(upbeat music)
- I'm Scott.
- I'm Russell.
- And I'm Leo.
This is Spitball.
(upbeat music)
Welcome to Spitball, the pitchin' kitchen,
where three pixel pioneers empty our heads
of startup and tech product ideas
that we have stuck up in there
so you can all have them for free.
Anything that we say is yours to keep.
Russell, you brought a guest along this week, yeah?
- I did, future daddy, current daddy,
friend of the podcast, tech guru in some lights,
quality engineer, messes with chemicals and batteries,
Marshall, welcome.
- Hello everyone, thank you for having me.
- Chemical daddy.
- We're so glad to have you.
This is gonna be a lot of fun.
And this week, thanks to your idea,
we're gonna be playing a game
that we're calling Intermurals.
So we're gonna give ourselves roughly a minute or two
for one of our reject ideas
that doesn't deserve a whole episode.
So who wants to start us off?
It was your idea, Marshall, you wanna be the first?
- Yeah, sure.
So the-- - All right, what do you got?
- The one that I got right off the bat
is a retractable blanket for--
(laughing)
For the neat freaks who like to be cozy.
I'm just, I'm one of those neat freaks
and I don't like leaving blankets all over the living room
and I can just picture this kind of retractable blanket.
You pull down when you need it
and then it goes right back up when you're done,
clean and cozy.
- I love the eight.
- Or it goes right at the foot of the bed
and you don't have to make your bed ever again.
Why do you have to leave your sheets on the bed?
You can just roll them up like a,
do, do, do, do, do, do, do,
like a blind that you're pulling up.
- Rip the lawnmower, get the full diesel engine running.
(laughing)
- Get some real torque in there.
- I don't know, I like the cartoon spin
at the very end of it.
- This is great, is it on the ceiling?
- I guess I pictured it at the top of the couch
and you pull it down,
but you could go from underneath as well.
- Like over your head, like a Snuggie?
Does it have a hole in it?
- It's sweet.
- Well, I guess the armrests,
like it doesn't open up or it doesn't cover the armrests,
that's where your head goes or something.
So I'm picturing you lying down for this.
- You're laying down?
- Yeah.
- Oh, that's great.
- Or you have two sections.
- Or yeah, you just have a bunch of holes,
like hooded holes throughout the whole blanket.
- And you just pop through one of the holes.
- Suspish.
- Like a Swiss cheese.
- Yes.
- Honey, did you cut a bunch of holes in my blanket?
- This is great 'cause if you have a whole couch
and you have a whole family
that wants to share a big blanket,
don't have to worry about it anymore.
You don't have to have five different throw blankets
all over the place.
It's one amazing, enormous comforter that comes.
- Mega blanket.
- Right, just the electric motor just running.
- Yeah, like one of those awnings
that people put on their decks or something.
- And it can be an actual electric blanket with the heat.
I love it.
This is great.
- All right, Leo, what's your idea?
- All right, I'll go.
So there's a lot of mood tracking apps out there
for yourself, keeping a log of how you're feeling day to day.
It can help you with tracking hormones and stuff like that,
but it only stays private.
I think you should have a mood tracker app
for family and friends.
So you can keep logs of people that you interact with
and say, you know what?
So this came from community.
Abed tracks whether or not he has good or bad interactions,
and then he realizes what he's actually tracking
with his female friends,
then it started to yield very positive results.
So I kept doing it.
It's a great gag.
But there are times where I wish,
like, wow, there's a pattern.
Every fall, this friend of mine gets really stressed,
and every whatever, this other friend of mine,
it might be nice to keep track of that somehow.
- Absolutely, you could pop that open
and see what kind of moods your friends are in.
You don't have to try to guess at it.
So you're not trying to ask them for things
when they're super grumpy.
- There you go.
- Yeah, NSA is gonna love this.
They're gonna...
(laughing)
- They already have this for all of us.
The social media element of that app
is gonna be fascinating.
- Yeah.
It's like Be Real, but it says if you're good mood,
bad mood, and it's shared with all your family and friends.
- It's just emojis.
It's just, that's all you post, just one emoji a day.
- Oh, that's such a good idea.
- No context, just emoji.
- There's gotta be a network effect.
How do you get people roped in?
I don't know, but mood tracking for other people.
- I wonder if you could do that just based on, like,
blood pressure or heart rate or anything else.
Could it come, if you feed enough data into this,
could it come up with the correct emoji for your mood?
- Maybe it's on everyone's Apple Watch.
Yeah, totally.
It's just the mood ring, but digitized.
- Ooh.
(laughing)
It's on everyone's auras or a ring.
There you go.
All right, Russell, what do you got?
- This one would never make it on the pod.
This is why it's called Outrage.
It's basically a tool or a website,
kind of like the Onion,
but it just does terrible reviews
of people's favorite restaurants and local areas.
And just. (laughing)
- One star only.
- One star, it's just.
- One star or less.
- You just make fun of, like, people's favorite dishes
and the whole breed is just the opposite of a critique.
It's just awful.
And people rage click on that
and you just make people angry on food reviews
for local community restaurants.
Mom and Pop Shops, hundreds of years, just don't care.
Yep.
- Hold on, I'm registering trainwreck.app right now.
(laughing)
That's fun.
- Oh yeah.
