I've actually created a business model based on it.
The vhs rental stores were dying left and right. The one i looked into got most of its money from snacks and drinks. The subscription moddel was 75 cent, renting a movie would drop from 3-4 euro to 75 cent. (only 1 at a time) You could keep it for a week, then you would get a call if you could please return it.
The existing customers knew vhs rental was not really a thing anymore. Many visited just for a chat.
I figured one could guilt people into keeping the sub. I wasnt looking to make a profit, just curuous about the puzzle.
Looking at uvb there use to be several afordable manufacturers with good test data but they all closed shop. What is left either doesnt work or is scarry expensive.
The lamps are cheap the coating is hard to develop. Im not sure but it seems if you want to produce it you have to redo the rnd to figure out how.
That just calls for the purchase of 2 copies and the application of the learnings inside. A near infinite source of inside jokes. I know well who I have to make.
If pages arent fast or links are broken i move the url to a different file checked less frequently, when checking those i move what fails to the next file and check that on an even lower frequency (if at all)
In my experience we wouldnt need them if we were capable of doing their few simpel tasks. For some absurd reason people would rather argue needlesly.
My gut says half can be automated away and the other half needs a strictly defined job description free from any opportunity for freestyling. You could probably hire 2 or 3 extra for a while to hammer out the spec.
Im a user, no way my life was improved! If anything they made me sad and miserable. It gives all these nice looking things that you really should not use, you want to but cant, you make the mistake anyway, it is nice for a while then taken away.
It would be funny if it only happened 10 or 20 times.
Someone onhere argued this is entirely possible and that results can be merged later on. It seems facinating. Perhaps it is not conpute each node has to contribute but just bandwidth?
There is or was a British inventor who build an odd contraption with 2 vibrating plates with grinded garbage flowing between them suspended in ferrofluid. Along the track the paeticles sort themselves by density. Innitially a silly idea as ferrofluid is expensive but he wanted to see how well it worked and possibly try better fluids. It turned out to produce much more ferrofluid than was consumed. The story ends with: no one was interested enough to spend money on it.
People Who forget their phone are perhaps more likely to not configure anything.
I can think of a number of ways to improve the finders experience. Give the provider something to configure. Say a dedicated helpdesk number where I report finding your phone and you can report losing it. Perhaps with a pin matched to the phone.
Say the finder manages to unlock it (0000) they can create a facinating phone bill. If reported as lost the provider can at least cap the bill at something more usual until your id is fully validated.
Could create an app for registered lost and found spots. Then can do all kinds of magic.
Having 1000$ bricks sitting on shelves looks kinda..dumb?