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omouseon MVPs and $100k AWS Bills: Reflections on our launch

Go simpler and go cheaper. Why not do real-time processing for all of 2 minutes. That's about the length of an elevator pitch and shouldn't cost so much.

Or limit the number of beta users there can be.

Or work some freelance jobs for a few months and save up the cash and during that time pitch to investors. As you progressively have more cash you can hire an engineer to part-time hack on cool demos or to give you the opportunity to increase the number of beta users.

omouseon MVPs and $100k AWS Bills: Reflections on our launch

The best part is the "simplest thing possible". They actually didn't do that at all. I hate to dog-pile on this team, but damn, 100k spend in a month isn't simple at all!

omouseon MVPs and $100k AWS Bills: Reflections on our launch

Ha, I'm re-reading The Lean Startup and this paragraph seems like a contradiction in terms of what an MVP is:

We decided to build an MVP based on our best estimates and test the market that way. The goal was to launch something in 6 months and test if the demand was there; and if it wasn’t, we’d only wasted 6 months. We chose to optimize for getting to market quickly rather than worrying about how much it would cost.

Contrast it to what the Lean Startup principles say:

The Lean Startup methodology has as a premise that every startup is a grand experiment that attempts to answer a question. The question is not "Can this product be built?" Instead, the questions are "Should this product be built?" and "Can we build a sustainable business around this set of products and services?"

So instead of doing what a lean startup would do, they did the opposite. Let's see what they could have done instead...

"How many customers will actually use it?"

- Lean startup: create a signup page with a mock up or landing page and a few buttons that work and every potential behind a "coming soon" screen - Their approach: actually build the whole product and then launch it and see who's interested

"What is it all going to cost?" - Lean startup: As little as possible to discover the insights we need to iterate and evolve the product - Their approach: well we already paid the salary for our engineers and we've given them six months, so what's half the salary+benefits of X number of engineers?

"What should we charge for it? Is it going to cover the infrastructure costs?" - Lean startup: experiment on costing and pricing as you go along - Their approach: give away the product for a 30-day trial at a high cost to ourselves! Unbelievably expensive customer acquisition costs.

Reference: http://theleanstartup.com/principles

And now I guess I've truly learned why product managers exist. Someone let this crazy experiment run for six months. You're saying in six months you couldn't spend one month finding the simplest/cheapest ways to test these various hypothesis?

$100k customer acquisition spend is insane.

The whole post is just a lesson in contradicting what an MVP minimal viable product is.

Even when we were building v1, the team knew it wasn’t the ideal architecture. Before v1 even launched, there were plenty of conversations in our Slack about whether we should port Octopus to Linux and run it on Kubernetes, or see if we could run it on Windows within Kubernetes or use Nomad by Hashicorp?

Lol, engineers always want something fun to work on and sometimes it turns out to be a great idea. But they porting software for an MVP? Why not evolve the new product so that it generates more revenue or reduce the costs in some other way instead of talking about porting and rewriting?

If you're at an established company that has money to burn, go ahead, read the whole blog series. If you're trying to create a new startup, whether it's a product or service, avoid this article or read it as a warning. When you've spent as much as a decent engineer costs in one month...something's gone off the rails.

omouseon Online courses vs. colleges for software engineering

The conclusion is sound, the assignments reinforce learning through multiple and repeated usage of the various skills needed to complete them. The lectures and notes and readings are there to give a foundation and to be a reference to some extent. However, it's difficult to say that the only useful part of these courses are the assignments...

>The best way to learn is to do your own experiments. Once understood, that understanding lasts a lifetime. Facts can change, but the governing rules, if deciphered, won’t.

I recommend to all software developers that they join the ACM (Association of Computing Machinery). This gives you access to computer science papers which are the foundations and the governing rules. There's also access to Safari Learning which gives you access to the latest books and video courses:

https://www.acm.org/membership/membership-benefits

It costs a few hundred bucks a year and I've learned more in reading random CS papers and having access to great books and video courses than paying for many courses.

omouseon Ask HN: Germany vs. Canada for Tech Jobs?

>Canadian tech is catching up in compensation terms, and the dominoes are going to start following as demand picks up

Slowly changing. The US companies are going to pick up all the talent here.

omouseon Ask HN: Germany vs. Canada for Tech Jobs?

>And when you start contracting as an independent , you will make a whole lot more.

