Technology
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The issue: Sometimes, you’re looking for a co-worker, and you’d like to know if they’ve gone out to lunch, left for the day already, or haven’t arrived yet. Normally, you’d have to actually send a text message to that person to ask. But that can be overly intrusive. Fig. 1: Your coworker’s chair is empty.…
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Background: Haircuts can be time-consuming and expensive. Somehow, even though modern robotics have resulted in quad-copters, robotic surgery, and an alarm clock with a hand that slaps you in the face, the dream of automated haircuts remains elusive. Proposal: Behold, our salvation from laborious non-automated haircuts: the mechanical “haircut helmet.” Fig 1: Functional AND fashionable, the…
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Background: Although people usually prefer it to be sunny rather than rainy, there are locations in the world where it hardly ever rains. Plus, there are some people who prefer an occasional rainy day even when the weather is sunny and cheerful. Besides, sometimes a sunny day doesn’t match the tone of the actual events…
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Background: Have you ever had to deal with a shared refrigerator? If so, you may be familiar with the issue of old food items piling up in nooks and crannies of the fridge and never being removed. Periodically cleaning the fridge will fix this, but it’s a hassle to figure out which food is old…
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Background: If you go into a coffeeshop in a major city, there is a good chance that you will find it entirely colonized by patrons with laptops who use the shop as a “home office.” Even if you wait for half an hour, you might never get a table. Woe! Previously, this issue could be…
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Help reduce the cost of running a server with SPECIAL OFFERS on your console / command line / anachronistic DOS prompt! Sponsored by GENERIC BRAND VIRUS_SCAN.exe . Command line banner ads are the future of paying for server time. Advertisements will be unobtrusively inserted, as seen here. Don’t skip these special offers—that would be THEFT AND STEALING and…
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Background: There have been a number of historical attempts to bring exercise and video games together. However, these have mostly required additional attachments and/or gimmicky peripherals in order to function. But improved computer vision algorithms (plus the widespread availability of inexpensive cameras on laptops, televisions, and monitors) mean that it is now possible for the…
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The issue: When you call for transportation in a crowded area (Fig. 1), it’s often unclear both: 1) For you, the pedestrian, which of the numerous indistinguishable late model imported silver cars is picking you up 2) For the driver, which of the many pedestrians is actually the one who summoned that specific car. Fig…
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Walk a dog in style with this new amazing invention.
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Background: In olden times, recordings could only be viewed at home by either personal movie projector (extremely rare) or VHS player. Nowadays, digital video makes it possible for anyone to get on-demand video without the hassle of low-quality video and rewinding tapes. But perhaps the “VHS experience” is integral to getting the full effect from…
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