Ask YC: Which internship, Cisco or small C++ startup? - <AUTHOR>

I've seen a few of the "Which offer should I go for? BigCo or startup?"  But, I'm going to be flat out and give you the names of the companies that I have received offers for; partly because I would like to know if anyone has worked for BigCo... and would like to provide more specific information to help you give relevant feedback.
BigCo: Cisco Systems... at the Boulder office working on a web-based deployment Q/A system thing, a front end for a hard drive failure detection daemon, and possibly some virtualization stuff.
Startup: Rogue Wave Software... check out their URL for what they do... mainly enterprise C++ SOA stuff...
http://www.roguewave.com/
Would be working on developing a new Q/A web-based system thing I imagine similar to Cisco, somewhat on open source Apache Tomcat, and to cross-platformize their product (help run on various flavors of unix, AIX, etc...)...
I haven't discussed wages yet... so that could be the ultimate factor.  Also trying to get more detailed information on the projects I'll be working on, but most of the info is already there.
I'm about to finish my sophomore year as a Comp Sci major / Comp Eng minor... really interested in operating systems, networking, and programming languages...
I'm thinking BigCo just because the work is similar and it's good to get at least one BigCo under your belt...  Also might look really well to have a BigCo under your belt as early as my Sophomore year... :p
Any thoughts? <comment><USER2> I'd say go for the large company.

I interned at a large company the summer after my freshman year, and I feel I learned significantly more by noting what they did right/wrong with all of their influence and money than I would by working at a small startup that had fewer glaring issues and less leeway to screw up. The difference is that if a startup has a major issue, they will either fix it quickly or won't be a startup very long. A large company is almost certain to have major problems that they don't fix because the impact on the bottom line is a negligible percent at first glance, even though the issue could be crushing. I find I learn more from seeing mistakes made than thing done right.

Also, at this stage this is mostly working as a resume padder and not an actual career choice (at least not now), and assuming you will be working on similar things at either company the name recognition of Cisco make them a better choice. I specifically recall internship interviews after my first internship where all they did to their copy of my resume was put a giant circle around that company's name. Even if you do more skilled work and learn more at the startup, Cisco is more likely to get you into an interview at another company in the future.

Also, IANAL, but I think naming the companies is at least poor etiquette, if not a breach of something (perhaps an NDA, depending on your interview process). If you haven't discussed wages yet, that means you haven't made an official offer, and they could in theory retract it if they find out you were talking about the offer. A slim chance, but something to keep in mind in the future.

<comment><USER3> Naming them is at a minimum bad form.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My choice would be RogueWave. There are truly C++ experts there - the kind you will have a tough time finding (in person) in other places. Also, there's a good chance (I suppose) that you'll get to work on core products at RogueWave. They make money on their C++ software; that's probably what you'll get to work on. That's very, very good.

Case in point about experts - I work for a huge defense contractor. I suspect that in terms of C++ expertise, I am in the top 5 or so out of at least 2000 engineers at my site. It's not that I'm so awesome, but just that C++ is just not what we do here. There are plenty of experts here on other topics, but there aren't many people I can really learn from here on the topics I care most about (not limited to C++, obviously). There are a few, and I latch onto them as fast as possible.

Ask yourself: are you going to be exposed to the rare experts in a field that interests you at Cisco? Possibly, but "web-based deployment Q/A system thing" sounds like internal IT-crud to me - and that's not Cisco's business. Also, ask yourself, "Self, will I be working on essential business products at Cisco"? Remember that Cisco is based in San Jose.

In other words, the two things to consider:

1\. will you have unique access to experts in fields/topcis that you care about?

2\. will you be working on the thing that the business is _about_? (i.e., if you work at a router company, you better be working on routers. If you work at a software company, you better be working on their prime software. if you work at Ford, you better be working on designing vehicles...you get the idea).

In response to a couple other comments:

Don't worry too terribly much if the problems seem interesting. Pay attention, of course - have a basic filter - but you're a student looking for an _internship_. Students looking for internships have no earthly idea what is truly interesting and what is not - learning what's interesting and what's not is part of what internship experience is about (e.g., my experience as a Microsoft intern in testing - SDET - clued me in to the fact that I don't want to be a "tester").

Good luck.

<comment><USER5> Extrapolating from your point #2, would you say you'd better work on search or on advertisement at Google?

<comment><USER4> Google isn't really about search, it's about _data aggregation_.

I would say any of the important web applications are also within the group of "core products" that Google "sells", including the upcoming Google Health, GMail, and Google Docs & Spreadsheets - but the main point is to be working on the thing that is what the business is "about".

I would also add that one of the things that has thus far made Google different is that its employees have greater opportunity to add to the core business than do employees at other companies (GMail is a perfect example).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> RogueWave has been around since the 1980s. It may qualify as a small/medium company, but I wouldn't call it a startup.

This means that you may not have the same ability to create features/policy/products/etc as you would in a tiny startup. It is still a smaller company with technical products, so you may be to punch above your weight and make a real difference.

</comment><comment><USER7> As always -- it depends. =)

First, BigCo experience can be good at this stage because you learn how they do it. A BigCo is a BigCo because they have a process that works. (maybe not perfectly, but enough...) It's important early on to see how real software is shipped. It is messy and inelegant, and forces you to make tough choices. But a BigCo survives because most of the time through process and culture things work out.

A startup can be awesome if they give you real experience and a chance to make a real dent in the product. But sometimes you won't get that if the situation isn't good. e.g. Engineering team isn't up to snuff, bad process, poisonous culture. In enterprise startups I've seen this to be more true than not... your mileage may vary.

Final question you should ask yourself about each option:

Who will be my manager, do I have a lot to learn from them, and how much time are they willing to spend with me?

This may well affect your experience more than any other factor.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think that characterizing a company as a "C++ Startup" is a mistake.

The language doesn't matter.

Do they have crazy smart people? Are the problems interesting?

That's what matters.

</comment><comment><USER9> Go for Cisco. I did a part-time internship with them last semester and I had a blast. Lots of smart people - you'll definitely learn a lot.

</comment><comment><USER3> Go Cisco, and seek out smart people to work with and learn from.

Guaranteed to find some, which is not the case with the startup.

</comment><comment><USER10> _"I'm thinking BigCo just because the work is similar and it's good to get at least one BigCo under your belt..."_

I read in Cialdini/ Munger/ Scott Plous 's (can't remember) book about people typically asking for advice, once they have made up their mind, just to validate their decision.

Good luck with your internship!!

</comment><comment><USER11> > Startup: Rogue Wave Software

not to disappoint you but:

"Rogue Wave® Software has been serving the needs of the developer community for almost two decades" <http://www.roguewave.com/company/history- milestones.php>

</comment><comment><USER12> I didn't even read this whole post all the way through, but I'll tell you that I have several friends who have interned at Cisco, and more who have taken full time jobs there for a time, and based on those sources, go to the startup.

Rogue Wave isn't a startup; they've been around since the early 90's.

</comment><comment><USER13> RogueWave. My made-up criteria: they are one of the longest-running advertisers in DDJ, which I have been reading for years..

</comment><comment><USER14> Rogue Wave is not a startup</comment>


An Unanswered Question at the Heart of America's Nuclear Arsenal - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/an-unanswered-question-at-the-heart-of-americas-nuclear-arsenal/ <comment><USER2> I think anyone who has any engineering experience would suspect that never testing something will eventually result in it not functioning.

<comment><USER3> Please, please DO NOT test a nuclear weapon. The world will be far better off if everyones nuclear weapon turned out to be a dud.

<comment><USER4> True, but if just one side's nuclear weapons are actually duds, and the other side figures that out, that's not such a great situation.

<comment><USER3> I know. I know. But imagine the comedy of epic proportions that would ensue if WW3 consisted of all sides desperately pushing the big red button and nothing happens!

<comment><USER5> Yes, that would be hilarious. Instead of half of the worlds population being wiped out by nukes, we'd be wiped out by chemical weapons, airstrikes, and ground warfare.

<comment><USER6> Alternative scenario: The imbeciles are lynched in the street by angry crowds, many enquiries follow, life continues as normal.

I know anyone alive today, not suffering from a mental illness, that would accept their leaders starting a global nuclear war.

<comment><USER5> I would wager roughly 49% of the American voting public would be fine with Trump starting a Nuclear war. They didn't bat an eye at him assassinating an Iranian general. Or praising leaders like Kim in North Korea. They don't mind his rampant corruption to date or abuses of power.

Mind you, that's not a majority of the actual population given how low voter turnout is, but that's enough to be really scary.

<comment><USER6> I think the number is far too high, in my experience partisan people sober up remarkably quickly once their ass is on the line.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Russia and China remelt their pits every few years. That's more or less a public knowledge. I'm surprised that US doesn't do the same

</comment><comment><USER8> As a child I thought it would have been completely hilarious if the leaders of the free world solemnly decided to destroy it by a large scale nuclear exchange, only to find much to their surprise that none of the warheads functioned due to age and lack of testing.

I say leave the missiles and warheads exactly the way they are and let anyone with the temerity to order a first strike deal cognitively with the risk that the world might survive their decision.

