Author: simon

Talks from KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2020 – Part 1

Various talks I watched from their YouTube playlist.

Application Autoscaling Made Easy With Kubernetes Event-Driven Autoscaling (KEDA) – Tom Kerkhove

I’ve been using Keda a little bit at work. Good way to scale on random stuff. At work I’m scaling pods against length of AWS SQS Queues and as a cron. Lots of other options. This talk is a 9 minute intro. A bit hard to read the small font on the screen of this talk.

Autoscaling at Scale: How We Manage Capacity @ Zalando – Mikkel Larsen, Zalando SE

  • These guys have their own HPA replacement for scaling. Kube-metrics-adapter .
  • Outlines some new stuff in scaling in 1.18 and 1.19.
  • They also have a fork of the Cluster Autoscaler (although some of what it seems to duplicate Amazon Fleets).
  • Have up to 1000 nodes in some of their clusters. Have to play with address space per nodes, also scale their control plan nodes vertically (control plan autoscaler).
  • Use Virtical Pod autoscaler especially for things like prometheus that varies by the size of the cluster. Have had problems with it scaling down too fast. They have some of their own custom changes in a fork

Keynote: Observing Kubernetes Without Losing Your Mind – Vicki Cheung

  • Lots of metrics dont’t cover what you want and get hard to maintain and complex
  • Monitor core user workflows (ie just test a pod launch and stop)
  • Tiny tools
    • 1 watches for events on cluster and logs them -> elastic
    • 2 watches container events -> elastic
    • End up with one timeline for a deploy/job covering everything
    • Empowers users to do their own debugging

Autoscaling and Cost Optimization on Kubernetes: From 0 to 100 – Guy Templeton & Jiaxin Shan

  • Intro to HPA and metric types. Plus some of the newer stuff like multiple metrics
  • Vertical pod autoscaler. Good for single pod deployments. Doesn’t work will with JVM based workloads.
  • Cluster Autoscaler.
    • A few things like using prestop hooks to give pods time to shutdown
    • pod priorties for scaling.
    • –expandable-pods-priority-cutoff to not expand for low-priority jobs
    • Using the priority-expander to try and expand spots first and then fallback to more expensive node types
    • Using mixed instance policy with AWS . Lots of instance types (same CPU/RAM though) to choose from.
    • Look at poddistruptionbudget
    • Some other CA flags like scale-down-utilisation-threshold to lok at.
  • Mention of Keda
  • Best return is probably tuning HPA
  • There is also another similar talk . Note the Male Speaker talks very slow so crank up the speed.

Keynote: Building a Service Mesh From Scratch – The Pinterest Story – Derek Argueta

  • Changed to Envoy as a http proxy for incoming
  • Wrote own extension to make feature complete
  • Also another project migrating to mTLS
    • Huge amount of work for Java.
    • Lots of work to repeat for other languages
    • Looked at getting Envoy to do the work
    • Ingress LB -> Inbound Proxy -> App
  • Used j2 to build the Static config (with checking, tests, validation)
  • Rolled out to put envoy in front of other services with good TLS termination default settings
  • Extra Mesh Use Cases
    • Infrastructure-specific routing
    • SLI Monitoring
    • http cookie monitoring
  • Became a platform that people wanted to use.
  • Solving one problem first and incrementally using other things. Many groups had similar problems. “Just a node in a mesh”.

