Looking for Qubes OS-Users in Munich-Germany
in...@websecur.eu
Yuraeitha
> Hi,my name is Knut von Walter.In order to progress in my understanding of Qubes OS, I am looking for members of the Qubes-community in Munich-Bavaria-Germany. Thank you. Best of best Knut von Walter
If you look here, you can see how many people who use Qubes, based on unique IP addresses https://www.qubes-os.org/statistics/
Only the Tor IP's may be more of the same people, so ignore those. In addition, people may update Qubes while out in the wild, i.e. while on company, school, or if using VPN on. Basically, it's a rough statistic regarding how many people use Qubes.
However, what the statistics does provide, is that no more than the maximum can exist. And this information is relevant to your question.
Currently there is probably some 25.000 Qubes users, probably less, given the laptops that move abouts and update on different non-Tor IP's.
It's probably not proper to take the German population, and devide by the world population, to find out the ratio, and transfer this ratio to the 25.000 Qubes users. This is because culture, and mouth to mouth recommendations, infrastructure like technical security universities, companies, etc. may spread Qubes in different and various populations across the world.
However its given that Germany is more focused on security than some other western countries out there, so the ratio may be a bit higher than the average world ratio.
Lets crack some numbers. Data is just roughly accurate, give or take some millions or source update delays, wiki use controversy, etc.. But it should be accurate enough to get a useful conclusion. We're not trying to split hairs after all.
- Data -
"The world population was estimated to have reached 7.6 billion as of October 2017" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population
Germany Population 2017: 82,155,210
http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/germany-population/
Munich 1,330,440
Same link source as German population, just scroll down.
Qubes users: ~ 25.000
https://www.qubes-os.org/statistics/
- Analysis -
Step 1,A)
82M German pop. divided by 7.600M world pop. = 0,0107 (or 1,07 %).
Step 1,B)
1,330M Munich pop. divided by 7.600M world pop. = 0,000175 (or 0,0175 %).
----
Step 2,A)
25.000 Qubes users multiplied by German/world population ratio 0,0107 = 267,5 German Qubes users.
Step 2,B)
25.000 Qubes users multiplied by Munich/world population ratio 0,000175 = 4,3 Munich Qubes users.
- Conclusion -
This means, in a perfect square, evenly distributed scenario, there are at average some 267,5 Qubes users in all of Germany, and some 4,3 Qubes users in Munich specifically. However, keep in mind, this is evenly distributed. Other factors, such as culture, universities, companies, mouth to mouth, and so on, may change how even the distribution is. As such, you may for example be the only one in Munich to use Qubes, or perhaps, there are 10 others besides you in Munich. Similar, there may be 500 in German, or maybe only 10 QUbes users in Germany.
- Perspective, a small extra study -
However, we can make a logical deduction from our little inductive research above. Deductively, we can assume that because Germans are subjectively known t be more keen on security and privacy than some other western countries, or most countries in the world. And because Germany is one of the leading country in some technologies and science. It's not unlikely to think that Germany might have a somewhat higher distribution of Qubes users, compared to elsewhere.
For example, it may be assumed that Germany then have 300? or maybe 700? Qubes users (up from 267,5), it's a wild guess. At this point, it becomes calculated guess-work. But you can still estimate the likelihood of how likely your guess is.
However, keep in mind, a slightly bigger likelihood of more Qubes users in Germany, does not translate into many more Qubes users in Munich. Germany is about 88 times bigger in population than Munich is, so for every 88 extra Qubes user in Germany, there is only 1 extra in Munich, if evenly distributed. However, if you got universities, privacy advocated companies, or just plain lucky to have people interested in Qubes to spread mouth to mouth in Munich or near Munich, then Munich may have a bigger ratio as well.
So, your take away, considering so few of the 25.000 Qubes users actually post on these e-mail thread / forums, it can be "assumed" that some just read without posting or rarely posting. However, many more likely don't read these e-mail thread / forums much or at all. This is without considering there are other Qubes platforms too, like the Reddit one.
In other words, even if its evenly distributed, and there are 4,3 Qubes users in Munich alone, or even if your lucky, and the distribution is affected by factors that spread Qubes in Munich, then maybe there are some more, but its probably hardly record breaking. Maybe 10 max is a good guess?
So, you're looking for 10 people, out of the 25.000 Qubes users. That's 10/25.000 = 0,0004 (or 0,04%). And we're being generous on the Munich pop. here.
That means, out of 100 people posting here, you may probably, at maximum and if lucky, only find 1/0,004 = 250, that is, 1 person from Munch, out of every 250 people posting here on these forums.
I'm not good with remembering names, but I hardly see that many people posting here. Perhaps there are that many? But the liklihood of you finding one of the other few hypothesized to exist Munich Qubes users here, you will probably have to be quite lucky.
