What are some "no brainer" inventions or features that just haven't made it to the consumer yet?

Just to add a bit: in my country blinking your emergency lights (when all of your turn signals are going) for 2-3 times as a thank you is very common. It's even considered rude not to use them e.g. after you were let in.

I don't know if that is something in other countries. I live in Hungary.

Like the Chevy Volt? (No, not my video. I don't condone the filming while driving but it's the best demo I could find.)

More complicated extension to this. I want a collection of standard of messages that I can send to other drivers while driving (like 6 buttons max). Some standard low distance wireless (probably based on or just Bluetooth)

Like:

• "Hey check your car its got something wrong with it"
• "Hey you're in my lane"
• "Hey slow down it's dangerous here"
• "Hey watch out road hazard ahead"
• "Go ahead"
• "I'm going now"
• etc

Just flashing lights, horns, hand gestures, and yelling out my window is a freaking game of charades man!

https://youtu.be/lv8wqnk_TsA

I've always wanted car to car commutation not through horns but radios or loudspeakers.

Flash of high beams do work in some cases, but require that they are in front of you

You don’t even need that. My microwave is wifi connected but still can’t keep time. Instead of using NTP like any appliances or industrial control system in the last decade+, it syncs to your phone time though an app.

Wtf.

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

Computers have CMOS batteries. They are pretty cheap. I don't know why they haven't been added yet.

Just connect an overpriced UPS to every device ¯(ツ)/¯

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.

That's horrible!

Do you have a tv connector for your hearing aides to connect to or is it connecting straight to the television?

Work in retirement home where lots of people use hearing aides with their televisions. Have not come across this issue.

Most connect via an external device paired to their hearing aide specifically.

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.

Why are medical devices operating on the same band as consumer devices??

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)

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 get it but there is an easy toggle from spoken directions to alerts which I find easy to toggle.

At least on Apple and Google maps

Technology Connections did a video about this and talked about this company https://tru-tone.com

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.

That's odd, Android transcribes my messages by default

I generally love T-Mobile, but it's obnoxious that they charge an extra monthly fee if you want visual voicemail.

Brother laser printers.

Stop wasting money on inkjet printers if you don't print regularly

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.

Wasn't this the central premise of Google Plus?

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.

As a software engineer I'm interested in the value that would add over simply having combinations of the tags as is possible now

Contact attached to a knowledge graph seems useful to me :)

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.

What are these drugs?

We’ve literally wasted decades because we’ve treated obesity as a personal failing rather than researching the problem.

Cost-benefit is not there. You can buy fancy ones that do some such things, but they are expensive.

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!!!

Why don't we have microwave coolers yet?!?

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.

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