view org/ideas.org @ 143:36c7beb5e5cc

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author Robert McIntyre <rlm@mit.edu>
date Thu, 26 Feb 2015 18:03:15 -0800
parents f40992b38f51
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1 #+title: Big List O' Ideas
2 #+author: Robert McIntyre
3 #+email: rlm@mit.edu
4 #+description: list of ideas from the last ~ 7 years
5 #+keywords: aurellem ideas half-baked random
6 #+SETUPFILE: ../../aurellem/org/setup.org
7 #+INCLUDE: ../../aurellem/org/level-0.org
8 #+babel: :mkdirp yes :noweb yes :exports both
10 * Ideas
11 # :PROPERTIES:
12 # :HTML_CONTAINER_CLASS: ideas
13 # :END:
15 This is a list of all the ideas I've had that I felt like writing down
16 for the past ~ 8 years. Some of them could be practical inventions and
17 are "just" waiting the that 95% perspiration to bring them to
18 fruition, some are ideas for science fiction, and some are simple
19 observations. Some are really only for my own personal notes and are
20 not meant to be comprehensible. They are arranged roughly in reverse
21 chronological order, with the most recent ideas at the top of the
22 list. The ones at the bottom of the list are heavily influenced by my
23 time at MIT.
25 If you find some of these interesting and would like to collaborate on
26 them with me or discuss them in more detail, I'd love to hear from
27 you. You can email me at ideas@aurellem.org.
29 If you want to use one of these ideas as your own and run with it,
30 please feel free. I'd love to hear about it if you do.
32 #+begin_quote
33 There's no end to what a man can accomplish if he doesn't care about
34 getting credit.
35 #+end_quote
37 - whole brain perfusion embedding :: Do the standard EM embedding
38 protocol, but skip the osmium step, and use the "perfusion
39 pausing" method to prevent overextraction during the dehydration
40 and embedding steps. I think that you CAN perfuse resins into the
41 brain, simply because you CAN perfuse viscous rubber when doing
42 vascular casts.
44 - perfusion pausing :: One problem with doing perfusion is that if you
45 STOP the perfusion, you rapidly loose pressure in the organ as
46 your perfusate leaks out. You can prevent this by submerging the
47 organ/head/rat whatever in FLUID at the appropriate level. Use
48 something inert like flurocarbon to avoid problems. You would
49 have to slowly decrease the flow rate while simultaneously
50 lowering the perfusing object into the fluid. To start again,
51 reverse the process -- reengage the peristaltic pump slowly while
52 removing the organ from the fluid.
54 - evoultionary textbook mimiricy :: as surgery becomes more common,
55 there develops a distinct selective pressure for individuals
56 organ layout to look more like the medical textbooks! :P
58 - transparent skin :: temporary / permament transparent skin. Allows
59 for examination of organs / muscles and visual prevention of
60 disease and detection or abnormalities / good things
61 eg. excercise.
63 - sweet information :: candy with a whole book written in it. Eat a
64 book!
66 - targeted immunosuppressant :: just kill off the B-cells and friends
67 that would cause problems in a organ-transplant / other
68 situation. AIDS is good at killing these cells -- maybe make it
69 just target the ones that will cause problems. Then you can
70 premptively kill off that part of someone's immune system before
71 a transplant. ALSO, you can kill off everyone's defenses against
72 other blood types and make people effectively type AB+ w.r.t
73 blood transfusions. Actually, why not give babies this treatment
74 so that they're automatically compatable with all blood types?
75 The immune system has this already when it's first growing; maybe
76 it can be "retrained" to accept new things, or the mechanism of
77 immune cell death be co-opted for these purposes.
79 - fuck you tetris :: tetris that actively gives you the worst possible piece.
81 - pockets :: more things should have them!
83 - colored shower head :: a shower head add on that measures the temp
84 of the water and changes the color of the water streams w/ an LED
85 to show you the temperature. That way you can align to the color
86 you want and see the temperature without feeling it.
88 - giant dragonflies :: we could rapidly MAKE giant dragonflies by
89 evolving modern dragonflies in an very oxygen rich environment!
91 - anesthetic surgery courtesty video :: as a matter of courtesy,
92 whenever you go under anesthetic, the doctors should provide you
93 with a video of the surgery / recovery after you are concious
94 again. The recording should begin about 3 minutes before
95 anesthetic, and continue until both you and the docor agree to
96 stop recording, or you leave the hospital.
98 - whirlpool of light :: shine a laser out into space. But the planet
99 is spinning! What you get is a spiral or light! And as this
100 signal expands, does it eventually reveal it's wuantized nature?
102 - perfusion coking :: EOM
104 - whatever :: asdfsadasda asda
106 - timestamp verification :: you sign your message, and it has a
107 timestamp at the top, with a +- percision number. Then you send
108 it over to the public timestamp server, which only signs the
109 message if it gets the message within the timestamp window. Or
110 the computer just signs the message but puts a timestamp at the
111 beginning. So if everyone trusts the timestamp server, you can
112 get reliable timestamps, and prove priority on ideas, etc.
114 - the great computing slow-down :: in general, our computers are
115 getting faster and faster. However, eventually our brains will be
116 made of the same stuff our computers are made of! This has very
117 interesting consequences -- I can add 2+2 and get four in about a
118 second. Since my neurons actually work at around 10-60 hertz in
119 parallel, this means that it takes me around 10-30 operations to
120 do this addition. That's actually not bad in terms of computing
121 time. If my neurons were as fast as the latest transitors, then
122 most calculators would be SLOWER than me at adding numbers. Only
123 the newest, most optimized calculators would be faster, and then
124 only about 10 times faster! This means that once we begin to
125 think at the speed of our technology, that technology will
126 suddenly seem pitifully slow in comparison to how it seems
127 now. And no amount of technical progress will remedy it, because
128 that same progress will also make us all think faster. We'll
129 either have to settle with living in "slow time" to do some
130 computations, or learn to make smarter hardware with special
131 optimizations. But this is actually really hard, because we'll be
132 working with machines that will appear to us about as fast as
133 MECHANICAL computers. So, in the future, all the cool parties
134 will be in cyperspace at vastly accelerated speeds compared to
135 how we exist now. But at these parties, the computers will SUCK!
136 Of course, this is one of the few things that can save us from AI
137 risk, because those AI's won't seem so scary when the're build
138 out of rickety mechanical parts form our perspective.
