Germany, seeking independence from U.S., pushes cyber security research - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-cyber/germany-seeking-independence-from-u-s-pushes-cyber-security-research-idUSKCN1LE1FX <comment><USER2> I used to work in the US as a perf engineer, and now live in Europe(Denmark). I made a conscious choice to live here despite a drastic cut in pay. Europe just does not pay anywhere near what US does. Unless this changes, majority of top tech talent will always be in the US.

Want top notch Cyber Security in Germany? Start by paying well for the engineers... then may be they want to stay.

<comment><USER3> This comparison is very complex. You cannot just compare European wages with US wages [1].

For one, the cost of living is going to depend on where you live. Which country, which city, which town. And you cannot just compare the costs. Each person has different values. Some prefer to live in a village, other in an apartment in a city. Some are cool with 1500 EUR rent a month, some find that ridiculous. Some can't stand the smog, others don't mind. If you live in a village the value of a car increases, while in a city the public transport system is invaluable. Each has their + and -, beyond just the cost of living, and how important these values are is _also_ going to differ.

On top of that you get healthcare in Europe, even if you end up sacked. You pay more tax in Europe, but this also gives you more social security. Then there's state pensions.

In the USA the native language is English, and its settled on that. In Europe, this isn't the case (though it is in Amsterdam) with e.g. the stoic French and Germans. Not even the EUR is the main currency in whole of EU.

[1] I suppose we'd need some kind of statistical analysis.

<comment><USER2> True that I generalized too much. But, I did so for brevity of my point. Comparing EU salaries with US is not apples to apples. Because EU has different cost of living regions & benefits vs similar differences in US. However, as a personal anecdote from someone who moved from SouthEast USA(Raleigh, NC) which I consider as neither too high end like Bay Area nor too low like somewhere in Montana to Denmark, which is rather higher cost example within Europe, I see a big difference in the money I can retain every month after my expenses. Admittedly, I did not count healthcare costs because it was covered almost entirely by my employer in the US. Here, the Danish government does from my taxes..

If I were a young new graduate tech engineer with aspirations of being among the best, and getting paid well, from anywhere in Europe, it seems almost 90% logical to look at moving to US. Cultural, political and family reasons to stay in Europe is a different story.

I have a friend in DK, who bluntly said that "he will not consider the US in the argument because of Trump, and the society that would elect an idiot like him". People have different priorities at the end of the day. But, money wise, it is still the US of A...

<comment><USER4> I think you are undervaluing a lot the benefits of the European culture [1].

It's just not health care, it's also the safety of not being spontaneously fired, the work-life balance, the vacation time, the paternity leave, and so on.

[1] I know that the mileage can vary from country to country.

<comment><USER2> I didn't mean to undervalue the benefits. I need to communicate better. I only intended to state a part of the argument that US generally pays substantially more than Europe. There are many (including myself) that choose to stay in Europe in-spite of it, valuing other benefits such as (better healthcare, work-life balance, education, involved society, gun control etc). It still does not change the fact that US pays better, and that it would be better for Europe to do so as well if they want to attract top Engineers aways from US...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Germany has a pretty awesome computer security base already. Look at CCC. The government may need to better align their values with the people's to harness that talent though.

<comment> ur-whale This, a 1000 time.

Germany's (and western Europe's in general) biggest problem is not lousy compensation and sky-high taxes (although these are a huge problem as well).

The biggest thing that prevents Europe from innovating is _culture_.

Risk-taking, innovation, doing crazy "unthinkable" things is something that has simply _deserted_ the European DNA a long time ago (probably over a century by now).

Almost all the important technical inventions of the 19th century happened in Europe. Almost all the important technical inventions of the 20th century happened outside Europe.

If you've ever worked in Germany in a tech company you will very likely know what I am talking about here: when you throw a new and crazy idea on the table, the immediate reaction of the crowd is to carefully explain to you the myriad of ways in which your idea is just "not possible" and "will fail".

Getting a brainstorm-type session going with a group German engineers is darn near impossible.

And much less so with management.

<comment><USER6> I think you are somewhat correct with your brainstorming scenario, but Germany was still plenty innovative in the last century.

Software technologies like MP3 came out of Germany. Companies like SAP and Hetzner are successful and german. Berlin has a healthy startup scene. Green technologies and automotive is dominated by Germany.

Overall I think Germany has plenty of risk taking engineers but the capital is more risk averse than in the US. Capital includes angel investors and pension funds and everything in between.

<comment> ur-whale >Software technologies like MP3 came out of Germany.

With one of the most restrictive IP licensing scheme I've encountered in my professional life. Way to promote innovation indeed.

>Companies like SAP

At the risk of sounding sarcastic, I have a very hard time putting SAP and innovation in the same sentence. They're basically the Oracle of Germany.

> Green technologies and automotive is dominated by Germany.

I do not know enough about green tech to comment, but for automotive, I strongly disagree: incremental improvement, yes. Innovation? certainly not. Case in point: how many German company dominate in self-driving cars? All the German car makers are buying the tech. from elsewhere.

As a matter of fact, thanks for picking that example: where did Sebastian Thrun have to go in order for his ideas to take flight? Why did he not choose to do his thing in Germany?

>Overall I think Germany has plenty of risk taking engineers but the capital is more risk averse than in the US. Capital includes angel investors and pension funds and everything in between.

You are correct that Venture cap in Western Europe is risk averse. All they invest in is European versions of stuff that's already been proven successful in the US.

But what you're not seeing is that the aversion to risk from European VC is a _symptom_ of a larger/deeper problem: statistically speaking, there is no appetite for risk and innovation in Europe. VC risk-averseness is just one facet of that.

And why should there be? Given the regulatory and tax burden you're going to be subjected to when you try to do anything over there, why even effing try?

<comment><USER7> > With one of the most restrictive IP licensing scheme I've encountered in my > professional life. Way to promote innovation indeed.

I feel like you are moving goal posts. Also, do you think IP in the US software industry is any better?

<comment> ur-whale No, I am not moving the goal posts.

Patents, while they were invented to promote it, end up being a major drag on innovation, which bears to my point: innovating in Europe is a major PITA.

>Also, do you think IP in the US software industry is any better

The way IP is managed in the US is terrible, granted.

But I would say that these days, and specifically for software, things are _way_ better than they used to - say - in the 80's and 90's.

A number of tech. companies are starting to recognize that sharing IP is actually making them more money in the long run and are actually publishing a lot of what they invent.

For example, and while I am no fan of Google, they tend to open source a ton of non-obvious stuff (e.g. the recently discussed s2 library).

On the flipside, and as an experiment: if you work in a German tech. company, try and ask their legal dept how they'd feel about open-sourcing some of their stack. See what they say.

<comment><USER6> How much a tech company open sources their stuff depends much more on their industry sector. The web industry makes a lot Open Source. The embedded industry does not. Do General Motors, Boeing, or Tesla open source a lot?

My employer, Bosch, does open source a few things. For example: [http://www.amalthea-project.org/](http://www.amalthea-project.org/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Interior Minister Horst Seehofer told reporters that Germany needed new > tools to become a top player in cyber security and shore up European > security and independence.

Good grace. The man is so horribly incompetent at everything he does and his party (CSU) are even worse. I don't trust this proposal even a bit.

In addition:

1) how on earth are they planning to _fund_ and _staff_ all of this? I worked for local government and it paid shit, and from what I hear state/fed government doesn't pay much more either, so no way to attract talent by pay.

2) Like many gov positions, this will be German nationals only (or EU nationals, not sure if German-citizens-only is still allowed under EU regulations?). Definitely no jobs for non-EU applicants.

3) Ever got a conviction for hacking or a (known) weed/other drug habit? Automatic no-go. Which is the reason why there is a _severe_ lack of IT competency in government, no matter the level or agency.

4) Who in living hell wants to work that job? I'd expect to be kicked out of any political or hacktivist group if I were to work for our increasingly authoritarian government, let alone under Seehofer, and that with reason. That leaves as candidates only those with no other options left, and authoritarians at the best, Nazis at the worst. The police of Saxony showed on the weekend what is the result.

<comment><USER9> I've worked on projects for the German govt before, and I was never employed by them. Points 3 and 4, possibly also 2 are handled by hiring companies to do the work.

<comment><USER8> Seehofer wants to create an entire agency. Makes sense given that this is national security matter, I can't believe he'll (be able to) outsource this.

And the other points are still valid even if outsourced, as the requirements will be part of the outsourcing contract.

<comment><USER10> I don't know if it's not possible to outsource it, if you look to the U.S. an absolutely massive amount of work (intelligence and military ops) is outsourced to private contractors

Ex source (sorry, old one, don't have time right now to find a more recent article I was thinking of for reference): [https://www.salon.com/2007/06/01/intel_contractors/](https://www.salon.com/2007/06/01/intel_contractors/)

<comment><USER8> > I don't know if it's not possible to outsource it, if you look to the U.S. > an absolutely massive amount of work (intelligence and military ops) is > outsourced to private contractors

And Snowden was one of the inevitable results. I mean, I'm happy the leak happened, but it is a perfect example of what can go wrong with outsourcing to the cheapest bidder. In total it would be better for the government to do in- house, but how else are you gonna shift citizen money into the hand of already ultra rich people... the only thing where outsourcing is profitable and worth it is for exclusively short term things (e.g. constructing buildings or developing a specific software), but long term stuff? Cut the profits of the company and hire the employees yourselves.

