The Ghetto Called Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2381827,00.asp <comment><USER2> That's cool. I'm glad to hear Dvorak's opinion. Here's mine:

Quit whining about Facebook. It's opt-in. People like it, so they opt in. Believe it or not, AOL was actually relevant and somewhat useful to people over a decade ago. Was it the best? No. Did it help people? Yes.

I hate to say this, but people do need training wheels with tech. Facebook makes things simple. I no longer have to sign up for 20 different accounts, figure out which friends use which services, remember different passwords, or have to learn 20 different interfaces -- I can now message, chat, organize, collaborate, send pictures, share links, and do a bunch of stuff at once. It's called having a broad set of features. Facebook is "training wheels" the same way something like the Windows OS is "training wheels." Internet Explorer is bundled, but you are free to download Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Flock, Opera, Seamonkey, etc. It bundles Windows Media Player, but you can download VLC, Miro, iTunes, Foobar2000, MediaMonkey, WinAmp, or hundreds of other things.

Facebook didn't magically kill Wikipedia, Craigslist, Hacker News, Instapaper, or the thousands of other companies and products available. It's called choice. People have choices. They have a lot of choices. Let them decide. If a product is easier to use, by all means use it.

(end of rant)

<comment><USER3> People had the same choice a decade ago, and chose against AOL.

I think Dvorak is simply pointing out the fact that Facebook is being praised like the second coming of Jesus, while AOL is regarded as an internet backwater and failure, where they both provide/provided very similar functions.

<comment><USER4> One huge divide between people in the tech community and those outside of it is the meaning of free. Facebook's a walled garden to people who want APIs and generously licensed (or public domain) data, but, to most of everyone else, the only cost with Facebook is creating an account -- something many people want to do anyway for the other features of the site. This is in sharp contrast to AOL, which was very expensive and only offered its data to paid subscribers.

<comment><USER5> AOL's cost was money. Facebook's cost is your personal privacy. Yes, you don't have to shell out a dollar, but you lose all control over the information you associate with Facebook. In some ways, I'd rather pay real money.

<comment><USER4> Right, I'm not trying to make a claim either way about what the superior thing is; I'm just saying that your average person would rather get the service for free at the cost of their own privacy, which is one plausible explanation for the difference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think it would have been useful to include "Dvorak" in the submission title.

<comment><USER7> Right. Dvorak is a professional troll.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Divorak needs to get off the internet and realize that the online communication doesn't create some separate place but is a part of real life. This "second class citizenry" rhetoric is harmful and absolutely misses the point. People are relying on Facebook for their online presence (overly so, of course) because there are many benefits to doing so (ease of use, lack of cost, easy mobile access, ability to pester customers etc.). We don't need to end the Facebook "ghetto" as much as we need to make the rest of the internet make as much sense to end users as Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER9> > Load World of Warcraft and play something that reflects real development > efforts rather than cute marketing tricks.

I love that line.

The achievement of WoW is to inflate the importance mouse clicks to an insane level by a more complex mechanism.

That is all.

<comment><USER10> I mostly agree with your sentiment. I think WoW and Facebook are very similar in function, connecting people socially through software. I don't really think one is any better or worse than the other.

However, I do think something like WoW is a significant artistic achievement as well as a social tool. I really think this artistic product is the "achievement" of WoW.

<comment><USER11> _I really think this artistic product is the "achievement" of WoW._

That's one take. Another is its achievement was taking an entertainment medium that people used to pay for only once, applying Skinnerian behavior modification techniques to keep them coming back and paying for monthly, then scaling that model to an unprecedented massive scale.

[http://www.cracked.com/article_18461_5-creepy-ways-video- gam...](http://www.cracked.com/article_18461_5-creepy-ways-video-games-are- trying-to-get-you-addicted.html)

Granted the social aspects of online games _are_ truly fun, but the nice thing about Facebook is that it (initially at least) succeeded and scaled with just the social part and not the psychological manipulations mmo's like WoW relied on from day 1.

Some of the stuff that's been added recently, like Farmville and whatnot, exploits both the social and psychological, but the core value of FB is that it is still primarily a social experience, a way for people separated by distance and/or life (new baby, etc.) to maintain connections and know what's going on in each others' lives.

<comment><USER10> You're partly right, but I think a game like WoW would exist even if there weren't a market to exploit (although probably not on the same scale with today's technology). Look back to the 80s and 90s when these types of games existed for cheap or free.

Many of the "psychological manipulations" present in WoW were present in the genre long before someone at Blizzard (or Sony or whoever else) decided those game play mechanics can make a boatload of cash. The tone of your post suggests that games are designed from the bottom up as a psychological manipulation tool. This is most certainly not the case; they are designed to be fun (although I could buy the argument that this stuff is being done consciously with WoW now, and would not be surprised if evidence were presented). For the most part these "manipulative" qualities in games were discovered/researched after gaming became popular, they did not insert these manipulations into games to make them popular. Most of this psychology stuff is pretty new to popular game design.

So far I haven't even addressed the original point of my statement, the artistic merits. WoW is a huge 3d environment created from scratch by a team of talented (and I'm sure very well paid) artists. There are many people who are excited about the lore of WoW the same way others get excited about LotR. To say:

"The achievement of WoW is to inflate the importance mouse clicks to an insane level by a more complex mechanism.

That is all."

Especially with the "that is all" added to the end, this statement dismisses the creative work that went in to WoW to create one of the largest 3d interactive worlds ever made.

Anyway, both services offer value to the user but I'm just sayin' give credit where credits due.

<comment><USER11> Regarding WoW's artistic achievement, I've read a good observation about that - they've somehow created an art style whose longevity is not dependent on continually increasing gfx capabilities, but maintains an appeal even as other games get higher realism and whatnot. Timeless design in any domain is quite a feat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > I think it's brilliant that the boys at Facebook are taking on Netflix by > developing their own streaming service

Assuming Dvorak's talking about the newly-announced Dark Nights rentals, he's talking about a third-party app developed by Warner Bros, not a ploy by Facebook itself.

I wouldn't bother bringing up a small factual error like this, but it really digs into the point of his article: it's a lot harder to build up the idea of Facebook as an evil monopolizing force trying to lock people into their platform when it's third-party content producers that are actively pulling people into the FB ecosystem.

You could argue that this is a result of their efforts to attract developers to the FB Credit platform, and that's just an attempt to attract and lock in users. That's definitely true, but you can't really call a neighborhood a 'ghetto' when it's got a posh shopping mall full of big-name department stores.

</comment><comment><USER13> Spot on. But this is exactly the kind of article that one would expect to get many negative comments on HN. It's critical of a hyped website and the argument isn't even economic.

</comment><comment><USER14> As I see it, the problem with Facebook is that it is monopolizing a space that we should all desire to see open and dispersed. Is it good to have one company monopolize all online social interactions among all humans on the planet? Of course not. People spend egregious amounts of time on Facebook, which is wonderful for Facebook and stifling for the rest of the internet. If you recognize these problems you should abandon Facebook and reject it on principal. With so many people and business on board, this is actually quite hard to do, which is exactly why it should be done.

</comment><comment><USER15> Dvorak has a seriously warped view of Facebook and life-in-general IMO. Facebook's main competitor is Second Life? Who on earth thinks that?

There's nothing "fake" about the community on Facebook. Ask Hosni Mubarak.

<comment><USER16> I don't think he seriously views Second Life as a real competitor - he was just using it to draw an analogy.

As for the community, I believe the "fakeness" he's getting at is the ability of the user to carefully cultivate their likeness and project a version of themselves that may or may not be truly reflective of "reality".

Of course, one could argue that we are always cultivating a "desired image" of ourselves. However, Facebook and similar platforms provide visual and textual clues that allow users to more concretely realize social relationships. This in turn may allow them to go above and beyond the normative level of image moderation. Whether that is "good" or "bad" is another question altogether.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think if you want to compare Facebook to something outdated or controlling, I'd try the "portals" of the turn of the millennium. It's a pretty natural extension we see with almost anything which subsists on advertisements: more attention means more views means more ad-clicks means more revenue. Of course Facebook and everything else financed by ads with a brain is moving to push as much of your activity onto its platform as possible.

</comment><comment><USER18> Are all Dvorak's friends on facebook pre-teen girls? It's probably worse than that, they are probably 'writers'

The fake people on facebook, at least on MY facebook, are the people that are fake in real life. Yes, it is easier for them to broadcast how fake they are. Luckily facebook also makes it easy to filter out their broadcasts. It's also much easier for the friends I care about to broadcast important information as well. For those of us without a media site/platform to broadcast our cra... err articles, facebook works great.

Also, I never get along with WoW addicts.

<comment><USER19> You may be underestimating how many small bits of 'fake' are common. A facebook profile is much more accurately described as "how someone wants themselves to be seen" rather than how they are in reality. Some of it is self-censorship, some is self-promotion, some is subconscious, but the cumulative effect is such that the reality show analogy is quite apt; it's based on real events, but edited and filtered into something misleading.

Think about it this way, an autobiography is probably mostly true, but you're going to read it with the understanding that it's not an impartial, objective viewpoint.

<comment><USER20> _"Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful. A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from inside is simply a series of defeats."_

             -- George Orwell

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Er... isn't Facebook's primary feature for, I don't know, social networking? Being a means to connect with people you know?

It's certainly expanding to provide many services besides that, but I don't think anyone is replacing the rest of the internet with just FB.

