HP's new ARM-based Servers - <AUTHOR> http://h17007.www1.hp.com/us/en/iss/110111.aspx

<comment><USER2> Here's a good article summarizing the HP site which does a horrid job explaining what it actually is

[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/01/hp_redstone_calxeda_...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/01/hp_redstone_calxeda_servers/)

<comment><USER3> I don't want to predict the future, but if HP thinks it can win over customers with 100% marketing and no technical details, that's not a good sign.

I make the IT purchasing decisions for my company, and I know what an ARM CPU is, and why it's a good idea. Therefore, I know that HP's approach doesn't make sense: ARM hasn't been proven in this market. Therefore, customers and vendors (like HP) need to work very closely and there needs to be openness about design issues, performance tuning, etc.

HP's starting off on the wrong foot. Maybe there's enough money in ARM that they'll figure it out. But if I have to make a prediction, I'm of the opinion the ARM server market is going to take off so fast that HP will be left behind.

<comment><USER4> _...win over customers with 100% marketing and no technical details..._

Hasn't the enterprise market worked that way for years?

<comment><USER5> The fundamental flaw here I think is centralized purchasing.

<comment><USER6> No clue why that got voted down. I think you're right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How odd that HP calls these servers Project Moonshot. A moonshot used to be slang for something with a low probability of success.

<comment><USER8> It's against HP's immune system to sell machines without Windows. They already try hard not to sell their HP-UX and NonStop boxes, but clients insist on relying on them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> HPs urls are terrible: <http://h17007.www1.hp.com/us/en/iss/110111.aspx>

<comment><USER10> No kidding. Clearly they're using IIS, which has the equivalents of mod_rewrite built-in. Why would they keep using such awful URLs? The only other major company still using cruft like that I can think of is IBM. Totally unnecessary.

<comment><USER11> Amazon is up there too.

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003O6G5TW/ref=s9_hps_bw_g6...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003O6G5TW/ref=s9_hps_bw_g63_ir01?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-5&pf_rd_r=13KXA06CD1CPTH1KGGVJ&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=801471022&pf_rd_i=14220161)

<comment><USER12> At least with Amazon, all you need is: <http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003O6G5TW>

Which isn't too bad...

<comment><USER13> Or even: <http://amazon.com/dp/B003O6G5TW>

or: <http://amzn.com/B003O6G5TW>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Most are overlooking the change in thinking with these servers.

Think of servers with ARM processors in the pipeline which will come with 64+ cores, available for cellphones. The biggest problem in a datacenter is not space or processing power, it's energy consumption and heat dissipation. Walking into a datacenter gives you the feeling that the place looks empty with plenty space to fit 6x more servers. Today this can't be done because there's no capacity for more air conditioning to cool more servers in the building.

Also, the way of processing has changed in the last years, for example with map reduce, which makes having many cores way more useful than a single server with a massive 5 ghz core. Actually today, many servers are IO bound, not CPU bound. There's exceeding cpu capacity.

Think of having a server, with 64 ARM cores and and array of SSD's. This won't heat up as much as mechanical disks or today's cpus, with very small IO constraints due to SSDs speeds and far more parallel processing power.

<comment><USER15> Our solution to infrastructure/performance problems which dates back a fair way is to simply throw more hardware at problems.

Lately we are starting to hit a limit - a power limit. We are actually limited in the data center we use not by space, but by our power consumption, so we now have a pseudo KPI of "reduce our power usage". It's a good goal, but certainly not one I had ever contemplated.

A (future) stumbling block is our reliance on x86. Would love to be able to move to ARM =\

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> From [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/01/hp_redstone_calxeda_...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/01/hp_redstone_calxeda_servers/) :

 _The sales pitch for the Redstone systems, says Santeler, is that a half rack of Redstone machines and their external switches implementing 1,600 server nodes has 41 cables, burns 9.9 kilowatts, and costs $1.2m._

 _A more traditional x86-based cluster doing the same amount of work would only require 400 two-socket Xeon servers, but it would take up 10 racks of space, have 1,600 cables, burn 91 kilowatts, and cost $3.3m._

Hmm, let's see. It's about 7-8 grands per Xeon server, something like HP Proliant DL360R07 (2 x 6-core Xeons at 2.66GHz). It's 3 times as many cores as Redstone, clocked at 2.66 times greater frequency each, and doing more instructions per clock tick, too. And that's without hyperthreading.

Am I missing something big, or is Redstone solution neither cost-effective nor energy-effective?

<comment><USER17> You assume the application is compute limited and that the extra performance on the Xeon translates into extra performance on a given application. That's probably not a good assumption for this kind of workload.

<comment><USER18> You're going to be I/O bound (network or disk), memory bound, or compute bound. It's hard to imagine the Redstone systems besting Xeon based servers in any of the three.

<comment><USER17> It depends entirely on where your bottlenecks are. If the bottleneck is entirely within your node, then this isn't going to be compelling. If you're doing something that's very light on the resources within your node (serving static content, etc) and your bottleneck is some other system somewhere else, then these sorts of machines could be compelling purely from a space/power POV.

<comment><USER16> If your nodes are not bound on some local resource, you can as well just run them in virtualization containers on Xeon. The setup will be even more flexible than with (less powerful) ARMs.

<comment><USER19> But not nearly as space/power-efficient.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I find it strange that they're using Cortex-A9 CPUs. I would have expected anyone going for the server market with ARM cores to use Cortex-A15, which has 40 bit addressing with PAE.

<comment><USER4> The A15 wasn't available when Calxeda designed the chip.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Does it support ECC ram? None of the other ARM servers I've seen yet have.

<comment><USER4> Yes, it is a real server.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Is this another line of non-intel machines that the manufacturer will bury in a hidden portion of their website and deny that even exists in public?

</comment><comment><USER23> I think this is a highly significant move by ARM. It's amazing when you speak to datacentre people and they tell you how much of your server charges go on electricity and cooling. My recent example was £200 extra/year for an additional Opteron 6128 and £400 extra/year for the increased power usage from that processor!

There is an obvious gap in the market for low power, low heat generating, high memory throughput server processors. I'd just like to see a reference Linux distro which supports 16 ARM cores as well as a reference server card...

The specs:

<http://www.calxeda.com/products/energycore/ecx1000/techspecs>

only refer to 32-bit memory addressing as well (ie. <4GB of memory). Seems like the wait will be for the ARMv8 64-bit processors to be integrated.

Interesting times!

<comment><USER24> No virtualization ability. No addressibility of more than 4G is a killer for some apps. CPU horsepower density isn't quite as high as they say: at 72 quad- core A9's per rack unit vs. 6.4 Xeons in a comparable 10U blade server. A Nehalem clocks about 3x faster and runs about 1.5-2x faster per clock than the A9 for "random server logic" workloads, so this appears to be higher by only a little bit.

Power consumption isn't clear. I see no peak load wattage numbers, which worries me for a product marketed expressly as a low-power option.

One advantage this architecture does have is density of memory bandwidth. They have 72 DDR3 channels per rack unit vs. 25.6 for a blade server filled with 4-channel Westmere EXs (the Intel boards will stack the DIMMs up on the same channel). So you might want to look seriously at it as a hosting platform for a very parallel in-memory data store.

<comment><USER20> I'm going to guess that by 'no virtualization ability', you probably mean no hardware acceleration for virtualization. That doesn't mean you can't have OS- level virtualization. In fact, I'm working on a hypervisor for BeagleBoard.

Plus, TrustZone has been hacked in the past to implement virtualization.

