Hall of Fame: Netflix for Legos, Bone-Conducting Hearing Aids, Anti-Squirrel Artillery Cannon, and Uber for Home Bakers

I'm Scott.

I'm Russell.

I'm Leo.

This is Spitball.

Welcome to Spitball.

Where three nostalgic nerds and so many guests over the last two years have emptied our heads

of startup and tech product ideas that we have stuck up in there so everyone out there

can have them for free.

that we have said has been yours to keep. And this week we're on a summer hiatus and we have a lot of

listeners to the show that are new who may not have heard some of our earlier stuff and we've

had some really great ideas over the last two years. So we wanted to go maybe back into the

archives and pick some of our favorites. So we've thrown together a little best of for you this week.

So kicking it off first, we had an all-time favorite of the three of ours, author, technologist,

and general enthusiast for tech culture, Chase Roberts on the show, where he

pitched us Netflix for Legos.

All right, Chase, what have you brought to us this week?

Um, so I pitched this one in an email actually, uh, a couple of weeks ago.

Um, for my newsletter, just people who have bought my book.

Um, and that was a Netflix for Legos.

So basically my kids, like they'll put together a Lego set and then

basically just goes in the bin with all the other Legos.

And we've got, I mean, I said a bin,

I've got like three of these huge bins filled with Legos.

And like, we have more than enough for free building.

And my kids are terrible at free building anyway,

and never do it.

But it's like, it just feels like such a waste

to spend $100 on a new Lego set, and they do it once,

and then it just goes in the bin forever.

And so I was like, what if I could just rent the Lego set,

they could put it together, I could send it back,

and they could send it on to another kid, right?

So that's idea number one.

- That's great.

- Oh, Lego library.

- Like a Lego library.

And

I think some

libraries might even have Legos.

Mine doesn't.

But I think, I don't know, I think it's a cool idea.

There's some issues with, like,

you gotta figure out shipping,

'cause you start shipping Lego sets back and forth.

If you get

people on subscription

and they're doing

two or three a month,

shipping adds up.

Yeah, and then counting pieces.

I feel like that's a solvable problem.

We could build some robots to count pieces.

There's some YouTube videos of people.

- When it gets back and if it's off by X amount,

then pull it open and count the

pieces or

something.

- Yeah.

- Right, visual learning, right?

That's the visual eye camera thing.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- But those are solvable issues.

- Yes.

- Those are fun problems.

- Those are fun problems.

- And

if you're making the service,

you don't have to use like the official Harry Potter set

with all of its whack pieces.

You could make your own sets that are a little more basic

and easy to keep track of with, you know,

all the

basic parts.

You have your own plane set that your Netflix for Legos

has designed with, you

know exactly

it's the same

like 50 pieces across the entire thing,

so you get the economies of scale there.

- Yeah. - Whoa.

- And there are some people who've done similar things.

I think there's somebody in like the UK

that's doing rent Lego stuff.

I don't know, I think it's a fun idea.

Like I'd sign up and do it.

- Dude, I could Spitball that for like,

what Leo, you just said.

- I know,

like

Chase, you

could totally,

I think you said this, what if you took or scanned

all the Legos in your

library

and just open source Lego creations, right?

And so now people know

your inventory

and now your subscription, Netflix style,

is not getting new boxes but taking your current Lego set

and applying it to new designs,

creator community, or--

It just auto generates the instructions based upon what you have in front of you.

So there's actually an app that does this.

I think it's called Brickit.

And

you spread out all your Legos on the carpet and then you like hold it up and

it, it's supposed to scan your Legos and inventory and then tell you what you can

build.

In theory, it's really awesome.

I haven't used it in a while, but I tried using it like two years ago and I scanned

probably like 200 pieces and then it kicked back and it was like,

you can use 20 of your pieces to build this bird. And I was

like,

well, that's not exciting.

So the execution wasn't quite there when I tested it.

It's probably better now, but yeah,

like the community, there's a lot of people in the Lego space, um,

working on cool ideas

like this.

Peer to peer, like, Hey, you and the guy across town who has,

it's more age

kids has,

if you work together, you could build this mega robot,

but you only have half the pieces

and so do they have the other half.

It's a dating

app, but for Legos.

(laughing)

Yikes.

No, it could be good what you were saying though,

like if you could inventory all of your Legos

and do it correctly, you know,

and then like upload it somewhere

and then we could send you designs,

that'd be cool for sure.

Or if you could just somehow say like,

I know I've bought this Lego set in the past,

I've bought this Lego set in the past,

like I know I have these pieces.

And just do it that way.

Like maybe that's the way to do it.

And then it's like, oh yeah, build the mega robot

from these 20 sets that you said you already, that you have.

- And Lego themselves have the whole ideas forge thing

where people submit designs that they've created

that they want Lego to make a set for.

So clearly there's like a well of people

who are creative with designing cool new things

that are like, they have,

here's what you can make with these parts, right?

That inspiration is out there.

I'm not the kind of person who can look at a pile

and say, this is gonna be great as a robot,

but there's clearly a lot of people out there who are.

I'd love to like get connected with them, yeah.

- That's cool.

- We were so fortunate back in episode 22

to have Rebecca, our friend of all three of ours,

pitch the idea of a bone conducting hearing aid.

