How Pantone Is Still Turning Color into Money (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-26/how-pantone-is-still-turning-color-into-money <comment><USER2> Pantone is a example of how a good standard can generate value; in Pantone's case it's _the_ standard for print color consistency. It's a shame that the standard is closed and proprietary but it's a good example nonetheless.

<comment><USER3> well until we get rid of Economics as a civilization ... we just have to live with it. Nothing is Free in this world.

<comment><USER4> > Nothing is Free in this world.

You mix "free as in freedom" and "free as in beer" here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The way I see Pantone is they charge money to guarantee that a colored piece of fabric always looks the same. I can go to Pantone in 10 years and say give me a piece of 16-1234-tcx they will give me that and it will look exactly the same as the previous sample I had. Coloring fabrics is not as easy as coloring stuff on a screen.

<comment><USER6> > Coloring fabrics is not as easy as coloring stuff on a screen.

eh.... both on nontrivial tasks.

Two identical RGB monitors side by side will not match and even after being color matched using expensive tooling, they will not stay matched for long. Getting two monitors from two different manufacturers, or even different revisions of the same product, requires considerable effort.

On top of that the color space used by applications may not match, and may not be compatible with the monitors. I always enjoy the color match game of receiving a graphic from our art department because they rarely have their tooling set to the RGB colorspace when they produce their graphics. So depending on which browser you view the graphic in and on which platform you view it you'll end up with wildly different colors. Because some browsers take into account the monitor color profile and others don't, and Macs do a better job with color than Windows which does an infinitely better job with color than Linux (Android).

<comment><USER5> That is one way of seeing it.

The way i tend to look at colors in a computer is as following as long as you use sRGB, L _A_ B or possibly even CMYK then it is up to the OS to show that correctly.

In reality every device will have different background light, different settings, different manufacturing process and the list continues there is just no way all the parameters can be accounted for.

If you develop for the web or another multi platform environment you cant expect colors to be spectrally same from device to device. AS such you can not and should not develop applications that has that presumption.

Only in very specific controlled environments can one make the assumption that a color is what it is and not a representation.

So coloring in a computer is easy cause the rules of the "game" is defined. Show a specific sRGB color and that is what it is. If you have a bad screen that wont show that color that is not my problem.

BTW the "RGB colorspace" is not a specific thing it is an idea, dont ever refer to such a thing if you want to be productive.

<comment><USER6> That's a very optimistic approach and will eventually bite you in the ass without proper checks.

BTW people often generalize terms to simplify concepts for the uninitiated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wish some company would do for odor what Pantone has done for color.

<comment><USER8> This is really a great startup idea. From a unicorn perspective it won't do, but what a beautiful business it would be.

<comment><USER9> It's already done. As you might expect, the food and drink industry have a need for this. In the brewery I worked at in 1998, we had a commercial set in our "taste training" room which was a set of defined things to smell/taste for training the palate for subtle but specific flavours.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I did some computer graphics consulting for them years ago and learned a bit about what they do. Here's a couple use cases as they were explained to me:

1\. Say you want to print my Coca Cola posters in China. As a designer you could send them a swatch of paper with the right color OR I can just tell them the Pantone color.

2\. Say you design something on your computer but you need to determine if you can actually print it. The software I worked on would let you compare the color gamut of various devices i.e. let you know if the item you designed could be printed/rendered on a certain printer or T-shirts.

<comment><USER11> #1 is definitely a problem. However, does RGB/CMYK/Hex not solve this?

<comment><USER12> Well you definitely shouldn't be using RGB/Hex for print. Lots of these colours cannot actually be printed, and there are different algorithms for converting them to printable formats (that give different results).

As for CMYK, there is a difference between spot and process colour. CMYK is process colour, made of lots of small spots of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black ink. There are different ways you can do this and you will get different effects. For example you could have grids of dots, but you could have the grids at different angles.

Spot colour (pantone) is just ink that is that colour. You get exactly the same every time, no matter the printer.

<comment><USER13> (I believe you've swapped the labels: process color mixes dots of CMYK inks to approximate other colors; spot color uses an ink pigmented to the precise color you want. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CMYK_color_model](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CMYK_color_model) )

<comment><USER12> You are correct. How embarrassing! I have edited my comment. Thanks. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> When you need to be right about color, you pay for it. I've paid close to $1000 USD for official Pantone color guides over the last few years.

<comment><USER15> I'm not sure I understand. What do you have to be right about? I would assume if a brand has a registered pantone color they know the code? Why do you need a book?

I'm no designer but it seems like Pantone created a solution then convinced everyone else there was a problem.

<comment><USER16> The man with two watches knows that one of them is wrong, but only the man with three watches knows what time it really is.

Similarly, it's possible to say "these printed things and signs are different colours", but only with a reference can you say which one is the _wrong_ colour, authoritively enough to complain to whoever forgot to colour-correct their part of the process.

And of course a brand has to pick a Pantone colour in the first place, for which they will want a reference book.

<comment><USER17> > The man with two watches knows that one of them is wrong, but only the man > with three watches knows what time it really is.

I realize it's an off-topic nitpick, but that's not actually true. You take the average of all watches, and this will be your best guess for what time it really is. So having two watches really is better than just one, and three watches provides no guarantee of perfect accuracy.

<comment><USER4> > I realize it's an off-topic nitpick, but that's not actually true. You take > the average of all watches, and this will be your best guess for what time > it really is.

This only holds under additional assumptions, as for example that the errors of the watches are independent and normally distributed. In general this is not a good idea.

<comment><USER17> If you know that errors are dependent or if you know the distribution of the error, you can make an even better guess, but that certainly doesn't make averaging "in general not a good idea."

You're going to make assumptions whatever way you do it, e.g. using confirmation (two watches indicating the same time) to indicate truth assumes that error is fairly rare (out of 3 watches only 1 will be wrong at any given time) and that it's discontinuous rather than a smooth drift over time. No assumptions, no conclusions.

Main point: more watches is always better, and three is not a magic number.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm still not sure how they are making money.

<comment><USER19> They sell color books. You have to (according to them lol) buy a new one every few years because the samples fade and change over time.

<comment><USER20> Color fading is a real concern in many industries. I have an old munsell book (the standard for coloring dirt) from a retired geologist and it's no where near the color in new copies.

