Microwaves that use directed or reflected waves and to better direct or target energy to specific spots in food. Thermal vision in microwaves and more automated time/power controls.
Why are we still just blasting waves on a spinning dish as high as we can? Like we can pinpoint microwaves for devices with our routers, but we can do it for inside a controlled environment in a box?!
This is my evidence if someone tries to patent this and lock people out of making cool products that I said it here first!
Cost-benefit is not there. You can buy fancy ones that do some such things, but they are expensive.
Do you have any models in particular you are thinking of? I was in the market a few years ago when I thought of this, but couldn’t find anything. So far I’ve found one’s with weight, and ambient temp sensors, and a heating element and fan combination for roasting and convection, but nothing like what I’ve described.
Nah, sry. I just heard/read about them. One thing is using an inverter to control power instead of on/off timing. Other is using a bunch of sensors, that i remember as an idea many years ago.
https://shop.panasonic.com/products/homechef-4-in-1-multi-oven-1-2-cu-ft-1000w
Seems to have both (i just googled “fancy microwave” and it was the first result :)).
For my needs just a timer dial is enough.
No worries! Yeah, the inverter control is definitely a step in the right direction, though!
| For my needs, just a timer dial is enough. Most of the time it ain’t that deep, so time + power level really is enough. It’s just I think the microwave could be a much more versatile cooking appliance!
Why don’t we have microwave coolers yet?!?
Just make your own!
I can only find papers talking about using microwaves at near the 0 K scales for that (and admittedly I definitely don’t enough quantum mechanics to even hazard a guess as that works from reading the summaries!!!), so I am not sure about it at higher heats (like around 300K).
If you don’t want multiple magnetrons (which would work too as a standard antenna in the wireless model of MIMO) you could use a electromechanical system, ie point magnetrons at reflective plates and move and adjust them to least direct the waves to a given point. Multi antennas I think would give a better granularity (because you can control the wave as well as direction and be able to time the peaks to hit inside a target vs just aiming the beams to a given spot). You may be able to get that with an electromechanical system, but it’s not something I know of a lot of public info on, but if you could get a time division demux device for high power microwave that directs the different peaks to specific reflectors, you’d be good too.
Any openhard ware folks, please take this if you are interested!!!
Routers? Do you mean Wi-Fi routers? Because they certainly don’t pinpoint waves for each device, they send all traffic out in all directions.
Why ‘correct’ someone when their knowledge of a topic so clearly outstrips your own?
I’m happy to accept that I was wrong, in fact this is a very interesting bit of technology! I didn’t intend to be rude, unlike you, clearly.
I’d also like to add that beamforming, despite the name, does not actually involve creating a directed beam. As I described the antenna still sends a signal out in all directions - multiple antennae work together to create an interference pattern with a stronger signal where a device is located. While I wasn’t aware of this technology, it is not as “directed” as the name implies and wouldn’t necessarily have applications inside a microwave oven, especially since the wavelengths used are pretty long, so I don’t think they would not have much flexibility to create the kind of precise pattern that cooking something while skipping the empty space would require.
While the total length of the average Microwave’s wave is about 4.7 - 4.9 inches (12.5 CM) you can further pinpoint the phase of the wave as well both by frequency (playing with that .2 inches in the bandwidth) and phase modulation. This could be further tuned if needed by allowing Microwave ovens to operate in the other ISM band of 5.7 GHZ allowing for 2 inch waves (5.3 CM) or even the 61.25 GHZ band (0.19 inches). Though, as you move up in frequency, you see less penetration as the power is lost faster on the surface of the objects.
Would any of that really make it heat more efficiently though? You’d need at least two magnetrons, some sort of computer vision system, and a computer to do the necessary calculations. Even if you could practically produce an interference pattern that’s better than a single standing wave, I suspect you’d lose more energy than you save.
It might be more efficient though honestly that wouldn’t be MY goal. The main thing would be improving the quality of cooking provided by microwave ovens, less cold centers, burnt outsides, uneven heatings, etc.
RISUG is cheap, permanent, safe, reversible male birth control.
It was invented in 1979, and has not yet come to market.
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It’s been almost 27 years since the first Austin Powers movie and the world still doesn’t have any sharks with frickin’ laser beams attached to their heads.
