Top Secret #16: Product Hunt, Dillon, New Docs, and Migratory Birds
This week, we talk about our latest engineering hire (a fellow YC founder!!), what we've shipped recently, M&A flops, rare guitars, and cool ornithological news.
Things have been moving quickly for us after our public launch!
First, a brief favor to ask! We just put up Tesseral on Product Hunt and would be grateful for any engagement: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/tesseral. It helps people find us. Thank you!
Last week, we announced that Dillon Nys is joining our team. When we first met Dillon, in the Y Combinator W24 batch, it was immediately clear that he’s an exceptional technical talent. His company Celest, a Flutter-focused platform-as-a-service, was an extraordinary undertaking; he still maintains it as an open source project. We’re really excited to welcome Dillon to the team, where he’ll really fortify our capacity, especially with his deep, deep understanding of cloud infrastructure. (It’s also really fun to bring other YC founders onto the team.)
In terms of product, we launched our managed API keys feature earlier this week, which you can read more about here. We’re really excited to extend our feature set even further.
More big news: we now have a GitHub README: https://github.com/tesseral-labs/tesseral!
What We’re Reading
‘Turbocharged’ Mitochondria Power Birds’ Epic Migratory Journeys: ever wondered exactly how migratory birds fly so much? Well, part of the story might be about their mitochondria. It turns out that migratory birds have more mitochondria than non-migratory birds and their mitochondria generate more energy.
A Young Cooper’s Hawk Learned to Use a Crosswalk Signal to Launch Surprise Attacks on Other Birds: more birds today! Man, birds are smart. Someone observed a hawk using traffic build-up (from traffic signals) as cover while hunting.
A Secret Trove of Rare Guitars Heads to the Met: on one level, this is a story about a couple of guys who secretly accumulated an enormous private collection of rare guitars. It’s simultaneously a compelling portrait of obsession and a poignant reflection on guitars’ place in American culture.
Salesforce Signs Definitive Agreement to Acquire Informatica: just two years after Salesforce disbanded its M&A committee after a string of reckless, ill-fated acquisitions, Salesforce is throwing $8B at Informatica. The strategic justification is … vague. I am not convinced that the path to leadership in the next generation of AI-driven SaaS runs through formerly PE-owned companies founded in the early 1990s. I feel deeply sorry for whoever has to run the merger integration.
Hestia Capital’s founder named CEO of Pitney Bowes: a long-running fight between activist investors and Pitney Bowes management has effectively come to an end. You can read more about Hestia’s issues with management here, but the essential complaint is that management neglected the core business in pursuit of a dubious “global ecommerce” segment, wrecking free cash flow and letting the stock price tumble >80% over ten years.
CISA loses nearly all top officials as purge continues: presented without comment.
Driverless Semi Trucks Are Here, With Little Regulation and Big Promises: it’s really hard to believe that autonomous vehicles are just part of life now. Not that many people seem eager to fight them. Instead, people seem somewhere between ambivalence and in favor of autonomous vehicles. I expect as more people get to experience services like Waymo, the excitement will build.
AI may already be shrinking entry-level jobs in tech, new research suggests: whether it’s AI or not, it does seem to be a pretty miserable job market for new grads. Even MBA grads from HBS are struggling to find work; there’s a valid conversation to be had about the contemporary relevance of an MBA, but there’s little doubt that these are generally talented people. Things are rough.
AI Cheating is So Out of Hand In America’s Schools That the Blue Books Are Coming Back: man, I feel like such an old geezer. I didn’t even realize that blue books went away. I even took computer science exams on paper; we literally had to write syntactically correct C++ with a pencil. Please tell me I’m not out of touch.
Nerd CornerTM
I recently stumbled across the International Obfuscated C Code Contest. (I was reading about how FFmpeg works, which led me to read about Fabrice Bellard’s other accomplishments, including his three wins of the IOCCC.)
It’s kind of a fascinating thing. The whole point is to write creatively terrible C code, stuff that abuses the language.