Improving the Performance of Your Kubernetes Cluster – Priya Wadhwa, Google

  • Tools – Mostly tested locally with Minikube (she is a Minikube maintainer)
  • Minikube pause – Pause the Kubernetes systems processes and leave app running, good if cluster isn’t changing.
  • Looked at some articles from Brendon Gregg
  • Ran USE Method against Minikube
  • eBPF BCC tools against Minikube
  • biosnoop – noticed lots of writes from etcd
  • KVM Flamegraph – Lots of calls from ioctl
  • Theory that etcd writes might be a big contributor
  • How to tune etcd writes ( updated –snapshot-count flag to various numbers but didn’t seem to help)
  • Noticed CPU spkies every few seconds
  • “pidstat 1 60” . Noticed kubectl command running often. Running “kubectl apply addons” regularly
  • Suspected addon manager running often
  • Could increase addon manager polltime but then addons would take a while to show up.
  • But in Minikube not a problem cause minikube knows when new addons added so can run the addon manager directly rather than it polling.
  • 32% reduction in overhead from turning off addon polling
  • Also reduced coredns number to one.
  • pprof – go tool
  • kube-apiserver pprof data
  • Spending lots of times dealing with incoming requests
  • Lots of requests from kube-controller-manager and kube-scheduler around leader-election
  • But Minikube is only running one of each. No need to elect a leader!
  • Flag to turn both off –leader-elect=false
  • 18% reduction from reducing coredns to 1 and turning leader election off.
  • Back to looking at etcd overhead with pprof
  • writeFrameAsync in http calls
  • Theory could increase –proxy-refresh-interval from 30s up to 120s. Good value at 70s but unsure what behavior was. Asked and didn’t appear to be a big problem.
  • 4% reduction in overhead
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Audiobooks – August 2020

Truth, Lies, and O-Rings: Inside the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster by Allan J. McDonald

The author was a senior manager in the booster team who cooperated more fully with the investigation than NASA or his company’s bosses would have preferred. Mostly accounts of meetings, hearings & coverups with plenty of technical details. 3/5

The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World by Niall Ferguson

A quick tour though the rise of various financial concepts like insurance, bonds, stock markets, bubbles, etc. Nice quick intro and some well told stories. 4/5

The Other Side of the Coin: The Queen, the Dresser and the Wardrobe by Angela Kelly

An authorized book from the Queen’s dresser. Some interesting stories. Behind-the-scenes on typical days and regular events Okay even without photos. 3/5

Second Wind: A Sunfish Sailor, an Island, and the Voyage That Brought a Family Together by Nathaniel Philbrick

A writer takes up competitive sailing after a gap of 15 years, training on winter ponds in prep for the Nationals. A nice read. 3/5

Spitfire Pilot by Flight-Lieutentant David M. Crook, DFC

An account of the Author’s experiences as a pilot during the Battle of Britain. Covering air-combat, missions, loss of friends/colleagues and off-duty life. 4/5

Wild City: A Brief History of New York City in 40 Animals
by Thomas Hynes

A Chapter on each species. Usually information about incidents they were involved in (see “Tigers”) or the growth, decline, comeback of their population & habit. 3/5

Fire in the Sky: Cosmic Collisions, Killer Asteroids, and the Race to Defend Earth by Gordon L. Dillow

A history of the field and some of the characters. Covers space missions, searchers, discovery, movies and the like. Interesting throughout. 4/5

The Long Winter: Little House Series, Book 6 by Laura Ingalls Wilder

The family move into their store building in town for the winter. Blizzard after blizzard sweeps through the town over the next few months and starvation or freezing threatens. 3/5

The Time Traveller’s Almanac Part 1: Experiments edited by Anne and Jeff VanderMeer

First of 4 volumes of short stories. 14 stories, many by well known names (ie Silverberg, Le Guin). A good collection. 3/5

A Long Time Ago in a Cutting Room Far, Far Away: My Fifty Years Editing Hollywood Hits—Star Wars, Carrie, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Mission: Impossible, and More by Paul Hirsch

Details of the editing profession & technology. Lots of great stories 4/5

My Scoring System

  • 5/5 = Brilliant, top 5 book of the year
  • 4/5 = Above average, strongly recommend
  • 3/5 = Average. in the middle 70% of books I read
  • 2/5 = Disappointing
  • 1/5 = Did not like at all
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Linkedin putting pressure on users to enable location tracking

I got this email from Linkedin this morning. It is telling me that they are going to change my location from “Auckland, New Zealand” to “Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand“.

Email from Linkedin on 30 August 2020

Since “Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand” sounds stupid to New Zealanders (Auckland is pretty much a big city with a single job market and is not a state or similar) I clicked on the link and opened the application to stick with what I currently have

Except the problem is that the pulldown doesn’t offer many any other locations

The only way to change the location is to click “use Current Location” and then allow Linkedin to access my device’s location.

According to the help page:

By default, the location on your profile will be suggested based on the postal code you provided in the past, either when you set up your profile or last edited your location. However, you can manually update the location on your LinkedIn profile to display a different location.

but it appears the manual method is disabled. I am guessing they have a fixed list of locations in my postcode and this can’t be changed.