The odds of that happening, can't be calculated without some related data. But subjectively, I think it can be deduced to be quite unlikely.
- Quality check -
For good orders sake, lets ensure the numbers are correct by reverse calculation. 7600M world population, divided by 1,330 Munich population. That means, the world is 5.714,28 times bigger than the Munich population. In other words, if we calculate 5714,28 with the 4,3 Munich Qubes users. It becomes 24.571,42. Which is a little depreciated from the 25.000 total Qubes numbers (devil is in the details), however, it shows you that by reverse calculation, we reach full circle back to where we started. In other words, you now got a full circle perspective on what to expect regarding finding fellow local Qubes users. Albeit, the numbers are evenly squared in a perfect distributed world, you may include factors, like privacy minded universities, or companies, that operate in Munich, or something like that. But keep it as calculative as possible.
Yuraeitha
Based on all that, I'd rather recommend you extend your invitation to the entirety of Germany. There are evenly distributed, without other factors, expected to be 276,5 Qubes users in all of Germany. You're far more likely to find fellow Germans here, than fellow people from Munich.
You could even extend it to nearby countries to Germany, if you make an event, some are likely to travel further.
Also keeping in mind that many Qubes users are privacy minded, or may not enjoy the idea of meeting strangers. The more people you invite, the more are likely to come.
Organize an event, it can even be small and without investment in the beginning, like ask people to donate a little for a meeting room for a few days, and then wait for the event and everyone to arrive.
a.mc...@yandex.com
Just wow! I am really impressed!
Now I'm going to make such statistics for my country.
Yuraeitha
cheers :)
Feel free to point it out if you fins any mistakes.
It would be interesting to make for every country to get some Qubes demographics. But the issue might be countries that are big, or many smaller countries, whom do not use Qubes at all.
For example, lets assume there are few people using Qubes in China. China has a massive population. This messes up the numbers quite a lot. Therefore these "ratio" results have flaws, so must be taken with a grant of salt :)
Yuraeitha
Generally, there are three macro perspective trends.
Trend 1): Qubes is over-represented in a region or country.
Trend 2): Qubes is at average represented in a region or country.
Trend 2): Qubes is under-represented in a region or a country.
If any region or data, falls into the trend 1, or trend 3, then it messes up the accuracy.
Trend 1) speculated factors
- Different culture (Can have huge influence).
- Reasonable stable and functioning economy, towards a strong economy.
- Peace.
- Order and predictability in short term daily life.
- Reasonable infrastructure towards great infrastructure.
- Anything else that you can imagine in this, etc.
Trend 3) speculated factors
- Different culture (Can have huge influence).
- Poor economy, country is not functioning well, or barely at all.
- War with another country.
- Civil war.
- Turmoil and unstable government.
- Poor infrastructure (roads, internet, food supply, reliability in expectancy).
- Anything else that you can imagine in this, etc.
Trend 2) is what we can calculate with pretty high accuracy given how physics work. However the real world is far more complex, trend 2) is not taking the many factors of life into consideration. The trend 1) and trend 3), as on the list above, have big influence.
Similar problems are found in GNP (Gross National Product), which is something used by macro economists and politicians too, to measure how well a country is performing in its production. The drawback, just like trend 1), and trend 3) above, is the vast different cultures, history, current state, different ways from country to country on how to calculate, or even different ways in gathering the raw data used in the calculations, etc.
The solution, is to limit these comparisons to the countrys own GNP from the year before, and to avoid comparing with other countries, unless, of course, the country look a lot alike in the trend 1) and trend 3) factor lists. For example USA states, may draw better similarities between similar looking states, compared to if you compare a US States GNP with say, Germany, Russia, China, Italy, and so on, whom have similar, but yet also very different cultures and factors that make comparisons inaccurate. The solution therefore, is to only compare where it makes sense to compare, either by comparing to your own GNP the year before, or only compare with a country that looks a lot alike. Keeping in mind that even within USA, a US state can be very different from another US State, so one has to be very careful with comparisons like these. Even if comparing a countrys own GNP from several years back, ones own country culture will likely have changed, and even the method of calculation, or method of data collection, can be different if going too many years back in the same country.
However, if you do like inflation calculations, you can go year by year, one at a time, make % comparison with the countries own GNP, only one year back at a time. This way, you can see a chain reaction, only looking at small changes at a time. But its dangerous to try jump too far in the timeline, unless changes in trend 1) or trend 3) are taken into account. Given the complexity, this is notoriously difficult to do, in any way that represent accuracy. Even getting a close estimation can easily be notorious.
So the takeaway?