All right, Rebecca, welcome and let's hear it.

What's your Spitball idea of the day?

- Okay, so I've always been really interested

in like sensory substitution or sensory expansion.

I came to the States when I was two and I'm partially deaf,

so I have a hearing aid in my right ear

and it's not from the auditory nerve,

which means I don't have brain damage,

so I can still pick up sounds through vibration,

but it just needs to be amplified.

It's basically a mechanical issue.

So my eardrum is static.

Usually an eardrum is really dynamic

and with sound waves, it flexes

and then translates those waves into sound in your brain.

Mine's damaged, so it doesn't actually flex.

There's a lot of scar tissue on it.

And throughout the years, like hearing aids,

functionally, if I took it out right now,

it almost looks like a little tiny satellite

that can go right into the ear.

So I take it out when I work out, I do hot yoga.

So it's like, I feel like they're tasting and everything

And all of the little electrical components are pretty delicate.

And I was on a plane one time and I saw this guy.

He had these totally encased silicone earphones that actually sat above his ears like a cochlear

implant would.

They're called Shox.

I think they're like 200 bucks.

And they're waterproof and it seems like such a better feature for a hearing aid.

So when I went to my audiologist, I was like, "Do you have anything that's like a cochlear

implant, but it's like just single and I don't actually have to have a hole drilled in my

head that I could use because they, I, I, he let me try them on and they were awesome.

The sound came through really crisp and clear and I have to like stick something in my ear

and have it sit like on top. I don't have, I wouldn't have to take it out when I exercise.

It's like the shock absorbent properties of whatever the shocks were made out of. Plus

an actual hearing aid that's like a cochlear implant that sits above the ear instead of

piping something directly into the ear canal. And it's, yeah, more user-friendly for exercising.

I think you could probably even swim in it. So

yeah.

So once again, I have a pair of the Aftershocks, the running version, so they're not

totally

waterproof,

but they're sweatproof and stuff. And they're great. I use them because they sit

on top of my ear, like you said, and they're bone conducting, and you don't have your ear

occluded so you can still hear traffic.

And when I'm commuting via bike or I ride a one wheel, I can still hear traffic and

car horns and things around me without occluding, you know, and blocking out the world.

They're also great for wearing around the office.

You have your podcast or music in or whatever, and if somebody says, "Hey, come here for

a second," you can still hear what's going on around you.

They're great.

They don't sound super great, but they'd be great for an amplification of in-room audio

for sure.

And you're saying that this doesn't exist as a hearing aid right now?

That is crazy.

Your options for the bone actually is for a cochlear implant.

That's it?

That's ancient technology now, right?

I feel like they've been doing that for a long time.

I guess it's like

2024.

They haven't fixed that?

My thing is like, we can literally send shit to Mars,

and we can't come up with better things

that like go on our bodies, that it makes me feel crazy.

- And the Aftershocks

that I have,

have a microphone in them for phone calls, for Bluetooth.

But they just don't pipe the microphone that's in them

into the speaker that's on them.

- Wait, what?

Like there's a separate microphone

to it?

- You're 99

.9% of the way there.

- Totally, I feel like you just do

a steady change.

- They're headphones.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, they're headphones that have a microphone,

So you can take a phone call, right?

Like any, most Bluetooth headphones have,

but there's no way to like turn on,

make the microphone pick up what's in the room

and make that sound louder in the headphone.

It only can pipe the sound to the phone call,

to the phone, you know?

- No, no, I'm confused as to why this doesn't exist.

This seems like very doable and clearly useful.

- Without Googling it, AfterShokz,

I think,

makes a version that's two independent ones too.

So we're like 99.99% of

the way there.

- You just need to call

their

customer service line.

- Should

we not air this episode?

- Could you please turn on the microphone?

- Yeah.

- So the other piece of it is too,

like for people who are profoundly deaf,

like I still have hearing in my left ear

and I'm not profoundly deaf, just partially.

I feel like there's options for vibrations

to be able to be translated in different parts of your body.

So maybe you can't, your auditory nerve is broken,

but I've seen things like wristwatches

or like whole chess pieces that people put on

like smaller children to translate sound waves

or vibrations and correlate it to certain sounds

like certain pitches and the sound of a dog

that can help round out

the way that you

hear

'cause your brain is just perceiving these sound waves.

And so I feel like there's some kind of in-between there

between like an over the ear hearing aid

and that vibrational piece that people are like strapping

all over their body.

But I don't know how any of the

science pieces

of it work, but.

Yeah, you just need an equalizer, so you make your bass more loud

if you can't pick that up naturally as well or vice versa.

I think that most traditional

hearing aids themselves do filter out.

Like I know that my pair of I think it's Pixel Buds or Sony earbuds

or AirPods all have active noise cancelling

where you can say only let the voices through

but the rest of the sound not.

And AI is getting really, really good at real time,

like only let certain frequencies through.

So if you had a personalized profile

of what frequencies you can and cannot pick up naturally,

then you just boost what you're not able to pick up.

And you like, it's your own real

world EQ

and you normalize it yourself.

That's so

good.

- Can I tune out certain voices of certain people

and just be like,

(laughing)

this person talk ever.