<comment><USER9> It wasn't outsourced to the cheapest bidder; actually, limitations on govt salaries is one of the reasons to outsource: you can attract better talent with competitive offers. And plenty of whistleblowers at the CIA and NSA were direct gov employees, not contractors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > FILE PHOTO: A German flag is seen on the laptop screen in front of a > computer screen on which cyber code is displayed, in this illustration > picture taken March 2, 2018. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel/Illustration

Cyber code. Reuters. Cyber code.

<comment><USER12> I'd estimate that a solid 90% of the mainstream news I read about computer science subjects has factual errors. Not interpretations different than mine-- stuff that just ain't true. It makes me wonder how competent the writer is, and makes me wonder if 90% of the rest of mainstream news is written just as incompetently, but I just can't notice it because I'm not an expert in everything.

<comment><USER13> I can't find the name for it right now, but for me that has been a common way to think about why some "news" items stick around, even when they're total BS.

People read an item within their own field and go "what a load of crap, they can't even get the basics right _rage_ " then they turn the page, read something from a different field and go "my, that's so interesting, these people really know their stuff!"

<comment><USER14> You're looking for [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell- Mann_amnesia_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect)

<comment><USER15> I posited recently that news in areas we're not expert in are basically processed as entertainment, which is why we don't give a damn about its accuracy whereas we're comparatively so enraged about gross mistakes in areas we're well-versed in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> A good start would be switching all government systems from the Microsoft stack to a home-grown alternative. But efforts to switch to Linux are regularly stopped.

<comment><USER16> It's because it's not really doable without tremendous effort. I work for a muniplavity in Denmark, and we're a big participants in an open source group for public software called OS2, we're also members of a group of municipalities that own our own ESDH software and codebase and pay private companies to support and maintain it. Our libraries operate on 100% open source with Ubuntu supported by a local company.

So we're actually pretty progressive in terms of pushing open source while also supporting local business.

We operate more than 300 IT systems though, I'd say that around 75% of these run on windows only, many without suitable alternatives. So even on the technical side, we can't swap our stack because our employees wouldn't be able to do their jobs. We're working to lower this, and stuff like web-apps and the rise of android/iOS devises has helped but it'll probably take 25 years to happen, and here's the thing, Azure is actually the most EU friendly, secure, stable and cost-efficient cloud platform, so a lot of those non-Microsoft software actually still run on Microsoft.

Then there is the employee training. I'm not sure if you're aware, but the primary cost of running a public organization is your employees. They are the most important resource and replacing them is really expensive. So is retraining them, and it's also something we already struggle with in terms of IT.

Most times when we switch a system, the technical implementation will go excellent. The organizational implementation will go horrible, however, because learning how to use an IT system is hard. It's even harder to learn how to use it efficiently and often local management will be reluctant to invest enough time or focus on what they view as IT changes, because they are already understaffed in their primary function.

Windows, android and IOS are something most people have worked with before. So is the office package, and again, where is the non-Microsoft alternative to the office365 enterprise stack? Anyway, switching people who can barely "turn on the internet" (talking of course about the browser, but that's what you'll literally hear every day in our support center) to open source alternatives is a tremendous effort that nobody, nobody, outside of tech wants to do.

Then there is IT, we've run Microsoft for decades. Our staff is trained for it, they're certified in it and despite what you may think, they're actually cutting edge in terms of skill. At least in my country they are, we've yet to find an ADFS consultant that knows more about ADFS than our guys, in fact, we've had to send most of them home because they weren't able to help us. Where do we find Linux replacements for those people? And how do we pay the 25 million it would cost us to replace the ones that don't want to work with the Linux stack?

Lastly there is support. Microsoft may have a spotty reputation in popular culture, but their support has always been top of the class to the public sector. If we file a primary incident report to Microsoft, Seattle will be on the phone with us until it's fixed. What Linux house will offer this service? Even if we found one, I don't think we'd really want to throw away decades of partnership with an untested entity just because.

I wish we could run European based open source software, I really do, but the truth is that it's complicated, highly improbable and the business case isn't even there. Because it would be really expensive, and do you really want to sacrifice welfare to run Linux? Would your political leadership?

<comment><USER17> Thanks for taking the time to write out your experience, it really makes me think.

> so a lot of those non-Microsoft software actually still run on Microsoft

As a FLOSS advocate myself, this matters less than you seem to imply. Microsoft is publicly traded, they'll pivot to goat herding if that's the way to maximize profit. So avoiding it is (imo) less important than avoiding their lock-in products. If Azure has little lock-in, might as well use it, icky as it may feel to me personally. It's not inherently anti-FLOSS, because Microsoft is not inherently anything.

> If we file a primary incident report to Microsoft, Seattle will be on the > phone with us until it's fixed. What Linux house will offer this service?

I think both Redhat and Canonical would love that business.

I'm not looking to argue as you seem to know what you're saying, but on the financial side, how many millions are spent on Windows, Office and other licenses every year? I'd say it's worth doing the math.

<comment><USER16> I actually really like Azure. Orchestra and application insights have made incident support so much easier, and it's only as lock-on as you make it.

I also worry because of the political climate. It's extremely unlikely, that the relationship between the EU and the US will really go bad, but we have contingency plans for things you wouldn't believe, so naturally we have one for Azure.

<comment><USER18> Do you have one for Microsoft Office and for reading all your (hopefully archived) documents? Rendering (and hence sometimes the meaning) of office documents can vary significantly depending on your software.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This seems quite reasonable for Germany to do. At some point, when you can't trust others to do such important work you need, you have to do it yourself.

<comment><USER20> Nah, it's not.

Germany has already several established agencies in this area that could use the money but wouldn't have to be build up from scratch.

<comment><USER21> Is that a bug or a feature, though? Organizations often get stick in their ways. It might be easier to start from scratch if you want something new.

<comment><USER20> If we'd have much money to spend, I'd say it's a feature. We don't however so I'd say it's a bug. Also due to the persons involved, there might me some unknown motivation behind it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> So, Germany is US controlled territory?

<comment><USER23> If national critical systems are running Windows or other US closed source tech, then technically yes. The US is potentially in control of these systems. This is true in Germany and in many (most?) other parts of the world. From the viewpoint of these nations, all the US needs to do is have Microsoft, Google, or whatever tech company is in control of a system of interest to insert malware or give the US government the private data it requests. I'm not saying it happens, but rather that it's certainly possible and completely in the US's playcourt to decide to control or not to control. This is why government computer systems should be open source or self-developed.

<comment><USER24> >If national critical systems are running Windows or other US closed source tech, then technically yes. The US is potentially in control of these systems.

What? So because US govt't systems run (or ran) Kaspersky (or TrendMicro) that means the US is (was) controlled, technically by Russia or Japan? Huh!

<comment><USER23> I don't know those software or how widely utilized they are in the US and specifically in US national security critical systems.

The US in a unique position, though. Windows and OSX are operating systems; they have complete control of everything else running in the systems they run on. Google has view of the world's web navigation, email authentication, as well as complete control over a grand portion of the world's phones (most of the other portion is controlled by Apple, also a US company), including knowledge of phone calls made between people, and their location at all times. Facebook also has great knowledge of how all people are interrelated.

There's probably lots I'm missing, but the point is that most of the world's cyberspace (a useful word apparently) is controlled by the US. If we translate that to cyberwarfare, that means that the US practically has ALL the guns. A couple guns from other nations are not going to make a difference in this space.

<comment><USER24> At least Kaspersky was well deployed within DHS and DoD: a ban was set to prevent new deployments: [http://www.executivegov.com/2018/06/dod-nasa-gsa- issue-inter...](http://www.executivegov.com/2018/06/dod-nasa-gsa-issue- interim-rule-to-ban-use-of-kaspersky-labs-products-services/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The salary of a skilled German software engineer in this field is about 1/4th of the US counterpart. So I wish the German government luck in their endeavor, because they're gonna need it.

<comment><USER26> I know plenty of smart Germans who do not want to move to USA even for 4-5 times the salary.

<comment><USER25> I don't doubt it, but for the very best the multiplier is greater than that, and not moving becomes harder. The difference is between lifetime wage slavery and financial independence at that point.

<comment><USER27> I've just moved _to_ Berlin to look for software development work, and it's nowhere near as bad as you are portraying.

Lower than the USA, yes; but even junior software roles are well above "wage slavery". Housing and medical insurance are both much cheaper here (also food, but food is so cheap generally that it being cheaper here doesn't make much difference, unlike rent and insurance).

<comment><USER25> Obviously this depends on the field and on your baseline in the US. I suppose if you made $100k/yr here, then making 60k euro there would not be that big of a deal, even though taxes are much higher. But if you made $500-700k/yr here in total comp (a realistic proposition for senior engineers in hot fields), such a move would be foolish. Remember, we're not discussing the low end of the market here.