</comment><comment><USER22> Would someone like to clue me in on all the hate of this guy named "Dvorak"?

<comment><USER23> It's the name of the linked article's author.

<comment><USER24> To add to that... his specialty is intentionally specious and sensationalist arguments that don't hold up to any kind of scrutiny, thus inviting rabid rebuttals from people in the know, driving tremendous traffic well beyond what either A) a plainly idiotic argument or B) a extremely well-honed analysis would produce. In other words, he takes trolling to heights 4chan can only dream of.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is possibly the most poorly written article I have ever read on HN.

</comment><comment><USER26> AOL keyword: Facebook

</comment><comment><USER27> Facebook will too pass....

</comment><comment><USER28> What the crap?

<comment><USER29> How is this comment useful?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Divorak hasn't been relevant since the death of floppy disks.

<comment><USER31> After reading the article, it kinda sounds to me like Dvorak just can't see Facebook's relevance as a communication tool for people who aren't super skilled with computers. I'm not really a fan of Facebook myself, but shantanubala is right; It does help people connect and share information easier. I wouldn't agree with Dvorak that Facebook is a ghetto, then again the definition of the word "friend" seems to be a little different these days.</comment></comment>


Are there alternatives to ownCloud? - <AUTHOR>

I like the idea of heaving my own file hub for some stuff, but I don't like the URLs ownCloud generates, also it's PHP.<p>Are there some good alternatives with custom URLs for shared files? <comment><USER2> I imagine there are plenty of reasons to not like ownCloud, but is the url pattern seriously that important?

I'm not even going to try to identify why you don't want to use a php solution, given that you clearly don't want to actually modify it.</comment>


Israel silent as Iran hit by computer virus more violent than Stuxnet – report - <AUTHOR> https://www.timesofisrael.com/tv-report-israel-silent-as-iran-hit-by-computer-virus-more-violent-than-stuxnet/ <comment><USER3> The title is just a variant on the argumentum ex silentio logical fallacy.

</comment><comment><USER4> More violent but also more out in the open, where stuxnet was a silent killer. (meaning it was deliberately less violent)

<comment><USER5> How can software be "more violent"? How can software that isn't running directly on a weapons platform be "violent" at all?

<comment><USER6> If the software physically destroys the hardware that is running it, I'd say that's fairly violent. Stuxnet, the virus it's being compared to, destroyed the centrifuges it infected. Sort of the issue with the "more violent" explanation so far is that Iran isn't saying how bad the damage is, and it sounds like this new virus might be hitting critical infrastructure like power systems, but no one will say anything beyond "systems are being attacked".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So is there any indication yet what the virus did / is doing?

</comment><comment><USER8> but whats the story? some guy again picked an unknown usb stick en route to his job at super secret nuclear facility and just plugged it into a nuclear supervising computer again to see the contents?

<comment><USER9> To say stuxnet was akin to someone plugging a USB drive in really downplays how serious the operation surrounding stuxnet was.

Iran was having their nuclear scientists assassinated in the streets at the time stuxnet was being infiltrated into the nuclear facilities.

I have a feeling that when you have that level of resources being dedicated to a mission, your not hinging your whole plan on someone picking up a random usb and plugging it in.

<comment><USER10> Israel Mossad used remotely detonated magnetically attached bombs attached to the victim's car door while they were stuck in traffic using a motorcycle drive-by attack. That's unusual outside of the Middle East. In most other countries they trigger remote exploits (electronic and physical) in target vehicles which lead to terrible crashes.

<comment><USER11> > In most other countries they trigger remote exploits (electronic and > physical) in target vehicles which lead to terrible crashes.

Citation please! I've never heard of this actually being done IRL - only on CSI type shows. Where/when/who has actually used this technique in a killing? It seems overly complex and prone to suboptimal outcomes (the vast majority of car crashes only result in minor injuries).

<comment><USER12> This isn't a citation, but if you're interested in the topic and learning more about to what length Israel will go to assassinate perceived enemies, I recommend "Rise and Kill First" by Ronen Bergman

[https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Kill-First-Targeted- Assassinatio...](https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Kill-First-Targeted- Assassinations/dp/1400069718)

<comment><USER13> Perceived

<comment><USER12> I actually regret using that word - I'll leave it so your reply has context. Perception is always a factor in determining one's enemies or allies - <USER2> is no exception.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> OT this content was posted by a user who registered just 3 days ago.

user: chablent

created: 3 days ago

karma: 524

<comment><USER15> He has what looks like a bot running posting articles from major new sources about 1 per hour. A couple of those articles did well on HN and those got him the Karma. Nice Karma gaming.

<comment><USER16> how is it possible to submit so many news stories, like 10 a day. The "posting too fast" didn't kick in?

<comment><USER17> Browse new, you'll see the same submitters over and over again. Create a system and people will game it.

Wouldn't be surprised if they are sold or used ideologically to sway opinion. The internet once prospered and thrived on anonymity but feel that sentiment is shifting back towards integrity and longstanding handles. Perhaps there's a way to do this still pseudonymously with zero knowledge proofs, though likely will be yet another system capable of being gamed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Espionage is one thing. But isn't targeted cyberattacks on another nation's facilities and infrastructure an act of war?

Anyone know if there are any international law covering cyberattacks?

<comment><USER19> If cyberattacks counted, the US would be at war with China and Russia. I bet there will be a treaty eventually, and I have some fears on what secondary restriction it will place on the internet.

<comment><USER20> A treaty that is unenforceable (ie no one can observe the outcome) is as good as no treaty. You can't really attribute most cyberattacks and if you automatically assume it is country x, then country y in conflict with country x will rush into attacking you.

<comment><USER19> Oh, they could make it enforceable, but I don't think anyone would really like the resulting version of the internet except bureaucrats who crave power over all things.

You see some politicians mention that all software developers should be licensed, and we see companies requiring signed code to allow it to run on platforms. Licenses for servers happen in some places. Its all little step, but a few more gets you a locked and licensed computing network.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Guessing that Israel feels (or was explicitly told to be) unleashed to act against Iran by the Trump administration after Bolton entered.

<comment><USER22> Based on?

<comment><USER23> Official US policy against Iran is that they should suffer sanctions despite adhering to the treaty that got them lifted. Trump alsomoved the embassy, discarding all the policy against itfor no good reason.

That Trump would tell bibi to go town if he wants to is extremely plausible, it's pretty weird to question that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Assuming these were already airgapped. I wonder if this could have been prevented with a 10 cent glue stick for USB ports.

</comment><comment><USER25> Too bad the us didn't stay in the Obama negotiated P5+1 nuclear agreement.</comment>


A message from the FFmpeg project - <AUTHOR> http://ffmpeg.org/index.html#message

<comment><USER2> a more active post - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9989499](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9989499)</comment>


The History of the Saturn V - <AUTHOR> http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/saturnv.htm <comment><USER2> Interesting tidbit from <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_V>

_On September 3, 2002, Bill Yeung discovered a suspected asteroid, which was given the discovery designation J002E3. It appeared to be in orbit around the Earth, and was soon discovered from spectral analysis to be covered in white titanium dioxide paint, the same paint used for the Saturn V. Calculation of orbital parameters identified the apparent asteroid as being the Apollo 12 S-IVB stage. Mission controllers had planned to send Apollo 12's S-IVB into solar orbit, but the burn after separating from the Apollo spacecraft lasted too long, and hence it did not pass close enough to the Moon, remaining in a barely-stable orbit around the Earth and Moon. In 1971, through a series of gravitational perturbations, it is believed to have entered in a solar orbit and then returned into weakly-captured Earth orbit 31 years later. It left Earth orbit again in June 2003. Another near-earth object, discovered in 2006 and designated 6Q0B44E, may also be part of an Apollo spacecraft._

</comment><comment><USER3> Ken Rockwell has a nice lesson about the Saturn V here: <http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/2009-07-1-new.htm>

</comment><comment><USER4> We have one of these where I live (Huntsville, Alabama), and it is huge! You really cannot appreciate the magnitude of it (size and engineering) without seeing it in person, much like the Hoover Dam.</comment>


The truth about TDD - <AUTHOR> https://sdegutis.com/blog/2018-08-29-the-truth-about-tdd <comment><USER2> I'm not gonna listen to advice about TDD from a guy who says a method that "has 2 if-statements, 4 assignments, and a value that has 3 possible states" isn't wrong.

TDD doesn't work well with procedural code. That's the real "truth" about TDD.

<comment><AUTHOR> That wasn't a procedural function, it was an FP function, but it had a bit of complex input. That kind of thing happens more often when you have a more complex business domain.

<comment><USER2> > 2 if statements

> 4 assignments

> not procedural

oh boy</comment></comment></comment>


Netflix vs Blockbuster, 2004-2010 - <AUTHOR> http://go-digital.net/blog/2011/02/netflix-vs-blockbuster-perfect-example-of-an-industry-replaced-by-a-more-efficient-version-of-itself/

<comment><USER2> Uh, what?

Blockbuster had revenue of approximately $4 billion in 2010.[1] Where did the data come from for this chart? No operating business has zero revenue. Blockbuster has plenty of revenue, they just can't pull in enough gross profit to service their debt.

