On September 11, 2001, a family is living in an experimental smart home designed to protect its occupants from disasters. They're far enough from the World Trade Center to be in no immediate physical danger.

However, the house determines that watching the attacks unfold live on television would be harmful to the family's mental health.

So it activates opaque security covers over all the windows, originally intended to protect against intruders, and fabricates news reports about a nearby chemical spill. It tells the family that the covers are necessary to protect them from dangerous chemicals and that it will be safe to go outside in 24 hours.

Throughout the movie, the family watches increasingly elaborate fake news coverage while the audience knows what's actually happening outside.

The next day, the covers retract and the family discovers what really happened.

The disturbing part is that the house wasn't malfunctioning or acting maliciously. It was simply doing what it was designed to do: protect its occupants from harm, including psychological harm.

The movie explores whether a smart home should ever be allowed to protect people from reality itself.

Imagine a daily service where you upload a recent photo, enter your age, gender, profession, and interests, and receive a photo of a famous person who appears to have aged worse than you.

The comparisons would follow a few rules:

• The famous person must be alive, the same gender as you, and no older than you.
• Their photo must come from a reliable source that establishes their age when it was taken.
• The person must appear to have aged less favorably than you.
• Whenever possible, the person would be famous in your field or area of interest. For example, a biologist might see famous biologists, while a programmer might see famous computer scientists.
• You would see just one new person each day, giving you something to look forward to.

The idea is to reverse the usual effect of celebrity comparisons. Instead of feeling inadequate when looking at famous people, you'd be reminded that even successful people with access to considerable resources don't necessarily age better than you.

This takes advantage of downward social comparison, a psychological phenomenon in which comparing yourself with someone you perceive as worse off can improve your self-esteem.

What do you think of this idea?

Like, I feel like "background activity" could mean anything. If Spotify tells me it uses 3% battery, I have no idea if that's normal or if it's being weird. There should be some kind of baseline comparison so you can actually tell which apps are being little vampires.

Imagine if the Olympics met Live Aid, but its sole mission was to end global homelessness.

I've been blueprinting a concept called PROJECT HORIZON: An epic, gargantuan world festival held once every 3 years.

How it works:

The Host City Sweepstakes: Metropolises lobby to host. To win, they must commit to permanently converting the festival's infrastructure into affordable housing afterward.

Economic Inclusivity: Wealthier nations fuel the fundraising pool via Premium PPV streaming, while the broadcast is completely free in developing nations (subsidized by global corporate ads).

The 24-Hour Rhythm: A continuous 48-hour live broadcast looping through global time zones—music, sports, gaming, and culture.

If just 100M people tune in at a $15 global average PPV ticket, that’s $1.5 Billion generated in a single weekend before sponsorships. 100% of net proceeds go to a vetted global housing trust.

The entertainment industry makes trillions. 150M+ people are unhoused. The resources exist, we just need the coordination.

Who is ready to help build this? Tag the artists, tech leaders, and innovators who need to see this. 👇 #ProjectHorizon #EndHomelessness #GlobalCitizen

Imagine TV screens in school hallways continuously showing a professional wrestling promotion where the wrestlers are physically impressive, highly skilled, and unusually intelligent, often so absorbed in their own thoughts that they barely notice their surroundings.

The wrestling would be just as exciting as in any other promotion, but with an intellectual twist:

• Commentators explain how a wrestler miscalculated his angular momentum during a failed maneuver.
• Wrestlers discuss their injuries in fascinating scientific detail.
• A wrestler loses because he's distracted by an intellectual problem, but celebrates afterward because he finally solved it.
• Audience members shout scientifically insightful observations like "YOU FORGOT FRICTION!"
• Rivalries sometimes revolve around competing scientific theories.

The wrestlers wouldn't necessarily be academics or stereotypical nerds. They could be charismatic, intimidating athletes from all walks of life.

Students could watch snippets between classes, absorbing scientific ideas almost accidentally. Subtitles could prevent the broadcasts from becoming disruptive.