<comment><USER28> > $500-700k/yr here in total comp (a realistic proposition for senior > engineers in hot fields)

Sure, but that level is paid to maybe 1-in-25 staff/principal/distinguished engineers at the top handful companies which make up maybe 1-in-25 of total jobs in the industry (order of magnitude)?

So for the 1-in-500 talents in the German coding industry, maybe it might be a worthwhile consideration to move halfway across the world with their families, but for the 499 even doubling their salary isn't all that enticing...

<comment><USER25> 500 and 700k is about the level of comp of Google's Staff and Senior Staff levels correspondingly, assuming a high yearly review rating. Let me assure you, there are a lot more of them than you think, at Google and elsewhere. It is true that _almost_ all of the engineers at those levels are exceptional however.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Harvard university debate team loses to New York prison inmates (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/11916035/Harvard-university-debate-team-loses-to-New-York-prison-inmates.html <comment><USER2> Does anyone actually have the source to the actual debate? All i've found is clickbat articles.

<comment><USER3> Yes, would love to watch some actual footage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Anyone interested in this should check out Radiolab's episode on the state of collegiate debate:

[http://www.radiolab.org/story/debatable/](http://www.radiolab.org/story/debatable/)

<comment><USER5> Your link is about an entirely different format of debate ("policy debate") from the one under discussion in this thread ("parliamentary debate"). The two are unrecognizably different. See e.g. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Policy_debate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Policy_debate) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_debate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_debate)

<comment><USER6> Competition seems to have turned the so-called "policy debate" into a highly stylized ritual that bears little resemblance to true debate, and having little relevance outside of its own domain. To my mind, rewarding arguments regardless of validity or relevance, and favoring the number of arguments over their cogency, has destroyed its value.

[https://www.americamagazine.org/arts- culture/2017/09/26/corr...](https://www.americamagazine.org/arts- culture/2017/09/26/corrosion-high-school-debate-and-how-it-mirrors-american- politics)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why should this surprise anyone. There are Harvard graduates in prison. There are geniuses in prison.

<comment><USER8> Genius does not equal honesty or good character.

<comment><USER9> Being honest and of good character also doesn't mean you can't end up in prison.

<comment><USER10> And dishonesty or bad character don't mean that you can't win a debate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Ivy League people are people, prision inmates are people.

<comment><USER12> Therefore, Socrates is a cat. But I see your point ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> >The three inmates, Carl Snyder, Dyjuan Tatro and Carlos Polanco, were tasked with arguing that public schools should be allowed to turn away students whose parents entered the US illegally.

>The inmates impressed the judges by suggesting that if public schools turned the students away, non-governmental organisations or wealthier schools could step in and provide better education to the children in any case.

That's a weak argument, in my view.

The illegal immigrants wouldn't be able to afford private education as it is too expensive even for Americans. Non-gov orgs wouldn't be able to reach to illegal immigrants. Home- and Internet-schooling would be better arguments, but still bad.

Integrating the children of illegal immigrants into public schooling would bring greater benefits not only to them and their parents but to society as a whole.

 _One can argue that, in the US, European cultural values predominate ( "white" is not a synonym for the Caucasian ethnicity but simply an identity that means "holds European cultural values"), and that African-Americans don't have significantly different cultural values from European culture, (ie, they are "white" save for superficial differences like music, food and places of worship, and so on), and that a Syrian Caucasian is not "white" (because they don't hold European cultural values) but an African-American descendant of the people from the Sahara region is a dark-skinned "white"._

And therefore African-Americans being dark-skinned "whites" (even if they try to superficially distinguish themselves with the US "black" cultural identity) is an example of the power of assimilation of our public schooling. It would convert, say, a child of Syrian parents with Middle-Eastern values into someone who holds European cultural values and who would work, or rebel, within the cultural rules of the European system.

The children of illegal immigrants should be allowed into public schools not just to neutralize the threat of cultural invaders, but to give us more soft power over a wider portion of the world.

Discuss? ;)

<comment><USER14> I would say it is counterproductive to base your re-education camp argument around loaded terms like white/black-american culture.

> ;)

But you know that.

Nobody uses "white" the way you did and even if that matches your observations in the US that term was only very recently inclusive of so many origin countries on the European continent. The UK version of "white" still isn't nearly as inclusive as the American construct. It is fine to merely say American culture has predominantly European roots.

The underlying argument around re-education camps may have more merit. The primary argument is about who pays for it. You need to convince Congress and education secretaries and I don't think you're soft power argument would sway anyone.

<comment><USER13> More specifically, I mean to say that "white" is the cultural identity that originated with the European Enlightenment and its values. It is almost perfectly interchangeable with "Westerner".

I also mean to say that this is universally true, as it is a fundamental definition of what "white" is -- a cultural identity, and not a skin-color, "race" or ethnicity.

Modern biology doesn't divide humans into races; there is no Caucasian "race", for example.

"White", furthermore, isn't an ethnicity like Caucasian is (because Caucasian simply refers to the ethnic people originally from the Caucus region), but instead is a cultural identity as I described above.

As "white" is a cultural identity, skin-color and ethnicity aren't a determining factor on whether someone is "white". Again, the term "white", when properly defined and understood without confusion with Caucasian or "of European birth or descent", is almost perfectly interchangeable with "Westerner".

What I mean by "black" are the unsuccessful attempts of African-American people of Sahara-region descent to avoid "white" assimilation and distinguish themselves from "white" culture. I say unsuccessful because African-American fundamental values are essentially the same as "white" values -- unlike, say, an African person from Nigeria -- and even as they rebel against institutionalized oppression they do so within the confines of "white" values (ie, they wish to be included in those institutions as equally as Caucasians, but don't wish to fundamentally destroy or alter them like other cultures do).

One can even go further and say that "black" is as much a proper name for ethnic people from the Sahara-region as would be to call people of Middle- Eastern descent "brown people". "Black", in my view, is simply a name adopted specifically by African-American culture, and doesn't refer to dark-skinned people as a whole; the term "black" is only PC in the US; in other languages, it is offensive; the technical name for people of Sahara-region descent is now taboo in the US, and, in my view, this is to help erase the memory of Africa- American cultural history and to further assimilation.

<comment><USER14> yes everyone could tell from outer orbit that this is the argument you actually wanted to have, and it has nothing to do with the discussion at hand and only undermines it and weakens your argument.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think you underestimate the type of "spin" (for lack of better term) that goes on in the street? At least here in the Bronx, some of these people find ingenious arguments to get out of situations. Who is going to be better than understanding argument and the law, than someone who personally went through the process?

These people find ingenious short-term "quick-fix" arguments, a lot of that advantage can go away in the long term.

</comment><comment><USER16> Yes I love this shit fuck ivy leagues

</comment><comment><USER17> maybe the lost but they made it into Hype League!

</comment><comment><USER18> Should say 2015

</comment><comment><USER19> Why am I reading about this in an Oct 15 UK publication?

</comment><comment><USER20> Amazing what happens when you step out of the "group think" environment and into the real world. They should have expected the unexpected.

<comment><USER21> This comment is so bad that it has to be satire. You can't really string that many cliches together while simultaneously claiming to have an outside view of "group think" and be sincere ... can you?

<comment><USER22> And this comment is so rude that your point is lost entirely.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Did Facebook really do something wrong? - <AUTHOR> Users can use Facebook to connect with other people. In the process they share their information on Facebook. Facebook can use this information to categorize users based on their interests and serve them targeted advertising. Advertisers do not see who saw their ads unless the user interacts with the ad.
Now the platform itself is open and can be used by others in their apps to get user data. In such a case, the user himself approves sharing his data on Facebook with the app. This is what happened in the case of Cambridge Analytica. Users used a 3rd party app which collected data. They voluntarily did it. The app then shared it with Cambridge Analytica. The app developer got data from users and used it in ways he didn't disclose to his users.
Facebook makes close to no money from these third party apps. I have written apps in the past which ended up collecting user information which just sits in my database. I don't see how Facebook can prevent exploitation of this data as it can't be monitored. They could just shut down the pipe but I believe that will again make many people mad. The app developer is at fault.
Given above, I feel its the app developer at fault and not Facebook.
TL;DR Facebook advertising doesn't leak user information. Cambridge Analytica's approach would fail if people simply stopped using 3rd party apps. <comment><USER2> > In such a case, the user himself approves sharing his data on Facebook with > the app.

Most users are non-technical and have no idea what this really means. To users it means "if you don't approve you won't be able to use this", so they do. It's like giving candy to someone who doesn't understand nutritional facts — all they understand is it tastes good, not that it's also bad for you. Facebook and other companies know and take advantage of this.

Also, it's my understanding the Cambridge Analytica app also pulled data about friends of people who used it, so even if you hadn't consented to the app you were still scraped. _At the very least_ Facebook is at fault for having a system that allows personal information of non-consenting users to be taken by third-parties.

<comment><AUTHOR> I sort of agree. However note that when you pull data about friends, you don't get information about friends who have a higher privacy setting. Also, you can't get personal information about these friends through the api, however you could just web scrape it for many.