Reducing complexity, and limit ourselves into how we use and take the data for granted. For example, be mindful of all the various ways the data can be shaped differently from what reality really looks like.
So keeping these challenges in mind from economics, we can draw a bit from it in our Qubes demographics.
For example, if you know how many Qubes users are in the USA, or in China, EU, Africa, Russia, or any other similar region, which is very different to the rest of the world, yet similar inwards towards itself and its own culture, then we can increase the accuracy quite a bit.
The problem is we don't have such data, and it probably isn't a good idea if the Qubes team start to look into the unique IP's in an invasive way. It's already troubling enough that they keep logs of everyone's IP to begin with.
So what else can we do? We might be able to incorporate some secondary data, i.e. find out how many people live in a country without infrastructure. Then we can take the world population, and subtract the amount of people whom have no or extremely poor infrastructure.
Another method, which can be used in addition to the above, or any other similar subtractions, is to figure out how many children and teenagers, as well as old people, there are in the world. While some old people, and likely some teenagers too, use Qubes, the bigger population of Qubes users are probably in the years of maybe, say, 20-50 years of age. It's a bit inaccurate to guess like this, but its even more inaccurate to include the age groups that likely don't use Qubes. So while not entirely accurate, at least, we can move closer towards accuracy.
What else? Maybe we can find data on how many Chinese use Linux, for example, and then deduce by that, whether Chinese may be likely to find Qubes interesting or not. If we can find such reliable data anywhere. Still not too accurate to deduce in this manner, but it's way more reliable and accurate, than just making wild random guesses out of personal opinion. Once more, pushing closer towards accuracy.
The more we can do of these accuracy measures, the more close we can get to the real life like numbers. Especially if we can find precise numbers on the big factors, like the ones with the number of people living in poor infrastructures, or the number of people of different age groups to filter out.
Lets imagine, we came to the conclusion that at least 4 billion people (4000 million), can use Qubes, the remaining 3.7 billion (3700 million) people cannot.
Okay, so here we go:
- Analysis -
Step 1,A)
Step 1,B)
1,330M Munich pop. divided by 4.000 world pop. = 0,000332 (or 0,0332 %).
----
Step 2,A)
25.000 Qubes users multiplied by German/world population ratio 0,0205 = 512,5 German Qubes users.
Step 2,B)
25.000 Qubes users multiplied by Munich/world population ratio 0,000332 = 8,4 Munich Qubes users.
So the more accurate we try to filter away any population that cannot use Qubes, the more we are left with a population with the potential to use Qubes. It does not matter if everyone uses Qubes in this population, what matters is that they got the potential to use Qubes, so that the differences are taken into account.
By removing age groups unlikely to use Qubes, and removing poor infrastructure populations, then we can already increase the accuracy by quite a bit. The question is, how far can we go, and still be getting closer towards accuracy? For example, we can be trying to trim too far, and end up on the other side of the extreme. Say we deem a country to have a poor infrastructure, yet it still happens to have a significant amount of Qubes users due to privacy concerns from their governments. Or alternatively, children/teenagers who are smart, and venture into using Qubes, or even older people keeping up with times.
It's not so simple, but, I think we can at least shave off a few billion people. The question is much more, when is shaving off, too many? Is 3billion too much? or too little? etc.
Yuraeitha
Yuraeitha
Sergio Matta
> Hi,my name is Knut von Walter.In order to progress in my understanding of Qubes OS, I am looking for members of the Qubes-community in Munich-Bavaria-Germany. Thank you. Best of best Knut von Walter
There is a very good ideia here. During install procedures ask for the city to installers and suggests them to look for a google-qubes-city-community. Would be even better if the installation procedure tells him how many installations are in their city.
kai....@gmail.com
I am using Qubes Os (version 3.2, however, can't get Qubes 4rc* to work, so far)
and am living in Munich. You, as well as other Qubes users in Munich, Bavaria, Germany,
are free contact me on Qubes Os issues (I am only a user, though).
I am using Qubes on a thinkpad T430 with 16 gb ram and a ssd.
i am mainly using whonix and debian in qubes. i was not able to get
windows to be installec (problems with iso file, both when copied from
installation cd or when using downloaded iso).
My contact data can be found at my homepage at http://kai.froeb.net
All the best
Kai
kai....@gmail.com
Al the best
Kai
meinene...@gmail.com
cheers
Yuraeitha
aye, that certainly rises the bar quite a bit, this is a strong factor if he's having even remote success in setting laptops, up from the 4-6 evenly distributed calculation expectation.
Including the factor meinene...@gmail.com mentioned.
So it's probably reasonable to assume that there should at the very least be some 10-15+ people in Munich, given those 2 extra factors up from the even distribution. But that extra estimation is a subjective estimation though.