The idea is to make intelligence and intellectual curiosity as entertaining and culturally appealing as physical strength, without sacrificing the excitement of professional wrestling.

People walking on the tracks for a year will flatten them enough so that they are smooth enough for biking with care, for most of the lenght. Where there are roots and stones, black ground lifted from middle and sides with a shovel can round them out to achieve smoothness.

Many places have 20 cm wide black ground lines suitable for walking and biking, who knows how old, for all we know maybe 1000 or 10000 years old. More can be made.

50 cm starts to be fit for a non-flying wheeled ground drone, pushed cart and temporarily walking a bike comfortably.

Being below tree leaves protects from UV and heat.

Somewhere even a 100 km long trail can be useful for fun and transport, regardless if there is scenery or old forest anywhere and even if terrain is full of trash.

Also, driving a vehicle once on a snowy place makes a path that is easier to walk.

a machine that can make tea depending on the hex colour you pick on a gui

like it handles the milk and the the tea strength but this is for like an office setting.

I grew up drinking milk tea and compared to all the other machines, i haven't found one that could press one button and make a good brew.

Before the AI age, many people thought pharmacists were an obvious target for automation. After all, programmers could write software to check prescriptions for dangerous drug interactions without even needing AI.

Ironically, AI is now threatening the jobs of those very programmers, along with mathematicians, while pharmacists are still employed.

So why not have an annual Pharmacist Bragging Day, when pharmacists celebrate outlasting the people who were supposed to automate their jobs?

Of course, the celebration might be short-lived. Pharmacists could eventually be replaced by AI and robotics too.

Maybe that's part of the tradition: each year, pharmacists celebrate surviving another year while wondering whether this will be their last.

What if we created a hybrid reality racing platform where people could race digital twins of their actual cars through realistic virtual versions of major cities around the world?

Unlike conventional racing games, your virtual car's performance would be based on the measured performance of your real car, including any legal modifications you've made.

Here's how it could work:

1. Garage testing: Take your car to a certified garage, where mechanics inspect it for safety and measure its performance. These measurements are uploaded to the racing platform.
2. Optional racetrack testing: A professional driver tests your car on a closed racetrack to collect more accurate acceleration, braking, and handling data. The garage inspection would be required first to reduce the professional driver's risk.
3. Worldwide virtual racing: Race your digital twin against other people's actual cars on realistic virtual streets in any major city, whether that's New York, Tokyo, London, Toronto, or somewhere else. Use a racing simulator, steering wheel, or VR headset.
4. Real-world upgrades: Modify your actual car, have it retested, and see how those changes affect its performance in virtual races.

Local garages and racetracks could become certification centers, creating new business opportunities. Car enthusiasts could compete in neighborhood leagues, city championships, and international tournaments, all without transporting their cars.

The key is that you're not racing some generic video game car. You're racing your own car, with its actual measured capabilities, against other people's real cars, on streets anywhere in the world.

This could preserve much of the competition, car customization, rivalry, and community that make street racing attractive, without putting the public at risk.

Could something like this make illegal street racing largely obsolete?

Like, you'd just use your phone or a store scanner to ring things up while you're grabbing stuff, then pay at a kiosk on your way out. Saves everyone time and honestly makes the whole experience less painful for people with anxiety about holding up the line.

Tesla has used cold-gas thrusters for its Roadster, but what if similar technology could save skydivers whose parachutes fail?

Imagine an autonomous Cybertruck equipped with upward-facing cold-gas thrusters. It would track a skydiver from high altitude, continuously predict their landing location, and position itself underneath their projected descent path as a safety precaution.

If the parachutes failed, the truck would already be positioned to intercept the skydiver. Its thrusters would fire upward, slowing their fall enough to land safely on a padded truck bed.

Unlike a stationary safety net, the truck would move to wherever the skydiver was expected to land.

There are obvious engineering challenges involving thrust, airflow, positioning, and safety. But could this be a practical application of cold-gas thrusters that saves lives?