<comment> Lx1oG-AWb6h_ZG0 "Higher privacy setting" is kind of meaningless when Facebook seemingly goes out of its way to make the settings page hard to use. You pretty much need a PhD at this point to understand what all the toggles do, and even then it's not enough because they automatically opt you in to any new feature. I remember at some point in the beginning when they kept resetting all my privacy settings because they refactored their features but didn't preserve my old privacy setting... I just gave up at that point and stopped bothering.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Facebook _definitely_ did something wrong. Facebook makes developers sign up to an agreement that states they won't pass the user's information on to other parties. Kogan did that and Facebook failed to stop him, and then failed again when they didn't follow up sufficiently with Cambridge Analytica. Putting in a framework to protect user's data and then failing to act on it means they failed to protect their users.

Kogan and Cambridge Analytica also did things that I would consider wrong, but that doesn't let FB off the hook.

<comment><USER4> What would be Facebook options to stop Kogan or Cambridge Analytica?

They already have the data, other than suing, what's possible here?

<comment><USER5> They could have banned CA from operating on FB much sooner.

They could have sued the developer in court to send a message to other bad parties.

They could have notified the users that their data was used improperly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The reports have been so vague as to what Cambridge Analytica did its hard to know what they have or how they used it.

I feel like the political climate is so energized right now that everyone is freaking out instead of waiting for details and specifics. Facebook seems to be taking this very seriously and, generally speaking, I've always been impressed with Zuckerburgs ability to be introspective and make changes instead of digging in his heels.

I'll give them the benefit of the doubt for the moment while all this shakes out.

<comment><USER7> What exactly has been vague about what CA is accused of? You don't believe or can't understand how data from a purportedly academic app was used to harvest data from millions of user friends? Or how that data was then sold to a commercial entity?

<comment><USER6> Companies have been scrapping information off Facebook since they opened up the platform. We had to abandon some plans to use Facebook as a social mechanism for photo sharing because of new restrictions Facebook added in 2016. My point is, IMHO, Facebook has been continually tightening controls and adding more privacy features for years, so in this case, I give them the benefit of the doubt.

<comment><USER8> What doubt, though? They gave unconsenting users' data to third parties for years. It was policy. They knew what they were doing but didn't care.

(And I'm not sure what you mean by "scraping", but this was not anonymous web scraping, it was done through APIs these devs were given access to by Facebook.)

<comment><USER9> The problem wit this argument is that they ARE consenting users, they just don't care enough to know. From the facebook sign up page "By clicking Create Account, you agree to our Terms and that you have read our Data Policy..." On the data policy they say that your data is given to third parties. The problem is that common sense has been removed from our society. You DON'T need a PHD, as another poster said, you merely need common sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> (Part of) the problem is a lack of transparency to the cost you pay.

>They voluntarily did it.

If we're going from voluntarist morality then it seems okay initially but there are two main complicating factors that I see.

(1) Facebook and this app appear to be free. In reality they have a cost but because that cost takes the form of something other than money, the monetary value is obscured.

(2) Even the data itself is obscured from the user. Users don't know what data they've handed over, how it's been collected, what conclusions have been drawn from it, who it's been sold to, whether it's been combined with other data sources, etc.

Even the most voluntarist among us would probably see something wrong with the US healthcare system where you can't know the price of your services until after you've accepted them. Social media data collection is even one worse step than that because you _never_ find out what price it is you've paid.

A fix to this is radical forced transparency, just like what GDPR is going to do.

</comment><comment><USER7> You don't see how Facebook could prevent exploitation? After 2014, they restricted access to friends data after CA first blew up. But they knew in 2012, the Obama campaign had similarly abused TOS to harvest friend data and to perform analaysis and cross-referencing with (such as identifying friends who are also on campaign donor lists).

Saying that people could just write a web scraper anyway is a bullshit rationalization. The technical barrier is high enough that it would make it an extremely costly option, certainly more costly than all the other data sources that campaigns traditionally use.

FB may not have outright committed evil, but they sure didn't seem to prioritize safety for their users. And that's enough on which to consider judging them accordingly.

<comment><USER11> When you say abused, do you mean that the campaign did not violate it in 2012 but took advantage of the lenience Facebook allowed them? Thanks

<comment><USER7> According to what campaign workers told the NYT, the harvesting of data seems most certainly to have violated FB's TOS, especially regarding the storing of data for reasons other than caching performance: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16624506](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16624506)

But FB has the right to decide when to enforce TOS or not. It seems they never did so, not just for Obama but for other operators as well. Pretty sure most FB users would be surprised that their data was knowingly analyzed by a third party as thoroughly as the NYT article describes, with FB's knowledge.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> While the title is framed to get people's input; in the text you proclaim that the issue is not Facebook but the users. So, what you are asking is - _I am convinced Facebook did not do anything wrong but prove me otherwise._

The problem with that there is no way to prove a negative. And you already have the biggest defense - "...but people shared their data willingly".

Still, here's my view on this - Facebook is designed to collect data but it also is designed to keep people engaged so that they share _even more_. They also make it easy for people looking to collect data.

Their whole business model is around data. So, I wouldn't be surprised if there is a leak showing Facebook specifically courting CA, just like twitter did with RT:

[https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/oct/27/russias-rt- rev...](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/oct/27/russias-rt-reveals- twitters-pitch-to-sell-millions-of-dollars-in-2016-election-ads)

</comment><comment><USER13> I'll leave this here, I don't want to pressure HN into learning anything about privacy or Facebook's practices though: [https://phys.org/news/2018-02-belgian-court- facebook.html](https://phys.org/news/2018-02-belgian-court-facebook.html)

</comment><comment><USER14> I agree. I find [https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/03/suspending-cambridge- an...](https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/03/suspending-cambridge-analytica/) accurate about facts.

On the other hand, in Facebook's own words, "In 2015, we learned that a psychology professor at the University of Cambridge named Dr. Aleksandr Kogan lied to us and violated our Platform Policies". If Facebook learned this in 2015, why are they suspending violators in 2018? That part is blameworthy. But I agree the primary blame lies at Kogan, CA, SCL, etc.

</comment><comment><USER15> Yes, the app developer is definitely at fault.

The question at hand is whether Facebook could/should have done something/more to avoid this kind of situation. I do not have a definite answer to this question, but one could imagine both technical and legal means that can be used to avoid such abuse of data.

The other question at hand is whether Facebook should be allowed to hold this kind of power. Again, I do not have a definite answer and if the answer is "no", I have no idea how this could be implemented.

</comment><comment><USER16> > Facebook advertising doesn't leak user information.

It exposes too much data to advertisers/app, which most users unknowingly agree to. Which is still Facebook's problem and should be regulated. I think the downfall of FB has just started and Google is quite lucky that their efforts with G+ fell, because if they succeed they would be in same position.

Cambridge Analytica use of data is immoral and legality should be decided in courts.

</comment><comment><USER17> facebook basically did nothing to ensure third party apps & developers were not violating its data access and sharing policies. most developers know it has always been pretty easy to harvest data from facebook by tricking users and once you have the data you can do whatever you want with it.

facebook probably didn't do anything illegal, but many people feel they failed to sufficiently protect user data from bad actors.

It the absence of laws or regulations to punish facebook, the only recourse is for users to leave the platform. this probably won't happen b/c most people don't know or don't care. but if we think its in the public good to protect this data we should seek to pass some regulations that require platforms like facebook to meet an acceptable threshold of data protection.

given the effects that harvesting facebook data can have on elections, its probably a good idea for regulators to step in.

</comment><comment><USER18> One issue is that the older version of the graph API permitted third party apps to access your full friends list and data your friends had shared. So I post photos and statuses, and those aren't just visible to my friends but also to third party apps my friends are using.

</comment><comment><USER19> The crux here is the difference between affirmatively doing something wrong and failing to do enough right. I'm not going to wade into the rest of the debate, but I think anybody giving an answer should try to be clear _which_ question they're answering.</comment>


Google+ Games is shutting down - <AUTHOR> https://support.google.com/plus/answer/3123176?hl=en&ref_topic=1334138 <comment><USER2> In short. Google+ is thriving, but we decided to shut down Google+ Games. Look away... Look away.

If you paid for anything contact the companies that are already tired of us and have them solve your problem. Oh and by the way, try our new Google Play Game Service! Hurry, before it's gone!

<comment><USER2> Sorry for the snarky comment. I usually don't make these types of comments but shutting down a service, asking users to do the leg work to solve game credit problems, and then marketing a new service in the same post bugs me.

<comment><USER3> No, no. You nailed it succinctly and without bitterness. Well played!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> That's something that makes me afraid to invest more time in learning Go language.

What if after investing my time in learning Go, one day I'll see Google blog post saying:

"Go lang project at Google is shutting down, we will no longer develop that. But don't worry we decided to donate that project to Apache Software Foundation! It is now called Apache Go. Look for in ASF incubator, just next to Apache Wave (formerly known as Google Wave".

<comment><USER5> But Go has Rob Pike and Ken Thompson. And a BSD license. I feel like that's as safe as it gets.

<comment><USER6> Motion seconded. As someone who's worked with more languages than I care to count, I think Go really is a great contribution. It's not just that there are big names behind it. I have little doubt that it will stand on its own merits precisely because of how its creators' experience and clarity of purpose manifest in pragmatic language design.

FWIW, I'm also _really_ enjoying getting into Rust[1]. At a distance, it's easy to confuse their purposes: both Rust and Go are superficially "new-world systems languages". But the goals and influences of each differ considerably, and this becomes manifest as you dig into them.

