7 ms·

List of hilarious and useless things at CES

77 points by seapunk 8y ago

Jhndb 8y ago
I can't see any of these images in Firefox. Edit: Works in Safari. It's a good thing the internet has enough ad space to sell all this crap
- realusername 8y ago
  It works on my Firefox, maybe you have some add-on interfering.
- duckerude 8y ago
  Firefox's tracking protection blocks hotlinked Twitter images.
OkGoDoIt 8y ago
There’s so much weird stuff at CES, but I feel like it’s almost Darwinian. 90% of it is crap but sometimes the zany stuff works. I’d recommend people in the tech world attend at least once just to see the intensity of it all. It’s free if you register far enough in advance. CES is an experience! This blog post is mostly just making fun of bad English marketing copy though. Yeah lots of international companies have trouble describing things well in English, but that isn’t really the right metric to judge them on.
- dirktheman 8y ago
  Some of these things are just downright silly, though... does the world REALLY need a sofa with YouTube? A humongous camera headset? Or a 'smart toilet'? I guess there's a market for mindless consumerism products, but I can't help feeling that a lot of smart people could be of better use solving real world problems...
  - OkGoDoIt 8y ago
    I used to work for an ecommerce site that sold the Numi toilet (gen 1), and it's amazing how many people shell out $8000 for a creepy automated toilet. I agree it's silly, but there is apparently a market.
- seapunk 8y ago
  I plan to go there one day, and see it with my own eyes. A lot of cases presented are "french tech" startups which means these startups are invited with the money of the France taxpayers. It became a subject of mockery in France because institutional folks who never launched anything give business lessons to entrepreneurs and we see the result in Vegas each year.
  - SyneRyder 8y ago
    I thought you were exaggerating until I got about halfway through and discovered the French Tech section. I honestly can't tell if La French Tech are being knowingly ironic. Their website [1] is a gloriously detailed coming soon page ("Our site is undergoing renovation, and will be back online with in 2019") and the idea of starting an English language local French Tech community in your own country is perplexing. I'm fascinated, thanks for mentioning it. [1] https://www.lafrenchtech.com/en/ https://www.lafrenchtech.com/en/
    - realusername 8y ago
      It's an alright community but it's targeted at business people in IT, not developers, the one in my local area does not have any tech people for example.
majewsky 8y ago
This is how ordinary people see tech people.
jonathanstrange 8y ago
"The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later." That's all I get instead of pictures.
- fabrixxm 8y ago
  Images are from twitter. Is the browser blocking tracking content? (for me, on firefox, that's the case). original twitter thread https://twitter.com/edzitron/status/1083476320808398849 https://twitter.com/edzitron/status/1083476320808398849
- seapunk 8y ago
  Maybe because of hotlinking media. Thanks for pointing this out.
tinus_hn 8y ago
It a reformatted version of this: https://mobile.twitter.com/edzitron/status/1083476320808398849 https://mobile.twitter.com/edzitron/status/10834763208083988...
docdeek 8y ago
A lot of French Tech in those photos - I suspect there’s a mix of ‘useless tech’ and ‘bad marketing copy in a second language’ behind that.
- majewsky 8y ago
  From what I took from Ed's comments, he only covered a tiny chunk of the whole exhibition area until now. So he may just have happened to walk past the French area.
- kabes 8y ago
  Not sure if those 'La French Tech' signs are supposed to be marketing or warnings.
_pmf_ 8y ago
It's missing the Google Assistant Ride: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtRHdhj-imA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtRHdhj-imA
idoco 8y ago
I don't know. Some of the tweets are funny, but it's effortless to be cynical about other peoples work. (Especially when presented by non-native English speakers) Similar lines could have been written about once crazy ideas that we take for granted today.
- seapunk 8y ago
  > Similar lines could have been written about once crazy ideas that we take for granted today. That's right, I hope some startups will succeed even if they are mocked or criticised like it was the case for Dropbox.
- ranit 8y ago
  > Similar lines could have been written about once crazy ideas that we take for granted today. The post mocks the presentation of the products, not the products. Submitted title here in HN makes it look like it is about mocking the things.
  - mimixco 8y ago
    Actually, the guy is spot-on. Not only are the ads dumb, the actual products are dumb, too. Is there one thing on that list that the world needs?
- macNchz 8y ago