To give you a sense, here’s one winning entry (forgive the Substack formatting) – this is somehow a chess engine:
``` C
typedef char ** C;
#define F getchar())
#define H(z)*n++=z;
#include <setjmp.h>
#define v pain(0,0,0
#define Z while(
#define _ if(
#define o(d) (u[l]=0,l[d]=6^e,q=1e4>v,0),l[d]=0,u[l]=e^6,q)
#define I(H,n) { _ r=l[x=H],!r|(r^e)<-1){ _ j=u[l],-7==r|6==r\
){ n; e=~e; return 1e5- f; } u[l]=0,t=j+1,i=j-1; _!i&89<x)i\
=j,t=6; _-1==t&30>x)t=j,i=-7; Z++i<t){ b=S; d=0; S&=63; \
a=((j^e)!=1?6!=(j^e)?O[32+x/10]-O[u/10+32]-q:(S|=6!=j?8\
:1,2==u-x)*9+9*(x-u==2):(d=1==j?x-u:u-x)/8+!(!((x-u)%\
10)|r)*99+(j==1?90<x:29>x)*(9*O[28+i]-288))+O[r+28\
]*9-288+O[x%10+33]-f-O[33+u%10]; x[l]=i; S|=(21=\
=u|21==x)*2+(u==28|28==x)*4+(91==u|x==91)*16+32\
*(u==98|x==98)+(20==d)*64*x; a-=k>f?pain(a,f+1\
,M,k):0; _ i==c&u==h&!f&N&a>-1e4&x==y)longjm\
p(z,1); S=b; _!N|f&&(a>M||!f&a==M&&1&rand()\
)){ _!f){ _ k){ c=i; h=u; y=x; } } else _ \
L-a<N){ n; e=~e; u[l]=j; x[l]=r; return\
a; } M=a; } } x[l]=r; u[l]=j; n; } }
typedef int G; C kk; char J [ 78 ], O [ ]
= "HRQAMS#-smaqrh[UTZYTU[|TBA("
"$#(ABT|ba`gg`ab8>GK[_`fFDZXEYR" "L\t####"
"##B#A#@#G#F#E#D#K\t\3Zlv#tjm" "\3J#tjm\3Pwb"
"ofnbwf\3Joofdbo\3)&`&`.&`&`" "#+&g*\t"; G y,
c,h,e,S,*s,l[149]; jmp_buf z; G main(G L, C fa, C Na){
return pain(L, fa, Na, kk);} G pain(G L,C fa,
C Na, C ka){G f=fa; G N=Na; G k=ka;
G u=99,p,q,r,j,i,x ,t, a, b,d,M=-1e9
; char *n; if( *l){ e=~e; Z u >21){ q= l[--u]^e;
_!-- q){ _!l[p=e?u-10:u+10]){ I(p,)_ e?u>80 & !l[p
-=10]:u<39&!l[p+=10])I(p,)} _ l[p=e?u-11:9+u] )I(p,)
else _ u-1==S>>6){ l[u-1]=0; I(p,l[u-1]=-2^e); } _ l[
p=e?u-9:11+u])I(p,)else _ S>>6==1+u){ l[1+u]=0; I(p,l
[1+u]=e^-2); } } _!--q){ n=O+41; Z++n<50+O)I(u+80-*n,
)} _ 0<q&4>q){ n=q==2?53+O:O+49; Z++n<O+(q!=1)*4+54
){ p=u; do I(p-=*n-80,)Z!p[l]); } } _ 4==q){ n=49+O
; Z++n<O+58)I(u-*n+80,)_ e&!(S&24)|!e&!(S&3)&&k&&
!l[u-2]&!l[u-1]&!l[u-3]&&o(u)&o(u-1)){ l[u-1]= 4
^e; l[u-4]=0; I(u-2,l[u-1]=0; l[u-4]=e^4); } _
e&!(S&40)|!e&!(S&5)&&k&&!l[u+1]&!l[2+u]&&o(u)&
o(1+u)){ l[u+1]=e^4; l[3+u]=0; I(u+2,l[1+u
]=0; l[u+3]=4^e); } } } e=~e; return M; }
Z h<130){l[h]=-(21>h|98<h|2 >(h+1 )%
10); O[h++]^=3; } n=O +14; s=20+l; Z
++s<29+l){ 10[s]=1; 70[s]=~ ( * s = *
n++ -+84); 60 [ s] =-2; } Z n=J){ puts
(58+O); u=19; Z++u<100){ H(32)_!( u%10
))H(32)H(O[7+l[u]])_(9+u)%10>7){ H(58
-u/10)H(32)_ u&1)puts(n=J); } } puts
(O+58); _-1e4 >v , 1)){ e=~e; puts
(O+(v,0)> 1e4?e?90:82:96)); break
; } _ 1<L&e) { d=v,2+L); printf
(O+114,h%10+64,58-h/10,y%10+64
,58 -y/10,d); } else{ putchar
(62 ) ; h= (95 & F-44; c=l[h
+=(56-F *10]; y=(95&F-44; y
+=(56-F*10; Z 10!=(u=(95
&F)){ c=5; Z--c>1&&u!=c
[O]); c=e^c-7; } } _!
setjmp(z)){ v+1,1);
puts( 106+
O); } } Z
10!=
F; }
```The author of that chess engine, Oscar Toledo Gutierrez, has some other fascinating projects likes this operating system somehow squeezed into 512 bytes.
Other Cool Stuff
Muse: this is a cool YC company. I’m not sure I know exactly what they’re doing, but it looks like you can use their software to build a website that’s kind of like an augmented reality experience. Pretty neat. It reminds me of bruno-simon.com from years ago. I’d be eager to see more people push the boundaries of web development. Websites all look the same now.
Interview Simulator: oh, this is kind of cool. Seems actually useful. I am immediately tempted, though, to build a prank version of this – some kind of insane interview version of the password game.
From The Archives
(2005) Rewriting Reddit
(2009) SaaSure: the original product of the company that pivoted to become Okta
(2014): Ask HN: Founders whose startups have failed, where did life take you afterwards?
(2015): Why you should build your web startup using Ruby on Rails
(2016): Boom (YC W16) is Building an Affordable Supersonic Aircraft
(2021): Bigger than the dot-com boom and built to last: unicorns in the roaring tech 20s
Thanks,
Ned