[1] [http://investor.blockbuster.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=99383&p=...](http://investor.blockbuster.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=99383&p=irol- newsArticle&id=1426686)

<comment><USER3> It's in their annual report:

[http://phx.corporate- ir.net/External.File?item=UGFyZW50SUQ9M...](http://phx.corporate- ir.net/External.File?item=UGFyZW50SUQ9MzQ4MTIyfENoaWxkSUQ9MzM2Nzc2fFR5cGU9MQ==&t=1)

See page 24(29) where they list annual revenue for past five years:

      2004 - 6.0B
      2003 - 5.9B
      2002 - 5.6B
      2001 - 5.2B
      2000 - 5.0B

EDIT: Your statement about no real business doing $0 in revenue kept on nagging me. So I went and looked up their 2010 10k. They actually did $3.2B in 2010. So this chart is NOT accurate. They did do $4.0B in 2009, but only dropped to $3.2B in 2010.

Just because you file for bankruptcy doesn't mean you have zero revenue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> That is a GREAT chart. That is a classic example of the Innovator's Dilemma. What if you told BB in 2004 that if they moved into pushing mail order and streaming their 2010 revenue would be $2.2B -- what would they have done differently? Quite possibly nothing.

This is why these disruptions are tough to deal with. Trying to actually disrupt yourself could result in the loss of a LOT of revenue, but it saves the business. But who could foresee that?

</comment><comment><USER4> This chart was created by somebody with a fundamental misunderstanding of what bankruptcy is.

</comment><comment><USER5> So where did the other $3.8 billion in revenue go ?

<comment><USER6> I would guess that consumers kept it. Watching 10 movies using Blockbuster could cost the consumer around $50 (in Canada, anyway, where Blockbuster is still thriving because Netflix took more than a decade to get here). Watching 10 movies on Netflix is included in your fixed monthly cost, which is considerably less than $50/month.

Edit: Or maybe what gamble said.

<comment><USER7> I pay $20/month to watch Blockbuster online (only supported by my DVD player I think), get unlimited DVD's in the mail, and unlimited trades in store.

I really like it, and it's nice to go get what I want when I'm in the mood, rather than hope the movie that arrives is something I feel like watching.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This implies that Netflix one-for-one replaced Blockbuster. How can you ignore Redbox, iTunes, and the rise of On-Demand offerings from cable and satellite providers that all took place within the same time frame?

</comment><comment><USER9> What about Redbox? Surely they put more of a dent into blockbusters business then netflix did? I always assumed netflix was competing against walmart/best buy dvd sales, and not blockbuster rentals.

</comment><comment><USER10> Usa vs china aconomy would be similar by 2015</comment>


Airtable gets $52M in funding - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/airtable-ceo-howie-liu-interview-on-52-million-in-funding-2018-3?op=1 <comment><USER3> Airtable is awesome.

We have been throwing out a ton of self-built admin forms and CRUD pages by Airtable bases. Now people inside the company can add new fields, versioning by default, super simple interface.

Largest con: No webhooks. Which makes you pull data every X minutes to find out if a record changed. I would throw them a lot more money (280$/month now) if they just had webhooks as it could replace a TON internal systems/reports.

Second con: Ids. I would want them to support client delivered record_ids. Right now airtable has it's own ID field (which can not be set). Therefore if you want syncing to work efficiently you need to store that airtable_id on your side to do REST updates (PATCH). Would be better that airtable record_ids could be provided by the client so I can inject database primary keys and not have to store/query their record_id

<comment><USER4> Likewise, I am foaming at the mouth to replace some internal google sheets with air table but as you mention, webhook capability is table stakes to front the effort.

<comment><USER5> You might want to look into Quick Base.[1] It is actually the little known elder statesman in this space and includes a lot of features Airtable doesn't currently support. Specific to this thread, one of them is Webhooks.[2] And while the product uses an autonumber for keys by default, you can change it and then import/update against your designated key.[3]

[1] [https://www.quickbase.com](https://www.quickbase.com)

[2] [https://help.quickbase.com/user- assistance/default.html#abou...](https://help.quickbase.com/user- assistance/default.html#about_webhooks.html)

[3] [https://help.quickbase.com/user- assistance/default.html#sett...](https://help.quickbase.com/user- assistance/default.html#setting_the_key_field.html)

<comment><USER6> Unless I missed something, their plans start at $25mo (annual billing) with min of 20 users, maybe in same space but not very appetizing to get your feet wet. but i'm sure their pricing is designed with that in mind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> During the Sonoma County fires we had over 60 volunteeers editing Airtable verifying shelter information, fire locations, developments, lost and found and more. We essentially put a light Rails app in front of it to serve as a front end for the site sonomafireinfo.com. I don't think we could have scaled and gotten volunteers onboard as quickly as we did without Airtable.

<comment><USER8> You couldnt get an app to scale to 60 people without this? Something seems off, 60 people is not a lot.

<comment><USER9> I think the better question is: during a life-and-death fire rescue effort, is it a better use of time to use Airtable as a backend or to write, deploy, and operate a concurrent editing backend yourself? There's a clear answer here.

<comment><USER8> Good point but most states have disaster relief infrastructure already in place for events like this? If this was scrounged up the day of it would make sense.

<comment><USER10> Why do you believe most states have IT-related disaster relief infrastructure in place? I worked for several years in CA govt, I would be surprised if anything beyond the major metros has much in place for coordinating shelters, etc. In fact, the sonoma fires are documented to have had lots of problems with reverse 911.

<comment><USER11> I have been eager to explore the available tools for disaster relief because it seems like people scamble to DIY a solution for every disaster. I made my own Firebase relief matchmaking service when we had a 100yr flood a couple years ago. I would love to see easily deployed crowdsourced open-sourced tools that can be used as soon as possible in these scenarios.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I like airtable, but the per-base row limits (50,000 before you reach "contact us for pricing") are too small for many of the things I'd like to use it for.

And there's something a bit odd in their pricing model, isn't there?

The plus tier is $10 per user per month with a limit of 5,000 records per base; the pro tier is $20 per user per month, with a limit of 50,000 records per base.

Suppose I want to use it to replace a spreadsheet where our staff record some kind of work they have done.

If I have a staff of 2 I can pay airtable $20 per month on the plus tier and each person can do work generating 2,500 records in a shared space before I have to upgrade.

But if I have a staff of 50 and I pay airtable $500 per month on the plus tier, each person can only generate 100 records before I have to upgrade. Even if I pay them $1000 per month on the pro tier I'm still worse off on this metric at 1000 records per person.

<comment><USER13> The whole charged-per-user SaaS culture is stupid.

SaaS had to be priced somehow, then someday someone came up with the idea of charging per-user and everybody followed that up, but it is not smart. Most SMB end up sharing accounts, which makes your product look worse than it actually is and at the same time makes your users miserable.

<comment><USER14> That's one of the reasons I love Basecamp's pricing model - a flat $99/month for as many users as you'd like.

<comment><USER15> We recently decided to follow that path, but for us additional users will not have any significant increase in cost.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Glad to see this company get more funding. Last year I ported all of our companys excel and access files over to airtable. Currently tweaking with their API to work with a MS-SQL database using amazon Lambda and RDS at the moment. Their API documentation is fantastic, some of the best I've seen as well. They even have some of the best case studies for workflow management as well, posted on their blog, for setting up a relational database management setup in different use cases.

As a user who's also part of their alpha-test program, its exciting to see all the changes they made this year. They added blocks which lets you add app-like integrations such as forms, kanban, maps integration, page designer (think of mailmerge for word) etc. I personally have only dabbled in about half the things offered here, but its crazy how many things you can do with airtable.

I also wrote a popular excel VBA script for airtable too, for bulk downloading and renaming images found here on their forum. [https://community.airtable.com/t/bulk-image-downloader- and-r...](https://community.airtable.com/t/bulk-image-downloader-and-renamer- using-excel-vba/4913/3).

Airtable has lots of potential use cases for startup apps as well, I highly suggest reading this article from a philosophical standpoint. [http://sirupsen.com/minimum-viable-airtable/](http://sirupsen.com/minimum- viable-airtable/)

<comment><USER17> Can I ask what actual business functions these spreadsheets are for?

<comment><USER16> I use it to manage purchase orders overseas and use it as a traditional product database. Anything that I would use MS-access for I use airtable instead.

On this page, [https://airtable.com/templates](https://airtable.com/templates), there's a database called "Product Catalog". Thats what I use

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't know man, I might not be the target audience (MD of a software company) but I just don't get this.

It seems only slightly more useful than say a Google spreadsheet on a platform that yes might have blocks and templates but I didn't see anything there that made me want to switch away from Google Spreadsheets, Trello and a couple of other systems I use to run my 20 person £1mm turnover business.

I'll keep it in mind but having played with Airtable I just don't see the value. Still, wish them all the best.

<comment><USER19> Spolsky's discussion of Excel is probably the best way to understand Airtable: [https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2012/01/06/how-trello-is- diff...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2012/01/06/how-trello-is-different/)

> Over the next two weeks we visited dozens of Excel customers, and did not > see anyone using Excel to actually perform what you would call > "calculations." Almost all of them were using Excel because it was a > convenient way to create a table.

> What was I talking about? Oh yeah… most people just used Excel to make > lists. Suddenly we understood why Lotus Improv, which was this fancy > futuristic spreadsheet that was going to make Excel obsolete, had failed > completely: because it was great at calculations, but terrible at creating > tables, and everyone was using Excel for tables, not calculations.

If you view it from the lens that most Excel users employ the spreadsheet to create lists and tables (data organization), then Airtable is one way to improve that workflow.

