she hasn't talked about it as far as I know (it's definitely in none of her YT videos or more obvious social stuff) and in every video she looks extremely healthy and seems reasonably upbeat and i'm going to be really pissed if she is sick again, so, I'm really hoping no news is good news.
My buddy has a non-cancerous brain tumor but it often plays with his hormones and causes his eye to bulge and lose vision so they can be quite nasty even without cancer. The medicine to keep it from growing also makes you lethargic and asexual. That's why I was curious. It can be rough on a person
Well, mostly. I seem to recall that she had a recurrence about a year ago or so (pre-edit, 2019 specifically per her wiki page, I'm getting old). But I've been watching her for a while and she seems to still be active and making good videos, so yeah good news I reckon.
I feel she doesn't want what she went through for her medical woes to not be a big part of what people think about when they think of her. I'm assuming that but it's the impression I get.
She mentioned it briefly in a few of her tesla videos, she did apparently go through chemo but that was 4 years ago and I don't see it in a more recent one so I'm guessing she's in remission?
Sadly, the design is most likely going to be copied, mass produced and available on Temu/Amazon/Alibaba within the next several weeks. Kick Starter is basically free R&D for Chinese manufacturers.
> o/s is where you share your designs freely, not just rip others off.
It's effectively the same thing. It's just connotations. In fact China has a lot of bad connotations associated with everything they do so it's hard to talk about the country in an unbiased way. There's so much pride and patriotism that gets introduced into the equation especially given the fact that it's on track to overtake the US in terms of economic size.
On the other hand, open source has too much good connotations associated with the term. If the core philosophy was exploited to the maximum extent you essentially get China.. where the incentive to innovate is much less than the incentive to copy someone else's innovation.
>China copies everything and everyone else, but then still tries to keep it's own secrets.
Doesn't everybody do this? The US full of closed source and open source code/products? The thing with China is that stopping illegal copying is unlikely to be enforced so the only defense against intellectual property in China is secrecy.
In the US both secrecy and law are used for protection and many companies and people exploit both of these tools.
The use of "rip off" when referring to a copy, typically means copies done illicitly or of poor quality. Being permitted to do so is antithetical to this.
>All of China/Asia/Africa are free manufacturing for the West…
Not free. But extremely cheap.
>Of course, the view that they don’t innovate and only knockoff the West is also hilariously false.
Of course not. I never made this claim. But in China, the incentive to innovate is much lower due to lack of enforcement of intellectual property rights. So of course in terms of cost/benefit ratio every individual in China is more incentivized to copy someone else's innovation rather than innovate themselves. It's the most logical move.
It's sort of a strange parasitic symbiosis between the US and China that in theory should never work. When China steals ideas and manufacturing from the US and tries to sell it back to the US, one would think there's trade imbalance that would cause the whole thing to break down.
The thing that keeps it afloat is marketing at quality control. China can rip off a product but issues with marketing and QC prevent them from effectively selling it. So what happens is the US uses China to manufacture and then they sell the products at a huge margin above the manufacturing cost to everyone in the world including China.
Everybody gets fucked in this scenario except for US corporations. But at the same time everybody makes enough money such that the whole economic cycle doesn't fall apart.
I’m aware you left yourself a bit of wriggle room versus the absolute claim. Doesn’t change how it sounds.
> When China steals ideas
You know how they say the execution matters, not just the idea?
> and manufacturing from the US
US companies bring the plan, but the Chinese factories have unparalleled skills in actually manufacturing the product into reality.
Not sure how you are claiming that they both can and can’t deliver the required quality? Almost everything, high and low quality, can be manufactured in China. Spend the full $$$ value and you’ll get unbeatable quality. But pay peanuts, get cheap things.
> marketing at quality control. China can rip off a product
To continue my point above, they take that product and manufacture it with the best cost-value ratio for the mass consumer. You can always get various levels of quality in knockoffs.
> sell the products at a huge margin above the manufacturing cost
This is actually connected to my previous post. The West is able to do this solely due to economic and currency disparities, which are further perpetuated by the West. Hence, you get:
> Not free. But extremely cheap.
The West is completely dependent on the non-West for labor. It’s such a massive point of failure that the Western lifestyle would fall apart otherwise.
>I’m aware you left yourself a bit of wriggle room versus the absolute claim. Doesn’t change how it sounds.
No. What happened here is you interpreted it as a insult to your pride. That did not occur. What occurred was a statement of a fact. It was you're own pride and bias that changed how it sounded.
>You know how they say the execution matters, not just the idea?
So. What's your point? Everybody knows this. Why are you stating something obvious? I think you were so clouded by your pride that you can't see that I'm neutral. I really don't care. Your tone only became neutral when you realized I was a neutral party. You were blinded by your own pride when you thought you were communicating with an "enemy" and when you realized I'm neutral that cleared your mind. Now you're talking some sense.
>Not sure how you are claiming that they both can and can’t deliver the required quality? Almost everything, high and low quality, can be manufactured in China. Spend the full $$$ value and you’ll get unbeatable quality. But pay peanuts, get cheap things.
I said marketing AND QC. There's a ton of low quality shit coming out of China. A ton. There's a ton of high quality stuff too that's behind a wall of bad marketing. You just need to compare TEMU and Amazon.
You say you're not sure how I made a claim that they can and cant' deliver the required quality then RIGHT after that statement you say almost everything high and low quality comes out China. So you aren't sure how I can make such a "claim" then you make the SAME claim right after that sentence. That makes no sense.
>To continue my point above, they take that product and manufacture it with the best cost-value ratio for the mass consumer. You can always get various levels of quality in knockoffs.
Quality is inconsistent enough that Chinese products are associated with poor quality. Additionally the marketing is just bad, your products may be made in China but the brand is rarely ever Chinese.
>This is actually connected to my previous post. The West is able to do this solely due to economic and currency disparities, which are further perpetuated by the West. Hence, you get:
Good we're in agreement.
>The West is completely dependent on the non-West for labor. It’s such a massive point of failure that the Western lifestyle would fall apart otherwise.
Not completely dependent. And not permanently dependent. Advanced manufacturing is still very much US exclusive. For example, boeing air liners. China does not know how to manufacture those things yet. And given the fact the US knows advanced manufacturing they can implement basic manufacturing again if the need arises. BUT, and this is a huge but, as more and more time passes with America not reinvigorating manufacturing they will slip deeper and deeper into permanent dependence.
But overall we're in agreement here. Next time be more careful before you charge in with your guns armed. It's better to be neutral as you see the world with clearer eyes.
> No. What happened here is you interpreted it as an insult to your pride.
You see, the thing is, I’m not even incidentally or partially Chinese. I just really despise the Western pride and xenophobic judgement people like you cast! I don’t know how you claim to be neutral, but I’m definitely not attempting to be neutral.
Anyways, I’m also gonna end my argument here. I see no value.
I'm Chinese by race. A US citizen by birth. As such I hold no pride for either country.
How can I be xenophobic against my own race? Additionally how can I be xenophobic against people in my own country who I grew up with?