[1] Caveat: Rust is definitely still in its pre-release lifecycle. As such don't expect to launch your-next-great-whatever to production with it. But it's a great time for language and software enthusiasts to jump in and have fun.

<comment><USER5> One of my biggest problems with Go is that what the authors say it is for and what people using it for are 2 different things. The authors say it is to replace systems languages, and as far as I know they've never retracted that position, whereas in the wild it's being used instead of Python and other similar scripting languages.

<comment><USER6> I think that's simply a misunderstanding of what "systems language" means. It does not mean "go write an operating system", even though that's an application that comes to mind because of C.

From the top of golang.org: "Go is an open source programming environment that makes it easy to build simple, reliable, and efficient software." That's a pretty general statement. Follow on with this one from [1]: "Go is an attempt to combine the ease of programming of an interpreted, dynamically typed language with the efficiency and safety of a statically typed, compiled language." They're pretty clear that they want to have their cake and eat it too, regarding the benefits of these language classes.

For more color on Go's origins, focus, and design, I highly recommend the "Go at Google" talk by Rob Pike, available as video [2] or an edited article version [3].

[1] <http://golang.org/doc/faq#creating_a_new_language>

[2] <http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Go-Google>

[3] <http://talks.golang.org/2012/splash.article>

<comment><USER5> It's not a misunderstanding at all. From day one the target was C/C++. The initial demos were all about how fast Go compiles compared to C++.

Hell, that FAQ makes it pretty clear what the target is. Please read "What is the purpose of the project?" and tell me how the target is anything but C/C++...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm shocked and surprised! How is that possible? after all this was going to be yet another amazing google product built by bunch of smart people that made it through 12 rounds of interview process. To paraphrase, "people with no imaginations hire people with no imagination" :)

<comment><USER8> All shutting down Google+ Games means is that the integration of web games with the Google+ UI is going away in favor of piecemeal integration. Google+ Games is essentially the _old_ Facebook model that even Facebook-linked games are using less, the new model (supported by Google Play Game Services, Google+ SSO, the Google+ Moments API, etc.) is of games (quite often native mobile games rather than web games) that interact with a support platform through a sign-on API, cloud services that provide saves/multiplayer toos/leaderboards/acheivements, and systems that allow integration with social network news feeds.

<comment><USER9> This actually makes sense.

The Google play services do seem to offer more.

But do I trust Google's services (especially ones that are open, although I doubt this is or was the case with games) anymore?

No. I trust them about as much as I trust any company's services.

I just didn't think Google were any company, until recently.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm surprised by how many technical people are butt hurt over every subsequent shutdown of a service after Google Reader. It sucks to invest time and effort into something that was assumed to exist, however naively, forever. On the other hand, if we were to hold on to every design and implementation we've ever created without the ability to throw it away, no matter whom or what depends on it, our technological progress would probably be slowed.

Could you imagine if every piece of code you wrote once it was functioning, couldn't be thrown away and you had to support it forever once it existed? That would blow.

It's much like backwards compatibility decisions. Sometimes you gotta break free.

Just breathe, remember it's not the end of the world, and if you're on the self entitlement band wagon, you're going nowhere fast.

<comment><USER11> I think the correct sentiment: if you're relying on an advertising company like Google, you're going nowhere fast.

<comment><USER12> Relying on a eCommerce company like Amazon, you're going nowhere fast.

I too can make blanket ignorant statements. Google is not just an advertisement company anymore. Haven't been for awhile.

<comment><USER13> How can you possibly suggest that? For 2012 advertising revenues made up nearly 95% of Google's total revenue ($43.6B of $46B). <http://investor.google.com/financial/tables.html>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> When they launched Games on G+ I was pretty excited. I went to play and was greeted with "Games are _social_!" along with a prompt to share all my social networking info with 3rd parties. Decline and you can't play. Games are social? I'm supposed to hear "social" and just enthusiastically agree to that? Sorry, but no. I never went back.

</comment><comment><USER15> Please send me any data regarding Google shutdowns.

<http://jensenbox.github.io/timeline/>

<comment><USER16> One thing that's missing from the timeline is _equivalent services_ that Google have launched/purchased. For example, Google Video didn't so much 'shut down' as merge with (the arguably better) Youtube.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> As a shareholder of Google, it's encouraging for me to see that Google shuts down products that didn't work out really really fast (Nexus Q and now Google+ Games).

<comment><USER18> If only they shut down g+ as fast! :p

<comment><USER19> hehe, yeah, Google+ is working, but in a strange way

<comment><USER20> FWIW, I generally find that the majority of referral traffic to the Fogbeam Blog is from Reddit, with Hacker News and/or Twitter next, possibly Slashdot if we got something on there, and then G+ and "everybody else". Until a week or so ago... for the first time, I noticed some posts that we put up where we got more traffic from G+ than from Twitter.

Yeah, it's just one anecdote, and there are all sorts of possible reasons, but it definitely appears that G+ has it's niche in some regards. It might not ever displace Facebook as the main 'generic' social network, but it's no tumbleweed filled wasteland like some people would lead one to believe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Google+ Games was not successful. I don't think it's that kind of community. So it makes sense to shut it down if no one was using it. Wouldn't you agree?

<comment><USER20> _Google+ Games was not successful. I don't think it's that kind of community. So it makes sense to shut it down if no one was using it. Wouldn't you agree?_

Maybe yes, maybe no. I don't think any of us here in the peanut gallery have enough information to really say. I mean, we can - I suppose - take Google at their word that it wasn't "successful" but we don't know things like:

1\. Why wasn't it successful?

2\. How are Google defining "successful" here?

3\. Are there other decisions or investments that could still be made to make it more "successful"?

4\. What are the possible n-th order effects of having a Games ecosystem, even if it isn't seemingly "successful" in isolation?

4.5 - what are the n-th order effects of the shutdown notice? How will developers react to this? Does it damage trust in Google as a brand? Will there be "downstream" fallout from this?

5\. What, if anything, does this say about the possibility of an "apps" (non game) ecosystem within G+?

6\. Etc.

Now I'm not saying Google are wrong to do this... from their perspective it may well be the right decision. Or it might not. Even companies full of very smart people don't always make good decisions on everything.

<comment><USER22> I don't get why everybody is so whiny and bitchy about what Google does and does not. It's a public company that's in it for money and all the stuff they make and you use for free - be it good or not; costs a lot of money to maintain and host and develop and all that.

It's not their responsibility to privately mail you their road map and spendings and ask your opinion about what to do with their money. I hated when they close products I'm using and I do use a lot of google stuff. But .... for the love of god people...

<comment><USER20> I'm really not sure why your reply is attached to my comment above. I'm not bitching about anything, just observing some random thoughts that one could apply to this sort of decision. I don't begrudge Google anything for shutting down G+ Games, as I never played the first one of them, nor was I ever likely to.

 _It's not their responsibility to privately mail you their road map and spendings and ask your opinion about what to do with their money. I hated when they close products I'm using and I do use a lot of google stuff. But .... for the love of god people..._

Riiight, not sure if that was meant to be directed to my reply, or if that was happenstance, but I certainly don't claim that Google have a responsibility to mail me anything or solicit my opinion on anything.

That said, it's pretty clear _why_ people make a big deal out of these announcements: Google are so large and powerful and have such a disproportionate amount of influence over what happens on the Web these days, that everything they do impacts a _lot_ of people and likely has ripple effects throughout the entire ecosystem. So it's hardly unreasonable for people to take notice and comment on this stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I think the killer feature was ability to use "Hangout" with G+ Games.

Sigh! I had a half baked card game (where seeing other peoples faces was a critical element) that I was planning to implement on G+.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you're willing to require your players to use modern browsers (Firefox and Chrome), and don't care about social network integration, then <http://www.webrtc.org/> should be a great alternative.

<comment><USER24> Flash has this feature for at least 10 years now. So no need to exclude.

Proof: [http://web.archive.org/web/20031221102318/http://www.macrome...](http://web.archive.org/web/20031221102318/http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/help04.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> can someone explain to me why people view service shutdown's (by Google in particular, it seems) as some kind of epic betrayal?

In every other industry, discontinuing a product is a non-event. In fact, even within the software industry its usually a non-event. Nobody is out there screaming havoc when Goodyear tire discontinues a product line that wasn't selling well. Google isn't allowed to do the same?

</comment><comment><USER26> Google's new project will be robots responsible for shutting down old services and groups. Rumor has it that they'll be called "Terminators," and they'll look kind of like this: [http://imposetonwallpaper.free.fr/wallpapers/films/terminato...](http://imposetonwallpaper.free.fr/wallpapers/films/terminator/Terminator3T800.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER27> Almost had a nervous break down because I thought Ingress was going to be listed >_> !

<comment><USER17> I have some concerns over that too, but ingress is completely independent, which means, if they really don't see it fitting into their strategy they can either spin it off of sell it to another company, hopefully.

Yes Google reader is somewhat independent too, but at least it has "Google" in its name. They can't spin it off of sell it.

<comment><USER28> Did Google ever sell some business?

<comment><USER17> I would say yes if that includes departments of companies they acquired.