140 - unitary reverse evolution of chaos+minds :: Chaotic systems diverge
141 exponentially in state space. Do you get anything interesting
142 when part of the physical system associated with the chaotic
143 system is a object that performs some sort of computation? Is it
144 possible for the computational system to play a
145 percision-enabling role in determining the final/initial
146 conditions of the chaotic system, just by tracing out thoughts in
147 its decision paths? This is probably too vague of an idea right
148 now, I just wanted to write it down.
150 - microwave time :: the cooking time you enter on most microwaves is
151 insane. It's expressed in what I call a "hybrid base", a
152 combination of base 10 and base 60. You can get absurd things
153 like 100 < 61, and 120 == 80! I wonder if these hybrid base
154 systems could be very useful for some purposes!
156 - three-eyes :: if you had three eyes, would you still draw cubes like
157 we currently draw them? Or would all 2D-representations of 3D
158 space always look hopelessly fake?
160 - visual taste/smell assay :: get a grid of bacteria, each expressing
161 a human taste/smell receptor linked to some sort of fluorscent
162 activity or ion pump. Use a camera / electrical grid to transduce
163 the smell / taste signal into bits!
165 - carabiner mushroom lock :: you can take a trapazodial carabiner and
166 make it so that a chain link is caught between the wide end of
167 the carabiner and another chain attached to the carabiner.
169 - children's tool shop :: I think that kids should be provided with
170 tool shops -- these would be nice sheds with a good collection of
171 tools to do various things -- circuit components and soldering
172 irons, wires, a small lathe, drill press, belt sander, a
173 centrifuge, microscope, and telescope, etc. The idea is that the
174 kid can now think, "I could use X to do this thing that I'm
175 thinking about" -- the building becomes an extension of the kid's
176 body & mind.
178 - fluid display :: like the previous idea about matching refractances
179 between glass and liquid, except you make a lot of
180 switchable glass tubes in various patterns in the
181 glass, and actively pump colored liquid through the
182 tubes (the tubes have glass-like fluid in them by
183 default.) The result is that you can cause the
184 tubes to appear and dissappear, and vary their
185 colors as well!
187 - immunoincompatibility :: take the human genome, and refactor it so
188 that it doesn't use a particular codon at all. Then remove the
189 support from our ribosomes for that codon. What does this do for
190 us? It makes us immune to almost all viruses!
192 - life cycle :: it's called a cycle, right? So, the thing that repeats
193 itself over and over, right? Not much of a cycle if
194 you don't come back after you die, if you ask me!
196 - car with no blind spots :: use some cameras in the back of the car
197 to augment the rear-view mirror so that you never have to turn
198 around in order to lane change.
200 - partial cell death :: you freeze a set of cells using some cryo
201 protocol and 60% survive. How can this be explained? It seems to
202 me that if the cells are the same, and the conditions
203 homogoneous, then all the cells should either die or
204 live. However, suppose that there is a metabolic cycle that needs
205 to be in a certain phase for the cell to survive. If the cells
206 are asynchronous, then you might end up with some cells dying
207 because there were in the wrong part of their cycle. This implies
208 that you might be able to cryoprotect cells by causing them to
209 enter a certain metabolic mode before freezing.
211 - cryonics color appeal :: perfusate used by cryonics companies should
212 have red food coloring in it. It's just a nice touch so that the
213 cryonics patient looks more life-like than with clear CPAs, and
214 hopefully might get treated with more respect.
216 - paramagnetic CPA :: you take a CPA that can be influenced by
217 magnetic fields so that its degrees of freedom are limited. Then,
218 you release the field, instantaly increasing the size of the
219 state space of the system and dramatically decreasing the
220 temperature enough to plunge the system past homogenous
221 nucleation temperature and directly to the glass transition
222 temperature, creating a doubly unstable glass at much lower CPA
223 concentrations than possible at conventional CPA concentrations.
225 - room temp noodles :: how does the physics of cooking noodles work?
226 Could you use a vacuum instead of heat to force water into the
227 noodle?
229 - personal carbon offset :: feel bad about contribuiting to global
230 warming by using electricity / driving a car? Forget trying to
231 "conserve" or "minimize your carbon footprint". Follow the
232 Platinum rule -- make the world BETTER off than you found it!
233 This would be a small, self contained system that sucks C02 out
234 of the air. It uses electricity, but it's so efficient at
235 removing CO2 that it more than offsets the CO2 produced by even a
236 coal plant to produce that electricity. This way, you can still
237 drive even a gas guzzler, but have a net negative carbon
238 footprint! Maybe something cool could be done with the carbon as
239 well. Use as much electricity as you want, but negate the damage
240 to the enviroment with more technology.
242 - undoing spermogenesis :: with enough sperm, you can derive the
243 donor's entire genome. You gain more confidence in the alleles
244 for a particular gene the more sperm you have. Each additional
245 sperm gives you the same sort of information you'd get flipping a
246 coin and trying to decide whether the coin is H/T of H/H. Is
247 there enough sperm in the the average load for you to be as
248 confident as mitosis?
250 - mars life :: we could engineer life that could survive on mars
251 (probably some non-vascular photosynthetic
252 poikilohydric creature like a lichen) by taking an
253 extremophile from Antarctica and evolving it in
254 increasingly Martian conditions. This could be an easy
255 start to a terraforming process.