- So if you're just like,
you wanna kind of feed into your own anger a little bit,
that's when you go to this space
and just kind of feel the anger,
feel the burn a little bit.
- Yeah.
- Facebook, formerly Twitter,
that all the newsfeed teams have learned
and then learned the lesson by reverting
that angry people keep you on the site longer, right?
That's why flame wars and stuff happen.
So there you go.
- That's.
- Instead of showing you
all your uncle's horrible political opinions,
you're seeing-- - Skip right to the good stuff.
- Your favorite restaurant just skewered.
- Dragged through the month.
How could anybody say that about this restaurant?
The view is awful and it's like the only lake view.
Just smells bad from the dead fish.
I don't know, I've thought about different restaurants
that would have no reason to, yeah, have a bad review.
- That's great.
- Yeah.
(laughing)
- Scott, let's hear your intramural half-baked idea.
- This is definitely a scrimmage one
that I could not pitch as the full.
Okay, so in order to help break bad habits,
let's start a company that gives experiences
that are so bad you never wanna do it again.
(laughing)
So this stems from,
significant other recently had food poisoning
to the point that we got DoorDash
and just a very bad experience
with one of the ghost kitchens on it.
And now she's like, "I will never ever eat this again.
"This weekend was one of the worst I've ever had.
"Never doing DoorDash now.
"And now we're just gonna save extra money
"from not doing DoorDash in our future.
"Can you apply this to other things?"
- Quit smoking.
- Quit smoking, lace cigarette.
- Someone beat you up.
Oh yeah, there you go.
- Let's call it or else.
(laughing)
As I sit here, like picking and chewing on my fingernails,
that's my oldest bad habit.
If I had something that was like hanging over me.
- Fingernail polish that's just tastes like anchovies
or something.
- Cayenne pepper.
- Yeah, cayenne pepper.
- Just ruin like TikTok.
Like just have like 100 TikToks in a row
that are just terrible.
Never again.
(laughing)
Just like, what am I on this for?
I wanna quit my social media addiction.
Yeah, exactly.
All right, who wants to go first for main ideas?
- Wait, this was originally a intramural idea
and now I'm using it for Russell's Love Corner.
(laughing)
- This sounds like a perfect segue into the main show.
- It's almost junior varsity or something.
- Yeah, it's a Russell's Love Corner,
but I had to pull this out of a hat,
but I thought about this a while ago.
It's a little ridiculous and I don't think this will ever,
this is why I'm bringing a Spitball actually,
this will be interesting.
But, so I've thought about creating a,
we'll call it beacons.
Okay, so basically you're having a good night,
you wanna meet somebody, you can press a button
and a beacon goes out to all the single people in an area
saying, "Hey, come meet me at this place tonight,
boys and girls."
(laughing)
Literally, it's just a--
- The DTF button.
(laughing)
- Yeah, how is this different from Grindr?
(laughing)
- 'Cause you have to be at that location.
Like you probably have to, this is how it makes money
'cause like I bet you would have restaurants
or whatever hire or like encourage people,
attractive people to come to launch their beacons
at different restaurants.
Yeah, there's some legs here, all right.
- Launch your beacon here and get free drinks
for the next hour or something.
- Yeah, the brand integration.
- That's it.
- Whoa.
- You know, and now basically it's outsourcing
single meetup nights to not be dependent
on the restaurants or those people, but the single people.
And so, "Meet a bunch of my boys,
they're gonna launch our beacon tonight."
- That sounds bad.
(laughing)
- You know what, that's part of the fun.
That's part of the fun.
(laughing)
- Dude, I think I beaconed twice last night.
I don't even remember.
(laughing)
- Yep, so then now you just have people like,
and then now it's like, "Oh, look at,
a bunch of beacons went off across the street.
Let's go to that bar instead of this one," right?
And now it's like a, it's a group--
- Oh.
- You know, it's probably better in groups
if you're, you know, launching your beacon by yourself.
It's not gonna be as cool.
So I don't know how else to say it now.
But yeah, it's like, if you do it in groups maybe
or something, that's kind of where it shifts into more fun.
- I just wanna add some hardware to this,
where it's like an IR bracelet or something
that you can only see through your phone
if you're looking for it with the app or something.
Like, "Oh, this person's, his beacon's going off over there,
but you can only see it through the phone app."
- It's gotta be called Beacon now,
'cause the puns are the viral marketing in itself.
- Absolutely.
- But yeah, so now you just partner with brands.
I think that's the monetization.
It makes money.
It's way different.
You can take pictures with your boys
and say, "We're gonna do this," right?
And everybody can add on to that beacon.
You know, "I'm here, I'm here, I'm here."
Now you have, like, you know, before you go out,
you can pick your place based on
who wants to talk to somebody, right?
So get rid of the whole, it's online dating without,
that's how I would pitch it.
It's more like-
- Without preparation.
- You can't talk to them.
It's just, "Oh, I have to meet them in person?
Ugh, I have to date in real life?
Yikes," right?
Like, no, yeah, that's how it is now.
It's how it should be.
- If you're having a bad date during it,
do you change the app to a distress beacon
and someone else can come and get you out of there?
- Yeah.
Just fire the flare, you know?
- I feel like it'd be really easy for this culturally
to be, like, a sign of desperation or not coolness.
