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Seriously, we don’t need smartphone-controlled candles
- sethbannon 10y agoOne of the saddest things to me is seeing some of the most brilliant and creative minds work on trivial or frivolous things. How much positive impact could those people be having if they were just pointed in another direction? Yes, it's sometimes hard to know what frivolous looking things may turn out to be important, but some things (e.g. smartphone-controlled candles) are clear as day.
- recursive 10y agoAlso sometimes formulated as "how can you people be having fun when cancer still isn't cured yet?"
- ethanbond 10y agoSome would argue there's a difference between having fun and dumping billions upon billions of dollars into unequivocally stupid shit.
- recursive 10y agoVote with your wallet. Put your billions into unequivocally useful progress.
- imagist 10y agoSo you're claiming that people are working on smartphone-controlled candles for fun? Because LuDela seems like it's a startup trying to make money, not a group of people trying to have fun.
- recursive 10y agoNo, I'm claiming that making smartphone-controlled candles isn't Serious Productive Work that Contributes to Society, and they should Feel Bad.
- fps 10y agoHere's a community of people who make things that you probably find useless for fun: https://makezine.com/ https://makezine.com/ Here's a company that makes money off this community, which is probably made up of people who think making random crap you can control with your smartphone is fun: https://www.adafruit.com/ https://www.adafruit.com/ Things you don't understand can be fun, including make interesting gadgets that you don't find useful.
- icebraining 10y agoThe purpose of those companies is to get and help people to make stuff. That's not useless. Making is the point, not so much the final product. And still 90% of what I've seen on Makezine was more useful than LudeLa.
- imagist 10y agoThere's a difference between selling parts to a community of people who use them to make things for fun, and selling pre-made things that some people would make for fun if they weren't already pre-made.
- fps 10y agoWhy is this so important to you that it's one of your "saddest things"? People should be free to work on what they want to work on. Maybe these brilliant people you want to subjugate have no interest in whatever it is you deem important.
- icebraining 10y agoPlease stop implying that having a critical opinion implies a defense of banning these things.
- fps 10y agoIt doesn't? The point of the article was that people shouldn't be allowed to build things like IoT candles because they're not necessary. Not "this isn't useful to me", or even "this thing is ridiculous, they're not going to sell any of them!", but: "These are people with real skills and entrepreneurial spirit, investing a renewable resource (money) and a non-renewable one (time) into products that really aren’t going to move the needle." The GP even says "How much positive impact could those people be having if they were just pointed in another direction?" This isn't being critical of their interests, this is saying they shouldn't be able to choose what they work on.
- icebraining 10y agoThe point of the article was that people shouldn't be allowed Nowhere does the article say or imply this. Yes, the author thinks these are not useful generally and that it's a waste to create them. No, that still doesn't mean or imply they want to ban their creation. The GP even says "How much positive impact could those people be having if they were just pointed in another direction?" This isn't being critical of their interests, this is saying they shouldn't be able to choose what they work on. No, it isn't. In no way, shape or form does the verb "point" imply coercion. "Point" means "direct someone's attention".
- robalfonso 10y agoPoint, however, I think its pretty clear a bluetooth candle is frivolous on its face....that said if you could control over the internet that could be a useful product feature. i.e. left your candle on and ran out? Extinguish remotely. My wife has done this before (the leaving on not the engineering a internet candle...unless she's hiding that from me)
- dcwca 10y agoI think it's beautiful that we've reached a point in society where we can work on trivial things, and I hope we can bring everyone along for the ride. My wife purchased about a dozen LED candles. I like them because they're atmospheric and simulate a real candle without me having anxiety about burning my house down. They're fairly annoying to turn off and on though - I've often wondered if there were a slightly more expensive LED candle with remote control.
- sbov 10y agoWe haven't reached any "point" in society. For at least a thousand years there's been a subset of the population who worked on "trivial" things.
- icebraining 10y agoI've often wondered if there were a slightly more expensive LED candle with remote control. They cost $13.78 on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Flameless-Candles-Remote-Control-Pillar/dp/B003VXG7Y6 https://www.amazon.com/Flameless-Candles-Remote-Control-Pill...
- ynniv 10y agoNo one sets out to make "frivolous" things. We're all just chasing applications of something that we think will be useful (in this case the IoT) and sometimes something comes out that other people think is ridiculous. It's possible that this person's next project really is to use embedded processors to cure cancer.