257 - problem with Aubrey de Grey's ideas :: Aubrey de Grey says that we
258 might be able to live forever by continually repairing our bodies
259 at the cellular level -- he details 7 different mechanisms of
260 damage and says that if all of them are dealt with /together/
261 that it would stop aging. (You can't miss even one because
262 they're all fatal.) However, it doesn't take into account that
263 we are also beings of information and that there is a very real
264 software component to our existence. Even if our biological
265 chassies can be maintained forever, I think it is unlikely that
266 our minds will operate well far outside of the design constraints
267 that we've evolved to handle. Say I programmed a webserver with
268 the express goal of it being able to serve webpages for month on
269 some stock server. I'll do fairly rigorous testing to make sure
270 that it can handle the expected load then then some. Now say that
271 you want to keep a particular instance of this webserver running
272 indefinitely. (The program instance is like your mind and the
273 computer it's running on is like your body). You might very well
274 be able to keep the physical computer infrastructure running for
275 forever by replacing hard drives / ram / CPUs, etc. However,
276 since I designed the webserver to work for a month, it probably
277 has memory leaks, rare stochastic bugs, or other built in limits
278 / constraints (think log files or some date rollover shenanigans)
279 that will ultimately kill the webserver even with eternally
280 perfect hardware. Do you really expect that a webserver
281 engineered to work for 1 month will run for 10 years without
282 catastrophically crashing? Not even Apache can do this! In fact,
283 if I put in the extreme effort to make it that robust, I've
284 wasted time that I could have spent on other projects by pursuing
285 an unnecessary engineering goal. Likewise, human minds have only
286 ever run for at most 122 years before they are destroyed due to
287 hardware degradation. Fixing the hardware doesn't change any
288 software bugs that are almost certainly present in the human
289 mind. Think of all the pathological things that can go wrong with
290 a webserver, multiply it by a million, and that likely how
291 evolution has designed our minds. For example, consider memory :
292 why should you expect that we have evolved the ability to
293 coherently organize memories past say 150 years? There's been
294 absolutely no selective pressure for this ability, so you can bet
295 that if there's any fitness to be gained from not having
296 unlimited memory potential (such as better metabolic efficiency),
297 we have it! You might think that maybe we would just forget
298 things the same way that we sort of forget things that happen
299 earlier in our lives, but complicated information processing
300 systems don't have to fail gracefully when they're pushed far
301 past their design constraints. A 150 year old person is just as
302 likely to suffer a catastrophic psychosis due to software
303 limitations associated with memory as he is to do something with
304 all those memories we might consider reasonable. More likely, in
305 fact, since there are so very many ways for a complicated
306 software system to break and so few ways for it to run
307 successfully. Therefore, I think Aubrey de Grey's "hardware-only"
308 approach is missing a very important component of longevity
309 science, and any successful effort to make people live orders of
310 magnitude longer than they do naturally will need to deal with
311 people's software as well as their hardware.
313 - validating neurocryopreservation :: Problem : you want to test
314 whether a brain is functionally preserved through vitrification,
315 but you don't want to figure out how to preserve all the other
316 organs in the animal. It might be possible to keep the rest of
317 the body at almost 0C and vitrify just the head for only a few
318 minutes. Induce hypothermia, then separate out the head's blood
319 supply from the rest of the body, then just cryoptotect and
320 vitrify the head. Might need some sort of thermal guard to keep
321 the outer head / neck from becoming too cold. You leave the
322 spinal cord intact! Then you devitrify to 0C, remove
323 cryoprotectant, and then reattach the blood supply. You can
324 determine brain preservation using behavioral assays!
326 - freezing water purifier :: you slowly freeze water, but also run
327 liquid water over the frozen mass. This takes away basically all
328 impurities and creates "washed ice" then you melt the ice. Maybe
329 you could re-use the heat from creating the ice to melt the ice?
331 - ultra strength :: allow a person to visualize their muscle
332 recruitment patterns. Give them adrenaline and let
333 them feel what it's like to have the normal limits
334 removed. See if they can replicate the effects.
336 - phone names :: make a PX record for domain names that's like the MX
337 record, except that it is a phone number instead of
338 an IP address. That way, you can use the domain name
339 registration system to provide names for phone
340 numbers. Then, as long as you control the domain, you
341 can point people to your current phone number by
342 updating that record.
344 - edible flowers :: Edible white flowers that you put in a colored
345 solution with flavor. When the flower turns the
346 right color, it is also flavored and ready to eat!
348 - suicide cryonics :: according to [[http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/06/magazine/06suicide-t.html][this]], people who commit impulsive
349 suicides have a newfound sense of the importance of life. Perhaps
350 they are good cryonics targets.
352 - lead bone :: Could you fill in all the empty spaces in a bone with
353 lead? Might be cool.
355 - the quest for life :: Every stupid story has the "immortal who
356 wants to become mortal" or some other such idea. I want to story
357 where the protagonist loses their immortality and feels /angry/
358 and ashamed about losing something that's so absolutely crucial
359 to their identity. A reverse of "death makes life worth living",
360 they feel that living forever is what makes life worth
361 living. Now they've "lost their sunrise" or their "connection to
362 the timeless universe" or something. So they go on a quest to get
363 it back, learning about themselves along the way, and regaining
364 the precious thing they lost in the beginning.
366 - world-map :: take a small table and paint the continents in
367 toothpaste on the table. Make a slightly raised barrier
368 around the table. Slowly pour water onto the table, and
369 it will form the oceans!
371 - stage magic rituals :: rituals should incorporate elements of stage
372 magic. Foe example in Teller's tempest, they have a scene where
373 they levitate a crown in front of someone, then put it on his
374 head. They also have a wedding ceremony where they levitated the
375 bride as well. Actual weddings and other ceremonies should
376 incorporate stage magic as an enhancement.
378 - isotope time dilation :: use a cyclotron to speed up rare isotopes
379 developed in nuclear fusion experiments. The relativistic time
380 dilation will stop the isotopes from decaying, and allow time to
381 study them. This is based on radioactive isotopes that fall
382 through the earth's atmosphere that take hundreds of times
383 longer to decay than normal.
385 - marsupial stimulation :: You take a freshly pouched marsupial baby,
386 and show it videos and other interactive things while it matures
387 in the pouch. What mental effects would this have?
389 - dynamic re-keying :: Some older ways of tuning instruments sound
390 better, but we use the even-tempered scale today because it makes
391 it easier to switch keys. With electronic music, why not make
392 key-annotations and dynamically re-tune the piece to sound good
393 in the current key? Could be done as a midi+annotation -> midi
394 compiler for experimentation.
396 - death always implies damage :: is is possible for a corpse to differ
397 from a living person only in the fact that one is dead and the
398 other is alive? NO! A corpse must always have some sort of
399 molecular damage which causes the loss of function!
401 - inner eye :: Surgically install a bunch of tiny cameras inside a
402 person. Then, you can activate them all and get a
403 picture of your internal organs for diagnostic
404 purposes.
406 - chaos rails :: should make a visualization of the homoclinic tangle,
407 it's truly beautiful.
409 - context gobbler :: this would be in "inside-out macro" that takes
410 the context (like you use for things like error, continuations,
411 and friends) and transforms it to something else. Maybe useful?
413 - cryonics middle ages :: some people say that cryonics is an
414 experiment and that it is foolish to wait until we have revived a
415 human. There is a middle ground where the procedure has a dismal
416 success rate on humans, say 1 in 20, so that you'd be a fool to
417 try revival. Nonetheless, this very risky procedure could be the
418 legal proof of concept needed to create a new class of life
419 between "living" and "dead": "stasis".
