201–210 of 464 posts
No single thing, but in general the gradually declining fraction of people capable of understanding complex systems "from top to bottom" concerns me. I have seen far too many projects become locally-smart but globally-incoherent due to the gradual dissolution of systemic understanding over time.
My thoughts exactly. Knowledge transfer in manufacturing / industrial environments is something that I'm working on. - Language models / NLP applications for processing large amount of technical text data (SOP, documentation, technical data, machine text logs, voice to text, video data processing for speeding up corrective action, training, onboarding and highlighting areas of improvement / bottlenecks), digitising d…
I'm starting a new job doing exactly these things in order to reduce the carbon intensiveness of heavy industry, specifically cement production. I'm hyped because I think the technical challenges aren't too daunting, and the prize is huge.
My thoughts exactly. Knowledge transfer in manufacturing / industrial environments is something that I'm working on. - Language models / NLP applications for processing large amount of technical text data (SOP, documentation, technical data, machine text logs, voice to text, video data processing for speeding up corrective action, training, onboarding and highlighting areas of improvement / bottlenecks), digitising d…
There are hundred million dollar manufacturing companies out there tracking whole processes with pen and paper. Just sayin'.
Government Software.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Predictive/preventive maintenance is actually a big thrust behind my current company, Dials. HOAs, which we serve, are run by busy volunteers, yet expected to perform almost insane financial gymnastics, planning 30 years of major component replacement, e.g. common area roofs, piping, asphalt resurfacing. This involves (a) estimating each component's lifetime (total and remaining), (b) getting a cost estimate, and (c)…
Tracking stuff is hard. I wonder why QR codes won't work in this case, or something similar, or super basic otherwise / stickers or codes at first. Might be more annoying to generate and maintain them initially. CV could work really well to keep track of inspection steps as well, or to recommend what you should do next, and how to do it
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Changing motor oil always comes up but it is really worth paying someone a few bucks to do it for you.
Why? Especially if you have an SUV or higher car you can easily crawl under. Just unscrew the original plug, screw in a Fumoto valve, and an entire oil change is done in under 20 min, and then you just drop off the old oil at Autozone or whatever. While the oil is draining, you can change the air filters too. Buy the Kirkland brand oil at Costco, and you do not have to trust whoever the mechanic shop hires to bust yo…
- Equipment: wrenches, oil collection pan, oil container for transport to disposal, funnel?
- Knowledge: Quality of oils, filters, Oil weights (5W20? 10W30?)
- Willingness: To get dirty, to stain the driveway
- Time: 30min if all goes well, then time to take waste oil to disposal
- Trust: In self
- Funds: $20 for oil and filter, assuming disposal is free
- Time: 15min, plus a few minutes to drive to the shop
- Trust: In "professionals", misplaced or not
- Funds: $29.95
I have the equipment, knowledge, and willingness to take the minor risk of mistake and deal with the consequences. $10 is not a fair wage for those prerequisites!
Of course I use better oil and filters than the shop would. Does this matter? Am I kidding myself? And someday I'll take my plastic milk jugs full of waste oil to a disposal place.
Educational games. Hear me out. The way we teach us basically how we did it 500 years ago. This is stupid, boring and not scalable. We dont have enough teachers, attention span is short, education is costly. So we need something that scales, is fun and involves all types of media plus gamifies education. Think Skyrim or GTA meets MS Encarta
Simply changing a game's locale to the target language you are trying to acquire is such an amazing immersion experience with the language -- and this wasn't even intended as an educational tool! If playing Skyrim, you hear the target language constantly, utterances are subtitled so written and heard language can reinforce each other, and practically everything you look at is labeled in the target language. Best of a…
I'm trying to play games with another language, and while sometimes it's ok, other times you really need to know the language to understand how understand mechanics that are introduced into the game. City Skylines was a super tough game to play in a learning language, but it would have been a nice learning exercise if I had the above feature.
How to design thermally efficient buildings - especially everything that's going on with climate crisis. The thermal comfort solution to everything in the last 70 years has been to put an HVAC on it, whereas if the buildings were designed properly, the need to actively maintain internal temperature is minimized. After talking to architects, I'm dismayed that basic heat transfer is not a part of their curriculum.
HVACs are very rare outside of industrial and some office buildings across most of Europe. Buildings with innovative designs(like opening up during the night to cool itself and using that cool air to refresh during the day) exist. Thermal efficiency is taken very seriously and is a serious part of building codes.
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>Also it is just a nice feeling, every time you use something you've repaired. I feel it's my personality, but as soon as I fix anything I am overcome with anxiety every time I'm near it for fear the issue will return or that my repair was faulty and inevitably prone to cause further damage. I don't know why I get this way. In spite of all my worries I've yet to truly fuck up an appliance I've repaired (furnace, micr…
I'm totally guessing here, but apart from just being able to trust professional design and manufacturing more, could there be some kind of a "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" effect there? If it were socially normal and expected to try and repair things, and you did happen to blunder, that would be a normal blunder that everybody makes. But if you go against the grain and try to fix things yourself when it's bec…
If it broke and I replaced it with a broken appliance then the manufacturer/distributor is to blame. If it broke, and I broke it worse (made it unrepairable) then it's my fault. Sure, I was trying to be frugal and save money doing it myself, but having to admit fault to a professional could be embarrassing.
Easier to displace blame instead of facing truths I guess? Despite repairing this much stuff, I still consider myself a pretty bad mechanic, maybe I'm just too hard on myself.
Railroads. Specifically freight rail. There is stunningly little literature on any R&D in conventional freight rail transport, something I discovered when looking for any published research some months back. High-speed rail, yes. Regular old freight, no. Contrast this with autonomous and electrified trucking as alternatives, with which rail could offer considerable synergies. I'd suspect that break-bulk, trainset ass…