<comment><USER21> TIL there's a standard for dirt color matching.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I do software in the sign and digital graphics industry. We rely on Pantone to make sure what we produce matches what the customer (usually somewhere else in the world) expects. For this reason it is incredibly helpful to have a standard. The swatch books are expensive though.

</comment><comment><USER23> No, Bloomberg, I will not turn off my Ad Blocker.

</comment><comment><USER24> TL; DR: Pantone has a monopoly on print color standards. If you want printed colors to match screen colors, you have little choice but to use Pantone.</comment>


Directed Edge driving recommendations in Microsoft's MediaRoom CES demo - <AUTHOR> http://blog.directededge.com/2010/01/07/directed-edge-driving-recommendations-in-microsofts-mediaroom-ces-demo/ <comment><USER2> Congrats! That's great news. How'd that partnership come about? Did they contact you, or the other way around?

</comment><comment><USER3> Mediaroom is surprisingly awesome. My in-laws have it via UVerse, as do much of their family. A bunch of them were telling me over Christmas how easy they found it to do things like share a photo slideshow across every room in the house, etc.

</comment><comment><USER4> Well, I'll be damned. If you hit me with one more of these, I will be forced to revise my opinion, which I absolutely hate to do.

</comment><comment><USER5> Hey congrats scott. that is brilliant news

</comment><comment><USER6> Congratulations, Scott :)</comment>


Ship of Theseus - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus <comment><USER2> A thing's identity doesn't reside in the object itself, but rather the person or persons doing the identifying. Also, identity can be split into elements. The name, as in "Ship of Theseus," can be swapped out independently of the elements, though doing so tends to lead to confusion.

The example given of the sock with the hole in it: assume it's the only sock that the owner has with that hole. If the hole goes away, then it no longer has a unique identity, it's just another sock in his drawer. What gave it an identity in the first place was the fact that it was different.

With a ship, its identity appears to be tied to its designation. If you carried on replacing all the parts of the ship, it'd still be the Ship of Theseus, because that's what it's called. Back in the day when I owned a desktop computer, several times this would actually happen. Every component would got swapped out over a period of time. It carried on being my computer throughout all of it.

A computer's identity can be arguably split into two main elements, a computer and a system. If I replace the operating system and wipe all the data, using it feels completely different. Yet it's the same computer, just running different software. If you replaced the crew of a ship with a different crew, then the ship would operate differently, say, in battle, but it would still be the same ship.

You could restore the old system / crew and retrieve the original functionality, but if you replaced both the hardware and the 'software', yet kept the designation, you have two different things with the same name.

A person's body has all of its cells replaced after a period of years. But we don't go around emptying the prisons of long-serving inmates on the basis that the person that committed the crime isn't the same as the person currently in jail.

One can devise conceptions of identity with varying degrees of immutability. The conundrum makes the incorrect assumption that identity itself is an immutable concept. It's not.

<comment><USER3> What I find more intriguing in this article is that whenever I click in the "Śūnyatā" reference link (by the end of the page) it moves to the column on the right side.

Would that be the same link or is it a new one?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For a somewhat practical example of such a ship:

"The detachment estimates that approximately 10–15 percent of the timber in Constitution contains original material installed during her initial construction period in the years 1795–1797"

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

</comment><comment><USER5> There's a wonderful Indian film with the same name which kind of touches on the subject - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus_(film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus_\(film\))

I would recommend the movie to the fans of cinema/indie movies.

</comment><comment><USER6> Where this question becomes practical is with the Origination clause of the US constitution. It states that any bill for raising revenue must originate in the House of Representatives. If the House passes a bill that deals with some topic, and then the Senate amends it by removing all of its' language and replacing that language with something else, did that bill still originate in the House?

See: Sissel v. United States Department of Health & Human Services

<comment><USER7> Thanks for posting this. I was about to check out as this being a bit of philosophy I have no interest in. But, I can see where at least having a name for the phenomenon makes since in circumstances like this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Works well for code projects too! Is it the same code base, even if all the lines are rewritten?

<comment><USER9> [http://graydon2.dreamwidth.org/195706.html](http://graydon2.dreamwidth.org/195706.html)

Graydon Hoare about what code he has left in Rust.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think of it like a band (Could well apply to a company too) which occasionally replaces members. So long as they replace few enough members each time that people can associate it with its previous roster, people will accept it as the same band.

Even if after 20 years of incremental changes to the band none of the original members are left it will still be considered by many to be the same band (although they will all likely lament the loss of such and such member) By being recognized as the same band it inherits many of the same rights such as performing the same songs as the previous incarnations of the band (assuming of course it owns, or pays royalties to the right holders, but that is an unrelated topic).

However if too many members change at once, or they lose a member whose presence independently defined the band then people will likely not consider it the same band.

The identity is a label applied to the set, as the set changes so does the definition of the label. For the most part assuming members of the original set do not get placed in different new sets all identifying as the original label, people will generally accept the label as applying to the new set which was formed.

I would chalk it up to people being stupid, or language being imprecise. The alternative seems to be to consider every change to the set to require a new label and be identified as a new set.

<comment><USER11> The Wikipedia article mentions a band, the Sugababes, that started with three founding members, but one by one all of them ended up leaving the band and being replaced. Is it still the same band?

An interesting twist is that the three founding members regrouped and formed a new band, with the Sugababes still in existence. Which is the real Sugababes?

<comment><USER12> A band isn't only defined by its members, though. They can have a distinct sound, a preferred genre, even various brandings and styles that make for a markedly different performance.

<comment><USER13> But those attributes are defined by the members. :)

<comment><USER14> Not really. For bands like the Sugarbabes they are defined by the producers, session musicians, composers and lyricists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> In order to experience/measure something, you must interact with it. Any interaction changes both sides. You can't experience the same ship twice.

<comment><USER16> That's not really satisfying on a human level, though. I can't take your car and claim that it's no longer "your" car since some atoms changed.

To generalize, physical identity seems to be an important part of ownership, so how does that interact with this concept?

<comment><USER15> Just accept unsatisfying, impractical truths, and despite that, allow yourself to have an illogical intuitionistic sense of things. That's what I do. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Known a bit more prosaically as Trigger's Broom in the UK.

And applies to humans, too, with our continually regenerating cells.

