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.
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.
I’ll add on to this a feature that lets you know when multiple quick directions are coming up. I don’t like being told to exit, then told to get to the right lane within 500ft, and then make sure to take the left ramp 100ft after that. Just let me know there’s a complicated maneuver coming up.
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”
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
Hijacking this with my mini rant: GOOGLE if you provide me with three possible routes to my destination and I specifically select one… DON’T FUCKING CHANGE IT MID-DRIVE GODDAMMIT!
I feel this has become so much worse the past couple months. "There’s an accident ahead reported 8 hours ago, I’m gonna reroute to the highway you asked me to avoid, you have 5 seconds to decline :) ". Cool, guess I’ll need to pull over and fix it, again.
As implemented, it’s beyond terrible. The only way I know of to disable it is to turn off mobile data (or disable mobile data for google services / maps). Maybe that’s changed semi-recently, I dunno.
I can understand the utility of a feature that can dynamically adjust your directions so that you’re always on the fastest route, but what Google has implemented has serious and dangerous flaws. The fact that the change in route is automatic and without my consent unless I interact with my phone in a set interval of time WHILE DRIVING is ridiculous, and once it switches over, there’s no quick and easy way to undo that.
Additionally, it doesn’t seem to understand that I don’t care if the toll road will save me 3 minutes on this trip, I don’t want to pay a toll or deal with the inevitable billing screw up. I don’t care if making a dozen turns through unfamiliar urban/suburban side streets will questionably save me 5 minutes, I’d prefer the relative safety and predictability of a straight path down the interstate. I also don’t want to drive down a winding, unlit rural highway after dark during deer season just because it’s a few minutes faster than if I stayed on the well-lit road with a lot more vehicle activity.
And, that’s just the start of my Google Maps rant.
Those work at the beginning, when you first set your route, but I don’t think they necessarily work when the app re-routes you. At least, the no toll option doesn’t seem to work around here in the past. Hopefully it’s fixed now. I’m all for that.
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.
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)
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!
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!
You have a point! Did you know about inverter microwaves? now you have 2 options, full blast, and less full blast! 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
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.
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!
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.
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).
A bicycle that is as reliable as a car.
I bought a top of the line cargo ebike from a German manufacturer that cost half as much as a cheap new car. It needs scheduled maintenance every 2000km. After 5000km the entire drivetrain needed to be replaced, the front brake completely failed when temperatures dropped below freezing, the motor sometimes cut out due to a firmware bug in the controller and the suspension seatpost broke when I rode down a curb.
Imagine any car having safety-critical faults like that after 5000km.
Due to the nature of bikes there’s probably a ton of weight saving that’s going on, which is why stuff breaks so easy. With cars they’re so over engineered that they weigh a (few) ton(s) and are generally over built for their expected stress levels.
Because bikes are so small they’re harder to add in that element of over building.
Oh, and the manufacturers are greedy and want the largest profit margin
For normal bikes I agree. Ebikes and especially cargo Ebikes suffer from lack of specialized parts. All the parts are the same as on a 10kg mountainbike. My bike with me and a load on it weighs 170kg. Make it 3kg heavier, triple the beefiness of all components.
And I don’t need 11 sprockets that are millimeter-thin when I only use 3 gears (for flat ground, uphill, and an emergency bailout for when the battery dies).
My e-bike (Onyx RCR, basically a motorcycle) hasn’t needed anything of the sort. So it might be either a specific manufacturer thing and/or a cargo bike thing. I can imagine them using regular bike parts even though it’s taking way more weight/stress.
For pedal bikes, they can be that reliable if you want to pay for it:
hub gearbox (a rohloff gets 100,000km minimum)
decent belt drive (30,000km)
solid tires get 5,000km. Not as good as car tires but there’s a reason; any additional durability will add noticeable drag/weight. Super thick e-bike tires could probably get 70,000km like a car
They know where I spent how much money; probably wouldn’t take much to figure out what I could have bought in a situation like that where every individual product is slightly cheaper or more expensive than the last.
Even banks don’t want to see everything you’ve purchased. That opens them up to a whole new avenue of subpoenas from police trying to prove crimes. They already have entire legal compliance departments dedicated to fulfilling subpoenas for financial crimes. They don’t want even more responsibility.
Trebuchets are relatively easy to assemble, made of readily available wood, and more than capable of yeeting the fattest of fat cats. They are also legal to own and require no permits.
Personally, I’d love to turn it into a sort of Punkin’ Chunkin’ type event. Have different categories for accuracy and distance, then a separate division for non-traditional “cannon” type launchers.
Lastly, separate the launchers based on how the launcher is powered; Cannons may be pneumatic, but there should be a separate category for human powered launchers. Just like in Punkin Chunkin, the person has a limited amount of time to “charge” the launcher, via some mechanical means. Treadmill, hamster wheel, rowing, etc are all acceptable, as long as the launcher is entirely powered by the one person.
And just like in Punkin Chunkin, the shots only count if the billionaire is intact after launching; If they’re completely turned to mush while in the air, the shot is disqualified. Bonus points for keeping them conscious and screaming/flailing in the air.
I thought a very low and compact version of a bench to do floor presses would exist but I have never found one, maybe I’m not using the right keywords. Just a short, narrow sturdy piece of equipment to lay on to get my back off the floor just enough to get some range of motion.
I was in the middle of replying how that would be perfect “if only it were more narrow like a balance beam.” Looked up floor balance beams and they exist. Thanks for the assist.
Being able to get pinged for a new message in a group chat bit mute the consecutive messages from that chat until you check it.