<comment><USER9> I think that might be the established thought behind most of the world's nuclear arsenal. No one knows if they might all work. But the fact that some countries have them will give their adversaries second thought. See North Korea as an example. They tested one crude device few years ago. But no one outside of the NK regime know for sure if their nukes are deployable with a delivery system. But it doesn't matter. The fact that they have the capability makes even the U S pause and consider if regime change is a viable option there.

<comment><USER7> That's a special case.

The most likely case for somebody other than a great power making a nuclear arsenal, and ever thinking of nuclear first strike will be somebody:

1\. Living in a very bad neighbourhood

2\. Being extremely secretive

3\. Not having reputation for bluffing, considering winning a war a matter of existential national importance

If we are to see military use of nukes happening this century, most likely you will see it where you never saw it coming, in a scenario of extreme power imbalance.

Saying this again, for anybody who is desperate enough to bet on a nuke for a military advantage, is already in such a dire straight, that they are already pass the point of using atomic weapons as a deterrent.

They will hold it as the top military secret till the "day X"

<comment><USER10> A world with broadly-held would have civil wars fought with them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The blame slinging seems a bit unwarranted given the understandable constraints on detonation tests.

The two plauisble outcomes even as a laymen are either the plutonium's decay results in less energetic nuclear explosions as lost to atomic decay or the breakdown products "poison" it to a dud which cannot sustain fission. The other unlikely result is a "meltdown state". The decay chains would presumably be calculable without any destruction.

The composition could potentially be destructively tested by centrifuges and chromatography suitable for weapons grade radioactives - possibly resulting in just some low level possibly atomic waste instead of a detonation.

<comment><USER7> That has more to do with metallurgy than with nuclear physics. It's clear that decay and fission products need at least 100 years to accumulate in any significant amount to affect munition performance.

Pure plutonium has 6 metallurgical phases, and alloys used in pits add even more to metallurgic issues.

Imagine an implosion design going through a brittle failure instead of an orderly compaction of a hollow pit? Or worse, one side of a pit went through phase transition, and the other don't and you don't even get a fizzle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> On an unrelated note, I highly recommend this episode about nuclear weapons from Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: [https://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore- history-59-the-destroyer-...](https://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore- history-59-the-destroyer-of-worlds/)

</comment><comment><USER13> I have this naive fantasy where every country that has nuclear weapons independently and secretly came to the conclusion that keeping them operational is ultimately more dangerous than not (due to accidents, human error, clinically insane leadership, ...), and just removed the detonators and unplugged the big red buttons. The nuclear deterrent remains, but is now actually based on a collective fiction. We've discovered the ultimate defensive weapon, one that only needs to exist in our imaginations ;)

<comment> streb-lo The major problem with 'global zero' initiatives is that if one nation can achieve nuclear primacy they become the de-facto owners of the world. No one wants to risk that.

Alternatively, the problem with not pursuing global zero is that the probability that someone will eventually use them approaches 100% in long enough timescales.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> When pits degrade, what is happening? Is it merely a function of the radioactive isotopes decaying below the point at which they'll detonate in a big ol' fireball?

<comment><USER15> Pu is an unusual metal. It has at least 6 different solid allotropes (phases), each of which have different density, hardness etc. The phase can change over time, kind of like how an old chocolate bar can become white and crumbly or soft and chewy. You build your bomb expecting your Pu to be in the δ phase (delta phase). If your pit has changed into a different phase due to age, the explosive lenses will not compress it correctly and you will get a dud or reduced yield.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allotropes_of_plutonium

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Can these things be tested in space? Instead of doing a test on earth, push something way out to space and test it, what would the impact be on earth if it was far away?

<comment><USER17> Probably yes, and probably safely once in space, but the difficulty is that it has to travel from the ground through the atmosphere to get to space, and sometimes rockets fail on the way up, creating a bigger problem when they fall back down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's inevitable that if the US is to keep a nuclear arsenal, thousands of new nuclear weapons will have to be manufactured...

... and tested?

The U.S. government could announce to the world a temporary resumption of atmospheric nuclear tests, in violation of several binding treaties, in the name of practical necessity. Such a step would not be taken lightly. A series of tests could be conducted over a few months to test new bomb designs, as well as the older Minutemen and B61s. Those tests could take place at the old Nevada Test Site and in the Pacific.

<comment><USER19> Why atmospheric? Just cost? Ground test or sending it out to L1 seem reasonable.

<comment><USER18> In a real context, nuclear weapons will be detonated above ground, and you can't test heat damage and overpressure as a function of distance from the blast, with underground tests.

<comment><USER20> We already have sufficient models for how these warheads will perform _if_ they work. The question at hand is _whether_ they work - an underground test would give a measure of yield.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


No founders agreement.. what are my options? - <AUTHOR> Hello,
I've been working on a startup for almost a year. Even though it was co-founders idea/concept and some work had been done previously, product was dormant for years as co-founder couldn't take it to the next level due to other obligations and lack of interest. We've known each other for few years and have worked on other failed concepts in the past.
A year ago, I insisted we pursue that product more seriously as I saw potential so we both rolled up our sleeves and worked on our free time for more than a year keeping our full time jobs. When we started, we verbally agreed to 50/50 split. No founders agreement or vesting schedule. Just an LLC was formed which we both are members.
Long story short, product has now started to generate revenue (not a lot) and we have no employees. Recently, we really don't have good working chemistry. We tend to get into pointless arguments about strategy, direction, features to develop and way things need to be done. Is this normal reality in a startup?
Most recently co-founder scrutinizes every bit of my work and points that it needs to be done differently. Recently as we have started making money, co-founder continues to highlight how important their contribution is to the company's survival every now and then unsolicited and without their contribution the company wouldn't be successful. We're both responsible for building and selling, each of us are focused more on one than the other.
Both of us had no prior leadership experience and know nothing about management or leadership. Perhaps we don't know how to deal with this new found success? What are my options now? Ask co-founder to sign founders agreement on terms verbally agreed upon? Probably wouldn't agree and get suspicious. Lawyer up which may be counter productive due to cost/benefit.
Not asking for legal advice but I'm hoping some of you had similar unfortunate experience and have some insight to share.
Thank you! <comment><USER2> Random advice from the internet.

Sit down and discuss the future.

      1. Discuss the financial prospects of the company.
      2. Discuss future products/business lines
      3. Discuss each of your professional goals
      4. Discuss each of your personal goals
      5. Discuss how you can both help each other achieve those things.
      6. Decide if you want to try to work things out.

Pointing to a document would not solve the problem. At that point you're already lawyering up and curtailing dialog and arguing over who gets what share of the present rather than building a bigger future.

Starting to make money is a change and change is stressful and starting to make money is an inflection point for the company and neither of you has experience dealing with that. If the company is successful things will continue to change and this is an opportunity to gain experience in dealing with change _together_.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. We've tried somewhat close to #3, #4 and #5 before to no avail. I often have to be an audience of unsolicited outbursts of co- founders past and ongoing accomplishments. Here is an example, "I did X and it resulted in Y which is very very important and amazing, what have you done?" or "If I hadn't done that for the company we wouldn't be where we are now. You should appreciate that more." along those lines in addition to constant scrutiny on how things needs to be done exactly the way they want it (no other way). We each have things to accomplish week over week and it's all tracked in Jira and visible to both of us so there is no need for me to announce these randomly.

I've have 10 years worth of professional experience at a big shop having people work below and above me but I've never experience someone behave in such a way or control every part of the business in a way it just ins't necessary. Perhaps they no longer need my contribution and want to create such atmosphere so I can walk away?

I'm embarrassed to be complaining about this on the internet rather than going and talking about this to resolve conflicts like and adult like you said but having tried multiple times it just isn't working out. Almost feels like the way author describes his experience here [https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/18/co-founder- conflict/](https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/18/co-founder-conflict/)

I get your point that focusing on the bigger future is far better than figuring out who gets to keep what. But what if you no longer enjoy each others company and can't deal with the environment? I'm looking to move on but don't want all the time and effort I've put in to go in vain either.

I'm thinking of notifying that I'm stepping down and come to terms regarding equity that we both feel is fair? Perhaps, I can get compensated at an on going basis if not lump sum? What if I'm told no to any equity or comp what are the options that folks have used before?

Sorry for the rant and thanks in advance.

<comment><USER3> Well, if you are thinking of moving on and he won't offer you any compensation, you probably have leverage. Did you actually sign anything assigning the IP you created to the company? If not, you're in a good position to demand compensation, as he'll lack clear title over the company's IP. Bad position for him to be in.

<comment><USER2> In my opinion, both people are in a bad position. The odds are that this is a lose-lose.

<comment><USER3> I can't disagree with that. But there are ways to make the best of a less- than-ideal situation.

I've seen many situations like this and I didn't want MakeThingsWork to feel like he has no leverage here. He probably does. That will help if he wants to negotiate a resolution.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: 5iler – a repurposable minimalist notepad - <AUTHOR> http://5iler.com/ <comment><USER2> Neat, minimalist idea. I like it.

Small nitpicky feedback: Your keyboard shortcuts say to use cmd + 1/2/3 to switch files. In Safari, that will load the first/second/third bookmark. The correct shortcut for Safari is ctrl + 1/2/3

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I'll update the Shortcuts modal to reflect this.

<comment><USER3> Three finger swipe on the mac app would also be wonderful. Any chance of open sourcing this?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You might want to fix your shortcut help. I don't have a cmd key on my Linux system.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I'll update it to reflect OS/Browser.