  Yeah, I’m usually pretty cynical in general about the bevy of marketing hyped ‘smart’ devices being sold these days, but this takedown feels really low effort. Some of the products being mocked actually look like interesting ideas written off because of their bad marketing copy. I actually looked up the mini dishwasher from one of the pictures because I’d like a portable dishwasher for my small apartment kitchen. The the ones on the market right now are really clunky and it appears to have been a zero-innovation kind of space for some time. Unfortunately the first version is Euro-only, but I have my eye on it for the future.
- notus 8y ago
  Most of the products are pretty terrible or lack innovation. Seems like things I would have found at a sharper image 20 years ago. That being said it doesnt preclude them from success considering electric scooters just became a billion dollar industry.
benj111 8y ago
The smart rod made me think. What is it about competitive hobbies and having the best kit. If you go fishing and have the best rod, bait, hooks, where's the upside? You cant be sure that massive fish you caught is your skill or just tech. Everyone would expect you to catch a big fish because you have all the kit. If on the other hand you just have a cheap rod etc, that big fish you catch, you caught because of your skill. The guy sitting next to you with all the kit, that's just caught a massive fish is ok, because he has all the kit. I've noticed the same thing with cycling and golf. I suppose you could say its to prove you're part of a group, but isn't being sat in the rain, next to a muddy pond proof enough?
- sz4kerto 8y ago
  Yep, this is what eventually leads to back-to-the-nature movements (barefoot running, free climbing, expeditions without oxygen masks, etc.).
- Sendotsh 8y ago
  It's everywhere though not just hobbies. Whether it's what clothes you wear, what phone you have, what car you drive. (Most) people want to have better stuff than those around them. "Beat the Joneses" etc. Consumerism is a drug, and it's incredibly addictive. It took me a long long time to stop caring about having the best stuff. New phone every year, new laptop every 2. As fancy a car as I could afford, high end fishing gear, etc. Thankfully, having kids let me "grow up" a lot in a very short timeframe, and I now have a 15yr old car, 4yr old phone, and generally just cheap but functional stuff around me, but it's still hard to shake that urge.
- claudius 8y ago
  Even though a hobby may be competitive, you don’t have to do it competitively. Maybe you just want to go fishing and catch fish and you’re happy if you caught one and want to catch more. As a hobbyist cyclist, I like having a decent bike simply because it’s more fun to cycle with less effort. Of course I could get an old crappy one to show off my skill and constitution, but that’s not the point for me. The point is to have some fun and while part of this fun is due to achieving goals, achieving a hard goal with a little help such as a good bike is still more fun than not achieving the hard goal, especially if it’s due to comparably-bad tech. Whether your threshold for bad tech is now a really old bike or a not-newest bike is merely a quantitative difference and in the end subject to personal preferences.
hawski 8y ago
The World's First Smart Sofa reminds me of The World's Most Comfortable Chair from The Tick: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ah7GxKHGHPg https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ah7GxKHGHPg That would've been something.
chx 8y ago
You know what's missing? NBASE-T USB adapters. What's going on? They were announced last summer and they are nowhere to be found.
- voltagex_ 8y ago
  I don't think Aquantia is "consumer focused" enough. Looks like the next presentation is January 16. https://investors.aquantia.com/news/2019/01-07-2019-140027448 https://investors.aquantia.com/news/2019/01-07-2019-14002744...
  - chx 8y ago
    Well, there is the Realtek RTL8156 at 2.5gbit as well and there are no products AFAICS. https://www.realtek.com/en/component/zoo/category/network-interface-controllers-10-100-1000m-gigabit-ethernet-usb-3-0-software https://www.realtek.com/en/component/zoo/category/network-in...
CharlesDodgson 8y ago
Some of those are genuinely terrible, many others are a great example of why it's as important to sell your idea well!
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
anonu 8y ago
The WowCube - The World's first Twisty Games Console... I am actually intrigued.
- mimixco 8y ago
  I agree. That's the only one that seemed worth looking up. https://wowcube.com/ https://wowcube.com/
SJSque 8y ago
I think that I should take inspiration from some of these and add some new possibilities to my Idea Generator: http://www.stevesque.com/ideas http://www.stevesque.com/ideas
- kaybe 8y ago
  Needs more Alexa and Youtube in everything! (Yes of course I want Alexa in my toilet, what a fantastic idea! </s>)
k4ch0w 8y ago
Thank you OP I haven't laughed that hard in a while. I honestly have no words for some of them. Water 2.0?!