I'm sorry, I can't. I can't hear you. You're on

mute. Sorry,

I put you on mute.

You, a person.

Real life mute. Isn't there a black mirror about that? Somebody gets like

shunned from

society so they're blacked out and you can't see or hear them and they're just like

a blur

because they were committed to crime or something? That's gonna be this show. It's like that. When

we

we get famous, you know, people are gonna be muting us.

(laughs)

Full

kids.

- IRL blocked.

(laughs)

- I wanna, I guess like imagine,

thinking of concerts, right?

You can't, you wanna hear the concert,

but you wanna talk to your friend

and you don't wanna scream, like, or you're at a bar

and now you're just, everybody's talking

and now you can have a normal voice conversation

and not yell at

each other because you have

this like,

bone, you still have the bar experience with,

but you can isolate voices or.

Yeah,

like it's maybe more magnify rather than like isolate because you still want to hear the outside sound

But you want to magnify in a specific voice

So aftershock should just or whatever we create a version like this

That's just like a setting that allows you to have normal conversation with people in loud places

simple, right

Rebecca this is one of those ideas that's making me angry that it's like doesn't exist because it's we're so close as a society

Aftershocks only makes the kind that you're talking about

where

they wrap all the way around

and it's one big wrap

around earbud.

There is no one that I've seen that's two from them,

but other brands have some like bone conducting ones.

So basically you just want to like take one of the two

pair of earbuds that bone conducts and stick it on the side

that you are more deaf in and crank up the volume

from the

mic that's on it.

Yeah, totally.

- And I feel like anything in age tech,

most deaf patients are older.

I feel like there's a silver tsunami coming

and we have to figure some of this stuff out

and then people like me will benefit greatly.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Hearing aids were recently opened up

for over-the-counter administration,

which hopefully will spur some innovation in this market

because they've been restricted by,

you need to go to an audiologist,

you need to have a prescription and stuff for

decades.

- What's crazy is it's not covered by insurance either.

- What? - That's nuts.

- Yeah, they're only four grand.

- Man, this country sucks.

- And they're not covered by insurance.

- Four grand, is that what you just said?

- And it's not covered by insurance.

- Man, how long do they last?

- I mean, you can like 15 years, 10 years,

but like the tech gets

better all

the time.

- Wow, I guess like, is that its own insurance?

It's like vision, maybe that's why.

Like, I guess people are walking around blind all the time.

I just don't understand why that's not covered by insurance.

It's okay if they're blind, you know,

they gotta pay for vision insurance,

not healthy, it's not for their health.

- Or dental, like,

yeah,

you're covered

except for the teeth, like what?

- That's not critical to your health.

- How is that not health?

This country makes no sense.

Yeah, it sucks that they're $200

for a really good pair of Bluetooth earbuds,

which do a lot more than a hearing aid,

but then a hearing aid unit itself is thousands and

thousands.

- Totally a racket.

- Hopefully that's being fixed soon.

- Like my urgency here is I'm not getting more hearing.

So the deafer I get, so somebody out there listening,

make me an on the bone hearing aid.

- Mark, it's there.

- You said that you do have a little bit of sensitivity

in the one

ear, right?

- On the right ear, I'm partially deaf, yeah, yep.

- Do you have, partially, okay.

Have you ever tried putting in one Bluetooth earbud

and just cranking up the pass through?

- No.

- Really, really loud?

- No.

- That'd be interesting to do

as a little experiment.

- Probably just

every noise though, right?

You can get-- well, I mean, like, AirPods and Sonys,

you can say only let voices through and stuff.

So that would be an interesting thing.

Everybody would be different listening to this.

Yeah.

Yeah, because they tune them.

Like, when you

go to an audiologist,

based off of the frequencies that you can hear--

and lower

sounds are much

harder for me to hear.

So they-- like, I'll take it out if I go to a concert,

or mine's tuned to pick up lower frequencies.

So male voices, if I'm not looking at you

and kind of watching your mouth, I

I can miss like a third of a

conversation.

- Three white married 30 somethings

on a podcast, for example.

(laughing)

- You're piped like directly in,

so.

- Wish you'd

have crank it up

guys,

for us.

(laughing)

Yeah, I feel like there's other applications too

that it's not like, it's a benefit

to those of hard of hearing, but like, I don't know.

I wonder if the isolation thing is really important

in other scenarios or, I don't know.

It just seems like there's a lot of other use cases and I'm curious what our listeners are going to come up with, you know

Yeah, like the bar scenario. I mean even dinner in our restaurant during like a

Work event or any type of social gathering. There's like tons of ambient noise that's happening all the time

And there's like a like a buzz that's always there in the background. You have to really pick out

tonalities so feel like if that tech improved or became more accessible it benefit multiple venues

yeah actively canceling out just the TV at the bar or

Just the

yeah,

you don't want man. I wish I could open an app and it would show me

Here's the four different things that we're detecting around you that are the category of sound and which ones do you want to just turn?

Off TV

at the bar. You're on a plane crying, baby

That would be incredible.

Yeah.

Or like a concert again.

You want to listen to the band and not like the people--

or you want to enhance the audio, get clearer

audio.

And--

But turn off the screaming drunk guy that's one row ahead of you.

Yes.