<comment><USER5> I like 5iler a whole lot and I second adestefan's advice. I use a Linux system and don't have cmd keys. I'm wondering if, since some browsers (at least Chrome + Safari) use cmd+1/2/3 to switch tabs, if maybe replacing cmd with ctrl would be easier for everyone involved?

Great app and excellent design. Call me a fan!

<comment><AUTHOR> Appreciate it :)

Actually, you can already use Ctrl+Numbers -- command is essentially just an alias for Macs (i.e. the Shortcuts modal is the misleading part).

<comment><USER4> I was a bit obtuse in my original comment. Ctrl does work fine. I then tried Alt since that's in the position of the Cmd key, but that didn't work (which is a good thing because then it doesn't eat the browser's tab switch keys.)

Of course the same is also true on Windows.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've updated the Shortcuts help screen on Windows :)

<comment><USER4> Still missing in one place. When you hide the menu the little tool tip says to use cmd + E to restore it.

<comment> V-2 It also recommends Cmd + S as a way to enforce synchronization

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Cool idea, nice implementation!

Feature request: please implement lists either as a keyboard shortcut or as a text macro. Both ordered (numbered) and un-ordered preferred.

BTW, for anyone who didn't catch it: you can change the name of each notepad. Just double-click the name, type what you want and it'll be saved.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! As a matter of fact, Markdown support is the next big thing I'm working on, and I plan to look into incorporating lists.

<comment><USER7> I'm probably in the minority, but I would vote against markdown support. There are tons of minimalist markdown editors out there (have a look in the Mac app store for starters). At least make it switch-offable.

I'd vote against list automation too, because it changes the way the cursor and keyboard behave.

URL detection would be nice though, since it only affects the visual display and mouse behavior.

I'd also vote for a constant-width font option. Preferably Consolas or one of its knock-offs.

It would be nice if the line number, column number, and number of characters in the buffer were reported in one of the corners.

Comments based on the web version (Firefox Mac).

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting, thanks for the feedback. I definitely plan on adding an off switch for Markdown, and will only be going through implementation if it doesn't impact speed/usability in a noticeable way. The plan is to make it a minimal implementation (i.e. keyboard shortcuts only) and barely something you would notice you had.

The reason I'd like to add it is because having switched over from TextEdit and Evernote, the one thing I miss are the Cmd+B,I,Us etc.

<comment><USER8> Have you thought about a subtle markdown support like a syntax highlighter? Vim does this for example. Bold things get displayed bold with there stars, headings get bold and colored (red in my case). It allows to read the markdown source and have the effect of formatting at the same time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Two requests:

1) I'd like the titles to be Markdown-friendly headings instead of C comments, personally.

2) I'm not sure if this is within scope - maybe this is just something to do on my own in Dropbox - but it would be neat if there were an 'archive' button. Let's say I'm done with one of my files and I want to clear it out. Push the button, and that file would be moved to archived/DATETIME.txt or something like that, and cleared.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi! Thanks for the feedback.

1) I'm working on implementing Markdown and will be using friendly headings once we sort that out.

2) I love this idea! In fact, it's been on my wishlist for some time now -- I plan on shipping it this week. I've been calling it "Snapshot Backup", but I think "Archive" is a much better word for it. Thank you :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Great job! Like the concept. But here's another nitpick.

I see when you activate a file, the animation first shrinks the file a bit and then expands it out. Is it possible to remove the shrinking? It makes the app "feel" a bit jerky. I think the reason is when you shrink the activating file, all other files expand by a bit. This causes the whole screen shifting a bit, leading to a somewhat jarring experience for a split second.

</comment><comment><USER11> Interesting app. I actually like it because I use a paper planner that is laid out in columns like the app. (like this: [http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-UQkLuS4qZtA/UTyyzpS9suI/AAAAAAAAAH...](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-UQkLuS4qZtA/UTyyzpS9suI/AAAAAAAAAHs/cDQdsRTHKFw/s1600/M-F+Column+Grid.jpg))

</comment><comment><USER12> Text editor-like tabbing behaviour (new line preserves last line's tab level) for indented lists would be quite useful.

<comment><AUTHOR> That makes sense. I'll try my best to include it in the next version!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Really nifty and very well done.

If you have time down the road you could think of implementing one feature that every modern text editor for some reason lacks: autocorrect. TextEdit on Mac has some form of autocorrect but mostly sucks, I don't know why in 2014 we're still using the backspace but I feel it's time to move on.

<comment><USER14> isn't the same auto-correct system in TextEdit.app available by default in any cocoa text-fied on OS X? And if you think that system 'mostly sucks', perhaps it is because you are vastly underestimating what a difficult feature it is to implement?

<comment><USER13> I didn't say it was easy and I'm not underestimating anything, that doesn't change the fact that autocorrect on Mac sucks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> In Chrome, the font is rather difficult to read. For example, l and t look very similar.

Great idea - it looks very promising :D

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! :)

Had a few complaints about the font, working on adding customization in the next version.

<comment><USER16> why not just change it to a better default font? It's cool, btw.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Cool idea, not sure I like how the web app hijacks Command+N keys though (I use these often to switch between browser tabs). Lately I've been using a similar ~5 categories, and just emailing things to myself. I put the "tag" in the subject line have gmail filter them into labels.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

Out of curiosity, which browser are you using? As far as I'm aware, I didn't build in any Cmd+N hijacking into the app (I did do Cmd+S for syncing/saving though, and Cmd+1,2,3,4,5 for switching between files -- is that what you mean?).

<comment><USER18> Yea, he means Cmd + Number I believe. In Chrome Cmd + 1 goes to the first tab, Cmd + 2 to the second and so on. So it can be somewhat annoying for someone who frequently uses those shortcuts to change tab.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure -- right now, Ctrl+Number works as an alternative, so considering getting rid of Cmd+Number all together.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I really like this, especially that it handles the tab key properly. I find it frustrating that it hijacks ctrl+tab and ctrl+shift+tab as well though. I use those to switch browser tabs. I'm on Linux + Firefox.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm interested in what 5 categories people would use in their own 5iler?

<comment><AUTHOR> Since I built the first prototype a few weeks ago, it's been changing every day for me! Interesting to observe the change in contexts.

Right now it's: Thoughts, Code, 5iler, Today, Private

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Looks nice. I have been using [http://selfcoded.com/justnotes/](http://selfcoded.com/justnotes/) instead of evernote, but I will check this out!

</comment><comment><USER14> I don't get what the 'insert line divider' is meant to be. It seems to just insert a large, fixed amount of whitespace characters?

<comment><AUTHOR> Try it out! It's a hyphen-based separator I found myself using to divide chunks of text. For now it almost functions as "sub-notes" feature.

The keyboard shortcut is Cmd/Ctrl + /

<comment><USER14> Yes, I did try it out-- for me at least, on FF/Win7, it just inserts about 20 whitespace characters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Good idea! it works pretty good in FF but in Chrome when I type "-" nothing gets printed, and when I type = it prints "-".

</comment><comment><USER23> Nice, I really like it.

My suggestions might be out of line with the minimalist philosophy but:

1) Code coloring or at least code blocks

2) The ability to open two at the same time, side by side

</comment><comment><USER24> For the desktop version, I'm having problems with undo. Occasionally, if I delete something, I won't be able to undo it.

<comment><AUTHOR> This may be a known issue: it has to do with the fact that whenever Dropbox syncs, the undo state is reset. If you haven't setup Dropbox sync and have been experiencing this, let me know.

<comment><USER24> Yeah I actually haven't synced Dropbox, though I can't seem to reproduce this on a consistent basis. Huge fan of this though, definitely going to be something I use on a consistent basis.

<comment><USER24> Also, redo isn't working for me at all.

<comment><USER24> Jk, I was using the wrong shortcut :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> FYI: I am planning to open source the code within the next two weeks. Please get in touch if you're interested in contributing!

email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER25> I absolutely love this!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> > 5iler (pronounced 'filer')

No. This isn't intuitive at all.

Five-iler?

<comment><USER27> Is that really the most constructive thing you could say and the most constructive way to say it?

<comment><USER28> Probably not, but I agree that it's worth mentioning.

It doesn't follow any common verbalization of the '5' character. It's also at the front of the word, so you have no clues to start you off on the right path. Even when you know how to say it you still want to say "five" when you read it. I would give the name a very low usability/accessibility score, and frankly it pushes me towards not using the product ("yeah I use this thing called filer - if you want to check it out it's actually spelled with a number five, and then 'iler' \- yeah I don't get it either"). If we're going with the 5 theme I would have preferred 5note or 5notes.</comment></comment></comment>


The Coffin Homes of Hong Kong - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2017/05/the-coffin-homes-of-hong-kong/526881/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> Does coffin imply any sort of "you'll live here until you die" stability or is it purely referring to the size?

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder if this will be our fate too a few decades down the road.</comment>


I downloaded an app. And suddenly, was part of the Cajun Navy - <AUTHOR> http://www.houstonchronicle.com/local/gray-matters/article/I-downloaded-an-app-And-suddenly-I-was-talking-12172506.php <comment><USER2> Might make sense to adjust that to "She" instead of I.</comment>


Rust: learning how to share a queue between threads - <AUTHOR> http://dbeck.github.io/Learning-Rust-Sharing-My-Queue-Between-Threads/ <comment><USER2> [http://rustbyexample.com/std_misc/channels.html](http://rustbyexample.com/std_misc/channels.html)

This is how you share a queue between threads, the title is super-clickbait. It doesn't seem a surprise that stdlib doesn't have a circular buffer, I have no idea what it'd be used for?