77 points by seapunk 8y ago

I can't see any of these images in Firefox. Edit: Works in Safari. It's a good thing the internet has enough ad space to sell all this crap

realusername 8y ago
It works on my Firefox, maybe you have some add-on interfering.
duckerude 8y ago
Firefox's tracking protection blocks hotlinked Twitter images.

OkGoDoIt 8y ago

There’s so much weird stuff at CES, but I feel like it’s almost Darwinian. 90% of it is crap but sometimes the zany stuff works. I’d recommend people in the tech world attend at least once just to see the intensity of it all. It’s free if you register far enough in advance. CES is an experience! This blog post is mostly just making fun of bad English marketing copy though. Yeah lots of international companies have trouble describing things well in English, but that isn’t really the right metric to judge them on.

dirktheman 8y ago
Some of these things are just downright silly, though... does the world REALLY need a sofa with YouTube? A humongous camera headset? Or a 'smart toilet'? I guess there's a market for mindless consumerism products, but I can't help feeling that a lot of smart people could be of better use solving real world problems...
- OkGoDoIt 8y ago
  I used to work for an ecommerce site that sold the Numi toilet (gen 1), and it's amazing how many people shell out $8000 for a creepy automated toilet. I agree it's silly, but there is apparently a market.
seapunk 8y ago
I plan to go there one day, and see it with my own eyes. A lot of cases presented are "french tech" startups which means these startups are invited with the money of the France taxpayers. It became a subject of mockery in France because institutional folks who never launched anything give business lessons to entrepreneurs and we see the result in Vegas each year.
- SyneRyder 8y ago
  I thought you were exaggerating until I got about halfway through and discovered the French Tech section. I honestly can't tell if La French Tech are being knowingly ironic. Their website [1] is a gloriously detailed coming soon page ("Our site is undergoing renovation, and will be back online with in 2019") and the idea of starting an English language local French Tech community in your own country is perplexing. I'm fascinated, thanks for mentioning it. [1] https://www.lafrenchtech.com/en/ https://www.lafrenchtech.com/en/
  - realusername 8y ago
    It's an alright community but it's targeted at business people in IT, not developers, the one in my local area does not have any tech people for example.

majewsky 8y ago

This is how ordinary people see tech people.

jonathanstrange 8y ago

"The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later." That's all I get instead of pictures.

fabrixxm 8y ago
Images are from twitter. Is the browser blocking tracking content? (for me, on firefox, that's the case). original twitter thread https://twitter.com/edzitron/status/1083476320808398849 https://twitter.com/edzitron/status/1083476320808398849
seapunk 8y ago
Maybe because of hotlinking media. Thanks for pointing this out.

tinus_hn 8y ago

It a reformatted version of this: https://mobile.twitter.com/edzitron/status/1083476320808398849 https://mobile.twitter.com/edzitron/status/10834763208083988...

docdeek 8y ago

A lot of French Tech in those photos - I suspect there’s a mix of ‘useless tech’ and ‘bad marketing copy in a second language’ behind that.

majewsky 8y ago
From what I took from Ed's comments, he only covered a tiny chunk of the whole exhibition area until now. So he may just have happened to walk past the French area.
kabes 8y ago
Not sure if those 'La French Tech' signs are supposed to be marketing or warnings.

_pmf_ 8y ago

It's missing the Google Assistant Ride: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtRHdhj-imA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtRHdhj-imA

idoco 8y ago

I don't know. Some of the tweets are funny, but it's effortless to be cynical about other peoples work. (Especially when presented by non-native English speakers) Similar lines could have been written about once crazy ideas that we take for granted today.

seapunk 8y ago
> Similar lines could have been written about once crazy ideas that we take for granted today. That's right, I hope some startups will succeed even if they are mocked or criticised like it was the case for Dropbox.
ranit 8y ago
> Similar lines could have been written about once crazy ideas that we take for granted today. The post mocks the presentation of the products, not the products. Submitted title here in HN makes it look like it is about mocking the things.
- mimixco 8y ago
  Actually, the guy is spot-on. Not only are the ads dumb, the actual products are dumb, too. Is there one thing on that list that the world needs?
macNchz 8y ago
Yeah, I’m usually pretty cynical in general about the bevy of marketing hyped ‘smart’ devices being sold these days, but this takedown feels really low effort. Some of the products being mocked actually look like interesting ideas written off because of their bad marketing copy. I actually looked up the mini dishwasher from one of the pictures because I’d like a portable dishwasher for my small apartment kitchen. The the ones on the market right now are really clunky and it appears to have been a zero-innovation kind of space for some time. Unfortunately the first version is Euro-only, but I have my eye on it for the future.
notus 8y ago
Most of the products are pretty terrible or lack innovation. Seems like things I would have found at a sharper image 20 years ago. That being said it doesnt preclude them from success considering electric scooters just became a billion dollar industry.