421 - philosophy of the mirror :: neat thought experiment -- if you take a
422 mirror of someone by actually reversing a person's chirality
423 molecule by molecule, then will the only be able to read mirror
424 writing? The answer is yes, by analogy to a purely mechanical
425 scan-tron device. This is one of the only interesting transforms I
426 know that can take a human brain and change it in subtle,
427 non-destructive ways. It's also an argument against dualism.
429 - biosphere in a bottle :: There are around 15 million species. 15
430 million stem cells will fill only a tiny size, far less than a cubic
431 inch. Preserve a single cell from every species on earth in this
432 small space, and you will have a record of our current biosphere
433 that can be protected. "Hold the genetic data of all species in
434 your hand!"
436 - chaos lock :: The "arrow of time" points in the direction of
437 increasing entropy. The time evolution of chaotic
438 systems depend exquisitely on their initial state. If
439 you take a measurement of a chaotic system at any
440 given point of time, you can evolve that system
441 backwards or forwards based on your measurement. So
442 let's say you start the chaotic system in a VERY low
443 entropy state, then let it run for a while, then take
444 a measurement with some uncertainty. Your
445 measurement is pretty good, but obviously not
446 PERFECT. If you evolve the chaotic system back in
447 time, then you will see that you don't really reach
448 a state with low entropy an hour before (the entropy
449 is easy to measure with surrogates like alignment,
450 etc). So use this technique to SEARCH for a more
451 accurate measurement! This potentially can give you
452 many more orders of magnitude than you could get alone
453 just using an instrument. Sometimes it will give you
454 bad results, the the odds of it doing that are
455 infinitesimal, and you can just measure a couple of
456 times.
458 - cryo-evolution :: perhaps there would be a way to rapidly evolve a
459 symbiotic bacterial organism that could protect
460 human tissues from freezing damage.
462 - suicide parasite :: sometimes, people kill themselves for no good
463 reason. We often explain this with things like "hidden
464 depression" or we say that they had something like chronic jaw or
465 back pain. I think that smells of rationalization. I don't buy
466 it. I propose that in many suicide cases there is a disease that
467 causes the suicidal behavior. We already know that certain
468 parasites have mind-bending properties in other animals, even
469 mammals like mice. It's not much of a stretch to imagine a
470 parasite that causes suicides in humans. Some problems:
471 - What does the suicide parasite get out of it? :: This might be
472 answered by the whole thing being a glitch caused by
473 cross-species contamination. Toxoplasma works this way.
474 - What predictions does a disease model make :: suicide should
475 be more common among people who share a contagion
476 vector. There should be suicides that don't make any
477 sense : people who weren't really depressed, who had no
478 reason to kill themselves. People who have killed themselves
479 should have a higher incidence of some unknown parasite in
480 their brains.
482 - domestic insects :: People should eat more bugs because they're much
483 more efficient, so why not do some major domestication research
484 to make very appealing bugs? Beetles, in particular, seem to be
485 excellent targets for domestication because they have extreme
486 levels of genetic malleability.
488 - birth-clones :: What if each person was intentionally split at birth
489 into a normal embryo and a few "backup" cells which
490 is then frozen. The backup cells are created just
491 the same way as natural identical twins. The backups
492 can be used to regenerate organs. etc. Also, it
493 would be a good sci fi concept, because you could
494 have a culture where people reward people who were
495 especially awesome are "reborn" from their
496 backups. Imagine having a young Bach every
497 generation, etc.
499 - pronunciation guide :: a simple webpage where you type in a word and
500 it returns a simple, English sentence describing exactly how to
501 pronounce the word. For people who don't want to learn IPA.
503 - cortex-search :: use the repertoire of actions learned to limit the
504 search space of possible actions.
506 - learning to teleport :: scifi idea, this is a story about a person
507 who is struggling with his/her society's ideas about
508 teleportation. It's considered a fundamental part of being a
509 member of that society (after all, the difference between animals
510 and humans is that humans are creatures of pure information while
511 animals are burdened with base matter, "that's how you travel the
512 stars, etc") Humans are born normally, grow up, and then
513 eventually transcend via destructive upload. Analogies to jumping
514 off a diving board into a pool (which I simply /could not do/ for
515 a long time), etc.
517 - no-float-ice :: cup that has cross beams at the bottom where ice
518 forms. Then when you drink liquid from the glass,
519 the ice stays at the bottom and doesn't hit your
520 lips. For bars and fancy things.
522 - bitcoins for immigrants :: A common case with Mexican immigrants
523 (illegal or not) is that they want to send money they've earned
524 in the US back to their families in Mexico. They currently do this
525 through things like Money Gram or Western Union, and they get
526 fleeced in the process with fees. Bitcoin could greatly reduce
527 the cost of sending money from America to Mexico, but I don't
528 believe that it's currently used for that among Mexican
529 immigrants currently due to lack of knowledge. I bet you could
530 set up physical locations like those obnoxious Western Union huts
531 in places like Texas, Arizona, etc, and greatly undercut
532 them. Or, perhaps some educational seminars about bitcoin might
533 be in order. There's some money to be made there because there is
534 great demand, and it's a good thing to boot!
536 - reverse eye-tracking :: A painting that is actually a digital screen
537 with a camera. It records people's eye tracks permanently. It's
538 "artistic" because paintings are normally these things that you
539 look at without changing, but this one is changed the second you
540 look at it, recording where /you/ looked forever for others to
541 see. Make it be a painting of a woman and see the trolling as the
542 breasts and groin area light up with interest from all the males
543 passing by.
545 - smart toilets :: Instead of using indirect measures like infrared
546 detectors of the presence of a person, use computer
547 vision to directly measure whether the toilet needs
548 to be flushed. I think a lot of things will end up
549 going this way as we get better computer vision.
551 - validate chemopreservation :: chemopreservation is difficult to
552 validate because it destroys the functionality of a brain, and
553 brain simulation will take a long time to mature as a
554 technology. However, one very powerful way to validate
555 chemopreservation would be to have a person/animal learn
556 something with high complexity such as a number or the solution
557 to a maze, or a flashbulb memory. Then you preserve their brain
558 chemically, slice it up, and read /that specific memory/ from the
559 detailed brain scan. Much more difficult, but much more doable.
561 - candy screw :: edible candy screw with candy nuts that you can screw
562 as well.