So it appears that my options are to accept Linkedin’s crappy name for my location (Other NZers have posted problems with their location naming) or to allow Linkedin to spy on my location and it’ll probably still assign the same dumb name.

The basically appears to be a way for Linkedin to push user to enable location tracking. While at the same time they get to force their own ideas on how New Zealand locations work on users.

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Sidewalk Delivery Robots: An Introduction to Technology and Vendors

At the start of 2011 Uber was in one city (San Francisco). Just 3 years later it was in hundreds of cities worldwide including Auckland and Wellington. Dockless Electric Scooters took only a year from their first launch to reach New Zealand. In both cases the quick rollout in cities left the public, competitors and regulators scrambling to adapt.

Delivery Robots could be the next major wave to rollout worldwide and disrupt existing industries. Like driverless cars these are being worked on by several companies but unlike driverless cars they are delivering real packages for real users in several cities already.

Note: I plan to cover other aspects of Sidewalk Delivery Robots including their impact of society in a followup article.

What are Delivery Robots?

Delivery Robots are driverless vehicles/drones that cover the last mile. They are loaded with a cargo and then will go to a final destination where they are unloaded by the customer.

Indoor Robots are designed to operate within a building. An example of these is The Keenon Peanut. These deliver items to guests in hotels or restaurants . They allow delivery companies to leave food and other items with the robot at the entrance/lobby of a building rather than going all the way to a customer’s room or apartment.

Keenon Peanut

Flying Delivery Drones are being tested by several companies. Wing which is owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet, is testing in Canberra, Australia. Amazon also had a product called Amazon Prime Air which appears to have been shelved.

Wing Flying Robot

The next size up are sidewalk delivery robots which I’ll be concentrating on in the article. Best known of these is Starship Technologies but there is also Kiwi and Amazon Scout. These are designed to drive at slow speeds on the footpaths rather than mix with cars and other vehicles on the road. They cross roads at standard crossings.

KiwiBot
Starship Delivery Robot
Amazon Scout

Finally some companies are rolling out Car sized Delivery Robots designed to drive on roads and mix with normal vehicles. The REV-1 from Reflection AI is at the smaller end with company videos showing it using both car and bike lanes. Larger is the Small-Car sized Nuro.

REV-1
Nuro

Sidewalk Delivery Robots

I’ll concentrate most on Sidewalk Delivery Robots in this article because I believe they are the most mature and likeliest to have an effect on society in the short term (next 2-10 years).

  • In-building bots are a fairly niche product that most people won’t interact with regularly.
  • Flying Drones are close to working but it it seems to be some time before they can function safely in a built-up environment and autonomously. Cargo capacity is currently limited in most models and larger units will bring new problems.
  • Car (or motorbike) sized bots have the same problems as driverless cars. They have to drive fast and be fully autonomous in all sorts of road conditions. No time to ask for human help, a vehicle on the road will at best block traffic or at potentially be involved in an accident. These stringent requirements mean widespread deployment is probably at least 10 years away.

Sidewalk bots are much further along in their evolution and they have simpler problems to solve.

  • A small vehicle that can carry a takeaway or small grocery order is buildable using today’s technology and not too expensive.
  • Footpaths exist most places they need to go.
  • Walking pace ( up to 6km/h ) is fast enough to be good enough even for hot food.
  • Ubiquitous wireless connectivity enables the robots to be controlled remotely if they cannot handle a situation automatically.
  • Everything unfolds slower on the sidewalk. If a sidewalk bot encounters a problem it can just slow to a stop and wait for remote help. If that process takes 20 seconds then it is usually no problem.

Starship Technologies

Starship are the best known vendor and most advanced vendor in the sector. They launched in 2015 and have a good publicity team.

In late 2019 Starship announced a major rollout to US university campuses “with their abundance of walking paths, well-defined boundaries, and smartphone-using, delivery-minded student bodies“. Campuses include The University of Mississippi and Bowling Green State University .

The push into college campuses was unluckily timed with many being closed in 2020 due to Covid-19. Starship has increased delivery areas outside of campus in some places to try and compensate. It has also seen a doubling of demand in Milton Keynes. However the company has laid of some workers in March 2020.