<comment><USER20> If that's the target audience, then I see Airtable failing also. Surely 80% of the benefit of an excel spreadsheet, or google sheets, for a common user is how bare bones and simple to navigate the two products are?

"Oh hey, I just need to fire off some data rapidly in an organized way. Boop, done." And that's the trick, isn't it? The need to rapidly organize previously un-organized data. It's not a case of, "I know exactly how I want to rapidly organize some data."

With Airtable, it would be "I now have to navigate this decoupled spread out GUI and learn what all these abstract terms mean, when all I want to do is calculate how much we spent on ice cream last month."

In essence, it is making the workflow slower for those types of people.

On the other end of the spectrum, from a programmer's point of view, GUI's ALWAYS slow things down. This is why programmers who used VIM / Emacs were faster than those using modern IDE's. It's why hot-keys are important to both technical and non-technical workers. Presentation does not equal productivity. The presentation is what Airtable is pushing as the abstraction for non- technical users.

If the target audience for Airtable is instead small-business startups - <USER2> those startups are going to be in for a world of hurt when they need to get into real business development. They will have wasted time, energy, and resources to get set up on a lego platform that they'll need to migrate away from.

Looking at the pricing model and data limitations, there's nothing that would make this a better choice than just hooking up to AWS or something similar, directly. Using Airtable would require maintaining some form of middleware for SPA's...and there's no way in the world that you wouldn't be hitting their caps rapidly. Just an extra cost.

I'm not saying this product won't work well for a market niche, but that niche is a lot smaller than the buzz words thrown around in today's publications.

<comment><USER21> 52M isn't chump change in funding. Glad to know VC's think it's a big problem.

Personally I am working on an Airtable/excel like product but rather than a spreadsheet, you can easily make structured hierarchies. Think rows, which could have more rows, or link to other cells. A very easy way to capture relational data.

You can just start writing stuff in cells Define headings and data types later. Like git, it stores version history, let's you work offline and let's you sync with others. Let's you upload markdown, or pictures and files into cells. Define a stricter schemas later. Restrict editing/viewing of cells based on formulas so others can't easily break what you've created.

I wrote a little manifesto at orows.com and working on a prototype. Once I have about a 100 users, I plan to quit my job and work on it full time.

Think github, but rather than files, an object graph.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> d--b Pg's startup idea YC would fund from 2008:

22\. A web-based Excel/database hybrid. People often use Excel as a lightweight database. I suspect there's an opportunity to create the program such users wish existed, and that there are new things you could do if it were web-based. Like make it easier to get data into it, through forms or scraping.

Don't make it feel like a database. That frightens people. The question to ask is: how much can I let people do without defining structure? You want the database equivalent of a language that makes its easy to keep data in linked lists. (Which means you probably want to write it in one.)

From: [http://old.ycombinator.com/ideas.html](http://old.ycombinator.com/ideas.html)

<comment><USER22> I bet every developer that has used sheets in a business setting has come to realize that there was a need for an intuitive web database with relations and forms. I was thinking about doing something like this the other day, also saw it Pg's startup list.

<comment><USER23> I bet there's still room for such a solution if it was targeted specifically to developers. I personally really liked Parse because of this functionality.

<comment><USER24> Definitely! You should check out [https://base.run](https://base.run) \- it's a solution targeted to developers that want to quickly build and test out ideas or internal tools

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Well deserved funding.

Airtable is one of those products that really changes the way you work or even think about building workflows. I use it as a middleware for uploading content to a side project website I own. Nothing out there is as flexible and easy to use as this (their API is also a piece of cake.)

They care deeply about their user experience and are always shipping features at an impressive pace. Really happy to see them growing.

Simply put. Airtable is like Smartsheets but for cool people :D

<comment><USER26> +10000 Airtable is badass. It is simple and elegant and fills a niche

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> We've used Airtable for replacing various parts of our internal backend dashboards for non-technical people. Syncing over the API + Zapier is doable, but I wish they made two-way sync easier. And the fact that they don't have cross-base lookups is a __major __pain point.

For anything that requires quick fiddling and no API access, I still prefer traditional spreadsheets. Airtable's strict relational limitations means you cannot quickly enter some static data in an arbitrary field (e.g. a currency exchange rate). This makes quick back-of-the napkin calculations really awkward, even impossible.

</comment><comment><USER28> Airtable seams cool but i have a hard time understanding where in the market they are.

Like between Excel and a relational db app? Not sure about that.

Some things that often fail in excel is:

* You cant easily verify what the user writes.

* It is hard to stop users from destroying the formulas that make it work.

* It becomes slow when the row count starts to go up.

* You cant have user roles where some users is suppose to be able to see one thing and edit another and another user is to edit another thing and see something else.

* Data relationships are also mostly not there.

<comment> FLUX-YOU >* You cant easily verify what the user writes.

Sharepoint somewhat handles that with file locking and had some revision history and permissions support. Most people just put spreadsheets on shared folders, so of course they get blown up.

Airtable is basically an enterprise swiss army knife for solving trench- fighting issues. That's basically the market, freeing up developers to handle main projects to make it worth the company's time to employ them.

Some rando department needs a form for their new employees or needs to spreadsheet-collaborate? Instead of building some custom webapp, Airtable is a central point for those kinds of things where a more specialized workflow solution doesn't exist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I wish our company had this 10 years ago. Everybody was using and mis-using Excel for everything, whether it's requirements, project tracking, documentation, manually updated dashboard and dashboard.

We're not abusing Excel anymore, but we've ended up specialized software for everything. Ironically we've lost ability to create something that is exactly tailored for each person's need.

<comment><USER30> Excel is SUCH a double-edged sword, isn't it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I think Airtable's marketing hasn't always been ideal, because I don't really think of it as a spreadsheet product. In fact, I've actually tried using it to do spreadsheet-like number crunching and it's just not that good at it.

What it really is is a darn-fine visual database that only looks like a spreadsheet (potentially...there are other views as well). The ability to create fairly sophisticated, structured data models along with an easy to way to collaboratively edit that data is pretty impressive. I've been using it both in my freelance business as well as to manage lots of household planning stuff along with my wife, and it's done a great job. I wish the Pro plan were cheaper...I'm only on Plus right now and want the features of the Pro plan. But I understand the need to charge for good tooling. (Also a happy paying customer of Basecamp here.)

</comment><comment><USER32> Happy to see these guys doing well. Got turned onto their product middle of last year and have started using it for all sorts of stuff. Its a great middle ground between an excel file and building a custom app for things. Super flexible with very little learning curve. Girlfriend and I even use it to track which wines we've tried, like, and ratings and stuff for them.

<comment><USER13> Would you use a spreadsheet for that?

I'm asking sincerely, since most of open examples I see of people using Airtable and Fieldbook and other similar software is for these simple use cases -- in fact for tracking wines or whatever, a spreadsheet is maybe much better.

Now when I tried to use Fieldbook for a somewhat complex bunch of data that gets currently added, 5 tables with references between them it has quickly bloated and become slow to the point of not being usable anymore.

So I'm left with the impression that people mostly use these apps for simple use cases where a spreadsheet, or a Trello board, or even a text file would be better; and that complex use-cases are not supported at all -- as they wouldn't be in a spreadsheet.

<comment><USER33> > Now when I tried to use Fieldbook for a somewhat complex bunch of data that > gets currently added, 5 tables with references between them it has quickly > bloated and become slow to the point of not being usable anymore.

I've had the same experience, glad it's not just me. It was a few months ago so I don't remember the exact details, but I could not model the complex relationships I wanted in Fieldbook (which I've used before) or Airtable (my first time). I didn't gel with the Airtable UI either.

<comment><USER21> Care to elaborate what kind of complex data modelling you wanted to do?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Airtable is a fantastic product. We use it religiously.

For those that may be interested, one of Lambda School's students has been building out an ORM for Airtable to abstract away some aspects of the API. [https://lambda-school-labs.github.io/Airtable-ORM/](https://lambda-school- labs.github.io/Airtable-ORM/)

<comment><USER35> Do you know what documentation tool this uses to handle the layout? It looks awesome.

<comment><USER34> It's Slate [https://github.com/lord/slate](https://github.com/lord/slate), which could use some updated docs, but it looks good

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> This is pretty similar to DabbleDB. I wonder why this was so much more successful than DabbleDB. [https://techcrunch.com/2006/03/11/dabbledb-online- app-buildi...](https://techcrunch.com/2006/03/11/dabbledb-online-app-building- for-everyone/) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wZmYMWKLkY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wZmYMWKLkY)

<comment><USER37> Because DabbleDB was ugly and not very user friendly?

<comment><USER36> Yeah that sounds about right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Does anyone know how this compares to Coda[0]? I saw a post a while back about Coda and signed up to get an invite but haven't heard anything since.

[0][https://coda.io/welcome](https://coda.io/welcome)

<comment><USER39> I know a bit about that, as I tried both. Spoiler: We kept using Airtable and Dropbox Paper instead.

