A prototype watch, raising hope for Parkinson’s | Hacker News Reader

A prototype watch, raising hope for Parkinson’s

blogs.microsoft.com

278 pointswglb101 comments

> As part of her work, Zhang researched the root cause of tremors. She spent six months, off and on, building prototypes. She sometimes worked in her London home, soldering wires to PC boards and tinkering with coin cell motors to create vibrations. She tested early versions with four other people with Parkinson’s, producing promising results for three, spurring the idea forward, she says.

This paragraph reads like the solution is not as simple as strapping a vibrator to a wristband. So where are those results documented? Does anyone have an idea where the source code and schematics are for the singular Emma device prototype?

Edit: I have not been able to find source code yet. A reddit thread about the device [1] from December 2016 links to a screenshot [2] of a BBC documentary from which one can infer that Zhang used six motors for the Emma device and timed them in a specific way.

Edit 2: I noticed that my other HN comment [3] asking if this article is a PR submarine was first upvoted until it was shown at the top of the thread. It was then downvoted until it moved to the bottom of the thread. If a HN mod is reading this: Does that voting pattern seem normal?

Edit 3: Now this comment is also receiving downvotes?

Edit 4: The BBC has a GitHub repository containing other code related to the documentary. There has been an issue opened in January 2017 [4] from a person who wants to help his father who has Parkinson's. No source code seems to have been released since then.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Parkinsons/comments/5hh2fx/emmas_wa...

[2] http://i.imgur.com/0q0QHsj.png

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14388178

[4] https://github.com/bbc/MiD/issues/3

I have a nagging feeling about this project as well. It is simply too good to be true: first we see a lone engineer fiddling with some wires on a prototyping board, and a few months later poof the girl can write again.

She is defying years and years of experience by a large number of experts in the field, this just does not sound realistic.

Why is this 'breakthrough' presented as the effort of an individual? The only reason I can think of is that MS is trying to show the world what Good People they are, and showing the long and hard work of a large team of engineers is just not sexy.

Zhang was at Lift when she saw that they invented the spoon that compensates for Parkinson tremor during eating. That's where she got the idea. The wrist device was built by electrical engineers, not her.

AFAIK the way this magic device works is if you vibrate the wrists for some reason that makes the tremors go away. not sure how that works. But it is most definitely not related to the parkinsons spoon, because all that thing is a spoon with active stabilization.

Frankly weird that if this simple technique has already bee n discovered, i don't see why this tech hasn't been mass-produced already. seems like a no-brainer.

It sounds like active noise canceling technology that you get in Bose and other expensive headphones, but instead of audible noise, it's tremors that are being canceled. When I saw EMMA, it made me think of the spoon, so it makes sense that she saw it too.

I understand your frustration as I too was looking for what series of hypotheses her journey of discovery took her through. Alas, this was a (good) human interest piece so that was not the focus.

Assuming this device works, it is fun to think about why this might be. All I could extract from the article is that it sends vibrations and fails for some, requires randomness in others and works at a specific pattern for Lawton.

I am not an expert but what I do know is that Parkinson's can be viewed as a breakdown in the proper transmission of feedback from erroneous predictions. In planning movements, the brain is constantly making and correcting its predictions, sufficient damage to part of this circuit would result in improper gain modulation and ineffective dampening to prevent overshoots. Improper cost predictions might even affect motivation to perform a movement in the first place.

It's not clear how a pattern of vibration might lead to a reduction in symptoms. My best guess is that it's related to stochastic resonance. The noise or pattern from the vibrations, and that the population of neurons responding to the vibrations are different enough might be such that, whatever weak signal there is carrying the proper feedback is now more readily decoded. Whether or not this device works will likely be highly variable, dependent on the state of degradation and particulars of the erroneous feedback control.

TIL about Stochastic resonance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic_resonance

One thing that is virtually guaranteed to get you downvotes is complaining about downvotes. Which you do twice in this comment.

