mgummelt

Oh, yes. We load pages of 50 rows at a time, with lazy scrolling that loads more on demand. If you keep scrolling to load dozens of pages, sometimes perf can suffer, but we don't see that to be a common usage pattern. Most users use our query controls to find what they need rather than scrolling.

All queries are made directly to your Postgres or MySQL database, so those systems define the limits. We never store your row data. We've had users running Plato with 100M+ rows.

No image support yet.

Thanks! Happy to trade notes. Shoot us an email.

I can't say I've used Baserow, but looking at their website it seems like they let you create new databases (like Airtable does), rather than connecting to existing SQL databases.

I agree that open access is not always the right approach. Most of our users don't in fact run Plato with open access. Databases are read-only by default, and many provide write-access to only certain tables. We're also working on more features to scope access.

- Queries restricted to certain virtual tables, to avoid unintentional linear scans

- RBAC for scoping access

- An API client for hitting administrative endpoints rather than cells directly

Lots more on the way.

Hey deepspace. Check out my response here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35074506

The killer feature for many users is the ability to track new data with *virtual columns*, which stay in Plato and never touch your backend DB. It lets you extend schema for new operations without having to run a DB migration. They're great for support agents or other operators to take notes, track new customer requirements, etc..

Respect to the OG

Hey. Good questions.

Pkey/Fkey joins are supported in Plato by "expanding" foreign keys. You can log in, connect our sample DB, and play around with how it works. It's pretty easy. We're soon adding support for generic joins as well.

And, yes! We take a more structured, column-oriented approach than Excel. Much like Airtable. Though we are introducing an Excel-like formula language for defining derived values. It will compile to SQL on the backend, but not expose that to the user.

It's more that requirements change faster than the engineers can respond. These internal tools often aren't prioritized, and the role of any ops team (e.g. accountants) is very dynamic.

At that particular company, the accountants would often come across new tax form data they'd need to track. Waiting on eng to migrate the DB was too slow.

Thanks!

One advantage is that Plato is SaaS so you don't have to run it yourself. NocoDB's cloud offering is still in private beta.

Others:

- Multi database support

- Virtual columns for tracking new data without modifying the DB

- Backlinks for one-to-many relationships!

But the biggest difference is probably the roadmap outlined in our blog post. We aim to be a general purpose sandbox for all kinds of internal tools. The database admin is just the first step.

No, but accounts are free!

As for security, the short of it is that you whitelist our IP, and your DB will need a public address we can connect to. It's similar to how e.g. cloud Retool works. We're shipping on-prem soon.

Here's our full security docs: https://plato-app.notion.site/Security-Overview-6e38fdc4daf0...

Yep, that's another good comparison. It's been a while since I used Django Admin, but based on my memory these are some of Plato's advantanges:

- Virtual columns that track new data w/o modifying the DB (Great for ops)

- Virtual tables for saving new table views and hiding their implementation details

- Inline edits (Django requires click through to forms)

- More user-friendly queries (Subjective, but I remember filters in Django being tedious)

There's also some rough edges in Django Admin, like IIRC for foreign key select inputs they have to load every value into the frontend, which grinds to a halt for anything other than small databases.

I'd love to have you try it out and compare. Shoot us an email!

Of course. Metabase is the first product I recommend for easy BI, but Plato isn't a BI tool. It's an ops tool used for more "transactional" workflows.

Startups use us to diagnose support issues, track new user data for ops, extend user trials, manually update ML training sets, etc..

Plato | Founding Engineer #3 | Onsite/Remote | San Francisco | https://plato.io

Today's OS's are based on metaphors from the 60s. The web was invented by a physicist to share Sangria recipes. Smartphones are designed for infants. We can do better. We need a new app platform rooted in the ideas of Alan Kay, Douglas Engelbart, and Bret Victor. More on this here: https://vision.plato.io.

Plato is a well funded seed-stage startup building this platform. We build a low-code platform that lets anyone in your company build live internal tools. We sell to operations heavy industries like fintech, healthcare, and logistics, where the demand for internal tools has skyrocketed in the past five years.

We're hiring a founding engineer who wants to earn significant equity and help us democratize computing. Learn more at https://jobs.plato.io/founding-engineer

Plato | Founding Full-Stack Engineer | Onsite/Remote | San Francisco | https://plato.io Today's OS's are based on metaphors from the 60s. The web was invented by a physicist to share Sangria recipes. Smartphones are designed for infants. We can do better. We need a new app platform rooted in the ideas of Alan Kay, Douglas Engelbart, and Bret Victor. More on this here: https://vision.plato.io.

Plato is a well funded seed-stage startup building this platform. We're starting with internal tools. We build a low-code platform that lets anyone in your company build live internal tools. We sell to operations heavy industries like fintech, healthcare, and logistics, where the demand for internal tools has skyrocketed in the past five years.