<comment><USER3> I believe a channel can only have one receiver and one sender, no? So you can't share the channel between multiple workers.

<comment><USER2> This is the case for spsc (single producer, single consumer) channels, but the example I posted is for a mpsc (multiple producer single consumer) channel. Any number of threads can push data into it, as the example shows!

Having multiple receivers is slightly more complex, and you can't use std::sync::mpsc (obviously) but they are also possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you're curious check out oyashio: [https://github.com/viperscape/oyashio](https://github.com/viperscape/oyashio) It's a thread safe spmc in Rust that uses promises underneath. If I were to rewrite it, I'd use a Vec with promises and a cursor of sorts, instead of the of linked list I came up with.

<comment><USER2> You could also use this [https://doc.rust- lang.org/std/sync/struct.Condvar.html](https://doc.rust- lang.org/std/sync/struct.Condvar.html) (all block, notify one) to implement a "work stealing" style multiple consumers channel that'd be pretty cool. I think various incantations of this have been in and out of Rust's stdlib (I couldn't tell you why though?).</comment></comment>


Medium: A Developer's Guide to Managing Email Accounts - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@bulcclub/a-developers-guide-to-managing-email-accounts-83ef2c824d4a <comment><USER2> This sounds a lot like Throttle ([https://throttlehq.com/](https://throttlehq.com/)). How are they getting around the deliverability issues? If they forward mail along, don't large ISPs like Gmail ultimately attribute any spam that comes along to their outbound IPs?

I moved away from Throttle for this very reason, because getting mail deliverability right is incredibly finnicky. Ended up moving to Fastmail and using their catchall. Fastmail solved the deliverability problem for me (since they host the catchall domain), as well as permitting me to send out from any of my wildcard aliases (thus allowing me to reply in situations where I still want to keep my real address hidden).

</comment><comment><USER3> Fastmail has that same technique, and it is very nice. I have run into sites where I sign up for an email where they do not allow the "+" (presumably to prevent you from doing a "firstname.lastname@example.com"). My only concern with this is it seems like with either way, it would be trivial for a spammer to figure out your real email address (i.e. firstname.lastname@example.com, use a regular expression to convert it to email@example.com). How hard would it be to maybe alias email@example.com and email@example.com so they both go to email@example.com? or maybe firstname.lastname@example.com also aliases. That way it makes it that much harder to derive the original email address.

<comment><USER4> If you're using <some-alias>@user.example.com nothing says that email@example.com has to be a valid delivery address. If I read the article correctly in fact, that is the case in their implementation. So it's not possible for spammers to guess an unaliased email address.

<comment><USER3> Upon rereading, you are correct on that. Thanks for clearing that up!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> this seems a little over-complicated, why not just use a catch-all?

If website example.com requires my email, I provide them with the email firstname.lastname@example.com where xxxx is a randomly-generated 4 (or more) character code. I save the email and password in my password manager.

This way, I can blackhole compromised emails, and also prevent spear-phishing by checking the 4+ letter code.

I don't wish to be overly negative, and this is a problem-space ripe for a solution, but this service can vanish tomorrow and take with it all the sites I've subscribed to.

I was thinking just today that it'd be cool for the next generation of email to require a sort of OAuth login to get permissions to send you automated emails. You can then just revoke the API access for a rogue/compromised service.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's a free service... so what's the catch?

<comment><USER7> "Free. Forever."

How? Not answered in the FAQ.</comment></comment>


Screenshot: "A Fire Upon the Deep" sequel (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://www.norwescon.org/archives/norwescon33/vingeinterview.htm <comment><USER2> If you're a Vinge fan, the annotated version of A Fire Upon the Deep is a great find (available on Kindle); it has his emacs notes (linked in-text) and you can watch the characters develop, his editor suggest improvements, etc. Looks like his system hasn't changed all that much, either.

<comment><USER3> Emacs is suggesting improvements? I want that extension!

<comment><USER4> Clippy for Emacs?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I haven't interacted with him much, but Vinge was a speaker at this year's main North American AI conference (AAAI), and was impressively engaged. Unlike many famous speakers he didn't just fly in for his 2 hours and fly out again, but attended a whole bunch of sessions for several days, and he was asking pretty intelligent questions. Mostly normal questions about the specific research at hand, too, not singularity-related questions or "how will this research help the robot revolution". ;-) Seemed like a very down-to-earth guy; I don't think most of the researchers who got asked a question by him realized that he was a famous sci-fi author at the time.

<comment><USER6> Well, he was a professor of computer science (San Diego State University: <http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/vinge/>) No surprise he asked smart questions!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> A Fire Upon the Deep is one of my favourite books ever. It successfully combines hard sf and space opera and doesn't get bogged down in either. It is large like many of its space opera kin but the plotting is such you never feel like you are slogging through fluff. And the technologies and physics are well thought out and their effects on the universe at large are well presented. The aliens in it are probably the most interesting since Niven's Puppeteers.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm a huge Vinge fan, but I was really underwhelmed by Rainbow's End. (Was it aimed at the YA market and I didn't notice?) Hope CotS is better.

<comment><USER9> I understand the sentiment... but completely disagree.

_Rainbows End_ is less fun than his other novels, but it deals directly with near-future issues in a way that only a few other SF authors are doing well (Stross, Stephenson, recent Gibson, and who else?). It changed how I think--- much more than did, eg, _A Deepness in the Sky_. In terms of relevance to the times, I'd rank it next to _True Names_.

<comment><USER10> _True Names_ is perhaps the most underrated SciFi story of all time. From 1981, and hasn't aged at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wooooo! I've always thought of the proper title for this hypothetical book as "Sky fire" (to bring it full circle, you see). "Sky children" makes me think it's a stealth quadrilogy. Sooner or later it's _got_ to cycle. "Children of Fire?"

</comment><comment><USER12> Does anyone know what text editor that is? Emacs?

<comment><USER13> Yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Now, the title is just mean: I assumed they are making a movie now!

But, oh well, the fact that Vinge uses Emacs is interesting although not surprising given he was a CS teacher.

</comment><comment><USER15> Interesting that he reads Slashdot, and not one of the more modern news sites.

Also, ugh eugh Papyrus in the site header, argh.

<comment><USER16> He only says "places like slashdot". Though in my experience there are plenty of smart geeks and "hackers" who haven't even heard of sites like HN or Reddit. It always surprises me, but sites like HN certainly seem to primarily attract the progressive "eye on the ball" types who are into trying out new sites. The traffic to some of the older, staid, more conservative sites indicates there's still a hardcore of people enjoying them.

<comment><USER5> Slashdot has a much bigger population of "normal" developers and engineers, I think, especially from big corporate places that aren't Google, and areas of engineering that aren't software engineering. That's sometimes useful in the comments area; there's plenty of junk, but there are also sometimes good comments from people who work at places like IBM/HP/Boeing/Motorola/Exxon, which is less common here. I think there's probably also more scientists of the non-computer variety.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> New Vinge, new Richard Morgan and maybe new Neal Stephenson (depending on how you count The Mongoloid) all in 2011.

The Morgan & Stephenson books might be fantasy and historical fiction (?), but if everything lives up to its promise this could be the best year for SciFi/Fantasy since 2000, when Vinge's "A Deepness in the Sky" beat Stephenson "Cryptonomicon" for the Hugo Award.

</comment><comment><USER17> What formatting system is that?

</comment><comment><USER18> Initial Reaction to the site: "Ahhhhhh! The Papyrus!"

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm really excited about the sequel. I read "A Fire Upon the Deep" only a year or two ago. Amazing book. Not sure where he'll go from the end of it but should be interesting.

<comment><USER20> Make sure to read "A Deepness in the Sky" first. It's a prequel to "A Fire Upon the Deep", and also a Hugo award winner.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> love the insight of all the notes and use of emacs!

</comment><comment><USER22> This blog post is nearly a year old. Why is it coming up now?</comment>


Don't Outsource Your Thinking (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@blakeross/don-t-outsource-your-thinking-ad825a9b4653 <comment><USER2> Michael Crichton observed this and called it the Gell-Mann amnesia effect. I think he said publicly that the name was to ride on the coat tails of Gell- Mann's public success:

>>> "Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know."

<comment><USER3> One caveat I would make: it is often over-generalized to then dismiss all media on a topic, especially when readers have some limited knowledge of the topic at hand.

<comment><USER4> Right, remember to keep your eyes peeled for that 10 or 20% of media that isn't BS.

<comment><USER5> If only there was some way to know that the 10 or 20% you think isn't BS isn't BS and you aren't labeling the non-BS as BS.

<comment><USER4> Ofc a more nuanced discussion would have to include something like a probabilities of expected values. But given the cost of creating BS is cheaper than refuting it and the media's proclivity for distributing it, I'm very willing to be somewhat biased against it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wish I could upvote this more. This is such a pain for me, to see a reported story and see an obvious question that any _serious_ journalist could answer just sitting there, unanswered. It made me wonder what they teach in Journalism school these days.