Kiwibot

Kiwibot

Kiwibot is one of the few other companies that has gone beyond the prototype stage to servicing actual customers. It is some way behind Starship with the robots being less autonomous and needing more onsite helpers.

  • Based in Columbia with a major deployment in Berkley, California around the UCB campus area
  • Robots cost $US 3,500 each
  • Smaller than Starship with just 1 cubic foot of capacity. Range and speed reportedly lower
  • Guided by remote control using way-points by operators in Medellín, Colombia. Each operator can control up to 3 bots.
  • On-site operators in Berkley maintain robots (and rescue them when they get stuck).
  • Some orders delivered wholly or partially by humans
  • Concentrating on the Restaurant delivery market
  • Costs for the Business
    • Lease/rent starts at $20/day per robot
    • Order capacity 6-18/day per Robot depending on demand & distance.
    • Order fees are $1.99/order with 1-4 Kiwibots leased
    • or $0.99/order if you have 5-10 Kiwibots leased
  • Website, Kiwibot Campus Vision Video , Kiwibot end-2019 post

An interesting feature is that Kiwibot publish their prices for businesses and provide a calculator with which you can calculate break-even points for robot delivery.

As with Starship, Kiwibot was hit by Covid19 closing College campuses. In July 2020 they announced a rollout in the city of San Jose, California in partnership with Shopify and Ordermark. The company is trying to pivot towards just building the robot infrastructure and partner with companies that already have that [marketplace] in mind. They are also trying to crowdfund for investment money.

Amazon Scout

Amazon Scout

Amazon are only slowly rolling out their Scout Robots. It is similar in appearance to the Starship Robots vehicle but is larger.

  • Announced in January 2019
  • Weight “about 100 pounds” (50 kg). No further specs available.
  • A video of the development team at Amazon
  • Initially delivering to Snohomish County, Washington near Amazon HQ
  • Added Irvine, California in August 2019 but still supervised by human
  • In July 2020 announced rollouts in Atlanta, Georgia and Franklin, Tennessee, but still “initially be accompanied by an Amazon Scout Ambassador”.

Other Companies

There are several other companies also working on Sidewalk Delivery Robots. The most advanced are Restaurant Delivery Company Postmates (now owned by Uber) has their own robot called Serve which is in early testing. Video of it on the street.

Several other companies have also announced projects. None appear to be near rolling out to live customers though.

Business Model and Markets

At present Starship and Kiwi are mainly targeting the restaurant deliver market against established players such as Uber Eats. Reasons for going for this market include

  • Established market, not something new
  • Short distances and small cargo
  • Customers unload produce quickly product so no waiting around
  • Charges by existing players quite high. Ballpark costs of $5 to the customer (plus a tip in some countries) and the restaurant also being charged 30% of the bill
  • Even with the high charges drivers end up making only around minimum wage.
  • The current business model is only just working. While customers find it convenient and the delivery cost reasonable, restaurants and drivers are struggling to make money.

Starship and Amazon are also targeting the general delivery market. This requires higher capacity and also customers may not be home when the vehicle arrives. However it may be the case that if vehicles are cheap enough they could just wait till the customer gets home.

Still more to cover

This article as just a quick introduction of the Sidewalk Delivery Robots out there. I hope to do a later post covering more including what the technology will mean for the delivery industry and for other sidewalk users as well as society in general.

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Audiobooks – July 2020

The Address Book: What Street Addresses Reveal About Identity, Race, Wealth, and Power by Deirdre Mask

Covered the subtitle well. I would have like some of more technical stuff that the author mentioned reading. 3/5

The Fated Sky: Lady Astronaut #2 by Mary Robinette Kowal

Set mostly in the lead-up to the first Mars expedition and the journey to Mars. Lots of interpersonal/interracial problems & fixing toilets. 3/5

Enola Gay: Mission to Hiroshima by Gordon Thomas

Mainly following Paul Tibbets and the 509th Composite Group plus some on the ground in Hiroshima. Has “minute-by-minute coverage of the critical periods”. 3/5

Pandemic by John Dryden

A 3 part radio play set before/after and during a global pandemic. Total length just 2 hours. Parts 2 & 3 felt a little cliched. 3/5

An Economist Walks into a Brothel: And Other Unexpected Places to Understand Risk by Allison Schrager