So how do we make sure that it's a cool thing
that cool people do when they fire their beacon?
- You wanna have a small,
like, you have to have a small group together
before you light the beacon.
'Cause then it's not just like a single person-
- Three or more.
- Looking for love or whatever.
It's a little bit of a group scene,
but, you know, kind of saying,
"Hey, we're open to hang out with more people.
Come on over."
- That's a great idea.
You avoid the,
there's that one creepy, horny guy in the corner
who beacons here every night.
- Slashing in the corner.
(both laughing)
- Yeah.
Well, you could probably, like, on the app, right?
We can make, like, small beacons
and then big beacons or something like that.
- Well, that's your in-app purchase strategy, right?
- Oh, there it is.
- Oh, geez.
It's the best one yet.
This has got,
this could make more money than the other ones.
- It's got legs.
- I could say this, like, helping out small businesses
and, you know, setting up, like, donation drives
or something like that.
If you have a bunch of beacons going off
for a adoption event for kittens or something.
- That's wholesome.
- Oh, yeah.
- Yeah, it's driving in the other direction from...
- Yeah.
- But you can have, like, a dog park beacon.
Like, I feel like that's,
I feel like a bunch of single people should meet at dog park.
Everybody's got their dogs.
Maybe we throw some beacons out there.
- And that would be a great excuse.
- Yeah.
- Mutual interest.
- Dude, maybe we throw some Pokemon Go elements in there,
like, events, right?
You do, like, random events at points of interest.
Meet at this, no, I don't know if it's, like, a fountain.
- It's the beacon weekend.
- Yeah.
I'll throw this out there
and then I'll save it for the next Love Corner.
But I wanna create a, you know,
the Bachelor and the Bachelorette, the shows?
I think this is, like, if you're a single person,
you gotta have, that would be an interesting way
to create a, you know, use the beacon to,
I don't know how to make it not creepy,
but, like, create an experience where I'm, like, you know,
the most attractive dude on the planet, right?
I mean, we're all that lucky to be here on this podcast.
- We're looking at Marshall right now.
Relatable, yeah, yeah, we all know.
Bringing the average up.
- You can somehow create that experience,
like, live, in person.
I have 10 people all around, like, trying to talk to me.
I don't know, like, I feel like everybody
that watches that show wants that experience
once in their life for the Bachelorette, at least.
I think that's what people.
- A sponsored mega beacon.
- Something like that, or I don't know.
That's a stretch with this app, right?
One of the many that we will launch here on this podcast.
But I think that's a-- - Of course.
- I really like that idea.
- Would you use it, Scott?
Like, if you, or like, would we have used this
back in the day?
- If I had a group, if we had a group
of actually single guys, honestly, screw it.
I would just force you guys to come out and be like,
come on, we're all going out tonight.
This is, tonight's for me.
Get this app, turn on your beacons,
and we're hanging at this bar together.
- Yeah.
- Light the-- - That's how I would do it.
Light the beacons. - Light the beacon.
- There's something kind of like--
- The beacons are lit. - Exciting about it, right?
- Russell calls for aid.
- It feels like it has gravitas.
- Yeah, it really does. - We've done it.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, it's good.
- Gondor calls for aid.
- You know what's funny?
- Just a bunch of dudes on the app
lighting their beacons to each other.
(laughing)
This becomes dudes hanging out,
groups of guy friends, single guys,
meeting other groups of single guys and hanging out.
- Everyone wins. - That's valid, yeah.
- Yeah. - Totally.
- Maybe it should just be a bro app then.
- The tenders of the world let you choose
what you're interested in.
I imagine that you could filter it
so that you only see the beacons
that are lit of your interests, right?
- Oh, give 'em colors. - Yeah, that's true.
- Yeah.
- Hangouts are green and relationship interest, pink.
- Oh, stoplights, right?
Red, green, yellow, it's complicated group.
(laughing)
- Stoplight parties are blue.
- It's a bad idea to engage with these ladies' color.
- You could rate groups, could you rate?
(laughing)
- Like Uber.
- Oh, that beacon is bad news, don't go to that beacon.
- I really like the idea of it just,
just release the app called Beacon
and that's all it is, is you are emitting a beacon.
Like Marshall said, you choose the color
and then just let people figure it out
on their own at that point.
I'm gonna just light a red beacon here
and see what happens and someone can drive by
to be like, I wonder what the red beacon is.
There's 30 green beacons over here.
- Yeah, exactly.
It'll just become its own little meaning
in its own little clicks and areas.
- Yeah, gotta figure it out,
let the community figure it out.
- Dude, throw some Snapchat geolocation stuff,
like you can click the beacon,
you can see the videos that are happening right now.
That'd be kinda cool.
See how the fights are going.
- The fight club.
- Ooh, that beacon just went out.
- Oh.
- Let's go here.
- Call the police.
- Alrighty, Scotty, let's hear what you're pitching today.
- Okay, so I recently read an article
that I cannot stop thinking about
and it is a company that is training AI models.
Microsoft's putting like $50 billion into new servers
and training for different AIs,
which is just a bunch of GPUs, super energy intensive.
- He said AI, take a shot.
- And so, but what this company is doing
is they are renting people GPUs to put in their home
and because they take so much energy,
the people, you're using them as space heaters
for their home and then the company
is then subsidizing the money to pay for the power
that's being consumed there.