It was not my intention to complain, as I neither feel pain, dissatisfaction or resentment against those who downvote me. I wanted to point out that my comment asking if this is PR was downvoted to the bottom. I remember such a voting pattern from only one other thread on HN. I just looked for it and it was also on a thread about Microsoft [1]. I can not remember such voting patterns for any comment not about Microsoft.

I will probably not respond to further comments about those downvotes, as it seems off-topic; dang has already commented extensively regarding previous astroturfing accusations against Microsoft [2]:

> If MS "infiltrated" HN, it's news to me and I'd like to know about it. If anybody did anything to HN that could fairly be described as "infiltration", we'd be pissed. It's our job to protect the integrity of this place for the community and we take it seriously. When we see gaming and manipulation we crack down on it hard. But actually the BigCos aren't the ones who do such things, probably because they're (rightly) too risk-averse.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12319829

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11844253

> dang has already commented extensively regarding previous astroturfing accusations against Microsoft

dang has also commented that there is no special status for Microsoft on HN.

I don't think the poster is complaining about the downvotes. He's just trying to understand if there's an unnatural pattern in all these things.

This is a PR piece, and it's very interesting. Seems like we're all in such a hurry to de-bunk it, demanding scientific details and open source. If Apple published this, would the reaction be as cynical?

I don't have an issue with it being a PR piece, but I think it's a shame that an actual discussion of the tech is basically non-existent.

Other controversial opinion: I've seen several examples of tech projects led by women where the reporting is couched much more from the human interest angle than a tech angle, and worst, questioning the tech in question can be met with accusations of sexism. I think this does a great disservice to women in tech by assuming a less critical bar.

As for examples, Elizabeth Holmes is probably the most well known one, but another one that was kind of fascinating to me at the time was Grace Choi and her "Mink" make-up printer. The printer as advertised was basically non-existent, but articles were universally laudatory and many lambasted men who questioned the tech for "just not getting it." I'm not arguing that is going on here, but without an explanation of what's actually going on, and comparisons to other similar technologies, this is just a puff piece.

Oh come on. The Apple glucose monitor thread has one poster criticising Apple for a cynical money grab because what they should really have done is cure diabetes completely and the only reason they didn't is commercial gain. Honestly, go look. Post by Xoros. There are other cynical takes, one calls Apple's strategy 'cute', but Xoros takes the biscuit.

If Apple had published this, it'd be on the market within a few days / months.

No, I think your other comment was getting downvoted because it didn't really make any sense and people disagreed with it. No conspiracy there.

This placement/voting pattern is not abnormal, IME - particularly as different child comments are left.

New comments always start at the top

Not always. I've had new top-level comments get placed below an already highly upvoted top comment.

Yeah, I will say that I downvoted you. Your expectations (source code, that the results would be documented to your satisfaction after a trial of size N=1) seem unreasonable to me, to the extent that I personally think it is downvote worthy. I don't think, "where's the source code," contributes to the site, especially in situations where one would not reasonably expect to have access to it.

----

I have definitely seen the pattern where something I say initially gets downvoted, or upvoted, then the reverse happens later. It seems at a minimum that there might be a difference between the populations of people who read a story soon after it's posted and long after it's posted. It wouldn't surprise me if different sorts of comments appeal to these different groups, and that's ignoring the content of replies.

Personally I would suggest not worrying about it too much, and doing your best to make comments that seem good to you. For a long time, I actually had a userscript that eliminated the fading style that gets applied to comments, and also hid karma and points. In some ways, that makes using the site a little less stressful, because you can worry a bit less about what others think.

Edit: this comment is a good example of one that initially received several upvotes, but is now negative. ;)

In the article, Hayan Zhang is described as a researcher. She (claims to have) created a device that improves the quality of life of people who have Parkinson's. The device seems to have been built with easily obtainable components. Similar effects to the one she exploits have been described scientifically [0], although it seems questionable if the result comes from the vibration [1].

Expecting publication of source code from a researcher seems appropriate to me. From another article about the “Emma device” [2]:

> Haiyan has no plans to commercialize the technology, but hopes other researchers will take on the project and run with it. “I think it warrants more trials,” she noted. “It definitely works for Emma. I’m amazed how well it works for her.”

