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16 Things

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Re: 16 Things

#81

Post by WestCoastJustin »

walterbell wrote: post #80
WestCoastJustin wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the kind words ;) > How long does it take to write and produce each episode? Rough guide is about ~2-3 hours per minute of video. Research, playing around with ideas, demos, writing, recording video, recording audio, editing, etc. So, ZFS part one was 12 min, that's about 24 hours, and part two is 18 min, so about 36 hours. Those two episodes are about 60+ hours of solid work. ZFS did take a little longer…

> Rough guide is about ~2 hours per minute of video. That makes sense, given the high quality result. A 2003 thread estimated production cost for training videos at $1000-$3000/minute, http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=254620 and that range still seems relevant, https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/17/871420 > here is a basic dump of the tools I use Great that you were able to achieve this level of qua…

Thanks for the links! At least I am not going crazy ;)

> Have you considered pay-what-you-want pricing, with a suggested anchor?

As of late 2014, I am working on this full-time. Scary, but I think I can pull it off. I am shooting for a $12 monthly subscription fee (auto-renewing), that will give you blanket access to everything for 30 days. My thinking is that, I am targeting sysadmins, devops folks, and developers who want to learn about ops. So, if I can save you even 1 hour per month, then it more than pays for itself. I am hoping to push this out in a few days actually, so I will have more data soon! I don't think it will be an overnight success, but hope to build it over a couple years. At least that is the plan.

> Or creating (for pay) screencasts for commercial software?

I have looked at this. Even brokered a deal, but ended up backing out. It just takes way too much time and I needed to focus on putting out my own content. I just need to get some funds coming in rather quickly, or go get a job again. So, I am putting everything I have into this. Once I have some money coming in, then I might look at this again.

Re: 16 Things

#84

Post by ig1 »

tptacek wrote: post #28

Their "Security" section is a bit naive. The questions it poses go all the way back to the 1990s. If the Jericho Forum had started a VC fund, this page would be their investment thesis. The 2000s saw a wave of companies try to capitalize on "deperimiterization", some with huge capex requirements (one NAC startup had designed and contract fabbed their own MIPS core). They all flopped. Maybe it's true that firewalls ar…

CISO budgets are exploding at large companies; in '98 most of these companies didn't even have a CISO.

Firewalls have proven to be ineffective and companies are willing to pay for solutions that are more effective. Attackers have also gotten a lot more professional and sophisticated.

There's certainly been plenty of billion dollar security companies been built outside of the firewall space in recent years (FireEye, Varonis, Lifelock, Trusteer, Cloudflare, etc) and there's undoubtedly going to be many more.

Security also has played out in mobile the way you suggested can't happen. Companies like Lookout and BYOD management companies are well on the way to building billion dollar businesses in spaces traditionally controlled by entrenched vendors enabled by the shift to mobile.

(incidentally the security section was written by Scott Weiss who founded IronPort and later ran Cisco's Security Technology Group; so not someone unfamiliar with the security space)

Re: 16 Things

#85

Post by jacoplane »

WestCoastJustin wrote: post #44
jfernandez wrote: post #4

In the 'Online Video' section he calls out podcasts as an emerging/trending medium. I'd love to hear more about where people in HN community feel it's moving. Of course there's the obvious Serial momentum, and as a passionate consumer of podcasts I'd love to think through with you guys a little more where we think it'll go. For example a YouTube-like podcast portal seems like a potential option (i.e. moving away from…

I run https://sysadmincasts.com/ , which is a weekly bite sized screencast for sysadmins. Also posted to Show HN a while ago [1]. I can tell you that my inbox is flooded with "Thank You" messages, and requests to put out more content, I am struggling to keep up! As patio11 put it, if you can say: "I'll save you 12 hours of Googling and reading Free Information On The Internet (TM) and it will cost you $50" [2], you c…

Hey, your site is great, just a suggestion, you might consider submitting your site to PocketCasts (email support@shiftyjelly.com), it's the most popular podcasting app on Android, and you don't seem to be in their directory. I've added your feed to their app, but it would help people discover your show.

Re: 16 Things

#86

Post by [deleted] »

jacoplane wrote: post #85
WestCoastJustin wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run https://sysadmincasts.com/ , which is a weekly bite sized screencast for sysadmins. Also posted to Show HN a while ago [1]. I can tell you that my inbox is flooded with "Thank You" messages, and requests to put out more content, I am struggling to keep up! As patio11 put it, if you can say: "I'll save you 12 hours of Googling and reading Free Information On The Internet (TM) and it will cost you $50" [2], you c…

Hey, your site is great, just a suggestion, you might consider submitting your site to PocketCasts (email support@shiftyjelly.com), it's the most popular podcasting app on Android, and you don't seem to be in their directory. I've added your feed to their app, but it would help people discover your show.