Would you settle for ill tempered sea bass?
A better voicemail.
I just re-watched the introduction of the first iPhone, and one thing that stood out to me was this “visual voicemail” thing they showed. To this day I still just get an SMS if someone leaves a message, and then have to call my voicemail and listen to recordings one by one. That’s still the norm for standard phone contracts here afaik, it’s ridiculous!
I didn’t know that was even still a thing. For years now on my iPhone I’ve just looked at the text transcriptions of my voicemail in my phone app.
Now my iPhone, actually transcribes my voicemail live and gives me the opportunity to pick up during them leaving the voicemail. Like old-school answering machines used to do.
That’s odd, Android transcribes my messages by default
Seems to heavily depend on your provider. Some work with the standard phone apps, some have their own apps, but most don’t seem to offer it at all here in Germany. One even sends you an audio MMS instead and just calls that “Visual Mailbox”. It’s crazy to me that such a basic and useful feature still isn’t just a standard thing on all phones.
It depends on your service provider. In Canada they charge for it. Last time I checked it was around $7/month.
Phone assistants responding to you in the same volume of voice you used to address them.
This would require a way of judging the distance you’re speaking from. Calling out from another room might get a whispered response, and vice versa.
This seems solvable. There are differences in pitch between a nearby whisper and a distant shout.
I agree, but I wouldn’t call it a “no-brainer.”
Maybe not. I’ve heard of apps that can detect mood and I imagine being able to tell that someone is sad from the tone of their voice should be more challenging than picking up the relative difference in inflection, quality of overtone saturation, application of the built in compressor, etc.
Any maps app that, when you set a route, lets you decide “don’t give me any directions until I get to X step” and/or “don’t give any directions after X step”. I dont like hearing the navigation when I don’t need it, and that would save me from having to open or close the navigation while I’m still driving.
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Or stop zooming in to the max, leaving me with zero information! The only choice left is to blindly drive into the river when instructed to do so.
useful implementation of AI silo’d to the applicable function.
some examples:
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“rename these images with X pattern, add their description to the meta data”
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“correctly capitalize all the names in my address book and tag them by how i know them”
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“show me how much i spent on fast food last month”
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actually good and useful autocorrect / spell check
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find all the emails about Jane’s wedding next year and let me know where we are with the planning
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find me an app for windows desktop that does XYZ
edit to clarify: I know there are algos and LLMs that do this, but I don’t want a “machine” that does all of them, I want a machine that only does each one really well.
LLMs would do all of those incorrectly with 100% confidence.
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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
Discord only does 3, then stops for a while.
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Draino for gutters!
Batteries inside of stove/microwave/coffee machine/etc. with the sole purpose of keeping the time from resetting when it loses power.
I’ve conditioned myself fully by this point to only use the clock on the stove as an indicator of whether my power has or has not gone out
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.
Contact attached to a knowledge graph seems useful to me :)
Can you give more context or an example. Is it like sort of Obsidian graph but the nodes are all contacts or something?
As an example: https://linkedpeople.net/person/Q358587
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?
As a software engineer I’m interested in the value that would add over simply having combinations of the tags as is possible now
These kind of tags are supported in all kinds of note taking apps. I don’t think it would be an Hercularian task to achieve it.
Don’t underestimate the legacy code. There’s a reason we avoid it.
Some sort of device to remove the heads from the ruling class
The up coming weight loss drugs. I’m moderately over weight and been fighting it 20 years.
Having some help there would be a god send for a lot of people and I’m slightly optimistic on this round of drugs.
Yeah, companies starting an obesity epidemic by pumping us full of government subsidized corn syrup, only to solve that by getting us reliant on an exorbitantly expensive drug that you have to inject every day. How I love capitalism.
God fucking forbid we take any self responsibility.
I eat pretty much zero processed food and it’s incredibly easy and inexpensive.
I’m fat because I eat and snack too much and it’s 100% my fault.
We’ve literally wasted decades because we’ve treated obesity as a personal failing rather than researching the problem.
Drunk mode for phone. It holds all purchases in a limbo state and pops up with a list to approve or deny at noon the next day.
It also redirects any communication with your ex to an AI bot for the evening.