How can others improve on her work when it is not published? To me it looks like this invention is milked for PR as much as possible, while details about implementation are scarce. That device helps only one person right now, while potential is there to help a lot of people.

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20037223

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23939405

[2] https://mspoweruser.com/microsoft-researcher-creates-wearabl...

I can see where you got your expectations from. You should reach out to the researcher. Maybe they can tell you why it's not OSS. I'd not be surprised if it was some mix of medical devices being a special case, and the IP being owned by Microsoft.

I wrote Hayan Zhang the following Email with the subject line “Source code & schematics for Parkinson's device?”:

Hello Hayan Zhang,

I have read several articles about the “Emma device” you have built, but could not find any details. Have you published source code & schematics?

The BBC has a GitHub repository for code related to the documentary. The one open issue on it is from a person who wants to help their father who has been affected by Parkinson's <https://github.com/bbc/MiD/issues/3>:

> I am hoping to design a similar item to help my father with both > writing, and potentially in continuing other activities that his > Parkinson's is starting to inhibit, and while the Big Life Fix episode > covering it gave some hints at the details, there wasn't that much > concrete information.

In a Reddit thread, other people also want to know how the “Emma device” works and built it for their relatives who are afflicted by Parkinson's: <https://www.reddit.com/r/Parkinsons/comments/5hh2fx/emmas_wa...

Since you seem to have zero interest in commercializing your findings, I do not understand why the information on the details seems hard to find. Have you published something (like a scientific article) on the subject?

Greetings,

No answer. I wrote to Hayan Zhang <haiyan@gmail.com> btw.

Hm.

Parkinson's patients sometimes have tremors, but all tremors are not Parkinson's. The physiological explanation of Parkinson's "firing off wrong signals to muscles" is not correct.

Parkinson's disease is defined primarily by bradykinesia and limb rigidity - the difficulty of the motor planning part of the brain processing motor commands to the motor cortex. Much of the disability in Parkinson's disease comes from a patient's brain not being able to come up with motor commands fast enough, resulting in wooden, statue-like movement and gait instability (i.e. coming up with motor commands fast enough to maintain upright balance).

Of interest - while tremors (i.e. essential tremors, action tremors, rubral tremors) can limit function, the interesting part of Parkinsonian tremors are that the vast majority of them are "resting tremors," i.e. they go away with action and thus are not the limiting factor of writing. Most Parkinson's patients complain, rather, of the bradykinesia (motor command issues) causing micrographia, or excessively small and unreadable handwriting.

Anyway, I am not sure what diagnosis Emma actually has - it may be what is known as a "tremor predominant" Parkinson's disease (which overlaps a bit with essential tremor, another neurological movement disorder). It may very well be essential tremor. Or it may be a dystonic tremor which responds, bizarrely, to weird sensory cues, i.e. "gestes antagonistes". If the watch with its vibrating counterweights works for her, great. For most of our Parkinson's patients, it doesn't solve their main issue which is the inability to move or walk, or at least do so well.

Not to mention the cognitive deficits in Parkinson's disease which is a whole other can of worms.

Of note: Parkinsonian and essential tremors respond extremely well to implantable deep brain stimulators...that is a whole other topic as well.

Are you in some way working with those with Parkinson's? You seem highly knowledgeable. I have a relative that I believe is in denial of the disease (Parkinson's + as described by one doctor) and am looking for some insight. Apologies for the out of band comment, just looking for help.

Hm, sure. Not sure what the best way to get in touch would be through HN, but send an email to my username at gmail i guess.

Does the article even mention if the watch has any active vibration adjustment? I may have missed it, but I'm wondering if this is a specific vibration pattern, or if any similar vibrations would help this particular person.

I think it was buried deep in there somehow, but I didn't really see a great explanation of what exactly they were doing.

