
Show HN: Booleans as a Service (BaaS) - alanfriedman
https://booleans.io
======
cpa
Good practice would recommend adding /v1/ to your API url. The state of the
boolean ecosystem is moving so fast that we have no idea what booleans will
look like in 5 years!

~~~
alanfriedman
Good call. We're already struggling to keep up with this rapidly evolving data
type.

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copperx
Ironically, the idea is more useful than intended. One could, for example,
store on/off user's preferences in the cloud without the hassle of local
storage, survey responses, or even control IoT devices remotely with just the
switch of a boolean.

~~~
Matt3o12_
Sure saving the 128 bit (even longer when encoded) UUID for one value is so
much better then saving 1 bit!

Now seriously how is this any good since you can only save one bit. MongoDB as
a service is probably what you're looking for...

~~~
misingnoglic
Sure but what if you want that boolean backed up somewhere?

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Matt3o12_
And where would you suggest backing up the UUID for that bool?

It only makes sense to back bools up this way if len(n) > backup key.

If you could backup 129 bools it would make sense because you'd only have to
remember the key, 128 bit, to access the backup. If there are equal or less,
just remember the bools directly.

------
andr
What are your gross margins? What is the monthly churn rate for active users
(active to inactive)? How much revenue (in USD) have you have booked each
month for the last 6 months?

~~~
alanfriedman
We're focused on changing the world for now, and will think about making money
later.

~~~
Cshelton
Pre revenue BaaS model....I like it

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MichaelBurge
Can it send an email or POST to a webhook whenever a boolean is changed? I'd
like to know whenever our is_production flag is changed.

Could you add an XML endpoint for your API, with an XSD describing it? All our
systems are built to use XML, and adding JSON support to our infrastructure is
still 6-9 months away.

Do you offer HIPAA-compliance, in case we'd like to store booleans from
medical records on your servers?

~~~
alanfriedman
Yes HIPAA-compliance is at the top of our backlog.

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adriancooney
Someone should build and _EXTREMELY_ slow CPU with this as it's register.

~~~
jschwartzi
And use a caching proxy as a level 1 cache.

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jaxondu
Now we know why that iPad app is so expensive.
[http://youtu.be/P_KmFJ2gGzw](http://youtu.be/P_KmFJ2gGzw)

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dkopi
I'm concerned about the lack of authentication on this API. What's to prevent
an attacker from modifying my booleans? just his ability to guess the guid?

~~~
alanfriedman
For mission critical booleans we may add authentication in the future.

------
alanfriedman
I'm just glad this was ranked higher than the SpaceX landing for a minute.
Priorities are in order.

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fla
What will you do when someone builds Byte as a service on top of your product
?

~~~
alanfriedman
It's ok, we could use more competition in the BaaS space.

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noonespecial
I tried to do a Schrödinger's version of this concept but our A/B testing was
ahhh... inconclusive.

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nobullet
Guys, make /v2/ with namespaces. Global is good, but your clients have to
think about uniqueness. Make namespaces for clients, this will help a lot.

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mikeash
This API seems woefully incomplete. It really should include operations on
booleans, not just storage and retrieval. I'd much rather use a tested, well
written, and efficient AND operation on your server than risk writing my own
and potentially screw it up.

~~~
alanfriedman
We think this API is world-class, built on military grade encryption and a
robust distributed cloud infrastructure.

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nvartolomei
I hope you had monetization strategy before launching?

~~~
alanfriedman
We've heard from various famous people that if you build great products, the
money will follow.

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raverbashing
In order to be compatible with corporate IT services we might require the
requests and responses to be in XML format with a corresponding XSD file

<value>True</value> should be acceptable

~~~
alanfriedman
We'll definitely look into that.

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nolite
HTTP 500 error on sending qubits

~~~
sandebert
You should try sending using jQuery. It's great for all things.

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cmath
Do you provide a SLA? I'd really like to get an uptime guarantee before
migrating my booleans to your platform.

~~~
alanfriedman
We will provide a detailed migration path from legacy boolean systems.

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ilolu
"Apply HN" would have been more appropriate

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supershobu
What's the market size in boollians dollars ?

~~~
alanfriedman
Nice.

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progval
Could you add groups of booleans? Like “POST
[https://api.booleans.io/groups/”](https://api.booleans.io/groups/”) to create
a group, then one can use all the other operations: “POST
[https://api.booleans.io/groups/:gid/:id”](https://api.booleans.io/groups/:gid/:id”)
to create one with an arbitrary name, “PUT
[https://api.booleans.io/groups/:gid/:id”](https://api.booleans.io/groups/:gid/:id”)
to update, etc.

~~~
alanfriedman
Sure. The possibilities are endless when it comes to CRUDing booleans.

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mholt
I want my money back:

    
    
      curl -X PUT https://api.booleans.io/46ddb646-c74b-47c4-ba30-d82d11cae3c8 -d val=asdf
    

"asdf" is truthy in JS but response from server is "Unprocessible entity" :(

~~~
alanfriedman
Strict equal yo ===

------
sergiotapia
I feel like the rule of three in comedy applies universally.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_three_(writing)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_three_\(writing\))

~~~
minimaxir
What are the previous two instances?

The left-pad debacle was ages ago in Internet time. Comedy is partially rule
of three, part timing.

------
blater
Amazing technology, but we are finding it a little limiting in production.
True and False values are good, but we're finding that often the data value is
in an in between state. We believe that a quinary operator would give
significant advantages over the current binary booleans (TRUE/FALSE). Is it
possible to implement a quinary boolean along the lines of
TRUE/FALSE/MAYBE/MOSTLY/KINDA.

for example earth_harmless:FALSE is not quite true, whereas
earth_harmless:MOSTLY is exactly what we need.