[deleted]

Re: 16 Things

#87

Post by walterbell »

WestCoastJustin wrote: post #81
walterbell wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Rough guide is about ~2 hours per minute of video. That makes sense, given the high quality result. A 2003 thread estimated production cost for training videos at $1000-$3000/minute, http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=254620 and that range still seems relevant, https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/17/871420 > here is a basic dump of the tools I use Great that you were able to achieve this level of qua…

Thanks for the links! At least I am not going crazy ;) > Have you considered pay-what-you-want pricing, with a suggested anchor? As of late 2014, I am working on this full-time. Scary, but I think I can pull it off. I am shooting for a $12 monthly subscription fee (auto-renewing), that will give you blanket access to everything for 30 days. My thinking is that, I am targeting sysadmins, devops folks, and developers w…

You can have more than one distribution channel, e.g. your own monthly subscription site, plus a bundle of transcripts (reformatted as an ebook) + a package of screencasts, sold via https://www.softcover.io/ which takes 10%. Use 80/20 rule to figure out which topics are in high purchase demand and could benefit from a deeper dive. Lower-cost channels can feed demand for deeper/premium products/channels.

Background: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8224896 & https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7350265

Re: 16 Things

#88

Post by tptacek »

ig1 wrote: post #84
tptacek wrote: post #28

Their "Security" section is a bit naive. The questions it poses go all the way back to the 1990s. If the Jericho Forum had started a VC fund, this page would be their investment thesis. The 2000s saw a wave of companies try to capitalize on "deperimiterization", some with huge capex requirements (one NAC startup had designed and contract fabbed their own MIPS core). They all flopped. Maybe it's true that firewalls ar…

CISO budgets are exploding at large companies; in '98 most of these companies didn't even have a CISO. Firewalls have proven to be ineffective and companies are willing to pay for solutions that are more effective. Attackers have also gotten a lot more professional and sophisticated. There's certainly been plenty of billion dollar security companies been built outside of the firewall space in recent years (FireEye, V…

FireEye is the firm I alluded to in my comment.

Varonis, Lifelock, Trusteer, and Cloudflare aren't reactions to deperimeterization and the declining effectiveness of firewalls. (Ironically, Cloudflare is if anything a cause of the declining effectiveness of firewalls, not a solution). Also: my argument isn't that it's impossible to build a billion dollar security company! It's that the dynamics of doing so aren't isomorphic to those of other startups.

I think you missed the point of my comparison to mobile, which was not that there wouldn't be viable mobile security products, but rather than shifts in technology produce explosive returns for things like adtech and video, but tend not to do that for security. Lookout is I think the closest you come to an example of a breakout success for security, amidst the most important shift in computing since the personal computer, one that has minted a bigger number of larger successes outside security.

The STG has been beating the drum on post-firewall broad-scale deployment of security technology (= more blue pizza boxes) since Jayshree Ulal started it a decade ago. Have you read a lot of Jericho Forum stuff? If you found Weiss' piece interesting, I think you'd find Jericho especially interesting. Maybe even lucrative. ;)

(Voted you back up)

Re: 16 Things

#89

Post by walterbell »

tptacek wrote: post #88
ig1 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CISO budgets are exploding at large companies; in '98 most of these companies didn't even have a CISO. Firewalls have proven to be ineffective and companies are willing to pay for solutions that are more effective. Attackers have also gotten a lot more professional and sophisticated. There's certainly been plenty of billion dollar security companies been built outside of the firewall space in recent years (FireEye, V…

FireEye is the firm I alluded to in my comment. Varonis, Lifelock, Trusteer, and Cloudflare aren't reactions to deperimeterization and the declining effectiveness of firewalls. (Ironically, Cloudflare is if anything a cause of the declining effectiveness of firewalls, not a solution). Also: my argument isn't that it's impossible to build a billion dollar security company! It's that the dynamics of doing so aren't iso…

What do you think of software like Bromium, Qubes, etc. which creates enclaves within endpoints?

Re: 16 Things

#90

Post by eldavido »

dsacco wrote: post #51
tptacek wrote: post #28

Their "Security" section is a bit naive. The questions it poses go all the way back to the 1990s. If the Jericho Forum had started a VC fund, this page would be their investment thesis. The 2000s saw a wave of companies try to capitalize on "deperimiterization", some with huge capex requirements (one NAC startup had designed and contract fabbed their own MIPS core). They all flopped. Maybe it's true that firewalls ar…

Yep. Information security is a nonalgorithmic problem. Much as people might like to disagree or pretend otherwise, it is fundamentally at odds with a service that can scale to meet the needs of clientele in an automated manner. The most successful companies in that space are consultancies that can deliver personalized results to every client on every engagement, and while they are very successful, they will never be…

Something I used to think about during my tenure as a graduate student in computer security: has anyone written the definitive book/study/dissertation on why security incidents happen?

As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, it's a very complex problem involving operational, economic, and technical factors, suggesting (as others have mentioned) it's not something that really can be "sold". Watching bugtraq for a while, I saw a lot of pure tech exploits (buffer overflows, SQL injection, other silly things like that) but also quite a lot of misconfiguration -- insecure passwords, lack of an enforced password policy, employees leaving the company without revocation of their credentials, etc.

Maybe a good commercial opportunity would be policy compliance checking tools. Imagine a simple policy like "the corporate network should not be accessible from the outside world". Would it be possible to check all firewalls/routers/NATs/etc. for compliance with this policy?

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