<comment><USER5> The reason hardware support for virtualization is necessary on x86 is only because of some design decisions dating back to the 80286.

<comment><USER25> Can you elaborate?

<comment><USER4> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popek_and_Goldberg_virtualizati...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popek_and_Goldberg_virtualization_requirements#IA-32_.28x86.29)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I wonder if the Redstone part of the name came from a secret Minecraft fan at HP's headquarters.

I hope it succeeds, just to give Intel a run for their money. I really think that ARM is the future of computing (including the desktop).

<comment><USER27> Given the "Project Moonshot" bit, I'd imagine it's from the Redstone rockets that launched the Mercury astronauts into space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> No details or pricing whatsoever?

<comment><USER29> You can get details on the underlying server architecture from Calxeda's pages describing the system on chip, and the quad server boards that are in the initial HP design:

<http://calxeda.com/products>

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Just yesterday I was dreaming of small server racks composed of Raspberry PI's and BeagleBoards. Wish I had a few million lying around… or a cheap dedicated link at home.

<comment><USER30> Don't forget some BeagleBones for good measure. <http://beagleboard.org/bone>

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> How much cooling do these racks need?

It could be a killer sales point if these servers need no cooling.

</comment><comment><USER32> I hope it has ECC RAM, as opposed to most competitors I've seen before (such as the atom based boxes)

<comment><USER29> Yes; it's a properly server oriented processor, with ECC, fast interconnect, large cache, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> So.. another blade server solution? I thought RLX tried this a decade ago, and went home bankrupt?

<comment><USER4> RLX really needed scale-out software and DevOps, but neither was widely available in 2001. Also, Calxeda is claiming a larger advantage than RLX did.

And wasn't RLX technically a success since it was bought by HP and _then_ canceled?

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Project Moonshot? What's wrong, "Project Vaporware" was taken?

<comment><USER35> From the Register article: "The hyperscale server effort is known as Project Moonshot, and the first server platform to be created under the project is known as Redstone, after the surface-to-surface missile created for the US Army, which was used to launch America's first satellite in 1958 and Alan Shepard, the country's first astronaut, in 1961."</comment></comment>


The End of the Future by Peter Thiel - <AUTHOR> https://www.nationalreview.com/2011/10/end-future-peter-thiel/ <comment><USER2> From 2011. Interesting take</comment>


Neural Network at Warp Speed (1988) - <AUTHOR> http://repository.cmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2939&context=compsci <comment><USER2> "Warp programs are written in a high level Pascal-like language called W2, which is supported by an optimizing compiler written in Common Lisp. W2 programs are developed in a sophisticated, Lisp-based programming environment supporting interactive program development and debugging. A C or Lisp program can call a W2 program from any UNIX host on the local area network."

Ah, the good old days of the dominance of Lisp in artificial intelligence research.

</comment><comment><USER3> Most people don't realize that what is popularly known as "deep learning" has actually been around for over 50 years now. The big gains are really the result of having additional computing power to throw at the problems.

<comment><USER4> Is that _actually_ true? From my cursory understanding, it seems that there has been a slew of theoretical breakthroughs (including ways to architecte and train networks aside from just blindly throwing more computation resources) that significantly pushed the field forward. Off the top of my head, I'm thinking of Hinton's 2006 DNN which pre-trained each layer one at a time as a restricted Botlzmann machine, computationally simpler activation functions like ReLu, the development of residual networks, the development of GANs, etc.

Of course GPU-based training has helped a lot, but my impression is that these theoretical breakthroughs were also important.

<comment><USER5> I think its more that originally GPU compute proved that deep nets are possible to train and give good results which lead to more research on them and the development of things like ReLU and ResNets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Needs [pdf] in the title.</comment>


Spiders think with their webs, challenging our ideas of intelligence - <AUTHOR> https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24532680-900-spiders-think-with-their-webs-challenging-our-ideas-of-intelligence/ <comment><USER2> Interesting to think of how this relates with the Extended Mind theory ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Extended_Mind](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Extended_Mind)) and how our environment and setup is effectively part of our cognition. In a way, maybe we should consider intelligence to not just be about our ability to connect A to B in complex ways (or equivalent views) but rather as the ability to create frameworks both in an internal and and internal process. In that sense, you could think of intelligence as a stack. Would love to hear thoughts on this.

<comment><USER3> Thank you for sharing this "Extended Mind" concept, it is mind-blowing -> on an arbitrarily contained mind inside a skull to keep collateral damage to a minimum. In the mind experiment of Inga and Otto they use a notebook to extends Otto's mind and claim it is so because "it is constantly and immediately accessible to Otto", can we say the same of the Internet? Does it extend our own minds?

<comment><USER2> Absolutely. More specifically, the Internet itself can be thought of as an extended network of neurons. To extend cognition with it, you need to integrate its knowledge without yours (for example by reaching information as quickly as via in-body cognition, eg via Google or a notes app), and you need applications that can deliver this knowledge (usually SAAS). If you have such a system in place, it's functionally the same as having a bespoke work stack that complements your cognition.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Distributed cognition is a really powerful idea that breaks a lot of our assumptions about individuality and agency. When applied to something like AI, I think it promotes much better thinking about how to get productive work done -- since it isn't so much about the algorithm as the system as a whole.

I recommend Ed Hutchins book "Cognition in the Wild" or Don Norman's "the design of everyday things"

Other related ideas are "the extended mind" and "actor-network theory". It is hard not to come to the conclusion that personal identity is useful for drivers licenses but ultimately a very elaborate social illusion/myth.

I really like the implications for reincarnation, though!

</comment><comment><USER5> Well, I extend my cognition quite extensively to my pen and paper notes, my whiteboard and my code. Suddenly I get a sense of familiarity with the spider...

</comment><comment><USER6> Based on encephalization quotient, spiders are the most intelligent animals. Some baby spiders' brains overflow even into their legs.

I guess a web can be used as a turing machine tape... though, 3D and finite.

Their big problem is asociability.

</comment><comment><USER7> Well it's not too crazy when you think about it. The web is just encoding location and size data for them. Any medium that generated the same results every time would do the same thing. I think because of their smaller intelligence it just seems more profound than it actually is because it represents a significant portion of their capabilities.

We see this in some types of machine learning. Echo state networks and reservoir computing essential just encode the data with their random connections.

So I think it's cool, but not that surprising. The spider is just learning the world through its web just like a musician learns music through a specific instrument. The difference is its not a significant portion of our intelligence and we have extra space/power to learn the world through different tools. Language, writing,reading, computing, mathematics, etc.

</comment><comment><USER8> Well, we know that ants use their extended phenotype (pheromone trails) as part of their collective decision making processes. And we know spiders that use their extended phenotype (net) as part of their sensing apparatus. And we know that sensing and sensory processing are not clearly distinguishable.

Personally, TIL that there is already a name "extended cognition"/"extended mind" connected to the idea. I just wonder that neither Wikipedia article recognizes that this is clearly a subfield of the more general idea of the "extended phenotype".

</comment><comment><USER9> Does anyone have a link to the paper?

<comment><USER10> I found this paper online: [https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10071-017-1069-7#...](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10071-017-1069-7#Abs1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Lacks mention of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portia_(genus)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portia_\(genus\)) the jumping spider which hunts!

</comment><comment><USER12> Do people think with _The Web_ too then ? Baity headline.

</comment><comment><USER13> Sorry, but I don't see a lot of real substance here. It seems like "Forcing the religious idea of an universal consciousness again down to our throats".

