One 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.
So 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.
Here's a community of people who make things that you probably find useless for fun: 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/
Things you don't understand can be fun, including make interesting gadgets that you don't find useful.
The 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.
There'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.
Why 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.
It 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.
The 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".
Point, 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)
I 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.
No 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.
This 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.
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.
I 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".
"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.
We 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.
I 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.
When 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.
> 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.
"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.
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.
Say you own a restaurant with 100 tables. Each night someone needs to manually go and blow the candle out or turn it off. Now you can turn them all on and off simultaneously and remotely. Additionally, if its a LED candle you might be able to monitor the battery status remotely.
Probably not cost effective in the long run, but that depends on the cost of labor.
The candle doesn't seem replaceable, so you'd need to buy another of these smart t̶u̶r̶d̶s̶ candles every time. Considering that those restaurants keep them lit for hours, that would be insanely expensive.
Each night someone needs to manually go and blow the candle out or turn it off.
I've developed an app and wait staff tracking system that allows restaurateurs to keep track of where the staff are going to be in the normal course of their duties and find high-efficiency ways to add tasks such as candle extinguishing. During our closed-beta, it turned out that in such restaurants, the staff had to visit each table anyway for the purposes of cleaning and restocking between diner occupations, and again at the end of service; our app ensures they get additional training and reminding to blow out the candle while they're there.
>Name one situation where you would really benefit from a remote-controlled candle.
I'm sitting down and cuddling and a candle is more than arms length away. I want to light it, but I don't want to stop cuddling or get up. Why would you want a remote for your TV? Same thing.
I could see someone using it for an art piece. Or to make it easier to place and light a candle in hard to access area. Also being able to light/put out based on timer might be a minor QoL improvement.
Personally, i'll stick with normal candles since I like the tactile and sensory experience of lighting a match and candle.
An event venue that wants a swanky "authentic" chandelier hung from a high spot? Maybe a church or other venue with dozens or hundreds of candles that need to be lit and extinguished? Restaurants that otherwise have to have a server walk around and light all the table candles at dusk... I don't know if it's enough for this company to survive on, but I can certainly think of real benefits over "traditional" candles for quite a few cases.
Not really, except for the aforementioned homemade stuff. I used to have a couple hundred books, but I gave them all away a few years ago. I'm not a minimalist, I certainly have more stuff than I strictly need, but they're all practical.
Art is wonderful. Art at home eventually loses its appeal and becomes more crap to maintain.
> Name one situation where you would really benefit from a remote-controlled candle.
As well as the D&D example, I can think of a couple of daft romantic gestures it might enhance. Assuming the target of the gesture is a little nerdy of course, otherwise it might detract from the atmosphere rather than enhance it.
Enh. 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.
Forget 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.
Isn'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.
It 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.
Listen, 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.
I 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...
Listen, 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.
Listen, 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.
Although I agree I find the effort you put forth he to be wasteful based on the premise of your statement. You are welcome to ignore the post and read something more valuable. If people keep reading the blog, the author will continue composing.
Exactly. Upon reading that I considered buying into the candle crown-fund just to irritate people like the author of that article.
Then I thought... Maybe this is the next wave of negative marketing - a step up from those adverts that are basically intended to _annoy_ you into remembering a specific product/service being to pay for articles slamming the whole idea of your gloriously decadent whatever-you-are-selling in order to get your attention. I certainly wouldn't put it past TechCrunch to entertain the idea if there are a few $s in it.
"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.
While 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.
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.
"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.
It'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.
I 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!"
If 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.
98 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 206 ms ] threadHere'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/
Things you don't understand can be fun, including make interesting gadgets that you don't find useful.
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.
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".
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.
They cost $13.78 on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Flameless-Candles-Remote-Control-Pill...
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.
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.
Or maybe I should lighten up.
Another point of view would be that people who create frivolous things are, by definition, not particularly creative.
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.
http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/28/11317518/kuvee-bottle-keep...
I wish I knew about this.
Seriously, I need a smartphone controlled candle.
Don't begrudge them their remote control candle.
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.
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.
And besides that, it's not as though some new technology has been invented here. This is combining well-understood parts together.
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.
"Pulling out your phone", sure, but if its out already because you also use it for other game related functions...
Probably not cost effective in the long run, but that depends on the cost of labor.
I've developed an app and wait staff tracking system that allows restaurateurs to keep track of where the staff are going to be in the normal course of their duties and find high-efficiency ways to add tasks such as candle extinguishing. During our closed-beta, it turned out that in such restaurants, the staff had to visit each table anyway for the purposes of cleaning and restocking between diner occupations, and again at the end of service; our app ensures they get additional training and reminding to blow out the candle while they're there.
We're opening to investors next week.
I'm sitting down and cuddling and a candle is more than arms length away. I want to light it, but I don't want to stop cuddling or get up. Why would you want a remote for your TV? Same thing.
And the parent commenter's main point was that it opened doors to imaginative ideas, not that this idea itself were practical or useful.
It's also potentially dangerous so that makes it interesting.
Easier to set up than actual lights and creates better ambiance.
Personally, i'll stick with normal candles since I like the tactile and sensory experience of lighting a match and candle.
Art is wonderful. Art at home eventually loses its appeal and becomes more crap to maintain.
As well as the D&D example, I can think of a couple of daft romantic gestures it might enhance. Assuming the target of the gesture is a little nerdy of course, otherwise it might detract from the atmosphere rather than enhance it.
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.
"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?
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.
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.
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.
Then I thought... Maybe this is the next wave of negative marketing - a step up from those adverts that are basically intended to _annoy_ you into remembering a specific product/service being to pay for articles slamming the whole idea of your gloriously decadent whatever-you-are-selling in order to get your attention. I certainly wouldn't put it past TechCrunch to entertain the idea if there are a few $s in it.
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/ [2] http://www.nfpa.org/public-education/by-topic/top-causes-of-... [3] http://www.cnet.com/products/ludela-smart-candle/preview/
It seems 31.7% of those were "residential" fires (393000).
From 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.
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.
I only use LEDs, of course.
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.
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!"