Weird ideas welcome: VC fund looking to make science fiction factual A venture capital fund is looking for ideas that are out of bounds for traditional investors, seeding technology that may only come to fruition decades down the line, but where researchers can show real results in the lab. Deep Future specializes in technological long-shot ideas that struggle to get funding because there isn't …
Note: The AI has no control of or information about the toast being made in the enclosure it has been arbitrary slapped onto. It still just uses a timer and a static array of simple heat elements, but at least it will apologize when it burns your toast and tell you how awesome you are and what a great day you will have anyways.
It definitely knows what kind of spread you should order next as well, but that feature flag is disabled at the moment for obvious reasons.
> How about a toaster that does toast evenly, on both sides, and doesn't burn it, irrespective of what sort of toast is put in it?
You mean like this one:
The Antique Toaster that's Better than Yours
How to design an actually good toaster with lessons from the 1940's
Gentlemen, I present the 1948 Sunbeam toaster.
My grandmother actually had several of these and I can vouch It Just Worked. You put toast in, set the dial, and you got toast that matched. Didn't matter if it was the first time in the morning, or if you just did 6 sandwiches. Didn't matter if it was standard, thin, or Texas Toast sliced. Didn't matter if it was white or pumpernickel. It Just Worked.
So god damned sad that is gone, along with a lot of other good stuff, like car engines that lasted 100,000+ miles.
Thank you for the suggestion - as my 61 year old hifi speakers will attest, I'm all in favour of old stuff hat just works perfectly, but you mention n adjustment dial? I'm expecting the perfect toaster to sort all that out as a mis-set adjustment dial is as certain as bad news on the radio unless I restrict myself to a single uniform variety of bread. It's almost 2026, th electric toaster as invented over 130 years ago in Chelmsford, surely it's about bloody time somebody made one properly bringing in some of the knowledge of the 20th and 21st centuries?
Do the engineering bods at Culham, JPL, Cambridge et al have no shame? Or worse still, those very clever people squandering their talents working in AI.
My last car, a 2016 diesel, had over 250K on the clock and the engine was still fine. It was the associated mechanicals, sensors and electronics which were failing making it uneconomic to repair. So, yes, I agree that modern engines seem to be fairly decent, the weakness being mostly the associated engine management stuff.
"Bloody engineers! Fix the stuff you've invented already that doesn't work properly before all this jetpack and fusion bollocks."
The engineers prototypes work perfectly, as advertised. Then the bean-counters get involved. Marketing use the adverts based on the prototype, not the cost reduced version they actually sell.
It already exists... it was produced in 1952, I have one. The Sunbeam T-20-B Radiant Control toaster. Entirely mechanical, stylish, and easily the pinnacle of toaster technology. AI not needed. Transistors, also not needed. Passive electronics... not here! Just cleverly arranged springs and wires. It measures the blackbody radiation of the bread to determine when it's optimally toasted. Science!
"...Ah, you are perfectly right, I see what the issue is ! The issue is that we used 780°C) on one side which caused the toast to bend. I will now apply it on both sides which will fix it for sure. Here..."
The toast is burnt again, and it's a metal toast which I used for the experim...
"...Ah, you are perfectly right, I see what the issue is ! The issue is that I used 780°C) on both sides which caused the toast to bend in the opposite direction. I will now apply it from the top and bottom as well which will fix it for sure. Here, this is a solution where current will only be sent to the heater elements on both sides, not the top and bottom ones..."
The toaster is melting !
"...Ah, you are perfectly right, I see what the issue is ! The issue is that I used 780°C) which might be a bit hot and made the toaster melt. The solution is to apply the correct toast-roasting temperature. Would you like me to do that ?"
"Yes damn it that what I asked for in the first place !!!"
"...Here's the automotive rusted nut-removal induction heater you requested. Be mindful of applying it on..."
I asked for a working toaster !!!
"...Ah, you are perfectly right, I see what the issue is ! Here's the 780°C) toaster you requested..."
Yeah, people think "no limits in the sky", like the German song "Über den Wolken" von Reinhardt Mey.
In reality it is extremely strict regulated. Depending on where you fly unannounced you might get tornados, euro fighters, migs or shenyang as "companion". In some areas you may not see them, you are shot down (possibly the ground-air method too), 'cause wrong area.
Here we do have some sonic booms near where I live. Sometimes even more than one per year, and sometimes a double boom since quite often two euro fighters lift of to check the unknown-something in the sky. (Actually always two start, but sometimes their boom is separated if the fly a bit apart)
OK, so "warp drive" is already on the list.