As it turns out, not much about investigation. I looked through the curriculum at Berkeley[1] (a respected journalism school) and found things like J260[2] which is a seminar more on "why" of investigative reporting than the "how". There is also a "web skills"[3] class, but this is just about building a web site.

They really should consider adding a 'using the Internet to find people, corroborate sources, discover links between individuals and corporations, and to track ownership relationships.' Something that, as the author points out, is really a bunch of useful web sites and how to click them.

[1] [https://journalism.berkeley.edu/curriculum/](https://journalism.berkeley.edu/curriculum/)

[2] [https://investigativereportingprogram.com/](https://investigativereportingprogram.com/)

[3] [https://journalism.berkeley.edu/course-section/j215intro- to-...](https://journalism.berkeley.edu/course-section/j215intro-to- multimedia-web-skills-section-1-1-fall-2016/)

<comment><USER7> These days newsrooms do have a bunch of technical people on staff (plus access to an amazing network of experts outside), to do the kind of digging the article talks about. Resource, time constraints, pressure to publish before someone else scoops you I think complicate the process.

It's similar to software companies pushing out workarounds and hacks to deal with bugs that there is no time/resource available to fully investigate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Good read. Definitely shows how little work is often put into investigating a story nowadays, even from publications considered reputable in the past.

And it's worth considering given how many controversial stories that lead to internet mobs and threats had just as little work done on the investigation side as this one. The covington kids story had no real investigation done on it, since if someone had actually asked witnesses or looked into video evidence beyond the original tweet, they'd have seen a completely different series of events. Same with the story of that guy thrown off a plane for speaking Arabic; a bit of research would have proven the story was not what it seemed there either.

And there are plenty of stories where non existent people/companies/organisations have been written about after a troll submitted a fake news tip or what not. Hell, it's surprisingly easy to get a questionable story into the media, since often no one will investigate it properly. I know, I did that by accident.

As for why that's the case? Eh, probably time. The internet has led to a 24/7 news cycle for every publication in the world, and has created a situation where being 'first' is often seen as more important than being right. Even sparing the 10 minutes necessary to investigate a story like in the article is presumably seen as a 'waste of time'.

Either way, good article.

</comment><comment><USER9> If journalism, as a profession, is to add more societal value than random blog posts, I think there needs to be a fundamental reworking of the medium. As it currently stands, the medium itself encourages sloppiness. A modest proposal:

1) Articles should, like legal briefs, support each non-trivial point with a footnote or citation. Primary sources, such as presses releases, documents, and transcripts, should be hyperlinked from the footnotes.

2) Long form articles—unless they appear in a literary magazine—should contain section headings ordered in a logical manner.

3) An adversarial aspect should be introduced into the medium. When a judge receives a legal brief, she doesn't review the brief in isolation. Typically, there is an opening brief, a response, and a reply. It should be a matter of journalist practice to write response articles to other articles. Aggregators like Google News could then make it easy to see, for example, the Wall Street Journal's response to a New York Times article.

<comment> bjelkeman-again The the first points are very much on point for me. I don't get why sources aren't referenced. Is it because they are afraid the reader will leave the news site? An attempt at sandboxing the user?

The second point, particularly US writing/journalism seems to really have a very different writing culture than the European. It seems to want to be a story with a beginning a history etc before getting to the meat of the article. It often feels like the writer is paid by the word rather than interested to getting the point across. European journalism ties to get the hook in early, and the expand on it and draw you into the article more upfront with the meat of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Writers for media (I hesitate to call them "journalists") have no incentive to find _facts_. They have an incentive to craft a _story_ , based on whatever information they already have in front of them. If they already have most of a story, and a cursory search turns up no obviously interesting facts which add to the existing story, they'll leave it there. There is simply no _reason_ to go digging.

It's only where there's no story without digging, and/or where the more you dig the more story you get, when you get investigative journalism.

<comment><USER11> This is incorrect. Have you worked as a journalist? Do you subscribe to any news that you actually have to pay for?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Can I just take a moment here to plug how vital Internet Archive (mentioned by the story, sounding like it's just a thing that the internet does) is to, well, most things, and getting more important by the day?

I haven't donated to them yet but I'm going to now.

</comment><comment><USER13> It's seemed to me for a while that you could take an infosec-style approach and use voluntary controls, policies, procedures and third-party non- government certification via accounting firms to give the public more confidence in the press, something that is obviously fundamental to a democracy.

Just like in infosec, controls (etc) do not guarantee safety (accuracy), but they let you know that processes were followed and that fact is documented. Third parties (accounting firms) confirm that you have the evidence of having followed your processes. Corruptable? Sure. Better? Definitely yes.

Just like in infosec: if you have evidence that every week you've plowed through the access logs, you're more likely to have caught an intruder/mistake. The approach tends to route out single acts of sloppiness and subterfuge and turn mistakes in to conspiracies, which is a much harder thing to pull off than a single actor looking for fame or a raise.

For my part, I genuinely believe these organizations are trying their best to do something very hard but that their own efforts at fairness can be undermined by a lot of factors, especially money. The natural incentives (clicks/$) need to be counterbalanced with self-imposed "regulation" that is third-party verified.

[EDIT: s/factories/factors

<comment><USER14> Yeah, be prepared to be treated like a paranoid schizophrenic when you do that.

You're going to stop having conversations, or will you be recording them all?

Not to say you shouldn't, but it isn't easy and requires a lot of consideration, energy and discipline.

The digital tools are definitely NOT ready, there's a few gigabytes of raw mathematical data to be processed by humans into algorithms before we get there.

<comment><USER15> >HALDEMAN: It's a limited hang out.

>DEAN: It's a limited hang out.

>EHRLICHMAN: It's a modified limited hang out.

>NIXON: Well, it's only the questions of the thing hanging out publicly or privately.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_hangout](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_hangout)

Sounds interesting when people are allowed to grep conversations for the scandal of the moment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > We are lucky to live in a time when we are all so empowered.

I remember when I was a teenager, before the internet era. Our science teacher thought us about critical thinking and not blindly trusting the media. Everything he said made sense, but still, I felt that I was lacking the proper tools and expertise to challenge what was said in reputable medias.

It's much easier nowadays, Thanks to the ability to search the web, better knowledge/expertise in some fields, better understanding of how medias work... yet it's not easy. It is a skill that needs constant practice, and one shouldn't fall in the other extreme not to trust anything.

I really think this should be taught in school. Examples of bad journalism, recent government lies, marketing and PR...

</comment><comment><USER17> Author Blake Ross ("founder @firefox and former prod dir @fb") makes great points about poor quality / outright lack of investigative journalism in reporting. Worth the 2 min to read.

</comment><comment><USER18> I don't quite understand how you are supposed to follow that advice... no one has time to personally investigate everything. We have to outsource SOME of our thinking.

<comment><USER16> I don't think we have to investigate everything, but we should try to detect patterns of wrong information (can be government propaganda, marketing, incompetence), and not trust blindly every piece of information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is a little beside the point, but I'm going to hold the author accountable for his take on a pressing issue.

Author makes the mistake of not holding the retailer responsible for what they sell. Walgreens, Target, and GNC, to anyone who knows what they're doing, are NOT reputable, in terms of herbal supplements.

Go to any naturopath or natural health practitioner and they're going to recommend herbal supplements with their own branding, specialty shop, or specific brand. They're not going to give you prescription, and call it into Walgreens like an allopathic doctor will.

Author is effectively saying "It's not the reputable retailers responsibility to stock their shelves with legitimate products."

Why do you think they sell crap instead of quality herbs? The cost is lower.

Think for yourself, and take your health into your own hands and you'll be a healthier person, no doubt.

Calling for the FDA to regulate and save the day because a bunch of uneducated people blindly trusted big corporations...no.

</comment><comment><USER3> Always value contributors to my media literacy guide. This message is a key point that underpins all the examples I list.

[https://github.com/nemild/hack-the- media/blob/master/README....](https://github.com/nemild/hack-the- media/blob/master/README.md)

There's also one for engineers in the tech industry:

[https://github.com/nemild/hack-the- media/blob/master/softwar...](https://github.com/nemild/hack-the- media/blob/master/software-engineers-media-guide.md)

</comment><comment><USER20> I don't believe there is anyone I've ever met whose thoughts were original to them in all particulars. I think it has been very seldom where I have met anyone that has had one original thought in their head, I'm pretty sure most thoughts, including mine were thought somewhere else and transmitted via some media. Probably in most cases the only originality lies in the assemblage of the thoughts and how they interact.

<comment><USER21> "You're not the first to think that everything has been thought before" \- Three dimensions by Something for Kate.

<comment><USER20> I thought I was quite clear that I did not believe everything has been thought before, but only that most things have been thought before - or more specifically that most people think things that have been thought before but in new configurations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Seems a bit like pot calling kettle black considering what Facebook allows to be advertised these days.

