Technology
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Background: Sometimes, office workers who are retired (or unemployed, or even on vacation) miss certain elements of the office environment. Much of this is probably rose-tinted nostalgia, but maybe we can capitalize on it anyway in order to create a valuable service. Proposal: There are three elements to this system, which we will call the…
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Background: Sometimes, people feel the need to win an argument no matter what, or to “save face” after being totally incorrect. Or maybe it’s the last question at a pub trivia night, and the championship is on the line! The issue: (Un)fortunately, it can be easy to be called out on factually-incorrect assertions (e.g. “I’m…
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Background: When discussing a topic, it’s convenient to have “shorthand” terms for complicated concepts: e.g. “absolute monarchy” or “representative democracy.” The issue: Somehow, English completely lacks a term for describing the upcoming governments of the future—there is NO quick way to describe “a dictatorship, but the (human) dictator rules over the citizenry using an army…
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Background: It is common for people to be glued to their cell phones for nearly 100% of their waking hours. This is especially true now that phone batteries last for hours even under heavy use and fast video-capable cellular data is available in most populated areas. The issue: It is commonly suggested that people should…
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Background: Yoga is often thought of as an activity that requires focus, and is thus incompatible with meaninglessly scrolling through random Internet content. And it’s true that most yoga positions do not leave the yoga practitioner’s hands free to casually browse a cell phone while yoga-ing. The issue: Unfortunately, the result of this is that…
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Background: Cell phone interfaces seem to inexorably become more complicated as time goes on. The issue: The 2010-era smartphone relied on a small number of obviously-interactable elements, but 2020’s smartphones are quite sophisticated (and complicated) from a UI standpoint, with finger-sliding gestures, multiple screens of icons, and even the possibility of splitting the screen to…
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Background: It is generally understood that a person who finishes the last amount of something (e.g. milk, soy sauce, driving a shared car until the tank is empty) is also responsible for refilling the substance. The issue: This system is frequently gamed by the lazy, who will leave a tiny amount remaining so as to…
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Background: Extremely large TVs have now become cheap enough to use as gigantic computer monitors. It’s possible to find a 55+” television with high enough resolution and low enough latency to work as an external monitor for even the most discerning computer-ologist. The issue: Most desks are not set up to accommodate a 55″ television…
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Background: When typing on a phone with an on-screen virtual keyboard, the auto-correct feature is essential. Strangely, this auto-correct / auto-complete feature has never been monetized! Proposal: In order to bring great deals to consumers and new advertising opportunities to companies, we describe the following auto-correct enhancement. Currently, auto-correct is boring and predicable. For example:…
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Background: With the 2020 COVID plague, work-related video chats have become increasingly full of a large number of participants (Figure 1). The issue: Video chats have a problem that in-person office work does not: there is no convenient way for participants of an unreasonably-large video chat group to split off into subgroups. Instead, every discussion…
WorstPlans: updated every Monday since July 2014! 