564 - better bibliography :: when writing a thesis or paper, have the
565 bibliography not just be an opaque list of resources, but have it
566 be a list of /summaries/ and /qualities/ that each paper has in
567 the context of the paper being written. When examining a
568 bibliography, I want to know if reading the papers in the
569 bibliography are worth my time, and I also am probably also
570 interested in exactly the things that are being discussed in the
571 paper I'm reading. The bibliography is the perfect place to
572 provide information about the referenced papers from the
573 author's perspective. I will use this biographic form in my own
574 thesis.
576 - digital inter-library loan :: libraries at universities already do
577 inter-library loans for books, so why not do the same for access
578 to stupid paywalled digital papers? All the universities could
579 allow access to articles for registered students to all the files
580 available through any participating university. This could be
581 achieved by sending requests through proxies at participating
582 universities. Each university would decide who at the university
583 can access the proxy network. Access to the proxy network could
584 be made easy using something like http://libx.org/.
586 - chess visual :: to show the vast size of the game trees considered
587 by computers, show two people playing chess in a
588 void. They are floating in space, and there is a
589 simple chess board between them. Then, as they play,
590 the game tree's they are considering are drawn
591 behind him. The root of the tree starts centered in
592 their heads or whatever they use to think, and the
593 tree grows out from behind, never crossing the
594 dividing plane between the two players. Each
595 player's tree is a different color. As they grow,
596 there are animations for pruning, etc. Eventually,
597 they look like the hemispheres of a brain, wings,
598 etc. A human's tree might occasionally have a long
599 chain, while the computer tree would be more
600 uniform. You could compare deep blue and a modern
601 laptop. Use actual data when fighting two computers!
603 - time verification :: some standard way to verify that some piece of
604 data was recorded at a specific time. Might involve a time
605 server, a key for each time period, something like that.
607 - tamper proof gold bars :: [[http://www.tungsten-alloy.com/gold-plated-tungsten-alloy-bar.html][this site]] offers gold plated tungsten bars
608 as "novelty" items. One reason to prefer coins is because they
609 are much harder to counterfeit because there is less surface area
610 to mass ratio. However, gold bars are still a great design
611 because they can hold a lot of value in a small space. A gold bar
612 could be given the same protections (and more) that gold coins
613 have to offer by changing it into a "gold book", which would have
614 hundreds of "pages" of gold bound together. This could be
615 implemented with multiple steel rods going through the book which
616 can be removed, or some more classier mechanism for holding the
617 pages. The point is that the bar can be EASILY subdivided (and
618 people would perform this test before buying), thus guaranteeing
619 it's authenticity.
621 - aurellem shirt :: I should make an aurellem star symbol tee-shirt.
623 - touch vision :: inspired by GelSight, I want to reexamine cortex and
624 see if I could implement touch as a very low range
625 form of vision.
627 - high school science :: this is a lesson in scientific ethics. The
628 goal is to calculate /g/, the local gravitational
629 acceleration. The students are told that the textbook says it's
630 /exactly/ 9.81 before they start the experiment. See how they
631 doctor their results to get closer to the textbook value. It's
632 neat because for any given school, /g/ is probably *not* exactly
633 equal to 9.81, because that is just an average!
635 - opencourseware subtitles :: there are ladies who type up lectures
636 while they are being given. These recordings should be kept and
637 given to OCW for subtitles. If the timestamps of keys are
638 recorded, then it is easy to make subtitles.
640 - screen locking timing :: you use your computer camera to see if you
641 are sitting in front of the computer. If you are, then the screen
642 will never lock. If you are, then the screen will lock with a
643 30-40 second timeout. It's an extension of using inactivity to
644 initiate the countdown, just with more information.
646 - mirror toilet :: a toilet with a square basin made or mirror instead
647 or porcelain. That way, you can see how good of a
648 wipe job you have done / watch how your excretion
649 system works.
651 - test dummies :: why don't we clone anencephalic humans and use then to
652 test /in vivo/ human organ systems and drugs? It
653 would be ethical as long as there are women who are
654 willing to host the clones, and it would be a
655 tremendous resource for studying the human body. I
656 see nothing wrong with it morally, since no one is
657 suffering, and it stands to save many lives throughout
658 more advanced technology.
660 - X-ray telepresence :: given that a doctor is operating on a patient
661 via telepresence, one cool things you can do is shine X-rays into
662 the patient to view the insides during real time. If the system
663 was coupled with a Bayesian model of the layout of the structure,
664 and the x-rays were only fired whenever the uncertainty of the
665 model reached a certain threshold, then the radiation damage
666 and surgery risk could be minimized.
668 - superfluid vascular system :: I wonder what would happen if you
669 replaced the blood in a human with a superfluid. What would the
670 physical dynamics be? Would the superfluid flow through the
671 vasculature, or would it ignore it and travel through the cells,
672 or something else entirely. Since superfluids need to be cold to
673 retain their superfluidity, how would the dynamics change during
674 perfusion of a superfluid, where the fluid gains and looses
675 superfluidity as it goes deeper into the body and is cooled by
676 superfluid from upstream. In summary there are two things to
677 simulate 1.) replace all blood in human with superfluid
678 instantly. 2.) perfuse superfluid into human.
680 - projective guessing :: I think that we read and see things by
681 making a really good guess about what we're expecting to see,
682 and then searching for our guess in what we see. If it really
683 doesn't match, then we start to make more guesses / analyze the
684 image from first principles, but most stuff is projective
685 guessing.
687 - Intestinal flora maintenance :: why not inoculate babies at birth
688 with "ideal" gut flora instead of whatever bullshit they
689 naturally get, thus giving them optimal digestive/nutrient
690 extraction capabilities. Might also be able to make their farts
691 not stink for life, too. MORE IMPORTANTLY, might help to
692 preventatively stop some forms of /colic/, which affects 1 in 5
693 babies and causes constant screaming and pain for about 5 weeks.
695 - server culture : mirrors :: make a distributed system where people
696 can mirror the websites of people they like -- essentially cover
697 the server costs of favored websites. This could make popular
698 websites run at no cost. The system would require that the
699 mirrored content be the same as the official source. Sort of like
700 bit-torrent for websites.
702 - map programming :: one problem with functional programming is that
703 in order to remain functional, you have to pass up arguments up
704 into each calling function to get the full range of behavior
705 from the lower level functions. Normally people come to a
706 compromise involving abstraction and sparing use of dynamic
707 variables to configure runtime behavior. What would be the
708 advantages of making a programming language where every function
709 receives one argument, a map, which contains all the symbol
710 bindings it would ever need? This map is passed on to all
711 subordinate functions. This way, you could replace functions on
712 the fly, and arrange for there to be sensible defaults,
713 etc. Might cause more harm than good but is an interesting idea.