You don't realize the extent of true neutrality. I see what is now. You're not all about patriotism or pride. You're on the side of idealized fairness. Where all things are unrealistically equal.
Let's be real. 7 dollars (inc tax & shipping probably more) for a coat hanger? 0.5 dollars and i'm in, maybe. Cool idea, not for everyone, not life changing thing like a lot of people here are saying.
> Further investigation taught me that the Chinese have a parallel system of traditions and ethics around sharing IP, which lead me to coin the term “gongkai”. This is deliberately not the Chinese word for “Open Source”, because that word (kaiyuan) refers to openness in a Western-style IP framework, which this not. Gongkai is more a reference to the fact that copyrighted documents, sometimes labeled “confidential” and “proprietary”, are made known to the public and shared overtly, but not necessarily according to the letter of the law. However, this copying isn’t a one-way flow of value, as it would be in the case of copied movies or music. Rather, these documents are the knowledge base needed to build a phone using the copyright owner’s chips, and as such, this sharing of documents helps to promote the sales of their chips. There is ultimately, if you will, a quid-pro-quo between the copyright holders and the copiers.
Is it good for consumers when inventors don't bother inventing anything because they know any good idea will be ripped off, regardless of patents or other protections?
They are the ones being right. The real value is in MAKING/building those things. Not paying someone in perpetuity because they had a good idea once.
Our system is completely corrupt and promotes exploitation of labor for the gains of a few peoples. It is absurd that we agree to pay some people ad vitam æternam just because they did decent work once. By the same standard, a manual worker achieving outstanding work that allows some project to work and meet expectations should be covered for life. But instead, he gets a tap on the back the "right" to go back and continue hard labor.
This is exactly how Apple got so rich. They "invent" and design hardware/software using a minimal amount of privileged well paid peoples and then go on and exploit cheap labor in a faraway country in order to sell the device with insane markup in their own county, very often to peoples who could have very much used a well-paid labor job.
China is making very clear an obvious fact: ideas, designs, concepts, and immaterial things like that only have value when they can be shared and executed upon.
Making is where most of the valuable creation happens. Apple would be making zero dollar is it was only an idea of a device and not the actual very well-built device, enabled by China's workers...
Looks so simple, but I guess that's a sign of good design. I was also surprised something like this didn't exist already.
But my first thought was that it will almost certainly be cloned and sold en masse pretty quickly, so I hope she gets enough revenue from it to pay for her time.
Hopefully she already started the patent process, otherwise it’s either 1) an expired patent 2) an existing patent 3) she actually invented it but won’t profit at all from it
Patenting this for her portfolio maybe, I can design and print a folding plastic hanger in 1 piece in less than 24 hours. A mold not far behind if i reached out to a shop...
you raise an interesting point I think gets asked in nearly every YC interview. How do you build your moat or stop any big players from competing with a very similar product.
I think she actually misidentified the problem she was trying to solve.
In her case, imo, her "secret sauce" would be the space saving clothes rack/furniture AND matching hangers.
There is no solution with her hanger in normal clothes racks. so her hanger product actually serves no purpose.
Shit. You do have a really good point. There's not many examples of hanger bars mounted so close to a wall or in a tiny closet already. Most people who might use this would have to be building or installing one for this custom purpose.
I also wondered if it wouldn't make your shirts more wrinkly or have the potential to leave creases. I don't think anyone cares to invest in a space-saving solution like this if it means all their shirts will be wrinkled or creased. Unless space is the primary constraint, like a tiny apartment, tiny house, or custom van build.
There are plenty of examples of shallow closets in older homes/apartments that were once workers' quarters. I lived in a triple-decker in Somerville, MA that had a bedroom closet that was only deep enough for hooks on the back wall to hold the limited clothing of the occupants. The only way I could use a rod for hangers was to remove the closet door.
Most of the options on Kickstarter include both the hangers and low profile rod/brackets (and a shelf on the fancy one). The tier without a rod included says:
> While using your own rod isn't recommended, we got a lot of requests for it so here you go! Please read our FAQ before buying so you're aware of the pros and cons. Some basic DIY knowhow required.
I think she knows the hanger is only useful as part of a system.
> But my first thought was that it will almost certainly be cloned and sold en masse pretty quickly, so I hope she gets enough revenue from it to pay for her time.
The reason why this isn't a thing yet is a few reasons - from my humble perspective:
First, it's actually a 2 part system.
You need the coat hanger but you also need the coat rack, more specifically - the dowel, to be really close to the wall.
So you would want to sell this as a kit. She doesn't really talk about it in the video - it feels like an odd afterthought. The kickstarter has it but only at the $135 starting level.
Secondly, it's not a "one size fits all solution". I can't use this with really bulky jackets. I think it's a cool, front door, guest entryway piece.
Last, it's pricy - really pricy. You're asking me to pay ~$15-20/hanger. If you have this specific problem... still hard pressed - definitely expendable income level. But because it takes up more width, it can hold fewer items not a general place to store clothes (hence i think guest front door would be a cool-piece/talking-point).
The ones getting sold on this kickstarter are grooved to keep the hangers at a neat 90 degrees to the wall. With a normal rod the hangers can twist some. Whether or not this is a problem is up to personal taste.
I think the details matter. Curtain rods are typically 1-4" from the wall. This product looks like it works best <0.5" [0] from the wall otherwise it's possible the hanger will move around or have a "sagging" look.
Finding curtain rods that are that close is uncommon and limited in styles/options (I didn't see one on a quick amazon/aliexpress search). That's not to say you're wrong, but I don't think it's as simple as you believe it to be.
Are you misunderstanding something? Clothes Railings are "normally" fixed on the ends (to the wall of the cupboard) or from above and can thus, be positioned any distance from the rear wall.
Do an Image Search for "Clothes Railing U Bracket" for example.
Having two sidewalls available such that u brackets work is probably not a good use case for this hanger. Usually it means you're inside a closet?
But I agree you could build/attach small sidewalls or simply blocks and use this u bracket. But we've entered DIY space since it's not a common package and "readily available" as a solved problem.
From comments I read elsewhere, there are apparently apartments in places like New York that have non-standard depth closets that don't fit regular hangers that these could be useful for, and the van-life crowd has also been mentioned. In both instances, a regular rod mounted on either side would work fine.
I think also the negative comments here are missing how commonly closets are built incorrectly without the correct depth for a coat hanger. Not every day, but there are enough people living in condos which had lazy architects/contractors and might appreciate the solution. I've lived in one and seen several others. I couldn't think of another solution besides kids hangers, which wasn't a satisfying compromise.
This is an extremely useful design. I never thought I'd get excited about something like this but I recently moved to an old house with chimney flues running through every room, resulting in shallow alcoves that are of differing sizes.
A fitted wardrobe would be pricey (~$4000), barely fit depthwise and half of the space would just be covering the flue if we wanted it wall to wall.
On the other hand I can just buy 3/4 of these for each wall and still come out ahead. The grooves in the rods are well thought out and mean that I can saw them to size myself, as can anyone.
The only drawback I can think of is having clothes up directly against a wall. This could obstruct airflow and be an incentive for mould to grow.