Are spiders smart? yes. With capital letter. Some at least can be top of the game for a small arthropod. But If spiders think with their webs then we should consider the hair in our arms, our shoes and our googles part or our brain also. As philosopical idea It could have some merit, but it has not any sense in biology when what we call brain is clearly defined and delimited.

<comment><USER14> Oh but the brain isn't clearly delimited. You think with your gut, your spinal cord, your hormones. Even your eyeballs preprocess information before passing it up to your brain. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wonder if cats and dogs carry scents around like memories. If so they have to be really confused when you bathe them.

<comment><USER16> I'm thinking of ants and scent trails, and bees dancing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> And humans think with their phone today.

<comment><USER4> It is like the third hemisphere of our brain

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> 🧠</comment>


PayPal Finds a Niche in China  - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2010/05/18/paypal-finds-a-niche-in-china/

<comment><USER2> EBay's flagship consumer shopping service has struggled in China, but the company is more successful here than many may think, thanks to its fast- growing online payment business, PayPal. <http://paypalfees.info/></comment>


Ask HN: Is forming a company in UK a good option for a non-US resident - <AUTHOR> I'm looking to form a foreign company because where I live (Eastern Europe) it's much more feasible and legal to just do that compared to charging customers online as a domestic entity.
I'm wondering if it's a good idea to register in UK or maybe Estonia for a small business selling a software product licenses and SaaS subscriptions online. No employees or any physical presence in the EU .
I'm mostly choosing between UK and the US. I've read a lot about US LLC formation and it certainly has it's strengths, but I fear US tax and overall legal compliance issues. And the lawyers are super expensive. And travelling there is expensive. I'm also not going to seek outside investment which would otherwise be a major benefit of a US company.
From what I see on the web though it looks much cheaper and easier to form a UK limited company. Except for getting a UK bank account, which I could instead do in Latvia or Estonia. But this would limit online payment processing options although I'm sure there should still be some.
Have someone been in a similar position and went for UK incorporation? What has been your experience? There's really lack of information regarding this topic on the web, compared to US-based incorporation.
particularly interesting is practical experience with things like:
- what UK taxes do you owe as a non-EU resident member of a UK company on salary (besides the obvious 20% of company income) - can you deduct your salary from company's taxable income? - are there any legal complications from a small software business perspective or is everything simple and transparent - downsides; why would one rather choose a US business entity (or some other jurisdiction) - am I overlooking some important considerations?
I know I should talk to a UK lawyer regarding legal and tax compliance, and I will, but I'd very much appreciate to hear any thoughts from this community first so that I have at least some clue. <comment><USER2> Hey - I just recently wrote a series of blog posts of creating a startup in the US and UK for developers. It's based on my experiences. If you're based in Europe being a UK based limited company is a great option. As others have said you'll need a good accountant and lawyer, the posts cover my experiences with various companies. Personally I'd recommend Crunch.co.uk for helping with the company formation and accounts. Then Lawbite for the legal side of things. They've answered a bunch of my questions.

One big thing to beware of is VAT and VAT MOSS scheme - it's a bit of a nightmare to figure out your way around that. After discussing with accounts and lawyers your best option is to not be VAT registered until you know you're going to exceed the £82k threshold. Again - speak with your own lawyer and accountants on this as everyone's situation is different.

Hope that helps!

TL;DR \- [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11360598](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11360598) \- Covers company formation (and recommends a couple of accountancy options for the UK)

\- [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11360651](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11360651) \- Covers Legal advice for US and UK startups.

<comment><USER3> I have to give credit where due. It's unfortunately rare for someone with a brand new HN account to immediately contribute so much relevant and substantive information. Very Nicely Done!

Your articles are well written, easy to read, and seemingly accurate (n.b. without me doing _any_ due diligence to check facts), but the meme images are too distracting, even a bit annoying (this is most likely due to me being a curmudgeon ;). Of course, opinions will vary, and I'm sure others might say the memes break up the reading and help hold attention.

For notes, it's generally a poor idea to submit a bunch of good stories at (roughly) the same time, particularly if they're from the same site. Your submissions will be competing for attention with all other stories, including your own. Though your "101" article is currently sitting on the front page of HN, your second article "Dev Guide" suffers from the others' success. Spacing out your submissions, like one a day, will give you better results. Also, the HN Guidelines (link at bottom of most pages) ask for users to avoid submitting so many links that the new page is dominated by your posts.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for your feedback- I will space them out in the future!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You're perhaps better asking an accountant in the UK, rather than a lawyer.

It costs ~£15 to start a limited company in England and Wales (a separate jurisdiction to Scotland and Northern Ireland). So long as you keep accurate records and file your annual accounts correctly, that's all there is. An accountant would normally do the filing for you. For a small business this can often be done for £500-£1000. If you do your own bookkeeping and keep accurate records, that will keep costs down.

As your business will be domiciled in the UK, it will be subject to the UK's tax regime. But if you're outside the UK, your salary from the business shouldn't be subject to UK taxation (do check that, though - double-taxation isn't something I know much about).

TL;DR - Find an accountant in the UK who'll be willing to give you a free consultation (most of them). You'll probably find one on ukbusinessforums.co.uk (it's where I found mine).

<comment><USER5> The law is different for non residents.

So a lawyer which specialized in this is defiantly recomended.

<comment><USER4> Obviously IANAL etc, but I'm really not convinced about that. I'm genuinely interested to know why you say the law is different for non-residents. Even if that was the case, I'd be very surprised if an accountant could not advise on that aspect, given that dealing with company records and accounts is what they do. It's OP's time and money, though - if he wants to see a legal advisor of some kind, that's entirely his prerogative.

<comment><USER5> You can go to firms that specialize in incorporating shelf companies which are commonly known as formation agents. To register a company in the UK you need a local director address and a local company address (which are usually setup with an international mail forwarding service) as well as some other requirements most importantly a business bank account which under UK/EU money laundering regulations isn't trivial to open (And with a thin credit file almost impossible to open in the UK without a large deposit and a good formation agent).

Depending on the type of company you are registering for the prices can range from a few 100's pounds (plus fees/deposits) for a regular limited company to considerably larger sums if you are buying/forming a shell corporation.

Another good reason to get a lawyer (in both jurisdictions) is that some countries also have regulations regarding owning foreign companies. If your business is in a regulated field, health care, finance etc. this usually tends to complicate things even further.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If I was setting up a SaaS company outside of the US, I'd be concerned with tax rates, acquiring a bank account and processing credit cards.

It is worth noting that you don't necessarily have to have your bank account in the same jurisdiction that the company is incorporated.

There are many zero tax offshore jurisdictions (like BVI and Cayman Islands) and at a large scale you can get bank accounts and process credit cards anywhere. But, starting from zero I think it's a lot easier to use Stripe or Braintree.

I've listed several jurisdictions that are compatible with Stripe and Braintree by corporate tax rates. You may be able to achieve a lower rate by paying yourself a salary.

Stripe & Braintree

      Ireland (12.5%)
      Singapore (17%)
      United States (~35%)
      United Kingdom (~20%)

Braintree

      Lichtenstein (12.5%)
      Isle of Man (0%)
      Jersey (0%)
      Guernsey (0%)

So, I would consider Ireland and the above Crown dependencies.

Sources: [https://www.braintreepayments.com/country- selection](https://www.braintreepayments.com/country-selection) [https://stripe.com/global](https://stripe.com/global)

<comment><USER7> I would think that to be approved for Stripe or Braintree in anything close to a haven, Singapore included, the underwriting bank will require a utility bill with your name on it, which could be a deal-breaker. Source: I am an American who owns a Hong Kong company which was denied by Braintree (at that time we were doing 30k MRR).