What about replicators/transporters & gravity generators.
These are all fundamentally impossible (to even define), but there are too many here that think ST tech is "prescient and real", and I wish the harsh reality to be more widely known.
Nothing like having people actually committed to the effort ;)
You are dead when the transporter rips you to pieces. A copy of you is assembled elsewhere. Trek made it clear repeatedly that at some point during the process you are just data in the transporter's memory. They also said that replicated food tasted different. Replicators were the same basic technology as transporters - a Klingon beamed onto DS9 using a modified replicator. That taste difference implies transporters use lossy compression. If you have to take me apart to get there...
I think one of the TNG episodes had aliens with a different concept for a transporter. It worked by distorting space so you could walk a short distance to another planet. That one did not have your death as a fundamental concept of the design but would suffer from the usual problems of warp drive.
> gravity generators
That is an engineering problem and already solved. In the end a money problem.
Replace that with anti-gravity and acceleration-compensators, and then you will get your funding. Actually both are the same, but then you get DOUBLE funding! Without those everyone, in most SiFi movies, would be reduced to a pulp mash upon firing up the engines.
"... the amount of energy required to create gravity may well be unfeasibly large."
Not at all. Nowadays we routinely see images from the larger telescopes which demonstrate gravitational lensing.
That's the effect of the gravity of individual photons.
Classically, the gravitational force is G * M1 * M2 / (d*d).
In gravitational lensing, one of M1 and M2 is big - the mass of a galaxy, or a few of them - the other is tiny, the (effective) mass of the photon.
"That's the effect of the gravity of individual photons."
I think you have misheard or misunderstood something you read in a book or saw on YouTube.
"That's the effect of the gravity ON individual photons." is the phrase you are looking for. Not how the entire meaning of the sentence changes drastically by changing one single letter.
Gravity, as an effect not a property of mass, and what you feel when you are in a centrifuge, are literally the same. The cause is different, but the effect is the same and cannot be distinguished. It is one of those things which Einstein was wondering about why. Those torus rotating space stations are a money and engineering problem, but they actually work. Though don't forget: Closer to the center the mass is less, so you can have heavy feet and still be light-headed when you are too close to the center. Nothing new, has been very well tested and understood for centuries. Documented on film since last century.
Antigravity is unsolved. You cannot shield gravity. You might be able to counter it with other gravity, but that is an unsolved math vs. physics reality issue, cause where do you get the counter gravity from? Especially since it has to be in the right direction. And you'd need special ocean-heavy-weather training ahead to be prepared when it does not work so well. There are some nice videos of sailors dealing with it, and quite often failing to deal with it, which hurts a lot.
OK found the right post now!
We should have started bulding these things in earth & moon orbits a long time ago! Just like we should have been constructing spaceships there (duh!) instead of firing them out of a huge gravity well in one go (duh!).
There are pitfalls (all that stored spin energy could turn nasty!) and there are "space sickness" (coriolis) effects, but it is borderline criminal that we still haven't tried this on a pracical scale.
"Just like we should have been constructing spaceships there (duh!) instead of firing them out of a huge gravity well in one go (duh!)."
You forgot the lunar or asteroid mining required to build spaceships in orbit. Without that, it's cheaper to build on earth and launch a working spacecraft than to send up all the individual bits or raw materials[*] since the latter involves launching a lot more than you need or want. There's always waste in construction, even if it's just the packing materials :-)
* sending up modules that just need bolting together would work if building something too large or oddly shaped to launch in one go.
Those torus rotating space stations are a money and engineering problem, but they actually work.
If you're actually in contact with a rotating component you'll feel an inertial force that is equivalent to gravity, but it's not gravity. Stay stationary even a few cm away from that rotating component and you'll not feel any attraction toward it.
Never said it would. I implied, though not said, that you have to be rotating with the torus. You're the first to think otherwise, and the idea alone shows how weird you must be wired, and then going ahead trying to explain physics to me? EDIT: Oh crap, an AC comment, and I fell for answering...
This post has been deleted by its author
What about replicators/transporters & gravity generators. These are all fundamentally impossible (to even define)
Never say never. These are impossible now. Many of the technologies you use daily would have been impossible 150 years ago. "Indistinguishable..." and so forth. I think Star Trek happens much further in the future.
Replicating something would in essence require scanning source atom-by-atom (for example) and then reconstruct in a fancy 3D printer with source material transmutated into other. (LHC has transmutated lead into gold - supposedly impossible alchemy). Or the printer has access to multiple chemical elements to pick.