Pros Coda: \- As implied above: it is quite good at merging the features of a "word processor" (more like Google Drive, Dropbox Paper) with Airtable like functionality (Spreadsheets that are very easy to use, filter, display differently... I.e. building small pseudo apps. Basically: you can add text above and below your "Airtable" \- Multiple documents inside a document (navigation on the left side). Pretty good for Wiki like things

Pros Airtable: \- Better in displaying data (colors etc), adding attachements, e and other visual benefits that make it accessible to non nerds. \- I know the pricing model. Coda doesn't tell (me) what they will charge. I simply didn't want to become dependent on something I don't know I can afford (many users)

<comment><USER38> Thanks for the insight! I haven't played with either but this is pushing me a bit towards airtable :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Airtable is exactly what [https://transpose.com/](https://transpose.com/) Transpose could have been. But better. Been using it for just about everything you can think of. Did not know about the Blocks feature. Awesome. I got fairly good with Transpose until they closed up shop. Fieldbook and Airtable definitely can do things that Trello (cannot do tables) and Evernote (can do tables but very limited) cannot. There is a huge middle ground between Goog Spreadsheets and MSFT Excel. I hope they do not sell out to anyone. The day they do will be the end of their flexibility.

<comment><USER41> I hate to burst your bubble- but taking on investments like this probably indicates they'll be looking for a buy out/sell out eventually

<comment><USER42> The article literally says that's not the case. They hope to get an IPO. I know doesn't mean it's 100% true but it's still right there.

"Airtable isn't yet profitable, Liu said, but can be "cash flow positive at a moments notice." And an IPO is the eventual goal, he says, because he doesn't want to sell his company again. "

<comment><USER43> To be fair, lots of founders say this to press, and tell a completely different story to investors. I don't know anything about Howie Liu but in _general_ there's roughly zero correlation between what a founder tells reporters about acquisition plans and reality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Airtable runs businesses and I can easily see them becoming a platform (with other businesses being built on top of them) in the next few years. Amazing product and they've nailed something no-one else has for decades (merge excel and db advantages into one product).

</comment><comment><USER3> For everyone that does not get what makes this different from Google Sheets have a look at this video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGUCqWa0Msc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGUCqWa0Msc) where the CEO of Airtable (Howie Liu) is live coding an example on top of Airtable

Google spreadsheets is a collaborative excel Airtable is much more than that (forms, views, versioning)

<comment><USER45> Using zeit's now on that demo. Damn that service is so convenient.

<comment><USER3> The video made me discover zeit. It changed my life :-0

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I think Zoho Creator is everything that is being asked for in the threads below for airtable. Cheap Pricing, Tonnes of drag and drop field types, powerful webhooks and api for integration (in fact there are a lot of integrations out of the box) , good partner network with hundreds of developers already running multi million businesses from the platform, able to scale to over 3 million users per app, big plans at reasonable prices, drag and drop approach PLUS developer IDE for coding if you want to get into detail. Dashboards, HTML combined with CSS and javascript type language. I have met the CEO of Zoho Creator and he is NOT going to sell out to the VC's or a large company any time soon. It has been bootstrapped for over ten years. One of the major problem I have had with platforms is them being BOUGHT OUT by large companies (ie Podio and Citrix, Foxpro and Microsoft) and then they KILL them or don't keep upgrading them like the orig founders had envisioned.

</comment><comment><USER47> Anyone else getting a bit of a dodgy PR vibe about this post and all the glowing comments, or is it just me?

</comment><comment><USER48> I'm really happy about airtable. My use case is basically "shared access/excel-like with easier row grouping and simple projections". I used the API as well.

The feature I miss most is charts/graphs. Really hope they'll add them one day.

<comment><USER49> It seems that charts exist as part of their blocks offering:

[https://airtable.com/blocks](https://airtable.com/blocks)

But only for customers in the Pro tier.

<comment><USER48> Thanks. I looked at blocks, but on a mobile view it only shows the maps option, not everything else :-(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I was actually looking for something like this, good to know a product like this exists.

I use a combination of Trello and Google Drive for most things, everything from my personal life, to hobbies, to side projects, and work items. I love Trello but sometimes I want something a little bit more. I think I'll to duplicate things I'm working on for a few weeks or so in here to see how I like it. Maybe I'll replace Trello or maybe there are some integrations out there already to sync somehow, or maybe If I'm bored and have time on my hands I'll try writing something myself.

The app looks great but hopefully they add Kanban support for iPhone soon.

<comment><USER21> Have you used fieldbook. It's pretty amazing too. Like spreadsheets, but more involved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Original Show HN: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8373914](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8373914)

[alternatives link removed]

<comment><USER16> all the alternatives are fairly mediocre, I tried them all. The closest thing is google spreadsheets, which really is not designed for RDBMS / light database work. You can read my review on alternativeto.net as well.

[https://alternativeto.net/software/airtable/reviews/](https://alternativeto.net/software/airtable/reviews/)

<comment><USER51> I see above you mention moving a lot of your business processes to it from Excel and Access. What would you do if Airtable was acquired and sunset? I'm in risk management, so a lot of my day to day is planning for the unexpected, hence my concern and interest in alternatives (perhaps an open source front end paired with OpenFaaS on the backend for integrations).

<comment><USER16> That's a risk I'm willing to take.

Airtable doesn't have an official, automated local backup system yet. Their forum post indicates it as well [https://community.airtable.com/t/offline- local-backup/754/77](https://community.airtable.com/t/offline-local- backup/754/77).

Ideally, airtable should download a copy of all my database files into dropbox at least once/day, but that feature doesn't exist.

It should also have a automatic file downloader backup (e.g. when you upload an image, it goes to their amazonS3 server → that should ideally be backed up locally as well). Doesn't exist either. Just have to use the plugin I wrote for the time being

There is a 3rd party solution for backing up airtables using its API. Its on this forum post. [https://community.airtable.com/t/zenbackups-airtable- databas...](https://community.airtable.com/t/zenbackups-airtable-database- backups/3582?source_topic_id=5052). Personally, I have not used it.

Another thing from a risk management standpoint. Airtable has only 1 API key, and that key has access to EVERYTHING. If someone knows both your API key + your airtable's base ID, they can do anything with it. Issue GET requests for data, PATCH and update values in your database, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Feels to me a bit like Filemaker Pro!

Other than that, isn't their real competition Quickbase?

</comment><comment><USER53> I'm always shocked when I discover something tech-related that "millions of people are using". How did I miss this?

</comment><comment><USER54> As an avid Excel and GSheet user, it's nice and slick with a few more bells and whistles. Very clean and probably good for an organization with members who are not very good with sheets in general or have a hard time mapping data mentally; akin to a better designed SmartSheet.

</comment><comment><USER55> Just went to sign up using my Google account... why do they need to view my contacts?

<comment><USER45> To filter out the users that are not worth the effort to do support for.

<comment><USER56> So privacy aware users?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> I'm having trouble understanding what I would use Airtable for.

I run an online business and work with a few long term contractors. We mostly communicate in trello or slack. There isn't really any inventory to mamage.

I'm assuming there's an airtable use for me. But I haven't been able to figure it out from their marketing. Is there a use case in particular I should look at as a start?

(Personal life management stuff would also be useful. I do have a small inventory system for both my office and apartmnet, for example. Mostly just keep some in stock, add to list when low)

<comment><USER58> Your profile says you are an LSAT tutor. How do you keep track of everyone you tutor, whether they've paid, etc?

<comment><USER57> Oh I should update that. I very rarely tutor now. Mostly my site is set up to sell courses.

When I do occasionally take a single student, I just put an entry on a pending money section of my finance tracking spreadsheet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> I looked at air table, I just wasn't sure it would give me (or my clients) what I wanted. Having looked around I opted for Zoho Creator, one of its tag lines used to be MS Access for the Web :-), and back then it pretty much was but its moved on leaps and bounds now, unlimited records, customer portal, mobile, its own script style programming language. Integration isn't bad either with its own API, and a number of Inbuilt integrations to Apps like Onedrive, GDrive, Quick Books etc.

<comment><USER60> Very True. We are solution partners of Zoho, and have used Zoho Creator to develop really complex workflows for our customers involving inbuilt/custom integrations. I would say Deluge (Creator's scripting language) is its strength on top of being a flexible low code platform, which I haven't come across elsewhere yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> It's pretty, it works, it's pricey..i like some of the marketing around it and the buzz features they have. Honestly I found that like a Google spreadsheet with the Blockspring addon works best for most of my scenarios..

P.s. Along the funding they announced a new feature, and the blog post that goes with it has an embedded map that breaks responsiveness on mobile...did no one really double check before announcing a major feature release?

</comment><comment><USER62> I really want to use it, but I'm not fully clear on the use-cases. We already have specialized tools for project management such as Asana. We already have specialized tools for sales, such as Salesforce.

Seems like Airtable is the step between a simple CSV / excel file and a hyper- specialized tool for that problem. So if you're not quite ready for the latter, but you are experiencing pain with Excel, then Airtable is the way to go?

</comment><comment><USER63> So... time to dig through the terrible ideas of 20 years ago, and see which ones are now good ideas when adding "... on the internet"?

And I'm only being partially sarcastic. Their implementation looks neat, but having seen ugly Excel "apps" in the past, the idea of "spreadsheets programmed by anybody" makes me cringe.

IMO, if they're smart they'll have some kind of easy migration to "real" applications.

<comment><USER64> They do seem to have a schema which I like. You can say a column is a "pick from list" or a "date" and it'll enforce it and provide the best ux for picking the thing you need. This is much better than Excel. It's like an Excel/Access hybrid but for the web and very usable.

Alas, it's not an application development environment

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> I just saw Airtable for the fist time and it looks awesome. Yet I am a little concerned about the vendor lock in. Does anybody know a self hosted alternative?