So pretty much you're just getting a free space heater
that you just have to keep safe.
- Or you're paying like half costs
'cause you're gonna use a space heater anyway,
you might as well split it with this guy.
- Exactly.
And if energy is being subsidized by that
and you have a source of heat in your home,
there are so many different attachments
or things that you could put on top of this space heater/GPU.
It's not hard to make a dehumidifier out of things
as long as you have a heat source to condense air
and constantly be pulling moisture out.
You could put a big glass case around it full of algae
that feeds off of the heat on it,
a basic light source and use that for air purifying.
Just put a hose connected to this guy,
run water through it and all of a sudden
you have heated floors or a heated swimming pool.
You have a heat source for free in your house.
How do we utilize it?
- Melt snow.
- Melt, there you go.
- Yeah, melt your driveway.
- Small basic, a mat that you can put over anything
that just runs in and out of this GPU.
- So is this like a thing?
- Run your literal hot water heater.
- So the actual space heater part of it
is a thing right now.
- So people are selling GPU pack boxes.
- This is a Kickstarter that I just saw.
Where they're like, we're gonna take these GPUs
and we're gonna put them out into the world,
rent them out into the world
and you're gonna get the free heat.
- Put this in your basement
and we'll pay for half the energy to run it.
You pay for half energy and you get heat.
- In addition, you could also get
the dehumidifier attachment 'cause it's in your basement.
- So we're coming up with a bunch of ideas
that would add on to this idea.
- How would you use heat?
- Free heat.
- I mean, water heaters are constantly running.
You just have it.
- The amount of power that goes through these things.
- Help that.
- Honestly.
- Dude, water heat, yes.
I would just tag on everything.
Like I would just get 50 of these in my home.
It's just free heat.
- Can you condense heat so that it's like,
you know, 500 degrees, I'm using it for my oven type thing.
If you have a GPU that's running for an hour
and it produces this many joules,
can that be collected and stored and accumulated somehow?
I don't know enough physics to probably not.
- I feel like that would have been done in some way
if it was easier to do.
Not specifically.
- So like for example, we have a hot water pot.
We have a thing that's kind of like a kettle in our house
but it takes forever to heat up,
but it always stays at like 208 degrees.
And it's an always on hot water thing.
And it uses almost no electricity
because it spreads out the load over a long, long time.
And doesn't take much to keep something hot in energy
once you get it there.
I'm just wondering, what are the upper limits
of this GPU temperature that we have to work with?
- Yeah.
Well, how hot do GPUs get?
It's like around 100 C, right?
I don't know.
- Yeah.
- I'm gonna cook an egg on that.
- Dude. - You could run
a 3D printer on that.
- I do this kind of today.
I mean, I let close the door of this room for my podcast
and I don't have to run the heat in this room.
Don't get good airflow.
Like it makes sense.
- 'Cause of all the computers on around you.
- I have three monitors, you know.
My computer.
- My wife complains that my office is significantly warmer
than every other room in the house,
even when I'm not in it.
(laughing)
I've got my NAS and all this stuff, you know.
- Yeah, but this is kind of like a mini split
where you have smaller heat sources spread around the house
if you have like a brick or something
that you plug in in one room
and you have it around a couple of rooms,
then you can have it more localized
and more controlled as well.
- I mean, there's so much.
You can build a water cooler, or not a water cooler,
like a, you put like a, you know, an oil reservoir.
Like there is a whole crap load of stuff
you could do with this, I think.
- That's the thing, you can use the heat
to create essentially a refrigerator
and have a cooling side on it at the same time.
You could literally power a refrigerator
via a heat pump with this thing.
- Could you go, like in a way,
this would wipe out solar panels from the planet.
(laughing)
- We still need the energy.
- The energy goes into this box, still.
- The difference is someone else is paying for the energy.
- Okay, I mean.
- It's kind of like how your car has,
like it collects the waste heat
and that's how it runs the heat, like from the engine.
- Let me add to this.
Let's say you add solar panels to your roof
to power those GPUs.
Now you're literally making money running GPUs, free heats,
like you get your energy,
if they subsidize it the right way
and they're not like paying your electricity bill, right?
You're just like, throw some solar panels on it,
I'm retired, see ya boys.
I got 30 GPUs.
- We don't even need the GPU at this point.
Let's get the solar panels.
(laughing)
- GPUs, the GPUs make you your money,
the solar panels save you all the energy
and so now they're paying you literally
to right subsidize your energy.
Well, I make my own energy, so.
- Couple grand a month.
- Scott, do you teach me about heat pumps?
So like you can turn this into cold somehow, right?
How does that work?
- I literally was on chat GPT right before pitching this,
being like, I can do this, right?
And so.
- Yeah, 'cause like air conditioning and refrigeration
and stuff uses the loop energy.
I guess you have electricity.
- Yeah, you still have to have some kind of energy input.
It's like you're moving the heat around, I think.
- It's about compressing a liquid.
There's a liquid that when you compress it cools
or it's the other way around.
So when you compress it or you evaporate the air,
it cools or heats it.
I did HVAC school.
I have a certification in HVAC, believe it or not.
- What?
- Yeah.
- Seriously?
- Not a full trade school.
- Who are you, man, you have many talents.