715 - rest nest :: a small EEG device you would attach to your head when
716 you go to sleep at night. ML algorithms would determine
717 your particular sleep cycles. This would mostly be an
718 alarm clock that you could give a time range, say
719 7:00AM - 7:15AM, and it would wake you up during an
720 ideal time corresponding to then end of one of your 90
721 min sleep cycles. You would feel much more rested upon
722 waking up, and would wake up faster. There might be
723 some other uses for the EEG data as well.
725 - image compression :: use a library like gimp or opencv to process an
726 image to make it have less entropy, then store the reverse of
727 those operations along with the compressed simpler image as a
728 super-compressed image file (possibly accepting some
729 losses). Trades file size for decompression time, and allows one
730 to cheat by using information in gimp/opencv to compress the
731 image.
733 - fixed cryopreservation :: why not use a fixative to buy enough time
734 to ramp up cryoprotectants to an acceptable level at room
735 temperature? Then, the whole system can be rapidly cooled and
736 vitrified. This method "severs the biological link" in that the
737 fixatives are highly toxic, but current vitrification procedures
738 do this anyway since there can be a lot of freezing damage.
740 - dilated security camera :: a security camera that would capture
741 full video footage of everything at 60fps but then decide to keep
742 only every 1 frame every 5 seconds unless there's something
743 "interesting" happening.
745 - bitcoin wallet :: Part of "server culture", this would be something
746 like "coin.your-domain.com" which would serve as
747 your personal trusted access to your own bitcoins
748 from anywhere.
750 - libpay :: this would be a free library which would enable
751 micro-donations to software projects and other projects,
752 so that you could donate a penny to "emacs" and it would
753 be automatically split up to every person who has ever
754 contributed to emacs in proportion to the amount of
755 community esteem, code quantity, bugs fixed, whatever the
756 community decides. This might make it possible for
757 programmers to live entirely off of free programming.
759 - distributed graphics :: Browser based graphics-card accelerated
760 distributed computing API.
762 - pronouns :: use capital letters A-Z instead of pronouns. They solve
763 pronoun referents and gender neutrality, are short to
764 say, and you can encode useful information into the
765 choice of letter. For example, instead of "Meetings
766 shall be presided over by the president, unless she is
767 absent." USE "Meetings shall be presided over by the
768 president, unless P is absent." We already use this a
769 little, since I and U are reserved for the subject and
770 object respectively.
772 - phone DSP :: software app that inserts an audio DSP between the
773 input to a phone and the output. The DSP is delicious
774 and configurable, and can allow men to make their
775 voices deeper, etc. The app would allow you to hear
776 your own voice as others hear it. Most people hate how
777 their own voice sounds. The app would also allow one to
778 immediately change the parameters of the DSP using good
779 presets.
781 - predestined body learning :: a good example of predestined learning
782 might be the mirror neurons.
784 - restaurant receipt :: use a carbon copy receipt instead of two stupid
785 copies.
787 - anti google glass :: glasses with mounted lasers and computer vision
788 that targets the cameras in google glass and destroy them.
790 - wearable towel :: towel with clasp, velcro, whatever, that allows
791 one to wear the towel more securely than just
792 wrapping it tightly and hoping for the best.
794 - crossdressing :: Easiest way to disguise oneself as a woman is to
795 wear a burka.
797 - book-mode :: intelligent color highlighting for books and
798 articles. It would disambiguate pronouns and involved
799 references. For example, if "Rachael" was assigned the
800 color red, and "the blonde haired girl" refers to
801 "Rachael", then "the blonde haired girl" would be
802 colored red. Also, you could disambiguate multi part
803 run-on sentences by highlighting each
804 subcomponent. Maybe would also have applications to
805 scientific reading.
807 - Handheld light Rain measurement :: this would be a clear, teflon
808 coated plastic disk with a camera underneath the disk. You would
809 be able to hold the device out and it would measure the rate of
810 accumulation of water droplets from fine mists and light rain by
811 using computer vision to measure the diameters of the drops.
813 - Big Brother Farming :: This would be a vision system that would
814 individually monitor each plant and turn on water, etc to ensure
815 maximum/uniform growth for each plant.
817 - Discrete Faucet :: A faucet with discrete ticks instead of
818 continuous.
820 - Laser Circle :: take a glass microfiliment and shine a laser at one
821 end at an oblique angle. It will make a perfect,
822 large circle on the wall, converting a laser beam
823 into a laser cone, preserving most of the energy of
824 the laser.
826 - Invisible Glass :: Take a container of liquid and embed a
827 glass sculpture made out of glass that has exactly the same index
828 of refraction and color of the liquid. Then the sculpture will be
829 totally invisible in the container, and will only be revealed
830 when the liquid is drained. The container might be a fancy
831 wine/spirit bottle or an hourglass.
833 - Caterpillar people :: A race of caterpillar like creatures gains
834 intelligence after eons of predation by birds, etc. These
835 caterpillar creatures still undergo metamorphosis into a large
836 butterfly-like creature. The metamorphosis process turns the
837 caterpillar's brain into mush and reforms it into a minimal,
838 dumb, truly insect-like mind, completely destroying the person
839 the caterpillar was. The society develops all sorts of customs and
840 religious interpretations of the metamorphosis. It is viewed as
841 good and natural by some since it is part of their life cycle and
842 necessary to propagate the species, as only the butterflies can
843 mate. Some think that the butterflies are still the same person
844 because they have the same soul, even they no longer posses the
845 memories or personality of the original caterpillar. Some see the
846 butterfly form as the "true form" of the species, since the
847 butterflies can fly, mate, and are beautiful. Many make a big
848 deal out of the fact that 1-2% of the caterpillar's mind is
849 actually preserved in the butterfly. Some see it as a terrible
850 tragedy and argue that the caterpillars should try to stop the
851 metamorphosis by technology. Practically, some very important
852 members of society undergo hormone therapy and/or surgery to
853 prevent metamorphosis so that they can live longer as themselves.
855 This is a continuation of Marvin Minsky's ideas about pain being
856 something that preserves our bodies while destroying our minds,
857 something that is a remnant from our too harsh animal days that
858 hasn't caught up to the fact that we have very complex brains
859 now. It's a worst-case scenario about a maladaptive genetic
860 legacy. Also, it's inspired by "There She Is!!!", which makes a
861 compelling point about homosexuality by introducing a second
862 gender characteristic (bunny/cat, male/female), which makes
863 homophobia look very silly. Here, our own biological legacy of
864 pain and death is made to look like the tragedy it is through the
865 lens of the the caterpillar people.