I thought about it as well but if the rod is attached to a plank on the wall the clothes are 1cm away from the wall allowing for some air circulation.
Btw, there is an alternative solution, a hanger where the hook can spin, so one can hang clothes diagonally, nearly flat.
Hers looks nicer on the wall though.
I find coathangers comically cumbersome, if they could spin willy nilly I just might give up and store my shirts in draw. I already just fold and stack most everything else, the only thing I bother hanging is button down shirts.
Basically any coat hanger not made of wire or a single plastic part has a rotatable hook. There’s usually enough friction that they won’t normally spin.
> Looks so simple, but I guess that's a sign of good design.
I find that this is tends to be the rule, not the exception and it's really reworked how I view things. I've started to almost (more jokingly than seriously) believe that the less novel something appears the more it actually is. The real mark for a good work seems to be "wow, how did you spend so much time on that? It's so fucking obvious" combined with "why has no one else done this?" But it is also easy to post hoc attribute something to being "well that's just x and y, so not really novel." But far too many things can be trivialized that way.
I wanted to say this because I think especially in engineering circles we have this wild novelty paradox. Where we can understand how our work, despite all outward appearances, is exceptionally nuanced and has minor details that are critical but when we judge others' works we don't consider such details. I think this is because most details are baked in when you learn of the new thing. But we got a good litmus test: is anyone else making/producing/doing this "super simple blatantly obvious" thing. If no? It's probably deceptively complex. (It's also why you should laugh at anyone who starts a sentence with "It's so simple, you just...")
She labels her prototypes in the video on the Kickstarter page and the one that either ended up being the final design or very close to it was prototype number 134. So it did take her quite a long time to arrive at the solution.
It's never a linear path either, I am sure she branched down paths not used in the final design and spent many hours solving small parts of solutions she never actually used.
I used to embarassingly think that design was merely a matter of aesthetics until I read The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman, which opened my eyes to how much thought goes into seemingly simple things. Really changed the way I look at human-designed objects.
My favorite anecdote due to its simplicity and ubiquity that I never thought about previously was the anecdote about the idea of making top surfaces slanted in public spaces to keep people from placing empty drinking cups and such on top of them. So damn simple and inconspicuous, but so effective and now I see it everywhere!
> idea of making top surfaces slanted in public spaces to keep people from placing empty drinking cups and such on top of them
That's a low-key example of hostile architecture, isn't it? Other than preventing people from leaving cups around, this decreases the utility of public space. Everyone sometimes finds themselves suddenly needing a flat surface other than pavement for a couple of seconds or minutes. Say you've grabbed multiple coffee cups wrongly, or packed your groceries badly, and need to repack. Or something fragile you carried broke. Or you need to make a note on the spot. A raised flat surface nearby is godsend in such situations.
It is an interesting thing though. Why did the design lead too people leaving the cups behind? I get the hostile part as they do not want to clean up other peoples trash. It is something I think about a lot on the way to work. I see gum on the ground. Not like one or two here and there but hundreds of little blobs on the sidewalk. What is causing people in these particular spots to leave their gum behind and then putting the chore of cleaning it up on someone else. I even see it when there is a trash can nearby many times. What is causing the issue? So yeah so sometimes there is no 'clear fix' but making it seriously inconvenient to do something is an option for those who have to pay to clean it up. So we all suffer because of that.
Yep. The primary fault lies with the too-many people who abused the non-hostile system. "This is why we can't have nice things"--because trust is too costly in the societies where hostile architecture is prevalent.
I get that and agree. But why is the 'easy path' to leave the garbage even in conditions where there is a garbage can right there? Shame and motivation probably seem like the wrong tools here. It seems like something is lending it to us just not doing it the right way. It is like something in the architecture lends itself to people just ignoring the obvious way. My wife was telling me about a 'gum wall' at an amusement park. I immediately saw that as a way for the park to basically hack people to not throw their gum on the sidewalk. Basically a weird reward for keeping your gum and putting it on that wall. The architecture and mythos encouraged people to not do it.
Or you are my wife, didn't realize it wasn't flat, and now your plastic bottle is bouncing down the mountain side and part of the trash littering the place.
> ”it will almost certainly be cloned and sold en masse pretty quickly”
Wouldn’t it be worth taking out a design patent on a product like this? It might not stop people making similar designs, but it would give you protection against outright clones.
I think you can buy better hangers fwiw. In particular, more accurately sized for the jacket and with more shape around the collar. Though obviously ‘better’ is relative – if you’re hanging shirts or trousers you don’t need nearly as much shape.
When my son was about 5 months old, he was crawling in the bathroom floor while I was getting dressed in the adjacent walk-in closet. He was playing with the closet door and closed it. I didn't think much of it, but then I noticed that he had also opened a drawer which prevented me from opening the door from the closet (terrible apartment design!). I was stuck in the closet alone, without my phone, unable to get out. I panicked a little bit since it was early in the day and my spouse wouldn't return in about 10 hours. Long story short, I McGyver'ed my way out thanks to a wire hanger that I found in the closet: I straightened it and used it to push the drawer back in through the tiny slit that was left through the door and the frame. I used to hate wire hangers too, now I make sure I always have a few in every closet, just in case, you never know :)
Correct, I’m a little shocked people actually buy non-wood hangers. Metal is just trash the dry cleaner gives you. Plastic is what people somehow end up with in college.
> Giertz has previously branded herself as "the queen of shitty robots" on her YouTube channel, where she employs deadpan humor to demonstrate mechanical robots of her own creation to automate everyday tasks; despite working from a purely mechanical standpoint, they often fall short of practical usefulness, for comic effect.[9] Giertz's creations have included an alarm clock that slaps the user,
She has tried (and quite successfully imho) to move away from that image and become a respectable creator/inventor.
I think the highlights of her maker-career is Truckla, her Tesla she repurposed as a truck and drove to the cyber truck reveal. And her everyday calendar, which is a board of 365 LED and you can click each for everyday you complete whatever your everyday goal is and end the year with a lot board. As I recall it met and exceeded its kickstarter.
I'm sure the success was partly due to the fact that the "shittiness" of the robots was because they were iterative prototypes, not because she was inept. Part of what's great about her (and other similar creators') content is that you get to actually see the design and development process, including the failures, which is both entertaining and educational.
The shitty robots were built to be shitty. They were successful because they were funny.
Her initial period as the queen of shitty robots has little to nothing to do with what she does today or how she approaches problems.
She has talked about the anxiety that came with going from “no one can really criticize my stuff because it’s meant to be bad” to “this is actually supposed to be good, but is it good enough?”
Isn't the point of a coat hanger to hang your clothes uncrumpled? If you're compromising on that aspect, wouldn't wall hooks fit most use cases?
For places where space is at a premium a normal coat hanger on a telescopic rod would be a viable alternative in many cases, i.e. have the clothes rotate almost 90°, and mostly overlap.
There's surely good niche use cases for these, but looking at this advertisment I don't see why I'd want to go for this particular solution.
The sales pitch would be more convincing if it was contrasted to other space saving clothes hanging techniques in existing use, rather than pointing out that the inventor was unable to find prior art for her particular solution.