Examples of how people in unusual situations handle risk and how you can apply it to your life. Interesting and useful. 4/5

100 Things The Simpsons Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die by Allie Goertz & Julia Prescott

Over 4 minutes per fact so plenty of depth. A Great collection of stuff for casual and serious fans. 4/5

Chernobyl 01:23:40 : The Incredible True Story of the World’s Worst Nuclear Disaster by Andrew Leatherbarrow

Chapters on the disaster and aftermath alternate with the author’s trip to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. A good intro to the disaster. 3/5

Turn the Ship Around! : A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders by L. David Marquet

The management advice is lost on me but the stories about turning around an under-performing sub crew in weeks is interesting. 3/5

My Scoring System

  • 5/5 = Brilliant, top 5 book of the year
  • 4/5 = Above average, strongly recommend
  • 3/5 = Average. in the middle 70% of books I read
  • 2/5 = Disappointing
  • 1/5 = Did not like at all
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AudioBooks – June 2020

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power by Shoshana Zuboff

A good warning of the dangerous designs and goals of firms like Facebook and Google. Sometimes a bit wordy. 3/5

The Calculating Stars: Lady Astronaut Volume 1 by Mary Robinette Kowal

Alternate timeline SF. A meteorite hits the US. The Space program accelerates so humans can escape earth. Our hero faces lots of sexism & other barriers to becoming an astronaut. 3/5

By the Shores of Silver Lake: Little House Series, Book 5 by Laura Ingalls Wilder

The family move to De Smet, South Dakota. The railroad and then a town is built about them over a year. A good entry in the series, some gripping passages. 3/5

The Restaurant: A History of Eating Out
by William Sitwell

A non-exhaustive history. Bouncing through ancient times before focusing on Britain since 1945. But plenty of fun and interesting bits. 3/5

Broadway: A History of New York City in Thirteen Miles by Fran Leadon

A mile by mile coverage from South to North. How each section was added to the street and developed. A range of interesting stories and history. 4/5

My Scoring System

  • 5/5 = Brilliant, top 5 book of the year
  • 4/5 = Above average, strongly recommend
  • 3/5 = Average. in the middle 70% of books I read
  • 2/5 = Disappointing
  • 1/5 = Did not like at all
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AudioBooks – May 2020

Fewer books this month. At home on lockdown and weather a bit worse so less time to go on walks walks and listen.

Save the Cat! Writes a Novel: The Last Book On Novel Writing You’ll Ever Need by Jessica Brody

A fairly straight adaption of the screenplay-writing manual. Lots of examples from well-known books including full breakdowns of beats. 3/5

Happy Singlehood: The Rising Acceptance and Celebration of Solo Living by Elyakim Kislev

Based on 142 interviews. A lot of summaries of findings with quotes for interviewees and people’s blogs. Last chapter has some policy push but a little lights 3/5

Scandinavia: A History by Ewan Butler

Just a a 6 hour long quick spin though history. First half suffers a bit with lists of Kings although there is a bit more colour later in. Okay prep for something meatier 3/5

One Giant Leap: The Impossible Mission That Flew Us to the Moon by Charles Fishman

A bit of a mix. It covers the legacy of Apollo but the best bits are chapters on the Computers, Politics and other behind the scenes things. A compliment to astronaut and mission orientated books. 4/5

My Scoring System

  • 5/5 = Brilliant, top 5 book of the year
  • 4/5 = Above average, strongly recommend
  • 3/5 = Average. in the middle 70% of books I read
  • 2/5 = Disappointing
  • 1/5 = Did not like at all
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Audiobooks – April 2020

Cockpit Confidential: Everything You Need to Know About Air Travel: Questions, Answers, and Reflections by Patrick Smith

Lots of “you always wanted to know” & “this is how it really is” bits about commercial flying. Good fun 4/5

The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth

A very tightly written thriller about a fictional 1963 plot to assassinate Frnch President Charles de Gaulle. Fast moving, detailed and captivating 5/5

Topgun: An American Story by Dan Pedersen

Memoir from the first officer in charge of the US Navy’s Top Gun school. A mix of his life & career, the school and US Navy air history (especially during Vietnam). Excellent 4/5

Radicalized: Four Tales of Our Present Moment
by Cory Doctorow

4 short stories set in more-or-less the present day. They all work fairly well. Worth a read. Spoilers in the link. 3/5

On the Banks of Plum Creek: Little House Series, Book 4 by Laura Ingalls Wilder

The family settle in Minnesota and build a new farm. Various major and minor adventures. I’m struck how few possessions people had back then. 3/5

My Father’s Business: The Small-Town Values That Built Dollar General into a Billion-Dollar Company by Cal Turner Jr.