867 - relationships as a business :: [[http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Up-or-Out-Solving-the-IT-Turnover-Crisis.aspx][Turnover-Crisis]] is an excellent talk
868 about the "culture of quitting," which is about better business
869 by letting people go instead of keeping them around past their
870 "apex". Focuses on information transfer. Cool idea of an alumni
871 network, which for relationships would be a group of satisfied
872 ex-lovers, who would recommend new people your way, and who might
873 consider coming to you again, refreshed from their time away with
874 new stories/experiences. I should look for examples of this and
875 how they worked out.
877 - coffee with tea :: /rlm-tea/ contains 2% sugar, 10% cream, and 20%
878 dylan coffee. /dylan coffee/ contains 5% sugar,
879 20% cream, and 10% rlm-tea. Start your mornings
880 with recursion!
882 - psychic crystal :: in a science fiction story, this would be an
883 object that is very easy to move physically but is extremely
884 difficult to move with telekinesis.
886 - http://betsofbitco.in/ :: what a great place for an AI/person to
887 prove themselves as a good predictor. I wish this could be
888 automated.
890 - true reflection :: don't forget about that mirror in the student
891 center!, it's two mirrors at right angles, like staring at a
892 corner of a room. The light reflects so that it shows you what
893 you actually look like, instead of your mirror image.
895 - remote control wasp :: use computer to drive wings with remote
896 power/logic.
898 - encrypted email phone book :: public (distributed?) database of
899 email->private-key pairs, to enable automatic encryption.
901 - universal eye color :: every equivalent creature will see each
902 others' eyes as black -- it's universal. Even if the creatures
903 see in radio waves, and their eyes are 2m long pieces of jagged
904 metal, when those creatures look at each other, they will see
905 black, the absence of light and color (since it's being absorbed
906 by the sensor array).
908 - intelligent microwave :: it learns where the hot nodes of its fields
909 are, and uses them to evenly heat any food item. It has an infrared
910 camera or something to keep track of how hot the food is. That way,
911 you don't get bowls where the edges are boiling, while the center is
912 still frozen. Requires a little bit of intelligence/vision, since
913 the exact pattern of heating totally depends on the exact shape of
914 the food. Wouldn't need a carousel, and wouldn't need a timer,
915 just a desired temperature. Could also detect ice, and automatically
916 defrost the parts which are frozen. Might be able to work much
917 faster since it can avoid overheating; might have problems with
918 heating the insides of thick things, might need a weight sensor too.
920 + Would be much cleaner than other microwaves, since food would
921 "sputter" and splash liquid much less.
923 + Throw in some SIFT+R processing to match previously cooked foods
924 and learn the exact heating profiles for things that have been
925 cooked before -- it can get faster the more it's used.
927 - compression :: brain-aware image compression algorithm
929 - Credit card proxy :: would be a company which works like paypal
930 except for real world transactions
932 - Flesh pillow :: a pillow like the arm or torso of a human, complete
933 with simulated temperature, bones, and heartbeat.
935 - super screw :: a screw which has only one or two threads and instead
936 uses compression to fit into a hole (the whole shank
937 of the screw is split into multiple pieces to
938 accomplish this; the tip is a point, then the middle
939 bulges out and gets compressed when screwed in.
941 - light filter :: (like light tweezers) to mechanically separate
942 fluids with different index of refraction
944 - chalk eraser project :: maybe make a directional eraser, for easy
945 release of chalk dust, like fur, and how it likes to rest in a
946 certain direction.
948 - silver socks :: socks laced with silver for the antimicrobial
949 properties.
951 - UROP :: magnet gear/metal teeth tape
953 - Rod of Moses :: device to distill urine through evaporation and
954 easily dispose of urea crystals for use in desert --
955 produce drinkable water.
957 - UROP :: Make the LED in line with the flow for the micro injector, so
958 that it may transmit maximum flow. Motor that changes
959 distance of internal magnet from windings depending on
960 desired speed so as to obtain maximum power efficiency.
962 - lottery scraper :: web scraper which monitors various lotteries,
963 looking for "special" gimmick changes in the rules (like 4x
964 winnings on Wednesdays) and computes expected value...
966 - Memristiors novel design :: make an evolutionary algorithm to make
967 old stuff using all four basic circuit elements.
969 - Conductive concrete :: concrete that has embedded metal fibers so
970 that it can conduct electricity.
972 - little bitty melting pot :: might be useful for some types of
973 manufacturing/3D printing -- how small can an induction melter be
974 made, for example.
976 - power strip/timer programmable combination :: meh
978 - algorithms :: which learn what their inputs are and in what order,
979 and can adapt to changing circumstances -- they
980 remember previous arguments and adapt so as to respond
981 to different connections.
983 - true pure tones :: hear a true pure tone by direct stimulation of the
984 nerves of the ear
986 - mechanical analogue to the electrical op-amp :: would be an object
987 with two levers -- you pull on one lever and the other moves the
988 same way, no matter what's in the way or what it is driving. This
989 analogy could be useful to teach op amps to people.
991 - paper folding device :: make it convenient to fold lots of papers in
992 various ways.
994 - concrete epoxy :: epoxy with sand/ some other solid material.
996 - light capacitor :: suspend some ball of material with a high index
997 of refraction and shine light into it so it gets stuck -- would
998 the light stay trapped forever? Could you build up unlimited
999 quantities of light inside the sphere (which could then be
1000 released slowly by frustrated internal reflection?
1002 - movie screening :: Movies always are too long at first. One way to
1003 shorten them ``scientifically" is to record blink rate during the
1004 move and then remove / shorten the frames of the parts in which
1005 there are a lot of blinking (average this over multiple people)
1006 better yet, put it online and do it across thousands of people. I
1007 got this from youtube in which there is an episode of kill bill
1008 which is composed entirely of the parts in which people had their
1009 eyes closed. slogan: want to make a movie people can't take their
1010 eyes off of? Just take those parts out!
1012 - optimize an article :: capture reading of a scientific article via
1013 screen capture while people read it, then use it to make the
1014 article better. like the movie-pruning idea.
1016 - super reading program :: teaches people the ideal mental mask to
1017 apply during reading so as to read very fast.