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thangngoc89
Is this a joke ?

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
Do you want a yes/no answer?

~~~
thangngoc89
I just want to make sure this BaSS is serious and scalable enough to handle
massive boolean CRUD operations from my production product.

~~~
curun1r
I, too, would like to know the answer to this. If this solution scales, I have
a wonderful idea for a service that can store arbitrary data using 8 boolean
values per byte.

Imagine all the power that this booleans service has brought to the boolean
data type being available for arbitrary data types as well!

~~~
anaolykarpov
How will such a solution store the adress of the byte?

~~~
krotton
Using an additional byte for the size of the address and the specified number
of bytes for the address itself. Then you will only need a few identifiers
stored locally to access all the bits.

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misingnoglic
What are you going to do if the NSA requests data from your service? Are you
going to stand up for the consumer and protect our data?

~~~
alanfriedman
We will resist all intrusions of our users' privacy and/or booleans.

------
api
Finally a way to scale booleans in the cloud!

------
alanfriedman
Thanks for the good times everyone. If anyone's interested in making this a
real thing (IoT, state manager, web hooks, auth, labels, analytics, GUI, etc)
reach out at hello@booleans.io. I'd love to build it out but have a day job so
it's tricky. The BaaS future is one of endless opportunity.

------
arachnids
Big Booleans is the future, really nice.

~~~
alanfriedman
We're making a big bet on it. I've personally emptied my savings and 401k into
this business.

------
lexicality
I thought this was such an important contribution to the world that I made a
NodeJS API so people can use it more easily.

[https://www.npmjs.com/package/booleans.io](https://www.npmjs.com/package/booleans.io)

~~~
alanfriedman
This is incredible. Thank you.

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supershobu
My company is willing to invest $2 Million, series A. But We want full control
on the booleans.

~~~
hartator
Or at least full control of the false ones, with an option to buy the true
ones at a discounted prices.

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pbnjay
Feature request: I really want some named booleans! Maybe this could be your
revenue model?

~~~
alanfriedman
We agree this would be handy. A "label" field.

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UncleCarbs
The Uber of data.

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ORioN63
Can we get a self-hosting version? I don't trust my booleans in the cloud.

~~~
alanfriedman
All booleans are salted and hashed.

~~~
sprawl_
And not with MD5 either, I'm sure.

~~~
alanfriedman
Of course not...

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sourcd
The latency is too high for an enterprise application. I'd suggest a
supervised classification algorithm for those who need in-house booleans.

~~~
alanfriedman
We have our best and brightest working around the clock to deliver <50ms
latency at peak load.

------
xnzakg
How long is it before someone makes a FUSE filesystem that uses this for
saving the data and just stores the IDs?

Completely free Dropbox alternative!

~~~
icebraining
As a starting point, I've written a library for storing strings:
[https://gist.github.com/andreparames/c19f87fbe48ee8819f9ef09...](https://gist.github.com/andreparames/c19f87fbe48ee8819f9ef098c8eeb5ee)

Usage:

    
    
      >>> ids = storestr('Hello, world!')
      >>> print getstr(ids)
      'Hello, world!'
    

In my tests, the compression rate is approximately -36x.

------
joshrotenberg
BaaS-O-Matic.

[http://www.hulu.com/watch/19046](http://www.hulu.com/watch/19046)

------
yexponential
Can you share your stack.

Also as an innovative idea, how are you planning to deal with the surge of
clones to follow, any patents in the works?

~~~
alanfriedman
Also the stack is Node/Express and MySQL.

~~~
90minuteAPI
Wow, not using a document store? I think we disagree about how predictably
structured a boolean is.

~~~
alanfriedman
Mongo didn't meet our strict security and performance requirements.

~~~
krotton
I guess you mean MariaDB when saying MySQL.

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RivieraKid
Year or two ago I'd be surprised to see something like this on HN, now it's
just "sigh...".

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viacoffee
Do you guys plan on rate-limiting?

~~~
alanfriedman
Yeah that would be a good idea.

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yozel
I just need to store that 128-bit id to reach my 1-bit value. Well...

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lifeisstillgood
What hardware is used for memory in your servers?

I am clearly hoping for DRAM and BaaS

~~~
alanfriedman
EC2 c4 8xl boxes, load balanced across multiple regions. Jk it's a micro
instance.

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amelius
Perhaps somebody can build a filesystem on top of this.

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rubiquity
When can we expect Optionals as a Service to be added?

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kenrick95
How does this protect itself from DDoS attack?

~~~
alanfriedman
We're about to find out

~~~
ORioN63
So, how is it going?

~~~
alanfriedman
You guys have been nice enough to not bring it down, so all is good so far.
Peak load was 600 concurrent. Not sure on DB queries.

------
joshmn
Who do I contact for enterprise sales?

~~~
alanfriedman
Reach out to hello@booleans.io.

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pubby
All you have to do is boolean the axi.

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swat535
1 billion dollar valuation in 3..2..

~~~
krotton
..true..false

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kukx
Do you plan to add a GUI editor?

~~~
alanfriedman
Sure, once there's authentication.

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markbnj
You guys win the internet.

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mohsinr
I do not get it! Was the launch delayed by about 8 days...

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Edmond
love it:)

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otsdr
left-pad.io was funny, this is not.

~~~
slaman
curl
[https://api.booleans.io/50741f52-9b64-4ee1-a2d6-67ee1a60807c](https://api.booleans.io/50741f52-9b64-4ee1-a2d6-67ee1a60807c)

~~~
alanfriedman
Haha never considered using it for that.

