skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Show HN: Airtable MCP – Connect Airtable with Al tools using natural language
Hi HN! My name is Rashid.

I built an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server that integrates Airtable with Claude and other AI-powered editors (Cursor, Claude Code, Cline, Zed, etc.). It enables you to query, create, update, and delete Airtable records directly using natural language.

Features include:
• Base and schema management • Advanced record filtering and retrieval
• Data migration between Airtable tables
• Simple commands for direct data manipulation

Check it out live here: https://smithery.ai/server/@rashidazarang/airtable-mcp/tools

The project is open-source on GitHub: https://github.com/rashidazarang/airtable-mcp

I’d greatly appreciate your feedback!
Sure, but money isn’t everything, and not everybody weighs their values the same way as you. Maybe they can justify it. Dishwashers are convenient, but you have to admit that paying someone else to put your dishes into the dishwasher is even more convenient.
Is SSO salvageable at all? It seems like the idea of just logging into different accounts is fine.

Also just the idea of connecting your accounts together such that you can get megacompromised is foundationally riskier
That sucks. Treat yourself better.
And you may get hit by an airplane falling from the sky. Yet people don't stay home because of that. It's a risk assessment. The risk of getting ban from digital payment is not zero, but low enough that the convenience wins out. I haven't carried cash for at least a year, and almost don't carry physical cards nowadays, only my phone. Can I be locked out? for sure. Do I care? Not yet. You are different, of course. I don't tell you what you should do.
Five fourths out of ten?
You can find plenty of examples just from The Beatles
You're right. A "batteries included" device can't be sold for the actual R&D and engineering costs of the device, so you're either going to lose money on each sale, or not sell many at all; and either way that leads to anti-consumer behaviors.

Ramble follows, feel free to ignore

the AIY kits were "on clearance" when i got them, and i haven't seen similar since. But the issue isn't that people don't want to "own their data" and "DIY" - but think of all of the things you need to know how to do, to set up that device i spoke of. Linux shell. Wifi / networking. Electronics.

Figuring out the moving target of google infra services. Let's pause here; if this part is removed, we get a bunch more - running things in docker, or compiling from source, or python venvs. You have to have enough compute just laying around to do the processing of voice and tts, you still have to "hook up" all of the piping to something that can actually "do work" based on "plain english commands"

how many people on HN could set up a voice assistant without any assistance? With the archlinux wiki and stack and copilot that number might grow a magnitude or two. I do mean the full stack, but COTS hardware.

it's marginally easier these days than it was when i bought that AIY Voice Kit - transcription and TTS are downright magical, and built upon at least a decade and a half of prior art; I don't think tortoise-tts has much in common with the TI-49/A or Apple powerPC era text to speech. I don't think whisper has much in common with Dragon Naturally Speaking, or the powerPC era "short commands" that you could use with applescript.

If some startup wants to try and light investor money on fire a little slower,
it should be possible to design and build a "home assistant" device that's like a 100 TOPS tegra or functionally equivalent running linux as a "base station" and remote or satellite transceivers that have the wakewords and whatnot on them. Think like a cordless phone. Obviously to build a moat we'd use some arbitrary wireless protocol, if not proprietary. nah, it should be wifi, maybe even as part of a "home mesh wifi" system or something?

you're still gunna lose your ass trying to make something people want at a decent price.
Kaiser has this (at least did when I lived in San Diego). There's an urgent care in the same hospital as the ER.
Good question. That seems a lot more symmetric and easier to use.
Show HN: Messing Around with Neural Networks
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The game theory of political power
This is spot on, and also its worth noting there are different time/energy requirements for each of these modes.

I can text my friend in the same hobby randomly throughout the day, listen to gear reviews while I do some rote work, and shop for accessories on my lunch break.

But depending on the hobby, I might need a solid 1-2 hour block of time to really get into actually doing anything. Some are even worse if setup/cleanup or any travel is involved. And for some hobbies daylight & weather must cooperate.
Mind-blowing (to me)!
But this is just someone’s blog. All they’ve done is recount the day that they spent reading a writer’s personal papers. Why expect more than that? Why expect that one hurried day of research to have answered all of the questions?
Right because the government doesn’t do anything for its citizens and no one should pay taxes anywhere.

Unless you can provid all of the infrastructure for yourself and insure your property rights are secured from people just taking them.

You realize you are going to have to “obey the laws” of whatever country you live in?

The only way you don’t involve some government in your life is to either live in on a boat or to live off the land in the woods somewhere

You know that LLC is also a legal construct you need a government to enforce. Do you plan to get a passport? Do you plan to be “stateless”? Plan on registering for the countries health care system?
Perhaps easier but less versatile. A large storage site connected to a national high voltage grid can take electricity from a much wider variety of sources and send it to a wider variety of consumers.
Graph Graphs (2010)
Totally valid question, and I think that yes... there is a reason that our (or Western) song structure has evolved the way it has.