I like to be part of multiple chats like for my game server if there is an issue I want to be alerted from my guardians. Usually the channel is quite for days and days until someone says something then it’s pings after pings as people reply while I’m commuting home and it interrupts my music
Add a bot to your server that reacts to every single message on a ~10 minute delay. Long enough for them to close the app and forget about the messages, then the reactions start rolling in. And the reaction notifications only get sent to the original sender.
It’s also completely undetectable to a reproductively abusive partner (clinical term for baby trapping). This allows the person to get their ducks in a row to leave the abusive relationship safely and for good, without alerting the abusive partner OR being trapped into being in some kind of contact for 18 years. By contrast, the closest women have is the depo-provera shot which only lasts 3 months and is arguably the harshest of all hormonal birth control options. RISUG is one of if not the best birth control method we’ve invented to-date, and we’re sleeping on it.
Nested Tags for contacts. Ability to add sub tags like Friends/BowlingGroup or Acquaintance/LocalChurchContact
I seriously don’t understand what’s difficult to tag contacts like this and ability to use them to message a group. It’s a serious no-brainer feature but not to be found anywhere.
I think the question boils down to something like “For this data set, is there information captured by a tree representation that’s not captured by a list of categories?” Trees, or graphs in general, can capture path-based relationships. Categories are based of course on set theory.
I think both have their place, and like anything within mathematics or programming it comes down to which metaphor more naturally and easily expresses what you’re trying to do. I find trees and graphs easy to think about and represent visually, but it all depends on the problem space and the approach.
Note: This is assuming the kind of “tree” we implement permits multiple inheritance if needed.
I have a bachelor’s degree in maths so I get where you’re coming from. I’m asking, what specific functionality would nested tags provide that unnested tags do not. What is the return on investment for implementing this feature? Describe how this might improve your user experience with collections of objects? What actions in a user interface could you perform or would be made easier with nested tags that are not possible or are more cumbersome using only unnested tags?
Consider a data set that is naturally hierarchical and path related relationships are the central purpose of the data. Let’s say a genealogical database like some services run.
I can see a way of doing it with tags but mostly what I’m picturing has to add additional metadata to the tags that essentially represents the graph and has to add extra logic for resolving all of it.
If stored as nodes and edges you also have the capacity to add additional features to the relationships easily and naturally. That allows you do induce various subnetworks by edge flavor pretty easily. Network metrics such as centrality and clustering also fall out naturally.
Again, you can do it in tags because you can represent the network data as a table, which would in turn be translatable into possibly some long and complex tags. Or maybe there’s a more natural way, but for me the graph is easier to think about and write interesting algorithms for.
Mostly when you have multiple events where you could have made few tags and sub tags to capture the data instead now you have make multiple tags with parent and children as a tag
Hierarchical tags is also possible. In fact Gmail has it, so you can for example create a work tag and then subtags for each company you worked at, and do similar things with hobby tags, and apply multiple tags
But as someone who designs software I don’t immediately see any additional functionality. I’d like to understand the benefit to see if I want to incorporate the feature sometime
Alright I’ll provide a use case scenario. I wanted to this functionality when I was in uni where a lot of my contacts had more than one role to play and I had trouble remembering all the roles my contact would have. Let’s say one of my contact was my coursemate but also worked in organizing committee of an event. I knew other members of the organizing comittee as well. So in the event that I needed to share an information with the entire organizing committee, I needed to remember committee list members instead of software helping me. And what about another contact who also part of the event but was on a different team like Public Relations. You could say just another tag would suffice no need for nested ones. But this kind of events happens multiple times and I would have to create multiple tags for multiple events (instead of nesting) and it becomes cumbersome managing the list.
I’m not sure how much legacy code is written for contact apps in smartphones. But given the amount of tweaks and changes apple and Google make in each of their releases I would expect they wouldn’t have any problem integrating this feature.
Also you mentioned legacy code, but why T9 dialing isn’t a thing anymore coz that would be available if they were simply extending from legacy codebase.
I guess strict nesting wasn’t possible, but strictly enforcing nesting would be problematic: the bowling group might have acquaintances, friends, and your actual brother.
I miss Google Plus for this exact reason! I really wish they wouldn’t have given up on it and just stuck to their guns. Kept it long enough for people to give it more of a try.
True I miss this feature from Google Plus. But I want this more for my local contact app more than social media. And good point on whether needing nesting strictly but given it is known to me that I can only filter in nested tags, I would create a new tag and add all there instead of making it a sub tag.
But admittedly, I’ve just watched two videos on using Knowledge graphs with WikiData and Obsidian to make a personalized attempt at exobrains with AI, so I am biased to think it’s a good idea in general right now. I really like the idea of not just sorting by tag, but being able to get complex relations out of my personal data, so I can stop having to remember things like “ok so who all is a dev working on this project that would know something about the backend to the search function” and instead use data both available and inputed to get a list of contacts to review. It just gets to be a mess when teams get too large or too many interworking teams! You could extrapolate it to other interpersonal planning and coordination things too like “who would like to play a dungeon crawl for the next few weekends?”, grabbing both calander data where we can, maybe personal notes about whether they can make it to things regularly or be upcoming things for them, and whether they like those kinds of games. Not everything would be known of course, still gotta actually ask people, make a plan, etc, but make it easier you know?
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.
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.
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?
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.
The problem is inherent to Bluetooth, The only way to make it not be like this would be to make things dramatically more difficult to connect to things over Bluetooth.
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.
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
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!
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
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