<comment><USER18> There's a good conversation about this, humans and cell regeneration specifically, in the movie "Waking Life" (as well as many many other great conversations about a variety of philosophies)

<comment><USER17> Is that the animated movie about dreams from ~10yrs or so back?

<comment><USER19> That's the one. :)

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The DMV solves this by saying, "The Frame".

Now I don't know what happens if I cut out the left frame rail and replace it, then cut out the right rail and replace that, then the front sub-frame, then the rear. Whichever section has a VIN plate riveted to it??

<comment><USER21> Similarly, the ATF solves this by saying "the lower receiver".

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> It reminds me about the story of a famous Japanese street food vendor, who had cooked soup out of the same pot for fifty years, every day, never stopping to clean the pot, because he never stopped cooking soup out of it. When the soup got low, he just threw in the ingredients it needed to fill the pot again. According to the story, he had been serving the same pot of soup for fifty years. Pardon if I have murdered this story, and I have no idea where it comes from. Just something I read one time, and remembered.

<comment><USER23> In USA: "marry ketchup bottles"

[http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB961626630107390259](http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB961626630107390259)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The answer depends on perspective and subjectivity. If I took the ship across the ocean last year, and now I take the fully-parts-replaced version this year, I'm still calling it by the same name. In my mind it is "same", unless I decide to get especially academic about it. It is both same and not-same. Meh. Not the most interesting of paradoxes. ;)

<comment><USER25> Its more interesting when you consider how it applies to living beings. If I replace every part of a dog with cybernetics, is it still the same dog? At what point does it stop being the same dog? The brain? The nervous system? Other various senses? How much of identity is tied up in how a creature perceives its environment? What happens to the creature when we alter that perception or enhance it?

<comment><USER26> is identity even real? such thinking can be construed as a 'reductio ad absurdum' argument that it is not...

how can we even tell if it is a concrete concept? its very poorly defined to begin with too...

<comment><USER27> I'd guess it's about as real as most other concepts we use - fuzzy at the borders and breaking down when you focus on them too hard. It's like asking when a chair stops being a chair - when it has 3 legs? 2 legs? When it's angled 45 degrees? 30 degrees? Etc.

I suspect that identity is just another way of grouping things by properties, in this case including sharing spatial and temporal history - I am the same I was 10 minutes ago, because I'm made mostly of what I was made 10 minutes ago, and I moved somewhat continuously through space, etc.

<comment><USER26> yeah, it falls out of how the brain functions i think... there are a bunch of classifiers in there, and its not always easy to map what they do to reasoning. there are loads of fuzzy concepts like this with day-to-day utility which are very difficult to define accurately in a way that unambiguously communicates intent to another person.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> As Paul Graham pointed out in his essay on philosophy, it depends on your definitions. Here, it depends on your definition of "same". But that makes it a much less interesting discussion about different (mostly unstated) definitions of the word "same", rather than a profound philosophical discussion about something...

<comment><USER14> No, it's obviously still a profound philosophical discussion about identity.

Saying "it depends on your definitions" sidesteps the whole issue of how you come to these definitions, and what impact they have on how we view reality. In other words, it hides the profound issues under the rug.

For example, a common argument against moving your brain information to a robot as a way to "live forever", is that then it's no longer you (since your physical brain ceazes to live).

The Ship of Theseus sidesteps this argument, since an example of it would be replacing your neurons one by one with artificial ones -- with you awake.

With such a procedure, you feel exactly the same at all times, and you have no recourse to saying your personality was merely "transfered".

It feels like you were the physical person X, and after these steps, you were the same person with a robotic brain, but with no abrapt change or loss of consciousness, just a continuous process.

<comment><USER28> All right, let me put it this way: There may be a profound philosophical question about identity. However, because of the problems of the differing, unstated definitions of "same", almost all of the discussion is really about the assumed definitions of words, and is therefore almost completely a waste of time. It _appears_ to be about the profound philosophical question, but it's mostly not.

<comment><USER14> It still is profound whatever one's definition of same. Pick a definition of same. Make it as precise as you want. It might be totally compatible with some of those definitions you come up with. For all others, The Ship Of Theseus still makes a powerful questioning tool that raises insights to question those "single, precise" definitions.

There's a naive (mostly anglosaxon/empiricist) idea that philosophy is just noise because of the conflicting definitions of things.

Whereas it's the total opposite: questioning and disecting the definitions we use (and what they presuppose), is the exact role of philosophy.

The Ship of Theseus (and countless others ideas and paradoxes) are tools in questioning those beliefs and "definitions".

Those examples don't stem because of our confusion about what is same -- they are tools to probe what we consider same, to poke holes in our idea of sameness.

And I call the objection to this naive, because having a "single objective definition" is not something possible (like science doesn't claim to know some ultimate "reality", just to make ever better models and approximations of it).

We have to live with various ideas about identity/sameness, and we need philosophy and arguments like The Ship, to question them and see their partial nature.

<comment><USER28> I don't think there's a "single objective definition". There are multiple valid definitions. What I'm saying is that most of the discussion about The Ship Of Theseus is really discussions about the definition of "same", but most of the time, people don't realize that that's what they're arguing about. This means that most of the argument is wasted time.

Sure, have a discussion about different definitions of sameness. (Ironic, that.) Poke holes in the various definitions. That's fine. Just don't have conversations where two different people have different implicit definitions of sameness, and each sees the other's position as clearly stupid, because the other person is using an unstated, but different, definition of "same".

<comment><USER14> > _Just don 't have conversations where two different people have different > implicit definitions of sameness, and each sees the other's position as > clearly stupid, because the other person is using an unstated, but > different, definition of "same"_

As you say, discussing X while having 2 different ideas of X is obviously wrong -- people practically talking past each other.

But that's only if the discussion is not philosophical but just a practical, everyday conversation.

That's because in the latter people talk and talk about X while X goes unexamined, where the essense of a philosophical conversation is to examine X, and investigation how each one defines it, and what might be correct or wrong about any singular definition.

A non-philosophical discussion would be: \- X song is the same as Y, they stole it. \- No it's not, they just have the same chord changes. \- They should come out with their own, they're copycats.

Whereas a philosophical disussion would be in the vein of: "what is sameness?" (itself), "when we can say that a song is stolen from another?" etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The best enunciation of this was the opening scene of John Dies At The End: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-W_P7rMQRA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-W_P7rMQRA)

</comment><comment><USER30> It has been said that every cell in your body is replaced every 7 to 10 years. This is not actually true, since brain cells aren't replaced but if it was, we would all be "Ships of Theseus".

