@isilzha314 Isn't it crazy how that works? When I first tried to get into security I thought it was this monolithic thing that most of the people involved with knew at least something about most areas of.

They definitely don't. But that's not the way any of it is presented.

The thing that really made me think of this post was reading the fasting subreddit where it seems like every person on there hasn't eaten in weeks. Or any of the investment subreddits where it seems like huge numbers of people are making 6 figure trades regularly. The thing is, if a million people are part of a community, and the top thousand of them are generating most of the discourse, that's the top 0.1% of the group. A thousand people publicly talking to each other looks like a whole lot, but it's far from a representative sample.

It's hard to get into hobbies over the internet in that way because it totally erases average people. Just another "filter bubble is bad for mental health" thing.

Years ago at Defcon I met these guys who were also new to security and we figured out we had zero overlapping knowledge because they were all Java devs and I was at an MSP doing net/sysadmin. One of the guys said something I never forgot: most of the talks are ultra niche and intended for an extremely specific audience, but at a con that size, that audience can fill an entire hall. It is totally reasonable to have no idea what anything meant, and that didn't mean everyone else was just smarter than you and you're just bad at security.

I mostly have to remind myself of this when I read subreddits about hobbies / interests / skills. It's helpful to remember that the average person is extremely underrepresented because the sample size is so huge and the most dedicated people are generating most of the discourse. Makes a person feel like a talentless imposter at everything if you don't take effect into account. Can be very discouraging. I've been discouraged out of tons of interests from failing to realize that effect.

@darkuncle right? It made me realize that all my assumptions about subscription based models just assume they're going to be predatory and anti consumer by default. It would be better to just eliminate the need to drive, but it's really clever to target the incentive scheme as a means to make lasting change.

I definitely miss perpetual software licenses though. Also HP wants me to subscribe to ink and nothing has ever made me want to ditch my printer more than that idea