Transporter would be just replicator with move command instead of copy - with hopefully no extra flies in the target pod.
Gravity generator could be on the table if gravitons do exist and their nature understood.
Yes, it's all science fiction now.
Which, inevitably, brings us back to the subject of 'inkjet printers'. In theory a brilliant and elegant idea, until they meet the realities of oxidation, evaporation, and corporate greed (where the oxidising, evaporating ink is given an unfeasibly large arbitrary 'value').
So many great ideas are only 'great' on paper, while other ideas are genuinely great, and then they meet the reality of human beings, who proceed to rip their wings off and enslave them forever.
You should be responding to government procurement requests, that's the sort of thing they pay for.
Take the "Unboxed Festival" that Rishi's clowns spent £118m on. Do you remember it? Des anybody remember it? If something that delivers nothing and cost the fat end of £120m is OK, then £375k for Lego model would be an example of prudence and value for money.
Can someone help me here? The Casimir effect is that a pair of barely-separated plates can experience an attractive / repulsive force due to random fluctuations in the quantum field. So far so good. But how could, even theoretically, this force be exploited to continually generate energy/electricity?
A pair of magnets experience a very strong force between them, on a nice and practical macroscopic scale. But no one has managed take a pair of magnets and continually generate electricity (without a source of energy like a motor), so why would the Casimir effect be any different?
I don't think you can extract any practically useful energy from the plates' motion, because you would have to keep repositioning the plates to maintain the effect. That repositioning would require an energy input equal and to the energy released from their initial movement - err, I think.
that $500,000 off to a Channel Island account.
The inkjet starwars laser anti mosquito platform made me think of our Cane Toad my menace.
Use AI to distinguish toads from the native amphibians and a decent laser or some other lethal agent all mounted in a shoebox sized autonomous wheeled rover with solar PV and battery. (Toads are nocturnal.) I reckon I could knock up a prototype for a few thou. and I could retire to Sark with the rest. ;)
I built a system to fire high pressure water at the feral cats ripping up my vegateable plots (by my definition any cat roaming freely under no control of the owner, is feral - hence an anonymous post as "my Tiddles wouldn't go into other peoples gardens and cause so much destruction". I say "get a camera and tracker around its neck and see how much damage it does to other peoples gardens and how much wildlife it kills!"
I digress - I built a higher pressure version that I was hoping to manufacture, but it made a lot of noise on the wooden garden fence if the cat managed to avoid a direct hit. (I had defined "keep out" areas for the "water pistol" so as not to damage the seed beds, crops or flowers.) The Copper who lives next door heard this, and pointed out that we cannot harm a cat or cause it distress (breach the Animal Welfare Act 2006), even if it is ripping up our property, as cats have a legal right to roam and their owners are generally not held responsible for normal cat behaviour like visiting gardens (its) or leaving deposits.
They cause material harm to my seed beds - dig a hole in one place, crap in another and 'cover it up' in a third (multiple times), reducing the vegetable crop for my family consumption (but the monetry value is very hard to quantify). Also I apparently cannot return the Cat crap through the owners' letter box! (The law does not require cat owners to clean up after their pets, unlike dog owners who are legally obligated to do so under the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005.) The law can be uneaven and an ass (joke intended!)
I have tried to net the area but two 4' grass snakes became entwined in it (Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 applies - so another reason for anonymity) - (one died and the other, though seemingly badly injured, slithered away and we have had young snakes in the garden this year.)
All the other prescribed deterents have also not worked, including Holly leaves, Lion and Tiger faeces, etc.
Cats are the spawn of Satan, but their human slaves think the world of them.
So no need for me to go after VC funding at the moment, but I have installed sheets of tin foil at various points that I know they walk through (now that I have removed the Holly branches) and might electrify these in the future (as a way to ionize the air ;-), so there is hope of a product! (I have put up small notices on the frames holding the foil so that trespasers are warned.)
I think you will find that being shot by a 'normal' water-pistol doesn't amount to 'causing distress', otherwise half of a cat's life would amount to being 'in distress' given their instinctive reaction to anything that surprises them. A 'normal water-pistol' certainly did the job in our garden back in the day. Tiddles soon got the message and found someone else's garden to squat in and get a load off its mind.
"I built a system to fire high pressure water at the feral cats "
Why high pressure? Sounds to me (as a cat owner) like you over-complicated the solution when a simple few seconds spurt from something like a regular rotary sprinkler would likely have done the job without any legal complications or noise concerns.