</comment><comment><USER31> Is the ship a reference object or a value object?</comment>


N8n.io – Workflow automation alternative to Zapier - <AUTHOR> https://n8n.io/ <comment><USER2> Thanks a lot for posting! Even though I had actually planned to post it later myself ;-) Happy to see my project finally live on hacker news!

n8n is a free node-based "Open Source" (Apache 2.0 with Commons Clause) Workflow Automation Tool. It can be self-hosted, easily extended, and so also used with internal tools. Currently, there is no hosted version yet but you can sign up on the website if you are interested to get informed once it is ready.

I created it initially because I realized that every time I wrote a script to automate a small task it took me a very long time. Depending on the task it normally involved: reading documentation, writing code, committing to Github, deploying on a server, error reporting, SSL, make sure it restarts on a crash, and so on. So even very small tasks took at least half a day or day till everything was up and running properly. Existing Open Source solutions were not up to the task and also commercial ones like Zapier did not work for various reasons. Some being that they do not work well with in-house tools or complicated tasks and it gets expensive quite fast, ...

So hope n8n is as helpful for other people as it is for me. Also, all help with further improving the project and create more integrations is very welcome!

The project website with the nodes which exist and example workflows:

[https://n8n.io](https://n8n.io)

You can find the source code on Github: [https://github.com/n8n-io/n8n](https://github.com/n8n-io/n8n)

The whole project is written in TypeScript and uses Vue for the frontend. So it should be easily extendable for everybody with web development experience.

If you have any problems, questions or need an integration which does not exist yet you can post it to the forum: [http://community.n8n.io](http://community.n8n.io)

Documentation can be found here: [https://docs.n8n.io](https://docs.n8n.io)

Your feedback is highly appreciated!

Thanks a lot!!

UPDATE:

[Sorry are unable to answer any questions right now as it always displays me that I am posting to fast. Will answer as soon as HN allows me!]

<comment><USER3> > n8n is a free node-based "Open Source" (Apache 2.0 with Commons Clause)

Commons Clause is not Open Source. It is free-of-charge (for certain uses) source-available proprietary software.

<comment><USER4> I understand that developers need to earn money for their work. => Another license option to use is the the one of UI.Vision and others: Split the product in an Open-Source core (e. g. GPL license) and a proprietary part for the commercial "PRO" features of the product.

<comment><USER2> Yes is an option but one I would hate to take. It would mean that I have to artificially cripple the product for all users just to eventually earn money from a few. That was the opposite of what I wanted. I wanted that everybody can use it for free which gives the product the chance to get used by very many people and so become amazing for all users over time. So ended up with the Commons Clause as it aligned the most with my vision.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Zapier has about 1,000 integrations, more than any of their closest competitors and at a price that is far less than others in their space. What you've done here is great! The UX seems better than Zapier and the extensibility & community approach terrific. The key, though, is going to be adding integrations rapidly. I might also stress:

\- Bulk actions. \- Sync actions.

And support for other programming languages (eg. python)

Hope that helps.

<comment><USER6> If it's like most things in software (and life), there's probably a long tail of niche/useless integrations in that list.

<comment><USER5> Not really. The integrations are node-up, meaning the SAAS creates its own integration as value-add to its customers; and there's some user growth that emerges from being in their catalog. But, you point is somewhat valid in that many of the integrations tend to be shallow - so apart from a few key functions it can be tough to use them for complex workflows.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Crowded space, but darn few (if any) shared source or community based solutions. Here's a several examples from a market study I did in 2018: Workato, Apiant, Inegromat, Snaplogic, CloudHQ, Boomi, Tibco, Jitterbit, AWS Lambda, Mulesoft, Tray.io, ApacheNiFi, Stringify, Adeptia, Kotive, Cazoomi, Scribesoft and several more.

I really think the community angle is unique.

<comment><USER7> Thank you for sharing this list.

It's maybe a dumb question but even after looking in some of them I usually fall back on a classic cron job + some Python scripts for automation for the flexibility. What's the biggest advantage of these services / solutions when you already have some servers available?

<comment><USER8> Ability for a non-technical user to implement and manage the automation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've seen enough of these supposedly non-programmer-friendly interfaces to judge them all guilty until proven innocent (not that many, to be honest, but I am scarred nonetheless). Looking at the video, it's not the worst I've seen. But please, I beg you (the authors here or anyone building a similar product):

\- Provide first class debugging and dry-run support. Don't make people either run in prod (as the demo video effectively does) or set up full testing environments.

\- Strict, comprehensible scoping rules. Non-programmers will have more, not less trouble with having named data propagated everywhere for reasons that aren't visually clear. Global state is still bad.

\- Don't make users think about JSON.

\- Supply auto-layout. Don't force users to manually reposition things to get a decent layout, and ideally don't let them. The demo video seems to show at least the first half in place, so that's good.

\- Version control. Possibly via...

\- Ideally an isomorphically editable text representation. You can switch between graphical and text representations and have changes propagate.

Maybe this project checks more of these boxes than I've seen so far. I'm pathologically optimistic, so there's a good chance I'll work with this enough to find out.

I don't really know why everyone wants to keep making these benighted flow- chart UIs instead of using the relatively proven Scratch UI model.

<comment><USER10> I'm curious - could you explain what you mean by the "Scratch UI"? I did some searching on Google, but there appear to be several products which use this term.

Is this what you meant? [https://scratch.mit.edu/developers](https://scratch.mit.edu/developers)

<comment><USER11> I believe they are talking about that. I've seen that methodology of UI take off lately, too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> HN usually finds a theme to complain about with any cool project. Looks like this time they picked licensing. Just wanted to say thank you for making this project. I think tech like Zapier/IFTTT are really cool, but I would never trust a closed platform of this sort.

But something like n8n I would consider using, because you've provided an escape hatch to lock-in by making the source available. I think it's totally reasonable to prevent other companies from profiting from your work. I also think it falls under the umbrella of "open source". If someone wants a truly FLOSS version of this, they're welcome to make it themselves. But they won't, they'll just complain and keep using n8n, because the licensing is good enough for 99.9% of use cases.