<comment><USER24> Examples?

<comment><USER29> [http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/dec/20/google- sell...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/dec/20/google-sells- motorola-home-arris)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Now they have GPG, that's pretty much enables the same kind of functionality and better outside of Google+ Games. So it makes sense, I guess.

</comment><comment><USER31> I forgot that games even existed on it. Did anyone use it? Seems to confirm that Facebook is indeed not their actual competitor.

</comment><comment><USER32> Closing Down! Everything must Go!

</comment><comment><USER33> Well, now the company that treated me like human garbage for pointing out a doomed product direction will, at least, have to view me as human garbage that was _right_. Progress, one day at a time.

(My idea that was that we should engage independent developers and provide the resources to integrate them with Hangouts, thus having a double win because we'd both (a) get people comfortable with Hangouts and (b) have a higher quality of games than if we published Zynga dreck.)

<comment><AUTHOR>
      > Well, now the company that treated me like human garbage
      > for pointing out a doomed product direction will, at
      > least, have to view me as human garbage that was right.

Your manifestos were treated with astonishing patience and consideration, given their content and your reaction to criticism.

As I recall, your position was that Google+ Games should prefer intricate rulesets based on obscure board- and card-games on the basis that popular casual games are not sufficiently complex to pose an intellectual challenge.

It seems unlikely that positioning Google+ Games as the place to go for half- baked Catan knockoffs would have made it more popular.

<comment><USER34> And still is really sad that Google employees still waste time creating memes about Michael in their stupid internal memegen site many months after his departure.

<comment><USER33> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuel_Goldstein>

<comment><USER35> Since you seem to be an Ayn Rand fan, this is more like it:

Toohey: "Mr. Roark, we're alone here. Why don't you tell me what you think of me? In any words you wish. No one will hear us."

Roark: "But I don't think of you."

<comment><USER33> I'm not an Ayn Rand fan, but thanks.

My _Atlas Shrugged_ post was all about how the concept, while appealing, wouldn't work.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to Give a Talk - <AUTHOR> https://zapier.com/blog/how-give-talk/

<comment><USER2> I guess this will come off as snarky given the huge amount of time that obviously went into this. But what kind of person states up front that this is basically the first time he has ever given a talk - and then writes a several thousand word treatise on how to give talks? Again, I don't mean to sound snobbish or grumpy (but I'm sure I do), but there must be something really interesting about the psychology of someone who does something once for the first time ever and then sets about writing a comprehensive guide on it.

I've given quite a number of talks to decent size audiences and there are some giant smoking turds of BS in here that I hope nobody giving a talk ever reads. Take for example this:

 _" Depending on the length of your talk, the memorization needed, and your speaking time, you can either start practicing the day before or the day of your engagement."_

What the hell are you smoking? Practising a talk for the first time the day before you deliver it (let alone the actual day) is just about the worst advice I ever heard. Unless you are a certified egomaniac, this will probably destroy your confidence as you realise you can barely stutter your way through even the first two slides in the time alotted.

I guess I have to apologise to the author for sounding negative about something he has clearly put huge amounts of work into in an attempt to be helpful, but this kind of post just rubs me the wrong way.

<comment><USER3> I think there is a place for this kind of article. Someone who has just given their first talk may be able to relate to the needs of other soon-to-be first- timers more closely than an experienced speaker. Also, I think an article like this serves the author by forcing self-analysis of his or her procedure and discovering the ways of improving the process for future speaking engagements.

<comment><USER4> Agreed, but the title should be "Post-mortem of my first talk" or "What I learned from my first talk" rather than "How to give a talk", imho. Otherwise it's just misleading and disrespectful to readers. Maybe I'm oversensitive about these things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm not sure I agree with the advice to write out your talk in complete sentences. I think you'd be tempted to memorize the talk. In grad school, we gave lots of technical talks. There was one guy who wrote everything out, and he gave by far the worst talks in the department. He sounded like he was reciting something, rather than just speaking. He would pause awkwardly when he forgot where he was in spewing out his text. It was just painful to watch.

I think it is far better to know what you're going to say by practicing your talk out loud, a number of times. You have your main points in your head, but your delivery will be a bit different each time. That way you can sound loose and natural.

<comment><USER6> The trick is to write out the entire speech, word for word, but don't force yourself to stay 100% on script when you actually give the talk.

All through school as I was growing up, I was always instructed never to write out a speech or presentation in complete sentences, only to plan an outline, write down the main points on notecards, and then practice, practice, practice. The idea was that this strategy would result in a more natural talk.

The result, for me, was basically a recitation of the main points written on the notecards interspersed with some mumbling and fumbling. Every time I would practice, I'd find myself very consciously thinking "ok, now what do I say to get to the next main point?" It would be different every time, and the result was always a stuttery mess. My problem was that, with practice, the main points were the _easiest_ part to memorize. It's the stuff in between that I would forget and stumble over.

Now, I write a presentation as I would write an essay: plan, outline, draft and iterate, and read out lout repeatedly. Writing out the entire talk forces me to think about every supporting detail and every transition. It helps me to analyze the entire talk: I can easily pick out portions that don't flow well or don't make sense - or avoid writing them altogether, since every word of the speech is undergoing a drafting and editing process. I can identify phrases that are confusing and rewrite them, or even better, find phrases that particularly stand out and highlight them for emphasis. I can time the speech to within a very narrow window and find opportunities to expand or reduce the content, both on the paper and on the fly.

Finally, I practice - not until I've memorized it (unless it's relatively short), but until it sounds natural. I take notes on the bits I stumble over repeatedly, and those become my notecards.

This strategy probably isn't effective if you have to give a different talk every day or if you have minimal time to plan. But in my experience, it results in the most well-planned, natural talks with the highest content quality.

<comment><USER7> Exactly this. Learning things word-by-word is pointless and unrewarding. Being familiar with them, however, is a great idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> People interested in improving their public speaking skills should really consider joining their local Toastmasters club. Becoming a good public speaker takes a lot of learning, practice and good feedback..

Editing to expand on this: Toastmasters is a non-profit organization. In Toastmasters you follow a structured program to improve your public speaking skills, initially working through some canned speaking assignments to focus on specific skills, and over time working on more complex projects. As an example, you may work on structure in one project and something like vocal variety in another.

A big part of Toastmasters is feedback so you will get good feedback on how you're doing and where you can improve and you will also learn how to give others feedback.

Since the local clubs are run by the members there are also many general leadership training opportunities in a Toastmasters club. Someone will be in charge of doing PR (VP PR) or taking care of many other things that are required to have a healthy club (which is not unlike running a mini-business).

There is a minor "cultish" feel to it and a few semi-weird customs (e.g. clapping at the end of a speech) but all in all it's good fun and a great way to improve many skills a lot of us don't get to practice in our day to day engineering life...

<comment><USER9> Clapping at the end of a speech doesn't sound weird at all.

<comment><USER8> This may be cultural and context dependent but we had a company club and we had our meetings in this open seminar area. I know people looking on us from the outside considered the clapping to be a little weird. It works well though as positive feedback to speakers...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I gave my first talk this year, and I find this very backward.

I gave a talk because I had something to talk about that I thought other people would be interested int. I chose the venue/event those people would be at as they would benefit most from my talk.

The 'Learn from your talk' segement is great, but what I wanted to 'learn' from my talk, was not only 'how to give a better talk', but I wanted to know from the audience what they're thoughts were on the topic. That one might be specific to different subjects, but the first two I'd hope would be obvious for any presentation.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a good way to think about it! I suspect most people get invited to talk and say yes (versus trying to find a venue) because that's what the venue model supports.

Learning how to give a better talk is just a proxy for: how can I better communicate my ideas to the audience so they remember them?

In 2 months no-one is going to remember any of the details about your talk but they'll remember the experience and if you have resources online, they'll seek those out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Get drunk. Write it, and be complete. Go to bed. Sleep poorly. Get up before alarm. Caffeinate. Move your rousing conclusion to the top and try again, picking off your darlings. You're finished when you can't stand yourself anymore and it's time to shower. Think of something much better during steam. Dragon dictate while dressing. Rehearse en route -- a problem if you're just upstairs in the conference hotel. Email text to friendly teleprompter girl as sulky technician hooks up your mic. Wing it. Humbly accept false adoration. Cash the check. Add line to CV. Iterate.

</comment><comment><USER12> > Learn from your talk

This is probably the easiest and most underutilized technique to improve at public speaking.

<comment><USER13> Spot-on. As someone who speaks a lot, I still find this to be the most challenging (and worthwhile) part of the presentation lifecycle. Kudos for recognizing that and including it in your post!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is a resource I put together after giving a talk at IowaConf this year ([http://mikeknoop.com/iowaconf-road-to- zapier/](http://mikeknoop.com/iowaconf-road-to-zapier/))

It's huge (4,000+ words) but if you ever give a talk it could be really useful.

</comment><comment><USER14> What's with memorization? I give mostly short presentations, but usually I just need few bullet points on a slide and some solid eye brain control to calm down my nerves. Remember to talk slow, don't wave too much, don't stand too still, make it about few core ideas, nobody will get more than few ideas from your speech anyway.

</comment><comment><USER15> Thank you for posting this Mike. Preparation is indeed an act of respect towards the audience.

