What are some "no brainer" inventions or features that just haven't made it to the consumer yet?

Microwaves that use directed or reflected waves and to better direct or target energy to specific spots in food. Thermal vision in microwaves and more automated time/power controls.

Why are we still just blasting waves on a spinning dish as high as we can? Like we can pinpoint microwaves for devices with our routers, but we can do it for inside a controlled environment in a box?!

This is my evidence if someone tries to patent this and lock people out of making cool products that I said it here first!

Cost-benefit is not there. You can buy fancy ones that do some such things, but they are expensive.
- Do you have any models in particular you are thinking of? I was in the market a few years ago when I thought of this, but couldn't find anything. So far I've found one's with weight, and ambient temp sensors, and a heating element and fan combination for roasting and convection, but nothing like what I've described.
Why don't we have microwave coolers yet?!?
- Just make your own!
  https://youtu.be/MHm3fHVZitI?si=xKR-pi6d5Bjsymts
- I can only find papers talking about using microwaves at near the 0 K scales for that (and admittedly I definitely don't enough quantum mechanics to even hazard a guess as that works from reading the summaries!!!), so I am not sure about it at higher heats (like around 300K).
Routers? Do you mean Wi-Fi routers? Because they certainly don't pinpoint waves for each device, they send all traffic out in all directions.
- Why 'correct' someone when their knowledge of a topic so clearly outstrips your own?
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beamforming

RISUG is cheap, permanent, safe, reversible male birth control.

It was invented in 1979, and has not yet come to market.

It's been almost 27 years since the first Austin Powers movie and the world still doesn't have any sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads.

Would you settle for ill tempered sea bass?

Any maps app that, when you set a route, lets you decide "don't give me any directions until I get to X step" and/or "don't give any directions after X step". I dont like hearing the navigation when I don't need it, and that would save me from having to open or close the navigation while I'm still driving.

Or stop zooming in to the max, leaving me with zero information! The only choice left is to blindly drive into the river when instructed to do so.

Phone assistants responding to you in the same volume of voice you used to address them.

This would require a way of judging the distance you're speaking from. Calling out from another room might get a whispered response, and vice versa.
- This seems solvable. There are differences in pitch between a nearby whisper and a distant shout.

A better voicemail.

I just re-watched the introduction of the first iPhone, and one thing that stood out to me was this "visual voicemail" thing they showed. To this day I still just get an SMS if someone leaves a message, and then have to call my voicemail and listen to recordings one by one. That's still the norm for standard phone contracts here afaik, it's ridiculous!

I didn’t know that was even still a thing. For years now on my iPhone I’ve just looked at the text transcriptions of my voicemail in my phone app.
- Now my iPhone, actually transcribes my voicemail live and gives me the opportunity to pick up during them leaving the voicemail. Like old-school answering machines used to do.
That's odd, Android transcribes my messages by default
- Seems to heavily depend on your provider. Some work with the standard phone apps, some have their own apps, but most don't seem to offer it at all here in Germany. One even sends you an audio MMS instead and just calls that "Visual Mailbox". It's crazy to me that such a basic and useful feature still isn't just a standard thing on all phones.
- It depends on your service provider. In Canada they charge for it. Last time I checked it was around $7/month.

Being able to get pinged for a new message in a group chat bit mute the consecutive messages from that chat until you check it.

I like to be part of multiple chats like for my game server if there is an issue I want to be alerted from my guardians. Usually the channel is quite for days and days until someone says something then it's pings after pings as people reply while I'm commuting home and it interrupts my music

Discord only does 3, then stops for a while.

useful implementation of AI silo'd to the applicable function.

some examples:

"rename these images with X pattern, add their description to the meta data"
"correctly capitalize all the names in my address book and tag them by how i know them"
"show me how much i spent on fast food last month"
actually good and useful autocorrect / spell check
find all the emails about Jane's wedding next year and let me know where we are with the planning
find me an app for windows desktop that does XYZ

edit to clarify: I know there are algos and LLMs that do this, but I don't want a "machine" that does all of them, I want a machine that only does each one really well.

