Ideas: June 2024 Release
THE MOTIVATION
The ideas section is a place to offload and share various ideas I’ve come up. Although these are only the ideas that have already been implemented, tested, something I’m not interested in doing, or technically incomplete (meaning there’s various technical progress that needs to be accomplished before it’s applicable), however, it has definitely been conceived by me independently. It serves to share the kind of practical imagination I have but also to share the journey into the future:
CO2 sequestration and recycling
The global amount of CO2 produced per year is 37 gigatons and to put this into context 11 gigatons are transported by maritime shipping each year. So we need 3 times more than everything we ship overseas to handle the amount of CO2 we’re producing, this is the scale of the problem which means we need something of similar scale to tackle it.
My suggestion is taking agricultural waste, burning it, and either injecting the CO2 into the earth or recycle the CO2 into synthetic fuels. About 52% of the land in the US is used for agriculture, according to wikipedia 80% of 8.25 gigatons consists of global agricultural wastes per year from just the top four crops grown, and in the US agricultural waste is sold for around $55 per dry ton. Overall, it can be seen that the scale for carbon capture is there along with the economics with a $55 (or less in other countries) per ton compared to the $100 per ton of the proposed carbon tax. The CO2 can then be injected into basalt rocks underground to mineralize and be stored for thousands of years or turned into biofuels. The energy generated can be sold on the market or used in the process to generate the biofuels, the money generated could then be used to offset the cost of the operation. Overall, this may not be the silver bullet to defeating climate change, but it’ll be a good shot.
Update (7/17/24): It turns out there’s a company that emerged one month after I originally conceived of the design Arbor Energy. Also separate from Arbor energy as another related idea, agricultural waste could be ground up with water to create a slurry (maybe with preservatives) and injected into old gas and oil wells (or artificially created wells through methods like fracking). The off gases like CO2, methane, and etc would likely be contained in the well or they could be sold as a biofuel. The off gas CO2 and fossil fuels contribution to global airborne CO2 could be offset by pumping more slurry into the ground. Also not all the solids/liquids will turn into gas, this is just the same thing as naturally occurring fossil fuels and there’s definitely CO2 sequestered in this process. Finally agricultural waste is more dense in carbon than CO2 gas, because the carbons in agricultural wastes are in giant chains whereas CO2 gas is a single carbon connected to two heavy oxygen atoms. So 1 ton of agricultural waste technically sequesters more carbon than 1 ton of CO2 gas, so the impact of this process could be a very significant portion of the solution to climate change. Finally there’s the optics, people pumping oil/gas out of wells, while other people are putting it back in wells.
Update (10/23/2024): It turns out there’s a new company also pursuing a similar goal of burying CO2 Graphyte. Their plan is to take leftovers from agricultural and the timber industry to be turned into dried blocks that are individually packaged and then stored underground. I have to say I really like this idea, could be the bullet we’ve been looking for. Although the pumping plant slurry into old oil/gas wells could still work in parallel, plus the off-gas works as a biofuel.
Rescuing clinical trials through DNA sequencing
Basically some clinical trials may have failed due to it only working on a subset of the population, and many effective therapies are then thrown away. However, even with drugs that pass FDA certification many drugs sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t for a particular person. (This is particularly apparent with my own experiences with various psychiatric meds). Therefore we maybe able to rescue a drug from the trashcan by DNA sequencing to identify whether there’s a particular genotype where the drug does work. And it is already happening, ivacaftor for cystic fibrosis, trastuzumab for breast cancer, and etc. This rescues billions of dollars, advances personalized medicine, and provides relief for countless individuals.
Temporary Apps
QR code on device (like equipment, hotel TVs, etc) that you can scan that automatically downloads a temporary app (that you could make permanent) to control and monitor the device. QR code could setup a bluetooth or wifi connection with the device and then the temporary app would provide an interface. Turns out this is already implemented as an Apple app clip, but would be best if it was open source so it wouldn’t matter if it was an apple or android device.
Apple watch Software design
One of the core design ideas around the Apple ecosystem is that the Apple watch helps keep you from needing to pull out your phone and your phone helps keep you from needing to pull out your laptop. So isn’t it strange that of the phone, text message, and email complications for the Apple watch, only the text messages complication has a badge that tells you if you have new items. For phone and email, you need to pull out your phone.
Smartphone/tablet/laptop Mount
Similar to how the military Black Hornet 4 has a chest mounted screen and toolkit, we can build a similar mounting system for smartphone/tablet/laptops, so that you can have these items on rapid standby without having to constantly hold it. A smartphone based one could be mounted on your forearm, and technically any of them could be mounted on your chest. Is there a use case? Oh yes. Imagine a construction worker with a chest mounted fold out tablet who can instantly check blueprints. Or a doctor with a chest mounted fold out laptop who can move around the hospital, and be able to check and make edits to medical records in a second.