It is possible to fence cats out - though depends on neighbouring geography as to whether they can readily bypass fences (e.g. make use of nearby building. tree etc.). Also fence needs to be of the type a cat cannot climb (many cats can climb a "mesh" style fence)
However it also means keeping out foxes, badgers, hedgehogs, rabbits.
In our garden the main "digging holes" damage is caused by badgers, foxes and rabbits - cats are well down the list: Though we are in quite a rural area so more of a skew to "non pet" damage.
A bit of physical obstruction tends to stop cats - in our old house (a lot more cats round there as more urban), our pea zones never suffered cat activity. This was because we placed the sticks (for thd peas to climb up) when we planted the seeds - cats (living up to lazy stereotype) never bothered tearing down the sticks to use that weed cleared ground as a toilet.
Though whether it's worth the expense & time (if possible in location) of a "cat proof fence" is debateable for a small amount of veg loss*.
.. Plus a fence will decrease light reaching garden & so could impact on veg growth as a side effect.
* How do "cat losses" compare to "natural losses" caused by e.g. "cabbage white" caterpillar, carrot root fly, aphid infestation* etc. ?
* Although aphids rarely kill any of our plants, due to "lag" between high aphid numbers & predators reducing their numbers they can severely affect plant vigour / health and thus overall productivity.
Yeah I've always thought that too. I think the theory is related to the virtual particles that pop in and out of existence (or rather, the ones that don't, prevented by the small size of the casimir cavity). Their is energy released when the virtual real and antiparticles recombine and disappear back in to the quantum void from whence they "borrowed" the energy to briefly exist in the first place. The casimir cavity prevents certain particle/antiparticle pairs from existing inside the cavity, but they can exist (briefly) outside the cavity. This imbalance can vaguely, loosely, optimistically, be modelled as a net energy flow in a certain direction, which _could_ therefore be somehow tapped. Anyway, the theory of the conservation of energy certainly has a lot to say about all this conjecture.
Hysteresis.
The Casimir effect can be attractive, repulsive or, in some situations, neutral. The paper I just looked at exploited that. It allowed a chamber to expand via the Casimir effect until the effect was neutral and then shrunk it entirely in the neutral phase.
This may be strange, but this is a quantum system and it doesn't have to conform to the expectations of a macroscopic being who is used to the classical world.
That said, the paper's own author was highly sceptical of the maths. And it ignored real world things like friction. But it's possible, even with friction, you might be able to get out more than you put in. We regularly steal the earth's rotational energy; it's possible we could steal energy from the vacuum.
There is a fair bit of Heath-Robinson stuff we could do, but as mentioned in the article, there simply isn't the economic justification to do it.
Honestly, they may be better off using this cash to fund stuff that needs to be done but isn't being done, because our political system is broken.
We need more social housing. We need better climate change resilience - reservoirs, flood mitigation, fire breaks, lagoons, desalination plants. We need better healthcare funding so that 10% of the country isn't waiting in pain for an operation. None of this stuff requires the bending of laws of physics or is a VC-style gamble. It just needs a bit of funding. So stop throwing money at stuff that will never work and help people now, today, doing basic stuff that our governments will never do because they are incompetent, corrupt and don't give a toss.
Oh, and if you worked at HP and wanted to make a better printer, axe the ink subscription BS, remove the chips and create a free market in ink.
But what if cheap fusion, or an everlasting battery actually happens one day? It sort of reminds me about the the arguments against the Indian space program existing when they have millions living in poverty with no proper sanitation or clean drinking water. Blue Skying can seem like a waste of money, and probably 95%+ of it probably has little to no return, but that small percentage which does have a return can sometimes be worth all the "waste" by, in the long run, raising all the boats as the tide comes in.
Simon Reeve did a programme recently where a Norwegian salmon farmer had underwater lasers targetting lice on the fish in the farm.
It seemed to work & I'd have thought water would be more difficult than air to operate a laser effectively.
It'll be interesting to see the results for the mosquito laser zapper.
"At Hewlett-Packard, there's an engineer there whose job is to make inkjet printers 1 percent better, and he'd probably get a gold medal if he could do that"
Easy. Just buy a twenty year old HP inkjet printer and get a 100% improvement over their current crap. The same works for laser printers.
Robert Heinlein used the idea of a company that would ONLY fund projects that didn't have an immediate return; it's in "Time for the Stars" and (I think) "Farmer in the Sky" - perhaps others. In the books, it turned out that several blue-sky ideas turned out to be very profitable!
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