Hacker News Reader

mavamon Ask HN: Who is hiring? (July 2022)

Tenzir | Remote - EU | Open-source | Full-time | https://tenzir.com

Tenzir is a funded seed-stage startup that builds the next generation data plane for security operations centers. Our mission is to make security operations plug-and-play. Our stack consists of a database and execution engine for security event data, VAST (https://vast.io), for which we are building a Python-based app framework on top.

Our open engineering positions include:

- Frontend: https://tenzir.workable.com/jobs/2032753

- Security: https://tenzir.workable.com/jobs/2049717

We are based out of Hamburg, Germany, and hire across EU time zones for engineering roles. For any questions, feel free to reach out to us at careers@tenzir.com.

mavamon Ask HN: Who is hiring? (June 2022)

Tenzir | Remote - EU | Open-source | Full-time | https://tenzir.com

Tenzir is a funded seed-stage startup that builds the next generation data plane for security operations centers. Our mission is to empower defenders with an open platform for data-driven security investigations. Our stack consists of a database and execution engine for security event data, VAST (https://vast.io), for which we are building a Python-based app framework on top.

Our open engineering positions include:

- Frontend: https://tenzir.workable.com/jobs/2032753

- DevOps: https://tenzir.workable.com/jobs/2035096

- Platform: https://tenzir.workable.com/jobs/2043974

- Database: https://tenzir.workable.com/jobs/2033126

- Security: https://tenzir.workable.com/jobs/2049717

We are based out of Hamburg, Germany, and hire across EU time zones for engineering roles. For any questions, feel free to reach out to us at careers@tenzir.com.

mavamon Ask HN: Who is hiring? (May 2022)

Tenzir | Remote - EU | Open-source | Full-time | https://tenzir.com

Tenzir is a funded seed-stage startup that builds a next generation data-plane for plug-and-play security operations. Our mission is to empower defenders with an open data engineering platform to perform data-driven investigations through combination best-of-breed solutions. Our stack consists of the high-performance C++20 telemetry engine VAST (https://github.com/tenzir/vast), a Rust API, and a ReasonML-based frontend.

Our open engineering positions include:

- Lead Frontend: https://tenzir.workable.com/jobs/2032753

- DevOps: https://tenzir.workable.com/jobs/2035096

- Platform: https://tenzir.workable.com/jobs/2043974

- Database: https://tenzir.workable.com/jobs/2033126

- Security: https://tenzir.workable.com/jobs/2049717

We are based out of Hamburg, Germany, and hire across EU time zones for engineering roles. For any questions, feel free to reach out to us at careers@tenzir.com.

mavamon Actor system for the JVM developed by Electronic Arts

I'd like to mention the native actor model implementation CAF, the C++ Actor Framework, and share some experiences. (Disclaimer: I've been developing on CAF in the past and have a good relationship with the creator.) CAF (1) provides native actors without an VM layer, (2) type-safe interfaces so that the compiler yells at you when a receiver cannot handle a message, and (3) transparent copy-on-write messaging so that you can still push stuff through pipelines and induce only copies only when a ref count is greater than one.

In our telemetry engine VAST, we've been using CAF successfully for several years for building a distributed system that always has a saturated write path. CAF provides a credit-based streaming abstraction as well, so that you can have backpressure across a chain of actors, making burst-induced OOM issues a blast from the past. You also get all the other benefits of actors, like linking and monitoring, to achieve well-defined failure semantics: either be up and running or collectively fail, but still allowing for local recovery—except for segfaults, this is where "native" has a disadvantage over VM-based actor models.

With CAF's network transparent runtime, a message ender doesn't need to know where receiver lives; the runtime either passes the message as COW pointer to the receiver or serializes it transparently. Other actor model runtimes support that as well, but I'm mentioning it because our experience showed that this is great value: we can can slice and dice our actors based on the deployment target, e.g., execute the application in one single process (e.g., for a beefy box) or wrap actors into single OS processes (e.g., when deploying on container auto-scalers).

The deep integration with the C++ type system allowed us to define very stable RPC-like interfaces. We're currently designing a pub/sub layer as alternate access path, because users are interested in tapping into streaming feeds selectively. This is not easy, because request-response and pub/sub are two ends of a spectrum, but it turns out we can support nicely with CAF.