There is a pretty major difference between crumpled and folded. A soft/wide radius fold isn't going to leave wrinkles or a major crease but it may still be noticeable.
A sharp/small radius fold will leave a crease but will be significantly less noticeable on most clothes than wrinkles.
And either way the crease would be along a stress point where wearing the clothes would smooth the crease out quickly.
Speaking of crumples, it's interesting that the final design makes the apparent compromise of not folding the clothes down the middle, but slightly off to the side.
But in the discarded invention pile we can see an older design that folds down the exact middle (it has springs on the bottom).
Stacking vertically does kinda get there but there are some clear downsides. You can't access clothes in the back without taking off the whole stack. And it's visually a lot worse: you're just looking at like 5 shirts flattened on the wall instead of a neat line of flat sleeves.
You don't have to take the whole stock off the hook or rack, you just grab one of the hangers and move the item to the side.
Or (in the case of that cheap AliExpress plastic dongle) pull the bottom part up and away from the wall, and detach the clothes item with your other hand.
And yeah, maybe it's less pretty or whatever, but that's my point unthread: since this isn't contrasted with existing viable alternatives the sales pitch is rather incoherent.
I've just started hanging all my shirts. Basically I have a set amount of coat hangers. If i want a new shirt I need to sacrifice another. It also makes drying way easier. Out of the washing machine, onto a coat hanger, onto the washing line, straight into the wardrobe once dry.
First reaction was; "This is really dumb. It'll take up twice the width."
But after watching through to the end, Giertz comes off really genuine and it's an inspiring short story of failure and problem solving, and I love that. I believed at the end that she's solving a unique problem. Can't hate on it.
I have more questions about the enormously high bed stand in the opening shot. It immediately makes tons of sense (so much otherwise wasted vertical space in a room), but I have never seen such a thing.
Ah of course. I had a loft bed in college, though it was hollow underneath for my desk. Seeing it as a less ramshackle structure with built-in drawers was new to me.
In the Kickstarter video the wood is painted (and she has sensibly removed the goofy leaves on the sides, which were obviously only going to get in the way).
That might be because she's Swedish. As a Scandinavian it's always a bit weird seeing Americans staining wood, it's not really something you'd do, unless you're trying to make it lighter. Americans, and the British, loves staining wood, making it darker. That's kinda the opposite of what you do in Scandinavia. You keep everything light, bright and natural (if possible, pine has a tendency to yellow and that not really fashionable).
There are light stains that can make the wood grain pop. But you are correct, to my American eye, that unfinished look really detracts from the full effort.
It's not because they love staining wood, it's because the predominant species of trees in those areas are those that take better to staining.
In Scandinavia you'll get a lot of it pine, which is one of the types of wood which typically doesn't need staining, especially for indoor applications.
Looking at her video list, she released 20 videos between the bed video and this hanger video. This one -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYqz1F6eAVU <- came out about 2 weeks after the bed video. So, she very much kept her promise. Just sayin.
We already have shallow cupboards in small rooms, the hook in nearly all hangers rotate, or you have a narrow rod with a wide hook. If you don't mind creased clothes you use a drawer or open shelves in the cupboard. Or, use kids hangers that are shorter.
For me the killer app for a coat hanger would be one that allows you to remove the shirt easily with one hand and without stretching out the shirt or possibly breaking the hanger, just pull to remove the shirt right off the hanger. I’ve spent most of my adult life trying to come up with this design, and I’m getting close, the secret is spheres
I came across the Kickstarter [1] for this as a Facebook ad and passed over it for all the reasons folks are citing below. Folding hanger? What's the use case? But watching the video, she's really put a lot of thought into this. The system with the paired rod is pretty slick. I love the notches for keeping the hangers spaced.
This solves a problem not everyone has (not me, for instance--I have full-size closets), but I almost wish I did. I think it's going to do well. The Kickstarter is already double-funded.
But I'm sure she's patented it and amazon wouldn't want to get caught for intellectual property theft so will be diligent about policing sellers. They wouldn't want a bad reputation. And the customs office will destroy any imported product in violation of her patents.
You cannot patent a foldable coat hanger. The only thing she could patent is the specific mechanism she used to enable folding, but I doubt the copycats would use exactly the same design.
>You can't do that IIRC, because it is based on prior art in the public domain. Just like you can't patent a chair with 5 legs.
A point she made in the video (and at least partially confirmed by a quick patent search by me) is that there really isn't one of these in the prior art.
> There's also no reason to patent that many things for the same thing. You only need to be sufficiently vague to how it folds.
As far as patents are concerned, those are the same. Getting a patent broad enough to cover all her embodiments of the invention is the same as getting a patent that covers all the prototypes. In the US you get up to three "free" independent claims per patent application, that can cover different approaches that are non-overlapping. But they can't be addressed to different inventions. In other words, you can get a single patent on three reasonable variations of a folding coat hanger and slight variations thereof. You cannot get a single patent that covers a folding coat hanger, and precision timing device, and a popcorn maker.
> The only thing she could patent is the specific mechanism she used to enable folding
Have only had a brief look at the video but the folding mechanism looks like the standard figure-of-8 rubber things that join the various parts of folding clothes dryers (eg. [0] from John Lewis) - which makes sense! It's a proven design!
Sure you can patent a folding coat hanger, in fact someone did recently in granted US patent US1139964B2 [0].
If you look at the claim, which defines the scope of the monopoly, you'll see it is very long. That is because folding coat hangers were already invented and reinvented many times over. Some example published applications would be US4997115A [1], US5632422A.
I've not looked at the OP yet, but I'd be surprised if they had a new invention in this space; possible of course.
A lot of these things don't make it to be products because they're too expensive for the utility they provide.
Let me add some more sarcasm: destroying perfectly fine products because they "violate" some abstract concept is not insane at all. It's just what humans do.
In theory. Anyone can sue anyone at any time for any reason. Winning is different. In reality if you don’t have a bottomless legal warchest, good luck.
Worth noting this is Simone Giertz, she's a very popular maker on the internet, and her youtube channel has over 2M subscribers.
A lot of her funding on KS is porbably based on that alone.
It is a cool design, but 3 years? She definitely worked on other projects in that time.
Ultimately the volume taken up by the clothes is the same, you either have a shallow but wide closet, or deep but narrow. If you are not worried about the crease this might cause down the middle, then you might as well fold the garment and put it on a shelf?
Oh yes and that! Must've been a terrible experience. So yeah, "3 years" is a little click-baity, but I guess you gotta do what you gotta do for marketing.
I think the main delay is probably turnaround time on later prototypes. It takes a while to get something custom made, get injection molds done, get a prototype out of them, so like the idea is that she would have been working on this for 3 years, but not constantly on it for free years.
Getting anything done with custom PCBs is the same sorta design, order, wait, assemble, test, repeat process. So while it may take 50~250 hours of work to make just the electrical portion of a DEF CON badge, that 50~250 hours may take place over 6 months.
I think the crease comes not from folding but rather from stacking other clothes on top of it once it's folded.