<comment><USER3> Why worried about vendor lock in? Every base comes with API and export options. It's very easy to take your data with you?

Actually we mirror all the data every 24 hours with some simple GET requests in combination with postgres JSON columns

<comment><USER65> Well, getting the data out of it is just one part. I mean everything what makes Airtable better than excel, will be gone when they turn off their service.

That's a major issue if you want to use their service for anything that actually matters. You never know how fast a change is coming to such a platform and how much time you have to adapt.

For comparison: I am not a particular fan of MS Access, but I think the use- cases for Access and Airtable have much in common. With Access you have a certain vendor lock in too in terms of technology. So when Microsoft stops developing Access, you have to search for an alternative as you do not know if the runtime will be available on the next OS generation. Nevertheless, you can use the software as long as you have a machine which can run the current version (probably years).

In contrast, if Airtable gets shut down and will not be available in 3 month (e.g. if they get bought by someone who wants to integrate their tech into another product and shuts down the current service), you will have exactly 3 month to find/develop/deploy a replacement. Not cool.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> Airtable is such a nice product. My friend actually uses it as a headless CMS, in that regard it's so much easier to use than Contentful IMO.

</comment><comment><USER67> It's amazing how we are still using grid design for every thing and not much has improved other than few UI improvements. Maybe it's natural for our brains to map lists and tables.

And why do we need so many of these sheet apps. I remember my colleague showing me smartsheets. I wasn't impressed then too. Why spend so much time and energy to move to slightly better sheet.

</comment><comment><USER68> I just played with Airtable a little, but I was a bit disappointed about the performance. If I copy+paste 250 rows, it takes 10 seconds.

</comment><comment><USER69> I for one hope Salesforce acquires Airtable and integrates them into Quip. That will be a kick-ass workflow and documentation system.

<comment><USER70> Doesn't the article state that the founder of Airtable sold his previous startup to Salesforce and regrets it and doesn't want to go down the same path again?

<comment><USER69> Ah yes, the etacts debacle. Agree. I meant more the Quip integration (which would make sense) vs Salesforce as a company. But good point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> Good product, but they are still making something very similar to spreadsheets, instead of creating something new.

IRL It looks, like they have created more powerful and effective internal combustion engine, but still not a Tesla, thereby keeping more market for old- looking software and leaving less place for something really new.

</comment><comment><USER64> I had a quick play to create a project plan for the team. Yes it's very nice indeed. And intuitive if you happy with Excel/Google Sheets. However I like how you can effortlessly create a 'schema' on the fly. So it isn't as fast and loose as Excel.

</comment><comment><USER72> Airtable is fantastic. My only wish is that they formalize a "Airtable open format specification". At the moment, in spite of all its shortcomings, an excel file is far more portable than an Airtable doc. We need the Airtable data structure to become an open standard.

</comment><comment><USER73> It's great to see, that people see real value in the market for project management SaaS solutions. We started developing Zenkit ([https://zenkit.com](https://zenkit.com)) 1 1/2 years ago and have since then seen an explosion of new and amazing solutions coming to the market. I take that as a sign, that we're in the right market. I'm very excited about our future, and Airtable's. Congrats to Airtable for closing a new funding round!

<comment><USER74> Airtable is more than just project management as Howie put it that the goal of Airtable was to go after all potential business cases right away by creating a one size fits all platform, a horizontal approach. Project management market is already too crowded IMO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> Can someone tell me what they use airtable for/what it replaced? Is it kind of like sheetsu? (www.sheetsu.com)

</comment><comment><USER76> this makes me sad because this is the idea I've been building in my head for a long time now. :( I need to make a free and open source alternative based off of my ideas..

<comment><USER77> maybe you can contribute to one of the existing open-source alternatives ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> What's the major difference between Airtable and FileMaker?

<comment><USER79> Theorem: All great Mac software is re-created as web-based apps.

Corollary: coming soon to your browser, HyperCard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> How does sheets, airtable, etc... store data in the back end?

<comment><USER74> It appears to be that Airtable stores data in relational database, perhaps MySQL or PostGres. Not 100% sure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> This kind of reminds me of FileMaker. What am I missing?

<comment><USER81> You are right, it is actually quite similar

</comment></comment><comment><USER82> I hope they will finally implement webhooks.

</comment><comment><USER83> I don't get it

<comment><USER84> me neither, but i also don't use spreadsheets much

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> Nice Howie!

</comment><comment><USER86> Anyone used this for inventory tracking and management?</comment>


When Good Intentions Backfire - <AUTHOR> https://points.datasociety.net/when-good-intentions-backfire-786fb0dead03#.c9xmyludh <comment><USER2>
      There's a reason that no one can tell you exactly how Google's search engine or Facebook's news feed works. Sure, the PR folks will tell you that it's proprietary code. But the ugly truth is that the code has been patched to smithereens to address countless types of manipulation and gamification

I'm pretty sure the real reason no one can tell you how search works is because doing so would make it much much easier to game the system and do exactly what this author seems worried about.

Oh right, and also because it's worth billions.

<comment><USER3> It's probably a combination of the two. It would take tens of hundreds of man- hours to write a meaningful explanation of exactly how search acts, and doing so would provide no use to Google.

<comment><USER4> > no use to Google

And little use to anyone except consultancies that will charge someone through the nose to help game the system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That reads like the introduction to something that could be good. But the meat isn't there yet. Maybe he needs to write a book.

<comment><USER6> *she

<comment><USER7> and it looks like she's already written a few :)

[http://www.danah.org/](http://www.danah.org/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Objectivity" doesn't mean that all statements should go unchallenged in media, nor that all sides of an argument should get equal time or treatment. There exists such a thing as objective, empirically verifiable truth, and media owes its audience doing so.

<comment><USER9> True, but on the other hand people seem to believe their own opinions are "objective truth" more often than is justified.

This being the case, perhaps it's a nice idea to err on the other side for a change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> An awful lot of evil is done by people with the best of intentions. For example, Lenin said: "In order to make an omelet, you have to break a few eggs" to justify mass murder.

<comment><USER11> Best short discussion I've seen on "ends justify the means": [https://strongfemaleprotagonist.com/issue-6/page-112-2/](https://strongfemaleprotagonist.com/issue-6/page-112-2/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Lesson of the day: stop being good.</comment>


Meet Lamar Smith: Rep To Head House Committee On Science, Space, And Technology - simba-hiiipower http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/5/3725768/meet-lamar-smith

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's a good breakdown of his voting history on technology issues:

<http://www.ontheissues.org/TX/Lamar_Smith.htm#Technology>

Not a great picture. Voted against network neutrality, sponsored SOPA, although he did vote against taxing Internet access.

<comment><USER2> From all that I gather that the principle by which he votes is aiding his corporate friends. That's probably the most common trait with his voting record, and I doubt it has anything to do with any real beliefs of how politics should work.</comment></comment>


Why Did the Justice System Target Aaron Swartz? - <AUTHOR> http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-did-the-justice-system-target-aaron-swartz-20130123 <comment><USER2> "Some of Swartz's advocates believe the prosecution sought excessive punishment to set an example in the age of Wikileaks and Anonymous."

I seriously doubt that setting an example was a significant motivation.

"Ortiz and Heymann refused to offer a deal that didn't include at least six months of prison time and a guilty plea on all 13 charges."

In other words there was no deal being offered that didn't include a guilty plea -- a pelt on Ortiz's belt.

They targeted Aaron Swartz because he was a rung on their ladder, an easy win. One, he was part of an all but not understood minority to the rest of the population, a hacker. Two, it's routine to portray neutral hackers (our sense of the word) as evil hackers (everyone else's sense). Not understanding what we do makes us all potential witches, and no one is sad when an evil witch gets what he deserves, even when we don't understand what he did.

With Swartz ringed in by a large pile of charges, the result would likely have been at least one conviction. It only takes one out of N for Ortiz to put another mark in the "successful prosecutions" column.

Swartz just got in the way of Ortiz's and Heymann's ambitions. Collateral damage.

<comment><USER3> > One, he was part of an all but not understood minority to the rest of the > population, a hacker. Two, it's routine to portray neutral hackers (our > sense of the word) as evil hackers (everyone else's sense).

His motives might have neutral but his actions were not, at least in this case.

But either way, I wish we would all take a step back and critically examine _why_ it is that it is so easy for 'hackers' to be portrayed negatively.

Part of it is because "they don't understand", sure.

But there's another large part, which is the feeling of helplessness. Computing controls more and more of _everyone's_ life with each passing day. In the past people could take control of more of what was important to them. They could tweak with their car's engine and chassis, they could put money in the bank and feel reasonably safe it wouldn't have disappeared to some identity thief by the morning, they could go home secure in the knowledge that their work would physically be still sitting on their desk when they went back the next day.

Now computers have taken over everything and there are very, very few people who actually understand what's going on. And when the "average Joe" sees someone taking advantage of that, for whatever reason, it is natural to feel distrustful. You trust Aaron and I trust Aaron (even if I disagree with his methods), but why should everyone trust Aaron?

The past two weeks we've seen a chorus of criticism from hackers regarding a justice system that they don't understand. Much of the criticism is accurate, and much of it wasn't even in the right ballpark. This isn't even the only example, just look at the strictly-technical debates about open source software like Ruby on Rails or systemd where FUD is the rule. So if even the very smartest of us are liable to this type of behavior, why should we expect any better of the general public?

