An actual response I got from a cold outreach:

"We are a bootstrapped startup with zero funds and zero employees.
What do you want from us?"

Listen, I hate cold outreach emails as much as the next guy, but either ignore or unsubscribe. Given that you're also a startup you should understand the need to market your services, or you're not going to get your own business off the ground. Hostility like this isn't going to bode well for you in the long run.

For the record I responded saying we were just advertising our services, but clearly they're not in a position to make use of them, and I wished them well in their venture. Looking at their site it likely won't be long for this world and they really could use a hand, but to each their own.

We're not aggressive with our emails, it's an initial outreach then two follow-ups and done. You're free to unsubscribe or say no at any point, but this is just rude.

@thegibson The more I think about this, the more I want to read it! I say go for it!

@thegibson I'd read it!

And many thanks to @TheGibson for helping with the technical review!

Hey #infosec folks, do you handle tabletop exercises? Want to try something new? I wrote a book, and ut's now available for pre-order! Find it on Amazon, B&N, etc. For those who used to listen to my podcast and loved my tabletop episodes, this will go behind the scenes and you can get an idea on what exactly went into designing them. Thanks all!

#newbook #ttx #gamification #announcement

@Viss At least they didn't send him to the blender dimension.

@Viss His letter of retirement was rejected? Why do I feel like this is an episode of Rick and Morty where they made those Rick biscuits from the memory of the one Rick.

Happy Monday to the world at large. Let's make this week better than the last one.

@sawaba Success! And freedom! Congrats!

@sawaba Well, at least you can get off the plane...

@sawaba lol @ Clippy, but Clippy would have been more helpful. Delta could be worse, still better than Waymo, and you're not on AA or Southwest at least.

@sawaba Which airline?

@sawaba At least you're going nowhere quickly!

@sawaba Nice racetrack you got there...

@Rajiv Nice! I love tulips!

@gordondraper Thankfully I still keep in touch with my old security team at my last job before I went to take my own consultancy full time. It's been nearly 2 years, and yet we still meet every 2 weeks. give or take.

But yeah, I think you have a point. Time to see who wants to meet for coffee to just chat for a time. Thanks for the suggestion!

@gordondraper Yeah, we had a local meetup group here as well, but the organizer called uncle and the folks who took over dropped the ball. I had plans to start one up again as well, but I lack the time. Same with a conference. I helped set one up years ago, but gave up in the second year because the oc-organizers were hell bent on making the same mistakes, and I was exhausted. I did try to spin up a local entrepreneurs group, but that faltered after nobody wanted to commit for a second meeting with an actual topic to discuss.

Bottom line - people are hard.

One downside of working for yourself is lack of conversation with others in your field. I love my family, but I also don't want to stress them about difficult clients or a new technique I pray for testing for cache poisoning (thanks Portswigger Academy).

These are the times when I miss podcasting, untill I remember the amount of work that went into it.

@BallShapedMan Hopefully with Newey's design next year, and if he has a decent teammate, it could happen before he retires!

So I have a new book coming out soon, but what's interesting is this time I went through a publisher. It's currently available for pre-order on the usual sites, but what's interesting is the release schedule!

Canada - Between May 17th and 22nd
US and UK - May 8th

I get that different regions will have different availability, but what gets me is that everyone has different page counts! It ranges from 126 to 150 pages, but the proof I have says that it's 139 pages in total. Just wild to see the inconsistencies.