For some reason it is very appealing to the listener, and I think it's a combination of sonic qualities but also relief from repetition. And this is what's lacking from a lot of today's music.

Today we have what amounts to a loop where someone presses Play, mumbles over it for a period of time, and then presses Stop. There's no payoff.

I think one of first times I thought about this was listening to "Crazy in Love" by Beyonce. It has this big build-up that you think is going to go into a satisfying chorus... but it goes nowhere. Nowhere, for the whole song.

And that song is fairly dynamic by today's standards.
That looks good, I didn't see that earlier.
Having more (all) the tasks in a backlog from the get-go might make sense if we knew that:
a) requirements wouldn't change
b) priorities wouldn't change
c) we would be able to keep the understanding of the work throughout the effort
Then we'd just pull ticket by ticket and fill it with the details when we need it.

I've been doing it for 25 years, and I'm yet to see a project where the above assumptions would be true. I don't expect to see it.

Requirements always change. So do priorities.

We have this saying that our clients always know what they want. Until they see it. Then they know they wanted something different.

But even if that wasn't the case, the requirements change because we learn as we build the thing. The moment we know the least about a project is at its beginning. After that, we only know more.

So if things change, keeping more tickets in flight (even in backlog) means that every reprioritization, every planning, every pull to development costs more. Heck, we're bound to add work that's already there, but we forgot about it.

It's the cognitive load we add to so many activities every day.

And it doesn't even solve the problem of having better design because there's too much to remember.

Your intuition is right, though, when it comes to understanding the big picture. Not only architecture but also business. When every engineer on the team understands these higher-level goals it's so much easier to make sound decisions about design and implementation.

But for that we don't need dozens/hundreds of tickets in backlog.

BTW: I have a rule of thumb that on a physical board, there shouldn't be more than 100 items altogether. Our brains are incapable of meaningfully processing more. On a virtual board, it's even less, as our visual capabilities are impaired by screen limitations and crappy design of the tools we use.
I feel most responses to vulnerabilities are so lenient, you have to throw out some baby with the bathwater, you can't surgically remove the dangerous component, you gotta chop and throw chemotherapy en masse.

If you are an IT admin with any pride, SAML is out of any future plans. The idea of SSO is suspect as a whole. Xml parsing has been hit twice in a week, avoid it in the future, anything wrong with a policy that replaces xml with json?
Outbreak of tornadoes thunderstorms over the Deep South [3/15/2025]
that's wishful thinking. There is basically no relevant competitor to youtube, Google is extremely comfortable in doing whatever they want with it.
This hit me when looking at sci-fi shows that focused in music in the pre-2000 period (like stark trek)

Before, it looked very off why people in the future only hear that music. Now it look perfectly accurate!

(Also, the joke in my home is that not good music was ever created after 2010-ish so that is why everyone in the future is like that :) )
Why not just use the GitHub generated email address you get when you hide your email?
Tesla sends dire warning about escalating the trade war
Springs to mind as what? A counter-example? If so, I would not agree.
Your system makes destinations on only one line easy. Mine brings in many more lines.
Five years of blogging, and two posts that changed my life
> Determinism is unrelated to correctness.

I never said it is. That's why I qualified my example with the word correct.

> no matter what you do, it gives you the same output

This is not deterministic. This is determined. I think this is the confusion I was pointing out.

>> Deterministic means that if it is accurate/correct once, it will continue to be in future runs (unless the correct answer changes; a stopped clock is deterministic).

The bit in the parenthesis, I am trying to argue, is nonsense. If the correct answer changes, the system is not accurate or correct to begin with so the point is moot. Correcting the system will make it accurate. A stopped clock is not deterministic, it's determined. As a time indicator, a stopped clock is not a correct, accurate or deterministic model at all under any possible interpretation.
> they should also argue functions should only take one argument, and use tuple destructuring to break it apart within the function

You say that as an hypothetical, but that's exactly how code is written in Standard ML; and the rest of the ML language family supports it to some degree, although they lean more on currying, like Haskell.
I don't think it's fair to blame the skill of web developers (although if they use javascript and leftpaddings they have it coming).

The nature of web software is 100 times riskier than anything else because of the risk profiles and 100% connectivity
I also deeply respect this decision and I wish it was not such a taboo. Having said that, I am also deeply suspicious of easy banalities like "you ought to go when things are at their best". This because we are not great, especially when we're young, of having the perspective to understand that temporary setbacks like lost loves and financial setbacks are not an indication that the best days are past us.
Strictly speaking, the law requires a foreign national to carry proof of status. It's not something that ever has been enforced but it might be now. Such proof would be a valid passport and the most recent I-94 admission record. If applicable, such proof also would include an I-797 approval notice and/or EAD.
> What sort of fucking shithole backwards country locks people up for weeks (including over a week in solitary!) for arriving with an invalid visa?

