This comes across as bad but it is actually not that bad.
Those packages are from the universe repo, which includes ~23,000 packages that historically have been best effort maintained (unlike the main repository with ~2,300 packages that have guaranteed maintenance).
Ubuntu continues providing guaranteed maintenance for the main repo for free as it always have.
Now they are adding additional maintenance guarantees for 23,000 packages (which is a positive addition IMO), and making that available via Ububntu Pro
You can opt to not use Ubuntu Pro and you would continue getting the same guarantees as you were getting from Universe as before (which largely tracks Debian)
More details here in the "What's new with the Ubuntu Pro plan" section of https://ubuntu.com/pro
I wonder how to test controlling for reciprocity. I.e., If I receive a basic income as part of a pilot/experiment I will feel tempted to "give back" somehow, while if basic income is a baseline all humans receive, that reciprocity will not be present. How can you design an experiment so that somehow people don't feel they are receiving money in an extraordinary way, but rather that's just part of how the world works. Wouldn't that change their motivations and thus the behavior you want to observe?
It is technologically feasible today within a distance radius of 200 miles or so if the internet infrastructure around you is solid[1]. But as I mentioned in another comment, synchronous collaboration has a lot of friction, so I think while this is really cool, it's sort of an icing in the cake type of experience more than the most used scenario. Asynchronous is more convenient. And Bandhub has a sort of "live" feel since it has video and most tracks are recorded in one take (so there could be some slight mistakes or imperfections that make it feel very "real"). If you haven't tried it yet you should. The "live" feel to it was a pleasant surprise.
[1]NOTE: Most of the latency is actually in the audio processing components (internal audio device, driver and application buffers). There is some specialized hardware that minimizes this latency, making it work well across <200miles distance (or so). After that, speed of light + internet router buffers add way too much latency and it starts to not work so well.
I think there is a lot of truth in what you say. Most of our users in our target focus segment ( i.e., people who already play 2hs a day ) feel very confident in learning, practicing, playing/recording songs. Making music is hard after all, requires a lot of dedication. A lot of people aspire to get there, but they are not confident, or know how to get there. That's why lessons are so important in this hobby.
Since our initial focused segment is big enough for us to get traction, we are not currently focused on expanding, but we will do so in the future and asking ourselves/our users the questions you suggest seems to be a good idea.
The ability to connect with other people and develop deep relationships around something as intimate as profound as music making is very powerful. Making new friends is life changing.
When you say applying it to a wider audience do you mean (i) to people who are not musicians or (ii) to musicians not in our focus segment ( e.g., people who play less frequently/more casually)
Feature-wise Bandhub can be thought of as a combination of Facebook and YouTube with added specialized features for music collaboration.
(1) COMMUNITY FEATURES: Each user has a profile, you can follow/be followed, there is a news-feed, etc. The "posts" are exclusively music collabs, so you stay up to date on collabs your Bandhub friends are making, what's new, etc; you can comment and so on. You can search for collabs ( e.g., artists/styles/etc ) and create/share playlists. Also, there are interest groups ( e.g., "punk rock style covers" ). And there are added features specific to music collaboration ( e.g., "my list of collabs to participate" )
(2) THE MUSIC COLLABORATION SOFTWARE: There are two parts to it
(a) A collaborative GarageBand with video. When you open a collab in "STUDIO MODE" you get to a web-based multitrack audio/video editor - with many of the features of a DAW, but way simpler to digest. You can send/receive individual audio-video tracks, set the audio mix, enhance it with effects, determine which tracks stay/go, etc.
(b) Bandhub Recording App: when you want to record a part (called 'tracks') for a collab (e.g., the bass part), you use our Bandhub Recording App ( native app available for PC and Mac ). You connect your mic or instrument to the computer and using the computer's webacam you record audio+video through it. While recoding, you will hear the other parts of the collab (e.g., the drums and guitar) as backing tracks so you can play on top of them and stay in sync. When you are done, the track gets inserted in the collab in draft mode. You don't have to edit timelines for synchronization or use complex audio/video editing software at all. It's actually super super easy to use.
It's very high. We are not doing anything scientific around it but talk to the users constantly and I can tell you they are very very happy. The phrase "changed my life" is recurrent.
The community self-regulates who connects with who like any other social network/community. When you first logon you can explore/search for collabs and musicians and you will quickly identify people you'd like to connect with. If you are somewhat active the first few days you will quickly develop relationships with the type of people you are looking to connect.
Another important aspect is that the collaboration happens asynchronously. A lot of the frustration with forming bands is the synchronous nature of it. (1) all have to be together at the same time in the same place (which we know is very hard to do since people have their own schedules/priorities) and (2) all musicians have to actually perform perfectly in sync at once - any minimal screw up by just one of the band members and you have to start over. It's very frustrating. Asynchronicity solves those 2 problems.
For revenue, we have a freemium model, users subscribe to Bandhub Pro and get additional features.
Something similar: http://bandhub.com - there are more than 100,000 multitrack collabs (containing virtually all recorded music), where you can isolate (or mute) drums or any other instrument.
I wonder if we are thinking about the housing cost problem properly. I live in NYC and there are a lot of affordable options. That's certainly not the case about the most desirable locations. But ipso facto those locations will continue going up in price. Perhaps the problem is not so much about housing cost but transportation and access to services (eg uber, doordash), which seem to be advancing and making a lot of progress. Would love to hear your thoughts about this.
What's your advice for a new accelerator (or any investor for that matter) in measuring if they are doing well? The problem is one of retarded measurement of success. It feels like you are doing well because you are deploying money, you are being highly selective, etc. But you can still be slowly dying without noticing. What are some good predictors? You guys at YC have some heuristics for identifying good founders, but I believe it would be hard for new accelerators/investors to use those, because they are highly subjective and I would argue most new accelerators/investors will not know how to assess those founders characteristics when they are getting started. Would you advice people to experiment for a few years (literally being willing to loose all the money invested) just to develop that ability to measure, and be ready to be a good accelerator/investor a few years down the line?
I wonder about how much of the MOIC is driven by follow-on funding. Figure 4 indicates most of the value created came from early stage investing, but it indicates that that's the "initial" deal stage. So it may well be that most of the deals were really 25x+ MOIC deals at early stage - but the net fund MOIC for most investors was lower because they did extremely strong follow on rounds when they identified the company as a winner. If that's the case, the implied message about "VC investing is NOT a power-law" may be misleading.
@sama: how are you thinking about evaluating progress of the groups? it seems all the bureaucracy in the current research ecosystem derives from the fact that it is really hard to evaluate progress in research/science. So you form a committee of experts to evaluate if a given researcher is doing well, and that eventually leads to politics and bureucracy. what are you thoughts on evaluation?
Those packages are from the universe repo, which includes ~23,000 packages that historically have been best effort maintained (unlike the main repository with ~2,300 packages that have guaranteed maintenance).
Ubuntu continues providing guaranteed maintenance for the main repo for free as it always have.
Now they are adding additional maintenance guarantees for 23,000 packages (which is a positive addition IMO), and making that available via Ububntu Pro
You can opt to not use Ubuntu Pro and you would continue getting the same guarantees as you were getting from Universe as before (which largely tracks Debian)
More details here in the "What's new with the Ubuntu Pro plan" section of https://ubuntu.com/pro