Her invention looks very niche to me, but what do I know anyway? Still remember when GTA 3 came out and I was like "Pfft, who'd want the back of the main character occupying a sizeable part of the screen all the time?!" :)
this hanger has custom plastic parts. 3 years does not sound exaggerated. it's not 3 years of a full time job, but 3 years from concept to being ready for production sounds plausible.
Yup. My reaction when I saw the KickStarter campaing: it's Simone Giertz, so it's legit. If it were just some rando who's not a name I recognize from the DIY sphere, I'd assume it's fraud.
I bet many people will buy it because of who made it, even if they don't need it.
I was also thinking that the nearly 200 orders for a single coat hanger must be more of a sign of support for the creator than a sign of demand for the product.
> She definitely worked on other projects in that time.
If you didn't recognize the name, you are in for a treat… She filmed a lot of those and her collaboration with other makers — her videos with Laura Kampf are a breath of fresh air.
In the Kickstarter video she shows how you can hang pants with it: You split the coat hanger in half (where the 2 'triangles' are connecting by a plastic piece), and then just put the pants on half of the coat hanger. I guess it is the same as just folding the coat hanger and only using one half, but it looks tidier this way.
I marvel at the pedantry on HN sometimes...the 3 year comment is the thing you're locking on?
You can only mention the period of time something was developed if NOTHING else occurs at the same time? You can't multitask? Eat? Sleep? Use the restroom?
It took 3 years from the first thought to the start of the marketing campaign. So what?
She's moderately successful and a neat person, don't inject negativity into what is becoming less and less common on the internet, and what used to make it great.
My though was that, for being known for shitty robots, Simone came up with something that really wasn't shitty at all.
>the 3 year comment is the thing you're locking on?
What do you mean by locking on?
>You can only mention the period of time something was developed if NOTHING else occurs at the same time?
I think "I worked on a coat hanger for 3 years would be more clear." "I spent 3 years" literaly means that three years were used (spent) on it. Also it being the title of the video implies that. Basically, in terms of the title of the video, which is supposed to tell you the main idea, from the fact that the title isn't "I developed a new coat hanger" but "I spent 3 years working on a new coathanger," one might think that the three years were literaly spent on the coathanger. Putting numbers in a video title genrally improves clickrate. Also the fact that it took 3 years is more of a shocking claim so that in itself improves the click rate, which is somewhat dimminished if she took a 1.5 year break in between or something. I havn't watched the video by the way so my thoughts are based only on what I think the title implies, which is anyway what the discussion at hand is. All this said I do think it is possible three year were spent (or spent to the maximum extent possible). Lead times can be long in manufacuring and it is possible to spend a year just on verification and testing. The past few years has also seen a lot of supply chain issues.
To me the lower bound is not taking long breaks from the project. I know I've "spent three years" on projects that I worked on for a month and then continued for another month years later. And if I start them again now then it would be even longer.
The pedantry is just passive-aggressive hostility. There is a high jealousy avoidance factor in such responses - finding such an 'obvious' or 'easy' fault devalues the subject, so the jealousy fades away. "I have no need to respect/honor/be envious of this persons achievements because _insertSlightHere_ .."
Seriously, think about this next time the criticality levels hit too damn high. Folks can't deal with inequity easily these days, it seems .. its harder and harder to maintain an interest in others when so much depends on our own ability to be interesting ...
The notched rod looks neat, but isn't rifling through the clothes on the rack kind of an essential part of the experience? Can't do that with a notched rod.
Many people back kickstarters to back the person, not the product, and Simone is well known and nice enough that I think that enough people would do that regardless of whether or not they needed these hangers.
Yeah, it's kind of cool. But $20 for one foldable coat hanger is pretty outrageous, esp. considering that wire coat hangers you get at a cleaner's are virtually free, and you can fold them by hand.
Not the same thing! Sure! But close. And almost free.
Gotta finance the past 3 years of living, and employees apparently, minus what she made in that time from other projects which she says was operating a loss (but could be marginally lossy who knows)
She seems pretty confident that these hangers are a good idea. She could make up the costs of development over a longer period of time and still come out way ahead by the end. At $20 a hanger she risks turning a lot of people away. The kind of people who are really pressed for closet/clothes hanging space don't typically have $500+ to spend on hangers.
A lower price to get consumers to try them out and even replace a bunch of their existing hangers with folding ones could get her a lot more sales and let volume make up for smaller profits.
Agreed, that's the gamble one takes when deciding a price and generating hype from the start. I might also have put it lower, being rather cheapskate myself (or at least, not paying more than the absolute lowest price from the sustainable product options, which usually means... :( ).
Original submission title was "Why Simone Giertz spent 3 years working on a coat hanger", moderators changed it to "I spent 3 years working on a coat hanger", the title of the video is "Why I spent 3 years working on a coat hanger".
the very first sentence she says in her video is "I spent 3 years working on a coat hanger". is there something about the title that bothers you? I get when someone complains that a title is misleading, but I don't understand the commentary when the meaning is basically the same and the person commenting didn't even seem to have watched the first 3 seconds of the video.
I am not related to her in any way other than being her subscriber on YouTube, yet my nickname is attached to the HackerNews submission, and with current title I expect that somebody will eventually think that I am she, or that I pretend to be her.
"I" in a title refers to the author of the post (or video in this case). There's no implication that the author is also the submitter.
For example, I think I need to go lie down - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38288130 was on the front page for 20 hours yesterday, but it wasn't the submitter who thought they needed to go lie down.
In terms of taking out the person's name, we do that a lot in titles—especially when it wasn't that way in the original—because HN works better when the focus is on content rather than personalities.
I get the reason, but there's no need to worry. Most people here know that links aren't personal unless it's a Show/Ask/Tell HN. You can find other examples on the front page.
HN has a thing against questions in titles because a lot of them are clickbait. I don't care about this rule but that's why it was changed.
I understand that it's counter to the very specific brand of minimalism HN does, but it would be neat if Youtube submissions displayed the channel name without needing to click.
Love the iteration story, but like, what about pants? And thick winter coats? And stuff I don't want a weird potential fold line slightly to the left/right of centre?
Her example rack only contains the clothes that would be perfect for this. My rack and hangers accommodate all my needs with one simple cheap design.
For others' reference: the "one leg over, then the other leg over the other way" is how you hang a bespoke suit's pants. No special hanger needed, the cloth's opposite drag provides enough friction to keep it on. The hangar for the cuffed pants is good for keeping the cuffs in shape (but who wears cuffs?)
I fold the legs together (fold along the zipper, basically) and put them through the hole, which folds them again roughly above the knee.
There's very little room left on the hangar when I do that. Just like in that site's method.
So given a regular hanger will have ~10% of the hanger left empty with pants on it, and the new hanger cuts the continuous length down by 40%, I don't see how it'll be wide enough. Maybe her small person pants fit, but it doesn't seem like mine would.
This is so bloody stupid that it’s amazing. It literally solves a valid issue. I have a closet that isn’t deep and have short coat hangers for a bunch of clothes but this would allow my clothes to not sag off the end and fit into the closet nicely and neatly.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 346 ms ] threadChina is the apex of the open source philosophy taken to the maximum extent.