Who's singing

along with it.

Yeah.

Well, if it's on

the bone, you'll be able to turn off,

I think, as many voices, right?

You'd be only--

well, I don't know, I guess.

Oh, maybe

you--

- Whatever your input is, process the input

and

determine

your output.

- But the TV's at a bar.

That was, yeah, Leo.

All right, it's less weird, put something in your ear,

but now I can listen to this, yeah, this TV, that's great.

- I've used active noise canceling headphones

in one form or another for many years,

and it's still novel every time to turn on

the noise canceling and have the (makes noise)

sound where it just

sort of turns off

the--

I didn't even realize there was an air conditioner running in this room, but

yeah, that's way better.

Feels good.

Every pair of active noise cancelling headphones I've ever owned has a microphone on them

because they have to, to, like, cancel out the wave of the sound that it's around.

Just frickin' pipe that in but louder and boom, that is, that is ear enhancement. Dang.

Rebecca, you're saying there's devices that someone who can put, like, around their waist or something

that is able to translate sounds into vibrations?

Or like your wrist, you said?

- So it gives like electromagnetic pulses,

which that's all your brain is using to convert into sound,

'cause your brain doesn't see

and your brain doesn't actually hear.

Just takes in these electromagnetic waves.

So basically, these devices, there's,

I think the smaller, or like for children,

it's an actual chest band,

and then for adults, there's like a wristwatch.

And it takes a little bit for your brain to be able to kind of learn how to hear through the pulses.

But basically it'll, I don't know how they tune it, but then they have you wear this for a couple of days and you're able to pick up like, um, certain words because of the way that your brain is starting to train on the vibration.

That's amazing.

And I mean, there's major implications for sensory, like substitution or sensory expansion.

like, think Google lens even, or,

or what were the glasses that came up?

Yeah,

totally.

Oh, like, oh, so I was at South by Southwest and there's this VR set.

And the only thing it plays is like these K-pop dancers who are

coming like really close to you.

And they're,

you know, there's like

these dudes lined up with these goggles

and they're like right in your face.

And I'm like, this is what we've used the

technology for.

so we can

create an entire experience

and put people elsewhere and this

is what we chose to do.

(laughing)

I know, I know, don't get me wrong, I like K-pop.

(laughing)

We're so close in all these areas,

we're so close to really revolutionizing some things

for sensory expansion in a way that's helpful.

- Sensory expansion, can I,

so I'm really interested in how dogs

and smell an entire different world than humans.

Not that I want to, but it's just like,

they don't see as well.

Like you can't do that.

You can't, can you train,

like are there people trying to train people's noses

to like, I don't know, pick up crazy stuff

that maybe wouldn't be able to.

It's just like the weirdest thing

'cause like there's no technology out there for smell.

And I always am like trying to figure out how like--

- I've wondered that too actually.

- There's an entire

world that you can't see,

feel,

taste,

process, even with technology.

Like we have cameras, we have microphones,

we have, I'm sure, feeling technology,

but you can't do smell yet, I think.

- But I imagine it's just like if you could translate

the what stimulates the olfactory nerve in your

brain,

right,

like they could hack it.

They could figure out to just saturate you

with the most sumptuous smells

based off of triggering some series of

dots

in your olfactory system.

send you some electrical pulses and boom, yeah.

- And

all of a sudden it activates a sudden,

I mean, there's people like stroke victims

who can speak other languages

or all of a sudden have like cheese then associate,

like the small cheese associates with like forest fires

and things like that because the wires get crossed.

I feel like even technologies like infrared

or like night vision,

I feel like we're one step off of being able to see,

like if someone was just sitting down in a seat,

we can see like a heat print of where they were sitting

based off like having goggles or something

that allows us to see like a thumbprint on a mic

and see who last touched it

because there's still a heat transfer on it.

Like I think sensory expansion is,

like we're so close with VR and like night vision goggles

or stimulating the olfactory nerve.

Like we're really close to this whole other world

where like what if we could see the way that

There's like animals that have such a larger spectrum of color

that they're able to access.

And that's got to be a center in the brain too, right?

Oh, yeah.

And you're right.

Smell is one of the only senses we haven't really

developed much augmented technology for.

Could argue taste too, I guess.

But it's kind of hand in hand with smell.

Yeah.

That's interesting.

I think just-- yeah, it's kind of like bio training.

It's like biohacking, but with training.

Like, that is crazy.

Can you imagine like 20 years from now

and your kids are like, yeah, I smelled that.

What?

- What did you smell?

Did you hear about that?

There's a woman in the UK

a couple of years ago

who has some sort of,

what's the word I'm looking for?

Genetic mutation that lets her smell Parkinson's

and scientists

are totally baffled by that.

What is that all about?

Like once in a while, I

guess a human

comes along

that's inches closer toward some new unlocked realm

of smell that we've never had before.

It's such a crazy mutation.

That's

awesome.

It just

validated my idea.

We like Rebecca, we got this, like it's going to

happen now.

We just got to,

we just got to start having people smell

diseases and shocking them.

And that's it, right?

Just a little bio shock.

Like Scott, you got a taser.

Anybody got a taser?

Why me?

You're going to be the, no, not you.

I just need to tase you until you can smell new smells.