- yiyus 10y agoThis happens at several levels. Smartphone-controlled candles are a great example. Personally, what I find sad is that while many of the best programmers in the world are busy writing the next blogging framework or javascript UI library, scientific software that can make a great impact in our lives (and is a huge challenge even for the most experienced developer) is being written by PhD students with zero experience in programming. But I do not think the experienced developers or the inexperienced students are to blame here. To be honest, I do not know who would be.
- TheCapn 10y agoEhhhh... I disagree on a few levels. I do automation projects for friends on the side and every project starts with what is essentially flipping a bit or driving an output and grows from that. Home automation really is a matter of solving a dozen small problems to resolve the bigger one. To say automating a candle has no tangible benefits is looking at the small problem and failing to see how the larger problem exists outside it. What does it take to light a pilot light on a burner, heater, dryer, etc? I'm going to guess that the smaller problem involved in the bigger picture here is much the same. I definitely could sell a cellphone controlled burner in my job (though the regulations that sit in place are probably another hurdle.... outside the scope of this discussion though). And here's the other stupid thing. If people are willing to pay for it then it's not a bad idea. Someone was just clever enough to see if there was a market of people willing to buy the "smaller problem" without thinking of complicated ways to apply it. At a simple level, if its profitable, its useful. That profit likely drives this business to solve bigger problems. Think of it as a seed funding by creating stupid candles to apply technology to the larger problem. They don't necessarily have 6 or 7 figures of cash sitting out there to solve the big problem but to rope a bunch of people into the candle is enough to get them off the ground running. On another side of it ask what the person would be doing if they couldn't do that. There's no guarantee they'd gravitate towards something deemed "Beneficial" to humanity.
- icebraining 10y agoBut that bigger picture was already solved; fireplaces with remote controls have existed for years.
- sebastos 10y agoI know what you mean, people can be so frivolous. Sometimes I just can't believe I'm surrounded by a bunch of lazy, time-wasting jerkoffs who fritter away their days getting haircuts and drinking coffee and reading magazines and walking their dogs. I saw two fellows playing Chess in the park the other day and I just wanted to run up, flip the board over and scream "PEOPLE ARE STARVING IN AFRICA YOU SELFISH MANIACS". Or maybe I should lighten up.
- CPLX 10y ago> One of the saddest things to me is seeing some of the most brilliant and creative minds work on trivial or frivolous things. Another point of view would be that people who create frivolous things are, by definition, not particularly creative.
- zedadex 10y ago"Seriously, we don’t need smartphone-controlled X" will always give way to "but if it doesn't exist, we'll have the market to ourselves," and so you'll continue to see "smartphone-controlled X"s being created and successfully funded, as niches still have profit margins. There's really no point to the protestations anymore. "Smart X" is the new novelty modifier, and we've seen these come and go before. Just acknowledge it as a trend, purchase the ones you always had an interest in and believe a good product exists for, and forget about trying to dissuade the average consumer from doing what they're going to do anyways.
- deathhand 10y agoWe do though if we are to believe automation leads to more niche pursuits due to the availability of labor. This is the market behaving exactly like it should. Whether the goal is noble is a different thought exercise about where we place value in society.
- fps 10y ago"Only things that are directly useful to me should be made. Nothing else is permitted!"
- twinkletwinkle 10y agoThe only thing worse than someone creating a smartphone-controlled candle is someone else writing an article about it.
- CPLX 10y agoCommenting on said article, however, is virtuous.
- maxerickson 10y agoHow bout a meta comment about someone commenting about someone writing about it?
- twinkletwinkle 10y agoIt's wasted potential all the way down.
- vanhowen 10y agoThis has to be fake
- mtgx 10y agoNo? How about a "smart" wine bottle? http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/28/11317518/kuvee-bottle-keep-wine-fresh-smart-wi-fi http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/28/11317518/kuvee-bottle-keep...
- oneloop 10y agoOh man, even funnier than the idea itself is over the top claim that they're going to "reinvent wine". Thanks for sharing.
- digitalsushi 10y agoI have spent countless hours trying to use the LIFX API to create a reasonable candle flicker. Probably 40 hours of tinkering, getting inside its head, figure out that it really can't. I wish I knew about this. Seriously, I need a smartphone controlled candle.
- vlunkr 10y agoDepends on how you define "need" I suppose.
- moultano 10y agoWhen you have kids and perhaps an hour per day alone with your spouse, saving a few minutes on setting the mood has real utility. Imagine the person saving a few minutes finding matches just spent the previous hour doing dishes, cleaning up Lego, taking out the trash, sorting mail, and spent the hour before that wrangling kids into bed while they try with all their might to avoid brushing their teeth for the nth day in a row. Don't begrudge them their remote control candle.