LLMs would do all of those incorrectly with 100% confidence.

Draino for gutters!

The up coming weight loss drugs. I'm moderately over weight and been fighting it 20 years.

Having some help there would be a god send for a lot of people and I'm slightly optimistic on this round of drugs.

We’ve literally wasted decades because we’ve treated obesity as a personal failing rather than researching the problem.
Yeah, companies starting an obesity epidemic by pumping us full of government subsidized corn syrup, only to solve that by getting us reliant on an exorbitantly expensive drug that you have to inject every day. How I love capitalism.
- God fucking forbid we take any self responsibility.
  I eat pretty much zero processed food and it's incredibly easy and inexpensive.
  I'm fat because I eat and snack too much and it's 100% my fault.

I remember helping a friend apply eardrops to his ears due to earwax buildup and thinking "man if these vials had long bendy straw-like tubes then he wouldn't need someone to lean over his ear applying drops like someone applying cookie flavoring to a cookie."

Audinell ear spray. It will change your friends life. And only $15 a bottle.
- Where would we find something like that? That sounds like something I'd see in Walmart and buy in an instant if I saw it.
You literally turn your head to the side and drop the drops in your ear. You don't need a second person.
A long bendy straw would require you to squeeze the liquid from the bottle all the way along the straw until the end point. That would mean a larger bottle with a larger amount of liquid for you to be able to squeeze it along the whole length.
Do you actually need someone to help with that?
I just apply ear drops myself, are you sure they didn’t involve you in some kind of ear drop kink 🤔
- The problem isn’t the drops not going into your ear, it’s the fact they specifically instruct you to put in two drops, no more and no less, and it’s hard to see how many drops you’re putting in when the vial’s method of secreting the drops is squeezing the container.
- Not the person you replied to, and not a kink, but:
  I would absolutely be more willing to clean my ears if I had this straw-like mechanism. I still do it, but it feels like a huge effort. I also end up with drops all over me.
  I can't really explain why.

Drunk mode for phone. It holds all purchases in a limbo state and pops up with a list to approve or deny at noon the next day.

It also redirects any communication with your ex to an AI bot for the evening.

Batteries inside of stove/microwave/coffee machine/etc. with the sole purpose of keeping the time from resetting when it loses power.

I've conditioned myself fully by this point to only use the clock on the stove as an indicator of whether my power has or has not gone out

Nice try but I'm keeping my even more instant instant noodles to myself.

I'll give you a hint though, the secret is in being ok with pumping boiling water into your stomach.

Nested Tags for contacts. Ability to add sub tags like Friends/BowlingGroup or Acquaintance/LocalChurchContact

I seriously don’t understand what’s difficult to tag contacts like this and ability to use them to message a group. It’s a serious no-brainer feature but not to be found anywhere.

As a software engineer I'm interested in the value that would add over simply having combinations of the tags as is possible now
- These kind of tags are supported in all kinds of note taking apps. I don’t think it would be an Hercularian task to achieve it.
Contact attached to a knowledge graph seems useful to me :)
- Can you give more context or an example. Is it like sort of Obsidian graph but the nodes are all contacts or something?

Five minute abs

Some sort of device to remove the heads from the ruling class

Non rebellious printer

Baby wristlet with heartbeat sensor (this one will make you go proper crazy)

Car that breaks down as soon as you buy it

'cause fuck cars.

Non rebellious printer
They exist they're called LED Printers, you have to do a bit of searching for them though because they're often mislabeled as Laser Jet. If you go on Amazon for example and look for laserjet printers in the type box right at the bottom they'll tell you if it's really a laser jet or is actually a LED printer. Get an LED printer, Brother makes some good ones.
They are lightning fast even for color printing. They use toner like laser jet (which I guess is where the confusion comes from) but they work in a different way.

That one thing, with the whatchamacallit that does that super useful thing…

You know…

They are delicious