<comment><USER6> Thanks, good to know. What are the options for banking and card processing for a HK company? Why did you choose HK?

<comment><USER7> When I started my HK company I had been living in Asia for several years already and it just made more sense due to the lower effective taxation.

Card processing: Braintree, 2Checkout, and then some lower tier options like PaymentWall. I'm not including old-school/direct merchant accounts here. Keep in mind that 4%*$0.45+1.5% is totally standard, with that final 1.5% added for non-HK billings. So you will pay 2% more to charge a card in HK compared to US. But your tax rate can be literally zero percent.

A better option may be a US subsidiary or a US company wholly owned by a foreign entity. This is something I am considering, because...

> banking

Absolutely everything is a pain. After four years I still don't have a business charge/debit card. Applications for card processing and debit cards each take dozens of forms and generally longer than a month.

Having said that, I have saved lots and lots of money.

Lastly, a HK company costs about $1,000 to setup and $2,300 yearly to maintain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In UK are very stricts with all the paper work, if you don't do something right you will receive a fine (and not a small one regardless of what you missed). There are companies with manage this type of things and deal with all the paperwork. Just search for how to open a company in Uk. Some of them also helps with opening the bank account.

For me the worst thing about a Europe company is to deal with taxes when you sell to European countries. By lay you have to charge the tax where your client is, it means you have to be aware of where is your client located and the taxes in that country, plus fill all the paper work related. Keep this in mind as it can be worth for you to open the company in your country just to avoid this kind of things.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have no problem with them being strict as long as it's not very difficult or expensive to comply. Is this the case?

I don't suppose IRS or any other authority is particularly casual either.

Thank you for mentioning the VAT issues. I've read about that, and as I understand, there's a bunch of services for dealing with VAT collection. Some payment solutions presumably even handle it for you.

<comment><USER9> (Experience: I have been a director for a tiny UK "company limited by guarantee", which is a funny-shaped nonprofit organisation.)

It's not at all difficult or expensive to comply if you're a small business; the whole thing is pretty streamlined. You need to file accounts, but for a small turnover you can file "simplified" accounts which are just two tables. There is one subtlety - you can't be a limited company by yourself. The minimum is one director and one "secretary", but you can get company- secretary-as-a-service.

VAT is a separate issue - you have to deal with it regardless of whether you're a company or sole trader, if your turnover is high enough or you're selling digital goods (VATMOSS disaster).

Background info: [https://www.gov.uk/topic/company-registration- filing/startin...](https://www.gov.uk/topic/company-registration- filing/starting-company)

e.g. These people offer a full package for £70, which if your time is at all valuable is a good deal: [https://www.rapidformations.co.uk/package/all- inclusive-pack...](https://www.rapidformations.co.uk/package/all-inclusive- package/)

 _\- what UK taxes do you owe as a non-EU resident member of a UK company on salary (besides the obvious 20% of company income)_

[http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/manuals/rdrmmanual/rdrm10425.htm](http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/manuals/rdrmmanual/rdrm10425.htm) : implies you don't have to pay UK income tax, which makes sense. You'd have to pay your local income tax instead. I'm not sure how this applies to national insurance (what Americans call "social security").

 _\- can you deduct your salary from company 's taxable income?_

Yes, companies are taxed on profit not turnover.

<comment> UK-AL The company secretary and director can be the same person. It used to be the case they had to be separate, however they changed it several years back.

Now 1 person can run a company.

<comment><USER9> Ah, you're right - it changed in 2009 as a result of the 2006 act (which otherwise made a whole bunch of things more complicated).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why not the Cayman Islands? I was involved years ago in a 'distributed company' (US, Colombia, Brazil) that was offering a service to the Portuguese- speaking world (Brazil, Portugal) and we were registered in the Caymans.

Things worked out pretty well and the only trouble I had relative to the administration was that my name was on some paperwork that went to vendors and I'd sometimes get calls from vendors who would ask "Is this some kind of scam?" and then I would rattle off a list of well-known names that have important subsidiaries in the Caymans.

Luxembourg seems to be the flag of convenience for the EU, just as Delaware is here in the US, although Delaware puts you smack dab in the middle of FATCA land.

<comment><USER11> I find there's too little open information on how for a software company to do things properly in classic off-shore jurisdictions. Everything on the web related to this seems shady so I don't know what to believe. Things like: are there online payment processors that work with Cayman Islands? Where will I be able to open a bank account? and more - are not clear. I'm sure there are use cases for tax havens, but for me it looks like a more expensive and complicated option. Maybe i'm wrong. I just a simple and sure way to do small business, I don't mind paying some taxes and sending a report a year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> No experience with UK specifically, but being in the same position as you are (Eastern Europe, problems working with payment providers because of both their unwillingness and stupid local laws) I want to give you a warning. Do check your domestic laws on corporate tax residence. A lot of countries (e.g. Russia as of lately) will want to tax your company simply based on the residency of the physical person(s) managing the company (you in this case). So make sure you don't end up owing taxes in both jurisdictions. And even if your country has a treaty on double taxation with e.g. the UK the procedure to apply for an exemption may be really gruesome.

<comment><USER11> This is true. Care is required so that the company is not considered a tax resident here. There are some specific things to avoid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> One thing to bear in mind is that the UK is having a referendum on continuing its EU membership on Thursday 23 June. While I sincerely hope we stay in the EU, it's not 100 % clear that we will (although it seems likely). I know hardly anything about doing business outside the UK but within the EU, but it might be worth looking into what the change in situation would be if the UK did leave (such as changes in the need to charge the client's country's tax rate, rather than the company's country's tax rate).

</comment><comment><USER14> If you're looking to do business outside the EU as well (and not have to handle VAT-MOSS), you might want to read the Ghost blog on why they decided to move their foundation from UK to Singapore: [https://blog.ghost.org/moving-to- singapore/](https://blog.ghost.org/moving-to-singapore/)

(The HN discussion of the above link: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11103274](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11103274))

</comment><comment><USER15> What's wrong with having a local company (hence subject to laws in your jurisdiction) and then having a bank account in another country with friendlier banking facilities?

If this is a new business it's not usually worth the administrative overhead unless incorporating in the UK or US solves a specific issue (like stripe support, or some other critical services you made need).

<comment><AUTHOR> The problem is not banking, it's compliance with local regulations. There are some requirements that make global online sales like not practical.

So I would say the main purpose of this whole thing is payment processing in a sane jurisdiction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Singapore and Estonia both seem to be doing things right. Singapore (unlike Estonia) also has a fairly long tradition of being a great place for foreigners to incorporate, a well established and stable legal regime, sane taxation, etc. Estonia also looks pretty good, but they haven't been around as long so the odds of them making trouble for you in the future are probably higher than Singapore.

A Singapore corp will require you to pay taxes once on corporate income. After that it's simple - make distributions to yourself and pay only local taxes. It's as if Singapore asked economists what the most efficient way to run a society is and then actually did that.

A US business entity is probably a very bad idea due to things like taxation on global income and just general US insanity.

</comment><comment><USER17> Are you familiar with Stripe Atlas?

It was built for this usecase, and allows non-US companies to:

\- Get US Bank Account at SVB

\- Incorporate as Delaware C corp

\- Accept Payments immeadiately using stripe

\- have access to PWC consultants about tax and accounting info

\- AWS credit

It is in beta, but they are accepting applications. You should give it a go if it makes sense

</comment><comment><USER18> I've got a Delaware LLC and the tax is pretty simple - you just fill in a form (w8-ben) to say you are non US resident and that's it for US tax. Whatever income and gains are regarded as being yours personally and you are supposed to declare them where you live.

