DabbleDB, this YouTube video gives a great introduction to this online spreadsheet-like database. Sadly they were bought out by Twitter, never to be seen again. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCVj5RZOqwY
Sounds a bit like airtable
Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?
351–360 of 837 posts
Re: Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?
#352Earlier quoted context omitted.
> electron eats so much cpu & memory simply because it's > still a web browser, it has to support all those 20 years > of HTML/CSS history and it was designed to do so for 10s > of tabs, so it has a lot of caches and other things. XULRunner does the same thing, includes, in addition, a full XML GUI language and assorted technologies and the full runtime distribution, on my Windows10 system, including debugging, crash…
I often wonder why/how xulrunner has descended into obscurity while electron has blossomed. Anyone have input on that?
Wasn't xulrunner based on XPCOM which Mozilla deprecated? I think this is one of the technical reasons for its decline, but I think the biggest reason was timing.
When xulrunner was being developed there wasn't the same interest in desktop software. It seems like Chromium reached a point where you could build desktop-class software, but the distribution model wasn't right. Someone then decided to adapt Chromium to solve the distribution problem and you have Electron.
If Firefox had evolved to allow the tipping point experience that Chrome did, then you might well have seen xulrunner be that thing. It was years ahead of itself, but perhaps you could question the focus of the folks on the Mozilla side who were spread across so many concepts/ areas compared to the folks at Google - but I think that's for a different thread.
Re: Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?
#353Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I do keep wondering how Thunderbird can be so slow This is a frequently heard complaint, but I can't imagine under what circumstances this would happen. I have hundreds of thousands of mails in tbird, in various accounts and folders. It's never struck me as slow. And its search (one of the features i use most) is simply fast.
perhaps put your hardware and some benchmark numbers so people can compare? if something takes 2 seconds, you might consider that "fast" and others "slow". loads of things i think are slow i realize others don't notice (or care).
Apparently load time is 1.5-2 seconds. I swear it often feels slower than that. shrugs That's not bad.
The rendering corruption/lag issue with scrolling only happens while scrolling a message while in split-pane view, not when the message is maximized in its own tab.
Re: Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?
#354Knox, the macOS menu-bar encrypted DMG manager.
Re: Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?
#35580 or 160 Gb 5th/6th gen iPod w/ Rockbox!
Re: Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?
#356Qmodem Not really, except: I was thinking the other day that massive communities like Facebook and Reddit suffer because EVERYONE's allowed in, to an unlimited degree. Everything reverts to the newbie state and every sh*t post can define the threads. Remember dial-up? BBSes had limited lines and you'd have to set your (non-multi-tasking) computer to redial so you could visit your BBS. Moderators, paying members would…
BBSes have a sense of locality in that everyone is either in your LATA, or is spending a lot of money on long distance (remember that?) to visit.
BBSes also were not primarily fedgov privacy harvesting honeypots (mostly...) and that had interesting social interaction effects when the sysop was just some dude down the road instead of some NSA spook or marketing droid.
I also remember door games like TW2000 were a lot more fun than the modern "you must send us microtransactions of cash because your friends do" modern social games. Inherently slow empire building is also more social than spending money on a fake farm or the tired old FPS model.
Re: Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?
#357Earlier quoted context omitted.
It does seem somewhat paranoid. Might be useful to exclude certain routes with an easy interface, but tremendously harmful by seemingly legitimizing the myth of “no-go” areas that has recently become a favorite talking point of the alt-right in my (perfectly safe) country.
I work with many foreign women who have no idea the safe and dangerous areas of our city. You might consider from their point of view the value of such a service, rather than worrying about more meta-tribal political battles. Some areas of my city have higher harassment and crime rates, as a man this is less concerning for me, but it's something many women need to take much more seriously.
Well, I guess it differs from country to country. Here, people would consider me a paternalistic macho for suggesting women should stay away from this or that area.
Also, is Natalya a male name?
Re: Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?
#358* Windows Phone. We need a third viable option in the mobile space. This week we are concerned about the loss of a browser engine, recognizing this is unhealthy for the market. Windows Phone was terrific in many ways and recent concepts by fans such as @boxnwhisker (Harry Dohyun Kim) [1] show how beautiful the Metro design could be today. * Microsoft Image Composer. A little known sprite-oriented graphic arts program…
> Windows phone The gigants buy up competitors and bury it, shot down the project. We would have more freedom and viable options as consumers if not the big companies such as Facebook, Google buy up the competition. It should be illegal to do this. The world is a more poorer marketplace because of this.
If you make it illegal to buy companies, people won't start startups.
Re: Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?
#359* Windows Phone. Fantastic UI, and coupled with the Lumia, it was an awesome user experience. * The old Winamp, with all the intricate shortcuts that I had memorized. * Windows XP itself. I have been on Linux for years, and XP was the last Windows I used alongside it (for MSOffice). XP had reached the peak in terms of being able to control the desktop using the keyboard. And then the downslide started.
I know a lot of people who loved Windows XP, but I always hated it. Especially compared to Ubuntu, it felt like the past. Having to hunt down drivers and install them before any hardware started working was a pain, and after I tried Ubuntu and it auto-detected my wifi card and sound card, that was the end of any respect I had for Windows XP. And that's not even mentioning the number of times I had to call the phone number and read my license key to the robot to get my activation to work.
It wasn't until Vista came out before I could go back to Windows and not feel like I was taking a step backwards in time.
Re: Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?
#360Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not only this is not recent, it has nothing to do with politics or ideology, at all. No-go zones have been used all over the world for decades.
Not all over the world. I'm in Seattle and I'd probably have to drive to Chicago or Tijuana to find a place I wouldn't feel safe driving through.
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