Oh my God.

I'm not tasing you,

I need the taser.

I need a research

grant so I can just tase students and see if they smell new

smells.

You need the real scientist.

Nah, we got this.

Close friend to all three of ours.

We had our good friend Carl on who that episode definitely went off the rails a

little bit.

We had Carl pitch to us the anti-squirrel artillery cannon.

All right, Carl, what do you have for us this week?

All

right.

So not this past summer, but the previous summer, my wife and I

decided to plant an orchard.

So we bought two apple trees and two peach trees.

The apple trees not doing so hot, but they're still alive.

They're still green.

One died, but we replaced it and it's kind of limping along, but

the peach trees have been just booming.

So the first year we put the peach trees in, we got a whole bunch of

peaches growing on them, looked great.

And then within like middle of August, within like one day, all the peaches

were gone on both trees the first year.

And it was like, we couldn't figure out where'd all these peaches go.

So then this year we had like a bumper crop.

Like I'm talking between the two, three, two trees.

We had like 300 peaches gone.

What?

Two weeks, August, like one day they were just gone off the trees.

So there's some type of animal that's eaten the peaches,

and we're pretty sure it's like a squirrel or a bird or who knows what.

So that's been very frustrating.

So we're like, let's let's do some bird nests

and I or some like bird nets, and I bought like an eagle and I bought an owl

and I'm like getting irritated

and I'm trying to figure out what to do with my with my garden.

Additionally, the apple trees aren't getting the right type of water

or enough watering or the right water timing.

So we've had this water issue.

So I was thinking that I like artillery canisters.

Like those things are awesome.

Like they're sweet.

They shoot things like this is awesome.

So I thought, what could I combine to take care of my watering issue and

my animal issue at the same time?

And so I thought, what if I made a multi-axis laminar flow

water cannon that could shoot water in a pattern

wherever I needed it?

And I'd be able to set up auxiliary cameras

around my garden that when it sensed movement of a squirrel,

it would call in an artillery strike from my automated water

cannon

to blast the squirrel

And then it would also like during the day when it's just sitting there. It's a oh, yeah

We need to we need to distribute like four and a half gallons to this tree area and four and a half gallons to this

Tree, and so it would sit there and just you know rapid-fire

You know

right

Carpet bomb this tree and then that tree and then it would carpet bomb my corn rows

And then it would carpet bomb my raspberry bush and my blueberry bush and in those specific areas

So I'm not wasting all that water on grass that no one cares about I'm putting it on the plant where I need it

But then also

Pestering the animals that come not killing them not harming them. Just anytime an animal shows up

I'm just calling in an artillery strike to just barrage that sucker with water

And I'm thinking that, you know, a laminar flow cannon

that shoots water at high pressure over a long distance

might even be able to be like set up

in the middle of my backyard and water my entire lawn.

So it sits there and just runs, you know, 24/7

or eight hours a day or whatever it is.

But it's also on guard for my garden.

- This rules.

- Dogs are gonna love this.

- PETA's gonna love this.

I'm not hurting the animals.

That's right.

You're watering them.

So growing up, we had hostas all along our house,

like a huge row of them, unfathomable amount of hostas.

And without fail, deer would come in in the season and eat them.

And my dad tried sound devices.

My dad tried all kinds of stuff until finally we had a motion

detecting sprinkler. Whoa.

And it was an instant fix.

Squirrels would get in or a deer, excuse me, would get near it.

It would just tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick,

and then be done and they would go anywhere near it.

Not even afraid.

They were just afraid of the sound and the movement,

not even like getting blasted.

Maybe they got it a little bit or something, but there were perfect

circles of protection and right outside the range

of where this thing would trigger, they would be all eaten. Right.

Well, it's

exactly what you're talking about, but not automated.

I love

this is I can tell you from experience that it would work beautifully.

I just want to feed 10,000 pictures of a of squirrels and rabbits into a AI bot and have it a camera system with a.

Triple axis be able to recognize them and pinpoint the exact XYZ of this guy

with a camera with a camera so you can watch the fun of course record it and make a highlight reel.

Nice.

Maybe you have like one camera mounted on the artillery piece.

That's like zone control.

And like, cause you're going to have the hose run to this thing.

You're going to have probably a high pressure pump.

You're probably going to have a little bit of power.

So it's, it's going to be a pretty fixed unit in my brain.

You know, you might need a camera in a different position to like look

from a different angle that then also coordinates and triangulate.

So then you'd need some calibrating shots to call in like, okay, we're

We're gonna coordinate where this is

and then it can fire for effect.

Bring a water artillery round in

and land it right where they need it.

- Be the kids' summer fun.

- Yeah.

- Put it on fun sprinkler

mode

and it's

like raining

in little spots and stuff.

You make games out of it.

- Teach it to target small children.

This'll be perfect.

- That would be so fun.

- This would

actually be a lot of fun growing up.

- I think that's the bigger market, Carl.

Screw all that

stuff.

You turn this into like, this is an adult.

- Automated super soaker

turret.

- Right.

- Oh, it could have all the modes.

It could have a child play mode

where it goes out and just goes crazy.

It could have regular sprinkler mode

where it runs around and just does the,

you know, and sprays in a big giant arc on the grass.