This is true and more true if you're freelancing for US dollars. That sweet sweet conversion rate from USD to CAD works very well. But again this is why Europe is a better choice, Euros to USD or Euros to CAD whenever you want to travel is also a nice conversion rate.

omouseon Ask HN: Germany vs. Canada for Tech Jobs?

>high taxes, housing bubble, stagnant salaries

Salary ranges are still the same since a decade ago even though cost of living has gone up.

My first job as a full-time dev was $65k rent was $1500 or thereabouts, I'm sure there are first-time devs making $65k now. Even though rent is now $2000 at least for the same place I was living at.

After tax income is $49,190 (https://simpletax.ca/calculator) and rent went from $18,000 to $24,000. As a percentage of after-tax income that's going from 36.6% to 48.8%. The rent would have made me poorer if I hadn't changed jobs!

omouseon Ask HN: Germany vs. Canada for Tech Jobs?

Yeah this is the way to go. European internet/cellphone plans are also cheaper than in Canada. So for freelancing or working at a company, it's worthwhile. Plus you can travel more easily around Europe when you're within an EU country.

omouseon JSON for Modern C++

Fuzzed? That's a rarity in tests, that's awesome!

omouseon JSON for Modern C++

Reflection isn't required; keys in JSON are strings, and there are basic data types that are supported (strings, numbers, booleans, arrays, and dictionaries which are more of the same).

What's wrong with writing "initializers" which are serializers/deserializers? If you're looking for automatic file format to C++ class object, why settle for JSON (whether it's this library or JSONCpp) why not use Thrift or Protocol Buffers?

- Thrift: https://thrift.apache.org/ - Protocol Buffers: https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/

omouseon JSON for Modern C++

Yep this is why I like JSON Cpp, there's a single-file build and I've had success using it with Repl.it: https://neverfriday.com/2013/07/26/learning-jsoncpp/

Since JSON only has basic data types, it's easy to just parse and retrieve objects, similar to using XML tree parsing libraries back in the day.

omouseon JSON for Modern C++

I'm wondering what the difference between this and json-cpp https://github.com/open-source-parsers/jsoncpp is. They look like they provide the same functionality, albeit this looks more "modern C++ style"?

omouseon Paged Out – a new experimental magazine about programming

not a ripoff, they just are using the codebase and have forgotten to remove all instances of the "Lobsters" name (along with having what looks like one user at the moment?) I mean, I hope they succeed as a different type of site or accomplish whatever learning they would like.

omouseon Shopify and the Power of Platforms

That's fair, the UX for Woocommerce does need a bit of technical hand-holding. Could be improved on, though it seems like the pressure from Shopify will force some improvement on that front.

omouseon Shopify and the Power of Platforms

some open source people

Hey now, stop with the name-calling :P I work on and use proprietary end to end solutions for ecommerce (but not Shopify).

Woocommerce wins for me because it lowers development costs and costs are lower overall. My perspective is definitely someone who has developed ecommerce sites, not solely as a non-technical user, and for me it's very advantageous to lower costs by using and modifying GPL'd plugins and themes.

I guess Shopify has 4000 employees and enough cash and enough direction to come out of box with a good UX and good defaults and that's good enough for nontechnical users.

omouseon Shopify and the Power of Platforms

I don't know, these options look just as much as "swipe credit card, get started" as Shopify's options: https://www.siteground.com/woocommerce-hosting.htm?afcode=d5...

* Until then, Shopify earns their keep (and margin)*

That's fair. For business stuff I've swiped the credit card and paid for support as well. If the Shopify experience is easier than WooCommerce, etc. then I get it.

omouseon Shopify and the Power of Platforms

I've set up ecommerce sites quite a few times and it was honestly 1 to 2 days of "work", install + configure and then the rest was customization which clients pay for and are patient for. We were ready to sell product within a day basically and then iterate from there based on client needs.

I guess I wasn't clear enough in making my point: Wordpress + Woocommerce can be setup very quickly and with minimal fuss and they can be as heavily customized as you want and rival whatever plugin-heavy Shopify sites are out there.

omouseon Shopify and the Power of Platforms

They're beating earning expectations consistently: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/SHOP/

They're also growing and hiring more which always looks good in the books.

Unfortunately, while their revenue is growing their earnings are in the negatives: 1B revenue in 2018 up from 673M in 2017, however they're -64M in earnings and -40M in earnings previous to that.

