Technology
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Background: In smaller homes and apartments, it is likely that most rooms are multi-purpose: a “dining room” might also include a sofa and TV, and a “bedroom” might host an artist’s easel, work desk, yoga mat, exercise bike, and more. This is a practical method of using limited space, but people often find it unpleasant…
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Background: When you’re the admiral of an 18th-century navy and you want to communicate with the many other boats in your fleet, what are you going to do? Obviously you can’t just send text messages to the other captains, since you’re in the middle of the ocean and won’t have any cell reception. The answer…
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Background: Many programming languages allow extremely long user-defined variable and function names. Frequently, companies will have a specific policy on naming: for example, forbidding abbreviations and requiring descriptive variable names (e.g., “CALCULATE_TOTAL_COMPOUND_INTEREST” would be OK, but “COMPINT” or “CCI” would not). The Issue: Normally, this makes sense: if someone has to read a bunch of…
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Background: “Incidental exercise” is a term that refers to the physical activity that a person gets during their normal daily routine. For example, a person who lives in an apartment that is three flights of stairs up from the street would get the “incidental exercise“ of climbing three flights of stairs. Proposal: Let’s bring incidental…
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The issue: The presence of windows in a house is a major factor in determining of whether a house is dark and cavern-like or bright and uplifting. Unfortunately, it is usually impractical or impossible to add windows to a home after its has been constructed. Additionally, windows generally have a negative effect on climate control:…
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The Issue: Sometimes, people go to new locations and feel a sense of unease (Figure 1), due to their lack of familiarity with the local surroundings. Proposal: Thankfully, the solution is easy! The tourist can simply tour while wearing a VR that has been calibrated to change the exotic foreign landscape into a familiar environment…
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Background: Birdwatching is a hobby that appeals to many completionists who enjoy trying to see every possible bird. The Issue: Unfortunately, many species of bird have gone extinct. Some notable examples: Elephant bird (Madagascar, extinct ~1000) Moa (New Zealand, extinct ~1440) Dodo (extinct 1681) Passenger pigeon (extinct 1914) The ivory-billed woodpecker (extinct 1987) Fortunately, birdwatching…
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Background: The current “casual” style of watching movies at home is very convenient, but lacks much of the impressive and ostentatious style of films in the golden age of cinema. Typically, the “film watching” experience is as follows: 1) turn on TV (Figure 1), 2) press “play” on a remote. Proposal: Let’s bring back classic…
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Did you miss a solar eclipse? Not anymore, thanks to these “eclipse any place, any time” sunglasses!
Background: A solar eclipse occurs whenever the Moon passes directly in front of the Sun (from the perspective of a particular location on Earth). These events are relatively common somewhere on Earth, but are quite rare in any specific location. If only there were a way to see a solar eclipse more frequently, without financially-…
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The Issue: A common user complaint about “Big Tech” is that it can be literally impossible for customers to contact an actual human for tech support. For example, a user may have literally no recourse if: 1) their email account was terminated (e.g. due to “spamming”), 2) their video hosting was deleted (e.g. due to…