Resources:

- CAF: https://github.com/actor-framework/actor-framework

- VAST: https://tenzir.github.io/vast/docs/understand-vast/actor-mod... (sorry for the incompleteness, we're in migration mode from the old docs, but this page is summarizing the benefits of CAF for us best)

- Good general actor model background: http://dist-prog-book.com/chapter/3/message-passing.html#why...

mavamon Ask HN: Who is hiring? (April 2022)

Our open engineering positions include:

- Lead Frontend: https://tenzir.workable.com/jobs/2032753

- DevOps: https://tenzir.workable.com/jobs/2035096

- Platform: https://tenzir.workable.com/jobs/2043974

- Database: https://tenzir.workable.com/jobs/2033126

- Security: https://tenzir.workable.com/jobs/2049717

We are based out of Hamburg, Germany, but cultivate a remote-first mindset. (If you live in the region and look for a local System Administrator position, we’d love to hear from you.)

For any questions, feel free to reach out to us at careers@tenzir.com.

mavamon Minimum Viable Declarative GUI in C++

Could you also hook a TUI into this to render it on the console?

mavamon Parallel Grouped Aggregation in DuckDB

Basically that: use Flight as default IPC mechanism, but when local, use a plasma’ish mmap facility (for zero copy).

mavamon Parallel Grouped Aggregation in DuckDB

I had chat with Hannes, the DuckDB co-founder, a few weeks ago. They are building awesome stuff to become the "SQLite of OLAP". The team comes with a strong academic background and is tuned into the data engineering world.

At Tenzir, we looked at DuckDB as embeddable backend engine to do the heavy lifting of query execution of our engine [1]. Our idea is throwing over a set of Parquet files, along with a query; initially SQL but perhaps soon Substrait [2] if it picks up.

We also experiment with a cloud deployment [3] where a different set of I/O path may warrant a different backend engine. Right now, we're working on a serverless approach leveraging Datafusion (and depending on maturity, Ballista at some point).

My hunch is that we will see more pluggability in this space moving forward. It's not only meaningful from an open-core business model perspective, but also pays dividends to the UX. The company that's solving a domain problem (for us: security operations center infrastructre) can leverage a high-bandwidth drop-in engine and only needs to wire it properly. This requires much less data engineers than building a poorman's version of the same inhouse.

We also have the R use case, e.g., to write reports in Rmarkdown that crunch some customer security telemetry, highlighting outliers or other noteworthy events. We're not there yet, but with the right query backend, I would expect to get this almost for free. We're close to being ready to use Arrow Flight for interop, but it's not zero-copy. DuckDB has demonstrated the zero-copy approach recently [4], going through the C API. (The story is also relevant when doing s/R/Python/, FWIW.)

[1] https://github.com/tenzir/vast [2] https://github.com/substrait-io/substrait [3] https://github.com/tenzir/vast/tree/master/cloud/aws [4] https://duckdb.org/2021/12/03/duck-arrow.html

mavamon Ask HN: Who is hiring? (October 2021)

Tenzir is a funded seed-stage startup that builds a next generation data-plane for plug-and-play security operations. Our mission is to empower defenders with an open platform to perform automated data-driven investigations through combination best-of-breed solutions. Our stack consists of the high-performance C++ database VAST (https://github.com/tenzir/vast), a Rust API, and a ReasonML-based frontend.

Our open engineering positions include:

- Database: https://tenzir.com/career/backend-engineer/

- DevOps: https://tenzir.com/career/devops-platform-engineer/

- Frontend: https://tenzir.com/career/frontend-engineer/

We are based out of Hamburg, Germany, but cultivate an agile remote-first mindset. If you live in the region and look for a System Administrator, we’d love to hear from you!

For any questions, feel free to reach out to us at careers@tenzir.com.

mavamon Ask HN: Who is hiring? (July 2021)

Tenzir is seeking an experienced and passionate DevOps / Platform engineer who enjoys bringing open-core security technology into production deployment shape. We cultivate a UNIX-centric mindset: security operators use our high-performance C++ database VAST (https://github.com/tenzir/vast) to hunt in telemetry data, either via the CLI or our ReasonML-based frontend getting its data through a Rust API.

We also develop Threat Bus (https://github.com/tenzir/threatbus), a messaging layer for federating security content.

=== Role & Responsibilities ===

- Improve our CI/CD pipelines for continuous releases with GitHub Actions to build projects of different languages on various platforms and to automate unit and integration testing.

- Automate continuous deployment strategies in different environments, for our own staging and production clusters, but also on-prem (appliances) or with different cloud providers.

- Implement a reliable backend infrastructure for appliance and fleet management, configuration management and multi-layer VPNs.

- Write integrations with other tools from the (security) ecosystem to support a wider range of data formats.

- Be responsible for entire infrastructure segments, from whiteboard design to implementation and automation for production systems.