Not to mention the hype stories like this: "Shopify's market share could triple within five years rivaling Amazon", https://finance.yahoo.com/news/shopify-apos-market-share-cou...

omouseon Shopify and the Power of Platforms

Regulated meaning a tightly controlled and closed "market"?

Number of plugins isn't the greatest metric but it's a good leading indicator. It's kinda hard to estimate how many merchants and customers and volume of transactions have been processed when they aren't being tracked by a central entity ;)

omouseon Did Sam Altman make YC better or worse?

I'm sure that China and the US are certainly not on some ethical high ground such that considering funding companies in different [insert authoritarian governments here] is questionable.

Why not YC North Korea then?

I cannot believe in 2019, with the mass surveillance systems being built, you cannot see that there is are ethical questions to be asked.

omouseon Marriott CEO shares post-mortem on last year's hack

You aren't keeping the count somewhere else, in a cache, let's say?

omouseon Firefox Send: Free encrypted file transfer service

Interesting! Also, is this free/open source?

omouseon Firefox Send: Free encrypted file transfer service

It's because the whole app ecosystem is proprietary and the open source packages aren't as polished. I remember when it was a huge pain to use Bonjour.

It seems like this should be a solved problem but maybe it takes a Mozilla or some other larger entity to push the marketing and the customer support and development to really solve the problem of transferring large files securely.

omouseon Firefox Send: Free encrypted file transfer service

The eternal problem of uploading and sharing massive files seems to always have new solutions.

omouseon Did Sam Altman make YC better or worse?

Same here, there's a huge difference between YC in the early days and now.

the Series A program, which coaches seed-stage alums on how to nab follow-on funding

Pushing startups further into the hands of VCs who'll get rich whenever they're acquired or IPO.

YC China, a standalone program that will be run out of Beijing once it gets up and going

Lots of ethical questions about this that are just never answered. Is it okay to funnel capital into another country that is vastly different from the US in terms of politics, market, etc.?

“We’ll fund a lot of people doing a lot of things that sound really dumb, and most of the time they will be. And some of the time, it will seem like a bad idea and be jaw-droppingly brilliant. The very best startup ideas are at the intersection of the Venn diagram of, ‘sounds like a bad idea,’ ‘is in fact a good idea.'”

This particular quote from Altman just reminds me of PG's essay on why smart people have bad ideas: http://www.paulgraham.com/bronze.html

It just makes me see OpenAI as suspect now because they just opened a for-profit branch? And they are keeping some of their research hidden? I mean, where's the openness in that?

omouseon Major bank accidentally published a private package to the public NPM Registry

If this happens often, perhaps the user interface for npm publish needs to change? I mean, that's the only thing I can see mitigating this, with like a nice dialog that says "hey, are you REALLY REALLY sure and have you consulted lawyers on this???"

Or something to that effect. Or maybe companies can just pony up for NPM Enterprise which fits their use case.

omouseon Updated Microsoft Store App Developer Agreement: New Revenue Share

It's obvious from that structure that Microsoft realizes they are part of a larger ecosystem and that they aren't a dominant channel.

> if you rely mostly on your own marketing methods, then it should get less

That's usually how it is. You rely on your own website and blog for organic results and Google or Facebook or some other channel (billboards, TV, podcasts, etc.) for paid advertising. Microsoft and other app stores don't really fit into this equation, they're only good for partnership deals and SEO is harder to do in an app store.

Microsoft is just recognizing the reality for customers and realizing that they can possibly make up for it in volume. If I'm saving 10% from this new fee structure, that's more cash that I can re-invest into advertising in outside channels.

omouseon NSA’s top policy advisor: It’s time to start putting teeth in cyber deterrence

The best offense is a good defense, so the sooner they start patching software, the better. The sooner they get developers to use safer languages, the better. But that's not gonna happen, it's apparently too costly to develop safe and secure software, but the damage caused by poor cybersecurity is somehow an externalized cost which means it costs nothing in the current equation.

omouseon Experts cracked laptop of crypto CEO who died with $137M, but the money was gone

I think this is the $137 million dollar question.

omouseon Experts cracked laptop of crypto CEO who died with $137M, but the money was gone

There are bitcoin tumblers, essentially the idea is to split up the transaction into multiple transactions of varying sizes to various addresses and to keep doing that in such a way that it doesn't look weird...

Basically they try to hide the transaction among the huge volume of transactions going on, kinda like a VPN or Tor?