What's a sci-fi thing you feel is achievable with our current level of technology that you'd love to see become a thing?
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Here is something we don't have that I think we could: Automated vegetable farming.
I've seen these watering gantries that are fixed at the center of a circular field and then rotate radially around that point to water the field. Could you use that as a rail with an effector arm on it that can plant, weed, tend, fertilize and harvest the field, such that in goes seeds and out comes vegetables? Without the liability of free roaming robotic tractors and combine harvesters. Surely the issue here would be software.
Those are called pivots, and what you are saying seems plausible: there are vision algorithms to recognize and selectively spray weeds (see Bilberry ), recent prototypes with light-pressure grabbers to gather fruits and soft vegetables.
Even for harvesters, there are projects to automate harvesting and swapping the grain trucks (see Outrun ). GPS-guided (or assisted) tractors are already a thing.
Agriculture has some interesting innovations, but it often gets bogged down in corporate acquisitions and monetization.
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Plenty of other people's interests don't align with mine either - these days, it seems like most people's interests don't. What makes a corporation less reliable than my fellow Americans?
Divisions of power. Notice how shit things are getting under the Trump administration due to his (successful) attacks on our checks and balances.
Handing the reigns over to a corporation would be a similar situation, except that a corporation doesn't waste half its time playing golf or shitposting on twitter.
Imagine a Trump that doesn't eat, doesn't sleep, isn't stupid, and doesn't have any legal framework to tell him 'no' ...and can't just be assassinated by a fed up civilian. Literally no checks and balances, including vigilante justice.
...also did you see the bit about slavery and monopolies and such? Kinda seems like we're glossing over that to address relative alignment of interests, which is moot as fuck when things like slavery and monopolies are on the table.
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Universal healthcare and living wages for everyone.
They said scifi, not fantasy
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I'm on board with ethical and opt-in telemetry. Knowing how your users interact with your app is very useful, but not many companies can show restraint when money is involved.
If my data was used to refine and improve the products and services I interact with I'd be fine with it but as it stands it's just used to help make my life hell and exploit my existence for cash.
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I never stopped dreaming about flying cars, I just think it's not gonna happen because a crash would easily kill people just sitting in their homes.
Compared to aviation, road vehicles have virtually no structured regulations.
Even road rules are considered optional by many drivers. Lots of people drive without a licence.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C76osXtpLeM
someone was working on one years ago and it seems to never have come to market
That's really cool, thanks. I always wondered what such a contraption would look like. Too bad it didn't make it to market.
The real sci-fi dream is to have a machine that can take a bin of totally unsorted laundry (everything from socks to bedsheets), then wash, dry, and fold it all into a basket. I don't know if that could be done without some very human-like arms and better AI than we have today.
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I never stopped dreaming about flying cars, I just think it's not gonna happen because a crash would easily kill people just sitting in their homes.
Helicopters exist, they are expensive, loud, require pilot training and skill, and still crash sometimes.
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That's really cool, thanks. I always wondered what such a contraption would look like. Too bad it didn't make it to market.
The real sci-fi dream is to have a machine that can take a bin of totally unsorted laundry (everything from socks to bedsheets), then wash, dry, and fold it all into a basket. I don't know if that could be done without some very human-like arms and better AI than we have today.
for complex tasks like laundry I wonder if material recycling and on-demand manufacturing will advance far enough first that we end up "3d printing" (or Star Trek replicating) clothes and then just tossing dirty ones into a material recycling system, well before we have the tech to make a robot wash them haha
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Whether big or small. We all have that one thing from Scifi we wished were real. I'd love to see a cool underground city with like a SkyDome or a space hotel for instance.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Hemp as a replacement for plastics and synthetic materials. Food packaging shouldn't have a longer shelf life than it's contents.
Sunchips was using PLA, which is a step in the right direction.
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Here is something we don't have that I think we could: Automated vegetable farming.
I've seen these watering gantries that are fixed at the center of a circular field and then rotate radially around that point to water the field. Could you use that as a rail with an effector arm on it that can plant, weed, tend, fertilize and harvest the field, such that in goes seeds and out comes vegetables? Without the liability of free roaming robotic tractors and combine harvesters. Surely the issue here would be software.
I'm into hydroponics as a hobby grower and there are certain techniques for veggie growing that are set and forget. You plant and harvest only, no weeding, no watering. As far as I understand, traditional techniques are still cheaper though
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Right, business, and using tech most consumers don’t have. So that is definitely a thing. What I’m saying is, most families have access to it with consumer grade stuff.