EDIT: I just want to point out that there's been some discussion of licensing here which I've personally found interesting and instructive. I've seen several people suggest that there is a definition of the term "open source" that is essentially universally agreed upon (that being the Open Source Initiative definition [0]), and that that is the only valid definition. I've worked in what I consider to be open source for many years, and wasn't aware that such consensus had been reached. My personal views have not changed as of yet, but my paradigm has definitely shifted. I intend to pay closer attention to how others use this term, and carefully attempt to be clear about my usage in the future. Having a single agree-upon definition of things is always valuable, and if that's where we're at I'm all for it. I'm just not convinced yet that it's actually 100% agreed upon.

That said, I think the author of n8n was pretty dang clear.

[0] [https://opensource.org/](https://opensource.org/)

<comment><USER12> There's a weird trend on HN. For proprietary products (e.g. slack) I rarely see them getting criticized for having a proprietary license. If you are fully open source, then of course they love you. But if you try to strike a compromise and give away a lot while still keeping some licensing terms to let you make money off your creation, then you'll be bombarded by complaints about your licensing.

<comment><USER13> If Microsoft started calling Windows open source, I would be pretty peeved too. The word open source here is used as a marketing term for a product that isn't in spirit or reality. Yes, the source is available; that's nice, but it's not the same.

<comment><USER14> Windows isn't free. Nor is the source available to be viewed, modified, extended, learned from, etc. Also, you're comparing one of the biggest tech companies in the world, to an individual who is trying to make a living. This is an unfair characterization on every level.

<comment><USER13> >Windows isn't free. Nor is the source available to be viewed, modified, extended, learned from, etc.

I mean, I'm just using a popular non-open source piece of software as an example, you don't really have to read into it this much. Every comparison has limits, this isn't any exception. You can substitute 'Windows' for 'Gitlab EE' which is also proprietary software with available source code.

>Also, you're comparing one of the biggest tech companies in the world, to an individual who is trying to make a living. This is an unfair characterization on every level.

The depth of someone's pockets doesn't influence the definition of open source, though. This is not a characterization at all, rather, I'm saying that using the word open source to describe software that doesn't meet the criteria is always going to upset people. There is a simple solution that costs no money: removing the word open source. It is even recommended by the folks who push common clause.[1]

I realize people are very passionate about this, but please try not to read into what I'm saying too deeply.

(Also very notably: I have absolutely _NOTHING_ against proprietary or shared source software, or developers making money; love Gitlab EE as an example. Just please be honest.)

[1]: [https://commonsclause.com/](https://commonsclause.com/)

<comment><USER14> Well...characterizing the usage as a marketing term wouldn't be relevant if the potential for making money weren't an issue here.

Even beyond that, on a human level, the attacks on an individual trying to make a living seem unnecessarily harsh. My critique is mostly about the spirit of the negative comments (not just yours, sorry), which all seem to assume malice where there likely is none. I.e. several comments here and on the github repo calling the developer a liar and coward, etc (again, not you, this just happened to be the comment I replied to)

And I think this entire discussion proves that the definition of 'open source' is not as cut and dry as some people would like. And because of that, saying 'just be honest' when someone uses one of the alternative definitions of the term seems unfair.

I've always thought that the terms FOSS exists specifically to provide some extra clarity in this regard...

And I don't know what you'd call this other than "open source" because I haven't heard the term "source available" until today, and I would have had no idea what it meant if that's what the developer had used....

<comment><USER13> >Well...characterizing the usage as a marketing term wouldn't be relevant if the potential for making money weren't an issue here.

There is nothing wrong with marketing a project, be it open source, proprietary, free, non-free, etc. I never suggested that. Just about everything is 'marketed' in some sense.

>Even beyond that, on a human level, the attacks on an individual trying to make a living seem unnecessarily harsh. My critique is mostly about the spirit of the negative comments (not just yours, sorry), which all seem to assume malice where there likely is none. I.e. several comments here and on the github repo calling the developer a liar and coward, etc (again, not you, this just happened to be the comment I replied to)

It's because there's a lot of passion involved. Even people who are pretty great open source developers have acted in a way that is perhaps not so noble if you read the flagged comments.

However, I don't think this is necessarily out of assumption of malice. The problem is, it doesn't _matter_ if the author is malicious or not. The term 'open source' carries some connotations that many people have an intuitive understanding of today. I firmly believe the very _reason_ a lot of big projects choose open source is for the marketing benefit, and imo it is not deserved if your project isn't really open source. This could seriously harm the reputation of something that took decades to build, and if that seems alarmist, well, I know I'm not alone in this sentiment.

>And I think this entire discussion proves that the definition of 'open source' is not as cut and dry as some people would like. And because of that, saying 'just be honest' when someone uses one of the alternative definitions of the term seems unfair.

>I've always thought that the terms FOSS exists specifically to provide some extra clarity in this regard...

> I don't know what you'd call this other than "open source" because I haven't > heard the term "source available" until today, and I would have had no idea > what it meant if that's what the developer had used....

The thing is, if I say something is 'open source,' you almost _certainly_ , today, will understand that to mean what it has meant for decades: the OSI definition of open source, contrary to the wishes of some (including rms, for example.) This is just the layperson's understanding. They may not have a deep understanding of licenses or permissiveness, but it comes with a sense of what a project has to offer. Being able to profit off of open source is something that people inherently understand nowadays, and it took a long time for that to happen.

The reason you wouldn't have understood another term is because there is not a common understanding for 'source available' or 'commons clause.' This is because it was not very popular in recent years, and remains relatively unpopular. It is mostly pushed by companies that built amazing open source projects and had trouble with creating a sustainable business around it.

And therein lies the contention.

\- Because of what Open Source implies, it gives projects a decent marketing boost - including, of course, the common case where they are truly open source. People rely on open source projects understanding the implications and knowing roughly what they can do with it.

\- Commons clause doesn't imply the same things. But some companies are trying to use the term 'open source' to describe them anyways. To me, this looks a lot like trying to have cake and eat it too. It's not the same 'open source' that people have slowly grown to understand.

Of course most people won't understand why this issue has much contention, because this type of thing seems like a minor detail. In fact, many people, including me, initially found it confusing that licenses like GPL allow you to _profit_ off the work so as long as you follow the other clauses. It took me a long time to understand that this is a very important part of what makes open source special: the disconnect from the profit model. If you reconnect the development and licensing to the profit model, in my mind this is losing a key part of what makes open source so damn effective. Having many stakeholders that all profit from a project can be incredible - the Linux kernel being one such example.

