Maciej did a great job getting this all set up. Though I wasn't selected, he responded very nicely and gave me some thoughts about my idea. And, he picked six great products that I'm okay having been chosen over me. I'm very excited to see how they progress.
I really like this micro-investment program. I am currently working on my side project and how I can bring it to realization. I wish there were more programs out there that are willing to advise and help out single-founder products with less of a focus on investment. I'd be willing to give 5-10% equity in my eventual product for $300 if I got some smart minds to giving me real feedback and spreading the word.
My project is called Whiptail (http://getwhiptail.com) and it's a service that sends you text messages when you're at the bar or a house party to encourage good behavior and discourage doing things you'll regret. We'll be offering a few different sets of messages to choose. From with generic "Would your mother approve of the text you want to send?" to something targeted towards appropriate behavior around an ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend, and we're even working on a set built for students with social anxiety to help keep them calm in party situations.
It was definitely a side-project that I created for my own use, and due to PIC-PC encouraging me, I am working with a few friends into making to something that anyone can use. We just put up a pre-launch page yesterday and a logo is still being designed, but we hope to ramp up our efforts and have a public MVP in the next week.
That "pre-configured secure image" is awesome. I heard someone suggest it like 10 years ago, and had simply assumed that someone else had already gotten around to it.
Sad I didn't make it but these ideas were better than mine. You can't win if you don't enter so I'm still glad I tried.
Model yourself after TurboTax -- multi-level wizards that ask if you have any of these needs and if so, it drills down to more specifics.
There are going to be single-host people and multi-host people. Their needs are very different. A bastion host might seem like overkill for a single host. If you can directly ssh into your db machine in a multi-host environment then I think you might be playing a little fast and loose. Allowing traffic to leave most hosts to the outside world is also something you should authorize on an as-needed basis, though with todays heavily-integrated applications this one is much harder (and often forgotten.)
Of course, since you are creating these AMIs and know the version of all the software on them, emailing me when I need to rebuild my machines on your latest images is a big value-add. Keeping up with security patches is a PITA. Let me also add in some common frameworks to include in your emails as a v2 feature (rails, php, java..)
An automated made-to-order system would be useful. Allow customers to select which programs/libs they'd like to include from a list of checkboxes. That way they can order a secure image with their custom stack pre-installed. I would pay you for that luxury. It might be too difficult with all the possible ways things need to be configured by the user (setting up MySQL, for example).
Also, there might be an opportunity to carve a market out of the Bitcoin community. Many sites have and will continue to spring up that deal with Bitcoin in non-trivial ways (i.e., where using a payment processor isn't appropriate). Those people will feel better knowing they can start off on the right foot. Sell them their pickaxes and shovels.
A way to easily audit the image to ensure there's no 'special sauce' you left in. I realize it's no small feat, but I'd be a lot more likely to trust and use such an image if I had a way to make sure it's clean. (One way is to automate the process by way of script(s) that you leave up to the user to understand and review, whether they're Chef or Puppet or whatever else.)
Related to someone else's question, it would be great to also be able to use these images locally for development (e.g., via Vagrant, even if another step would be needed to import the images etc)
I'm not super up to spec with how Amazon works - could I also download these images and load them up in Vagrant/VirtualBox and or find a way to put them on my Linode machines?
Naming your contest after a failed policy of imperial conquest and subjugation that saw up to 20 million people die is really unfortunate. Would we accept "Greater Pinboard Cloud Reich" or a "Reichskommissariat Pinboard"? If not, what's the difference?
It's different primarily because "co-prosperity sphere" sounds really funny as a phrase. He's also using it in a self-deprecating fashion, because he's inviting you to apply to join something that historically you would never want to be part of.
So it's funny. As I wrote this I realized once again how hard it is to explain humor.
But basically, funny makes taboo or bad things ok to talk about.
I thought the entire (pin board) thing was a joke. IF your product is legit, good luck to you bro. I really like the idea and your design tells exactly what the service is without the need of text.
This entire thing seemed absurd. What actual value does Maciej provide beyond a trivial amount of cash given in a facetious manner?
The Co-Prosperity Cloud may have been a parody of the the current incubator trend, but the companies joining appear to be real entities with genuine goals? What do they have to gain by taking part in some tongue-in-cheek publicity stunt?