<comment><USER23> This wasn't posted by Facebook. The author used his experience working there to further question news pieces.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: I need advice on my first B2B SaaS startup - <AUTHOR> Hello, I am a technical founder of a bootstrapped B2B SaaS company. Our solution is a very horizontal process automation platform that has the potential to adapt to a lot of different industries and company sizes with the goal to automate pretty much any business process. I do 100% of coding and my co-founder does sales. Our pricing model is $10/user/month.
We started working on the product 4 months ago, and are still in the validation phase of the idea, which is showing a lot of potential, yet this hasn't materialized into revenue / paying customers just yet. Trying to look objectively at our progress, it seems we have accomplished a lot in 4 months: we have a working product, 5 signed pilot agreements (to start once we finish a couple of features), and we definitely get a 'wow' impression when we showcase our product. Business process consultants seem to particularly see the potential of our platform.
We have only 8 months of runway left, and will need to raise capital to stay afloat. My questions are:
- Most blogs seem to suggest that in order to raise a seed round you need around $100k in ARR. How are we supposed to get anywhere near that, considering we started working on the product only 4 months ago? Even if we go through the rest of our savings, I don't think it is likely we can hit such a number in the next 8 months.
- Is the advice from these blogs for startups in a later stage? How likely are we to raise money without the kind of traction these blogs talk about?
- What strategy would you recommend for companies in our stage? Is friends & family / business angels our only option at this point? How much would be a good amount to raise from them? We think that if we could hire 4 - 6 people we would be able to move significantly faster. Even if we have a good product, it still needs a lot of work.
EDIT:
Product link: www.seliom.com <comment><USER5> I run a B2B SAAS company (small but established). I like to be straight and honest and hopefully my advice will help. You are making the classic mistake of overspending time building stuff at this point. Here is why:

You have no paying customers yet. But you are going with a "horizontal process automation platform" which means you are very generic. When you are starting out, it is better to find one specific niche and go hard at it. If you get great at it, you can then expand slowly.

If you are selling to everyone, you sell to no one (unless you are amazon but that takes 2 decades). You need to get more specific about the immediate value your product brings and to which audience ? Every business technically can automate their processes. But are you really selling to every business ? 99.9% chance you will fail if you are not established already.

Few more things:

"platform that has the potential to adapt to a lot of different industries and company sizes with the goal to automate pretty much any business process".. You are just starting out. This wouldn't work for now. Get more specific. Think of one industry to start with and then expand slowly.

"5 signed pilot agreements (to start once we finish a couple of features)"..Sorry but the moment the contract is contingent upon features, it is in trouble. The customer should have seen enough value already even though I am not undermining it completely. This is risky for you. What if you are not able to convince the customer that those features are now delivered. How specific were those features ? I would count this as no customer yet. brutally honest.

Ok, now the good news:

You have a working product. That is awesome. STOP DOING ANY MORE CODING. It is time for sales and marketing like yesterday. What marketing and sales strategies do you have in place if any between you and your cofounder ? When you say "my co founder does sales", what does that mean ? Right now, you both need to focus on Sales and Marketing.

Sorry for the long post but this hits close to my heart being a bootstrapped SAAS founder so I thought to share my own experiences.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you so much! Don't apologize for the long post, quite the opposite, it is very much appreciated!! After discussing things with my co-founder, we have defined a more specific target market we are going after (at first) and are coming up with a proper marketing strategy to set in motion.

<comment><USER5> That's great. Remember the keyword is "Positioning". Spend a lot of time on your marketing website/copy and specially the Landing Page. Put yourself in the shoes of your best clients and imagine that you landed on your own site. Is the copy compelling and clear enough to show me value for ME within less than 5 seconds ? Also, setup an Outbound strategy with your co founder where he/she finds prospects through things like Linkedin etc. Rinse and repeat.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks again, this is very helpful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd recommend you to do some consulting. I know it's counter-intuitive and something you don't want to do forever, but at the beginning of a B2B company it's extremely useful for 3 reasons:

1) It provides quick cash so it removes the stress of having to look for money too soon.

2) Direct customer feedback while working with them on day to day problems. At this point you really want to understand your customers pains so later you can solve them with technology.

3) Initial validation/traction for your product. At the beginning, customers will value your consulting way more than your product, but for every new customer, try to provide less consulting and cover the rest with your product. Check if your customers are equally happy.

<comment><USER7> Second it.

If right now you're bootstraped, no revenue from SaaS yet, you and your cofounder are on your own and consulting, if related to your product, can give you 2) and 3) but more importantly 1), at a far bigger payout than you'll get from an early MRR.

This advice is opposed to common YC advise "don't lose focus, consulting IS losing focus" and I agree, but right now you're not funded, not accelerated, not incubated or anything and you're trying to finish your product. Stay afloat and don't burn your savings to the ground.

One more advice: finish your MVP soon, and at some point, early than you imagine, tell your first customers that's the version you're putting in production right now and it'll be like that for a while, because waiting for that customer(s) that "will definitely buy once we do X and Y" will KILL your roadmap and KILL your startup. You'll be doing features after features, won't focus on your core features and propositons, and won't discover what is your killer feature that you must polish. That's what will keep your first customers with you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!! This is part of the reason I was hesitant to do consulting. (Losing focus)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hi.

$10/month for a B2B product is very very low and companies don't sell $10/month products with sales people. It won't cover the cost of a sales person's time, or ads for that matter. If it costs $100 to get a client, you need them to stick for 10 months before you make anything. With an 8 month runway, your math won't work. It only works if you have great "free" inbound marketing and the time to wait. That's Netflix level pricing, where they have millions of clients and had the funding to cover initial losses while growing the user base.

My first advice is to raise your price! Either that or you need millions in funding to build a marketing campaign and to have the runway to wait until the CAC is covered. I would 10x your price at least, and then offer early adopter discounts to clients who pay for a year now, not when the product is ready, with extra off if they prepay for two years. Then each sale pays you enough to do some development and get the next sale, as opposed to paying you enough to eat at McDonalds once a month.

Also, list yourself on Sploda.com (no association) and update your profile every time something happens, so they start seeing progress.

John

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback, but this is $10/user/month. Many Saas companies charge similar amounts and they seem to be doing fine. I appreciate your feedback though!

<comment><USER8> Oh, missed that. Sorry!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> You need someone with sales experience.

Without knowing what business you are in, $10/month/seat sounds _way_ to cheap. You are working with businesses here, not consumers.

At this price point you would have to sell about a 1000 seats just to pay for yourself and your co-founder. If you want to bootstrap and hire 4-6 people, you would need to sell a whole lot more.

If you can really 'automate pretty much any business process' as you claim, than your product is worth much, much more than you are currently charging.

See if you can sell it at $1000/month/seat. Yes, sales will be twice as hard, but you'll need 2 orders of magnitude less customers to stay afloat. If you can't sell for that price, rethink your product or ditch the bootstrap idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> The logic we followed when pricing it so cheap was: we are just getting started, this will help get some revenue in quickly, etc. Will think hard and perhaps reconsider the pricing model.

<comment><USER10> Your first customers will be sold to in person. Let them tell you when something is too expensive (then discount to make the sale). If they aren't commenting on your pricing, you are charging too little.

Also reconsider your pricing model. Charging per user per month will place a limit on how many people use the service, limiting what you can learn. Get them focusing on the value you're adding more than optimizing price. What you learn from them will be hugely valuable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > 5 signed pilot agreements (to start once we finish a couple of features)

Just a word of caution here. It would be important for you and the client to already be aligned on financial terms / paid pilot when based on feature development. When dealing with larger organizations, it's not unusual do see B2B postmortems caused by 'death by a thousand features' where the deal never happens. Until the organization has to pay anything you may not have a deal at all (didn't go through procurement, legal, etc).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your advice, will take this into consideration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Stop coding and start selling. If you have something that is up and running, you need to get it in the hands of paying customers. Until you have actual paying customers using your system, you will be guessing about what features to build.

Push the people you have signed agreements with to start using the system. Maybe they don't need the features they asked for. Push them to pay you.

Do not pursue an investor until you have actual clients or money coming in. This is the first thing they will ask about and you will close doors if you approach them too early.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, we will continue to push hard on this. I am concerned however about staying afloat long enough to reach product-market fit. I really think we are on to something, but the constant stress over my head of "what are we doing to do in 8 months when we run out of runway" is concerning.

<comment><USER12> I think you should put on your sales hat. I know you said that you are the "coder" and your partner is the sales person, but I think you should start selling and supporting them. Trying cold calling and cold emailing. Use some money for a marketing push.

Use the stress of your short runway to push you to sell. Every conversation you have with potential customers should be about how you can get them to pay. Talk past their requests for features or whatever, something like "This is a great feature that we are working on for you and if you sign up for a year's service, we'll discount you until the feature is delivered".

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot for your advice, really appreciate it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> accelerators [https://thembaisdead.com/list-of-startup-accelerators-and- in...](https://thembaisdead.com/list-of-startup-accelerators-and-incubators/)

pre-seed and/or angel investors

freelance to stay a float.

funding portals:

[https://www.crowdfundinsider.com/2018/03/131246-finra- approv...](https://www.crowdfundinsider.com/2018/03/131246-finra-approved-reg- cf-crowdfunding-portals-38-and-counting/)

[https://www.crowdfundinsider.com/2018/06/134408-there-are- no...](https://www.crowdfundinsider.com/2018/06/134408-there-are-now-41-reg- cf-crowdfunding-portals-2-years-after-jobs-act-exemption-commenced/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, we also thought of accelerators as a plausible option. Part of the reason I asked the question though, is that I am curious how others are able to get from just an idea to VC funding. It sounds simple: build a great product, and get enough traction. But actually doing it, even if we believe in the product, seems to take a lot of time. Are we missing anything that other founders do? Or are the suggestions you posted what everyone else does?