Or it could have, you know, prestrigion strike mode.

Don't you dare eat my rose bushes.

(laughing)

- Or a joystick mode that you're manually controlling

Oh, absolutely. You could have like a video game controller and some POV goggles

with

a targeting patch on it

And you could sit there and intercept it and shoot the squirrels if you wanted to with water,

of course

I'm

only talking about

water

You know, it

would be so much fun

and then if if a precision strike is called in you could have it automatically save the clips and then

Automatically snip the video so that you have the replay reel so that you can enjoy it and upload it to YouTube.

Yes

Yes, yes, dude. Super soaker is gonna if you like turn this into super soaker toy

boom like

Do the do the laminar flow thing right for you know the other market

But you sell this kind of this game concept as super soaker

Boom, you got a market.

I'm not picturing like a target or something on it

Kids got to sneak up on this turret and try to hit the target with their own water in order to shut it down or

Something long enough for them to I don't know capture the flag or whatnot

You just got to get

past this thing a capture the flag mode on it would be pretty sweet

It's like spy mode right like I'm a secret agent trying to capture the flag

There's nothing crazy about this too. Like all the technology for this is there. It's just putting it together

That's why I picked that as my idea.

Like what's the MIT the MVP, right?

So like I can't is it hard to do these like giant ass pumps?

Do you feel like you have a big pump to like shoot water that hard and fast?

That's a great question.

How hard is it to lob a artillery amount of water across the yard?

It's pretty heavy.

Well, I looked into that, and the trick is really to get the laminar flow

because then you can send a packet, but you're limited by the surface

tension of the water because as the velocity goes up

and you get this packet of water going, if it's bigger than a regular raindrop,

which rain droplets are the size rain droplets are

because of some actual physics constraints.

And so what will happen is,

if you send something say the size of your thumb,

it will dissipate into at a certain velocity

and with not enough surface tension,

it will separate and disintegrate into,

you know, the corresponding drops

that would be a droplet size.

And so then your targeting accuracy starts to go down

and your velocity starts to go down

because you have more drag and then you have a larger amount of droplets that

are going to dissipate from your normal grouping.

And so that's kind of an important...

So it's a shotgun.

Yeah.

So then it ends up being a shotgun.

Could we have some variation of this that self-fills biodegradable water

balloons and just lobs them across the yard.

You won't have to deal with that.

And he's just, there is your artillery strike is water balloons coming

from seemingly nowhere from the sky.

A trebuchet.

Essentially a automated trebuchet.

Oh, that's great.

I just

want to build that.

Biodegradable.

Yeah.

You're right though.

It's all physics.

If you know the exact weight of the projectile.

What if you didn't care so much about precision

accuracy and you did the

trebuchet, but just, it's like a five gallon buckets worth of water that gets lobbed.

Would you get the,

like enough of a spray,

you know?

Well, you don't want to knock the peaches off the tree.

Oh,

right.

That's true.

You know,

that was, that's the original goal here.

or snap a bird's neck.

You can use it to harvest the peaches.

It'll be great.

What

about the angle?

What if you just had a high arc?

Like literally create rain on your lawn though.

What if you did the five-gallon bucket, but you lob it so high in the air,

the spray just covers the whole lawn, bucket after bucket after bucket.

I don't know how long that's going to take, but

The

laminar flow thing is great. Yes.

I don't

know. I like that

idea. I like making

rain on my lawn through one trebuchet.

I've never imagined laminar flow that has a brief on off.

Like the only time I've ever seen laminar flow is when it looks like a solid

biller because it's constant, but I've never seen intermittent laminar flow.

Well, I guess there's like jumping fountains that sometimes look kind of cool

where

they've got the splash pad.

Yeah.

They're always a little like disturbed, though.

I've, you know, those really precise

videos of

jumping fountains that are like

the splash pads where they're, you know, like intermittently on off, on off, on

You could get something really cool going there when you scale it up. That

would be cool

That sounds like a fun and very hard to pull off hardware project

Very cool.

Yeah, you could sell add-ons like additional barrels. You could do like I have a quad barrel

Sprinkler

It would be sweet if it was a quad barrel and then and then the barrels kind of came back and forth like one of

uh, bofors that they had in World War II.

Anti-aircraft guns.

Yeah, there you go.

I was

picturing four barrels, but they're all along the roof in different spots, so

you have this sort of reigning terror of

different angles and

stuff of various blobs of water

from all sides, overwhelming

the enemy.

Enemy squirrels.

Maybe that's how you make the valves work.

You move the barrels and slide them in and out, so it's like the bofors, but the sliding

in and out is where it takes a new slug of water and emits

it into the barrel.

A slug of water's excellence. Shoot a water slug with a compressed air

back up and just *pfff pfff pfff*

All day, all night *psh

psh psh psh*

Turn off the artillery, honey. It's hard to do that quiet, I bet.

-You're a compressor running all night.

-Yes.

[laughter]

-It's

just nom in the backyard for these poor squirrels.

-You could design it like a minigun, like a Gatling gun,

like one of the--

-Oh my God.

[laughter]

-Spins?

-Yes.

-Oh,

sure.

[laughter]

-Okay, why is it super soaker all over this stuff?

We need adult water guns or water turret systems.

