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Just to add a bit: in my country blinking your emergency lights (when all of your turn signals are going) for 2-3 times as a thank you is very common. It’s even considered rude not to use them e.g. after you were let in.
I don’t know if that is something in other countries. I live in Hungary.
It’s not exactly universal. In Germany, this can be interpreted as you warning of a pending emergency and trigger slowdown; they’d do thanks by signalling left-right-left-right rapidly.
Wtf this is like dark souls pantomime shit. You drivers really need a better way to communicate
Like a simple secondary horn that’s quieter and less aggressive?
Maybe like a kazoo
Oh, yeah, we use that too. It’s absolutely contextual, on the highway we use it for what you described.
I do it on occasion, I’m in the US.
I learned that this is a common practice in Japan, from a Youtube video I watched years ago. I adopted it after watching it. I live in the US.
We do that in the UK. I wouldn’t say it’s universal but it’s pretty common.
I found the drivers in Hungary very considerate and polite in general.
A friendly meep meep and a hoooooonk would be nice.
More complicated extension to this. I want a collection of standard of messages that I can send to other drivers while driving (like 6 buttons max). Some standard low distance wireless (probably based on or just Bluetooth)
Like:
- “Hey check your car its got something wrong with it”
- “Hey you’re in my lane”
- “Hey slow down it’s dangerous here”
- “Hey watch out road hazard ahead”
- “Go ahead”
- “I’m going now”
- etc
Just flashing lights, horns, hand gestures, and yelling out my window is a freaking game of charades man!
Basically, I like the idea of a quieter horn, and a regular horn. But we need like driving emotes, rather than the tea bagging hello equivalent
Like the Chevy Volt? (No, not my video. I don’t condone the filming while driving but it’s the best demo I could find.)
I’ve always wanted car to car commutation not through horns but radios or loudspeakers.
You thought internet trolls were a nuance… Just wait till they can bother you while driving.
Flash of high beams do work in some cases, but require that they are in front of you
Ah so we need rear high beams
Few taps on break lights is actually similar signal backwards than high beams forward.
I have like a Pavlovian response to immediately feather my own breaks and check my rearview if I see any red in front of me though lol
Hearing aids that don’t auto connect to whatever my neighbors are playing on Bluetooth. Also hearing aids with a Bluetooth block list
Seriously I’m fucking losing my mind over this. 3 times in under 10 minutes last night my hearing aids stopped playing the tv I was listening to to play the Bluetooth that my neighbors or their kids were listening to. Suddenly mid conversation with my wife about it, bam, music.
If you live in the US that sounds like something the FDA should be notified about. It’s probably not legal to sell a hearing aid that can so easily be hijacked by another party, or if it is, it really shouldn’t be. Either way, FDA regulates hearing aids so they are the ones to complain to.
As someone who works in live entertainment, Bluetooth is the bane of my existence. Every single show, I get multiple people asking if they can connect their hearing aids to my system via Bluetooth. The issue is that this question comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of how Bluetooth works.
Hearing Assist Systems have a variety of methods. All have their benefits and drawbacks. But notably, the requirement for HAS is that they provide an identical experience to the user as someone who isn’t hard of hearing. And that’s one of the big drawbacks of Bluetooth. Bluetooth introduces lag. HAS typically works either via radio, infrared light, EM loop, or wifi. And only the first three are acceptable for live events, while wifi is more popular for gyms.
The first three HAS all send an audio signal to the user without lag. Radio is a good example because most people understand how they work. The venue has a low power radio broadcaster (because FCC limits how powerful your radio broadcasts can be without an extremely expensive license) in the room, then each user can dial a receiver to that specific band. Then they’re able to plug headphones or a neck loop into the receiver. And boom, you have a distributed HAS with very little effort. Infrared does the same basic thing, with a light transponder instead of a radio antenna. The receivers watch for that light, and send the signal to the headphones. Lastly, EM coil. Many hearing aids have the ability to listen for EM broadcasts. The venue can install a loop around the room, which acts as a giant electromagnet. The hearing aid user switches to that EM mode, and they can pick up that magnetic signal. This is particularly popular in schools, where radio would have a lot of interference from rooms being so close together; The hearing aid user only hears the signal when they’re inside of the loop.