- I did, yeah, when I launched the company,
I had to do this whole HVAC training.
But yeah, there's a compressor, an evaporator and a coil.
And that coil when compressed is what creates the heat.
When you compress the liquid, I think it emits the heat
or the other way around.
So yeah, it's like you have to put the energy in
to move it from heat to cool or cold.
- But the thing that's going into the system is not.
- I don't know.
- Compressors are what costs the, is what the energy is.
- Right, right, right.
So a way to collect heat.
What are the ways that people collect heat
and turn it into energy?
You got turbines.
That's a little bit too big scale for what we're doing here.
Like boiling water, steam turbine is a little much.
- Is that it?
Is everything steam?
- Yeah, it kind of makes me think that maybe
if we could just collect heat coming out of the back
of the computers and turn it into more energy,
we probably would have been doing that already, right?
(laughing)
- Yeah.
- Marshall, is there some other kind of liquid
which a much lower point to turn into gas
that we could be running through here
and make little tiny turbines?
- Many of those are explosive, so probably not a good idea.
(laughing)
- I know that our city has bricks all around
that have computers in them
and they track the temperature of the sidewalk,
but they're self-powered because they have plates
on the top and bottom of the brick
and somehow they generate just a little bit of voltage
in electricity from the temperature differential
between the warmer earth and the cooler air.
You can generate energy with plates and some sort of,
I don't know enough about it to sound intelligent
while I say this, but there are systems out there
to generate just a little bit of electricity
with temperature differentials, I think,
but probably not enough for what we're looking to do here.
- There's gotta be a way to convert heat and energy, right?
Like you can charge a battery with heat, right?
(laughing)
So I feel like this is--
- We're all running up against the limits
of our physics knowledge.
- Yeah, there's definitely, I know there's an example.
I guess I think, yeah, I guess it is steam.
- All right, I don't wanna get us too stuck in the rut
of just turn it back into more energy.
What other cool stuff can you do
with a heat block in your basement?
- I honestly think it's a retirement plan
if you throw some solar panels on there.
Like that is dope, but.
- I mean, could you switch it around a little bit
and rent out some of the computing power?
'Cause like GPUs are expensive and hard to come by.
That's kind of part of what gave you the idea, I think, right?
What if--
- Yeah, that's kind of the deal you're signing up for the--
- Half or some fraction of the computing power itself
instead of the heat.
I mean, instead of the subsidized energy,
you kind of have to trade it out, I would assume.
Can't get both.
- Yeah.
- But then you get a GPU for your sweet new computer.
- You had ideas, right, Scott?
- And you just share it with IBM.
(laughing)
- I'm so sorry to go back to this,
but Stirling engines and thermoelectric generators
using the Seebeck effect can convert temperature differences
directly into electric voltage.
This is gonna be extremely inefficient
compared to what we're pouring into this GPU,
but you're getting something out and it's free.
- It's one of those thermoelectric generators,
but it's the entire bottom of the baseboards of your floor
all along your ceiling in the basement
where these GPUs live.
And when the heat hits the ceiling,
it's generating just enough of a temperature differential
across a huge amount of space.
And I don't know how these things work.
- You take it straight to the bank.
- Stop talking up my ass.
- Straight to the bank.
- My initial gut reaction on this
was I wanted to put different attachments on top of this,
like the dehumidifier one, the air purifying one
that was just filled with algae that's feeding off of,
it's living off of this heat on here.
The hose attachment where it runs a coil around it
and you can get hot water to different places,
such as to your heated floors, to your pool,
to keep your coffee warm on your desk.
Just a bunch of ridiculous hardware attachments
you could put on this guy and upsell that
as part of your GPU rental heater experience.
- Dude, I feel like, yeah, GPU rental,
I feel like you could apply this to like,
speaking of HVAC, like the back of your refrigerator,
those compressors get stupid hot.
You run a little coil out of there, you got free heat.
It's just, there's a lot of vampiric heat
throughout your house, your oven when it's done,
your stove or whatever, not maybe not your stove.
- I always wondered where that heat goes.
- Right, it just evaporates free energy into the air, right?
Why not convert it into something useful?
- As our previous guest, Steph and I have shared before,
we have an ongoing debate about if we have an oven
that is at temperature and we've completed using it,
do you have the same amount of energy entering your home
if you leave the door shut when you're done with it
versus if you open it?
I think technically yes,
but that energy is spread over more time, right?
So is it more efficient for your,
like let's save the furnace running for 20 minutes
by opening the door or is it just, no, it's a wash,
leave it closed or open, doesn't matter.
- Isn't that the same kind of argument
like people have about running their heaters,
whether you want to like blast it a whole bunch at once
to build up a lot of heat or run it intermittently
over a period of time on and off.
I forget which one of those wins out
or if that is just an ongoing argument,
but I think it's kind of the same thing, right?
- It is.
- There's this also thing that I learned
in HVAC certification.
(laughing)
- Man, that is.
- It's called.
- I think I might go get my HVAC certification.
(laughing)
- If you guys want to sponsor us,
HVAC technicians of America.
- The objects in your house retain heat.
And so in a way, if like bringing a room
up to surface temperature,
you actually have to think about,
oh, all the pieces of furniture and crap in your room,
you actually have to bring that up to temperature as well.
And so there's probably some something there.
