Computers
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The Issue: Vertical orientation is the standard for short-form videos, which are optimized for viewing on (tall) cell phone screens. Unfortunately, desktop monitors are wide, not tall. This means the full-screen vertical video experience is suboptimal: such a video only fills about a third of the display area (Figure 1). Proposal: A vertical video aficionado could fix…
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Background: Many people find the relentless piling up of emails in their inbox to be stressful. There are various approaches for dealing with this. The most well-known is probably “inbox zero,” which recommends triaging emails when they’re relatively new (instead of procrastinating and letting them pile up). Although “inbox zero” doesn’t require that you should…
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Background: AI assistants often have “guardrails” associated with their operation, where an AI must get human confirmation for a potentially unsafe action before executing it. Examples include: AI agent generates an email (but requires human confirmation to send it). AI agent finds something to purchase only (but requires human approval before checkout). AI agent identifies…
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Background: Haunted houses are a Halloween experience that can range from extremely cheap and homemade (“this bowl of grapes is… human eyeballs!!!”) to extremely expensive and professional (e.g. Disney’s Haunted Mansion, although that’s not technically a “Halloween” experience). The goal of a haunted house is to evoke a feeling in the attendees that may range…
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Originally published 2025-12-29. Background: The phrase “seeing things through rose-tinted glasses” refers to the concept of viewing things with artificial optimism. Interestingly, there is no widespread term for the negative version of this concept (i.e., “emerald-tinted glasses” is not a phrase). The Issue: It is nearly unavoidable for a person to compare their appearance to…
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Background: A common issue in many interactions is that different people have different ideas of what is enjoyable. This comes up a lot when multiple people are trying to decide on a single dinner location, pick a movie to watch, etc. The Issue: In particular, let’s investigate the situation where two people want to go…
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Background: “Augmented reality” (“AR”) headsets (e.g. the Oculus/Meta Quest or the Apple Vision Pro) are capable of overlaying computer screens on top of a view of the real world. From the perspective of the headset-wearer, the virtual screens can entirely cover up any real world objects behind them. The Issue: If a person wears an…
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Background: There are a surprisingly huge number of emoji for expressing relatively rarely-used concepts, such as 🎍 (bamboo decoration), 🤾🏻♂️ (handball), 🎠 (carousel horse), 🛖 (thatched-roof cottage), and 🛋️ (couch and lamp). The Issue: Weirdly, there is no “standard” emoji for unambiguously expressing the concept “thanks!” or “you’re welcome!” One commonly seen approximation is 🙏…
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Background: Now that seemingly EVERY computer text input field is “A.I.-enhanced,” it can be somewhat difficult to remember which part of a document was generated by an AI, and which part has actually been reviewed by a human. The Issue: The classic response to this is “well just DON’T USE THE A.I. THEN!!” But it…
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Background: Vendors at stadium events often wander around the stands, selling hot dogs / popcorn / etc. to sports fans. Since a cart is impractical due to the stairs, vendors typically carry their products using a special-purpose carrying harness. The Issue: For many office jobs, a person needs access to a keyboard in order to…