People have to make money, though, and so going through the risky proposition of making truly open source software and trying to build a business around it is not always appealing. In my opinion, the obvious choice is to not make open source software. So-called "commons clause" is one option. But again, I think there is real danger in "open source" being conflated with things that nobody understands it to be.

<comment><USER14> Fair points. And it gives me a little more context into the intensity of the reactions. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Cool project. One aspect of these integration systems is that the volume and velocity of integration development is one of the main ways they show value. Zapier claims 1500+ integrations, and they have many competitor with similar counts of integrations. Somehow, they always seem to not have that thing I need.

I wonder why, in this era of Swagger / OpenAPI / Postman Collections / API Gateways ... why this is so difficult? I feel like there was a promise that integration would become more magical at a rapid clip, but as it stands it just seems like there are more options but no less headaches.

<comment><USER16> Does Datafire meet some of your requirements?

[https://github.com/DataFire/DataFire](https://github.com/DataFire/DataFire)

I've used it before and it's not too bad.

<comment><USER15> Thanks for sharing, that is definitely compelling. I like that their integrations cover lots of API methods, whereas a lot of simpler services only cover a few.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Look awesome, and although the license is definitely NOT open source (although you DO say the parts that people care the most are best-effort open source to the community), this has the potential to motivate other people to work on similar projects or suggest improvements to yours.

However... The beauty of Zapier relies on its amount of pluggable blocks. I don't think there's anyone in this market that has as many operations as Zapier and using custom blocks you can do pretty much anything. Yes I am totally a fan of Zapier as I have been using it for years! Zapier is like LEGO, there are many clones of LEGO but only one true LEGO (ouch my feet hurt just by thinking about it ;) ) I really hope you can get people to contribute more and more integrations as that's what really matters at the end of the day: The ability to use little or no-code to achieve automation between various platforms!

<comment><USER18> Zapier is propietary and prohibitively expensive. Yes, I like it -- but I'd rather support small projects like this one, even if it requires a bit more of time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> We're using n8n in production for a month now and are pretty happy with it.

Easily extendable and new integrations can be built easily.

Also helps that the author works here and is generally a great guy ;-)

<comment><USER20> Same here. Nice work!

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Nitpick but the commons clause license isn't really "open source" as much as "source-available"

</comment><comment><USER22> Super happy to see this effort and eager to check the code out soon!

As someone who relies on a lot of Zapier-style API connections, I'd love to hear more about how people approach it - how you go about managing env vars (keys/token), abstracting similar service procedures (oauth, webhooks) and generally monitoring 3rd party API endpoints for keeping the connections healthy? Any advice from Zapier / IFTTT veterans?

Edit: the n8n docs seem good and also address most of my questions [1]

[1] [https://docs.n8n.io/#/nodes](https://docs.n8n.io/#/nodes)

<comment><USER2> Yes, any advice would also be very appreciated from my side.

Great to hear that the docs are helpful! They were actually the main reason why I did not launch on Product Hunt/Hackernews earlier. It was very important for me to have something in place which is at least reasonable. Nothing more annoying than bad docs. Anyway, still a lot on my list to add documentation for. But it will get better, I promise!

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> question: if I have a project management software saas, and I want to integrate n8n to make automations (for example: when a task is marked as completed), is the license valid for this use?

<comment><USER24> Also interested in this example and the answer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is really neat! I'm generally prohibited from using stuff like Zapier at work, since we handle a lot of client data and passing it through any third party opens up a Pandora's Box of legal reviews. The self-hosted nature of this would bypass a lot of that hassle.

Public Service Announcement for anyone at BigCorp: Microsoft has it's own tool in this space called Microsoft Flow[1]. It's not as feature-filled as Zapier, but it works in a pinch and you get access to it automatically as part of an Office/Microsoft 365 license. So unless your corporate IT has gone to great lengths to explicitly disable access to it, you can leverage it to make your life at least a bit easier.

[1] [https://flow.microsoft.com/en-us/](https://flow.microsoft.com/en-us/)

</comment><comment><USER26> Leaving the UI aside, how is this different from Huginn? I have a few Huginn agents running menial tasks, but I find time consuming to debug issues. Does N8n have more connectors? What are the strengths compared with Huginn?

</comment><comment><USER27> How are you funded? Because this honestly looks quite complete.

<comment><USER28> I work two days a week for a startup to earn my living and the other time I spend on other projects like n8n. That is why progress is not always as fast as I hope it would be. That is why I also hope to make money with n8n as some point to work full time and make real progress.

<comment><USER29> Wow how do you do this? Can you divulge the specifics?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Sorry unsure, but perhaps this is similar?

[https://stdlib.com](https://stdlib.com)

> Standard Library: APIs as Building Blocks

</comment><comment><USER31> Open source or not (I'm so confused) this works really well. Solid job.

<comment><USER32> From other comments in this thread, it's apparent this is "source-available" but not "open source" in the sense of a free software [0] or OSI-compatible [1] license.

But the usual benefits of free software, like what has been possible with the Linux kernel, GNU software, and so much more, are not going to be possible to the same degree with this software.

[0] [https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free- sw.en.html](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html) [1] [https://opensource.org/osd-annotated](https://opensource.org/osd-annotated)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Might end up difficult to talk about this project. I was pronouncing it "Nathan" till I found the actual name in the docs.

<comment><USER34> haha, same! I can see it eventually being renamed to Nathan

<comment><USER33> It would have to be Naaaaathan, then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> How is this different from node-red?

<comment><USER36> Node-RED targets a different market than this product and Zapier.

Loosely speaking Node-RED has a superset of the functionality this project has, sacrificing customization/generality for simplicity.

Zapier and n8n interface with the user via a catalog model.

Without needing to know what is going on behind the scenes or seeing any code, a person can follow a recipe and bolt together (certain) APIs to achieve business requirements.

The "certain" is an important to note because you will never achieve 100% coverage for your "API glue" for a mid size to large organization "out of the box" with any tool.

That being said, if using a tool like any of the above mentioned as a custom workflow engine (knowing you will be writing software from the onset) or as _a_ solution and not a limiting factor or "silver bullet", they can be very useful!