China copies everything and everyone else, but then still tries to keep it's own secrets.
It's effectively the same thing. It's just connotations. In fact China has a lot of bad connotations associated with everything they do so it's hard to talk about the country in an unbiased way. There's so much pride and patriotism that gets introduced into the equation especially given the fact that it's on track to overtake the US in terms of economic size.
On the other hand, open source has too much good connotations associated with the term. If the core philosophy was exploited to the maximum extent you essentially get China.. where the incentive to innovate is much less than the incentive to copy someone else's innovation.
>China copies everything and everyone else, but then still tries to keep it's own secrets.
Doesn't everybody do this? The US full of closed source and open source code/products? The thing with China is that stopping illegal copying is unlikely to be enforced so the only defense against intellectual property in China is secrecy.
In the US both secrecy and law are used for protection and many companies and people exploit both of these tools.
All of China/Asia/Africa are free manufacturing for the West…
Of course, the view that they don’t innovate and only knockoff the West is also hilariously false.
Not free. But extremely cheap.
>Of course, the view that they don’t innovate and only knockoff the West is also hilariously false.
Of course not. I never made this claim. But in China, the incentive to innovate is much lower due to lack of enforcement of intellectual property rights. So of course in terms of cost/benefit ratio every individual in China is more incentivized to copy someone else's innovation rather than innovate themselves. It's the most logical move.
It's sort of a strange parasitic symbiosis between the US and China that in theory should never work. When China steals ideas and manufacturing from the US and tries to sell it back to the US, one would think there's trade imbalance that would cause the whole thing to break down.
The thing that keeps it afloat is marketing at quality control. China can rip off a product but issues with marketing and QC prevent them from effectively selling it. So what happens is the US uses China to manufacture and then they sell the products at a huge margin above the manufacturing cost to everyone in the world including China.
Everybody gets fucked in this scenario except for US corporations. But at the same time everybody makes enough money such that the whole economic cycle doesn't fall apart.
I’m aware you left yourself a bit of wriggle room versus the absolute claim. Doesn’t change how it sounds.
> When China steals ideas
You know how they say the execution matters, not just the idea?
> and manufacturing from the US
US companies bring the plan, but the Chinese factories have unparalleled skills in actually manufacturing the product into reality.
Not sure how you are claiming that they both can and can’t deliver the required quality? Almost everything, high and low quality, can be manufactured in China. Spend the full $$$ value and you’ll get unbeatable quality. But pay peanuts, get cheap things.
> marketing at quality control. China can rip off a product
To continue my point above, they take that product and manufacture it with the best cost-value ratio for the mass consumer. You can always get various levels of quality in knockoffs.
> sell the products at a huge margin above the manufacturing cost
This is actually connected to my previous post. The West is able to do this solely due to economic and currency disparities, which are further perpetuated by the West. Hence, you get:
> Not free. But extremely cheap.
The West is completely dependent on the non-West for labor. It’s such a massive point of failure that the Western lifestyle would fall apart otherwise.
No. What happened here is you interpreted it as a insult to your pride. That did not occur. What occurred was a statement of a fact. It was you're own pride and bias that changed how it sounded.
>You know how they say the execution matters, not just the idea?
So. What's your point? Everybody knows this. Why are you stating something obvious? I think you were so clouded by your pride that you can't see that I'm neutral. I really don't care. Your tone only became neutral when you realized I was a neutral party. You were blinded by your own pride when you thought you were communicating with an "enemy" and when you realized I'm neutral that cleared your mind. Now you're talking some sense.
>Not sure how you are claiming that they both can and can’t deliver the required quality? Almost everything, high and low quality, can be manufactured in China. Spend the full $$$ value and you’ll get unbeatable quality. But pay peanuts, get cheap things.
I said marketing AND QC. There's a ton of low quality shit coming out of China. A ton. There's a ton of high quality stuff too that's behind a wall of bad marketing. You just need to compare TEMU and Amazon.
You say you're not sure how I made a claim that they can and cant' deliver the required quality then RIGHT after that statement you say almost everything high and low quality comes out China. So you aren't sure how I can make such a "claim" then you make the SAME claim right after that sentence. That makes no sense.
>To continue my point above, they take that product and manufacture it with the best cost-value ratio for the mass consumer. You can always get various levels of quality in knockoffs.
Quality is inconsistent enough that Chinese products are associated with poor quality. Additionally the marketing is just bad, your products may be made in China but the brand is rarely ever Chinese.
>This is actually connected to my previous post. The West is able to do this solely due to economic and currency disparities, which are further perpetuated by the West. Hence, you get:
Good we're in agreement.
>The West is completely dependent on the non-West for labor. It’s such a massive point of failure that the Western lifestyle would fall apart otherwise.
Not completely dependent. And not permanently dependent. Advanced manufacturing is still very much US exclusive. For example, boeing air liners. China does not know how to manufacture those things yet. And given the fact the US knows advanced manufacturing they can implement basic manufacturing again if the need arises. BUT, and this is a huge but, as more and more time passes with America not reinvigorating manufacturing they will slip deeper and deeper into permanent dependence.
But overall we're in agreement here. Next time be more careful before you charge in with your guns armed. It's better to be neutral as you see the world with clearer eyes.
You see, the thing is, I’m not even incidentally or partially Chinese. I just really despise the Western pride and xenophobic judgement people like you cast! I don’t know how you claim to be neutral, but I’m definitely not attempting to be neutral.
Anyways, I’m also gonna end my argument here. I see no value.
How can I be xenophobic against my own race? Additionally how can I be xenophobic against people in my own country who I grew up with?
You don't realize the extent of true neutrality. I see what is now. You're not all about patriotism or pride. You're on the side of idealized fairness. Where all things are unrealistically equal.
Is that a placeholder for 'over consumption perpetuated through mass brain-washing (advertising)'? Or is there more to it?
> Further investigation taught me that the Chinese have a parallel system of traditions and ethics around sharing IP, which lead me to coin the term “gongkai”. This is deliberately not the Chinese word for “Open Source”, because that word (kaiyuan) refers to openness in a Western-style IP framework, which this not. Gongkai is more a reference to the fact that copyrighted documents, sometimes labeled “confidential” and “proprietary”, are made known to the public and shared overtly, but not necessarily according to the letter of the law. However, this copying isn’t a one-way flow of value, as it would be in the case of copied movies or music. Rather, these documents are the knowledge base needed to build a phone using the copyright owner’s chips, and as such, this sharing of documents helps to promote the sales of their chips. There is ultimately, if you will, a quid-pro-quo between the copyright holders and the copiers.
https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4297
And in return the entire US of A gets to buy these of $2 instead of $20.
This is exactly how Apple got so rich. They "invent" and design hardware/software using a minimal amount of privileged well paid peoples and then go on and exploit cheap labor in a faraway country in order to sell the device with insane markup in their own county, very often to peoples who could have very much used a well-paid labor job.
China is making very clear an obvious fact: ideas, designs, concepts, and immaterial things like that only have value when they can be shared and executed upon. Making is where most of the valuable creation happens. Apple would be making zero dollar is it was only an idea of a device and not the actual very well-built device, enabled by China's workers...