=== Interview Process ===

1. Fill out the application form at https://tenzir.com/career/devops-platform-engineer/

2. Phone call to get to know each other and identify potential roadblocks (30min)

3. Technical interview(s) (1-2h)

---

If you are interested in cutting-edge C++ freelance work, or look for a local sysadmin position, please reach out directly to us at careers@tenzir.com.

mavamon Ask HN: Who is hiring? (June 2021)

Tenzir is seeking an experienced and passionate DevOps / Platform engineer who enjoys bringing open-core security technology into production deployment shape. We cultivate a UNIX-centric mindset: security operators use our high-performance C++ database VAST (https://github.com/tenzir/vast) to hunt in telemetry data, either via the CLI our our ReasonML-based frontend getting its data through a Rust API.

We also develop Threat Bus (https://github.com/tenzir/threatbus), a dissemination layer for threat intelligence, which orchestrates detection and response.

=== Role & Responsibilities ===

As a key contributor to our infrastructure, you will improve and automate critical processes for building, packaging, and deploying our technology in test and production environments. Concretely:

- Improve our CI/CD pipelines for continuous releases with GitHub Actions to build projects of different languages on various platforms and to automate unit and integration testing.

- Automate continuous deployment strategies in different environments, for our own staging and production clusters, but also on-prem (appliances) or with different cloud providers (GKE, AWS, Azure).

- Implement a reliable backend infrastructure for appliance and fleet management, configuration management and multi-layer VPNs.

- Write integrations with other tools from the (security) ecosystem to support a wider range of data formats.

- Be responsible for entire infrastructure segments, from whiteboard design to implementation and automation for production systems.

=== Interview Process ===

1. Fill out the application form at https://tenzir.com/career/devops-platform-engineer/

2. Phone call to get to know each other and identify potential roadblocks (30min)

3. Technical interview(s) (1-2h)

---

If you are interested in cutting-edge C++ freelance work or look for a local sysadmin position, please reach out directly to us at careers@tenzir.com.

mavamon Ask HN: Who is hiring? (May 2021)

Tenzir | DevOps Platform Engineer | FULL-TIME | €70-80k | Hamburg, Germany | http://tenzir.com Tenzir is seeking an experienced and passionate DevOps / Platform engineer who enjoys bringing open-core security technology into production deployment shape. We cultivate a UNIX-centric mindset: security operators use our high-performance C++ database VAST (https://github.com/tenzir/vast) to hunt in telemetry data, either via the CLI our our ReasonML-based frontend getting its data through a Rust API. We also develop Threat Bus (https://github.com/tenzir/threatbus), a dissemination layer for threat intelligence, which orchestrates detection and response.

=== Role & Responsibilities ===

As a key contributor to our infrastructure, you will improve and automate critical processes for building, packaging, and deploying our technology in test and production environments. Concretely:

Improve our CI/CD pipelines for continuous releases with GitHub Actions to build projects of different languages on various platforms and to automate unit and integration testing. Automate continuous deployment strategies in different environments, for our own staging and production clusters, but also on-prem (appliances) or with different cloud providers (GKE, AWS, Azure). Implement a reliable backend infrastructure for appliance and fleet management, configuration management and multi-layer VPNs. Write integrations with other tools from the (security) ecosystem to support a wider range of data formats. Be responsible for entire infrastructure segments, from whiteboard design to implementation and automation for production systems.

=== Interview Process ===

1. Fill out the application form at https://tenzir.com/career/devops-platform-engineer/

2. Phone call to get to know each other and identify potential roadblocks (30min)

3. Technical interview(s) (1-2h)

mavamon Ask HN: Who is hiring? (April 2021)

Tenzir is seeking an experienced and passionate DevOps / Platform engineer who enjoys bringing open-core security technology into production deployment shape. We cultivate a UNIX-centric mindset: security operators use our high-performance C++ database VAST (https://github.com/tenzir/vast) to hunt in telemetry data, either via the CLI our our ReasonML-based frontend getting its data through a Rust API. We also develop Threat Bus (https://github.com/tenzir/threatbus), a dissemination layer for threat intelligence, which orchestrates detection and response.

=== Role & Responsibilities ===

As a key contributor to our infrastructure, you will improve and automate critical processes for building, packaging, and deploying our technology in test and production environments. Concretely: Improve our CI/CD pipelines for continuous releases with GitHub Actions to build projects of different languages on various platforms and to automate unit and integration testing. Automate continuous deployment strategies in different environments, for our own staging and production clusters, but also on-prem (appliances) or with different cloud providers (GKE, AWS, Azure) Implement a reliable backend infrastructure for appliance and fleet management, configuration management and multi-layer VPNs. Write integrations with other tools from the (security) ecosystem to support a wider range of data formats. Be responsible for entire infrastructure segments, from whiteboard design to implementation and automation for production systems.

