5 ms·
A fun and cringeworthy post. Thanks. But why withhold the make and model of alarm clock? 1. Maybe others could chime in or assist. 2. Brands that sell fragile
by emptybits 7y ago
A fun and cringeworthy post. Thanks. But why withhold the make and model of alarm clock?
1. Maybe others could chime in or assist.
2. Brands that sell fragile and frustrating garbage like this should be exposed.
- choward 7y ago3. Increase my confidence that the article is actually real. I have no way of verifying anything in this article so as far as I'm concerned it's fake. I need a picture or at least a make and model so I know the alarm clock in question actually exists.
- BoiledCabbage 7y agoAnd maybe Raymond Chen is completely fine with 'choward' of Hacker News not believing him.
- cgrealy 7y agoYeah... he's Raymond goddamn Chen. He's not even aware of our existence. :)
- choward 7y agoDoesn't ring a bell. Am I supposed to know who he is?
- cgrealy 7y agoHe's the author of The Old New Thing... he was heavily involved in the development of Windows and he's generally highly regarded in software development circles. He's been around for a long time.
- perl4ever 7y agoI thought the name sounded familiar, but looking on Wikipedia, there are two Ray(mond) Chens (one is a Federal judge) and neither of them seems to be this guy.
- kempbellt 7y agoWhy would someone create a fake post explaining a frustrating situation and intentionally not share the make and model? I actually find it more valuable that it's written this way. Rather than pointing out one brand of product as the problem, it encourages readers to keenly review a product's "features" before purchasing. Even if it is fake, it's a simple post explaining a completely feasible, frustrating situation.
- moonbug 7y agoreally? is itreally beyond belief that bullshit doodads exist?
- kalleboo 7y agoGoogle "wifi projection alarm clock" and one product shows up, with universally poor reviews that for the most part have trouble with the Wi-Fi not connecting, Wi-Fi stops working after 6 weeks, etc. You have the world's largest database of consumer products at your fingertips, it's easy to verify his claims.
- RichardCA 7y agoThanks. Well spotted. It was annoying me that I couldn't find the extant product. https://www.lacrossetechnology.com/c82929-connected-projection-alarm-clock https://www.lacrossetechnology.com/c82929-connected-projecti... A lot of devices have a hard requirement for 2.4ghz and 802.11n and the need for awareness of this is not trivial. I have been reduced to keeping track of each mac address on my network and it seems like all the IOT devices use the same group of generic Chinese chipsets.
- _bxg1 7y agoProbably he didn't want to drag another (specific) brand through the mud on the official Microsoft dev blog. Deserved or not, it would be unprofessional.
- Arnavion 7y agoRaymond has always had a policy of not naming-and-shaming companies in his blog, for better or worse. Edit: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/?p=40523 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/?p=40523 >Things that increase the likelihood that your comment will be edited or deleted: ... More generally, comments that identify a specific company, program, or person.
- UI_at_80x24 7y agoHe works for MicroSoft. Of course he can't "name & shame" companies that do stupid things.
- skinnymuch 7y agoGood thing most companies don’t do any stupid things compared to Microsoft! Or else this would have no relevance.
- freeone3000 7y agoHis blog is possibly the most complete source of stupid things microsoft put in its APIs. Come on, it's about not turning a million followers against a smaller target.
- ce4 7y agoSkimming this rant left me with the assumption that it was about "the Microsoft alarm clock" and including some more specifics would have fixed that quickly.