People in general _want_ to think that at least _someone_ understands hacking besides the hackers and is working to keep them safe from those few with the means to destroy those computerized things which are becoming increasingly valuable to them.

<comment><USER4> > The past two weeks we've seen a chorus of criticism from hackers regarding a > justice system that they don't understand. Much of the criticism is > accurate, and much of it wasn't even in the right ballpark.

Dead on. The DOJ might have, in a fit of paranoia, jumped to the "evil hacker" stereotype because it didn't understand Swartz's actions, but the "hacker community," in a similar fit of paranoia, jumped to the "big evil government suppressing any threats" stereotype.

I don't think the DOJ understand the "free culture" movement. At the same time, I don't think a lot of hackers understand the public's desire for order, boundaries, and security.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The why of it is really, really obvious. The system attacks those who threaten the system. Successful activists are top of the list. (What makes A.S. stand out is that he was white and middle class. He doesn't fit the pattern-match for an _expected_ target.)

<comment><USER6> Put your tin hat away. The why of it is really, _really_ obvious. Low hanging fruit, an easy target for prosecutors wanting to score an easy win.

<comment><USER7> Why are the low hanging fruit / easy win points "tin hat"?

The wrong part was the nonsense race point.

<comment><USER4> The race point isn't non-sense. The targets of aggressive prosecution are by and large involved in the drug trade or with gangs, and as such are very often black or hispanic. Aggressive prosecution pretty much evolved to target those people. One of the reasons you can get so many years out of what seem like relatively minor convictions is because prosecutors often have to deal reticent minority communities. Everyone knows that the defendant is involved with certain crimes, but nobody is willing to testify to the effect of "yeah, he's the major local drug source here," and the prosecutors end up having to go after the defendant on secondary crimes.

Swartz's case is unusual because of his background (upper middle class, well- connected with the community) but also because of his race.

<comment><USER8> ... So Federal prosecutors said, "He's white and middle-class... Does... Not... Compute... Must... Prosecute..." ?

<comment><USER4> That's not what I said. I said that Swartz's case is unusual because he's white and rich and well-connected in the community, and he wasn't accused of a financial crime.

<comment><USER8> IIRC, one of the charges against Aaron was wire fraud. Bernie Madoff (rich, white, well-connected) plead guilty to wire fraud (amongst other charges).

I'm not sure how the fact that it wasn't a financial crime has much to do with how the Federal prosecutors handled things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As I read about the early involvement of the secret service and in light of the later actions of the DoJ, I couldn't help but wonder if there was something to the signature of Swartz's actions that raised the Federal Government's level of interest.

To put it another way, how likely is it that that particular closet had been used for similar activities before? Is it more plausible that Swartz discovered the closet or that someone told him about it?

Hell, it was unlocked. The camera may have already been there and the Secret Service already involved. Swartz may have blundered into a honey hole and screwed up an ongoing investigation. That's the sort of thing which pisses cops off.

It's not easy to make sense of MIT's actions as naive responses to a one off event - disconnecting the laptop and alarming the closet would be more plausible as responses to a commercial crime. Putting in cameras and letting the crime continue just doesn't make sense in response to the sort of hacking which is traditional on the MIT campus (e.g. lockpicking). MIT went along until JSTOR took radical public action and data collection and observation by the Feds was no longer feasible.

If the proposed plea bargain required Swartz to cooperate with investigations of other hackers, neither side would have an interest in exposing it. The Feds for fear of tipping their hand, Swartz's survivors for remembrance of his legacy. All along I have had the feeling there is more to the tragedy than the press can get from their chairs.

<comment><USER4> > I couldn't help but wonder if there was something to the signature of > Swartz's actions that raised the Federal Government's level of interest.

Of course it was the "signature" of Swartz's actions that raised the federal government's interest.

1) The "target" was MIT;

2) There was physical intrusion into MIT's network;

3) Millions of documents were downloaded;

4) Swartz previously did something similar to PACER.

You can argue about whether walking into an unlocked closest is "physical intrusion" or whether the "actual target" was JSTOR but that's all just a matter of characterization. The Feds are not "shades of gray" people-- everything is like the show "24" to them. They will assume the worst.

I'd bet money that the "bullet points" similar to the above landed on someone's desk, and even though I think the prosecution definitely was overzealous, I'm not at all surprised at the way they reacted. I'm really shocked that anyone is surprised.

<comment><USER9> _"You can argue semantics about whether walking into an unlocked closest is "physical intrusion" or whether the "actual target" was JSTOR but that's all just a matter of characterization. The Feds are not "shades of gray" people-- everything is like the show "24" to them. They will assume the worst."_

To the extent I am arguing anything, it is against the convenience of casting events into the form of a morality play...or of a Fox Television apologetic for torture. Cartoon characterizations don't require much of us and simple causal chains don't require us to deal with messy realities.

They just make for easy journalism and lazy citizenship.

<comment><USER4> Sorry, I meant "you can argue" in the sense of "it is possible to argue."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't agree with the articles contention that a 'DDOs is the internet equivalent of a sit-down strike'.

<comment><USER11> Its not 1:1, but while its people coordinating its pretty easy to draw the comparison, only when its done by a botnet wrangler or extortionists do things start to diverge.

You just don't see the equivalence because operating on the internet you only see your susceptibility to a ddos, and it's always different when it can happen to you.

It's a nuisance you deal with until the protesting party gets board. In one case you call the cops, in the other case you pay someone with a fat pipe to absorb the hit and forward the legit traffic to you.

<comment><USER12> I am unaware of any successful DDOS (other than accidental ones) which food not make some use of unsuspecting people's computers, either by ping reflection, botnets or secret iframes. All of these sound less like a sit-in and more like an attack which should be prosecuted to me.

I am happy to hear of counterexample.

<comment><USER13> How many successful DDOS attacks do you know about and how can you find out if the participating nodes are part of a botnet or use iframes?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Swartz aside, Rolling Stone has possibly the least responsive web design ever. If your window's width is less than the page width, the left side of the text gets cut off on Chrome dev and Safari. There's no way to scroll to make it visible; the only way is to make the window larger. It seems they are using Javascript to change the main container's `margin-left` to keep the content centered on different large monitors, but there's no check to make sure that it's positive on small monitors. So the takeaway is: if you're trying to make a site responsive, do it right, or don't do it at all.

On that note, if you're trying to prosecute crime: do it for justice and society, or don't do it at all.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm all for fighting the system and stuff. But in which country of the world, doesn't the system fight back?</comment>


Reclassification of earlier U.S. coronavirus deaths causes record 24-hour number - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-surges-in-some-asian-countries-that-had-been-lightly-hit-11587031743 <comment><USER2> I think this is because NY is now reporting probable deaths, and not just those who tested positive before dying.

<comment><USER3> Dr Birx said the whole country is doing this, and she seems totally fine with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This was brought up during the daily Cuomo yesterday. The media have not fully explained the new reporting (am I cynical if I say so they get better clicks?)

CDC mandated that all localities, not just NYC/NYS, count probable deaths in addition to those where a covid positive test was available. These figures are _not_ part of the 'official' covid death totals but instead are a separate category.

The reason this has been done is likely due to the reports coming from NYFD/PD concerning the much higher incidence of finding dead people when called. Those bodies are not being brought to hospitals for autopsie or anything else if there are no suspicious circumstances. By one report I read a few days back, a year ago it was typical to have encounter 25 dead on 911 calls over a 24 hour period. They are now seeing upwards of 200.

</comment><comment><USER5> That's a wrong number for daily deaths. It factors in previous deaths counts that weren't counted (mainly in NY). Those numbers should have been backdated. Currently it seems like the daily death toll is rising, although it doesn't (at least not so sharply).

<comment><USER6> This is not what the media is reporting, they say it's in a 24 hour time period.

Do you have a link?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Didn't NY just add 3+ thousand that weren't counted before?

<comment><USER8> 2 days ago.

"New York City raised its likely death toll from coronavirus by 3,778 people on Tuesday afternoon"

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/nursing-homes-remain-a- concern-...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/nursing-homes-remain-a-concern-as- new-yorks-coronavirus-outbreak-appears-to-plateau-11586892250)

<comment><USER7> maybe there was a slight delay getting them in this count

<comment><USER9> It's not (or at least, not only) a delay, but a change in methodology of classification. Previously, all patients who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 were counted, regardless of their cause of death. In the new methodology (in order to ensure that false negatives aren't missed), people with a pattern of symptoms are also counted, regardless of their cause of death.

So, many, many more people are counted than those who died directly from complications arising from Covid-19.

This is not altogether unreasonable; we want to know how many people are dying after contracting the virus. However, it is being reported as though the virus is the cause of death, when nobody doing the reporting is claiming that it is. It's a total mess.

Here's the actual data sheet: [https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/imm/covid-19-d...](https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/imm/covid-19-daily- data-summary-deaths-04162020-1.pdf)

<comment><USER10> Unfortunately I've seen these methodological updates getting twisted to serve various political ends - such as trying to discount the severity of the pandemic because "clearly they are overcounting"

<comment><USER9> If the number of deaths is overcounted (it might be, or it might be undercounted, or it might be overcounted in some places and undercounted in others), and the total number of cases is undercounted (it is; it's just a matter of how far we keep adjusting - we can't gain confidence until we have representative serological surveys), then the fatality rate (and thus almost certainly the mortality rate) is also overestimated.

