I teach a class at Arizona State University and one of my students asked why my laptop screen was pink. I then proceeded to give the class a 10 minute sales pitch on f.lux and how blue light inhibits melatonin production. It still surprises me what a profound sales channel raving fans can be.

I think it's relevant to point out the potent anti-depressant effects many people experience with natural supplements such as sam-e and 5htp. It's unfortunate that these drugs are rarely prescribed (in the U.S.). Few clinical studies have been done on these and there is little economic motivation for drug companies since these are un-patentable substances.

I'm curious of the different impact between normal sleep deprivation and primary insomnia. It's common that insomniacs don't feel sleepy during the day as compared to a normal sleeper that simply didn't get enough.

> We charge the equivalent of 2 hours from a professional developer.

I would say 1 hour, i.e. $99/hr, is a more accurate statement. This would also help make the product appear more affordable, and as a better investment.

Really? okay, thanks. I figured 1 or 2 hours of time as a cost would be fair, but it doesn't seem to go down well. I had also planned on them not using it for more than 1 month. So I guess I'll half it until people stop considering it a joke :)

I, too, experience this. I believe it is related to cortisol spikes similarly to the increased daytime cortisol levels seen with insomniacs.

Hi Ryan, my name is Sean. I'm the GoDaddy product manager in charge of WordPress hosting. Thanks for including us and I'm glad we could surprise you with some fast speeds. In the past few months we've really made some huge strides in reducing page load times and are at some impressive speeds across the board right now. However, seeing your response times fall off a cliff surprised us too. There's been a big email thread going on this weekend to nail down exactly what happened so we can fix it :) I'd love to talk more and share some of the details around a new WordPress experience we're delivering in a few months. My email is in my HN profile.

Check what kind of traffic you are seeing on /xmlrpc.php.

What tends to happen is that spammers hit that file up and ask it to perform slow operations (the Wordpress team recently greatly expanded its capabilities). A PHP instance gets tied up for the duration. I've had instances lock up until killed by timeouts of 2 minutes.

When a bunch of traffic arrives at once, it only takes a handful of badly behaved instances of xmlrpc.php to render the server essentially inoperable.

I just went through this a few months ago. My bloggers don't use it and it can't be deactivated from within Wordpress any more, so I just 404 it in nginx.

Thanks for the tip. After reviewing Ryan's logs, it turns out a software security layer, Sentinel, was detecting the load test as a DoS attack since LoadImpact was sending all traffic from a single IP.

Hi Sean, it surprised me enough that I ran the test multiple times and came up with the same result over and over. I connected with Ben over the weekend and would love to talk with you guys some more!

This is a great example of the innovator's dilemma.

I used Laravel for a small project for the past couple months. Although I started web development in PHP, I am strictly a Ruby/Rails developer right now and I have to say working in Laravel felt very natural and right at home. I'm not saying that being Rails-like is merit in it's own right, but I had that same feeling with Laravel as I did when I first started using Rails. I'd highly recommend trying this framework and hope with more projects we can see some solid documentation grow.

The way I see it is that the problem with Laravel is it's core — PHP. If you want to use Rails-like framework — use Rails and you get Ruby for free!

To your latter point, it's certainly possible. You could replace "Ford or GM" with a large 90s computer manufacturer, e.g. HP, but Apple eventually decided they wanted to via Apple stores.

I don't know that Apple is a good model. They have high volume of relatively inexpensive gadgets that they've managed to convince people should not last very long. The lifetime and service expectations of a car are completely different. If I bought a car and the battery went dead, and the manufacturer's solution was 'ship it to us and we'll send you a replacement in x days' that would be a unacceptable. Likewise, people aren't going to put up with streamlining support by saying stuff like 'no you can't replace your battery, if the car dies you just buy a new one.'

My experience with the HPs of the world is on the business purchase side, but I've never bought 'from HP'. I could initiate the conversation with HP, but they always hooked me up with a solution vendor or whatever were calling a dealer at the time. Same w/ Cisco, Dell, IBM, EMC, Microsoft etc.

Assuming you have an Apple Store nearby, the dead battery issue is dropping off your laptop at the store, going to lunch, and then picking up the repaired product.

Dealerships are more like Geek Squad.

I'm not convinced. When I had to do anything more serious than basic maintenance, the answer has frequently been "we'll order a replacement part, it should arrive in x days."

Hi! One of the creators here. We're creating an easy way for you to track and get notified of your JavaScript errors in your front-end heavy apps that use Backbone.js, Ember, etc. We also are developing a method to engage your users when an error happens so they don't feel lost (you'll see the model popup). I'm applying to YC with this concept and would love to know your thoughts!