TBH there seems to be a ton of "wearables" ideas flooding the poster sessions of the last few Movement Disorders Congresses, but honestly, these all either a) focus on tremor tracking to the exclusion of everything else and thus totally misses the main point of Parkinson's, or b) pour a ton of money onto custom hardware and electronics, yet can't really accomplish more than what you get with a fitbit or Apple Watch,

Sounds more like an advertisement for Microsoft and Windows while it actually has nothing to do with it. It's almost as if a good idea went through a PR processor that tries to turn it into a 'nice story' while also replacing normal words with branded words. It's annoying as hell to read, and instead of remembering the good idea behind this piece of personal electronics, it only leaves me with the bad taste of corporate marketing.

I have "Essential Tremors", which can be very frustrating. I can write, but there have been times, especially in school, where having tremors made my writing quite a bit messier than if I didn't have them. Something like this could be really interesting in the future, not just for people who have Parkinson's but also other causes of tremors.

The BBC documentary "The Big Life Fix" is available here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkjdHzlT_jI

It's worth watching, it's very emotional watching her try and write with the watch on for the first time.

Can anyone with a medical background chime in with some simple theory about why pulsed vibrations are so effective?

This is incredibly exciting work.

why pulsed vibrations are so effective

Vibrating shoes have been shown to be useful for helping elderly populations avoid falls; their diminished sensory acuity makes it hard for them to feel the differential pressure which indicates that they are starting to fall, but adding noise results in the sensory threshold being crossed.

I'd presume that the muscle overstimulation which causes characteristic twitching/jerking is being suppressed by improved sensation of pressure.

Interesting, I have syringomyelia (cavity in the spine that presses on the spinal cord), I'm lucky in that on the scale of "I'm fucked" to "I'm asymptomatic" I'm far closer to the latter but one of the side effects is decreased nerve acuity, worse some days than others.

Well, we don't actually know if the device itself is even effective. The placebo effect has a very large effect in Parkinson's treatments due to it being caused by low dopamine (and dopamine is released when you are excited about something).

We actually have a very effective, natural fix for this kind of Parkinson's symptom. Marijuana.

Look how amazingly (immediately) effective it is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4s-6fnLSzE

For those looking for a decent TL;DR:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/talkingtech/2017/05/10/m...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/05/11/microsoft-b...

We are working on handwriting analysis for Parkinson's Disease if anyone is interested -- http://ineuroskill.com/

Applications are for both monitoring medication intake and as a precursor for early diagnosis.

This reminds me of Google's Liftware, which does something similar but for cutlery.

https://www.liftware.com/

That's been mentioned as one of her inspirations in a couple places, even though they're two very different mechanisms. This bracelet seems to actually interrupt the tremor somehow while the spoon just stabilized itself like an active camera gimbal.

It's not. This isn't active stabilization, it just vibrates the wrist and somehow they claim this causes the tremors to stop. Very strange.

Wait, so does it just work by adding noise to the sensory input with simple vibration motors? Or does it actively counteract the tremors using an accelerometer?

It's great to see someone helping the symptoms and improving quality of life. It wasn't until a family member got Parkinson's that I realized it's not just shaking hands, it's a terminal illness with progressive neurodegeneration. Usually with dementia happening alongside the physical symptoms. It's about as scary as Alzheimer's.

There is a trio of neuro-degenerative diseases which are horrible and have no known cure or even treatment to make the symptoms manageable. The worst part is that the person who gets them suffers as much, if not more, than the people they know and they get worse over time. Huntington's, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.

Really fantastic story. Reminds of those times when engineers have a really profound effect on the lives of certain people -- like development of the cochlear implants that help the deaf hear.

The next thing I expect along these lines is 3-D printing of human organs.

Why wasn't this flagged as a dupe?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14316703

I would've expected the hash cruft to be ignored.

That's my error. I usually remove said cruft before submitting but neglected to do this time.

Sorry, I was asking more why HN didn't do it automatically.

I agree, it's frustrating. I think the primary reason is that a general algorithm for doing so might be difficult to come up with. Some hosts, such as Medium, use unique identifiers for each page view which are apparently mapped on the server side. If that identifier is removed, Medium returns a 404.

I chatted with mods and it is tricky to do with full generality.

This is why we need scientists. To make people's lives better.

I don't know. Is this normal to cry when you see something like this.

Or I have to go to psychiatrist especially considering I have symptoms of BPD.