3D printed custom eyeglasses
I wear glasses and the most frustrating part of it is that it constantly falls off my face, and this is because it’s poor fitting. I could fix it by bending the arms on the frame, but I lack the dexterity to do a really good job. Then I realized from my experience with 3D printing and 3D scanning, your head could be scanned in to create a 3D model and the perfect fitting eyeglasses 3D printed for you. Of course it’s such a good idea that it’s already being done.
Pointing in video calls
This has been a long time coming, I came up with this design ideas almost a decade ago. But it’s basically the ability to draw on the video call or screen share to easily tell the person what you’re pointing at. Because if you don’t have this capability, you’re just left with describing what you’re pointing at which is much harder. The only thing is for companies to implement it on video calls as well. Here’s a link to it in action.
Corporate Citizen Profit Sharing
I’ve been watching a bunch of economics videos about various countries, and a common theme is that even though a country is rich with natural resources the people are poor. This is because the country is full of corruption and all the money gets funneled away from the people. So what if a company dug up natural resources, sold it, and then distributed a share of the profits to the citizens directly? It would be similar to how companies have philanthropic side missions to their business. And even if the government tried to tax away exactly what was given to the citizenry, they’d have a hell of a lot more trouble collecting it as a tax than just taking a cut of a sale.
Ambilight TVs
I just added ambilights to my TV setup and I love it, it adds a ton more immersion. But what really has my head scratching is why haven’t TV makers built it into the TV. It would be a major brand new value adding feature against a backdrop of very small incremental improvements to the rest of the TV. They could just add it to the edge of the TV behind a diffuser.
Custom Voice Assistant Actions
So I built a google voice assistant and when I worked on that project it exposed me to how the google assistant parses your requests. Basically you give it a example sentence. There are certain words like dates that you can parse out and use as an input. And then there are certain words that are flexible like if you said dog instead of canine. I want that level of customization as an end user. Rather than having to be a developer and also while having access to the other apps on my phone or computer. *6/10/24 Following Apple’s release of their newest OSes, it shows that Apple has implemented this idea. Here’s the link to check it out from a third-party website with the beta.
CO2 alchemy
It’s a shame that there doesn’t seem to be a way to do this, but if you could separate the carbon from the oxygen all that you’re left with is carbon dust and breathable oxygen. I know that plants basically kind of do this and there are companies that chemically handle this. But man, if only there was some kind of catalytic converter that could do it. Just blow air over it, carbon dust falls to the floor and oxygen mixes with the air. My god.
P2P Home Sales
So what if the owner sold the house directly to the buyer with the seller acting as the bank. The seller gets the interest payments plus the sale of the house. This could allow the seller to offer a lower principal or lower rate than the bank and this could lead to lower housing costs. Imagine cutting out the bank and the real estate agents, there could be huge savings. It’s interesting how renting a home is p2p but buying one generally isn’t. I think a mediator could still play a role similar to how AirBnb mediates rentals, but with the money saved, the seller, buyer, and mediator could all still win.
Browser Payments
What if you either paid a subscription or loaded money directly within the browser you’re using and whenever you visited a website it’s paid a small amount to avoid having to deal with ads, paywalls, and subscriptions. It would streamline things dramatically. Particularly for news outlets, because at least I hate having to deal with dozens of $8 a month subscriptions to get all my news, even when I might only read a single article. Also cutting down on ads is quite attractive, because without an ad blocker, it can get pretty ridiculous. It’s kind of like Apple Pay or Google Pay but a single click process. And it would be able to pay out down to pennies for content creators without having it all being taken away with credit card fees.
Computer booths
Replace the defunct phone booths with computer booths. Having public access to a computer outside of a library does have uses. Primarily (or at least how I envision it) it helps the homeless access public services. But also it can be a source of local information for tourists or provide a way for someone whose lost their phone or drained their battery to get in touch with someone. The computer could just be a tablet embedded into a post, a camera to make sure no one damages it, and maybe finger print reader or something to allow people to use it for an allotted amount of time. Could run ads when it’s idle. And in fact this is one of the ideas so good it’s already implemented. New York city Link provides a tablet, wifi, phone calls, dedicated 911 button, usb power, and ads (hooray). Check it out here.
