TBL's links are one-way. This was actually a major innovation, at the time people understood there was something called hypertext, it had been written about in Ted Nelson's almost biblical book of the pre-web, Computer Lib/Dream Machines. Previous attempts at hypertext assumed links had to be two-way. By limiting the links to one direction, the technical problem became trivial. You could do two-way links today because relational databases are mature and inexpensive to operate, perform very well on today's hardware, and the internet of 2025 is much faster than the internet of 1990. But the one-way limit was necessary for the web to achieve its simplicity, and the non-existence of a platform vendor, which may have been its most important feature. It could still be done, but it would require a lot of cooperation and backfilling.#
You know those obnoxious sites that pop up dialogs when they think you're about to leave, asking you to subscribe to their email newsletter? Well that won't do for Scripting News readers who are a discerning lot, very loyal, but that wouldn't last long if I did rude stuff like that. So here I am at the bottom of the page quietly encouraging you to sign up for the nightly email. It's got everything from the previous day on Scripting, plus the contents of the linkblog and who knows what else we'll get in there. People really love it. I wish I had done it sooner. And every email has an unsub link so if you want to get out, you can, easily -- no questions asked, and no follow-ups. Go ahead and do it, you won't be sorry! :-)