1019 - explosive thermite epoxy putty :: one part would contain the rust,
1020 one part the aluminum.
1022 - reading comprehension :: use the above screen capture routine to
1023 make a quiz program that constructs questions about the content
1024 you seemed to gloss over while reading. could be easy if the pdf
1025 came with embedded questions. Dylan: automatically generate
1026 word-cloud about the parts you found most interesting; help
1027 others who read the same stuff by drawing attention to the
1028 interesting parts.
1030 - hard sword :: make a samurai sword, but use osmiridum instead of
1031 martensite for the cutting part; it should be a better
1032 sword.
1034 - close range wireless :: use the induction technology used to
1035 recharge electric toothbrushes with no metal links to send data
1036 without any metal at all!
1038 - reading :: is a form of synsethesia
1040 - DNA printer :: A machine which translates the text eg, "ACTGAC" into
1041 actual DNA
1043 - black generator :: ferro-fluid magnetic field suspended micro
1044 generator to make electricity
1046 - alcohol battery :: alcohol/fluid flow powered battery
1048 - folding razor blade sword ::
1050 - perfect pitch :: learn perfect pitch using another sense in
1051 combination (sight or touch)
1053 - kaleidoscope projector ::
1055 - razor blade de-sharpener :: for guilt free disposal
1057 - bricks :: filled with luminescent plant material
1059 - bio metallic structure :: metal grids with seeds inside, which grow
1060 together and form a durable biological matrix. The metal
1061 substrate delivers water. (maybe use plastic instead of metal?)
1062 Dylan: enrich plants with inorganic compounds; electrical
1063 interfaces in cellular plant matter => remote-controlled
1064 photosynthetic/bioluminescent structures.
1066 - conducting extracellular matrix :: to allow better control of
1067 organic systems and an enhanced nervous system.
1069 - cross-modal memory hashing :: a way to retrieve memories more
1070 robustly.
1072 - flossing thimble-guards :: (these actually exist)
1074 - rules + lattice learning :: integrate lattice learning with rules by
1075 generating hypothetical examples
1077 - wooden refrigerator :: to give food a better taste Dylan: like
1078 barrels for wine, or planks for salmon. Maybe just have "flavor
1079 planks" for your pre-existing fridge. Need to mitigate effect of
1080 temperature on volatility?
1082 - radioactive transmutation molecule by molecule :: create precious
1083 metals or something else economically advantageous.
1085 - crowd preservation :: inoculate food with tons of harmless
1086 bacteria so that there's no room for bad bacteria as a method of
1087 preservation
1089 - old school preservation :: Pasteur - style holding jar with siphon
1090 as a way to store liquids at room temperature indefinitely w/o
1091 refrigeration.
1093 - restaurant policy :: Throw rude people out of restaurant as a matter
1094 of course -- make ambiance much better.
1096 - clean windows :: make something that mixes soap with fire hydrant
1097 water (and reduces the pressure a bit) and use it
1098 to clean windows of buildings.
1100 - ocarina :: make an ocarina out of pure silver
1102 - fire pen :: pen which burns words on to the page, thus never needing
1103 any ink. Is there a way to make it runnable from the
1104 human's energy?
1106 - website to design your own soda :: and label, and have it mailed to
1107 you / sell it from your own online store.
1109 - solar panels :: that float on the ocean
1111 - handcuffs with more than two cuffs (3?) :: great for daisy chaining
1112 people, binding them to environment, etc.
1114 - vector based SOUND files :: like the pictures but with SOUND. codify
1115 sound in a language with enough symbols so that it can describe
1116 everything and encode it in that. would be like going from speech
1117 to text or smtg. Could also store sound as an image of the
1118 wavefront encoded as a vector image.
1120 - Mouse :: with a horizontal scroll wheel in addition to the vertical
1121 scroll wheel
1123 - logic maintenance system for big institutions :: to make sure the
1124 things they are thinking about doing are not retarded
1126 - http://www.regulations.gov/ :: cool site
1128 - genetically engineered glowing fruit :: sell seeds?
1130 - memory slide :: IF memories are encoded using particular sensory
1131 impressions, what happens if the sensory organ
1132 itself changes? those memories would become
1133 inaccessible. maybe this is why we can't remember
1134 much from our childhoods. also, could this happen
1135 throughout life as well? Could S remember stuff from
1136 his childhood?
1138 - make a completely indestructible phone :: no moving parts or display
1139 you should be able to slam it around all you want, and it will
1140 just work. brutally simple. aerogel around the battery, minimal
1141 interface - never gets too hot, and can be dropped into water. no
1142 holes -- uses field effects for everything from the buttons to
1143 inductive charging and data transfer.
1145 - midi to ocarina "tabs" program :: (online website? buy ocarinas from
1146 it too)
1148 - 3d printing with sound pulses (or just patterns) :: like the 8.03
1149 lecture
1151 - lighter flint on spring :: make hot, throw it at something, and it
1152 makes sparkles!
1154 - nuclear energy :: Rebranding New+Clear Energy with informational
1155 campaign and public debate forum to enforce its
1156 transparent and open nature. France needn't be the
1157 world leader in nuclear energy. (Dylan)
1159 - bubbles :: Engineer a material which has both ductility and high
1160 surface tension to make the "third"
1161 minimal-surface-energy solution to a bubble suspended
1162 between two equal-diameter rings. (Solutions are
1163 cylindrical catenary curve, two separated half-bubbles,
1164 and a double-cone)
1166 - Textbook whose content can be varied continuously :: alter level of
1167 difficulty, rigor, diction, emphasize crossover with certain
1168 other discipline, etc. Content generated dynamically from
1169 knowledge base, along with questions that are moreover altered to
1170 guide knowledge acquisition. Motivation: One book of
1171 knowledge. /One./
1173 ** From Jacob's idea list
1175 - Roommate-canceling headphones: uses roommate's laptop mic to seed
1176 noise cancellation alg in your headphones (would this
1177 work?). -Update on sound canceling headphones that take feed from
1178 tv: how about ones that cancel people talking on the phone by
1179 receiving the phone signals and playing inverse sound
1180 waves. #signalprocessing ~jcole@mit.edu
1182 - ClackerAlert -- tells if you slam the keys too hard using sound data
1183 (and speed/jerkiness data)!.Prevents RSI ~jcole@mit.e
1185 - Panic Pin :: separate pin that you can tell someone if forced to
1186 identify your PIN (idea from idea about credit cards)