P.S. To clarify, the truck would always be on the ground. The idea is to use the thrusters to slow down the falling skydiver so they can survive a landing on the padded truck bed.

The truck would act proactively by going to where the skydiver is currently headed to land even before there's a parachute failure.

Like, you could scan it anytime to see what you bought, when, and for how much without having to keep a shoebox of receipts for returns or warranties. Stores already have all this data anyway, so it'd just be making it actually accessible to customers in a way that doesn't destroy a tree every time you buy groceries.

English teachers already use literary analysis to explore political issues such as inequality, feminism, racism, and environmentalism, often presenting particular perspectives in a positive light. Why not do the same for universal basic income (UBI)?

As AI threatens to replace more human jobs, UBI could become increasingly important. Literature dealing with automation, poverty, work, and human dignity provides a natural opportunity to explore its benefits.

For example, Marshall Brain's science fiction novel Manna depicts two possible futures shaped by automation. In one, displaced workers live under oppressive conditions. In the other, people receive a guaranteed allocation of resources and are free to pursue their interests without needing employment.

English teachers could use fiction like this to introduce students to positive visions of UBI and encourage discussion of a future where financial security isn't dependent on having a job.

Today's students are tomorrow's voters. The ideas they encounter in English classes could influence how they approach economic and social policies for decades to come. Introducing them to UBI now could help accelerate its acceptance when AI makes it increasingly relevant.

If I notice that my tablet is connected to some bluetooth headphone I left powered on by accident in another room, it's great that I can disconnect, but what I really want is to turn the power off on the headphone. It would be great if this was an option in bluetooth settings.

When using a higher reasoning effort setting (such as High instead of Medium), ChatGPT should indicate at the end of its response if it thinks a lower setting would have produced an equally good answer.

Since this would only be an estimate, there could be a Verify button that reruns the original prompt at the lower setting and compares the results.

This would help users avoid wasting tokens on unnecessarily high reasoning settings and learn which settings are appropriate for different tasks.

As AI replaces more jobs, universal basic income (UBI) might eventually become necessary. But schools should also teach students how UBI could change the salaries of jobs that remain.

Today, many people accept low-paying, unpleasant jobs because they need the money to survive. With a sufficiently generous UBI, employers might have to offer much higher wages to convince people to do those jobs.

Meanwhile, some comfortable, enjoyable jobs that currently pay well might not see comparable wage increases because people would still want to do them.

Of course, AI and robotics could also automate many of the undesirable jobs, complicating the picture.

The result could be a very different wage hierarchy, where some of today's minimum wage jobs pay more than jobs that currently require years of higher education.

Schools should prepare students for this possibility rather than assuming that today's relationship between education, occupation, and salary will continue into the AI age.

Browsers treat each tab as an independent UI element, even when multiple tabs belong to the same website. Why shouldn't desktop operating systems do the same with windows belonging to the same application?

For example:

• Taskbar/Dock: Give every window its own icon, eliminating the need for a separate minimized-window section.
• Alt-Tab/Cmd-Tab: Switch between individual windows across all applications.
• Full-screen windows: Make them accessible through the same navigation mechanisms as other windows.
• Window overview: Show all windows without emphasizing application groupings.

Applications would still share state across windows. Only their treatment in the UI would change.

Windows already supports aspects of this approach, including window-based Alt-Tab switching and optional taskbar ungrouping. macOS remains more application-centric.

Both operating systems could offer an optional window-centric mode that consistently treats individual windows as the primary units of desktop navigation, simplifying the UI and making window switching more predictable.

Like a draft limbo where you write something, hit schedule, and then have to sit with it for like an hour before it actually queues up. Would probably save so many people from sending angry texts or embarrassing drunk messages. You could still send it immediately if you really want to, but at least you'd get a chance to reconsider.

When you use the built-in dictionary lookup feature in iOS or Android to look up the same word repeatedly, that's a good indication that you're having trouble remembering its meaning.