Mail QR Codes
I get a lot of physical mail from the government or other organizations that say please keep this for your records, and I just find it inconvenient, at most I just drop it in a stack of letters and call it a day. And the reason why these organizations send physical letters instead of emails is that they serve the lowest common denominator, people who don’t even have a computer or internet. But if we took the lowest common denominator and gave it a upgrade. What if every physical letter I get comes with a QR code that leads to a link with the digital version of it that I can store for my records. Then it’s as easy as emailing to myself or putting it into cloud storage.
Trial Adulting Student Project
Students should have a year long term project that just lets them decide what to do with it: could be a thing of great beauty, an invention, great achievement, great story/music, or just getting a job. That’s one of the central lessons of adulthood is how you use your time. They could be required to earn a certain amount and then budget it, they could start with some amount of savings, there’s a lot of options. But overall, this would be a bite size version of what being an adult would be. And you’d be judged on how well you did by committee. This gives them practical experience in the road ahead of them, and identify which kids need the most help. Although the downside is that it has to replace some schooling, since regular school is already a full-time job, but I believe the lessons learned are well worth it.
Tactical Endoscope
I’ve played some paintball and I know how risky it can be to stick your head out, and I can only imagine what it’d be like for a soldier or policeman dealing with real life or death bullets. So what if you had a wrist mounted screen with a flexible endoscope camera to look around corners for you. You could even add a privacy screen (the filters normally used to keep people from looking over your shoulder) so that you’re not a light house and give away your position. Could be a useful bit of kit.
1password Security Update
The earlier ideas post mentioned how 1Password requires a separate 2 factor authentication in order to recover your account. Well finally on 6/20/2024 1Password has implemented recovery codes to truly implement account recovery.
New Type of Shirt
Button up shirt combined with hoodie. Results can be very nice.
Solar still
Having emergency supplies on hand is a necessity particularly if you’re on a boat and traveling through the ocean. However, in an emergency where you’re perhaps just on a life raft, the thing that’ll kill you first is dehydration, but the irony is that you’re surrounded by water (that’s undrinkable). So a simple life-saver would be a solar still or a still that uses the sun to evaporate salt water and then condense it into fresh water. I was kicking around the idea and didn’t have a particular design setup yet, but I happened to find someone already implemented it.
Tricoder
Imagine a palm sized robotic microscope that you control with your smartphone. This by itself allows you to see into the microscopic world. But combine it with microfluidic reagent cartridges, and now you can conduct a vast array of medical tests. This was the end vision of the smartphone microscope I developed earlier. And I can’t build it now, but someday it can be a possibility.
Electro-permanent magnet
Basically a permanent magnet with a electromagnet to counter the magnetic field to turn off the magnet. At first, I wasn’t sure how could you use this thinking this is a solution looking for a problem, although it seemed like there should be a use. Well turns out there is and it’s already implemented. Electro-permanent magnets are used in construction when you need to move something metallic (like a large metal pipe) safely even when there’s a risk of a sudden power outage.
Alien robots
Where are all the alien robots? Aliens run into the same physics we do and should be able to create artificial general intelligence. And if AGI is such a threat, they should’ve had their terminator day as well. Finally earth is a planet with liquid water making it an attractive planet for not being too cold and not too hot. Yet we see nothing around. Either space travel is really hard, aliens are hiding, or we’re in a bad area of space.
Acceptance can be better than fighting
An especially relevant quote for the current times where things are becoming increasingly more partisan. This is the core concept of how to meet at a middle ground crystallized. However, it’s more than that, it’s knowing how to forgive as well with a special note towards the Israel and Palestinian conflict. All in all a good tidbit of advice.
True Age
Age of known life on earth is 3.7 billion years old, and we are descendants of that life in a universe that’s 13.8 billion years old, this means our true age is about a quarter the age of the universe. You were a single cell at one point, you were a sea animal, you were some kind of land animal, you were a monkey, then it’s you; you’ve survived dinosaurs, you’ve survived being eaten in general, you’ve survived world ending asteroids, you’ve survived the ice ages. For 3.7 billions years, that’s your history.
Innovative Unpublished Ideas
Next-gen targeting system
Massive untapped training set for computer vision
Next-gen authentication mechanism
Update (10/3/24): So I recently discovered that there are people working on my idea here. Basically my idea is to use a bracelet or something to modulate the electric field of the body, so that it can be picked up by something like a touchscreen to transmit information, therefore providing things like authentication. At the time I conceived of this idea, it was more a solution looking for a problem, but the video does bring up important points. Transmitting information this way is more secure since you’re not blasting out your data in every direction like you would with conventional radio based communication, you would only be able to pick up the data with this electric field approach if you were millimeters away or in physical contact. Their research has expanded on the concept to include things like transmission of video, audio, wearable data, etc, since communication through the body as a wire rather than through radio is orders of magnitude more power efficient according to their research. Overall, a very interesting idea.