I think people are glossing over the fact that Usenix ATC wasn’t even a good academic conference. If you’re submitting high-quality academic work to Usenix, you’re sending it to one of the higher prestige Usenix conferences in a specific subfield, such as Usenix Security or NSDI.
This is not really a contradiction, IMHO. I published about systems 15 yrs ago and experienced the crisis in systems research. My personal take is, that the academic community failed to set new standards and research methods for computing system. (Maybe they cannot even exist in our short lived publish or perish world) I still review for conferences that still have systems (like ieee percom), but it is really difficult to reach consensus on system papers in comparison to AI or HCI stuff, that is also published.
I dunno why you say it isn't useful. It is inherently plaintext, but still worth authenticating. If you just used an AEAD but didn't put e.g. the session identifier or connection ID or sequence number in the AD, it would be entirely unauthenticated, but the decryption of, say, the message body would still succeed.
I'm not saying it isn't useful, I'm saying it's not a useful example for getting people to understand the concept. Everyone runs aground on "but you need the decryption key to authenticate the plaintext anyways".
Yeah, but this also offers a clear exit opportunity (during the raise), and limits the "blast radius" to time-since-last-raise, rather than progress against the first four years of the company.
Nobody disagrees with that. The clear subtext to that comment is "if you plan to raise money". You can bootstrap a successful firm without raising a dollar.
Trouble is that there isn't much the consumer is willing to pay for anymore. They've become accustomed to devices like their phone where a single purchase fulfills an endless number of functions. The thought of buying much more is becoming a foreign concept. To complicate matters: For what they are not buying, they aren't saving up the money ready to deploy when something compelling does come around. They've decided to redirect that money into paying more for things like housing instead. Good luck chipping that away.
There is still plenty of opportunity to build a business that sells to customers who are collecting those angel checks (directly or indirectly). But that is dependent on at least some businesses being funded by angels.
I respectfully disagree that there’s no business opportunity that people are willing to pay for.
If your only target are developers or the tech industry, maybe, but there’s a whole world of non technical business people with problems that have extremely easy (and boring) technical solutions.
I’ve recently signed up my third customer paying $49/mo with a simple CRUD app. No targeted ads or landing pages. I literally walked into offices in my town and asked what the most annoying part of their job is and I made a prototype. They signed a 6 month commitment.
They’re amazed at my “computer skills” only because they don’t know any better.
Not saying I’ll become insanely rich, but my goal is a reasonable living ($200-$300k) within 5 years.
All this to say I think the opportunities in this market are there, but they look different.
> I literally walked into offices in my town and asked what the most annoying part of their job is and I made a prototype.
Consumers don't have offices. You are looking at a business-to-business transaction, which is where we said there is still opportunity, in large part thanks to those collecting angel money.
If you are going to disagree, surely you can provide an example of where you have sold to the consumer? Affirming that you could only find opportunity selling to other businesses too makes it seem like you do agree.
My broader point is that if you want to build a business there's a ton of opportunity if you're not overly picky on what that opportunity looks like. B2B, B2C, mobile, web, node, Python, PHP. None of it really matters.
> You are looking at a business-to-business.. which is where we said there is still opportunity, in large part thanks to those collecting angel money.
You might be mixing up opportunities within the tech industry with using tech to build a business within other industries. Angel money isn't really a "thing" for the latter, and that's where I'm pointing to opportunity.
But by all means keep on pushing B2C if that's your passion
> My broader point is that if you want to build a business there's a ton of opportunity if you're not overly picky on what that opportunity looks like.
That point was already firmly established before you arrived. What were you hoping to add?
> You might be mixing up opportunities within the tech industry with using tech to build a business within other industries.
Industry doesn't matter. An economy is all connected. What does matter is that at some point your sale needs a "final destination". If you sell to another business, they are going to need to pass the need on to the next hop. If they fail to do that, they will go out of business, and soon you will too.
That means either a consumer, someone with angel money to burn, or government (which is, as it pertains to this discussion, basically the same as angel money). Angel money keeps a lot of these B2B businesses alive. You might not need to accept the angel money directly, but someone needs to in order to support the system we have.
No. I remain unsure about what you were trying to add. You must have had some kind of astute observation that warranted your time to formulate a response – more than once. But, I'm afraid it went over my head. Perhaps you can frame it in another light?
The only real tech "freelancing", if we are to call it that, opportunities as it pertains to consumers is possibly in fixing someone's home computer/phone, and that is within the small set of things consumers are still willing to pay for. In fact, one's phone was explicitly mentioned. But it is unlikely that most "freelancers", within the tech sphere, are making a business out of that.
Maybe we all have a grandmother tossing a few bucks out here and there when she needs help. Is that what you mean?
But that's ignoring that freelancing itself is normally a business-to-business transaction by definition, so your assertion is a bit strange if we are to stick to general understandings. What is the pet definition you are trying to use here that should change our understanding?
Are we just talking past each other here? Are you saying that it's hard to bootstrap a pure B2C business using only B2C revenue sources? Because that's not what I'd do; I'd consult to other businesses. That's what 37signals did.
> Are you saying that it's hard to bootstrap a pure B2C business using only B2C revenue sources?
I said that consumers don't like to buy much these days, so business opportunities are effectively limited to selling to other businesses.
But businesses can't absorb buying your wares if they can't sell to someone else in kind – eventually meaning the consumer. That is, unless they have angel money to burn. So what was also said is that even within the B2B space, you are bound to be dependent on angel money even if you don't receive it directly. Meaning, as it pertained to the comment that came before it, that someone needs to accept the angel money to keep the house of cards standing.
> That's what 37signals did.
37signals doesn't strike me as trying to tackle B2C in any meaningful capacity either. 'Hey' plays that angle a little bit, which is maybe what you are thinking of, but it is clear that selling to business is still the bread and butter even there.
"Yes" doesn't explain your perspective, though. Obviously you can make money selling to other businesses. Nobody would think otherwise and the discussion that was taking place fundamentally wouldn't have been possible if that weren't the case. But what is it that you want to add to the discussion? That is what is not clear.
You put in time to tell us something. It is no doubt interesting. But, unfortunately, it got lost along the way. I am still interested in whatever it may be.
> businesses and governments pay for a ton of stuff.
Yes, that was addressed in the second half of the comment. But ultimately business must serve consumers – unless angel money is paying for. If you sell to a business, who sells to a business, who sells to a business, who sells to a business collecting angel checks you are still dependent on angel money.
Government too is effectively the angel model. The money will be there even if the consumer isn't being served anything they want to pay for.
There is literally a code-signing working group in the CA/BF. However, the browsers don't really participate in it, since it's irrelevant to browsers. This is the entire point of moving to dedicated hierarchies per use-case---each PKI (web, code signing, etc) can evolve independently.