But all three of these have one thing in common: They have zero latency. The hardware to take an analog audio signal, convert it to radio/infrared/EM, and broadcast it, is faster than the time it takes for the audio signal to move from a singer’s mouth to the microphone. It’s nearly instant, because it’s all analog. There is no digitization that needs to take place; Ir’s just converting one type of energy (electrical energy from the audio signal) into other types of energy. And that is easy and cheap to do.
WiFi is popular for gyms, because it introduces a delay in the audio signal. WiFi requires packets, which requires a digital conversion. And that packetization takes time. It’s a processor calculating 1’s and 0’s. But it’s acceptable for gyms, where you’re only listening to a TV mounted on the wall. They can delay the video signal by the same amount, and you’re golden. Now the delayed video signal and the delayed wifi audio are arriving at the same time, so the experience is identical regardless of how you’re listening. But you can’t delay a live event. Shit on stage happens in real time. So WiFi isn’t an acceptable medium for live events.
And Bluetooth is even worse than wifi, because it requires pairing. The Bluetooth protocol requires a handshake between the broadcaster and the receiver, which means it can’t be scaled to larger crowds. Even with the issues of wifi, you can at least broadcast it to an entire room. But for Bluetooth, you would need an individual broadcaster for every single person who wants to connect. It doesn’t scale. It would be like needing to install a new radio antenna for every single person who wants to listen to the radio broadcast. It simply isn’t scalable.
Plus there’s the fact that Bluetooth is a digital system that requires packets just like wifi, which introduces that latency. Even the best Bluetooth systems designed for specific brands (like AirPods being designed specifically for iPhones) have latency. And that’s under ideal conditions. A potential bluetooth system meant for hearing aids wouldn’t be operating under ideal conditions; It would be designed to be compatible with as many different devices as possible, which means you can’t use bespoke programming to reduce latency. And in a venue where you’re hearing both the room noise and the hearing aid, any amount of latency will cause an “echo” effect that makes it completely unusable.
But none of that matters, because I still get annoyed Karens going “but I can connect to my phone, so why can’t I connect to your system?” And even if I bothered explaining all of this, the most I’d get is an entitled scoff.
Yeah that’s terrible. I mentioned elsewhere that my tv uses a different system and it’s actually what they should be hoping you have available. My audiologist said it’s an evolution of the old inductive loops (ah back in the day I almost got one of those designed for personal headphone use). I can’t confirm it is because I’m not taking it apart while trying to remember how the fuck electromagnetic communication works.
Also depending on the performance I’m amazed that people can hook it up. I still turn mine off for concerts, though that may be more the music I like is the sort to make me go deafer than my genes.
That’s horrible!
Do you have a tv connector for your hearing aides to connect to or is it connecting straight to the television?
Work in retirement home where lots of people use hearing aides with their televisions. Have not come across this issue.
Most connect via an external device paired to their hearing aide specifically.
I have a tv beam device
You don’t mean the “As Seen on TV” device do you?
No, my audiologist gave it to me. And it’s not like my neighbors are using one. It switches to Bluetooth streaming for their stuff according to my hearing aid app
It’s just weird that it switches to someone’s Bluetooth. Usually there is some sort of combination of basic authentication required and confirmation. Have you tried something like a “factory reset” on the device?
Are these OTC hearing aids? Or prescription ones from a reputable audiologist and brand? Every brand I have worked with require the devices to be in pairing mode to do that (the first 30 to 60 seconds of when the devices turn on)
They’re unitron, and expensive enough they better not be otc, Especially since I got them with a hearing test and everything. And maybe my neighbor accidentally turned their device on as I turned my hearing aids on. I do give them and myself a little break when I get home from work many days
I have a Bluetooth speaker that I use for both my phone and wired via an aux/3.5mm cable to my PC. When hard wired the PC’s sound takes preference, which is what I want but it still connects via Bluetooth to my phone every damn time and mutes all the audio coming from my phone!