We're hiring a founding engineer who wants to earn significant equity and help us democratize computing. Learn more at https://jobs.plato.io/founding-engineer

Plato | Founding Full-Stack Engineer | Onsite/Remote | San Francisco | https://plato.io

Today's OS's are based on metaphors from the 60s. The web was invented by a physicist to share Sangria recipes. Smartphones are designed for infants. We can do better. We need a new app platform rooted in the ideas of Alan Kay, Douglas Engelbart, and Bret Victor. More on this here: https://vision.plato.io.

Plato is a well funded seed-stage startup building this platform. We're starting with internal tools. We build a low-code platform that lets anyone in your company build live internal tools. We sell to operations heavy industries like fintech, healthcare, and logistics, where the demand for internal tools has skyrocketed in the past five years.

We're hiring a founding engineer who wants to earn significant equity and help us democratize computing. Learn more at https://jobs.plato.io/founding-engineer

Plato | Founding Full-Stack Engineer | Onsite/Remote | San Francisco | https://plato.io

Today's OS's are based on metaphors from the 60s. The web was invented by a physicist to share Sangria recipes. Smartphones are designed for infants. We can do better. We need a new app platform rooted in the ideas of Alan Kay, Douglas Engelbart, and Bret Victor. More on this here: https://vision.plato.io.

Plato is a well funded seed-stage startup building this platform. We're starting with internal tools. We build a low-code platform that lets anyone in your company build live internal tools. We sell to operations heavy industries like fintech, healthcare, and logistics, where the demand for internal tools has skyrocketed in the past five years.

We're hiring a founding engineer who wants to earn significant equity and help us democratize computing. Learn more at https://jobs.plato.io/founding-engineer

Plato | Founding Full-Stack Engineer | Onsite/Remote | San Francisco | https://plato.io

Today's OS's are based on metaphors from the 60s. The web was invented by a physicist to share Sangria recipes. Smartphones are designed for infants. We can do better. We need a new app platform rooted in the ideas of Alan Kay, Douglas Engelbart, and Bret Victor. More on this here: https://vision.plato.io.

Plato is a well funded seed-stage startup building this platform. We're starting with internal tools. We build a low-code platform that lets anyone in your company build live internal tools. We sell to operations heavy industries like fintech, healthcare, and logistics, where the demand for internal tools has skyrocketed in the past five years.

We're hiring a founding engineer to join as Employee #1, earn significant equity, and help us democratize computing. Learn more at https://jobs.plato.io/founding-engineer

Losing one's job is not mutually exclusive with drug addiction and mental illness.

The laws aren't the only factor. They also have to be enforced, which they often aren't in SF.

Social services, with punishment for not participating.

The reviewed author does not advocate for imprisonment. He advocates for treatment and housing programs that require the addicts to follow the program and make progress. A "carrot and stick" approach, which has worked in other countries.

The author argues that housing prices are not a significant factor:

"Throughout it, they emphasized that the homeless were just like you and me, just poorer. Today, many of California’s leading homelessness advocates insist that the current crisis is due mostly to the housing shortage. Homelessness experts and advocates disagree.

'I’ve rarely seen a normal able-bodied able-minded non-drug-using homeless person who’s just down on their luck,” L.A. street doctor Susan Partovi told me. “Of the thousands of people I’ve worked with over 16 years, it’s like one or two people a year. And they’re the easiest to deal with.'” [1]

[1] https://www.studentnewsdaily.com/editorials-for-students/why...

Author here. You've probably read more smart contracts than me, but this hasn't been my observation. Rarible, for instance, is very popular and uses proxy contracts. Axie as well.

I'm actually not taking a pro or anti centralization stance. I'm only pointing out that many services people think have decentralized power in fact don't.

I'm the author an I agree with everything you've written, so I'm not sure what specifically you think is nonsense.

FWIW, I'm fairly sure Compound does have an update mechanism, from a brief perusal of their source code.

It's not a conflation. The article is explicitly differentiating Ethereum services from the Ethereum protocol, just like aboodman says.

Isn't Axie centrally upgradeable? https://github.com/axieinfinity/public-smart-contracts/blob/...

Author here.

I would have fleshed this out more if I knew this was going to reach the front page. Yes, many smart contracts are deployed with distributed upgrade mechanisms, and I mention them briefly at the end of the post. I mostly wrote this to start a conversation with friends about a) how many internet services can be practically operated with the friction that such upgrade mechanisms create, and b) the potential to use the blockchain only for the voting protocol, then to sign and deploy the service on a traditional cloud.

Plato | Founding Full-Stack Engineer | Onsite/Remote | San Francisco | https://plato.io

Today's OS's are based on metaphors from the 60s. The web was invented by a physicist to share Sangria recipes. We can do better. We need a new app platform rooted in the ideas of Alan Kay, Douglas Engelbart, and Bret Victor. I write about this here: https://vision.plato.io.

Plato is a well funded seed-stage startup building this platform. We're starting with internal tools. Plato is a low-code platform that lets anyone in your company build live internal tools. We sell to operations heavy industries like fintech, healthcare, and logistics, where the demand for internal tools has skyrocketed in the past five years.

We're hiring a founding engineer to join as Employee #1, earn significant equity, and help us democratize computing. Learn more at https://jobs.plato.io/founding-engineer