For the UK there's some info here on getting bank accounts (2013) [https://www.rapidformations.co.uk/blog/business-bank- account...](https://www.rapidformations.co.uk/blog/business-bank-accounts-for- non-uk-residents/) I'd recommend phoning them / the banks for the current situation.

</comment><comment><USER19> From my point of view, you should consider first where are your customers, and then -assuming you'd like to- where you'd like to look for fundings.

If you plan to market US companies and potentially raise money in the US, then you should incorporate in the US. You don't need to live there, although I'd recommend for alignment with your customers' time and build connections to raise. After initial expenses (i.e. the company is alive and running) it's relatively easy to get a visa.

If you're serious about your biz, you should take any decision to maximize its success, not to save a few bucks at the beginning.

<comment><USER20> _" If you're serious about your biz, you should take any decision to maximize its success, not to save a few bucks at the beginning."_

Being serious and looking for ways to maximize (i.e. capitalize on) the existing success appears to make more sense when you already have a working business model. When you're in the phase of experimenting ideas and there is a high chance of failing it sounds better to fail as cheap as you can.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Running a company in the UK is super easy compared to some eastern european countries - far less bureaucracy, regulations (maybe apart from VAT-MOSS, but that's an EU thing) are easy to follow and most things can be done online. An accountant can do _a lot_ of this for you and they cost between £60-120 a month. You will have to show up in person for an appointment to open a bank account though, and UK banks, generally - suck.

In terms of taxation, CIT/VAT are similar to everywhere else in Europe, PIT depends on where you live, so you need to talk to an accountant in your home country.

<comment><USER11> I've read that it's next to impossible to open a UK bank account as a non- resident (even for a company) unless you can deposit a large amount of cash. The are afraid of fraud or something.

Is this true?

Would be nice to have a bank account in the same country.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Check out Stripe Atlas. [http://www.wired.com/2016/02/stripe-gets-business- making-bus...](http://www.wired.com/2016/02/stripe-gets-business-making- businesses/)

</comment><comment><USER23> You could consider [http://stripe.com/atlas](http://stripe.com/atlas)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. Atlas could help one incorporate, but I don't see much value for me in what they offer. I just want to know if I should bother with a US company just to process payments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Take a loot at Atlas, by Stripe: [https://stripe.com/atlas](https://stripe.com/atlas)

<comment><USER25> People really need to stop recommending Atlas without having a first-hand experience. They are currently in wait list phase. They said they would be in that mode for many months (not even an ETA), and apparently, they are picking unicorns for now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> \- deleted comment about US company... - Regarding UK limited... there are special service companies which assist you in creating one, also helping you with taxes etc. But I don't know how this works for non EU residents.

<comment><AUTHOR> No offence, but this is contradicting everything I've learned about US incorporation so far :) Do you have any sources I can look into?

From what I know you can easily form and operate a company in the US without ever being present there.

You would have to come in person to get a bank account though.

I know there are always companies who will take money for assisting with any kind of crazy stuff. Here I just wonder if anyone who's not selling such services could share some real-world experience.

<comment><USER3> The post from "therealmarv" is wrong on just about everything.

Incorporation laws vary from state to state in the US, but they tend to be fairly similar. Many states do not have state income taxes for companies, and have business-friendly laws, hence the reason why so many humongous companies are registered in the tiny state of Delaware. A lot of publicly traded companies (and I _think_ most YC-funded startups) are registered in Delaware. In Delaware, all you need in your incorporation filings is an "Agent of Record" and there are many "create your own Delaware company" type sites that provide "Agent of Record" services, including postal mail forwarding and similar.

BTW, you might want to dig on the main YC site. I recall seeing something about incorporation paperwork and such.

Once you have a US corporation, you can get an EIN number from the IRS which is basically your tax ID for filing Federal Income taxes with the IRS. Your EIN number and incorporation papers is enough to get a US bank account for your business. From there, everything else you might want to do becomes even easier.

None of the above is difficult or particularly expensive. It might cost you about $1K total, plus yearly recurring fees for Agent of Record services.

<comment><USER27> Delaware is somewhat of a specialist in corporation organization, and a huge portion of the state's legislative and judicial resources are invested in being the venue of choice for incorporating a business. That's why the taxes on individuals living in the state are so low, they get a lot of income from corporate taxes and filing fees.

If you are incorporating somewhere solely for the purpose of doing business elsewhere, a Delaware C corporation will definitely do the job, in the same way that a rocket propelled grenade can _technically_ fulfill the same role as a flyswatter.

If you have a functional business, and don't need investor money, an LLC will work just fine. Delaware, Nevada, and Wyoming are the most popular states to register an LLC, but by now, all states offer their own flavor of a limited liability partnership-based company.

A New Mexico LLC does not require annual reports or fees, does not require naming your principals or filing much more than just the articles of organization. The filing does not have to be done by a member of the LLC. You just need to maintain a registered agent somewhere in the state, and that is pretty much the only requirement for staying in good standing as far as the state is concerned. You literally just need to hire a registered agent, fill in a very simple form, and pay $50. No lawyers are required (unless you hire one as your registered agent). If you are not doing any business in the US, and none of your LLC members are US persons, I don't think you need to concern yourself with US taxes. You register your foreign corporation wherever you _are_ doing business, and if they call up the New Mexico Secretary of State, they will say, "yep, we do have an LLC registered in that name".

If you want a US bank account, you will need an EIN from the U.S. federal government, which can also be done by a nominee having no other association with your company.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


RailsBridge: a Difference That Makes A Difference - <AUTHOR> http://bendyworks.com/geekville/articles/2012/8/railsbridge-a-difference-that-makes-a-difference

<comment><USER2> I've worked with Railsbridge in San Francisco and this is a great organization - Would love to see more RailsBridge outreach happening in the world.</comment>


Ask HN: Mental Health Startup - <AUTHOR>

We are trying to create an analytics platform that correlates online/mobile behavior to mental health wellness. Our first product is for parents to use with their children because a lot of issues that happen when young can manifest into clinical conditions as an adult (example: being bullied, obsession with violence etc). Am looking at different ways to market/get distribution/get the word out. My motivation is that a friend of mine committed suicide when I was young and I believe that we should be able to catch suicide ideation early since its never a single data point but a pattern of behavior before it happens. The site is www.mevoked.com, would love to hear what the HN community thinks. Thanks! <comment><USER2> I once went to a course called Avater which helped me very very much over the course of about 11 years now. I don't want to propagate anything but their methods were very good. They are just excersizes which you do with your attention's focus, get it under control etc. I wanted to make an app for them once to have those great excersizes on my mobile phone. I also coach and get coached over skype regurlarly just to clean stuff up. Would be very cool to work on something like this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Do you have any information on the type of exercises? One part of the platform is to promote certain types of content or exercises that parents can use with their kids or kids can do themselves...I am definitely interested in hearing more!</comment></comment>


Evolving a language in and for the real world: C++ 1991-2006 (2007) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.stroustrup.com/hopl-almost-final.pdf <comment><USER3> Another good read is the book "The Design and Evolution of C++".

[http://www.stroustrup.com/dne.html](http://www.stroustrup.com/dne.html)

It does provide a very clear rationale why C++ became the way it was (C++98), given the design goals and the constraint of being C compatible as much as possible, both in language and compiler toolchains.