A mix of personal and company history. I found the early story of the company and personal stuff the most interesting. 3/5

You Can’t Fall Off the Floor: And Other Lessons from a Life in Hollywood by Harris and Nick Katleman

Memoir by a former studio exec and head. Lots of funny and interesting stories from his career, featuring plenty of famous names. 4/5

The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks and Giants of the Ocean by Susan Casey

75% about Big-wave Tow-Surfers with chapters on Scientists and Shipping industry people mixed in. Competent but author’s heart seemed mostly in the surfing. 3/5

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YouTube Channels I subscribe to in April 2020

I did a big twitter thread of the YouTube channels I am following. Below is a copy of the tweets. They are a quick description of the channel and a link to a sample video.

Lots of pop-Science and TV/Movie analysis channels plus a few on other topics.

I should mention that I watch the majority of YouTube videos at speed 1.5x since they usually speak quite slowly. To Speed up videos click on the settings “cog” and then select “Playback Speed” . YouTube lets you go up to 2x

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Chris Stuckmann reviews movies. During normal times he does a couple per week. Mostly currently releases with some old ones. His reviews are low-spoiler although sometimes he’ll do an extra “Spoiler Review”. Usually around 6 minutes long.
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker – Movie Review

Wendover Productions does explainer videos. Air & Sea travel are quite common topics. Usually a bit better researched than some of the other channels and a little longer at around 12 minutes. Around 1 video per week.
The Logistics of the US Census

City Beautiful is a channel about cities and City planning. 1-2 videos per month. Usually around 10 minutes. Pitched for the amateur city and planning enthusiast
Where did the rules of the road come from?

PBS Eons does videos about the history of life on Earth. Lots of Dinosaurs, early humans and the like. Run and advised by experts so info is great quality. Links to refs! Accessible but dives into the detail. Around 1 video/week. About 10 minutes each.
How the Egg Came First

Pitch Meetings are a writer pitching a real (usually recent) movie or show to a studio exec. Both a played by Ryan George. Very funny. Part of the Screen Rant channel but I don’t watch their other stuff
Playlist
Netflix’s Tiger King Pitch Meeting

MrMobile [Michael Fisher] reviews Phones, Laptops, Smart Watches & other tech gadgets. Usually about one video/week. I like the descriptive style and good production values, Not too much spec flooding.
A Stunning Smartwatch With A Familiar Failing – New Moto 360 Review

Verge Science does professional level stories about a range of Science topics. They usually are out in the field with Engineers and scientists.
Why urban coyote sightings are on the rise

Alt Shift X do detailed explainer videos about Books & TV Shows like Game of Thrones, Watchmen & Westworld. Huge amounts of detail and a great style with a wall of pictures. Weekly videos when shows are on plus subscriber extras.
Watchmen Explained (original comic)

The B1M talks about building and construction projects. Many videos are done with cooperation of the architects or building companies so a bit fluffy at times. But good production values and interesting topics.
The World’s Tallest Modular Hotel

CineFix doesn’t a variety of Movie-related videos. Over the last year only putting about one or two per month and mostly high quality. A few years ago they were at higher volume and had more throw-aways
Jojo Rabbit – What’s the Difference?

Marques Brownlee (MKBHD) does tech reviews. Mainly phones but also other gear and the odd special. His videos are extremely high quality and well researched. Averaging 2 videos per week.
Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra Review: Attack of the Numbers!

