Ask HN: What would you love to pay for if it was available? • Hacker News Board

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

#161

Post by jaytee_clone » Wed, Apr 08, 2009, 2:43 AM UTC

electromagnetic wrote: post #45

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.

This is ideally a great product, if you can solve three practical problems.

1. Nutritional needs depend on age, time, body, activities, etc.

2. The desire for tasty food often greatly out-weights the desire for nutritional food.

3. Evolutionarily, we were designed to want more than what we need.

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

#162

Post by terragb » Wed, Apr 08, 2009, 2:53 AM UTC

reduxredacted wrote: post #85

terragb wrote: post #33

A dead simple, cheap 8.5x11 e-ink device with no wifi or touchscreen or anything like that. Just the ability to page through my already owned pdfs. Some of them are scanned images, not text so no text conversion. Even if the only way to get the docs on it was via some kind of virtual printer driver I'd be happy. I'd basically like a way to read stuff on e-ink as if it had been printed.

Agreed ... Foxit's e-book reader "appears as though" it's getting a little closer. For me it's not about page size but price. It seems like there'd be a market for a "light on features" ebook reader for those of us who don't care about whispernet, touch screens or wifi. Though I don't know that I would be willing to skimp on everything (like a reader with just forward and backward buttons). When I read PDF files on m…

The reason I say "as if it had been printed" is because converting things to "kindle format" sucks and tends to not work correctly unless it is just plain text. My printer never has this problem. Also it seems like this would reduce the complexity of the device and with that hopefully the price. Furthermore, searching will only work if you have only text which is one of the problems... You're definitely right about needing page numbers though.

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

#163

Post by RobGR » Wed, Apr 08, 2009, 3:07 AM UTC

bokonist wrote: post #102

the pre-1992 version of usenet

Voted up, because I am actually planning to pay for a giganews feed, now that Time Warner killed there usenet servers.

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

#164

Post by RobGR » Wed, Apr 08, 2009, 3:19 AM UTC

reduxredacted wrote: post #82

A small business server appliance for non-IT based small businesses. I'm thinking: Network attached storage with a built in Samba NT compatible domain controller/windows file/print sharing capabilities. RAID-1 plus an automated backup mechanism ... maybe, attach an external USB drive and it automatically does Sunday fulls and daily differentials keeping as many as it can store. Bonus points if it can take extra SATA…

I think Buffalo produced something like this called the "yellow box" or something.

It is getting easier and easier for a low-capital business to produce something like this. If you are interested in looking at this commercially send me an email at rgristroph@gmail.com, I have been researching various low power linux computers and etc.

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

#165

Post by ivankirigin » Wed, Apr 08, 2009, 3:26 AM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #118

Oxryly wrote: 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.

The problem is trust. People won't know for sure that's what they are getting. It's a similar problem with online fresh grocery shopping.

I have a few friends in robotics who periodically pitch this idea around.

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

#166

Post by RobGR » Wed, Apr 08, 2009, 3:26 AM UTC

dave_au wrote: post #148

This is motivated by the fact that I'm in Australia and our broadband sucks. Netflix send a whole heap of DVDs through the mail, so they're trust you not to rip them and distribute copies. If there was a massive content distribution network with kiosks in shopping centres where I could put in a DVD-RW or usb storage device (or pay for a blank DVD) and pay for the latest movies and TV shows I'd make a good amount of u…

http://www.cineflashplayer.com/

Click on the products part to see that they sell through kiosks.

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

#167

Post by kiwidrew » Wed, Apr 08, 2009, 3:41 AM UTC

cjbos wrote: post #21

davidw wrote: 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.

And New Zealand too.. there are zero quality Mexican restaurants there. Its not Mexican, but the best Peruvian food I've had outside of Lima is in Amsterdam http://www.casaperu.nl/html/casaperu.html can't recommend it enough! (My wife was born in Lima and we eat alot of Peruvian food)

There's a couple of lovely Mexican ladies who have a small restaurant in Wellington (Viva Mexico) that is absolutely fantastic! Otherwise, yes, NZ Mexican is rather abysmal.

(I often think that good Mexican would be an awesome business opportunity here...)

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

#168

Post by charlesju » Wed, Apr 08, 2009, 4:01 AM UTC

icey wrote: post #76

charlesju wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love to just drink my meals and be full.

Do you have a blender?

haha fair enough, let me rephrase.

"I would love to drink my meals, and still be a healthy human being."

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

#169

Post by plinkplonk » Wed, Apr 08, 2009, 4:11 AM UTC

"The only rule should be that you would actually take out your credit card right now and pay for it if someone offered it."

ok here goes,

1. New replicas of old computers like the ZX Spectrum, Comodore 64, Amiga, the lisp machine, the Newton

2. The above, but in a handheld form factor

3. A kindle that reads programming books perfectly, has no drm and can handle pdf without conversion.

4. A website that would pay me for learning (hey we are just thinking creatively! A man can hope!). SO say if I finish all the non research problems of each chapter of Concrete Mathematics, I'd get 20 $)

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

#170

Post by gecko » Wed, Apr 08, 2009, 4:36 AM UTC

yaj wrote: post #55

A hoverboard as seen on Back to the Future.

I used to desperately want a hoverboard. Then, sometime in late middle school or early high school, when I was getting into physics, I realized that a hoverboard would have no way of stopping or turning. I was quite depressed.