Ask HN: Do you have any ideas that seem impossible?
I'd like to hear ideas so impossible or half-baked that you'd be embarrassed to share them under normal circumstances
How about an internet connected Amazon Echo like device that with camera and vision analysis https://goo.gl/SoUzEi . It can basically learn to - subtract the vehicle https://goo.gl/x4uKVU - sense when temperatures are at dangerous levels - Take a picture and send it to certain pre determined phones alerting the owners that a kid or pet might be in the car.
Maybe we can even wire the car to switch on air conditioning till help arrives, alert local authorities to go check on the car etc.
Another way to have an API that would let sites like reddit, hacker news, you tube have a live feed of "potential kid in hot car" images that could crowd source a second level of human verification.
How about a pet owner data collective that predicts earthquakes? It would work by having some sort of Fitbit accessory for our pets which would collect and share their electrical signals via an app. Machine learning could then correlate these signals with actual earthquake activity and learn how to predict quakes (or if we would be able to predict them). Maybe just in time before the next big one hits the Bay Area :-) .
The article is pretty informative, I just like to report here the closing remark from the Principal Investigator: "It’s a huge claim, so we’d better have good proof for it".
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/17/world/europe/italy-earthq...
- a vacuum cleaner that separates out things it shouldn't have vacuumed for collection later.
- a tiny indoor drone that finds and takes the perfect photos at parties so you don't have to miss the action behind a camera. (I think I read about one that follows snow boarders or something)
- a web service that tells me about cool things that are happening nearby, but by scanning newspapers and notice boards, because around here most of this stuff misses the internet
- take a photo of a piece of furniture and find plans on-line for how to build it
Amazon could finance them and then rent capacity it out to other companies.
A pilot perhaps in Chicago by reviving the old freights tunnels - https://goo.gl/ErJQFx
The Swiss were/are considering them too - https://goo.gl/PNMRrE
So my impossible dream is actually turning what I already do into some kind of real business with an actual income stream. Ugh.
So many issues - technical and legal..
Well anyway, how about a walking machine that could walk on the ocean floor from one continent to another. Like an underwater ATAT.
I think I probably have an impossible idea pretty much every day. But a week or two back, I was actually moderately proud about suggesting a human-powered ekranoplan to some coworkers. Proud enough to do a web-search... and find it had been posted on half-bakery several years ago.