This is

our

generation growing up.

We need like this version in our lives.

- My roommate in college modified a Nerf gun

to where it was like really painful levels of speed.

It would leave welts.

They needed that scene, but for Super Soaker.

That probably exists, right?

Where you have

like stainless steel

canisters

instead of plastic shit.

- Have you seen the Phalanx gun

that they put on the US warships

that intercept missiles that are inbound

towards a US warship?

- Yeah.

Those are 75 rounds a second something

like that with with water. That's what I want in my backyard

for the squirrels

That sounds fun

identify target aim targeting solution and then just

and

squirrels

Not eating my peaches

Incredible

Most recently in episode 36, we had our good friend Jessica on and Jessica pitched us uber for home bakers

All right, we save the best for last

Jess what do you got for us? All right. All right. Hold

on to your seats guys. Here we go. So

Well, I feel like it's actually similar to something that Russell said so I

Love making sourdough, right? You'll not everyone knows that

but

you guys know that I love making sourdough

making sourdough everything.

And I also love eating it,

but I don't want to own a micro bakery.

There's way too many startup costs for that, right?

But I love selling it to like friends or neighbors

or people in my town.

And I really feel like there's a lot of people like that.

Like, hey, I would make rolls or pasta or bagels

or anything for you like occasionally, but not,

I don't wanna get branding and be a big baker

thing, but I have this skill and I'm willing to share it with people.

And so you kind of,

you have this opportunity for people to order things,

to order sourdough or micro bakery type things from people like

me. And it's like an order comes up and I can like the standby line.

I can choose to take it like, yeah, I'm free today. I could make that. Or sure.

I could have five loaves by Friday, but like, I don't want to do,

I don't want to be a baker and have people just demand all my time and be like,

Yeah, I want 20 loaves.

Yeah, I want five loaves today, tomorrow, the next day.

I can't do that every day of my life.

But I would really love to be able to sell it sometimes

to just be able to make some money,

but not have it be my job.

It's like Uber, but I'm, Uber eats,

but I'm like, other way around.

It's like, sure, I will claim that food order

and I will make it

and fulfill it.

- Those are, what's it called?

Cottage food laws, right?

Where

like, I can

sell baked goods

and I don't need a full

FDA approval.

- From my

home.

- Yes, from my home.

but you're combining

that with the open source,

or Leo, what are those, 3D print groups

where all these people have a 3D printer

and anyone can select jobs from this large site.

- It's a gig economy.

- And just

print at home.

Gig economy, thank you.

- 'Cause so many of us sourdough bakers

are already making stuff all the time.

I make stuff to feed my family.

It'd be really easy to make an extra loaf

when I'm making a loaf.

But if

I'm not making it,

I don't wanna really make something for somebody else.

But if there's an order comes up,

It's like, oh sure, I'll make that.

I'll make that tomorrow, whatever day.

Bagels, sure.

I feel like making an extra 10 bucks, extra 20 bucks.

So.

- That's great.

- Yeah.

- Whoa, okay.

So this is like a ticketing system of like,

I want a dozen bagels, some homemade bagels, right?

Let's go.

- And see who around there. - Right?

And then

you wouldn't have to find a local baker

or bakery or friend to make them for you.

You could just get on your phone and be like,

I want bagels.

and then it'll be like,

Jessica Zoe will be fulfilling your order.

Like, you know, sourdough takes a while.

So it'd be like tomorrow.

- Pick 'em up here.

- Sourdough

can't be instant, unfortunately.

But, you know, that's the idea.

- It's part of the rules.

It's part of the fun, I think, too.

It's the trade-off.

- Would this marketplace be assisted or hindered

by a rating system of the bakers and stuff?

Like, oh man, I got Diane again.

Oh, she's awful.

- You know, I was wondering that,

because obviously when it's homemade,

it's like, do

you get to select,

like I only wanna pick from these five people,

like are there

a list of

bakers?

And you can start making your own baker wishlist

and be like, only if these five people say yes.

- When you go to post a thing on Facebook Marketplace,

there's a checkbox that says,

don't show this to my friends and family.

So you almost need like, okay,

did you like that meal that you just had?

Okay, don't ever

show

my tickets to that person ever again.

- There you go.

(laughing)

Yup.

Or like, you also need a way to make sure

that people's kitchens are like,

you know, it's like, I don't want someone baking

that has cats or something.

- Oh yeah.

- I

don't

want--

- And a peanut oil house or whatever.

- Right,

allergy stuff

or yeah.

So, you know, it's like,

then I can have all these like little things,

these little stars on my profile like,

peanut free, this free, dairy free, whatever.

I don't know.

- Totally.

- That would be so cool.

'Cause I feel like people that want to eat sourdough

or eat something that's like healthy or homemade,

to go to a bakery is, well, it is really expensive,

but also sometimes they don't have the variety

that you're hoping for,

or you just don't have one in your town.

Like, I don't even know where,

most towns probably don't have a sourdough bakery.

- Right.

- It's made with love too.

That's the

difference.

- Only if you get one of those.

- That's the

app.

It's made with love, right?

Added ingredient, right?

The secret

ingredient.

And that's it, that's why.

- Your order will be fulfilled by Taco Bell.

What?