It's normal to cry when viewing something like this, but if you do suspect you may have mental health issues please please go to a doctor to have it checked out. You could be suffering for no good reason. In fact you may not realize the extent you are suffering until you start treatment and realize that you didn't have to feel that way.

> I don't know. Is this normal to cry when you see something like this.

I did :)

It's called empathy.

It's called "being manipulated". OK, I'm a bit cynical here, but calling this "empathy" alone sounds a bit simple to me...

That's incredible. The side by side comparison was so stark. I wonder what the physiology behind this is.

Absolutely astounding.

Woah. Nice one, Microsoft. That's amazing.

This article does somehow make a painful read. I just can't.

It'd be nice if someone who could handle it wrote a TL;DR for us.

Where can I buy or otherwise get (make, 3d print, etc) one?

what about just adding a heavy watch? that would at least cut down the frequency of the tremors, which could help the brain get its act together

It's not just heavy, it vibrates. It's actively trying to interrupt the tremors, as opposed to just dampening.

So is this what a PR submarine [1] looks like? I remembered that I had read such a story before and found that Emma could also write again in March 2017 [2], December 2016 [3], November 2016 [4] and probably other months between now and then.

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html [2] https://theassistiveblog.areavoices.com/2017/03/30/emma-a-we... [3] https://mspoweruser.com/microsoft-researcher-creates-wearabl... [4] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3979182/Engineer-c...

How can this be a PR piece? For starters, there isn't even a product. And most important, this is Microsoft, not some up and coming start-up that's craving for exposure. Microsoft is a behemoth when it comes to ad spending. If they had a product to market they wouldn't need some native advertising article, they'd go in guns blazing.

Microsoft is actively rebranding itself from "evil megacorporation" to "innovative doer of good".

That's pretty much every corporation these days though. Facebook, Google, Amazon starting a permanent homeless shelter etc.

Like "Microsoft <3 Linux" and "Microsoft <3 Open Source".

Except that Microsoft used to collect 2 billion dollars in patents from Linux based product vendors. They totally "<3" open source.

To the downvoters: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_documents

The story is a Microsoft blog post - it is definitionally PR. Still a good story though.

It's PR, but it's not a submarine.

Also I'm not sure why you think it's suspicious that this was written about before. It's an amazing result and clearly it didn't happen overnight so there were earlier opportunities for a writeup.

In what way is this submarining?

Looks like nice work. I think. I couldn't find the details and didn't want to spend the full 15 minutes reading.

This style of writing is very frustrating.

1. Introduction. We set up for something dramatic. In this case, a Parkinson's sufferer is about to see her life changed. In another recent story, a maternity nurse is about to birth her first child, and we were teased she would die after giving birth. Now we're at the moment of truth. All we have to do is...

2. CUT TO BACKSTORY. When X and Y first met in 1997, they were first drawn to each other by a shared love of whatever. Eventually, their travels led them to find out...

3. DEEP BACKSTORY. When X was 9 years old, she found a thing that immediately interested her. She kept at it because...

4. FAMILY BACKSTORY. Her grandfather fought in WWII/Korea/Vietnam for the US/British/Japanese/Australian army, and he tinkered on the side in whatever endeavor X would go on to work in...

5. MAIN TOPIC. And we get a paragraph or two of what we originally were interested in reading about, but not before...

6. CUT TO ORIGINAL BACKSTORY. Flesh it out a bit more. Finish it out. College, grad school, first job, moved across the country, landed current job. And now, finally...

7. NOT SO FAST. Let's finish out the grandfather's story, and his reaction when he learned what X was working on. Ok, now...

8. BACK TO THE ORIGINAL STORY ITSELF. And we get the five last paragraphs, which could just be joined with the first 3 paragraphs to tell the entire story. But then we woudn't hit our word count.

I just wanted to learn how this bracelet works. With that other article, I just wanted to know how the nurse died. Do I need to be teased for 27 paragraphs?

And with all that back story, they didn't even answer the most important question: WHERE DID THE IDEA COME FROM? How did the engineer know to she had to build a vibrating wristband?