- It's like all the stuff around you is acting
as quote unquote insulation.
- Yes.
- You're slowly heating and or releasing heat if.
- Yeah, so I don't know if,
they didn't teach me what that means.
Like, should you keep your house warmer or colder?
But I feel like if you keep it hotter, right?
You have all this stuff in your house
that now is holding that heat as well
to your point Leo ovens, right?
Why not you just run this coil,
let's say from or whatever,
like the GPU to run through surfaces throughout your house
to then become another heating element, right?
Kind of like those speakers
that you just clip onto a desk.
And then now the desk becomes a speaker.
You could kind of run coils
and heating elements throughout your house
that are like, they're like hot packs, right?
- Everything's a heater.
- It's like those centralized vacuums
that you plug into the different ports
only you've got just hot everywhere you need it.
- No, yeah, your favorite spot on the couch is,
my favorite spot on the couch is always heated
by my GPU and the base bed.
- Oh, my bed at night.
- My bed at night, my toilet seat.
- Yeah, before you get in it.
- My...
- Just for the bidet.
- Yes.
- There's just a bidet tank next to it.
- That's the life.
I have a GPU in my bidet tank.
(laughing)
(upbeat music)
- All right, Marshall, what idea do you bring this week?
- All right, so I really enjoy mini golf
and I wanna find a way to really spruce it up
and jazz it up.
And I'm also a big fan of just doing puzzles,
whether it's like jigsaw puzzles or word puzzles.
And I wanna find a way to combine the two.
So I guess what I'm imagining is setting up
a mini golf course that has puzzles built into it.
And so you have to kind of complete the puzzle
to move to the next hole or something like that.
I feel like you could go really complicated with this.
Like the original idea in my head was a lot more
Rube Goldberg, but that is also very complex.
So you could also do some cool stuff
with like virtual reality or augmented reality.
I feel like would be an amazing use case
for augmented reality to have like puzzles
that you solve by kind of knocking a golf ball.
And you try to knock it into this column
and that opens a gate so that you can then knock it
in this other direction.
And so it's more than just moving around obstacles.
There's a little bit more of a mechanical marvel to it.
And I think that would really draw people.
I think people would be excited about seeing something
like that in action, whether it is a big physical thing
in front of you or a kind of virtual space that you have,
I guess, curated for some more specific puzzles.
- Like an escape room. - Yes.
- Like an escape room. - Escape rooms meet putt-putt.
- Exactly.
Oh, that's great.
'Cause that, people gather for those.
People are excited to come together
and solve puzzles together.
You could have it be a group experience
where you have to have multiple people participating
in order to get to the next stage.
It's working in one room together, but it's putt-putt.
(laughing)
What'd you guys think?
- It's sweet.
- I love the VR possible element to that as well.
Just put them in.
'Cause my first thought is on this is,
okay, if you're doing puzzles on putt-putt,
like the only, everyone loves putt-putt,
except for waiting behind the person in front of you
doing putt-putt.
And if you're, all of a sudden,
it's some person figuring out a puzzle up front.
So I really love the idea of combining this escape room ask
where you have your own section.
It could even be the same room where things are changing
inside the room and you're just putting the same course
that's changing all the time,
or you're moving on to different ones going through.
- Yeah. - That could be awesome.
- That's a good point.
You could put time limits too.
You could put like escape rooms have a time limit, right?
You could throw like, all right, you have 10 minutes a hole.
You pass or fail and your game is beat all 18 holes
in your time limit or nine holes, right?
It's team effort.
Maybe it's like a shot.
Like it has to be a hole in one too.
You could do stuff like that.
'Cause that would be, now everybody's like,
come on, get the, you know, nail it.
Turn to the left.
- Yeah, then you get your picture taken
if you beat the record and get the hole in one.
But over the course of your puzzles that you've solved
so far, you're getting yourself rewards like bumpers
and easier paths to the hole in one and stuff.
- Yeah.
- Whoa.
- The faster you solve each of them,
the more bonuses you get moving on.
- That's so cool.
- That's some good incentive.
- And then maybe the final part of it
with that last hole in one is, you know,
there is some kind of mechanical piece
that takes the ball away.
And that's the Rube Goldberg part of it
where a Ferris wheel carries it away from you
so you don't get another shot.
That's it, man.
Once you've hit that last shot, it's gone.
- Got it, yeah.
You gotta monetize this, right?
You gotta steal the ball at the end of the course.
- Yeah, come back and try again next time.
- I've used my MetaQuest too for a lot of like zero G frisbee
and playing Beat Saber and stuff.
But honestly playing golf and golf simulators
works really, really well.
We have a friend who bought me a putt-putt game
and it's super fun to play golf in VR.
- Nice.
Yeah, I imagine you,
so you have to have some kind of like
haptic feedback with that, right?
Is there any kind of built in
for the games you've played, Leo?
- Oh yeah, yeah.
The controllers of each buzz and actually, you know what?
Some of the games require controllers
but some of them are just hand tracking
and you could even have like your own accessory
that you sell that is a little golf club
or something, you know,
or just nothing at all, your pressing buttons.
- Yeah, it's probably not too difficult
to set up a golf club that has haptic feedback,
you know, just have the sensors in the right place
and you don't even need the ball for this.
It can just be purely virtual.
- A little gyroscope inside.