Why are medical devices operating on the same band as consumer devices??
Because hearing impaired people want to connect it to their normal devices, like TVs and Phones?
Bluetooth is Bluetooth, no matter the usage. They’re only allowed to operate on a specific frequency range.
They have Bluetooth for convenience to help you listen to regular audio sources, but they should definitely have better controls available. Sounds like theirs are permanently in pairing mode
Any maps app that, when you set a route, lets you decide “don’t give me any directions until I get to X step” and/or “don’t give any directions after X step”. I dont like hearing the navigation when I don’t need it, and that would save me from having to open or close the navigation while I’m still driving.
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Adding on. An option to set complicated maneuver(s) up ahead voice notification and a prep notification for said complicated maneuver. The latter gives you an end goal statement. Such as, ‘Be in the left turn lane on the ramp up ahead.’ Then if you desire to enable it in the settings, hear what step-by-step actions need to be taken.
Tomtom made the first steps with this almost 20 years ago, it could show a second quick instruction in a smaller box, and it only showed it like that if it was in quick succession. Kind of crazy that a gazillion dollar company somehow can’t pin it down
This generally does happen on iphone maps. At least when I have two back to back things I need to do it’s normally phrased like “do this, and then shortly after do that”
Or stop zooming in to the max, leaving me with zero information! The only choice left is to blindly drive into the river when instructed to do so.
I think this is a brilliant feature. I’ve never thought of it, but this would totally solve the issue I have with being told basically 15 times some version of “don’t get off the highway at the junction” which is really annoying so I end up muting the directions the majority of the time, and that backfires pretty consequentially on occasion.
I get it but there is an easy toggle from spoken directions to alerts which I find easy to toggle.
At least on Apple and Google maps
Well yes we all know that, but the idea of the feature is that it saves you from messing up if you aren’t focused on your technology at a critical moment.
Batteries inside of stove/microwave/coffee machine/etc. with the sole purpose of keeping the time from resetting when it loses power.
You don’t even need that. My microwave is wifi connected but still can’t keep time. Instead of using NTP like any appliances or industrial control system in the last decade+, it syncs to your phone time though an app.
Wtf.
I’m so tired of everything being wifi connected
Nothing in my house is WiFi connected, other than computers and phones. It’s staying that way forever.
my microwave doesnt need wifi its a fucking microwave
A rather neat feature is scanning the barcode of an item with the phone app and the heating program is set automatically.
But setting the time automatically using ntp would have been enough for me.
“Smart” microwave might be generally helpful, but a lot of them aren’t for some reason, they went the first step of connecting to wifi and stopped there. Getting notification when ready or setting specific time and program via google voice instead of fiddling with controls is genuinely useful stuff that I would love to have
Fuck IoT
All my homies hate IoT
If you have wifi you need to store it’s credentials somewhere, and you run into same issue.
Actually automatic way would be to just take GPS signals clock time.
RCC has been available since the 80s. Much of the wold has been covered by radio time broadcasts that would be used by devices to set their own time but somehow it didn’t start to become really commonplace until wifi allowed for 2-way communications 🤔
I’ve conditioned myself fully by this point to only use the clock on the stove as an indicator of whether my power has or has not gone out
How often does your power go out? Why can’t you be bothered to set the time every ~10 years that probably happens?
Personally, where I live now, my power has gone out in the last five years more often than the rest of my life combined. I’m in my mid 30s.
That’s crazy! Where do you live?
I live in a rented house, it’s a double bungalow style with a lovely family attached. During COVID our power was out for three days straight. It was wild. Luckily I have a car that I can waste tons of gas to charge my things with (also luckily it has like seven USB ports), and also some battery packs that can charge things.