How it Should have Ended does cartoons of funny alternative endings for movies. Plus some other long running series. Usually only a few minutes long.
Avengers Endgame Alternate HISHE

Power Play Chess is a Chess channel from Daniel King. He usually covers 1 round/day from major tournaments as well as reviewing older games and other videos.
World Champion tastes the bullet | Firouzja vs Carlsen | Lichess Bullet match 2020

Tom Scott makes explainer videos mostly about science, technology and geography. Often filmed on site rather than being talks over pictures like other channels.
Inside The Billion-Euro Nuclear Reactor That Was Never Switched On

Screen Junkies does stuff about movies. I mostly watch their “Honest Trailers” but they sometimes do ‘Serious Questions” which are good too.
Honest Trailers | Terminator: Dark Fate

Half as Interesting is an offshoot of Wendover Productions (see above). It does shorter 3-5 minutes weekly videos on a quick amusing fact or happening (that doesn’t justify a longer video)
United Airlines’ Men-Only Flights

Red Team Review is another movie and TV review channel. I was mostly watching them when Game of Thrones was on and since then they have had a bit less content. They are making some Game of Thrones videos narrated by the TV actors though
Game of Thrones Histories & Lore – The Rains of Castamere

Signum University do online classes about Fantasy (especially Tolkien) and related literature. Their channel features their classes and related videos. I mainly follow “Exploring The Lord of the Rings”. Often sounds better at 2x or 3x speed.
A Wizard of Earthsea: Session 01 – Mageborn

The Nerdwriter does approx monthly videos. Usually about a specific type of art, a painting or film making technique. Very high quality
How Walter Murch Worldized Film Sound

Real Life Lore does infotainment videos. “Answers to questions that you’ve never asked. Mostly over topics like history, geography, economics and science”.
This Was the World’s Most Dangerous Amusement Park

Janice Fung is a Sydney based youtuber who makes videos mostly about food and travel. She puts out 2 videos most weeks.
I Made the Viral Tik Tok Frothy DALGONA COFFEE! (Whipped Coffee Without Mixer!!)

Real Engineering is a bit more technical than the average popsci channel. The especially like doing videos covering flight dynamics. but they cover lots of other topics
How The Ford Model T Took Over The World

Just Write by Sage Hyden puts out a video roughly once a month. They are essays usually about writing and usually tied into a recently movie or show.
A Disney Monopoly Is A Problem (According To Disney’s Recess)

CGP Grey makes high quality explainer videos. Around one every month. High quality and usually with lots of animation.
The Trouble With Tumbleweed

Lessons from the Screenplay are “videos that analyze movie scripts to examine exactly how and why they are so good at telling their stories”
Casino Royale — How Action Reveals Character

HaxDogma is another TV Show review/analysis channel. I started watching him for his Watchmen Series videos and now watch his Westworld ones.
Official Westworld Trailer Breakdown + 3 Hidden Trailers

Lindsay Ellis does videos mostly about pop culture, Usually movies. These days she only does a few a year but they are usually 20+ minutes.
The Hobbit: A Long-Expected Autopsy (Part 1/2)

A bonus couple of recommended Courses on ‘Crash Course‘
Crash Course Astronomy with Phil Plait
Crash Course Computer Science by Carrie Anne Philbin

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Audiobooks – March 2020

My rating for books I read. Note that I’m perfectly happy with anything scoring 3 or better.

  • 5/5 = Brilliant, top 5 book of the year
  • 4/5 = Above average, strongly recommend
  • 3/5 = Average. in the middle 70% of books I read
  • 2/5 = Disappointing
  • 1/5 = Did not like at all

The World As It is: Inside the Obama White House by Ben Rhodes

A memoir of a senior White House staffer, Speechwriter & Presidential adviser. Lots of interesting accounts with and behind the scenes information. 4/5

Redshirts by John Scalzi

A Star Trek parody from the POV of five ensigns who realise something is very strange on their ship. Plot moves steadily and the humour and action mostly work. 3/5

Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder

The book covers less than a year as the Ingalls family build a cabin in Indian territory on the Kansas Prairie. Dangerous incidents and adventures throughout. 3/5

Wheels Stop: The Tragedies and Triumphs of the Space Shuttle Program, 1986-2011 by Rich Houston

A book about the post-Challenger Shuttle missions. An overview of most of the missions and the astronauts on them. Lots of quotes mainly from the astronauts. Good for Spaceflight fans. 3/5

The Optimist’s Telescope: Thinking Ahead in a Reckless Age by Bina Venkataraman

Ways that people, organisations and governments can start looking ahead at the long term rather than just the short and why they don’t already. Some good stuff 4/5

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