<comment><USER14> It is usually about coming up with an idea that addresses a burning need. Getting enough traction becomes quicker that way and provides you with the necessary runway. So instead of getting "wow" as a response when you showcase, it becomes more like "we need this yesterday, when can we talk?"

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, thats a great way of putting it. Will try to aim for this more, and iterate until we get to this.

<comment><USER14> I mean it all depends on your runway. If you are young with very little responsibilities and can run on noodles, with some savings you can extend your runway and can chase more difficult to sell ideas. But if you have very limited time (cash to survive) then you better come up with something good because it needs to sell quick.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It is difficult to provide useful feedback without much more context, but - very generally:

\- since you are just starting out, it is likely that your pricing is too low. Again, hard to say without understanding more about your product and market.

\- at your stage it's probably best to try and close a few customers. Having >0 real, paying customers will help with fundraising (and maybe eliminate the need/desire to do any fundraising, who knows?)

\- make a few extremely specific customers very very happy (instead of already aiming for "a lot of different industries and company sizes" as you put it.)

\- pricing: once you have an idea on what type of customer to for first, figure out what your likely customer acquisition cost will be, and extrapolate your pricing from there. If it costs you 5k $ to get a customer, you probably want to get at least 3x from them over their lifetime.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, this is very helpful and insightful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'd recommend you to use the 8 months of runway as much as you can to build and make revenue. When you run out of money you will get a job anyway, try to not stress about it right now.

Sales: Try to sell what you have and listen to customers who pay you. Pilot customers might request a lot of features that nobody wants to pay for later.

Consulting: I imagine that process automation is often implemented by management consulting firms with deep access to the company processes. You could try consulting clients while using your software. You will be able to understand better their needs and generate some revenue at the same time.

</comment><comment><USER17> > Most blogs seem to suggest that in order to raise a seed round you need > around $100k in ARR

This isn't true at all, even in Europe! Companies regularly raise seed rounds on significantly less progress than an MVP + 5 pilot agreements 4 months in, so if you want to raise some money, don't let the advice from these blogs stop you.

I've just gone through the process of raising a seed/pre-seed from a mix of both US and EU investors — happy to chat about the experience if you're interested: email@example.com

Also, as everyone else has said — charge more!

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting, thanks for letting me know! I will be reaching out :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Where are you? If you are in San Fran or Seattle, rumor has it that you can convince an angel investor to give you a convertible note, 20% discount at a $5mm cap without any real sales.

But every where else that I have seen, your intuition is correct: friends/family.

This might be a good thing, because the sales is really what proves the product. Look at the dozens of low code platforms that compete in your space (if I understand your concept).

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> We are located in Europe. Thank you for your advice!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> If you can possibly bootstrap without raising capital, do it. The QUT CAUSEE study demonstrated that external capital doesn't improve your chances of succeeding, it just gets you to success or failure faster.

It is much, much easier when you don't have to justify what you are doing in your business to anyone other than yourselves. This is true even if you have the nicest and most understanding investors.

</comment><comment><USER20> You didn't mention anything about your goals for the business. I'd start there.

Taking funding might get you out of a short term hole, but it's a tradeoff with costs down the road that will be paid one way or another.

> We have only 8 months of runway left, and will need to raise capital to stay > afloat.

Depending on your goals, there could be a number of paths open to you that don't involve outside funding.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for taking the time to respond. Our goals are to build a great product and make a living. The more companies we can reach / revenue we can generate, the better. In that sense, we would be open to going down the VC route, we just don't know how to get to the point that a VC would be interested in investing (how to get the traction necessary at our stage).

> Depending on your goals, there could be a number of paths open to you that > don't involve outside funding.

Could you elaborate on this? Thank you!

<comment><USER20> > Our goals are to build a great product and make a living.

If those are the only goals, then they might be accomplished by either joining a company full time or consulting.

I hope you see what I'm getting at here. You'll need to be very specific about your goals and the company's goals before enumerating options.

You've picked one option - outside funding, but don't seem to have considered anything else.

As another example, you noted earlier:

> Our solution is a very horizontal process automation platform that has the > potential to adapt to a lot of different industries and company sizes with > the goal to automate pretty much any business process.

Your pricing model is $10/month. What other potential customer segments might there be which will pay 10x of that?

In other words, getting funding from your customers rather outside investors might be an option. You haven't said anything about what you tried in that respect.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair enough. I quit a full-time job that paid a good salary because I was not fulfilled with the idea of working for someone else the rest of my life. So there is definitely more to it than the objectives I previously mentioned. I want to make a good living, generate a lot of impact, and have the freedom to work on my own terms. I see myself more fulfilled building a product than freelancing too.

We have not tried to get funding from customers, but I think that perhaps the idea of consulting + finding customers willing to pay for a solution that has not been built yet is a good option to consider.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think this post can give you some inspiration: [https://firstround.com/review/how-superhuman-built-an- engine...](https://firstround.com/review/how-superhuman-built-an-engine-to- find-product-market-fit/)

</comment><comment><USER21> Marketing is the most important thing at all time every time. Where is the link to your product?

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair enough, edited post with link to product!

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> id suggest proceeding with caution. these pilot agreements.....did cash exchange hands? if no cash exchanged hands I'd treat these are essentially worthless.

I dont mean to burst your bubble but: if you're solving a problem that is serious enough businesses will give you money today. Usually (in my experience) these "once you add these features" are things that wont actually move the needle enough and you'll find yourself in continuous development of things that won't actually produce revenue.

If no money has exchanged hands, I'd suggest telling your sales cofounder to go get a pilot with actual money being handed over.

<comment><AUTHOR> I appreciate the blunt feedback. Will definitely follow this. No cash has been exchanged yet in the pilot agreements.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> No experience on launching B2B SaaS startups, but the video on the webpage looks too abstract. I am not __sure__ this product is something I need. Some real world examples would be better than Task1, Flow1. Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for taking the time to check it out! Feedback noted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> >a lot of different industries and company sizes with the goal to automate pretty much any business process.

I'm going to take a different approach. Your audience so broad that you don't know who your real customers will be. From all those "industries", you need to pick one that will be the money maker and slowly expand to other ones.

</comment><comment> barry-cotter > Our pricing model is $10/user/month.

patio11: charge more

Seriously, unless you're going to be selling exclusively into businesses with over 100 employees using b your service you need to charge more. The meetings to consider whether to use your product are going to cost the buyers more in employee time expressed in dollars than your product will.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, it seems a few other comments also suggest this. Will have to consider this. Really appreciate your feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I too would recommend consulting until your product can pay the bills. If you can find consulting clients who can potentially benefit from your app so much the better.

Clients who commit to pilots or trials without committing cash are not worth anything. You can offer fully refundable trials, but always take some sort of deposit.

Yes - friends and family rounds are a good source and I'd imagine common source of funds for early stage startups. It's as much a part of your network as the clients and employers you work with over the years. It almost goes without saying that you should only ask those who can afford to lose their investment. Awkward family functions can ensue if you lost Uncle Joe's much needed $10k savings pot.

Cold email can be useful (look at Steli Efti's e-books and tips on this subject). This was helpful to me when starting out and helped me find customers _before_ committing to build my product: [https://youtu.be/H0f0o5-liyM](https://youtu.be/H0f0o5-liyM)

Everyone you pitch - especially in enterprise - is time poor. Also when they commit to buying from a new startup they are putting their reputation at their firm on the line. Their natural inclination will be to defer the decision if they're interested. So if they gave any kind of indication that your product might be useful keep pinging them politely and semi-regularly - <USER2> with useful product updates which could meet their needs - until you get either a yes or a no. Introductions, warm referrals or partnering with a bigger vendor who can vouch for you can shorten the sales cycle significantly for enterprise.

Avoid falling prey to potential customers saying they'll bite if you give them 'feature X'. Do make a note of the conversations and feature requests though - sometimes if the use case crops up more than once it might be useful to consider adding to your backlog.

Consider blogging about what you guys do, how you do it, why you do it - <USER3> will help build social proof for not just the product but you. If the product itself doesn't work out all these articles are a nice thing to fall back on if you have to go back to full-time work.

See everything as a learning opportunity but know when to delegate. As a coder I wasn't very good at cold emailing or prospecting so I put everything into learning that skill. I now try and delegate it when possible. Similarly if you're not great at understanding Google Analytics etc. learn it - but know when to get a specialist in to help do a few days work for you.

Upwork is great for finding skilled freelancers to parachute in and do some work. Keep a list of all the top notch talent you work with, it's quite possible the best thing to come out of your venture is the network you build.

Finally take care of yourself. Mentally and physically. Know that even if this goes belly-up you are not your product - your product didn't work out - <USER4> however showed a lot of initiative, courage and smarts to get something new, that didn't exist before out the door and onto the market.

Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for taking the time to write this. I really appreciate it. This line particularly resonated:

> Clients who commit to pilots or trials without committing cash are not worth > anything. You can offer fully refundable trials, but always take some sort > of deposit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> To everyone saying they should do consulting, how can they they keep the IP rights then?

If they consult for another company, wouldn't that company own the rights?

From what I've seen, not many companies are willing to pay consulting fees and give up ownership of the work.