<comment><USER4> It was also a fantastic way to learn the language.

Going through all the design decisions, the underlying implementation, the trade offs helped me build a mental model that massively increased my productivity and intellectual happiness.

I yearn for similar works for other languages (e.g., clojure).

<comment><USER5> "The Ruby Programming Language" by Flanagan and Matsumoto may not have that as it's main goal, but gives a very good overview on why features are how they are and even gives some advice from the creator of the language himself and some commentary on them (e.g. flip-flops are considered an implementation oddity kept around for backwards compat).

[http://www.amazon.com/Ruby-Programming-Language-David- Flanag...](http://www.amazon.com/Ruby-Programming-Language-David- Flanagan/dp/0596516177)

I think it's the most relevant Ruby book, because it documents the basic thinking and mental approach of the language, which is actually very stable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a great paper! It was given at HOPL 3 (History of Programming Languages, a conference which runs every 15 years). I'd recommend all of the HOPL 3 papers to aspiring language nerds, but especially the ones on C++, Lua, Haskell and Self.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, for a somewhat longer paper, it's eminently readable. Very human in tone.

<comment><USER7> It's Bjarne's style - long but readable texts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The chapters _C /C++ Compatibility_ (7.6), _Sun and Java_ (7.7), _Microsoft and dotNet_ (7.8) and _Retrospective_ (9) were very informative. It's a history lesson every programmer should read.

</comment><comment><USER9> "It is more important to allow a useful feature than to prevent every misuse."

That's from his "Design Support Rules" section early on in the paper. I am still going through the paper, but this seems like a good rule and a reason why pointers are still allowed despite the protestations of people who hate C++. Sure, you can get into a pickle with them but that's not the language's fault.

Of course, there has been the rule "use references where you can, pointers where only absolutely necessary" but it's a difficult habit to break...

<comment><USER10> Two that jumped out at me: "C++'s evolution must be driven by real problems" and "Don't get involved in a sterile quest for perfection."

Arguably, that philosophy is why C++ went on to rule the world, and Lisp and Haskell remain niche languages.

<comment><USER11> Interesting tat Go has the same philosophy yet is anti-C++ many ways.

The difference is that Go doesn't believe "useful" is enough justification-- usefulness is balanced against clutter and complexity.

<comment><USER10> Go has a different perspective on the cost of clutter and complexity - <USER2> much it costs in terms of compile time when you maintain a million line code base over two decades. Going from a 45 minute compile to a 10 second compile adds up over a couple decades.

But it is still the same philosophy - Go's design is being driven by real problems that people ran into.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> "Exceptions are typically — and correctly — seen as a control structure". So much for those who say using exceptions for flow control is _bad_.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, I'm just going to go ahead and disagree anyway. Not only are they a poor structure for flow control they are an inefficient and slow one too, as Andrei mentions in his 2012 talk on expected<T>, a talk which also nicely illustrates the shortcomings of using them for their intended purpose as error handling.

In fact exceptions as implemented in C++ has to be one of my last favourite things about the language. They are an all or nothing proposition and yet were put in half heated and unchecked. Many years later the result I see is some or most programs have a catch(...) at some high level. Something went wrong, who knows what, can't even set the debugger to break at exceptions because they're being thrown everywhere all the time for flow control.

<comment><USER13> The heuristic is that if the case is more frequent than something like 1/1000 then you don't use exceptions in these languages (C++, Java, ...). As they are a lot cheaper in languages like ML, people there tend to use them more for early exits out of things like folds.

A simple example:

      let prod = List.fold_left (fun acc a -> acc * a) 1.0 xs

should not fold over the whole list if a factor is 0.0 so they tend to use exceptions for that (or delimited continuations)

<comment><USER14> Java doesn't really give you a choice though, because so many of the standard library classes have exceptions baked in. Any code you write related to file I/O for example will have to have either a "throws" or a "try/catch" on it, or else it won't even compile.

<comment><USER11> Checked exceptions are much closer to "error codes" than unchecked exceptions. Checked exceptions just loosen the constraint a bit and let you defer handling to anywhere the caller's remaining function scope (or explicitly continue the throw)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Straight from the man himself, Bjarne Stroustrup. Really interesting for any C++ programmer.</comment>


Bashttpd - An http server in bash - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/avleen/bashttpd <comment><USER2> Some other cool guy wrote this (<https://github.com/tlrobinson/wwwoosh>) sinatra framework in bash. I am using it to control the lights in my house with my phone.

A very simple js frontend sends get requests to wwwoosh, and some bash commands get executed to control a relays board that turns the lights on and of.

It's very simple, consumes almost no memory and is very reliable.

</comment><comment><USER3> How about ddshttpd (<http://dd-sh.intercal.org.uk/web-server/>)? A web server written using only sh(1), dd(1), and echo(1). It even supports running server side scripts ("ddsh-bin") and setting content type based on file extension.

I'm somewhat saddened to see that they don't own dd.sh domain anymore. It was at least twice as cute as no.de is :)

<comment><USER4> I went to university (Edinburgh) with the author of dd.sh. I remember him as a crazy Italian in the classic mold. As a first-year undergraduate in the computer science department he convinced me to forkbomb the department's main 30-way computer server. What he didn't mention was that the head of department was running a bunch of stuff on there at the time. My resulting heart rate was eclipsed only by the load average on the host, which if memory serves pegged at 512. Now I knew how the sorcerer's apprentice felt.

In a demonstration of genius he then proceeded to shutdown this particular forkbomb, using - you guessed it - only dd and sh ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> You should clean the data from the user before passing it to the shell. There is a trivial remote command execution vulnerability in the URL ("echo 'GET /;$(cat /etc/passwd)'|nc ..."). I assume there are more.

<comment><USER6> We have basic filtering now :-)

<comment><USER7> You shouldn't have to sanitize if you quote your variables properly. If general, the rules for "$foo" are "parse first, expand afterwards" while those for $foo are "parse, expand, parse again", so

      foo="hello    world"
      echo $foo # prints "hello world" [2 arguments]
      echo "$foo" # prints "hello    world" [1 argument]

Note that you can't trivially inject a command this way, though you can inject arbitrary arguments:

      foo="; ls"
      echo $foo # prints "; ls"

I would recommend never using test ([) with more than three arguments. Once you start doing -a and -o, then people can inject confusing values for variables, making it impossible to parse:

      foo='!'
      bar='2'
      [ "$foo" = 1 -a "$bar" = 2 ] # -bash: [: too many arguments

Since test runs a subprocess, it can't tell the difference between data and arguments. Instead, you should do something like this:

      foo='!'
      bar='2'
      [ "$foo" = 1 ] && [ "$bar" = 2 ]

(This also has the advantage of being way more legible.)

<comment><USER8> You can also solve that problem with double square brackets:

      [[ "$foo" = 1 && "$bar" = 2 ]]

<comment><USER6> Really, we should be using double square brackets. We're not aiming for POSIX compliance and double square solves a lot of problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why not using /bin/sh? Didn't saw a bash specific tool (except the function syntax which is easy to convert). And if you really want to use bash, please use #!/usr/bin/env bash so that it is more compatible.

<comment><USER10> What kind of environments contain bash in a different location than /bin/bash, and why is it done that way?

<comment><USER11> FreeBSD users have bash added in and so is located at /usr/local/bin/bash

<comment><USER9> Correct, in my case its OpenBSD which stores all "third-party" packages in /usr/local

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> These kind of projects are always so damn cool, but so utterly useless :(

<comment><USER13> completely disagree. Want to create a quick file server to test a design or an html page in a browser? Yes you could use python SimpleHTTP but python is a dependency that not all times we have access too.