Other tools that can achieve similar results (using Directed Acyclic Graphs, where the nodes represent the execution of your code for a desired pre- programmed task) are Airflow, Flink, NiFi, Dagster, Dagobah, Celery, and many more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> In terms of the licensing debate... Did you bother to actually read the Common Clause FAQ? Here are the first 2 FAQ entries:

"What is Commons Clause? The Commons Clause is a license condition drafted by Heather Meeker that applies a narrow, minimal-form commercial restriction on top of an existing open source license to transition the project to a source- availability licensing scheme. The combined text replaces the existing license, allowing all permissions of the original license to remain except the ability to "Sell" the software as defined in the text.

This Clause is not intended to replace licenses of existing open source projects in general, but to be used by specific projects to satisfy urgent business or legal requirements without resorting to fully "closing source".

Is this "Open Source"? No.

"Open source", has a specific definition that was written years ago and is stewarded by the Open Source Initiative, which approves Open Source licenses. Applying the Commons Clause to an open source project will mean the source code is available, and meets many of the elements of the Open Source Definition, such as free access to source code, freedom to modify, and freedom to re-distribute, but not all of them. So to avoid confusion, it is best not to call Commons Clause software "open source." "

</comment><comment><USER38> Have you thought about teaming up with an ESB like [https://zato.io/](https://zato.io/) ? Could really help both of you, I think.

</comment><comment><USER39> Thanks for this! I was just yesterday looking for good workflow automation tools, and was leaning towards Huginn, but I will definitely check this out.

<comment><USER2> Great to hear! If you have any problems simply post them in the forum I try to get back to you asap (sorry, will maybe be right ow longer than normal as I have a lot to follow up right now).

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Do I understand this correctly?

\- I'm allowed to setup an instance and charge clients to use it.

\- I'm NOT allowed to host the instance for clients and charge for that hosting.

</comment><comment><USER41> How do you compare to StackStorm ? You mentioned other similar solutions as less adequate, but I'm curious to get a quick comparison.

<comment><USER42> This would be a nice addition to the website, comparing the solution with each of its competitors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I really don't like when people say they are the "x" of "x" or the alternative to "x", doesn't that just drive people to look at "x". Sure it gets the idea across but there are other words to do that. Otherwise, great looking product

<comment><USER44> It's not always that cut and dry. If X is already well known, it actually has the opposite effect -- it capitalizes off of X's brand and familiarity and drives people to the new product. It's a common technique (that is frequently misused) in marketing and advertising.

I don't know if X=Zapier here is that effective, but I recognized it right away, and clicked the link to learn more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Good god Jan, you are amazing! Liked what you did with "link fish" and "ninja crib" but this takes things to a whole new level. I would love the chance to learn from you!!! Congrats, I'm pretty sure this project will be a big success

<comment><USER2> Thanks a lot! But probably not the right person to learn from. But that is one of the great things about the internet that you can now really always learn from the best people in their field thanks to Udemy & co.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> This reminds me a lot of a visual code based data processing tool developed out of the NSA. Apache NiFi. The difficulty with all these low/no code environments is getting scale and maintaining enough widget blocks for it to be productive quickly.

</comment><comment><USER47> This really looks like a great software and seems that the guy behind it knows what his doing. Additionally being open and fair about the licence. I will try it ASAP and wish the project gets BIG.

</comment><comment><USER48> This looks interesting, though Zapier is a little more intuitive interface- wise. Overall though, nice work!

</comment><comment><USER49> Looks awesome!! Bookmarked, planning to play w/ this. Kudos for launching something useful. :)

</comment><comment><USER50> What are your thoughts on StdLib.com?

</comment><comment><USER51> I love how you licensed it. I'm seeing a trend in how developers are being thoughtful about the licensing and how it will help monetize their efforts later. Excited to see how this goes.

<comment><USER52> Likely badly - this doesn't meet the OSI open source defintion, and while interesting, many developers are reluctant to contribute to various shared source / source available proprietary core products.

<comment><USER2> Which I think is quite interesting.

I can totally understand if a person says "I do not want to contribute code to a project for free when somebody else can make money with it". But then they can not contribute code to any OSI approved Open Source licensed project. Because with that license everybody can make money with it. And very often is that somebody the wrong one (like for example Amazon).

The only difference with the Commons Clause is that now still somebody can make money. But that somebody is now the entity behind the project. And they normally put that money right back into the project (by for example hiring developers) and make so sure that it improves and stays around a long time. So I personally would prefer to contribute code to a project which uses the Commons Clause then one which does not.

<comment><USER53> >I can totally understand if a person says "I do not want to contribute code to a project for free when somebody else can make money with it"

It's not so much that somebody can make money with it. It's that you, the project maintainer, will be reaping all the monetary benefits for yourself. With open source software theoretically anyone can benefit. If you don't like what the maintainer is doing, you can fork it. In this case, though I believe the commons clause does allow you to fork it, you would still be the one reaping any monetary benefits from the fork.

In my opinion the biggest issue with the commons clause is it no longer makes logical sense to fork the project. If the project dies because you couldn't make any money off it, and you don't go back and relicense your work, the code is practically dead as an 'open source' project. Well, that and that the consulting clause seems to be just sitting there waiting for a major court case to decide what it truly means (even the lawyer who led drafting the clause admitted as such [1]).

[1] [https://github.com/fossas/commons- clause/issues/4#issuecomme...](https://github.com/fossas/commons- clause/issues/4#issuecomment-415653257)

<comment><USER51> If it dies, there can be a point where the maintainer can re-license under more open terms, no? Until that point, the work and contributions are ensured to help sustain the creator.

I'm planning on releasing my project under similar terms. I'm not particularly interested in community contributions, but rather for there to be trust in ensuring privacy and security. Sometimes, there isn't a one-size-fits-all with the available OSI licenses and I appreciate what op has done to do his best to find what works well for him and the community.

<comment><USER53> It's less a community in that case than potential customers. Your creating a product, which is fine, but words like 'open source' and 'community' are quite misleading.

<comment><USER14> The words 'community' and 'customers' are not mutually exclusive and using the word community to refer to your customers is not misleading in the slightest...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Can someone possibly summarize why this doesn't fit the strict definition of open source? What important rights are missing?

<comment><USER55> I'm one of the people who subscribes to the Open Source Initiative's definition[1] of the term "Open Source". On that basis, the "Commons Clause" applied to the license of this software discriminates against fields of endeavor. This makes it a "source available" license to me, and not an "Open Source" license.

