bnzelener

I really like their UI and deploying over the web - that was like magic. But I was having a weird issue with loading images in Pebble.JS at first. I came back a week later and the image load worked just fine under the same conditions. They're still in early stages, but it's an awesome platform.

This is awesome. I was planning on doing custom boxes for us someday, but I put it off because of the headache of dealing with existing companies in the industry. Excited to use Pakible, and to be able to test out different designs without sending a freaking fax (or 20 emails).

Really excited to see the MVNOs getting better service by licensing multiple Tier 1 networks. I'm still using AT&T on a family plan, but only because they've followed T-Mobile's strategy almost verbatim for the last year.

I grew up in Alaska (now in Colorado), and my parents in Anchorage don't have home internet. Even in Anchorage, a city with 300,000 people, $60/mo will only buy you 10Mbps of download speed with capped bandwidth, through the only cable internet service in town. Now, with AT&T's rollover data I get about 45GB of cellular data usage per month. I'm on the 30GB/mo plan, but most months we only use 15GB, so the other half rolls over. Now, when I travel to visit my folks, I can tether without any concerns. It's actually worth paying the AT&T premium to be able to tether hassle-free. AND, in Alaska the LTE is way faster than the entry-tier cable internet plans. For many people with cellular service, it might actually be cheaper to use your phone as a hotspot in Alaska than to have cable internet.

Glad to hear so many of you are having good experiences with T-Mobile and MVNOs though. I'm so psyched for the future of data access!

This is a cool project - must have been fun to do the research on and build. Are you using any optimization techniques for AdSense? Would love to hear them if you don't mind sharing.

Very cool, Lee! Congratulations!

+1 It's a good format. The honesty and genuine voice from This American Life - and the episodes don't give you much resolution at the end. Just feels real.

Got a confirmed answer - he uses aluminum.

And on 3D-printing, YES - this guy is making awesome progress: www.hovership.com. I have one of his MHQ V1 frames.

Just subscribed! Thanks.

Unfortunately I don't have a video of his frame - My goal is to get one at our next meetup. It's hard to capture because the thing is zipping around so fast!

My videos (trying to iterate on getting better cinematic quality) are at www.vimeo.com/bnzelener

I believe his frame is CNC'd steel. It's really malleable, so when he crashes he'll just bend the bent arm back into place. He uses SunnySky 2300kv motors, KissESCs, a MultiWii flight controller, and a 1300mAh 3-cell battery.

I organize a drone enthusiasts group in Fort Collins, CO, and we have some members working on similar custom racing rigs. One member has his own CNC and is designing frames for around ~$200 cost of materials that can jet around at 60+mph. It's incredible to watch.

I've focused more on building a custom rig for getting great video of backcountry skiing, but there's a lot of overlap in the video/radio tech. If anyone has drone questions, feel free to send them my way.

Well, it makes sense that they'll keep focusing on the last mile - but I'm hoping the next product will appeal to more people. Boosted boards are amazing, but few are going to experience them because of the learning curve and style of longboarding.

Agreed. I really like listening to Paul Graham's longer responses. I'm left wondering how he and Jessica elaborated on most of these questions (if they did).

Really curious what Boosted Boards' 'bigger ambitions than making skateboards' are! A friend has one of their Kickstarter boards and it's unreal.

This is an awesome article, Paul. I really dig the layout of your site, too. I've been flying Lumenier quads for about 6 months, and just ordered their plug-and-play gimbal for my QAV400. It arrives today!

Sharing your article with friends that want a smooth entry to drone exploration.

I dig!

I love these essays. Particularly the "what do you do", "living on $40,000", and "value of writing".

This year I lived on around $30,000 from my start-up and probably another $10,000 in help from parents on plane tickets and other non-essentials. It's been a very comfortable year with travel and probably too many toys.

I live in Colorado :-)

It's tough to use Bitcoin seriously on a day to day basis when the value fluctuates so much. Yes, there are security advantages and there's less transactional friction. But that friction has a value, and it's way overshadowed by the volatility of the currency (today).

I read that Square Cash uses a credit card refund protocol to send money to debit cards so quickly. Is this the same mechanism?

If you can get this working on cars, I would love to see what you can do with residential real estate. 42Floors might beat you there, but they seem pretty focused on commercial.

Congrats on this article, guys. I hope the YC experience is going well. I got to watch your office hours at Startup School and was totally inspired. Glad to see you still killing it!

You'd think Boingo would have explored this from the start with their Wifi connection.

Even though it's consumer-facing, I'm sure they could have reserved a small subset of bandwidth to experiment with realtime flight data.

We loooove ArduPilot. Using ArduPlane and ArduCopter (firmware versions of ArduPilot) as the primary platform for our LTE-Telem box.

The current software for configuring ArduPilot boards has tremendous depth, but I think the UI could use some work. Especially for non-hobbyist users.

Agreed.

To my knowledge, "Trappy" (nickname of the pilot) is one of the best RC pilots around. He flies for Team Blacksheep, and is a big figure in the drone community for encouraging safety, education, and progressing the tech.

He's definitely known for pushing the envelope on reckless flight, but I get the sense that he would take responsibility if something happened.

These flying wings (foam plane model) absorb a lot of force on impact. Even with the GoPros and all radio equipment loaded on. Aside from causing commotion, I think it's unlikely that you'd severely injure someone. Possible, but unlikely. A quad-rotor heli falling out of the sky would really hurt, though.

A friend and I are working on this verbatim! Building an iOS interface for controlling the drone in-flight and planning missions, and a little "black box" that will connect to the autopilot computer and send telem data over LTE. We'll post on DIYDrones and FPVLab once it's ready for testers.

Back up.

Started with me not being able to download an attachment about 7 minutes ago. Now down fully.

This has nothing to do with the VPN, unfortunately.

The price difference comes from Southwest's price being different than Delta's. Southwest flights wont show up when searching Kayak's USA site, but they do show up on international Kayak pages. It sounds like that's because they don't want to pay the brokerage fees for flights booked through the USA versions of Kayak/Expedia/Travelocity -- but I'm not sure of that.

Interesting experiment though!

I'm 22 and never wore a watch while growing up, but I've been using a Pebble for about 3 months. I really like it.

It's been most helpful when I'm skiing, biking, or flying RC planes. Checking messages at a glance is awesome. I also use it for navigating music while driving.

Probably the biggest affect of using the Pebble has been having its function as a watch - somewhat ironic. If I forget it, I'm constantly looking at my bare wrist to check the time.

I wanted to see a microphone for Siri/Google Now integration in the next hardware revision. Pebble Steel isn't that impressive to me - but I see where someone might want a fancier Pebble, rather than just a fancier band.

Coming next year: TrailView

BigDogs with streetview camera systems. Oh my.