<comment><USER14> Do you have OpenSSL? I assume you do. Look at the man page for s_server and gape in awe at the -www -WWW and -HTTP options.

The only catch is that you need to rig up a key, it being SSL and all. -nocert probably won't play nicely with your browser.

<comment><USER15> That's cheating.

<http://lock.cmpxchg8b.com/certificate/hello.sh.html> (source: <http://bit.ly/mGCVks>)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think this one has a better name, Bash on Balls.

<https://github.com/jayferd/balls>

</comment><comment><USER17> Excellent!

People might say that this is utterly useless, but actually in one big companies I worked for we had something like this (not really http but still bash server) to execute and control tests running on the machine. The beauty of the bash is that runs on 100% clean servers which is great for product testing.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is an interesting novelty, but it can't ever be used in the real world, no matter how far along it gets, because bash is much more susceptible to security holes than normal programming languages.

<comment><USER6> There are many benefits to projects like this. I would argue that this thread is the biggest benefit - people are sharing knowledge on shell scripting, and I'll bet you one hamburger that at least 5 people learn something new as a result.

That makes it worth it :-)

It also gets people thinking, being creative and doing something "fun". Sometimes you just have to do fun things and see where they lead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> How does this differ from the cgi-bins of yesteryear?

Also, regarding environment sandboxing: it's probably worth looking at the direction the CGI spec went in.

<comment><USER6> It depends where you draw the line. CGI's were passed many variables and an environment by the web server. In that respect, this is closer to a web server - the only thing it doesn't handle is the very lowest level network listening.

<comment><USER20> >the only thing it doesn't handle is the very lowest level network listening.

Which makes it a bit imprecise to call it a web server made with bash (as it requires netcat). I clicked on the title already wondering how would it be possible to open a socket with bash only.

<comment><USER21> I think you're being a little overly pedantic.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google Checkout locks out The Oatmeal - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/#!/Oatmeal/status/194845039959097346 <comment><AUTHOR> From his Twitter account: "We've got hundreds of orders waiting to be filled and I'm not sure what else to do. Does anyone know of a way to contact support?"

Google's automated support system strikes again.

<comment><USER2> It appears as though he's reached somebody on the inside via Twitter. <https://twitter.com/#!/Oatmeal/status/194847766420275201></comment></comment>


How do you test an MVP when there is the "Chicken or the Egg" problem? - <AUTHOR>

I am almost finished with an MVP/beta version of a SaaS that helps businesses of specific industry market to potential customers. While I believe the service will be considered valuable to both the companies that sign up and their potential customers, I really don't know how to proceed with a proper way to validate this hypothesis.
For me to find truly test whether or not my customers (the businesses) are willing to pay for the service, I need users otherwise it is hard to argue a return on the investment. On the flipside, I can't get users without businesses signed up.
I'm considering offering a 3 - 6 month beta period that would be free to companies. The problem I have with this is that it's not really testing the viability of the service. Moreover, I won't be able to work on it full time since I do not have investors and I am afraid of falling short on bug fixes, feature releases, and most importantly, marketing to end-users. I could probably seek out investors but this is another chicken and egg situation; I will not have truly tested the service's viability to investors.
How does one tackle the dilemma of having two customer bases that are dependent on one another?
Bonus question: If it is to proceed with the beta period, would you seek out investors? If so, at what point?
Thanks, Chance (long time lurker, first time poster) <comment><USER2> Not knowing the industry your SaaS is targeting perhaps you could take the route that the original founders of Reddit did and lie to the first few businesses that come onboard. <http://venturebeat.com/2012/06/22/reddit-fake- users/>

Get all your friends to sign up to the service and interact with the first 10 or so business customers as if they were real users. You don't have to go free open beta for the first 6 months to verify the MVP, you could even confirm the idea by visiting or cold calling some of the target businesses you're interested in poaching. Perhaps try to stick a high dollar price on the monthly rate and offer the service to the first 10 signups for free or generate interest with an awesome landing page and a big closed beta image to procure email addresses from both users and businesses..

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, sorry I don't know how I missed this comment. Thanks for the link man. I had no idea but that's genius :)

I could probably get enough of my friends to interact with it but I guess but I feel that I somehow need to test both groups in order to truly understand it's viability.</comment></comment>


Dynamically changing running Lisp code (2004) - <AUTHOR> http://bc.tech.coop/blog/040223.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Part 2:

<http://bc.tech.coop/blog/040224.html>

Part 3:

<http://bc.tech.coop/blog/040225.html></comment>


Solo. Personal kanban boards hosted on your own server - <AUTHOR> http://getsoloapp.com/ <comment><USER2> so why exactly do you need my email just to give me a download link?</comment>


Build a Spreadsheet-Driven App by Writing a Single Function. - <AUTHOR> https://api.blockspring.com/blog/spreadsheet-apps

<comment><USER2> Michael Stok's 3 questions (from hardvard i-lab): 1) who is it for 2) what is the benefit 3) what makes it unique</comment>


How to really center an HTML element - <AUTHOR> https://coderwall.com/p/quutdq/how-to-really-center-an-html-element-via-css-position-absolute-fixed?ref=hn <comment><USER2> TL;DR: the article is 3 years old, talks only about horizontal alignment and even gets that wrong (i.e. reading w3c's specs is much more worthwhile than reading this article).</comment>


Skype for web will soon work without plug-ins on Microsoft Edge - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2015/09/19/skype-for-web-will-soon-work-without-plug-ins-on-microsoft-edge/ <comment><USER2> Time for a class action lawsuit again. Microsoft using their browser to lock folks into their apps.</comment>


Minion drawn entirely using CSS - <AUTHOR> http://cssdeck.com/labs/pure-css-minion <comment><USER2> I wish no one take this as an offense. But I will repeat the same speech I say when I see these examples: wrong use of CSS for nothing.

May this help the author with adversiting his skills but the truth about these is they're totally useless and waster ways of making stuff for the web. You can do that minion properly with SVG and be more semantic than that thing.

If authors wanted to draw using code, why not improving skills with something proper, and the best thing I know is SVG, period.

<comment><USER3> There's a fella who built a helicopter for himself out of a whole bunch of small electric motors and a battery pack that looks bit like a pilates ball.

...because he can.

These types of demos exist to show what can be done with a bit of experimentation. It may not be salable, scalable or sane. But it's interesting nonetheless.

The purpose of this is to not be useful. The purpose of this is to exist.

<comment><USER4> I also felt like ranting about the ranter. But couldn't find the energy. Thank you for giving a good example.

You could just have stopped at "fella who built a helicopter" since that in its self is almost always useless :D

PS: I love helicopters but could never justify buying anything more than a 3Ch mini helicopter.

<comment><USER3> If you're feeling adventurous, there are quadrocopter kits now that are quite reasonably priced and not too difficult to build and maneuver.

With a bit of tinkering, I'm sure someone will find a way to create a web based interface with CSS/HTML5 and JSON postback to control one live ;)

<comment><USER5> [http://nodecopter.com/](http://nodecopter.com/) (no affiliation, but sounds like what you want :-) )

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Given the animation, I was disappointed not to see a <blink> tag.

</comment><comment><USER7> You may also like the Pure CSS Horse: [http://codepen.io/anon/pen/tvaio](http://codepen.io/anon/pen/tvaio)

(not intended as negative in any way towards the original artist, who is awesome)

<comment><USER8> That's not pure CSS though. It's a jpeg.

