What are your thoughts on the fact that 90% of the comments here are something to the effect of “there is no sense in personally investing in using Tables since google will shut it down in x years”?
Just kidding. I do think it's a very fair concern for people to have. Google has that reputation. But honestly, many things on HN are from startups that may go away. And it isn't just Google. I was a huge fan of Apple's Aperture, for example, and they let that die on the vine.
For us, we think there is a real need for this kind of product. And we hope the one we built works well for our users. The team is really invested in the product. We plan to do all we can to make it successful.
> we think there is a real need for this kind of product.
I believe the comments covered that as well - this feels like a new flavor matching existing products. With the lack of trust in Google to keep it alive, combined with the fact that it just doesn't look to be innovative... it simply does not sound compelling.
If we got it wrong and there is more to it than "Google's attempt at AirTable", then perhaps the communication on what this product is supposed to be has missed the mark.
> If we got it wrong and there is more to it than "Google's attempt at AirTable", then perhaps the communication on what this product is supposed to be has missed the mark.
You say Airtable. Others have said Monday.com. Others have said Asana and Notion, etc.
The fact that there are a lot of products in this space -- in my opinion -- shows that there is a real need. It also shows that no one has quite got it right. Of course there are similarities between our product and others. "Tables of data" is not a new concept. "No-code" is not new.
This launch is our first step. We expect to grow with our users. And we hope we can delight them.
Wind, ice, squirrels, birds, snakes and trees are going to cause power lines to fail and create sparks so while perfectly maintained power lines will fail less often failures will still occur. If the world is a tinderbox from now on there is a choice to be made between energized overhead power lines and no risk of fire.
Those are other factors that cause sparks from power lines that are independent of maintenance. sparks are going to occur whether the towers are replaced with brand new ones every 10 years or if they leave them until there starts to be problems and then they go look to see what needs replacing.
Yes. The aviation system produced the human pilot who was able to transfer their skills and experience from all previous landings to this new unusual one. I do believe another equally as well trained pilot would have been able to pull it off as well. What would a computer program have done?
Perhaps pilots of previous generations could do this but, having trained numerous pilots for international airlines, as well as pilots for "fee-for-departure" (regional) airlines in the US, I wonder how many crews are up there that could competently handle most catastrophic events. Though I didn't train him directly, the pilot who crashed the Atlas 767 was pushed through the training program I worked for. Described as a "train wreck" in articles, his ability level was characteristic of others I trained (which I regret). Major US carriers do well screening their pilots but, at lower tiers of US aviation employment, I wonder if more automation would be the safer choice.
You would think we wouldn’t have an endless string of 0-day exploits for operating systems as well but here we are, for the last 25 years. It should be a simple and logical problem as well.
An operating system has to be able to handle arbitrary data, arbitrary network traffic, and arbitrary user input, with the goal of enabling its operator to perform arbitrary computation.
That might be a slightly less tractable problem than controlling a fixed set of flight systems to maneuver an aircraft with a fixed set of degrees of freedom.
Definitely not to understate the complexity of flight systems software at all, but the analogy to operating systems seems unhelpful.
The Carnot efficiency does drop as T_c increases, so all else being equal, for the same amount of fuel being burned, you'll get less energy. However, more importantly, at higher temperatures, a given volume of air at the same pressure contains less oxygen. All else being equal, at higher ambient temperatures, you're burning less fuel. For a turbocharged engine, you could increase boost to counter-act the reduced density, but that increases both mechanical and thermal stresses within the engine.
Anyway, I think the reduction of oxygen density is the primary driver for reduction in power as ambient temperatures rise.
The engine indeed makes less power, but since the air density is lower, you also have much less drag. (I know that for cars, the drag reduction dominates the power efficiency).
For airplanes take-off, the lift is the issue I'd say.
As a concrete example, current Formula 1 cars reach their fastest speed at the Mexico Grand Prix, held at Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez in Mexico City. Current race record is 372.5km/h (231.5 mph)[1].
The elevation of the track is around 2200m, and as you say the loss of drag more than compensates for the loss of engine power. Though being turbo engines helps as I understand.
Yep it's lift and for some planes power loss due to less oxygen in the engine, but that highly depends on the kind of engine. You do get faster easier due to less drag but you also need to be faster until you have enough lift to take off. So maybe the takeoff run won't take that much longer, but you'll have covered a lot more distance.
I flew for the first time today in a Cessna 172. I had a hard time determining if I was climbing or descending by looking over the cowling and found myself frequently checking the altimeter and rate of climb steam gauges. To be fair it was mountainous terrain so there was no obvious horizon.
That’s funny to read, I took my first flying lesson a few weeks ago and had the exact same problem flying over completely flat terrain. I have some simulator experience which made me look at the instruments way too much, the instructor had to remind me continuously to stop doing that and look outside instead.
After seeing the foils finally catch on in water sports I have been wondering why there are no foil boats. Great to see someone has made it happen!
I don’t do enough miles a year boating to care about the minor amount of fossil fuels I burn. I would be really interested in the foil tech with gas powered outboard. The foil boat must be must much more fuel efficient with a gas motor?
Never heard it was a software bug? Lack of maintenance allowed tree branches to grow under transmission lines which sag the hotter they get and so on a hot summer day with record system loads one transmission line tripping caused a cascading outage.
Read the Wikipedia page, sure the system operators in MISO didn’t get some alarms but blaming the whole thing on that is pretty lame. There were multiple causes and not
Getting alarms was just one of 10 things that went wrong.