Aw, you got the corporations on your app.

- All right, so here's what I don't know.

So does someone get to just put up in the app,

like, I would like blueberry sourdough scone,

or is it like they have a menu in the app

and bakers upload what they can make

and then people can click on stuff, like a menu,

because I'm very creative.

And if you tell me to make something, like, sure,

I'll look up a recipe and it'll probably be great.

My motto is it'll probably be

fine.

- I like that way better.

- You know, so there's this fun side to it.

Like, cool, I'll make something new.

Like, I wanna try.

- That makes a

lot of sense to me.

A couple of episodes ago,

I don't even know if this episode's out yet,

Russell pitched, I think it was Russell,

Grandma's Sassified, like, baking delivery

fulfillment service.

So it was kinda like that, where you have like,

Etsy stores, but they're all menus of, you know,

recipes that people have posted, I make this really well.

And then you, his pitch was you outsource that idea to like the factory

actually makes it and you just put the recipe in there, remove all the

love.

Remove

the

love.

But having

it

not be menu based where you have

like, what are five different

local people's takes on blueberry scones?

It's really fun.

I, I, yeah, I think that that's where the match happens.

Like you uploading your recipe makes it make sense.

It's a little bit anonymous, right?

So like maybe, you know, you might be the only baker

that does scones this way, right?

So then trying to not overwhelm that person,

like, dude, those scones I got on whatever app,

like, I'm ordering them every week now.

And now all of a sudden you're just like overwhelmed

because you're just such a good baker.

All of a sudden, like everybody's buying that

recipe.

- She's going

viral on, oh, what's the app called?

Ooh, hmm.

- Honestly, if there was an app or a website

where I could order just a box of scones,

but they were all made by a different person,

logistically

it's a nightmare,

but I got to like blindly vote on these

and then a communal vote of the world of like,

A1 is the best scone of all of these,

made by such and such.

Boost his business.

I would do that in a heartbeat.

I'd love that.

- So then it would just be like a drop off thing

where I would bring like 30 scones

and drop them off at

a certain place.

and so would 10 other bakers.

And then there would only be 30 boxes available, right?

We put one score on each box.

And then

it's just

a,

yeah,

there's just a, like a limit to how many it's like,

okay, every Friday, every Friday,

there's 30 boxes first come first serve.

Oh, then you can start bidding on them.

- Oh man, I've been making muffins out of a box

because I just like don't have the energy

to make it from scratch, right?

But if I could, like, there's something different

about like, I buy muffins all the time.

I go to LJ's, get the muffins there.

I get muffins from Blueberry store,

but they're not as good as, I don't know,

even the box stuff that I make at home,

it tastes better than sometimes the stuff I get at LG's.

And so it's like, it'd be nice to just get somebody

with a little bit more, you know.

- Somebody who knows how to handle a sourdough, you know?

- Just like,

you know, I'm trying my best with this box,

but it'd be nice if somebody who actually tried

to provide the good stuff, you're

like, oh man.

- Fresh fruit, all that, yeah.

Yeah, yes, fresh fruit, real good ingredients, you know?

There's no short cutting of employee work or whatever.

I mean, it's just like, I don't know.

- Your app would be the first

thing I would fire up

if I was traveling too.

If I'm in a new town for a week,

what are they known for here?

Oh, a really good curry that's made

by that lady down the street or whatever.

That sounds awesome.

Delivered to my hotel room for sure.

- Oh, that'd be interesting

too.

- Wow, that would be really cool.

- Just a convenient way

to get food

That's homemade from people that you don't know.

(laughing)

Awesome.

You do have to deal with the random arsenic poisoning

or whatever, but.

- Just give them a one star review and then move on.

(laughing)

- I'm sure the one star reviews will keep

all of the ill intentions in check.

- Yeah.

- They will be hilarious to read.

- Put razor blades in your carrot cake, one star.

(laughing)

- Three stars and above is just like

how good of a baker you are.

Two or less, something's happening.

It'd be so cool to just buy some legit cookies,

not like the--

I think you're just hungry.

Russell's in.

You are too.

He is on board.

All right, what are we going to call the app, Russell?

I just want some good baked goods.

Good?

Russell missed homemade muffins.

Whole

baked.

Baked whole, or something like that.

You could go healthy holistic or

whole--

like

not fake.

Maybe there's a spin on the at which is just like not like crud ingredients.

You know, you have to use good stuff.

Whole.

Whole.

Oh, no, it sounds weird.

Donut whole.

W H O

L E.

All right.

Whole foods.

Just whole it baby.

Uh, now I'm, uh, shoot.

I don't know what to do for dinner.

I'm going to whole it.

Whole, whole goods instead of whole foods.

Just.

You know, we could just call it zo good.

Zo good.

Oh, that's pretty good.

And then

no one will ever mispronounce

our last name again, because

it would become famous.

Yeah.

As always, thank you so much for listening. We hope you enjoyed yourself. And thanks to

all of our guests we've had over the last couple years. It has been an absolute joy.

We're coming up in the next few episodes here on 200 ideas, which is unfathomably cool.

We're going to keep at this as long as we can. And thank you very much for listening.

Our website is Spitball.show.

There you can find links to our YouTube channel, other social media that we're running.

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