Went out and got tons of ice to put in the refrigerator and freezer and cooler.
Set up our iPad connected to our phone as a hot spot and watched YMS play Jump King for all three days. It was wonderful. I miss being NEETs.
I guess you haven’t cleaned your microwave in 10 years or had to do any electrical maintenance in the kitchen.
My microwave does not have a digital timer. And yes, over the ~9 years I am living in my current flat, I did not have to do any electrical maintenance. Do you have to do that regularly?
I’ll have momentary power losses probably once or twice per quarter, depending on bad thunderstorms or nearby construction, things that happen worldwide and affect power grids indiscriminately.
I do set my stove clock, I just ironically find it more useful to not improve it in this ridiculously simple way because it’s a good indicator of whether my home has had a power outage. Lol
Even just a capacitor to keep the time for 10 minutes or so. That would cover 99% of the power outages in my home
At this point I believe there is a conspiracy behind it
Nice try but I’m keeping my even more instant instant noodles to myself.
I’ll give you a hint though, the secret is in being ok with pumping boiling water into your stomach.
This sounds like a Florida man headline waiting to happen
A printer that works
Brother laser printers.
Stop wasting money on inkjet printers if you don’t print regularly
Mine was brilliant and now it’s sad and none of the troubleshooting steps for the symptoms I’m getting actually work. I suspect the room it’s in is too cold and humid and that’s making the toner clump, but I’m not keen on replacing mostly-full cartridges as the price has more than doubled since I got the printer.
Try putting the cartridges in a dehumidifier or wrapping them in paper and placing them on top of your radiators for a few hours, just be careful that they don’t get too hot (more than 50°C could be problematic)
Warm white LEDs inside of coloured glass bulbs to make LED Christmas lights that don’t look like gamer vomit.
Technology Connections did a video about this and talked about this company https://tru-tone.com
Maybe OP is Alec from Technology Connections
Proceeds to paint lights
Best Christmas tradition
Gamer vomit… I love it!
It’s been almost 27 years since the first Austin Powers movie and the world still doesn’t have any sharks with frickin’ laser beams attached to their heads.
Would you settle for ill tempered sea bass?
Frick! You’re right!
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This
A better voicemail.
I just re-watched the introduction of the first iPhone, and one thing that stood out to me was this “visual voicemail” thing they showed. To this day I still just get an SMS if someone leaves a message, and then have to call my voicemail and listen to recordings one by one. That’s still the norm for standard phone contracts here afaik, it’s ridiculous!
I didn’t know that was even still a thing. For years now on my iPhone I’ve just looked at the text transcriptions of my voicemail in my phone app.
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I set mine up in 2009 and it is shocking to me how this is not the standard
Now my iPhone, actually transcribes my voicemail live and gives me the opportunity to pick up during them leaving the voicemail. Like old-school answering machines used to do.
This has been a standard android feature on the phones I’ve owned for the last… I wanna say 10 years.
I’m sure it could be comfortable in an English speaking country.
That’s odd, Android transcribes my messages by default
Seems to heavily depend on your provider. Some work with the standard phone apps, some have their own apps, but most don’t seem to offer it at all here in Germany. One even sends you an audio MMS instead and just calls that “Visual Mailbox”. It’s crazy to me that such a basic and useful feature still isn’t just a standard thing on all phones.
My husband and I have the same provider but different brands of phone. I have visual voicemail, he doesn’t and my phone is the older one. It seems like Samsung and Apple are the only ones to even offer the app so far.
It depends on your service provider. In Canada they charge for it. Last time I checked it was around $7/month.
How do you make it do that mine’s not doing that. And I’m on the latest version of Android.
Using the Google phone app, one of the tabs is voicemail and it automatically converts it to text.
Mine also allows you to see each voicemail in your acct inbox and play/delete/call back each one like a song on a media player.