benj111 8y ago

The smart rod made me think. What is it about competitive hobbies and having the best kit. If you go fishing and have the best rod, bait, hooks, where's the upside? You cant be sure that massive fish you caught is your skill or just tech. Everyone would expect you to catch a big fish because you have all the kit. If on the other hand you just have a cheap rod etc, that big fish you catch, you caught because of your skill. The guy sitting next to you with all the kit, that's just caught a massive fish is ok, because he has all the kit. I've noticed the same thing with cycling and golf. I suppose you could say its to prove you're part of a group, but isn't being sat in the rain, next to a muddy pond proof enough?

sz4kerto 8y ago
Yep, this is what eventually leads to back-to-the-nature movements (barefoot running, free climbing, expeditions without oxygen masks, etc.).
Sendotsh 8y ago
It's everywhere though not just hobbies. Whether it's what clothes you wear, what phone you have, what car you drive. (Most) people want to have better stuff than those around them. "Beat the Joneses" etc. Consumerism is a drug, and it's incredibly addictive. It took me a long long time to stop caring about having the best stuff. New phone every year, new laptop every 2. As fancy a car as I could afford, high end fishing gear, etc. Thankfully, having kids let me "grow up" a lot in a very short timeframe, and I now have a 15yr old car, 4yr old phone, and generally just cheap but functional stuff around me, but it's still hard to shake that urge.
claudius 8y ago
Even though a hobby may be competitive, you don’t have to do it competitively. Maybe you just want to go fishing and catch fish and you’re happy if you caught one and want to catch more. As a hobbyist cyclist, I like having a decent bike simply because it’s more fun to cycle with less effort. Of course I could get an old crappy one to show off my skill and constitution, but that’s not the point for me. The point is to have some fun and while part of this fun is due to achieving goals, achieving a hard goal with a little help such as a good bike is still more fun than not achieving the hard goal, especially if it’s due to comparably-bad tech. Whether your threshold for bad tech is now a really old bike or a not-newest bike is merely a quantitative difference and in the end subject to personal preferences.

hawski 8y ago

The World's First Smart Sofa reminds me of The World's Most Comfortable Chair from The Tick: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ah7GxKHGHPg https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ah7GxKHGHPg That would've been something.

chx 8y ago

You know what's missing? NBASE-T USB adapters. What's going on? They were announced last summer and they are nowhere to be found.

voltagex_ 8y ago
I don't think Aquantia is "consumer focused" enough. Looks like the next presentation is January 16. https://investors.aquantia.com/news/2019/01-07-2019-140027448 https://investors.aquantia.com/news/2019/01-07-2019-14002744...
- chx 8y ago
  Well, there is the Realtek RTL8156 at 2.5gbit as well and there are no products AFAICS. https://www.realtek.com/en/component/zoo/category/network-interface-controllers-10-100-1000m-gigabit-ethernet-usb-3-0-software https://www.realtek.com/en/component/zoo/category/network-in...

CharlesDodgson 8y ago

Some of those are genuinely terrible, many others are a great example of why it's as important to sell your idea well!

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

anonu 8y ago

The WowCube - The World's first Twisty Games Console... I am actually intrigued.

mimixco 8y ago
I agree. That's the only one that seemed worth looking up. https://wowcube.com/ https://wowcube.com/

SJSque 8y ago

I think that I should take inspiration from some of these and add some new possibilities to my Idea Generator: http://www.stevesque.com/ideas http://www.stevesque.com/ideas

kaybe 8y ago
Needs more Alexa and Youtube in everything! (Yes of course I want Alexa in my toilet, what a fantastic idea! </s>)

k4ch0w 8y ago

Thank you OP I haven't laughed that hard in a while. I honestly have no words for some of them. Water 2.0?!