I mean, they habe. I have been applying to tech jobs, and so far all of them had a first interview via video call.
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In theory that should work if the app can access a USB port on the TV and use the webcam. I haven’t heard of it being done though. The Apple solution works and it’s intended to be used like that.
But really, a lot of smart TVs run Android and Android has a surprising amount of supported devices (I suppose due to it basically being Linux). I bet you could hook a DVD burner up to an Android phone, and I’m sure a third party file manager could read files off a disc. Burning though? Should be possible but you’d need an app to talk to the DVD writer. And that, I’ve never heard of. You’d think a webcam would be easier but I think the software stack in an Android phone would only use its internal cameras without an app. The camera app for example is only going to look at the installed ones. It doesn’t know to look at the USB interface for more. But a third party camera app might.
I have a USB C hub and I do have an old Android phone (Galaxy S10, 2019). I do not have a webcam or DVD writer though.
That said, now that I think about it, if you hook a Samsung phone — not sure about others — up to a TV with USB C to HDMI, it kinda becomes a little desktop computer with the TV as monitor. I wonder, if you initiated a video chat, if you could do it with just a Samsung phone. Or really any phone that will display mirror to a TV.
I have a TV from 2014 that has Skype support with a USB webcam. Just saying.
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I've got good news for you! We've been terraforming the planet to be more like Arrakis for a couple decades already!
Ah, the chapterhouse: Dune strategy
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so kill the shareholders, then they won't care about their value.
Technically, you don't know that. /s
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Augmented reality overlaying historical photos and 3d models so you can literally see history as your walking.
Imagine being able to visit The White City that was built for the World's Fair in Chicago. Or seeing New York before sky scrapers dominated the landscape.
I think your idea is beautiful.
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Augmented reality overlaying historical photos and 3d models so you can literally see history as your walking.
Imagine being able to visit The White City that was built for the World's Fair in Chicago. Or seeing New York before sky scrapers dominated the landscape.
I think your idea is beautiful.
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Whether big or small. We all have that one thing from Scifi we wished were real. I'd love to see a cool underground city with like a SkyDome or a space hotel for instance.
wrote last edited by [email protected]AR. Being able to just pop into someone's AR world and walk around as if I was in tge same physical location.
Bikes/Ebikes/motorcycles replacing cars for single-person transport in cities.
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Roof-top gardens everywhere! Like the launch arcologies in SimCity 2000. They looked cool as fuck.
Plants on buildings bring some architectural and safety challenges, depending on how large they are. You need to somehow get dirt and water up, and the dirt can be pretty heavy. If something falls down into the ground it could hit someone and injured them. And also, with time, roots could lessen the structural integrity of a building.
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There is plenty of profit to be made in cheap housing, just like there is plenty of profit to be made in cheap food. You can go to the grocery store right now and buy a tomato for not very much money, and the store that sold it, and trucker who transported it, and the farmer that grew it will all make money - despite food's famously slim margins.
The situation with housing is more like this: the government has dictated that only 5 acres of land in the country can be used to grow tomatos. And each tomato plant can only grow a maximum of 10 tomatos. If you are a tomato farmer, what do you do? Well, since you can't grow as many tomatos as you want, you start looking for ways to increase your margin on each tomato you sell - selling the most appealing, perfect, organic tomatos you can.
So it is with housing. When the government finally approves the development of some denser housing in a desireable part of town, the developer wants to build the highest margin housing that they can, since they won't be able to build 50 more apartment buildings. So they build luxury apartments. However, if the government said "you can build as much and as densly as you like on any plot of land here", then developers would probably start with more luxury housing, but would likely run out of luxury renters quite quickly. But then they would simply seek out more profit with the slimmer margins available in affordable housing development.
you start looking for ways to increase your margin on each tomato you sell
That happens unconditionally under capitalism, there's no set profit margin where the owner says "I've made enough money, time to lower prices and raise wages".
Competition only exists within a very narrow context within capitalism. If you want the capitalists to do x y z, you don't deregulate, you simply restrict them from doing anything else and prepare to use every means the government has at their disposal to punish the ones who violate the public trust.
There's a reason China manages to operate a healthier capitalist system within a very clearly defined bird cage.
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I never stopped dreaming about flying cars, I just think it's not gonna happen because a crash would easily kill people just sitting in their homes.
I am grateful everyday that cars cannot fly.
