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Ask HN: What would you love to pay for if it was available?

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131–140 of 198 posts

Re: Ask HN: What would you love to pay for if it was available?

#131
post #97

Something like a Netflix for books and articles. I'd pay just to rent textbooks for general education classes. It would need to have a gigantic library though, big enough to guarantee that I would be able to find any book through there if it wasn't in a library. PDF versions of the books would be nice to, so I could access the book anywhere immediately. And it would need a good selection of scientific books. I have a…

This is an interesting thought. Does anything already exist as a service for college students to rent textbooks?

Yes, there are quite a few, actually. But they usually don't give you significant advantages over the old buy new/sell used model.

Re: Ask HN: What would you love to pay for if it was available?

#132

An online memorial for a dead relative.

check out http://mem.com . They made something for a friend's relative recently (unfortunately) and it looked quite nice.

I don't mean to be rude, but how is a service like this actually used? I mean, in your experience, what's different about it versus, say, a blog, or even a simple cms like jottit?

Re: Ask HN: What would you love to pay for if it was available?

#133

Bachelor Chow (See: Futurama). It doesn't have to be particularly tasty, but a simple meal that has 1/3 of your daily nutrition (with 1/3 RDA of all your vitamins and minerals) would be great. Preferably without ridiculous quantities of preservatives and artificial flavours.

In the US at least one of the latest trends (advances?) are these microwavable single-serving bags of rice (and now pilaf, curry, etc).

A few companies make them, and they're a large enough for a small meal, and pretty good for being a 90sec meal. If they could add a bit more substance (and significant nutrition) and variety we might be able to call this one a win in the next few years =)

Re: Ask HN: What would you love to pay for if it was available?

#135
post #23

A computer display with at least 200DPI, and about 19...21 inches diagonal. I'd consider only 1:1 and 4:3 sized ones. Honestly, several times I've been searching for high resolution displays, and aside of old, expensive and slow T221 (or crazy-expensive medical and flight control ones), there are none. Why such DPI? For starters, it makes anti-aliasing (think, `blurry' fonts, jagged or blurred widgets and 3D objects…

Stare at the sun for a couple of hours; that might help with the whole "seeing pixels" issue.

Re: Ask HN: What would you love to pay for if it was available?

#136
post #35

- A laptop battery that lasted for as long as I can stay awake (say, 24 hours). - A cellphone that people could call anywhere in the world without paying for an international call, and that allowed me to call anyone or use my data plan at the same price regardless of where I'm located. International roaming charges are so absurdly high that they force me to have different sim cards and an unlocked phone (extremely in…

I assume the big problem with having two SIM cards would be having two different numbers and missing tons of calls. Wouldn't it help to have two different phones so that you wouldn't miss calls?

Re: Ask HN: What would you love to pay for if it was available?

#137
post #62

A computer I could hang on the wall in the bathroom or kitchen that just displays tasks/reminders for the day. You know, a simple dashboard to start the day.

I'm not sure how far digital picture frames are advancing, but you could probably get a wi-fi one, and display an image from a remote server (your desktop), where you generate an image from text on the fly.

Re: Ask HN: What would you love to pay for if it was available?

#138
post #42

I want a desktop computer with a docked netbook. The files, programs, and program configuration on the netbook should auto-sinc with the desktop. Large files should be easy to stream from the desktop to the netbook. The netbook needs to have an embedded, fast cell network data connection. I might be able to build this myself with a MacPro, a router, a COTS netbook, hackintosh, dropbox, etc. I'd probably have at least…

I've thought about the same thing myself. (I'll make do with the 24 inch monitors, though. :) I'm surprised the Mac Pro doesn't have a way to dock the air yet, though. There are a lot of usability pieces to think about. Do you really want program configuration to sync? I use programs differently on laptops and desktops.

The MobileMe preferences sync is close and seems to be more elegant to me.

Re: Ask HN: What would you love to pay for if it was available?

#139
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its like a real girl who doesn't take hygiene all that seriously...

Boiling water + disinfectant beats a shower or any other non-lethal cleaning method. The doll should be more hygienic than any human could possibly be.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What would you love to pay for if it was available?

#140
post #2

Decent Mexican food in Europe:-) (BTW, "if it were available") Edit: if I ever 'made it big', and decided to stay in Italy, I'd invest a portion of my money in a good Mexican restaurant here. It would probably lose money, but what the hell.

The sad part is there isn't decent Mexican food in Mexico. I've tried in 6 different cities there, it's not at all like what we eat. Might be that the quality of the ingredients is just vastly inferior.

The only place I found so far with decent Mexican food in Mexico is owned by Sammy Hagar.

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