There’s still the cell providers limit on how many voicemails are allowed though. Better to use Google voice and have unlimited voice mail
I’ve had my google voice account handle voicemails for like 15 years and it did that for me. Well, now I don’t have to, but it’s been great.
I have a Samsung S20 and it has visual voicemail, haven’t dialed my voicemail in years. I assumed most phones from the past couple years had it, but my husband’s Google pixel doesn’t,.
I agree, this needs to be a standard.
Huh on iPhone in the UK. I get a transcript of any left messages.
useful implementation of AI silo’d to the applicable function.
some examples:
-
“rename these images with X pattern, add their description to the meta data”
-
“correctly capitalize all the names in my address book and tag them by how i know them”
-
“show me how much i spent on fast food last month”
-
actually good and useful autocorrect / spell check
-
find all the emails about Jane’s wedding next year and let me know where we are with the planning
-
find me an app for windows desktop that does XYZ
edit to clarify: I know there are algos and LLMs that do this, but I don’t want a “machine” that does all of them, I want a machine that only does each one really well.
LLMs would do all of those incorrectly with 100% confidence.
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Microwaves that use directed or reflected waves and to better direct or target energy to specific spots in food. Thermal vision in microwaves and more automated time/power controls.
Why are we still just blasting waves on a spinning dish as high as we can? Like we can pinpoint microwaves for devices with our routers, but we can do it for inside a controlled environment in a box?!
This is my evidence if someone tries to patent this and lock people out of making cool products that I said it here first!
Cost-benefit is not there. You can buy fancy ones that do some such things, but they are expensive.
Do you have any models in particular you are thinking of? I was in the market a few years ago when I thought of this, but couldn’t find anything. So far I’ve found one’s with weight, and ambient temp sensors, and a heating element and fan combination for roasting and convection, but nothing like what I’ve described.
Nah, sry. I just heard/read about them. One thing is using an inverter to control power instead of on/off timing. Other is using a bunch of sensors, that i remember as an idea many years ago.
https://shop.panasonic.com/products/homechef-4-in-1-multi-oven-1-2-cu-ft-1000w
Seems to have both (i just googled “fancy microwave” and it was the first result :)).
For my needs just a timer dial is enough.
No worries! Yeah, the inverter control is definitely a step in the right direction, though!
| For my needs, just a timer dial is enough. Most of the time it ain’t that deep, so time + power level really is enough. It’s just I think the microwave could be a much more versatile cooking appliance!
You have a point! Did you know about inverter microwaves? now you have 2 options, full blast, and less full blast! https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/85575 this cool person found out about this in 1991, and now my microwave has it. Welcome to the future :D
Why don’t we have microwave coolers yet?!?
Just make your own!
I can only find papers talking about using microwaves at near the 0 K scales for that (and admittedly I definitely don’t enough quantum mechanics to even hazard a guess as that works from reading the summaries!!!), so I am not sure about it at higher heats (like around 300K).
If you don’t want multiple magnetrons (which would work too as a standard antenna in the wireless model of MIMO) you could use a electromechanical system, ie point magnetrons at reflective plates and move and adjust them to least direct the waves to a given point. Multi antennas I think would give a better granularity (because you can control the wave as well as direction and be able to time the peaks to hit inside a target vs just aiming the beams to a given spot). You may be able to get that with an electromechanical system, but it’s not something I know of a lot of public info on, but if you could get a time division demux device for high power microwave that directs the different peaks to specific reflectors, you’d be good too.
Any openhard ware folks, please take this if you are interested!!!
In lighting effects an analogue could be a ‘scanner’, it reflects a stationary beam with a motorized mirror. Or you could mount the whole magnetron on a moving head!
Routers? Do you mean Wi-Fi routers? Because they certainly don’t pinpoint waves for each device, they send all traffic out in all directions.
Why ‘correct’ someone when their knowledge of a topic so clearly outstrips your own?