- chickenfries 10y ago> Imagine the person saving a few minutes finding matches Seriously? This person owns candles. Chances are they keep a lighter or match next to them. I'm all for user empathy, but this just seems to be making up a use case that seems really unlikely.
- moultano 10y agoMy wife and I aspirationally own half a dozen scented candles. We never actually use them.
- skelsey 10y agoOh cool, a remote igniter.
- 1812Overture 10y agoYeah this thing sounds like a pyromaniac's dream.
- goshx 10y ago"While it’s probably neat to be able to light a candle from your phone, it’s a fantastic example of something the world could do perfectly well without." The world was doing perfectly well without a lot of things we have today. Sometimes the ideas seen as stupid are what open doors to previously unimagined possibilities and innovation.
- emodendroket 10y agoName one situation where you would really benefit from a remote-controlled candle. And besides that, it's not as though some new technology has been invented here. This is combining well-understood parts together.
- coldcode 10y agoArson?
- emodendroket 10y agoWell, in that case I'm not sure I can recommend a candle tied to your smartphone.
- Spivak 10y ago> Name one situation where you would really benefit from a remote-controlled candle. Dramatic effect for my DnD campaign.
- tdb7893 10y agoDamn, you beat me to it. My first thought when I heard of these was "I need 30 of these for awesome D&D effects"
- koolba 10y ago> Dramatic effect for my DnD campaign. Preprogrammed maybe, but pulling out your phone to alter the lights after rolling a d20 would offset any added vibe. The analog solution of having the candles already lit and then, "Poof!", blowing them out as soon as you see that they failed the roll is far superior.
- emodendroket 10y agoThis seems worse than useless, as it also seems to me like starting a fire remotely has obvious risks.
- simbas 10y agoI wish you need to be on the local access point to light it, because it would be a nice way to remotely set fire.
- charlesdenault 10y agoI doubt this was the piece the founders were hoping for.
- PhasmaFelis 10y agoEnh. All the people declaring that they'd never pay money for something so frivolous (snrk) wouldn't have bought one anyway, and it'll probably bring it to the attention of some people who might.
- paradite 10y agoForget about whether the product is actually useful. The fact that it reached here on top of Hacker News is a success for marketing effort, be it positive or negative.
- pachydermic 10y agoIsn't this what the whole point of the free market is? Are there really more bad ideas for crappy products now than there were in the past? I mean, "snake oil salesman" used to be a real thing, right? It's not like it's anything new going on here.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- icebraining 10y agoAnd this article is part of the free marketplace of ideas. "snake oil salesman" used to be a real thing, right? It's not like it's anything new going on here. So we should avoid criticizing snake oil salespeople because they've been around for a while?
- emodendroket 10y agoIt seems like a failure of the free market that tremendous amounts of money and labor are going into idiotic products while basic research is increasingly neglected.
- amingilani 10y agoI was hoping this was saite.
- pashabitz 10y agoListen, I've read enough of these in the last couple of years. Enough! Don't fucking buy the stupid candle if you don't like it. What, blogging about things nobody needs is more valuable to the world than creating questionable products with new technology? People can make whatever they want and if nobody buys it - they'll stop. Sure, I wish everybody worked on finding a cure for cancer every day but that's not how stuff works. Get over it. You know what this is? Lazy journalism. Find another topic.
- icebraining 10y agoOf course, the same could be said about people who post comments about articles about things nobody needs...
- conkrete 10y agoI don't know about you guys, but I'm trying to work on a cure for cancer over here. I don't have time for these comments about comments about articles about things nobody needs...
- ChristianBundy 10y agoListen, I've read enough of these in the last couple of years. Enough! Don't fucking comment on the stupid article if you don't like it. What, commenting about things nobody needs to read is more valuable to the world than creating questionable articles about new technology? People can write whatever they want and if nobody comments on it - they'll stop. Sure, I wish everybody worked on finding a cure for cancer every day but that's not how stuff works. Get over it. You know what this is? Lazy commenting. Find another topic.
- Infernal 10y agoListen, I've read enough of these in the last couple of years. Enough! Don't fucking comment on the stupid comment if you don't like it. What, commenting about comments nobody needs to read is more valuable to the world than creating questionable comments about new technology? People can comment whatever they want and if nobody comments on it - they'll stop. Sure, I wish everybody worked on finding a cure for cancer every day but that's not how stuff works. Get over it. You know what this is? Lazy meta-commenting. Find another topic.
