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Packing Algorithms May Save the Planet
An anonymous reader writes "New Scientist reports on how competitions to devise better packing algorithms could help cut the environmental impact of deliveries and shipping. A new record setter at packing differently-sized discs into the smallest space without overlapping them has potential to be applied to real world 3D problems, researchers claim." Ok the title might be a little ridiculous, but the ridiculous packaging used to ship a few tiny objects by some shippers is pretty shameful.
Something the summariser seems to have missed.. This kind of problem comes up in a lot of different places.
One example would be brain tumor treatment using lasers.
This coffee tastes funny.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
When I worked for UPS in school, they used manual labor to load the trailers they used to send packages to the next facility. Loaders used their eyes, brains, and some basic tips to pack the trailer as tight as possible while using totally random sized packages. If you did well, you were rewarded; if you didn't, you were...not.
These guys would be well advised to watch how those trailers are loaded to figure out what algorithm the loader is using internally - we could get those trailers packed pretty damned tight.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
> Ok the title might be a little ridiculous, but the ridiculous packaging
> used to ship a few tiny objects by some shippers is pretty shameful.
In my experience, the smaller an item is that I carry around, the more likely it is for me to lose it. I think the same thing goes for the USPS. I don't think I'd feel all that great if Amazon tried to ship my new microSD card to me in a package the size of a postage stamp.
We're getting there... search for "great pacific garbage patch": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_Garbage_Patch
No sig today...
I work for a company that produces paper products. A large part of what we do is die cut the sheets into different shapes. We charge our customers for these shapes according to how many we get out of a sheet.
Sometimes the shapes are square/rectangular, which nest next to each other very well. Generally, they do not. Among other things, I am tasked with figuring out how many shapes we can get out of a sheet of paper. With the irregular shapes, the best method I've found is just to brute force the problem, trying various layouts to see if orienting the shapes one way will get us one or two more shapes out of a sheet. It's not a simple area problem, since some shapes nest very well, and some don't. I do have tricks I've learned to help speed the process, but I'd love to have something like this software, which would take the one-up shape, and tell me how many I can get out of a sheet of paper.
If you did well, you were rewarded; if you didn't, you were...not.
Sounds almost like a real-life game of tetris. In 3d. ;)
I don't read AC A human right
I keep hearing about this but has anyone actually seen in? All the videos I see are just generic pollution shots. If there is really a giant island of plastic floating out there lets see some pictures. I am not saying it's not there I just want to see it if it is.
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them
Once there is a sufficient volume of "web/warehouse" packaging floating around, retailers might consider using the model adopted by most video rental places, with a limited number of display models, in retail packaging, and a large number of generically packaged products ready on demand.
It is just unfortunate that this kind of idea is next to impossible to have done in physical stores. While the idea of a display item doing the advertising and the real product being sold in plain boxes sounds like it would work, it becomes very hard to embellish on your product without outside packing.
I would almost never buy an unpacked product because I would be afraid it would interfere with my warranty, and because otherwise there is literally no way to tell who fucked up a product; the manufacturer, or the unpacker. If the Unpacker were already highly trusted and gave me some kind of fantastic warranty I might consider it for inexpensive items.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The parent poster is referring to something called the "Rebound Effect".
The occurrence of consumption rebound that is greater than the efficiency gain is extremely rare for any fully used resource.
For a rebound to bounce higher than the efficiency gain, there must be an increase in the market size, which is no longer possible with oil.
In the end more resources are used than before the optimization,
Jevon's Paradox".
Funny how Jevon's paradox ends when the product/process and its place in market sinks.
Brian Dunning from Skeptoid says no... He is usually well researched. And funny.
That just leads to more bureaucracy, filling up D.C. buildings with corpulent bureaucrats stuffing their faces with vending machine hot dogs and farting dangerous greenhouse gases. This will hasten the demise of the planet much faster than an extra UPS trip over other odd week.
Seriously, his is why shipping methodologies need to be left to the market. Shipping companies want to make a profit, and fewer trips at using less fuel adds to their profits. Taxes may also perform the same function, but bureaucrats are incapable of making the economic calculations necessary to target taxes with sufficient precision, because markets are constantly shifting and changing. Go read up on Hayek and economic calculation.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
If it takes an infinite amount of time or processing power (same thing, really) to solve a given problem instance by a given algorithm, then that problem instance is not solvable by said algorithm even in theory, since the algorithm will never return the solution (by definition of infinite).
When we say that a problem is "solvable" (theoretically possible), we mean that there is an algorithm that will return a solution after a finite number of operations for any finite problem instance. If we don't put this constraint on the word "solvable", then for example the Halting Problem becomes trivially solvable: simply run the algorithm to be tested in a "simulation" and return "it halted" if it halts.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Many companies are taking advantage of better packing (euither by changing their packaging, tweaking their loading method, etc) as a method to cut down on costs. The ability to cram two extra boxes on a truck can often mean selling two extra boxes that you originally couldn't or reducing the shipping costs per order by reducing the amount of leftover head space in a shipping container by stacking more efficiently.
Whee signature.
I once got a 3.5" disk enclosure shipped from IIRC Andataco in a box that was about 5 ft^3. When I complained to them they answered that they had *one* size box that they used for everything. I would think that bulk shippers like Amazon would also benefit from a limited number of carefully-sized boxes in that they pack well into the trucks going to the carrier -- fewer trucks and faster loading == cost savings. Sometimes Amazon does a decent job of packing, sometimes they don't. I recently received a box of printer paper from them without any external packaging. It was beat to hell and falling apart, mind you.