=== Interview Process ===

1. Fill out the application form at https://tenzir.com/career/devops-platform-engineer/

2. Phone call to get to know each other and identify potential roadblocks (30min)

3. Technical interview(s) (1-2h)

mavamon Show HN: Oyabun – resilient C2 infrastructure for pentesters

It looks shiny. How does Oyabun compare to Cobalt Strike feature-wise?

mavamon Monitoring your own infrastructure using Grafana, InfluxDB, and CollectD

Does anyone have experience with an InfluxDB-based netdata setup?

When we evaluated multiple options, we found that netdata does a lot of the heavy lifting. What are the advantages of a CollectD-based setup?

mavamon Monitoring your own infrastructure using Grafana, InfluxDB, and CollectD

(Disclaimer: CEO & founder of Tenzir)

We at Tenzir are developing VAST for this purpose: https://github.com/tenzir/vast. It's still very early stage, but if you're up for trying something new, a lean and modern C++ architecture, BSD-license open-source style, you may want to give it a spin. The docs are over at https://docs.tenzir.com/vast.

It supports full PCAP, NetFlow, and logs from major security tools. There is CLI and Python bindings. The Apache Arrow bridge offer a high-bandwidth output path into other downstream analytics tools.

mavamon FlexBuffers

The nice thing with custom types is that you only need one type dispatching logic.

Sure, it works via stuffing the custom things in blobs, but then you have (1) an extra layer of indirection during dispatch, and (2) always waste a few bits or bytes to store the custom type information, even when you don't need it for actual blobs.

In principle, it's not a lot of effort to reserve a fraction of the type ID space for custom types. From a user's perspective, it's also much nicer to hear that a library cleanly uses existing extensions to the type system, rather than hijacking a general-purpose blob type.

If there's nothing that prevents it, feel free to take this as a feature request :-)

mavamon FlexBuffers

Here's the link to the spec about extension types: https://github.com/msgpack/msgpack/blob/master/spec.md#exten...

From there:

MessagePack allows applications to define application-specific types using the Extension type. Extension type consists of an integer and a byte array where the integer represents a kind of types and the byte array represents data. Applications can assign 0 to 127 to store application-specific type information. An example usage is that application defines type = 0 as the application's unique type system, and stores name of a type and values of the type at the payload.

mavamon FlexBuffers

Unlike MsgPack, FlexBuffers doesn’t support custom/extension types. Is this something that is planned for the future?

mavamon The deepest ever sighting of an octopus, by cameras on the Indian Ocean floor

Pluralization of the word "octopus" has been a long-studied topic: https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/the-many-plura...

mavamon The Rapid Growth of Io_uring

For users who need macOS and FreeBSD (kqueue) support as well, is there any unified standard for async I/O that covers both file and network? Or is the only choice to go with a library like libuv, which will always pick the optimal native implementation under the hood?

mavamon Ask HN: Who is hiring? (October 2019)

Tenzir is a big-data analytics platform for network security analysis. Our product empowers security professionals to quickly isolate security incidents and find the relevant subset in data lakes of telemetry. We aim to solve the tough cyber security challenges of tomorrow.

We are a UNIX shop at heart; we love building sound and composable abstractions - from backend to frontend. Our current UI is a CLI, which works well for threat hunters and incident responders. We are looking for a skilled frontend dev to build is a slick UI. Our backend is written in cutting-edge C++17/20, inspired by functional paradigms, and builds on top of a high-performance message passing architecture. We are looking for expert C++ engineers who enjoy systems building, with all hard problems from I/O scheduling to cache-optimized data structures. Our team has an academic mindset and over ten years of in-depth experience with C++. We foster an open, direct, and scientific culture. We have a passion for software engineering. Do you? Then join us!

=== Open positions ===

Backend Engineer (C++17/20): http://tenzir.com/careers/backend-engineer

FrontEnd Engineer: http://tenzir.com/careers/frontend-engineer

=== Interview Process ===

1. Application Form (Website)

2. Phone Call (1-2h)

2. Onsite Interview (1-2h)

=== Details & Application ===

https://tenzir.com/careers/

mavamon Ask HN: Who is hiring? (September 2019)

We are a UNIX shop at heart; we love building sound and composable abstractions - from backend to frontend. Our current UI is a CLI, which works well for threat hunters and incident responders. We are looking for a skilled frontend dev to build is a slick UI. Our backend is written in cutting-edge C++17, inspired by functional paradigms, and builds on top of a high-performance message passing architecture. We are looking for expert C++ engineers who enjoy systems building, with all hard problems from I/O scheduling to cache-optimized data structures. Our team has an academic mindset and over ten years of in-depth experience with C++. We are also looking for devops engineer to hold it all together in cloud-native stack. We foster an open, direct, and scientific culture. We have a passion for software engineering. Do you? Then join us!