There are better ways to pursue both $37 and the small amount of notoriety that this may bring.
It is all part of a scam whereby these "companies" pick up seed money from Maciej and then immediately flip to the likes of Groupon and Pinterest, whose investors promptly kick back funds to Maciej, who makes a point of firing all his employees exactly 37 minutes before their vesting cliff.
I've talked to him about it. He's a _dick_.
late edit: now he's trying to get me hellbanned. I saw him give a talk once to new startup founders about this. Anything to get an edge early on, including hellbanning innocent people like me.
> What do they have to gain by taking part in some tongue-in-cheek publicity stunt?
Nobody had heard of these companies yesterday. Now, their names are being seen by a lot of people in the many stories on influential sites linking to maciej's announcement.
The co-prosperity sphere got a rather lauditory write-up in The Economist! That's advertising you can't buy.
The value is that it's Hacker News linkbait. I certainly learned about six ideas that I wouldn't have otherwise, and I would _never_ have clicked on "Show HN: mysillyidea.com".
Simple Cyber Security is a service that just makes sense. I've been getting requests for such turn-key solutions for a while and never knew where to send them to. Could you talk more about the offering? Give us more details (anything you might want to add).
I'm glad you like the concept. The requests you get, what kind of solutions are they usually looking for? Or more precisely, what are their pain points?
As for more info, I'm starting with CentOS/RHEL 5 and 6 on AWS hardened to comply as much as possible with the US government accreditation policies (DISA STIG's for starters). As RHEL is the most common Linux OS for companies that have explicit security requirements, I figured I'd start there. They also have good support from projects like OpenSCAP and Aqueduct.
I likely wont start with any stack hardening so no apache/nginx hardening mostly because its not what I'm best at.
Every image will have complete documentation as to every configuration change available on the website for free to anyone.
I'm not planning on being in the system maintenance side of things (partially because I don't want to be liable for someone getting hacked) so I'm currently tossing around the pricing as a one time cost for initial configuration and then additional options for support (and consulting with those who want it).
If you have any requests/recommendations/suggestions/feedback, I'd love to hear them.
What you need to do is start selling it as soon as possible. That way you can start testing what the market needs. In my case, most clients mostly need a solid Rails box (with MySQL) that will allow them to focus on other important needs. This also applies to Django and Symfony. In terms of OS, the common bits are safe Ubuntu and CentOS installs. Though they do seek support and some hand holding.
Why a one time price? I thought at least EC2 made it possible to charge e.g. A few cts/hr, which I would guess would both get you more clients and more money then a one time fee, as the barrier to entry is lower.
I wouldn't buy wowza server, but have one running for 2 years now.
I wish more hackers would do these kind of smaller investment funds aimed at working with other hackers. We all know that a lot of smaller (but still profitable) ideas can be done with as little as $5k and be set to auto pilot (more or less). Maybe 5 micro VCs, each one putting in $1K. ROI? Probably nothing. But sometimes the whole experience is worth the money.
There are definitely some very deserving winners there. Maciej did a great job and I was very impressed that he sent me an email even though my project was not chosen. I love the idea behind the Pinboard Co-Prosperity Cloud and I hope it catches on.
What was the inspiration for the name?
I assume it wasn't The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, better known as The Empire of Japan in World War II, since you wouldn't want to pick a name associated with massive human rights abuses.
oh huh. Well that seems a worse decision than naming a social network "Diaspora".
Or am I the only one for whom that word conjures images of rotting potatoes, burning Jewish temples, and Africans being crammed into the cargo holds of ships?
You may be one of only a few. 'Diaspora' more generally refers to 'a body of those outside their group's ancestral homeland', and such communities aren't necessarily the product of suffering/persecution.
By the time such a group gets referred to as a 'diaspora' in this sense, it is often to emphasize the continuity-of-tradition-and-vibrancy in a new place, and thus mostly positive in its connotations.
I really like this micro-investment program. I am currently working on my side project and how I can bring it to realization. I wish there were more programs out there that are willing to advise and help out single-founder products with less of a focus on investment. I'd be willing to give 5-10% equity in my eventual product for $300 if I got some smart minds to giving me real feedback and spreading the word.