Now I wish they had a hinge too. (Hmm, weekend project?)
But my first thought was that it will almost certainly be cloned and sold en masse pretty quickly, so I hope she gets enough revenue from it to pay for her time.
I also wondered if it wouldn't make your shirts more wrinkly or have the potential to leave creases. I don't think anyone cares to invest in a space-saving solution like this if it means all their shirts will be wrinkled or creased. Unless space is the primary constraint, like a tiny apartment, tiny house, or custom van build.
Simone's hangers would have been perfect.
> While using your own rod isn't recommended, we got a lot of requests for it so here you go! Please read our FAQ before buying so you're aware of the pros and cons. Some basic DIY knowhow required.
I think she knows the hanger is only useful as part of a system.
The reason why this isn't a thing yet is a few reasons - from my humble perspective:
First, it's actually a 2 part system.
You need the coat hanger but you also need the coat rack, more specifically - the dowel, to be really close to the wall.
So you would want to sell this as a kit. She doesn't really talk about it in the video - it feels like an odd afterthought. The kickstarter has it but only at the $135 starting level.
Secondly, it's not a "one size fits all solution". I can't use this with really bulky jackets. I think it's a cool, front door, guest entryway piece.
Last, it's pricy - really pricy. You're asking me to pay ~$15-20/hanger. If you have this specific problem... still hard pressed - definitely expendable income level. But because it takes up more width, it can hold fewer items not a general place to store clothes (hence i think guest front door would be a cool-piece/talking-point).
Curtain rods are a solved problem with widespread availability across the quality spectrum, this is a total non-issue.
I think the details matter. Curtain rods are typically 1-4" from the wall. This product looks like it works best <0.5" [0] from the wall otherwise it's possible the hanger will move around or have a "sagging" look.
Finding curtain rods that are that close is uncommon and limited in styles/options (I didn't see one on a quick amazon/aliexpress search). That's not to say you're wrong, but I don't think it's as simple as you believe it to be.
[0] https://ksr-ugc.imgix.net/assets/043/060/840/f8e1ace8b30ae8b...
Do an Image Search for "Clothes Railing U Bracket" for example.
But I agree you could build/attach small sidewalls or simply blocks and use this u bracket. But we've entered DIY space since it's not a common package and "readily available" as a solved problem.
A fitted wardrobe would be pricey (~$4000), barely fit depthwise and half of the space would just be covering the flue if we wanted it wall to wall.
On the other hand I can just buy 3/4 of these for each wall and still come out ahead. The grooves in the rods are well thought out and mean that I can saw them to size myself, as can anyone.
The only drawback I can think of is having clothes up directly against a wall. This could obstruct airflow and be an incentive for mould to grow.
Might be time for my first ever pledge.
Btw, there is an alternative solution, a hanger where the hook can spin, so one can hang clothes diagonally, nearly flat. Hers looks nicer on the wall though.
I find that this is tends to be the rule, not the exception and it's really reworked how I view things. I've started to almost (more jokingly than seriously) believe that the less novel something appears the more it actually is. The real mark for a good work seems to be "wow, how did you spend so much time on that? It's so fucking obvious" combined with "why has no one else done this?" But it is also easy to post hoc attribute something to being "well that's just x and y, so not really novel." But far too many things can be trivialized that way.
I wanted to say this because I think especially in engineering circles we have this wild novelty paradox. Where we can understand how our work, despite all outward appearances, is exceptionally nuanced and has minor details that are critical but when we judge others' works we don't consider such details. I think this is because most details are baked in when you learn of the new thing. But we got a good litmus test: is anyone else making/producing/doing this "super simple blatantly obvious" thing. If no? It's probably deceptively complex. (It's also why you should laugh at anyone who starts a sentence with "It's so simple, you just...")
My favorite anecdote due to its simplicity and ubiquity that I never thought about previously was the anecdote about the idea of making top surfaces slanted in public spaces to keep people from placing empty drinking cups and such on top of them. So damn simple and inconspicuous, but so effective and now I see it everywhere!
That's a low-key example of hostile architecture, isn't it? Other than preventing people from leaving cups around, this decreases the utility of public space. Everyone sometimes finds themselves suddenly needing a flat surface other than pavement for a couple of seconds or minutes. Say you've grabbed multiple coffee cups wrongly, or packed your groceries badly, and need to repack. Or something fragile you carried broke. Or you need to make a note on the spot. A raised flat surface nearby is godsend in such situations.
Wouldn’t it be worth taking out a design patent on a product like this? It might not stop people making similar designs, but it would give you protection against outright clones.
The sheer quantity of goods being shipped in, one-by-one on a daily basis make it impossible to block in any effective manner.
> Giertz has previously branded herself as "the queen of shitty robots" on her YouTube channel, where she employs deadpan humor to demonstrate mechanical robots of her own creation to automate everyday tasks; despite working from a purely mechanical standpoint, they often fall short of practical usefulness, for comic effect.[9] Giertz's creations have included an alarm clock that slaps the user,
https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/simone-giertz-inventor...
I think the highlights of her maker-career is Truckla, her Tesla she repurposed as a truck and drove to the cyber truck reveal. And her everyday calendar, which is a board of 365 LED and you can click each for everyday you complete whatever your everyday goal is and end the year with a lot board. As I recall it met and exceeded its kickstarter.
Her initial period as the queen of shitty robots has little to nothing to do with what she does today or how she approaches problems.
She has talked about the anxiety that came with going from “no one can really criticize my stuff because it’s meant to be bad” to “this is actually supposed to be good, but is it good enough?”
https://youtu.be/M1B3gATS0GE
(voice of machine by Adam Savage)
For places where space is at a premium a normal coat hanger on a telescopic rod would be a viable alternative in many cases, i.e. have the clothes rotate almost 90°, and mostly overlap.
You can also stack the coat hangers vertically, e.g. with cheap plastic brackets like these: https://a.aliexpress.com/_Ew6YWEt
There's surely good niche use cases for these, but looking at this advertisment I don't see why I'd want to go for this particular solution.
The sales pitch would be more convincing if it was contrasted to other space saving clothes hanging techniques in existing use, rather than pointing out that the inventor was unable to find prior art for her particular solution.
A sharp/small radius fold will leave a crease but will be significantly less noticeable on most clothes than wrinkles.
And either way the crease would be along a stress point where wearing the clothes would smooth the crease out quickly.
But in the discarded invention pile we can see an older design that folds down the exact middle (it has springs on the bottom).
Or (in the case of that cheap AliExpress plastic dongle) pull the bottom part up and away from the wall, and detach the clothes item with your other hand.
And yeah, maybe it's less pretty or whatever, but that's my point unthread: since this isn't contrasted with existing viable alternatives the sales pitch is rather incoherent.
In stacking case, it is "expensive" to Read, I mean choose and pick and put the stack back so it aligns nicely.
Plus folding the shirt in the first place takes more effort.
It's not a stack data structure. You can pull out items from the middle of a stack.
>Plus folding the shirt in the first place takes more effort.