- zaidf 10y ago"Seriously, you don't need to be internet friends with your roommate. Just talk to them face to face!" -- parents of college kids during early days of facebook.
- emodendroket 10y agoSomehow I don't think remote-controlled candles are going to be a smash hit with young people.
- yoloswagins 10y agoWhile a smart phone candle doesn't solve the major issues facing humanity, it does help with prevent home fires. In the US, there are about 1.240 million house fires a year[1], of which, 2,325 are caused by candles[2]. The candle will go out if it's knocked over, or if it's smothered[3]. While this is very expensive for a candle, it has the very real potential to prevent house fires. With time, the cost will fall, and we'll see less and less candle induced home fires. [1] https://www.usfa.fema.gov/data/statistics/ https://www.usfa.fema.gov/data/statistics/ [2] http://www.nfpa.org/public-education/by-topic/top-causes-of-fire/candles http://www.nfpa.org/public-education/by-topic/top-causes-of-... [3] http://www.cnet.com/products/ludela-smart-candle/preview/ http://www.cnet.com/products/ludela-smart-candle/preview/
- oneloop 10y agoSo... 0.2% of the fires? That's not a great argument.
- kindleFire123 10y agoThat "1.240 million" is all fires, including vehicles & outside fires. I freaked out a bit thinking 1% of all US homes catch fire every year. It seems 31.7% of those were "residential" fires (393000). From https://www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/statistics/v17i2.pdf https://www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/statistics/v17i2.pdf: From 2012 to 2014, fire departments responded to an estimated 243,800 fires in one- and two-family residences each year across the nation. These fires resulted in an annual average of 2,110 deaths, 7,950 injuries, and 5.4 billion dollars in property loss.
- icebraining 10y ago"More than half (58%) of home candle fires occurred when some form of combustible material was left or came too close to the candle." I don't see how Ludela can solve this, so that leaves <1000. In fact, this kind of large candles probably don't set much on fire, it's the little ones that people put on Christmas trees and such that are really dangerous.
- thomasruns 10y ago
- hasbroslasher 10y agoIt's stuff like this where you wonder why we don't just take a fraction of the national budget to pay these (obviously bored, obviously skilled, obviously challenge-hungry) nerds to go solve some of humanity's problems instead of making them waste their lives designing more plastic shit. If your defense of this is "hur hur free market" then I can't level with you. The world needs less acidic oceans and a smaller Pacific garbage patch, not a remote-controlled candle.
- nbadg 10y agoI have pretty mixed feelings about this. What I think the article gets right is that the false sense of profundity surrounding stuff like this is really and truly ridiculous. The Yo app, I think, is/was an even better example: yes, there is definitely value in having 1-bit communication, as Marc Andreessen put it. But much like this candle, the actual fractional value achieved over existing options (text messaging, or a normal candle) is just so minimal that it absolutely does not justify the $2.5mm raise (for Yo). At the same time, the tech stack involved in producing these things, especially anything social, is so incredibly complicated that, from an "effort invested" standpoint, that hefty price tag almost seems justifiable. At the core, every digital "social" system -- that is to say, any digital system that communicates between autonomous physical-world entities instead of discrete topological points on a computer network -- every social system has a common core set of problems that have to be solved, but that are so incredibly onerous that even the "silliest" of applications end up with some serious capital. I've thought (and worked) a lot on how to solve that, this enormous disconnect between consumer value added and investor prospecting, but I think in the web world, there's simply too much momentum behind existing best practices to make any real dent. So, with a touch of irony, I think it's actually IoT, which is arguably even more difficult than your standard "social" app, that has the best chance at fixing it. My point is, there's definitely a place in the world for gimmicks like this. They're fun. They're cool. That's fine! The problem we have, and one that I hope to see solved (or solve myself) is that it's so absurdly difficult to do this stuff that these ridiculous little things get so much time and effort poured into them. Making something like this should only be marginally more difficult than writing a "flickering" integer object in Python. We've added way too much bulk to that, and I think we in tech, as an industry, would do well to add a little introspective pause into this crazy trend of "connect all the things!"
- traviswingo 10y agoIf these people are planning on dedicating 50+ hours a week to this, then yes it's a waste of time. I doubt they will, though. Once these things are built, the product moves itself, especially off of a Kickstarter campaign went viral. No need to spend any more time on it once it's done - its just a resume builder and laughable revenue generator at that point.
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- mladen5 10y agoOk i definitely want one! This is one of the best smartphone controlled products ever. I am sure this was actually a clever marketing trick.