Skip to main content

#7682 Couple trains

I know this must have been dreamed up before. How can you ride a train and not think of ways of doing it better?. But why doesn't it exist yet? Specifically, why doesn't it exist on my commute? I could sleep in an extra 10 minutes!

Basically these are stopless trains. They are made up of several short cars with automatic doors on each end that couple together automatically. There is one of these coupled units at each stop. You come to the stop hop on the short car in front of you and when the train nears the stop, the car takes off on it's own in front of the train. The train catches up to it and couples on and the doors in the back open up. You then walk back through the train to the car of the stop you're getting off on (as seen by the digital notice boards) and sit down. The train drives full speed until your stop when the doors in front close and your segment detaches and slows down to the stop. You hop off enjoying the fastest land commute known to man. Not to mention the fuel savings for not stopping the entire train each time!
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

#7844 Electronic voting

Electronic voting. Yea, even internet voting. Really shouldn't be impossible. Tom Scott says this is a terrible idea, but I don't think it's so unsolvable. The ways to cheat are: - stuffing the ballot box with bogus votes - counting or recording the votes bogusly - voting more than once or voting for someone else Voter confidentiality must be preserved.  Here's my solution.  - every voter must authenticate with some non-government system that 1) ensures user ID uniqueness 2) contains a method for contacting the voter (can be a form obscuring contact details) 3) creates a random code which is not retained by the system. This is easily done by Google, Facebook, or any tiny NGO. They would need to register and be subject to audit. - when a user votes, the data is logged in two public registers. 1) a voters register showing the person's user ID (or a unique variant from the authenticator) 2) a vote register showing the random code and how they voted
Post a Comment
Read more

#7483 Broadcast Café

This café is wired. There are cameras and microphones everywhere. What goes on inside is constantly broadcast in real-time on the café's website. There is a bold disclaimer on the front door telling everyone who enters that their conversation and image will be viewable by anyone accessing the site. It is open from 6am to 2am the next morning to maximize global viewing time, without becoming too seedy. It is located in New York or LA or maybe both. Another option: At the same time, monitors in the cafe show analytics in real time of how many people are on the website and where they are located. Maybe it even shows how many people are watching each camera and listening to each microphone. Perhaps people on-line could post chats and be active participants as well. Would no one want to go to a café where their privacy is completely nil? Would no one want to sit at their computer and watch people living instead of doing it themselves? Or do people have an inner desire to be seen, especi
4 comments
Read more

# Disinfectant coffee mug wipes

What do you do when you've finished your coffee in your personal cup which remains at your desk with a residue of drying coffee in the bottom? If you have a kitchenette in the break room there might be soap and a sponge for washing. If not, do you rinse it in the bathroom sink? Do you pour water into it, slosh it around and then dump it in a plant? Do you take it home and wash it? Or do you, eh, just pour some more java in the next morning crossing your fingers that nothing anthraxy got in there overnight? I propose a handy packet of coffee mug wipes. They clean and disinfect as well as with dish soap and water and don't leave any residual nasty taste.
2 comments
Read more