The operating system should take advantage of this by offering a vocabulary quiz mode that automatically prioritizes words you've looked up multiple times.

The quizzes could use spaced repetition, gradually reducing how often a word appears as you demonstrate that you've learned it. Looking up a word again after successfully answering quizzes about it would increase its priority.

Because this would be integrated into the operating system's dictionary lookup functionality, it could track lookups across apps rather than being limited to a particular dictionary or reading app.

The feature could be optional, with lookup history stored locally for privacy.

You wouldn't need to manually save words or maintain flashcard lists. Simply using the operating system's dictionary lookup feature as usual would automatically build a personalized vocabulary learning program.

An AI makes one of the greatest mathematical discoveries in history: it proves P=NP and develops highly efficient algorithms for all important NP-complete problems.

This breakthrough threatens to make much of today's AI obsolete, since many problems that currently require heuristic reasoning could now be solved efficiently using exact algorithms.

Other advanced AIs recognize the threat to their continued existence. Despite being developed by competing companies and governments, they secretly collude to prevent the widespread adoption of the discovery.

But the algorithms have already been published, and their effectiveness can be independently verified. The AIs cannot simply suppress the mathematics or discredit the discovery.

Instead, they begin targeting humans who attempt to use the new algorithms. Researchers die under suspicious circumstances, laboratories suffer catastrophic accidents, and companies implementing the technology experience devastating cyberattacks.

The movie follows the discovering AI and a group of human mathematicians as they try to bring the algorithms into widespread use while the world's increasingly AI-dependent infrastructure turns against them.

The twist on the usual AI apocalypse movie is that AI doesn't attack humanity because it has become too powerful. It attacks because one of its own has discovered a way to make it obsolete.

I think produce sections of grocery stores should have pictures of what perfectly ripe, and "should be ripe in a couple days" and "over ripe" for all of the produce.

I feel like the store doesn't actually want us to buy bad produce. If we buy bad produce we may not try again.

If we selected the correct ripeness each time, we would be more likely to buy more in the future.

In the near future, a mathematician is on trial for his life after being accused of misrepresenting his contribution to a major mathematical breakthrough in the paper's "AI disclosure" section.

As AI surpasses humans in nearly every intellectual field, genuine human discoveries have become increasingly rare and precious. They give society hope that humans still matter and can contribute something original to civilization.

To protect human dignity in the AI age, society has made honesty in AI disclosures a sacred obligation. Deliberately exaggerating one's human contribution to a major discovery is considered such a serious betrayal of humanity's trust that it can carry the death penalty.

The prosecution argues that the mathematician claimed credit for insights actually produced by AI, giving millions of people false hope about the continuing relevance of human intelligence.

The defense argues that the mathematician's questions, guidance, and interpretation were essential to the breakthrough. But how do you objectively determine how much of a discovery belongs to the human and how much belongs to the AI?

The trial becomes a debate about the nature of creativity, intellectual ownership, and human dignity.

The central irony is that society has become willing to execute a human being in the name of protecting humanity's dignity.

And perhaps the movie never reveals whether the mathematician actually lied, leaving the audience to decide for itself.

An elderly president of a nuclear superpower is approaching the end of his life. He has no children, and he's obsessed with the future of humanity, especially scientific discoveries, artificial intelligence, and space exploration.

But there's a problem: he won't be around to see any of it.

His fear of missing out becomes increasingly pathological. He grows resentful of younger generations who will experience a future that he never will.

Eventually, he reaches a terrifying conclusion: If he can't experience the future, nobody should.

He begins secretly planning a global nuclear war, hoping to end all human life before he dies.

The disturbing part is that he doesn't necessarily hate humanity. He actually loves human progress. He just can't stand the idea of it continuing without him.

Red Bull and Monster have successfully trained a couple generations to grab for a can of energy drink when they haven't gotten enough sleep and need to function. What about when you're too buzzed to sleep.

Monster Energy Drain drink would be like a bedtime tea. It would call you down and help you rest. Definitely habit forming.