Patrick Winston's video "How to Speak," available through isites.harvard.edu, emphasizes the same philosophy and promotes similar techniques for effectiveness.

Lot of work. Well done.

</comment><comment><USER16> I think you'll do good as long as you don't do what I typically do... put together the talk + code samples + slides two hours before the talk is scheduled to start! :)

<comment><USER17> That works for some people, not being prepared that is. For others it doesn't. Whatever works for you and makes your audience happy is great :)</comment></comment>


Kelly Sommers think about not being a programmer anymore - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/kellabyte/status/1239528224025174018 <comment><USER2> >Thanks for the kind words. I just don't know if I can ship code anymore. The endless sprints for years, retrospectives that never end, performance reviews. I just can't anymore.

Maybe just burned out by Agile???</comment>


Unlocking New Features in Moz Pro with a Database-Free Architecture (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://moz.com/devblog/moz-analytics-db-free <comment><USER2> I'm the person who did the original prototype in Python/Pandas. The purpose of the prototype was to prove that with the right data presentation, you could process more data and cut processing and storage by over two orders of magnitude. I picked search rankings given the size of the data and the struggle the legacy system had in terms of showing more than a limited amount of data.

Previously, the MySQL solution had many rows for each ranking spanning several tables with all kinds of other data not related to showing the aggregate statistics that were relevant to Moz's users.

The solution was processing the raw data in batch and applying categorization to have an integer representation for all values. These changes led to a very compact representation that could quickly be loaded into memory and then filtered/aggregated.

Storing the results as a CSV wasn't important. It just turned out that having the static data allowed me to effortlessly scale-out serving since the data was only updated once a day or once a week, and it was append-only.

How big of a difference did it make? All of the CSVs individually compressed was less than 20GB. The production system served all user data off of a ~60 node MySQL cluster, with rankings being the most costly in terms of processing and 2nd in terms of disk usage (from what I remember).

Also, Pandas was blazing fast at loading several megabytes of CSV data (< 80ms @ the time). If I had to do it again today, I'd probably use Apache Parquet instead.

The most important insight that carried through the various solutions was to pre-process the data so that it was easily consumable for the task at hand. The languages (Python/Elixir) didn't make a difference, in my opinion. That said Pandas is fantastic, it made working with that data in-memory very easy, at least for this prototype.</comment>


Guetzli – a new more psychovisual JPEG encoder - <AUTHOR> http://encode.ru/threads/2628-Guetzli-a-new-more-psychovisual-JPEG-encoder?p=50642 <comment><USER2> Repository: [https://github.com/google/guetzli/](https://github.com/google/guetzli/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> comparison with other codecs at fixed image size:

[https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/folders/0B0w_eoSgaBLXQk1V...](https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/folders/0B0w_eoSgaBLXQk1VQU9nTGh3NGs)</comment>


Ask HN: anyone from Berlin startup scene? - <AUTHOR>

Hi, I am an Italian computer scientist who will be in Berlin for a few days starting next weekend. Since I will have Saturday 24th and most of Sunday 25th free, and since I have heard that the startup scene and related "hacker" community is pretty big over there, I was wondering if any HN reader also happened to be free on those days and would not mind chatting over a coffe or a beer, sharing some experiences. Or even just point me to some co-working spaces/hub where I could just step in and watch people creating something. My main interests are games, graphics/visualization, and data retrieval. You can find some of my contacts in my profile. Hope those kind of threads are allowed! In any case, thank you in advance. <comment><USER2> hi, I'm based in Berlin (I run spreadgit, a version control system for Excel). we could meet up for a beer or something on Saturday. Otherwise, the cool startup kids hang out in the betahaus over in Kreuzberg ([http://www.betahaus.com/berlin/](http://www.betahaus.com/berlin/)). I'll drop you an email.

<comment><USER3> The really cool startup kids hangout in [http://www.sanktoberholz.de/](http://www.sanktoberholz.de/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm here. Shoot me an message: bit.ly/hellllyeah

</comment><comment><USER4> near Frankfurt, sorry</comment>


Where KDE is Going – Part 1 - <AUTHOR> http://dot.kde.org/2014/06/26/where-kde-going-part-1 <comment><USER2> I love and use KDE on both my workstation and laptop. However over the decades, and especially since v4, I've seen it grow into something I barely recognise. Some things have to change:

       1/ Remove akonadi/nepomuk/mysql - a full mysql install just to provide a data store for "PIM and metadata" is ludicrous.
       2/ Make sure the Semantic desktop/Semantic Search/nepomuk is optional. I respect that it maybe useful for some, but please respect that it may not be useful for all.
       3/ Ditto for consolekit/policykit
       4/ Ditto for KDE PIM. The moment Kopete, Konversation, Kaddressbook etc depended upon the PIM stuff, was the moment I dropped them for Pidgin. Why? See point #1

It took me 12 hours to get kdelibs-4.12.5 + the rest of kde-base built without consolekit, policykit, akonadi, nepomuk, udisks/udisks2, upower, raptor, redland, gstreamer, virtuoso, soprano and canberra. But the result is a clean, usable and fast desktop, ie. the desktop I want! If I have to do that each time I upgrade, I'm going to look at other options. I'm most definitely not alone in this, a search on any of #1-4 will find hordes of frustrated people spending time figuring out ways to remove all these unwanted features.

For many users, removing all the above isn't an option. For users its complex and time consuming. Failing to make them optional (rather than default) KDE will suffer -- losing users, as memory consumed by an idle desktop triggers horrific flashbacks to darker Windows days.

My perception as a user is that Gnome (minimalism uber alles) and KDE (everything and the kitchen sink) have gone to extremes and forgotten their user base.

<comment><USER3> > It took me 12 hours to get kdelibs-4.12.5 + the rest of kde-base built > without...

Gentoo and its USE flags system makes this sort of thing really easy. If you have an otherwise idle machine sitting in a closet somewhere, you could even create a Gentoo binary package builder [0] for your primary Linux machine, so you don't have to spend time building the world on your primary box.

[0] You compile software on the package builder, it creates tarballs and installation instructions, then you use the package manager on another machine to install those tarballs.

<comment><USER2> Actually I do use Gentoo :) Despite the USE flags KDE's own dependencies make this rather less than easy.

Try remove akonadi, consolekit, polkit, kde-base/ _pim_ add "-consolekit -policykit -udisks -udisks2 -upower -raptor -redland -semantic-desktop -virtuoso -soprano -gstreamer -canberra" to your USE flags and rebuild KDE.

Ended up having to create a custom ebuild, mask a whole lot of stuff and add some stuff to package.provided to make it work.

> you could even create a Gentoo binary package builder [0] for your primary > Linux machine

I wasn't complaining about compile time, I have 20+ cores distributed for distcc compilation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have huge respect for everyone involved in KDE and OpenSource software and I'm writing this on KDE 4.13 but damn... it still sucks. Maybe I'm the wrong user.. but I do programming and do sysadmin stuff most of the time..

First the good parts: KDE is quite stable for me. I have hardly any crashes... this is huge as Unity had some ugly bugs I could not resolve.

But I had to install the Numix theme and icons and tweak knobs to get a common look between KDE/GTK2/GTK3.. I found the default Oxygen ugly and not well designed but this is probably a question of taste.

With Numix the machine feels and looks great but I'm not so happy after installing Windows 8.1 on an 10 year old Pentium M notebook with 2GB RAM and having to realize that Windows is way faster and responsive and more feature- rich than KDE and Unity and requires less RAM.

I'm not trolling - I'm talking about stuff like browsing files using the file manager and using a browser or office for writing documents.

Back to KDE: I don't understand Plasma at all - I don't use "activities" I tried it but found it useless. I don't care about widgets. I'd care more if the widgets would not be so useless.. something like gkrellm that ran on fvwm95 gives me more and better data about cpu/disk/network usage than any widgets I've found in the collections.

Memory... at least 400MB RSS after a fresh boot running only Konsole. No semenatic desktop, no Akonadi, no widgets... This is just crazy.

I have no SSD and 4GB RAM - maybe I'm too cheap for KDE but Akonadi and all semantic desktop parts never worked for me.

Why can't I disable the desktop search? After some hours googling I managed to kill most of Akonadi and Desktop search but I really would enjoy something like a minimal KDE desktop.

Dolphin/Kwin/Konsole/Kate/Okular are really great tools, through and I enjoy using them more than the Gnome tools..

I don't think I'm an old grumpy user - I really enjoy the Unity concept and even found Gnome3 interesting but I'm still feel some longing from time to time for the speed and functionality of KDE 3.5.

But overall I can work with KDE. I would be probably a lot more happy if I had a SSD and 16GB RAM and well.. that sucks. I don't want to install Windows on this machine for it to be faster!

I know there are alternatives.. but running Windows 8.1 on this 10 year old Pentium M notebook just made clear to me that the problem is not the hardware - it's the software.

Why is it so hard to to have a highly functional and low-footprint system?