- Yeah, every time you tap.
- Every time you swing and you tap it, it vibrates.
So like every MacBook since 2015,
when you push the trackpad,
it feels like you're pushing down the thing
for when it's just a solid piece of glass that doesn't move
and it's got a little vibrate motor
and it feels like you're depressing something
and moving it downward, but you're not.
It's just like buzzing in just the right way.
You could trick your brain easily with like,
the Nintendo Switch made a big deal
about this when it launched.
You could have vibrate stuff just right
so that it feels like my controller's full of marbles
or whatever.
You could tap your golf club in just the right way
where it feels like you've made contact with the ball.
- Yeah. - That's great.
- Depending on like how hard you swing it,
it can clunk harder for a bigger swing.
- You inserted the club into the secret keyhole
in your escape room thing
and it feels like you're turning it or something.
There's gotta be a way to do that, yeah.
- And yeah, like if you have like a team element,
you could have different hole,
like one hole isn't just, it's not a one hole
with one hole in it.
It's multiple holes.
- Everyone has to do their own section of the puzzle
all at the same time or something.
- Yep. - Yeah.
- Or you need like, part of it is gated in a way
that you need some people to hit certain markers
for you to move on in your section or something like that.
- Yeah, yep, yep, yep.
- So like each puzzle.
- I can't cross this pit of lava below me
until someone else gets their putt
so I could put up a bridge.
- Yeah.
- Like you don't have to have one ball either.
You can have like three balls per hole
and now you have to nail, right?
You have to do the hole in one in each one
in order to unlock the thing, to unlock the thing.
And yeah. - Yeah, totally.
- That'd be.
- Russell, as many balls as you want.
- I want eight.
I want eight of them.
(laughing)
- Yeah, but then you're kind of like tracking
more than one just for yourself to kind of
get to the goal, I guess.
- Instead of a par three, it's a three ball hole, right?
- Oh yeah, 'cause you can generate more at a whim,
but that's like, that's part of what your score is.
Like if you can do it with just the one or two,
do your score.
- Yeah, and if it's like 10 minutes
and it's like a 12 ball, a 12 par course
and you have to nail, right?
Oh, I gotta hit 12 swings.
I gotta nail all of these, right?
Or that's, yeah, I lose the puzzle
and then I don't get my tickets.
- If it's actually happening in VR and software,
then you can randomize it too,
because it feels like if you just gave it
like a static thing, then it doesn't have much replayability
but if you're able to mix up the puzzles somehow.
- That's true, yeah.
Mixing up a mini golf course is probably hard.
- Like Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes
has frameworks for each puzzle,
but they're randomized and kind of generated.
- Okay, so you have different mechanics
and puzzle elements that are being shifted around
every time you play, or you could even,
like I know a lot of games have, what's it called?
Seeds where if you know an exact puzzle
you do want to play or wanna play one together with people.
- You can bring it back up.
- I'll use that same code
and then you're playing the same level
or you could just get a completely new one.
- Let's you tap into the speed run community.
- There it is.
- If you have that kind of hardware though,
where you can get that sort of haptic feedback,
I also wanna see the free for all opposite version of this,
where everyone's in the room at the same time
and you'd be like, first one to get it in the hole wins, go.
(laughing)
- Yeah, the Fall Guys of--
- Yeah. - The Fall Guy version.
Where it's just chaos
and you are just going as fast as you can.
- That sounds like a blast.
- Like these Tetris 99, F-Zero 99 games
that Switch has been doing where you just have a mob.
That's great.
- Yeah, that sounds like a bonding experience.
- Put it in some warehouse somewhere, yeah.
(laughing)
- Corporate event. - That's fun.
- Bachelor party. - Right, team building.
(laughing)
- Team building, go kill everyone else.
- Like what if you hide, there's one hole
and everybody has to try to putt around to find it.
Just, yeah.
(laughing)
- Just putting through the forest.
- It's part of the putting through the forest.
(laughing)
What does that guy do?
There's a putt-putt course nearby,
they're looking for the hole.
- It's a worldwide ARG.
First to find the hole on earth wins.
(laughing)
- That's how you get the price started for it.
That's how you get it going, kickoff event.
- I love the idea of a giant corporate warehouse for VR
where you just get a bunch of Oculus's or something,
invite groups of people there and be like,
okay, this is this game that we're doing,
that we're doing paintball today,
we're doing forest putt-putt, we're doing whatever.
- It does exist, yeah.
There's been like, you know,
when the last Harry Potter movie came out,
come to our thing, put on your VR headsets
and we have a special partnership
where you can be in Hogwarts or whatever, yeah.
- Whoa.
- Yeah, you could have separate events like that
kind of tied into it.
But it's gotta be mini golf themed still.
- That's right.
- I'm not letting go of that.
- That's great.
- Harry Potter mini golf?
Maybe.
- It's gotta be mini golf.
- I might be thinking of the wrong franchise,
but there was definitely some like big
blockbuster AAA film that partnered
and did a VR experience where they basically did that.
They built like a, it's kind of a set around there,
but really you don't need a ton of decoration stuff
'cause it's all being VR'd on top of,
but you can like run into a real wall, you know.
- A VR latency, I think that's the name of the place.
- I'm sure there's been several.
- Not that we have to, we can cut this part out.
