Technology
-
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: Fortunately, birdwatching as a hobby requires only two senses: sight and hearing. Most birdwatchers do not consider it to be strictly necessary to touch,…
-
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…
-
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-…
-
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…
-
Background: When talking to a digital assistant (e.g. Siri, Alexa, Google Home, probably dozens of others), the user can generally speak in a normal human language. For example: “Alexa, play ‘Cool Music for Cool People’.” The Issue: Unfortunately, thee ability to use natural language to communicate with these digital assistants is currently somewhat misleading: they…
-
The Issue: When multiple people try to view different screens in a dark room, it can be quite annoying. For example, a person trying to watch an atmospheric dark movie might be annoyed by a person playing on their cell phone, yet the cell phone user might also be constantly blinded by flashes of light…
-
The Issue: Many laptops have ports on one or both sides: chargers, USB ports, a headphone jack, video out, etc. However, it’s often quite annoying to find the ports. People often forlornly scratch at the side of their laptop for several seconds while trying to attach a cable to an out-of-view port. The difficulty of…
-
Background: Computer speakers can play high-frequency sounds that a dog can hear, but a human cannot. (This will be important later.) The Issue: People often wish they spent less time casually browsing / “doom scrolling” on the Internet. Unfortunately, it’s a hard habit to break! Proposal: This solution is very simple: an operating system can…
-
Background: In the year 2023, machine learning based chatbots finally became superior to the average human*. One interesting feature of these chatbots is that they provide the ability for the user to regenerate an answer. Here’s how the ChatGPT system handles answer regeneration: Not bad at all! [*] If you don’t believe this, please spend…
-
Background: In the early 2020s, the appeal of short (< 1 minute) videos became widespread, with TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, and other services vying for market share. (Surprisingly, the earliest major entrant into this genre, Vine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vine_(service)), completely failed and was shut down in 2017). The Issue: Unfortunately, the popularity of “bite-sized” videos has…
WorstPlans: updated every Monday since July 2014! 