<comment><USER27> If you do consulting around a product, it's typical to exclude improvements to the actual product from any rights assignment clauses, potentially in exchange for better terms. So e.g. any integration on customer-side would be owned by the customer (or grant the customer lots of rights to it), but changes made to the service itself would not, but potentially be cheaper/come with included credits to use the service/...

<comment><USER26> But in this case their customers want specific features that would be integrated in their own SaaS product.

How would that work, am I misunderstanding something?

<comment><USER27> Not necessarily they same customers as the ones that already have made feature demands (ideally you'd find more while doing this!), or if them, then consult on the entire integration, not just the features in the app they requested.

<comment><USER26> I get it the consulting on the integration but on the features, the first customers that request a particular feature would own the code for it.

<comment><USER27> No, that you would exclude in the contract so you keep it. If and to what terms of course depends on the specific case, as a new startup you'll have to give something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> A total runway of 12 months feels short if going enterprise. Though $10 price feels small business. What is your target business size?

Is there anything you can do to stretch the runway to 24?

I don't think you want to raise a new round with 0-$40 in MRR.

<comment><AUTHOR> Our platform is actually aimed at small and medium sized businesses, hence our pricing model. Having said that, we feel the platform has the potential to go after the enterprise as well, and could adjust pricing accordingly. I do think we will need to stretch runway, hence my question. I was wondering if outside investors were an option, but based on other comments, I am not so sure.

<comment><USER29> Without knowing the exact product I would suggest tightening up who your target market is. Generally, a product that can be for any industry of any size makes it really hard to focus. Start with a specific subset and it will make your sales outreach a lot more targeted and keep you ultra focused. For example instead of it's aimed at "small, medium and enterprise clients in any industry" think "local service companies in the US with 30-75 employees". It sounds like you might not have that ideal target market nailed down yet. Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! We have definitely been struggling with this. Will try to find a more specific niche.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'm very similar to you. B2B SaaS. Bootstrapped. Hitting 50k ARR right now.

\- 1 year is nothing. Do consulting up to two years.

\- screw partnerships, pilots. They add nothing.

\- Start blogging and evangelizing

\- Do anything feasible to get 10 customers. Worry about pricing after that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Understood, thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I would suggest reading the book 'Predictable Revenue' [https://www.amazon.com/Predictable-Revenue-Business- Practice...](https://www.amazon.com/Predictable-Revenue-Business-Practices- Salesforce-com-ebook/dp/B005ERYEGU/) . It will help in defining your marketing segments and how to reach them.

When I first started my saas, I incorrectly didn't start by gunning for paying customers. You could make a cool product, but your goal is to make a cool product people will actually pay for.

The second lesson I learned was not charging enough, but once you actually get people in your paywall, those are things to refine later.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the book recommendation, will take a look!

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> My story is very similar to yours. B2B SaaS, bootstrapped (still no capital raised after 7 years), even the price is the same. We had 4 co-founders, I wrote the code. Here's a brain dump of things we learned:

When we started we were all fresh out of (or still finishing) university and had fairly small savings. Definitely not a year of runway. So we found jobs that were relatively easy, well paying, and minimally distracting. Our goal was to earn only enough to live off, so while we kept the jobs we had infinite runway.

In my case I reached out to one of my uni lecturers and convinced him to add me to the tutoring team for one of his first year programming subjects. It was super easy content, the pay was pretty good, and I didn't have to think about it at all when I wasn't working on it. The other guys took other odd jobs around the university, for similar reasons. I am less a fan of the consulting strategy - it feels too easy for that to take over your focus.

Our internal goal was 100K ARR within our first year. If we did that, we'd all quit our other jobs and go full time on this, and start paying ourselves. We got pretty close to that target but went all in anyway.

If you can hit 100K ARR and keep your costs of living low, you won't need to raise a seed round. I don't know anything about you - we had just finished uni so we were in a good position to live cheap. We would make 100 meals for $100 and eat a lot of chilli con carne + rice: [https://i.imgur.com/9BtnOkP.png](https://i.imgur.com/9BtnOkP.png)

It was 6 months from first code written, to first customer paying us. And then about 9 months from there to 100K ARR. Our typical customer at the time was worth about $200/month ($2.4k ARR). Don't lose hope, you might be just on the cusp of some cash. The advice about charging more in this thread is bad advice without knowing how many users each business you sell to will have. In our case it was at least 20 (we sell a whole of business product, so it was defined by company size), which was totally sufficient.

We didn't hire anyone until we'd been going for about 18 months. Because we couldn't afford it. But in hindsight it helped. If you hire 4-6 devs now you're going to spend all your time managing them instead of learning what product you are building. Learning to be a manager takes a long time and you'll probably be bad at it at first - particularly if you'd rather be coding. Anecdotally I think we had a year lag from when we first hired a few extra devs, to when we got a significant increase in product output.

Don't do pilots. If you are building a feature for someone, make them sign a contract to actually buy the product contingent on that feature. Pilots give people an easy option to not buy after you've done a lot of free work.

Don't raise money from people other than customers if you don't have to.

My email is in my profile, reach out if you want to chat.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is very inspiring and I really appreciate the time you took to write your story. I will be reaching out soon. Thanks again!

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Don't take/pursue funding focus on your product and getting signups. You probably don't need funding.

I second the recommendations of taking on some consulting projects to extend your runway.

Start listening to startupsfortherestofus.com, start in the archives.

Check out applying for the next round of tinyseed.com if you aren't profitable when getting close to the end of your runway.

build your saas is another good podcast for inspiration.

Oh, speaking of inspiration. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CDXJ6bMkMY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CDXJ6bMkMY) @DHH startup school 2008

Good luck growing your SaaS.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! I did try applying to tinyseed, but might have been too early. Will have to try again after getting some more traction.</comment></comment>


WebAssembly initial steps tutorial - <AUTHOR> https://tutorials.technology/tutorials/11-webassembly-initial-steps-tutorial.html <comment><USER2> Note that the instructions provided here are not the recommended path, which is described on the main site:

[http://webassembly.org/getting-started/developers- guide/](http://webassembly.org/getting-started/developers-guide/)

The link here uses a nonstandard approach, which happens to work on a tiny program as in the example, but won't work on other things (for example, malloc or printf won't work). It also requires more steps to perform (4 vs 1 in the main site).

<comment><USER3> What's the expected final toolchain for C -> Wasm? If I understand correctly, there are at least two competing backends (upstream llvm, emscripten- fastcomp), as well as several paths through binaryen (s2wasm, asm2wasm)... and Binaryen seems to have forked the textual format when 0xc landed, and in a way that won't necessarily round-trip. Which puts me in a place of grokking the binary format and the WebAssembly.* DOM APIs, but not the toolchain to actually get there.

<comment><USER2> Not sure. The main issues are that

1\. The llvm wasm backend is upstream, which is good.

2\. asm2wasm will likely stay better at compile times, especially for non- separate compilation (which is important for code size, which matters a lot on the web).

3\. We don't know which of the two will produce better/smaller code. The wasm backend isn't ready for a fair comparison yet. And there are reasons to guess both ways here.

So we might not end up with a single "final" toolchain. Different people in the toolchain space have different ideas of what will work best, so I guess we'll just see how things turn out. And it's possible everyone will be right in the sense that different toolchains will be better at a different use cases.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> As someone who has stayed far away from the perils of web development, will this be the step that finally makes it sane again? I figure the sooner the DOM + JavaScript/EMCAScript die the better; and with asm.js and WebGL I thought that day finally came... but nope. 3 years later we're still scuttling around bad design decisions of over two decades ago.

<comment><USER5> I find it very strange that you see 'web development' as something that's bad, and the answer to it is to write C and ship assembly code to clients.

<comment><USER6> I find it very strange that you see minified, basically completely unreadable JS as better than C (straw man, it's actually "any programming language") and assembly.

If we aren't being disingenuous, it's "any language you want versus JS" and "minified, obfuscated JS versus assembly".

<comment><USER7> The web has a free software problem (either that, or native code has a free software anti-problem because distributing portable precompiled code is so hard), but I find minified JS no more or less acceptable, as a language to read, than assembly generated from an optimizing compiler.

That said, minified JS on the web runs in a sandbox with a sane security model (yes, browsers don't implement it 100% right, but at least there's a model there). Optimized native code without source does whatever it likes to any file on my single-user machine, and we're expected to be okay with that (cf. [https://xkcd.com/1200/](https://xkcd.com/1200/)). If I'm asked to choose between _running_ one of the two, my vote is with the web app, no question.

<comment><USER8> The point of WebAssembly is to use the sandbox as a means of shipping compiled binaries in a secure manner.

<comment><USER9> I was under the impression the point of WebAssembly is to do asm.js better.

<comment><USER5> I think these are both, more or less, the same thing. Better asm.js is a binary.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Normal Human iPad review - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/06/normal_human_being_uses_the_ipad/

<comment><USER2> I'm glad that everyone seems to think the iPad isn't a very good eBook reader (though apparently a good eComic reader).

I was worried that it would be just good enough, and offer enough extra features, to kill the dedicated ebook reader market. And I'm still waiting for the cheap Kindle clones with OpenInkPot to drop in price and improve in quality enough to actually purchase.

This comment from the OpenInkPot site is encouraging:

" _At the moment, the core OpenInkpot team is focused on writing firmware for future (yet to be announced) devices. As you can judge, our previous work has brought attention of E-ink manufacturers._ "</comment>