It's like, there's a place in Holland, right?
- That's a great idea, Marshall.
- I like it.
- I know, I wanna see that.
I wanna do that.
- Me too.
- I just don't wanna put in the work,
so Spitball people, it's yours.
- That's why we're here.
- Okay, Leo, what idea have you got for us today?
- It's a simple one.
So for those of you who don't know this,
I'm sorry to bear the bad news,
but your bathroom is disgusting
and particles settle all over everything,
including your toothbrush.
And that's always bothered me when I found out
how gross toothbrushes are.
There are ultrasonic jewelry cleaners out there
that just use regular water to vibrate and clean shit.
There should be one with some sort of notch or hole,
and that's where I store my toothbrush.
I stick it in there at night and it just vibrates and stuff.
I think there's some for like UV or whatever,
but it just cleans it every night.
And then it's sitting in there for a minute or two.
I don't think you have to do it for very long.
And you get a clean toothbrush every day, done, pitch over.
I don't know how to make it waterproof, but yeah.
- Yeah, I like the idea.
'Cause all you need is the ultrasonic,
all you need is the ultrasonic vibrations
to, I guess, to kill the germs.
I think that's true.
I think you can sterilize stuff ultrasonically.
- What?
- Wait, you're telling me that it's just water?
- There are jewelry cleaners out there
that you just stick water.
Sometimes you can put a little bit of bleach
or something in it or like shining agent or whatever,
but you just stick,
I don't know if you've seen videos out there,
but TikTok or whatever has them
where you just stick a dirty piece of like bracelet
or jewelry or necklace.
It just vibrates water and not much else
and dirt falls off of it.
I wanna store things that actually go in my body in there.
(laughing)
- So I have one of those jewelry cleaners.
I have something like that for a,
it's like the size of my glasses
so I can clean them off every once in a while.
But- - Does it work?
- To have one like built in with your toothbrush,
like a case. - Does it work
for your glasses?
- I have to use soap for that.
I'm not sterilizing, I'm trying to get the oils off,
but it does.
- Sure.
How long do you have to leave it in there
before they're clean?
- The one I have runs for like a preset three minutes.
So that- - See, that's nothing.
- Yeah.
- That's nothing.
I want it there for 23 hours
until I'm ready to brush my teeth again.
- No, I'm saying that's all you need.
You stick your toothbrush in there
and you run it for three minutes
while you use your mouthwash and wash your face
or get your pajamas on and then you're done.
- Or just do your alarm in the morning
'cause it's buzzing.
- For those of you who have electric toothbrush,
you just take the head off and stick it in there.
You don't even have to have the notch.
- I wonder if you could flush the system,
somehow have it hooked up to your main water line
where it'll just auto flush and auto refill each day
or however you want.
- Ooh, yeah.
- That was the case.
You could put anything in there, like you said.
I just have my cleaning box.
Maybe you don't wanna share your toothbrush with it
after this if I'm putting in jewelry or other things,
but.
- I think there are camping and desktop,
small apartment dishwashers that you can get
that sit on a countertop and they hook up
to your kitchen sink and you just turn on the faucet
and the pipe goes straight into it
and it's got room for a few plates and not much else.
But for people who are in a situation
where they can have a full one,
you want kinda like that,
but also with a pass through on the faucet
where it just sits there and you could,
yeah, your cleaning box, exactly.
- That'd be dope.
You could just create the toothbrush too.
Why not stop at the,
like this is the toothbrush that's always clean, right?
You just.
- Whoa.
- Yeah.
- It's compatible but proprietary
with our special heads that we have to sell.
- Just go all the way.
- I love that actually.
It's just a toothbrush, an electric toothbrush,
but it stores upside down so the bristles are facing down,
but it's inside of some ultrasonic recharging thing.
- Yes.
- And then you pull it back up and it's clean
and ready to go each time.
- Boom.
- If you're storing it inside something,
then it doesn't really even need the like everyday thing
'cause it's not getting particles on it.
- No, no, no, I want it extra clean.
- I mean, I would like that.
- Might as well.
- Get all the black pieces out, yeah.
- And I like the idea of having it
drained somewhere too afterwards.
'Cause like after it's clean,
you don't want it sitting around in that water
'cause then it's just gonna get funky again.
Now all that stuff that you blew off
is gonna settle back down.
So you can drain it, let it dry.
- A reservoir tank that'll auto flush it each time.
- Yeah, oh yeah.
- You just fill it up once a month or whatever,
once a week.
- Like a Keurig type thing.
- Yeah, exactly.
- It probably wouldn't need a lot of volume.
- Yeah, you don't need much.
- Every time you flush your toilet,
it actually takes the water from the top tank,
runs it through.
Why reinvent the wheel?
We gotta...
- We'll just store toothbrushes in the top of our toilets.
- I was gonna say that.
The toilet tank is clean water.
You just make that the ultrasonic cleaner.
- That's it.
And it has a GPU in it.
(laughing)
- Small risk of electric shock.
Do not sit on that.
You gotta squat, you gotta hover.
- No metal toilet seats.
(laughing)
- Thank you all for listening.
We hope you enjoyed yourself this evening.
And thank you very much, Marshall.
It was a delight to have you.
- It was wonderful to be here.
Thanks.
- Our website is Spitball.show.
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(upbeat music)
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