I’m happy to accept that I was wrong, in fact this is a very interesting bit of technology! I didn’t intend to be rude, unlike you, clearly.
I’d also like to add that beamforming, despite the name, does not actually involve creating a directed beam. As I described the antenna still sends a signal out in all directions - multiple antennae work together to create an interference pattern with a stronger signal where a device is located. While I wasn’t aware of this technology, it is not as “directed” as the name implies and wouldn’t necessarily have applications inside a microwave oven, especially since the wavelengths used are pretty long, so I don’t think they would not have much flexibility to create the kind of precise pattern that cooking something while skipping the empty space would require.
While the total length of the average Microwave’s wave is about 4.7 - 4.9 inches (12.5 CM) you can further pinpoint the phase of the wave as well both by frequency (playing with that .2 inches in the bandwidth) and phase modulation. This could be further tuned if needed by allowing Microwave ovens to operate in the other ISM band of 5.7 GHZ allowing for 2 inch waves (5.3 CM) or even the 61.25 GHZ band (0.19 inches). Though, as you move up in frequency, you see less penetration as the power is lost faster on the surface of the objects.
Would any of that really make it heat more efficiently though? You’d need at least two magnetrons, some sort of computer vision system, and a computer to do the necessary calculations. Even if you could practically produce an interference pattern that’s better than a single standing wave, I suspect you’d lose more energy than you save.
It might be more efficient though honestly that wouldn’t be MY goal. The main thing would be improving the quality of cooking provided by microwave ovens, less cold centers, burnt outsides, uneven heatings, etc.
Phone assistants responding to you in the same volume of voice you used to address them.
This would require a way of judging the distance you’re speaking from. Calling out from another room might get a whispered response, and vice versa.
This seems solvable. There are differences in pitch between a nearby whisper and a distant shout.
I agree, but I wouldn’t call it a “no-brainer.”
Maybe not. I’ve heard of apps that can detect mood and I imagine being able to tell that someone is sad from the tone of their voice should be more challenging than picking up the relative difference in inflection, quality of overtone saturation, application of the built in compressor, etc.
RISUG is cheap, permanent, safe, reversible male birth control.
It was invented in 1979, and has not yet come to market.
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Thanks, i never heard of this. Now ill never get to play my favorite boardgame:
Five minute abs
If your ABS takes 5 minutes to react there may be an issue with your car.
Strong Bad was ahead of his time when he made the Ab-Abber 2000. Abs in minutes - nay, seconds!
I figured I didn’t need it since I don’t have to fight Trogdor the Burninator, but I was wrong 😢
No! 7’s the key number here. Think about it. 7-Elevens. 7 dwarves. 7, man, that’s the number. 7 chipmunks twirlin’ on a branch, eatin’ lots of sunflowers on my uncle’s ranch. You know that old children’s tale from the sea. It’s like you’re dreamin’ about Gorgonzola cheese when it’s clearly Brie time, baby.
Step into my office.
The up coming weight loss drugs. I’m moderately over weight and been fighting it 20 years.
Having some help there would be a god send for a lot of people and I’m slightly optimistic on this round of drugs.
Yeah, companies starting an obesity epidemic by pumping us full of government subsidized corn syrup, only to solve that by getting us reliant on an exorbitantly expensive drug that you have to inject every day. How I love capitalism.
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God fucking forbid we take any self responsibility.
I eat pretty much zero processed food and it’s incredibly easy and inexpensive.
I’m fat because I eat and snack too much and it’s 100% my fault.
There are medical issues that cause weight gain fyi. Not everyone that is overweight can control it.
Saying that out loud nowadays makes you a public enemy in quite a few circles, sadly enough.
What are these drugs?
Ozempic is the big one, but there is Rybelsus, Trulicity, Wegovy, and others. They are for treating type 2 diabetes, but have been very popular for preventing type 2 diabetes, aka weight loss.
We’ve literally wasted decades because we’ve treated obesity as a personal failing rather than researching the problem.