I don't know if that is "discounting the severity", but so far we've watched the CFR go from the announcement at the WHO of 3.4% to paper after paper finding below 1% (sometimes far below). I don't think that these researchers are discounting the severity, I think they're doing the best they can with limited data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It is worthwhile to notice that there are as of April 13 there are 11k _weekly_ coronavirus related deaths according to the CDC out of 600k tested [1].

In a normal flu season there are 8k _daily_ flu deaths [2].

The ones that are the worst affected should be in the hospital. The cumulative rate of hospitalization is 12.3 per 100k, which adds up to 39k. So that puts an upper bound on known risk. [3]

[1] [https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/COVID19/index.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/COVID19/index.htm)

[2] [https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/68/wr/mm6826a5.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/68/wr/mm6826a5.htm)

[3] [https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/COVIDNet/COVID19_3.html?fbclid=IwA...](https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/COVIDNet/COVID19_3.html?fbclid=IwAR02UGPEV4r5LicjyNum1mpmFixTpCPYHJY8Nf3d8QV1iKrKK6ZlGTecifs)

</comment><comment><USER12> These numbers need to be seriously scrutinized for everyone's sake. Hospitals are now financially incentivized to claim as many Coronavirus hospitalizations/deaths as possible so they get their piece of the stimulus package.

<comment><USER13> That sounds like a conspiratoral worry. Hospitals are all lying? We should just publish overall death rates long with traditional death rates and known cv cases. it's guaranteed there are missed cv tests. In Seattle they have not had enough cv tests to 'bother' testing the sad cases of large numbers of people dying, even in the famous kirkland senior citizen homes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> [https://archive.md/tD5QU](https://archive.md/tD5QU)

</comment><comment><USER15> Wow, that's a doubling of deaths over 24 hours too. But I hope this is exceptional. I cannot see this being 8000 deaths tomorrow.

<comment><USER16> Hopefully, this is the peak we expected, meaning it won't keep going up by very much.

<comment><USER17> The first peak, that is. It's likely that during the many re-openings to come, we will have other peaks.

<comment><USER18> I believe that if we loosen things a little soon, this will be the main one. I think it is likely that we have reduced susceptibility by 15% in New York already. And seasonal factors are swinging to be on our side.

If R0 was 2.5, a virus with Rt of 1.9 (*0.85, and then a little seasonal benefit) is still scary, but it's a completely different ball game.

On the other hand, if we don't experiment with reopening a little soon, we'll lose the chance to effectively use the time where weather is on our side...

Emphasis on "a little". Slightly increase the set of permitted activities, designate an industry or two more as permitted, and continue to encourage mask wearing.

<comment><USER19> Not sure why pessimistic views are downvoted. You are just expressing your opinion and providing a reasonable reasoning.

<comment><USER18> I'm not sure whether I was downvoted for being pessimistic or optimistic. Most places seem headed towards extended controls and demanding a very high standard for any reopening.

I'm in the SF Bay Area which has had a fairly steady daily case count in the face of increased testing, but a declining number of COVID cases in ICU over the past 10 days. The latter is a lagging indicator, so whatever trend is there is going to continue for 10+ more days. IMO, we should slightly loosen controls, but I do not think public health will even consider that before a couple weeks have expired.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is a garbage number.

New York reclassified a bunch of folks that died over the last few days as COVID deaths under their new methodology, where all deaths are covid deaths if there is even a hint that they might have had COVID.

These are not deaths that occurred in a 24-hour period. These are deaths that were _reported_ in a 24-hour period, and covers basically everyone with any respiratory illness who died at home on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday.

Trying to compare that to a rate of deaths in hospital of likely or confirmed cases (the methodology used from last week until Tuesday), or hospital deaths of confirmed cases (the methodology used before last week) is meaningless.

If you change methodology, you really have to go back and recast historic numbers. But that isn't being done.

<comment><USER21> > If you change methodology, you really have to go back and recast historic > numbers. But that isn't being done.

This makes sense~ without some kind of reporting standard, every jurisdiction is free to apply their own methodology and we're prone to receive inaccurate (or politically biased) information. That might mean inflating numbers, or deflating (as is the case with China, an enormous country with miraculously no infections or deaths since the day they coincidentally kicked all western journalists out).

New York changing their methodology out of the blue this week puts a curious asterisk on both the numbers we're getting from them now and the numbers we got from them previously. Why the sudden change?

<comment><USER22> NY still has their old number of "confirmed deaths" which they were using previously and continue to report as a separate number from "probable deaths".

The article linked to doesn't mention that but what NY is doing makes sense. It lets us see the general trends using the old methodology while still being smart about counting going forward.

It is very open and every state + country should do something similar.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/14/nyregion/new-york- coronav...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/14/nyregion/new-york-coronavirus- deaths.html?auth=login-email&login=email)</comment></comment></comment>


Retina: A regex-based recreational programming language - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/m-ender/retina <comment><USER2> If you find Retina interesting, you may be also interested in a plothera of esoteric programming languages with the general string-rewriting paradigm [1], which is---as Thue [2] or /// [3] demonstrates---enough for Turing completeness.

[1] [https://esolangs.org/wiki/Category:String- rewriting_paradigm](https://esolangs.org/wiki/Category:String- rewriting_paradigm)

[2] [https://esolangs.org/wiki/Thue](https://esolangs.org/wiki/Thue)

[3] [https://esolangs.org/wiki////](https://esolangs.org/wiki////)

<comment><USER3> I can't find any page by Colagioia about Thue, so I can't say if he was the originator of this trend, but it's a shame not to see any mention of the origin of the name Thue on the esolang page. He was quite a mathematician; he originated the systematic study of string-rewriting systems ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi- Thue_system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-Thue_system) and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thue–Morse_sequence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thue–Morse_sequence)), which is why this name is appropriate, but made lots of other contributions, too—as a number theorist, I know him from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roth%27s_theorem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roth%27s_theorem) (which Wikipedia calls Roth's theorem, but which I think most number theorists call the Thue–Siegel–Roth theorem).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Examples: [https://github.com/m-ender/retina/tree/master/Examples](https://github.com/m-ender/retina/tree/master/Examples)

More didactic than a language reference

</comment><comment><USER5> Please add a screenshot of code to the readme and also fill your online editor with a block of example code.

<comment><USER6> Hi, author here! Thanks for the feedback. I'm not in charge of Try It Online, so I can't do anything about filling it with code by default, but as someone else noted, there is a Hello World button, which fills in a (very trivial) snippet.

There also a bunch of examples with tutorial-like explanation in the Examples folder.

I'll think about adding one example to the main README though, just to really put people off of looking further into the language. ;)

While I'm here, in case anyone does actually use the language and find it to be useful, I also wrote a VS Code extension that lets you use it as a powerful search-and-replace alternative: [https://github.com/m-ender/vscode- retinate](https://github.com/m-ender/vscode-retinate)

<comment><USER7> I know you from codegolf. I love reading your solutions especially in Retina. Keep golfing!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm enamored with the term 'recreational programming language'.

Not sure I'd ever use one, but it's a useful categorization nonetheless!

<comment><USER6> FWIW, they're usually called esoteric programming languages/esolangs, but I'm not a fan of that term. That's why I've been using "recretional" instead. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Out of all the quines I've seen, that's my favourite.

[https://github.com/m-ender/retina/blob/master/Examples/quine...](https://github.com/m-ender/retina/blob/master/Examples/quine.ret)

So elegant.

</comment><comment><USER10> somewhat reminds me of 'sed', but with less history and less power.

<comment><USER11> It looks to me like it's very similar to a subset of sed, but with a more powerful regex library. But many programs in this language probably have near line-for-line translations into sed if they don't use newer regex features.

A lot of people (including me) have basically only learned the s command in sed and don't usually think about all of the more sophisticated sed features.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> For more audiovisual fun you could also try IBNIZ.

<comment><USER3> [https://esolangs.org/wiki/IBNIZ](https://esolangs.org/wiki/IBNIZ)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Example Retina code:

K`0¶1

{ _\G0`

)`(\d+)\n(\d+)

$2$n$.($1__$2*_)

...you got somethin' severely wrong with you, boy.

<comment><USER6> Appreciate the compliment. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> so this is a programming language for when we aren't working? please elaborate

<comment><USER6> Yeah, that was the idea. Just a language for fun and specifically for code golf (solving programming problems in as small a program as possible). In the case of Retina, it turned out the language is actually pretty useful for throwaway scripts for string manipulation, so I actually _am_ using the language while working occasionally, but that was definitely not a design goal. :D</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Are you lonely? - <AUTHOR> A couple years ago I found myself lonely, overweight, and unhappy.  I had neglected to build a life outside of work, and it finally caught up.
It hasn't been easy and I still struggle with it from time to time but thankfully I'm in a better place now.
How did you get here? And how are you fixing it? <comment><USER2> lonely AF.</comment>


Intel Optane in 2016 - <AUTHOR> http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and-technology/non-volatile-memory.html

<comment><USER2> > " innovative cross point structure of perpendicular wires"

Are they really "wires"? Or is it fabricated in some kind of 3d litography?

This kind of new manufacturing technique strikes me as one that will take some time to mature.

But anyways, it's pretty interesting. How could/should OS paging change when this arrives? Do we need another tier or will they just consider this as faster swap?

Is this appropriate for other marketplaces where intel doesn't dominate (mobile)?</comment>