xyzzy

I wonder to what extent this is a statistical artifact rather than a genuine improvement. For example, if you measure performance as the mean time to serve each kilobyte, then the proposed scheduler does not increase performance.

What's the actual problem with Apache? Do you suppose it is running out of RAM in which to store thread stacks?

I wonder if old pre-forked process Apache would have done better, since it's not so easy to trick it into consuming infinite memory.

It's not so clear to me that a PhD is much use at a start-up in general; you'd probably learn more relevant technical skills at a regular programming job, and the mental habits you're likely to learn in graduate school will actively hurt you at a start-up. Unless you are lucky or careful about who you work with and on what.