<comment><USER5> This is so, so true. And it is so _sad,_ given that KDE 3 was a very usable, somewhat well-structured (considering the many configuration options) desktop that ran reasonably well on hardware from the previous _century._

It didn't _try_ so hard to be pretty. Actually, I always thought KDE 2/3 did have a pragmatic, technical elegance. KDE 4 (sorry: KDE-SC-Plasma-something 4) just looks like an early alpha preview uniting all the bad ideas of Windows Vista.

 _> I don't understand Plasma at all - I don't use "activities" I tried it but found it useless. I don't care about widgets._

This stuff _constantly_ gets in your way. Because it is a solution in frantic search of a problem. Unworldly and counter-intuitive to the greatest extent.

<comment><USER6> _early alpha preview uniting all the bad ideas of Windows Vista._

This is _exactly_ how I describe KDE 4. It was in development just as Vista was being demoed and it shows. The entire design of the system appears to have been heavily influenced by a failed MS product and the project is still living with that legacy. Time to go back to the KDE 3 code and start working on KDE 5...

<comment><USER5> I guess it looks so bad because it is a mediocre interpretation of the UI fads of seven years ago. This is why it is always a good idea not to follow the latest fad, especially if you have constrained development resources. Unfortunately, KDE 5 seems to be headed into a similar direction, copying the latest "flat design" fad, in a rather uninspired fashion. Until KDE 5 is ready, this fad will already have passed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I am generally _very_ happy with KDE.

It's much more hacker-friendly than Gnome/Unity IMO. Its footprint is huge and there's enormous power in it that I don't use. XFCE is similar but doesn't have the polish that KDE does, especially around multimonitor support.

I would encourage the KDE team to focus on driving towards the hacker use case and letting that power drive the end user experience. :)

</comment><comment><USER8> Nice, I still remember (not so fondly) doing the full build of KDE from source in the 3.x days to get it on my desktop machine. That and a bunch of issues with things that were more gnomish breaking it in weird ways. Using Kubuntu 12 has been pretty nice though. This next step sounds better still.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm not a KDE user (at the moment, though I have been in the past), but I have to say my first reaction to those screenshots were: "it looks like a shitty windows 8".

I'm not saying that's the truth, that was just the first thought that popped into my head looking at those screenshots.

</comment><comment><USER10> So the consensus on here seems to be that KDE (like GNOME) is too busy doing their own things, while not really catering to the needs of actual users.

Not having used KDE in a while (since the plasma disaster) I'm obviously not that into current details, but I remember advocating KDE over GNOME because it just worked and have what I needed.

Since Ubuntu those days are definitely gone. But now GNOME + unity is slipping too.

My next desktop may be cinnamon. I just wish I didn't have to be desktop- hopping like this to keep a nice, simple and working desktop. (and no, lxde and xfce is not for me. I find then too minimal and underpolished)

</comment><comment><USER11> Recently I had to spend a month working on a massively important, yet incredibly tedious/repetitive, web dev project. I started with our company's standard-issue dev environment: Windows 7 running Sublime Text. I got fed up with the slow speed and having to make 3x as many mouse clicks, which add up to a lot of repetitive motions after a while. I switched back to KDE because I could use Kate with the "fish://" protocol. I was able to finish the project in 1/4 the time it would have taken me otherwise. This is not an exaggeration, though it may be a conservative estimate. Much less wear-and-tear on my hands, too.

I keep meaning to learn vim and, in so doing, finally become a [SERIOUS PROFESSIONAL COMPUTER MAN], but KDE, when configured the way I want it, is the perfect development environment for me. I keep coming back to it. I have used every major computer operating system, different flavors of Gnome, XFCE, MacOS, Windows, and Linux under various lightweight window managers. If I need an OS for an older desktop machine, then I generally prefer razor-qt though :)

I've mostly outgrown the whole militant-OS-partisan thing, but I guess I'm kind of passionate about KDE. Passionate enough to write a long-winded thing on the internet, at any rate.

KDE is far from perfect. It's a resource pig until you learn how to use it effectively. But, so is everything else. It does seem like KDE development will chase the latest trends, but I hold out some hope that they might make some concessions for those of us who just want a lightweight system with a few powerful features.

</comment><comment><USER12> KDE is going straight ... Down!

I'm sorry to see it go (was my first Linux DE), but it's userbase has become a niche. It's mostly Unity and Gnome3 now.

</comment><comment><USER13> I feel like KDE5 is ugly, I'm already missing the detailed and elegant design of KDE4. Maybe it's just my whole dislike of the "minimalism" movement in general, but KDE5 looks dull and lifeless. That's just the visuals though. There's other great stuff about it to discuss, but I still can't help be disgusted by it's new look everytime I see it.

<comment><USER14> You know that you could change the widgets style and colours like on KDE 4 ? I don't dislike the new look&feel, but I like more what I have now (Oxygen with a dark colour scheme).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've been using Kubuntu for about 6 months. I was originally a Windows user looking to learn more about Linux and wasn't a big fan of the OSX UI. I went to KDE because it looked and acted like Windows but had the power of Linux underneath the hood.

I'm looking forward to the future of KDE and applaud the team for their effort and passion.

</comment><comment><USER16> Glad to hear things are still moving along and there are interesting things on the horizon.

I was a longtime KDE user until a couple years ago when I switched to Awesome and a desktop-environment-less desktop (i.e, neither Gnome, Unity, XFCE...).

I felt I was in the minority for liking KDE 3.0 (the infamous "public beta" release), and the following iterations.

Plasma wasn't useful to me (as a coder, I like to have and editor and a shell occupying as much of my screen as possible), but I appreciated the work that went into it.

I remember seeing once that KDE had a bad reputation of working around platform problems rather than tackling them head-on, unlike Gnome. As a result, they were constantly playing catch-up with the system integration that Gnome had built. I particularly remember the Network-Manager applet being bad enough that I just used the Gnome one.

Nevertheless, keep up the good work KDE!

<comment><USER17> "I felt I was in the minority for liking KDE 3.0 (the infamous "public beta" release)"

I think you mean 4.0

<comment><USER16> Quite right. My, how time flies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> after so many struggle and slowish kde I quit and went XFCE all the way..

It is not fancy but does the trick

</comment><comment><USER19> When I was a big Linux nerd I often found myself ditching KDE distros for those with desktop environments that look elegant and cohesive right out of the box.

But the new Plasma design looks excellent. If you guys can pull off an environment with great customization options and out-of-the-box elegance, that would be fantastic. Looks like the new design is headed in the right direction.

</comment><comment><USER20> Looking forward to KDE apps not dragging hundreds of megs of dependencies. And though I don't use it anymore, I still have a soft spot for this DE and the amount of flexibility it offers. Now, if it was a bit less buggy...

</comment><comment><USER21> I've always loved KDE and support everything they're going. Good job team!

</comment><comment><USER22> It's got a lot of promise to be the best looking Linux desktop around. I don't really like the grey they use however; I'd lighten it up. But then you're in trouble of looking like iOS.

<comment><USER23> Have you seen elementaryOS? Everything they've come up with looks a million times more polished than anything else in the Linux world.

<comment><USER24> I always feel that Elementary OS is all looks, no substance. They replace many well-established applications with their own basic apps that might look better but lack functionality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I've been a KDE user since KDE1 and I think, despite its flaws, it's still better than Gnome. I personally like the deep configurability, love the keybindings, WM tweakability, and so on. I'm not a huge fan of Plasma but think they made the right decision by building an architecture that would allow them to use the same components to build tablet, desktop, and other interfaces. I don't use any of the widgets though - don't find them useful. And I dislike Nepomuk and Akonadi, at least in their current form. I want to love Kontact but at least in SUSE 12.3 it still falls short of the mark. But I think this desktop is headed in the right direction and it's always the default I install first!

</comment><comment><USER26> KDE is great, but I don't like the default icons, colors and spacings, and the other themes aren't better (or at least, I couldn't find one).

</comment><comment><USER27> IMO KDE had an edge at Gnome until Ubuntu. Then Gnome on Ubuntu was the easiest/best DE until Unity / Gnome 3.

Today I switch between elementary, kde and Windows 8

</comment><comment><USER28> Remember when the open source movement revolved around Linux? Honestly this brings back memories from about 10 years ago for me.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm excited about KDE Frameworks 5 - Wondering how easy it would be to reuse parts of them in Qt5

</comment><comment><USER30> Starting to look fully commercial, that's really slick.

</comment><comment><USER31> My experience with KDE was always that it was prettier than GNOME 2 (at that time) but a massive resource hog, so I always ended up uninstalling it. I am curious how KDE has come along in addressing the bloat issue.

<comment><USER32> GNOME2 is still more lightweight. Where KDE has gained popularity is with people bailing out from GNOME 3.

FLTK still retains the small-and-fast crown.

<comment><USER14> False. KDE 4 runs far better that Gnome 2.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What for do you use Bitcoin block explorers ? - <AUTHOR> I am considering building a bitcoin block explorer as a side project and I would like the opinion from HN, as there are already many explorers out there.
1- What for do you use them generally if at all ?
2- How often ?
3- What is your background when you use it (developer, trader, layman ?) <comment><USER2> As a layman I sometimes use a block explorer to check how many confirmations a transaction I made has. I also check the median confirmation time and mean transaction fees out of curiosity if confirmations are taking too long but I let the BTC client choose the fee so I rarely have problems with confirmations on the network.</comment>