Seriously, we don’t need smartphone-controlled candles
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
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.
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...
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.
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.
Personally, i'll stick with normal candles since I like the tactile and sensory experience of lighting a match and 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.
Easier to set up than actual lights and creates better ambiance.
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.
Art is wonderful. Art at home eventually loses its appeal and becomes more crap to maintain.
I wish I knew about this.
Seriously, I need a smartphone controlled candle.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
Another point of view would be that people who create frivolous things are, by definition, not particularly creative.
Or maybe I should lighten up.
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".
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?
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.
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.
http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/28/11317518/kuvee-bottle-keep...
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!"
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.