=== Open positions ===

Backend Engineer (C++17/20): http://tenzir.com/careers/backend-engineer

FrontEnd Engineer: http://tenzir.com/careers/frontend-engineer

=== Interview Process ===

1. Application Form (Website)

2. Phone Call (1-2h)

2. Onsite Interview (1-2h)

=== Details & Application ===

https://tenzir.com/careers/

mavamon Ask HN: Who is hiring? (August 2019)

We are UNIX shop at heart; we love building sound and composable abstractions - from backend to frontend. Our current UI is a CLI, which works well for threat hunters and incident responders. We are looking for a skilled frontend dev to build is a slick UI. Our backend is written in cutting-edge C++17, inspired by functional paradigms, and builds on top of a high-performance message passing architecture. We are looking for expert C++ engineers who enjoy systems building, with all hard problems from I/O scheduling to cache-optimized data structures. Our team has an academic mindset and over ten years of in-depth experience with C++. We are also looking for devops engineer to hold it all together in cloud-native stack. We foster an open, direct, and scientific culture. We have a passion for software engineering. Do you? Then join us!

=== Open positions ===

Backend Engineer (C++17/20): http://tenzir.com/careers/backend-engineer

Devops Engineer: http://tenzir.com/careers/devops-engineer

FrontEnd Engineer: http://tenzir.com/careers/frontend-engineer

=== Interview Process ===

1. Application Form (Website)

2. Phone Call (1-2h)

2. Onsite Interview (1-2h)

=== Details & Application ===

http://tenzir.com/careers/

mavamon Ask HN: Who is hiring? (April 2018)

Tenzir is an ambitious startup with the vision to substantially improve the security of computer networks. We are seeking a very talented and collaborative person to help build the backend for disruptive cybersecurity products. We are creating a modern distributed system on top of a high-performance message passing architecture. Each of Tenzir's two co-founders have over ten years of in-depth experience with C++. We operate a modern code base and focus on quality-oriented reviews.

Role & Responsibilities

As a key contributor to our technology, you will participate in the entire process from translating user needs into designs and then implement them as working code. In particular:

- Design, prototype, develop, and evaluate abstractions in a cutting-edge C++17 code base

- Create scalable and composable interfaces in a high-performance message passing environment

- Tune and enhance data structures to accelerate search queries on massive amounts of data

- Contribute to an open and constructive review culture in an agile development setting

Interview Process

1. Application Form

2. Phone Call (1-2h)

2. Onsite Interview (1-2h)

http://tenzir.com/careers/cpp-software-engineer/

mavamon Ask HN: Who is hiring? (March 2018)

Role & Responsibilities

As a key contributor to our technology, you will participate in the entire process from translating user needs into designs and then implement them as working code. In particular:

- Design, prototype, develop, and evaluate abstractions in a cutting-edge C++17 code base - Create scalable and composable interfaces in a high-performance mesage passing environment - Tune and enhance data structures to accelerate search queries on massive amounts of data - Contribute to an open and constructive review culture in an agile development setting

Details and application: http://tenzir.com/careers/cpp-software-engineer/

mavamon Ask HN: Who is hiring? (February 2018)

Role & Responsibilities

As a key contributor to our technology, you will participate in the entire process from translating user needs into designs and then implement them as working code. In particular:

Details and application: http://tenzir.com/careers/cpp-software-engineer/

mavamon Osquery

We have an ongoing project and existing prototype that combines OSquery with the Bro network security monitor. This enables correlation of network and host state in the same framework.

More details here: https://www.bro.org//bro4pros2017/Haas_OSquery_Bro4Pros2017....

mavamon The shock tactics set to shake up immunology

Interesting potential link. When talking about cold showers, I suggest looking up the Wim Hof Method. In addition to cold exposure, this method includes a specific breathing technique based on Tummo meditation: oxygen surplus inhaling combined with subsequent breath holding.

mavamon Build2 – A C++ Build Toolchain and Package Manager

I've started with and am used to the "old-school" CMake. Is there a good article that showcases some of the more modern features?