Be careful here. Despite announcing 42 price reductions over the 7 years of AWS existence, the M1 tier was only reduced for the first time in 3 years after Google/Azure dropped their pricing. They push through a huge number of price drops, but sometimes (actually often) their headline drop is one very small, unique charge, leaving everything else unaffected.
Unfortunately, Uber in Australia is seeing some of the same myopic and special interest difficulties that Elon Musk and Tesla are in the US. To provide context, payment processing for credit cards in Australian taxis is exorbitant (10%) on top of the fare and mainly processed by an oligopoly that will fight to maintain this cash cow.
Of course, they are doing this through a regulatory agency, and clearly backed by a law designed to serve them. And there is no way to waive this requirement (that would impact regulatory fees for licenses etc).
Another case where technology is a long way ahead of the law in providing valuable solutions to the wider community.
I researched this for myself a couple of years back and found a couple of things but only speak from my personal account:
1. There are a couple of different options, the first being done completely without surgery, and the second where they cut the lens and 'flap it up' (literally) and then do the laser surgery. Obviously, the second option is more complex and as a result can result in more problems.
2. A lot will depend on how thick your lens is. I was looking at it and they said that as I had a thin lens, it drastically changed my options. It also raised the risk as they only had one chance (if you have a think lens, they can do follow-up laser surgery to fix mistakes - no such luck with me).
It must be said, that overall the chances of anything going wrong are less than 1% or something insignificant and in most cases you will just have the same or slightly worse vision. I just wasn't willing to take the risk given I had no chance for fixing it if they went wrong.
Sorry it's not data - just my personal experience a couple of years back.
Surgery without surgery? Whats that? The second option I believe is standard LASIK. Since I do sports, I'd be at risk of having a flap dislodged, so I have to do PRK, where they remove the cornea by brush and the cells regenerate on their own.
"Surgery without surgery?" That's PRK(Photorefractive Keratectomy) that the OP mentioned. I had PRK about 8 or 10 years ago and am very happy with the results. PRK is the older technology where they just laser the surface of your eye rather than cutting a flap and peeling it up before lasering. The risk are the same but different. That is to say, roughly the same (low, <2% if memory serves) chance of making your vision worse but with PRK it'll be caused by infection/poor healing of the epithelium, while with LASIK it'll be caused by complications due to cutting the flap. LASIK is(or at least was) more dependent on doctor skill/mistakes, while PRK is pretty much all computerized and juste depends on your cleanliness and immune system. The other big difference is healing. With LASIK it's zap, done, perfect vision, drive home and enjoy...just don't get poked in the eye for a couple months. With PRK it's zap, hay I can kinda see, have someone drive you home while the pain kilers wear off, oh god it hurts, I can't see anything, lay on the couch crying for 3 days, and then watch your vision get slowly better over the next month or so till eventually it's perfect. That's why LASIK is considered an improvement, because burning the skin off your eyes isn't a lot of fun(think onions under your eyes), and it takes about 3 days to grow back and another month to heal to the healthy smooth state required for 20/20 vision. Still it was worth it. Personally I chose PRK because I was doing MMA at the time so LASIK would have required taking 3 to 6 months off training to make sure I didn't damage the flap, whereas PRK on a friday let me continue training next week. Think I had to take monday off work 'cause I was still in pain, but by Tuesday I was OK. Driving was a bit hairy for a month or so. OK during the day but at night when your pupils dilate I'd have quadruple vision and major star-bursting from headlights, but not so bad I couldn't drive, but kinda freaky. After about 4 or 5 weeks that all faded and I had 20/15 vision. Totally worth it.
Agreed - there are thousands (tens of thousands?) of E-Commerce sites that have revenues in excess of $1m. It is staggering when you scratch the surface.
Not at all:
1. He is talking about how people actually make money out of E-Commerce - that is driving sales and ensuring you have a margin on what you sell. It is very myopic to believe that the technology underlying the E-Commerce solution will drive the success of E-Commerce (a situation all to common on Hacker News - yes I am aware it is technology focussed, but not the exclusion of everything)
2. Andy Dunn has backed Spree Commerce through Ayr, Bonobos, Red Swan. I imagine, he has done that because he believes proprietary all in one platform solutions have inherent limitations. Spree Commerce has the opportunity to significantly disrupt the Shopify model (and likely will impact their valuation and/or longevity).
There is a beauty to a system that has been designed and implemented so effectively where almost every example will be a unique deployment yet simply work. There is a whole other layer of directions on the taxi ways that ensures planes can keep moving and is standardised across all airports. Doesn't sound like an important factor, but when the wind changes and you have to have all planes take off (and land) in another direction ... and they don't have reverse ...
When I was at B-School, I would call up an alumnus at a company I was interested in working for and say, "I am going to be in your city/town this Friday, any chance for a coffee?". They would almost always say yes ... and then I would have to quickly book travel. On more than one occasion I did this, I turned up and found that I had meetings with HR, senior managers (even a CEO) planned. My experience is there is no substitute for travel during a MBA.
While I agree with your sentiment, I would like the article to drill down on the reported behaviour. What happens to those people who gave good early traction (the 4 quick repeat purchases). ie do they continue to buy (niche) or do they move on to the next bright new-fangled thing. If it's the latter, as a two-person company, the fad may wear off quicker than allowing you to get the refocus, target etc.
Identifying who these buyers are is the key ... and ultimately very difficult to ascertain. Any tips on that would be incredibly valuable.
The default position that all innovation comes only out of apple (vis the Apple keyboard comment) suggests that:
1. Apple marketing is still doing a great job convincing everyone they still have innovation in the heart of everything they do (I dare say it's not innovation as improvement and miniturisation)
2. Microsoft needs to do more to burnish it's innovation credentials
As much as I want to agree with you, the keys have OS X labels on them, such as the command button, so this is an actual apple keyboard modified with sensors.