The USA.

Or Russia

Tweedledum and Tweedledee
> The US is arguably more democratic

Because they have elections?

I always thought that when Americans say they’re a democracy they mean that in sort of propagandist way. Like, installing democracy as justification for military aggression.

But it seems that now some people really believe it? The bi-partisan system sponsored by corporations, where candidates are vetted through the systems - it reminds me of the Chinese communism with two parties instead.

Just compare it to Swiss democracy.

When was the last time an candidate from an independent political party became a president in the USA?
Rugged individualism seems to have been lost given the context here.
"Bye Bye Nerdie", S12E16, 2001 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bye_Bye_Nerdie : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4rbW96R5GM https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSimpsons/comments/qhy6bi/that_ro...
Try dependabot? But it's a tool by github, maybe better not to depend on a self reporylt
Could this also be implemented as an ORM DSL to interface traditional SQL databases?
Rotten for a While Now
You have discovered the Law of Fives: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Illuminatus!_Trilogy#Numer... ; as it is written:

> In the Erisian Archives is an old memo from Omar to Mal-2: "I find the Law of Fives to be more and more manifest the harder I look."
> It’s quite literally parsing xml using regular expressions. It’s an excellent case study for why you shouldn’t do that.

It's like a textbook example no? Don't parse non-regular languages with regular expressions.
I've worked in offices where everybody was there 10-12 hours a day. I've also worked in offices where people were there 8 hours a day. IMO the 8 hour offices spent more time working than the 12 hour offices. Once you're at the office 12 hours a day some of the day is going to be spent on leisure and socializing.
I mean typing it slowly, left ring finger 's', left pointer finger 't', left pinky 'a', right pointer 'n', then because 'f' and 'd' are so close on a qwerty keyboard any sloppiness between the left pointer and middle finger sitting on the 'd', 'f' would mean the d gets hit first as you roll into the 'f', seems pretty easy to make
Kudos for making this freely available, I was initially delighted to find out that there was a StepSecurity maintained alternative for the dorny/paths-filter action[1] as that seemed like a reasonable alternative to migrate to, but ended up being disappointed once I realized that it requires a subscription to use[2]

[1]: https://github.com/step-security/paths-filter
[2]: https://github.com/step-security/paths-filter/blob/b251c10d0...
Benzodiazepines: How They Work and How to Withdraw (2002)
> He did. The parallels between Trump and Zaphod are not subtle.

Zaphod was monstrously self-centred, and it could make him callous, but I don't think he was ever reported to experience hatred, or intentionally stoke it in others.
Got a similar outbound from a recruiter. "Strict office policy, we work 60 hour weeks." was in their bullet points. The salary is less than I make currently at a startup, and the product the company is making is nothing special. I can't even steelman the argument for why someone would write this on a job posting. They want to be honest? They think it will excite a prospect that has no family nor social life?
ESP32 WiFi Superstitions
lol so poetical
Been at my current job 9 years, been coding professionally for ~33, and 43 years total. I occasionally work (code) a 10 hour day if it's a project I'm really into. Most of the time it's 8 hours of "availability" - I spend my mornings online on a laptop in my living room, but still waking up. I work from home, so 9am is my usual wake-up as well as arrive-at-work time. If things are really going haywire when I wake up I'll go into my home office and start working. I rarely have any meetings before 1pm. People who schedule 9am meetings are the worst. I've spoken to my boss maybe 5 times in the last 6 years, he lets me do what I do leading my team, so it's pretty chill.

I also work on my own projects every night from ~8pm to midnight or 2am. So I'm still good to code, but I either get exhausted by, or lose interest in the day job stuff by 6 or 7pm. It's time for dinner, put on a show or a movie and work on the stuff I'm actually passionate about.

I get out on the weekends or work on projects that aren't programming.
I am a full stack hard core developer. I work an average of 12-14 hours a day. (At least 6 days a week)

I can make around $25k usd per month, but I usually don’t spend too much.

I love building products and now with AI, I am getting better at exponential rates.

I’m 33 years old, live in Mexico. I stay fit, maintain a skin care routine and try to be social. I’m single by choice.

I’m sure I’ll be able to find a good wife, once I feel accomplished. But right now, and for the past 10 years, I’ve been going harder and harder.
Isn't most of the frontend open source? Chromium looks a lot like Chrome. I would say that they would be basically indistinguishable to the average user.
So you can have thirty percent more not enough!

I’m sorry, we’re all out of solar. Perhaps you can have no wind instead.
Bank of Israel Unveils Possible Design of 'Multipurpose' Digital Shekel
The conclusion is extreme. Reading is too much of a benefit in language learning to give up on at all, it's the best source of the widest range of comprehensible native input you're going to find.