This is a skill which can be optimized to be very quick to do.
I really need a tutorial on this :D
But after watching through to the end, Giertz comes off really genuine and it's an inspiring short story of failure and problem solving, and I love that. I believed at the end that she's solving a unique problem. Can't hate on it.
In Scandinavia you'll get a lot of it pine, which is one of the types of wood which typically doesn't need staining, especially for indoor applications.
> I spent 3 years working on a coat hanger
This solves a problem not everyone has (not me, for instance--I have full-size closets), but I almost wish I did. I think it's going to do well. The Kickstarter is already double-funded.
[1]https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/simonegiertz/coat-hinge...
It’s theft all the way down
There's also no reason to patent that many things for the same thing. You only need to be sufficiently vague to how it folds.
IANAL, but I've gotten a few patents rejected.
A point she made in the video (and at least partially confirmed by a quick patent search by me) is that there really isn't one of these in the prior art.
> There's also no reason to patent that many things for the same thing. You only need to be sufficiently vague to how it folds.
As far as patents are concerned, those are the same. Getting a patent broad enough to cover all her embodiments of the invention is the same as getting a patent that covers all the prototypes. In the US you get up to three "free" independent claims per patent application, that can cover different approaches that are non-overlapping. But they can't be addressed to different inventions. In other words, you can get a single patent on three reasonable variations of a folding coat hanger and slight variations thereof. You cannot get a single patent that covers a folding coat hanger, and precision timing device, and a popcorn maker.
Source: IAAPL
Have only had a brief look at the video but the folding mechanism looks like the standard figure-of-8 rubber things that join the various parts of folding clothes dryers (eg. [0] from John Lewis) - which makes sense! It's a proven design!
[0] https://johnlewis.scene7.com/is/image/JohnLewis/238949258alt...
If you look at the claim, which defines the scope of the monopoly, you'll see it is very long. That is because folding coat hangers were already invented and reinvented many times over. Some example published applications would be US4997115A [1], US5632422A.
I've not looked at the OP yet, but I'd be surprised if they had a new invention in this space; possible of course.
A lot of these things don't make it to be products because they're too expensive for the utility they provide.
[0] https://worldwide.espacenet.com/patent/search/family/0748815...
[1] https://worldwide.espacenet.com/patent/search/family/0231371...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_property
No doubt that’s helping a lot.
A lot of her funding on KS is porbably based on that alone.
It is a cool design, but 3 years? She definitely worked on other projects in that time.
Ultimately the volume taken up by the clothes is the same, you either have a shallow but wide closet, or deep but narrow. If you are not worried about the crease this might cause down the middle, then you might as well fold the garment and put it on a shelf?
Also, where are trousers supposed to go now?
There is a claim this won't happen.
She also had multiple treatments for brain cancer. Though I think that was before this project I imagine such a thing takes a considerable toll.
Getting anything done with custom PCBs is the same sorta design, order, wait, assemble, test, repeat process. So while it may take 50~250 hours of work to make just the electrical portion of a DEF CON badge, that 50~250 hours may take place over 6 months.
Her invention looks very niche to me, but what do I know anyway? Still remember when GTA 3 came out and I was like "Pfft, who'd want the back of the main character occupying a sizeable part of the screen all the time?!" :)
I bet many people will buy it because of who made it, even if they don't need it.
If you didn't recognize the name, you are in for a treat… She filmed a lot of those and her collaboration with other makers — her videos with Laura Kampf are a breath of fresh air.
She's a nice lady, but 9 months to incubate? Her mother definitely did other things in that time.
In the Kickstarter video she shows how you can hang pants with it: You split the coat hanger in half (where the 2 'triangles' are connecting by a plastic piece), and then just put the pants on half of the coat hanger. I guess it is the same as just folding the coat hanger and only using one half, but it looks tidier this way.
You can only mention the period of time something was developed if NOTHING else occurs at the same time? You can't multitask? Eat? Sleep? Use the restroom?
It took 3 years from the first thought to the start of the marketing campaign. So what?
She's moderately successful and a neat person, don't inject negativity into what is becoming less and less common on the internet, and what used to make it great.
My though was that, for being known for shitty robots, Simone came up with something that really wasn't shitty at all.
What do you mean by locking on?
>You can only mention the period of time something was developed if NOTHING else occurs at the same time?
I think "I worked on a coat hanger for 3 years would be more clear." "I spent 3 years" literaly means that three years were used (spent) on it. Also it being the title of the video implies that. Basically, in terms of the title of the video, which is supposed to tell you the main idea, from the fact that the title isn't "I developed a new coat hanger" but "I spent 3 years working on a new coathanger," one might think that the three years were literaly spent on the coathanger. Putting numbers in a video title genrally improves clickrate. Also the fact that it took 3 years is more of a shocking claim so that in itself improves the click rate, which is somewhat dimminished if she took a 1.5 year break in between or something. I havn't watched the video by the way so my thoughts are based only on what I think the title implies, which is anyway what the discussion at hand is. All this said I do think it is possible three year were spent (or spent to the maximum extent possible). Lead times can be long in manufacuring and it is possible to spend a year just on verification and testing. The past few years has also seen a lot of supply chain issues.
Sure, she's playing to the algorithm, but it's far from the most egregous example I've seen of it.
Seriously, think about this next time the criticality levels hit too damn high. Folks can't deal with inequity easily these days, it seems .. its harder and harder to maintain an interest in others when so much depends on our own ability to be interesting ...
First time I'm illustrating a comment with stock footage: https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/video/studio-shot-of-hand...
More than triple-funded just 5 hours after your comment.
Not the same thing! Sure! But close. And almost free.
A lower price to get consumers to try them out and even replace a bunch of their existing hangers with folding ones could get her a lot more sales and let volume make up for smaller profits.
Anyone who watched the first Indiana Jones film knows how sinister and awesome folding hangers are.
The use case is to be so prepared in life you have one in your leather trench coat to hang it up like a civilized person.
It’s just public posted sales revenue for a product that didn’t need a kickstart.
But I understand, in comparison to kickstarters that don’t succeed at all, yes.
For example, I think I need to go lie down - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38288130 was on the front page for 20 hours yesterday, but it wasn't the submitter who thought they needed to go lie down.
In terms of taking out the person's name, we do that a lot in titles—especially when it wasn't that way in the original—because HN works better when the focus is on content rather than personalities.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
HN has a thing against questions in titles because a lot of them are clickbait. I don't care about this rule but that's why it was changed.
Probably easier to do now that youtube has moved to @handles.
Her example rack only contains the clothes that would be perfect for this. My rack and hangers accommodate all my needs with one simple cheap design.
I feel like it should come with some clips on the bottom for attaching items like trousers and other odd-shaped garments.
Some examples here, most of which should work with her hanger size:
https://www.wikihow.com/Hang-Pants
There's very little room left on the hangar when I do that. Just like in that site's method.
So given a regular hanger will have ~10% of the hanger left empty with pants on it, and the new hanger cuts the continuous length down by 40%, I don't see how it'll be wide enough. Maybe her small person pants fit, but it doesn't seem like mine would.
Off to kickstarter I go.