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As someone who do the whole mileage actual thing for many years (millions of Chase and Amex points) but also a family and a full time job - IE 3 seats vs 1 and can’t leave for a trip at the drop of a hat - I’m always astonished by how worthless my miles seem to be.

I’m not convinced it’s all one big scam but a teensie bit hopeful your solution can help. Looking forward to trying. Thank you.


Having accumulated points on various platforms, in my experience, United and Alaska had much better availability for close-in flights than Delta. Dunno if there's a difference between redeeming on the Chase site versus transferring to United and then redeeming, but might be worth playing with.

The big win I usually hear from family who use a lot of miles is on upgrading seats for free, which is really great because they have joint issues and fly fair number of international flights. But I think they also maintain a spreadsheet with a rotating schedule of like 10 credit card companies that are cycled (or maybe shifted between based on who has the best deal for a given good or store in any given month?) for maximum points.

Oh man, do I hear that. I suspect you’ll like this; let me know what you think! Feedback greatly appreciated

Spoiler alert, it’s basically a scam

Agreed. Anyone interested should check out a report out of Vanderbilt, "The Loyalty Trap: How Loyalty Programs Hook Us with Deals, Hack our Brains, and Hike Our Prices."

https://consumerlaw.berkeley.edu/news/price-loyalty-how-rewa... https://cdn.vanderbilt.edu/vu-URL/wp-content/uploads/sites/4...

Small counterpoint: Working in a spot where I had visibility to various loyalty programs, several of them definitely rewarded loyalty. Big spenders would get better conversion rates than the regular consumer.


It most definitely isn't, but it takes significantly more effort than the bloggers want to make it seem like.

Yes it’s not technically a scam because it’s legal.

But it has scam smells: layering, misdirection, lock-in, very fine print, gamification, adjacent complex social media apparatuses.

I’d place it near MLMs, loot boxes, timeshares, robux, liquidity mining.


Yeah, flying my family of 5 to Hawaii using skymiles accrued on my Amex. Totally a scam.

They’re basically interchangeable with cash. I don’t get the issue. The main frustration I have is that I cant buy myself a ticket with cash and then pay skymiles for my child. If they weren’t of an age that they must be on the same reservation it wouldn’t matter. Feels more like a limitation of Delta’s abacus that sits behind their mobile app.


It’s not nearly as complicated as you make it out to be, and the literal point of what I posted is to try and simplify it.

An MLM or timeshare it is not.

Yes, it has gotten harder than it was a decade ago. But it is far from a “scam”


What about businesses like roame.travel (YC company)? I think this toolkit just replaced services like that entirely

It uses Seats.aero under the hood, which is a Roame competitor, but I’d love to integrate it with others. Seats.aero is the only one with an API, though, which I believe is a mistake on Roame and others’ part.

The actual searching for actively available award flights is the part this relies on Seats.aero for


SoCal gas is at least $6.85 a gallon.


Not that high. In the 5s.


$6.84999 at the Shell station near my gym this morning.


$5.66 today at the arco nearby. LA fwiw.


Understood. This was in Manhattan Beach which is expensive for everything but still, that delta is incredible.

Actually, I noticed one near there yesterday on PCH (forget which station) was $6.89999 for the good stuff.


That would be double my cost of gas where I am from 2 years ago. That's insane.


Insane was me paying this much during the gas price hikes in the early 2010s. We aren’t even there yet. Adjusted for inflation thats probably $8 gas.


Trivial to see the raw GLB files in a Viewer that gives you a bit more control.

https://github.khronos.org/glTF-Sample-Viewer-Release/?model...


The way most museum 3d viewers don't provide a download button always seemed a little odd to me.


Trying to capitalize on merchandising, even though it's all public domain.


That’s a really unfavourable view for what is a likely an oversight in UI design.


It's well established. Most public websites for museums have galleries of high res scans, and they're mostly all trying to keep you from downloading it. There are lots of tools out there to circumvent them, however.


This is a tautology and one at odds with itself. They simultaneously provide the high res scans but you think there’s a conspiracy to keep you from them. Why provide them in the first place then?


Not at all. They want people to experience what they have, but they don't want a small subset of people selling prints, T-shirts, and little statues. From their perspective, they sell excellent quality prints, etc. in the gift shop and online, and the proceeds benefit the collection. So they lock down downloads if they can.


But it’s not locked down, by your own admission.


Almost impossible to stop a determined actor from downloading media that you're serving to a browser. Most organizations don't have the budget or understanding. They outsource their websites, and ask for it to be as secure as possible.


Also beautifully done. Love it!


FWIW, I was able to select a Logitech USB webcam on my Mac mini running Sequoia.


So much fun and beautifully implemented.

I wish there was a way to use the output/preview as a virtual camera in Meet, Zoom etc. I could drive my colleagues potty with some of these :)


Aww that'd be nice! I think only a native app could do that, unfortunately. I guess that's the tradeoff between native applications and web. More OS integrations vs no install/wider audience.


Thank goodness. My Gmail address is my first name so I typically get many hundreds of spam’s a day which are almost all caught. Dozens in my inbox today so I figured something was up. Glad it’s not that the spam pedlars have suddenly gotten clever.


> My Gmail address is my first name

It's good to be you! My wife and I both have 3-letter first names so we never had that option, despite getting in on the Gmail beta 20+ years ago.


I've long admired your work online both for its writing quality and incredible insight.

Thank you for sharing all these years.


Thank you for the kind words and for reading my work over the years!

I'll be happy if any of it was helpful :)


Agreed! I felt the same way but sitting here with my morning coffee chuckling away. A good start to the day.


https://callumprentice.github.io/apps/flight_stream/index.ht...

Something similar but for flights and in 3D.

12 years old now - might be fun to see what new data is out there - real time perhaps - and have another go


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