[1] [https://opensource.org/osd](https://opensource.org/osd)

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> > I hereby grant anybody the right to do consulting/support without prior > permission as long as it is less than 30.000 USD per year.

technical note: USD uses commas to denote thousands. So, in USD 30.000 == $30 which isn't worth the time spent to do the research to pick up the first phone call.

Social note: in many US cities $30k isn't enough to survive. In the US it's certainly not enough to live _well_. So, you're basically saying "Hey, I give you permission to make an important contribution to the success and community of this project as long as you're willing to take an absolutely CRAP salary for it."

that's.... not really cool.

I don't think it should matter how much a support person can make supporting your project. The only way a support person will be crazy successful financially is if your tool is ALSO crazy successful. It's a mutually beneficial situation. Don't limit them. Their success is your success.

<comment><USER2> Sorry for the confusion. The 30k was just some random amount to make it easy for most people. And did honestly not expect that a lot of people's income would come to 100% from n8n. Thought it would be one of multiple things they do and so 30k seemed like more than enough to cover the majority. Additionally did I not mean that they can ever make more. I simply wrote that up to that amount they do not even have to say anything. In the next sentence it additionally says: "If you have bigger things planned simply write an email to firstname.lastname@example.com."

<comment><USER57> This is very reasonable, and great that you provided those clear guidelines! Too bad the poster above didn't provide the full quote. Great project!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Nit: This is not open source - it is source available.(THANK-YOU for being upfront about the license though!)

Still, I might use this, and thanks for releasing

<comment><USER2> Yes you are correct. Wrote an extra section about it here in the docs: [https://docs.n8n.io/#/faq?id=license](https://docs.n8n.io/#/faq?id=license)

Great to hear!

<comment><USER55> I think it's disingenuous of you to call it "Open Source" and I think the distinction matters to more people than you think it does.

<comment><USER59> > Conversely, Richard Stallman argues the obvious meaning of term "open > source" is that the source code is public/accessible for inspection, without > necessarily any other rights granted, although the proponents of the term > say the conditions in the Open Source Definition must be fulfilled.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source#%22Open%22_versus_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source#%22Open%22_versus_%22free%22_versus_%22free_and_open%22)

<comment><USER55> I fall into the "...conditions in the Open Source Definition..." camp. I think many "source available" projects ride on the coattails of the goodwill associated with the term "Open Source".

<comment><USER59> You can fall to whatever side you wish, but calling someone disingenuous for siding otherwise does not show much of, indeed, goodwill, nor is it just.

<comment><USER60> The capitalization of "Open Source" makes it a proper noun or adjective which means it refers to a specific thing. This is why the Open Source Initiative (OSI) always uses "Open Source". You know they are referring to open source as defined by them. "open source" would be referring to the general concept which depending on interpretation could include shared source.

In my view using the proper vs common version of "open source" places this into a disingenuous attempt to be associated with open source as defined by the OSI.

<comment><USER59> In my view responding immediately with clear clarification of the degree of the code openness, right under the title of the website, places this into this as something which isn't remotely disingenuous. In my view seeing this as disingenuous is, quit frankly, odd.

It is also goes against the site comment's guideline (as well as general sane rule) of: Assume good faith.

<comment><USER55> Here's a concrete example of the connotation in action: I wouldn't have clicked thru to the comments or the project's site if the title of this posting was "Source-Available Alternative for Zapier".

I saw "Open Source" and assumed, as I suspect many people did, that it was talking about the Open Source Initiative definition of Open Source. Intended or not, those two words carry a connotation for a lot of people. I'd rather not see that connotation watered-down, either.

<comment><USER61> Then only click on links that say "Free Software". OSI redefined "Open Source" post-facto, and it has always been somewhat ambiguous. Free Software has always been unambiguously "Free as in Freedom Software".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Wow, this is a lot of work. Thanks a lot for open-sourcing it!

<comment><USER63> Only, it is not open sourced: [https://docs.n8n.io/#/faq?id=is-n8n-really- open-source](https://docs.n8n.io/#/faq?id=is-n8n-really-open-source)

Deceptive tactics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> At the risk of sounding flippant: the pipe operator.</comment>


Not a buzz word but real AI for marketing segmentation - <AUTHOR> https://ghostwriter.ai/2020/05/18/ai-marketing-personalization-how-to-get-the-most-from-it/ <comment><AUTHOR> I'm bored reading about AI as a buzz word. It happens because people who are writing are not using it! It is real, and I use it for personalization and segmentation.</comment>


How I converted 82% of my traffic to registered users - <AUTHOR> http://alephz.com/blog/5735995932672000/how-i-converted-82-percent-my-traffic-registered-users

<comment><USER2> Why such a complex password? Kind of an overkill IMO.</comment>


What should we learn from Shellshock? An Internet Perspective - <AUTHOR> http://blog.level3.com/threat-labs/what-should-we-learn-from-shellshock-an-internet-perspective/

<comment><USER2> The page kept refreshing automatically every second and it adds no interesting points to what was widely known about shell shock in the days after the event.</comment>


SharePoint To Run Enterprise 2.0? - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/sharepoint_to_run_enterprise_2.php

<comment><USER2> Could this read any more like propaganda?

<comment><USER3> Maybe, but this functionality is greatly needed with the organization I work for. We currently use SharePoint and it's utter garbage.</comment></comment>


Amazon Linux WorkSpaces - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-amazon-linux-workspaces/ <comment><USER2> But no linux client for workspaces? Anyone know if one is in the works? I see MacOsx is supported, as well as chromebooks, so it would seem to be a short hop...

</comment><comment><USER3> Cool but I still prefer my local laptop :)</comment>


Right-Wing Media Outlets Duped by a Middle East Propaganda Campaign - <AUTHOR> https://www.thedailybeast.com/right-wing-media-outlets-duped-by-a-middle-east-propaganda-campaign <comment><USER2> The irony if the internet is the wretched signal-to-noise ratio.

</comment><comment><USER3> > sites like Newsmax

As recommended by Donald Trump: [https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/12798842130559262...](https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1279884213055926272)

> .@FoxNews weekend afternoons is the worst! Getting into @CNN and MSDNC > territory. Watch @OANN & @newsmax instead. Much better!</comment>