I learned my second language by reading out loud, and only going on if I was sure I was pronouncing the thing right. We have the internet now; if you think you're pronouncing something wrong in a common language, you can go on the internet and make sure you're pronouncing it right. [edit: I remember when people were using their phones to transcribe what they were saying in L2 in order to check their pronunciation; do people still do that?]

When reading out loud sometimes I would sing the words, because you can't come up with a convincing way to sing a sentence unless you understand what it means.

Orthography is of course going to be distracting in English or French (or Chinese) because they have terrible orthography when it comes to representing sounds. But you're going to want to be literate anyway, so eventually you're going to have to learn how to recognize but ignore the details of the words.

Subtitles are a problem because people shut their ears off while reading them (as the article claims to confirm.) But if you can understand the subtitles, you've improved your literacy and gained an understanding of that piece of media. Now turn them off, and listen while knowing what's being said. Shadow and repeat after the speakers. Check your pronunciation against them. Roll the words in your mouth while the meaning is rolling around in your head. Make sure you know and can repeat every word that's being said, and make sure you understand the grammar.

Reading, writing, speaking, and listening are all very different things. But I'm not just learning a language to speak to people, so every one if them is important. I will not understand the cultural references that people use in daily conversation to communicate meaning unless I read. I can't replace their entire upbringing in a language by chatting, even in a focused way, for a few years.

Learning a language as an adult is different than learning a language as a baby. As an adult, you have another language to compare everything to, and you already know how languages work. A baby will become extremely fluent in their first language before they ever learn to read. You already know how to read. Take advantage. If you want to work on your pronunciation, there are lots of ways, like chorusing, shadowing, reading out loud, Pimsleur and FSI give you lots of chances to compare your pronunciation to a model, etc.

Babies take 7-8 years to get good at a language. They're no faster than you.
How Wasm reinvents web development
My company does not allow any employees to use their personal GitHub for work (or Facebook, instagram, or anything else) after running into issue when employees leave.
Grayjay also has a desktop app that does this very well. https://grayjay.app/
I wouldn't be surprised if the recent stock downturn is mostly him illegally offloading shares without disclosing it.
What Makes Us See Someone as a Leader? A Field Theory Approach (2024)
Great work.

Consider changing the behavior so that when the page is opened in the browser from the local disk, then it opens edit mode automatically, but when it's published to someone's website and accessed on the open web (check if the address is http/https), then it's a normal, read-only view expected from most pages.

Of course:

1. there should be a way to override this (a query string param or magic URL fragment) so you can look at it in edit mode, too

2. there should be a blanket exception for certain domains/URL prefixes—defaulting to keepworking.github.io (or <https://keepworking.github.io/nash/>)—so it activates edit mode on that site, too, which means that you personally don't have to do anything special to make the demo work (best if this exception is user-modifiable, so e.g. someone else can get the same behavior if they want without using the trick from #1)
Unless the basis for scrapping the TN were somehow that the free trade agreement was unlawful/invalid or the TN itself were unlawful/invalid, I believe that it likely would remain valid until expiration for work purposes but probably not for international travel purposes. What the other work visa options would be would depend on the person's qualifications and job; these would include the cap subject H-1B (but this is subject to an annual lottery), the cap exempt H-1B (available year-round but with a qualifying organization), the E-2 (requiring the creation of a company and an investment or employment with an existing E-2 qualified company), and the O-1 (requiring high standard of acheivement).
Google is replacing Assistant with Gemini
Pimsleur is very effective when just starting out a new language.

In general, I find that the most important thing to learn first with a new language is the pronunciation. Compared to learning thousands of words, it's not that difficult to learn to correctly produce the sounds of a foreign language. If you are able to pronounce things properly, native speakers will think much more highly of your abilities in the language (which can backfire when they assume you're fluent).
Thank you for submitting this.
”You would not believe how difficult it is to convince young developers raised on Javascript that client side validation is not enough”

At first read, I think you’re JSplaining, but I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt.

How difficult is it exactly? Can you provide examples, perhaps even of the particular difficulties? Are the difficulties on the side of the convincer or the convincee, or both?
Are you really asking if an office would suffer if coffee was unavailable?

And you understand that a lot of people don't drink their coffee black?

It seems pretty obvious to me that yes -- having coffee with milk available is very much best for the business. Kind of like having restrooms, chairs, and air conditioning are also best for the business.
It is, but it's also going to work because right now the only real political issue in Canada is a patriotism contest. Carney would be a fool to ignore that, and in fact he'd be best served by calling an election in a hurry and trying to wrap himself in the flag in the meantime.

If it costs the country a pile of money down the road so be it, a politician's real job is getting into and staying in power.