<comment><USER7> _ahem_ That's the joke...

<comment><USER8> Doesn't seem like a joke on your part, but I'll take your word for it :).

Should be more clear in the future that you intended that to be a joke.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> When reading the headline: Hmm, I can draw stick figures in CSS as well.. When seeing the result: Impressive! Still, a bit pointless, but still a cool thing to try and experiment with.

</comment><comment><USER10> Awesome job... I don't share many pens on FB, but I definitely shared this one when I saw it.

Lol @ the comments about it being the _wrong use of css_... That's obviously not the point. I love creating css art... because I can, and it's fun.

</comment><comment><USER11> Good work!

I think it's a great demonstration of css and it's capabilities (as well as the devs skills).

This is one of my own downfalls, I'll spend hours (sometimes days) on css UI when there is always a faster and easier method to implement.

</comment><comment><USER12> It's amazing to impress your clients, but why didn't you make him smile ??

<comment><USER13> Haha Good question!! He's smiling now!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I like it.

Before clicking I thought perhaps he had used CSS to render Adobe's commercially important multiple-master typeface. That would have shocked me. So forgive me for feeling a little bit let down!

</comment><comment><USER15> Wow. Nice! CSS has become a lot more flexible over the years.

</comment><comment><USER16> Love the hack! :)

Here have a blocky 3D version of it via tilt... [http://i.imgur.com/wntUbWM.png](http://i.imgur.com/wntUbWM.png)

</comment><comment><USER13> Superman Mode :P [http://cssdeck.com/labs/pure-css- minion](http://cssdeck.com/labs/pure-css-minion)

</comment><comment><USER17> I gave him more hair [http://cssdeck.com/labs/e8djo69n](http://cssdeck.com/labs/e8djo69n)

</comment><comment><USER18> There is mouth animations but I don't see the mouth moving at all. Anyone see anything? On Chrome/Win7 ATM.

<comment><USER19> The animations for the mouth appear to be commented out. If you take the comments off it seems to work. At least for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> That seems like a fun way to exercise those brain cells.

</comment><comment><USER21> A new meme is being born. "534 hours in CSS"

</comment><comment><USER22> frankly i'm blown away that anyone on earth likes Despicable Me enough to do anything like this

</comment><comment><USER13> Thanks for sharing!!! :D

</comment><comment><USER23> Every time someone abuses CSS in such a way a puppy dies.

Edit: I forgot about HTML. That explains the dead kitten.</comment>


Show HN: Viewer for Khan Academy (Win8 App + Source Code) - <AUTHOR> http://codecube.net/2012/09/introducing-viewer-for-khan-academy-windows-8/

<comment><USER2> I like the tile icon and the vertical coloured subject ribbons. Overall, seems like a very tasteful and restrained v1 Metro app. Will download when I get W8.

</comment><comment><USER3> Congrats on releasing. I just installed it and poked around a bit. Very smooth and clean.

As aawc also already mentioned, I too expected that when I clicked the colored bars I was going to zoom to the specific area with those videos but instead it was just defaulting to a different area.

I'm a .Net dev myself and I'm very curious to hear about your experience getting this in the new app store.

<comment><AUTHOR> The experience getting it into the app store was actually quite pleasant. The app only got rejected once because it didn't have a privacy policy. After I added one ([https://github.com/joelmartinez/Khan-Academy-for- WinRT/commi...](https://github.com/joelmartinez/Khan-Academy-for- WinRT/commit/d771f756b6cbb656f0ad9b0ff9229764e7660d27)), it got readily accepted :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very neat. Thank you! Here's a bug report :) When I zoom out of the grid-based listview using semantic zoom, and click on one of the columns, I expect to see that column in the view. Currently, it just goes back to the previous state of the zoomed-in view.

<comment><AUTHOR> yes, thanks for the bug report. This was totally working, but it must have regressed at some point. Will definitely fix in the next release :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Congrats! It looks really nice, any chance you'll be updating the WP7 app with the same look and feel?</comment>


BBS, Lua, Coroutines: Part 2 - <AUTHOR> http://sheddingbikes.com/posts/1287476854.html

<comment><USER2> Regarding FSM's, remember that you often can split them into several FSM's if they get too big. That reduces complexity immensily if possible.

</comment><comment><USER3> With regard to scaling coroutines, I guess this is basically the problem that Erlang tackles. Having zero shared state obviously solves the migration problem. (but raises other challenges)

<comment><USER4> How would one do a generic copy-on-write mechanism in Lua to automatically enforce zero shared state? (But only create copies once state has been changed.)

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure you'd want to do that. Here's why:

It would surely require some fairly severe changes in the Lua runtime. It's been 3-4 years since I touched Lua, but assuming they haven't changed that much, the data structures themselves are a fairly simple mix of tagged C unions with pointers to structs for arrays, objects etc.

You'd need to either run through all references in the current context and replace them with references to a mutable copy, possibly copying whatever is holding them as a result. This is horrible, and why you tend to use immutable, persistent data structures for this type of thing.

Alternatively, you'd need to somehow detach identity from memory location. Initially, object #123 is at the same position in all contexts, but if you mutate it, it'll be copied elsewhere. When you dereference #123 in that particular context, you will now be directed to the new location. This avoids the dependency update chain but adds an extra layer of indirection, which will presumably be a hashtable or so, which could impact performance quite severely and take up a lot of memory.

You'd also need to somehow tag and track objects which are shared (and need COW) or which can just be mutated directly.

In short, Erlang is probably the way it is for a reason. Trying to graft its model onto another language may well produce something hideous. Don't build your app on the assumption you'll be able to scale it later if your contexts share mutable state.

I don't think there's a silver scalability bullet in our future. You either start by assuming the worst case you can think of and restrict yourself to "safe" techniques, which possibly cause you to do a lot of mental contortion and work you wouldn't need to if you weren't going to scale. (this approach isn't infallible either - emphasis on the worst case _you_ or the maker of your tools _can think of_ ) Or you take the approach of ignoring scalability for as long as you can get away with it, risking a complete rewrite when your design falls over. Or start somewhere in between, depending on your (predicted) needs and preferences.

Disclaimer: my dealings with Lua are some years back and weren't all that extensive. (I most vividly remember debugging a crash that was caused by the allocator running a GC pass under out-of-memory conditions, a feature someone had evidently added without checking it was safe) My knowledge of Erlang is passing at best.

<comment><USER4> _I'm not sure you'd want to do that. Here's why: It would surely require some fairly severe changes in the Lua runtime._

In VisualWorks Smalltalk, I'd just start off by setting objects immutable and using a top-level exception handler on the mutation exception. Alternatively, one could also use forwarder proxies.

 _This avoids the dependency update chain but adds an extra layer of indirection, which will presumably be a hashtable or so, which could impact performance quite severely and take up a lot of memory._

For building application servers, there should be a mechanism to handle this sort of eventuality efficiently. Such mechanisms are also very useful when building things like Object Relational frameworks. This may be counter to Lua's design goals towards being small and highly embeddable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Lua and BBSs? Awesome. We ran a great, well, we thought it was great BBS back in the day :)</comment>


Paul Buchheit: What if I could not only change the way things are, but the way things have always been? - <AUTHOR> http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2007/04/what-if-i-could-not-only-change-way.html <comment><USER2> Memories change and the memory owners don't even realize it.

That reality seems a lot less mind-blowing after reading Paul's blog post.

</comment><comment><USER3> Blogga please.</comment>