Probably from that vibrating spoon idea.

https://www.liftware.com

I was always under the impression that the spoon did not vibrate but instead moved opposite of the direction of the tremors. Kinda like a steadycam for a camera.

The prototype actually was just the mechanism for a camera stablizer, just with spoon attached. Not actually a steady cam though, as those are just passive inertia-based gimbals on springs.

This is classic longform journalism writing, and it's the reason why I don't like longform journalism. I wish they'd give me an abstract -- not having article summaries is the reason I never found any "good" magazine worth the money. Imagine so

No. This is a bait-and-switch masquerading as good long form journalism. The bait in this case was the technology. The switch was the backstory. Proper long form journalism does not engage in this sort of dishonest writing. The story you came to read is introduced at the beginning and every paragraph afterward serves to build up what you want to know. Kinda like a novel!

It's really not. Longform journalism can be readable and not irritating, but you have to be a talented writer to pull it off. In addition the subject of the story has to be suitable. Here the talent is lacking and the subject doesnt fit the long-story treatmnent.

This is not a problem with "longform" writing, it's just a problem of poor writing.

I read a long winded essay on the filming of Blues Brothers. It was a perfect writing style because the message was found in the layers of anecdotes and details.

When I want to learn facts, I want to read something structured like a 9th grade essay.

Link?

You got that far? Congrats.

I couldn't stand it. After the introduction, I started scrolling, saw the general structure and just closed it.

It was the most unpleasant text I looked at in a very long time.

There's a video embedded which does a decent job: https://youtu.be/k9Rm-U9havE

Surely you could have read the whole thing in the time it took for you to write this? Why even bother?

Feedback is a gift.

Couldn't you just search for "Microsoft"+"watch"+"Parkinson's" and spend, let's say, two minutes selecting a "just the facts" article?

You probably spent those two minutes writing your post.

I spent about 10 minutes writing my post and it was very cathartic.

The article is teasing the reader. It could have easily explained the basics of the device in one or two sentences at the top. The two main questions the reader has are "Does this work?" and "How does this work?" The writer is just being cute by not getting those answers out of the way.

Different journalistic styles appeal to different people. If this one didn't appeal to you, that's perfectly fine. To figure out why it didn't appeal to you, and why you personally find it frustrating, that's great, and a good exercise in critical thinking, literary analysis, and self examination.

That said, there's a key difference between "This style of writing is very frustrating." and "I find this style of writing very frustrating." From reading other comments in this thread, the story appealed to them. What comes across to you as "the writer … just being cute" is engaging writing to others. As currently written, your critical analysis of why you find the journalistic style frustrating comes off as a rant, which doesn't contribute constructively to discussion on HN.

I agree with the gist of your reply. Different strokes, and so on. But I also found khazhoux's comment quite useful.

Also, your comment seems to try to differentiate as to whether an opinion should begin with "I think" (specifically, "I find"), which is a suggestion of poor writing form.

Had you followed your own advice, your last sentence might read "As currently written, your critical analysis of why you find the journalistic style frustrating comes off as a rant, which ^I don't feel contributes^ constructively to discussion on HN." I think you'll agree that those words are as wasteful here as they would have been in khazhoux's comment.

No, my post wasn't self-examination. I stated my opinion about the very low signal-to-noise ratio in this article. It's so uninformative, the article itself barely contributes to discussion on HN.

The article was tech-bait.

> From reading other comments in this thread, the story appealed to them.

The story, or the writing style? I also upvoted the story, because I'm not going to punish it for the shit writing. And I actually dislike that the topmost comment, which I agree to from the bottom of my heart, is about the style; but the very fact that it's at the top means that maybe even more people find it just as annoying.

As for the style, I couldn't find it here. Is there a name for it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_style

I always wish these blog posts were written like this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid_(journalism)

Maybe it is about how "engagement" gets measured, and having people jump through hoops is more profitable than valuing their time and their own decisions about how deep they want to delve?

This is not news, therefore it doesn't have to be written in the style you linked.

If it was, people would read the first paragraph, move on, and then complain that they wasted their money in buying whatever newspaper/magazine they're reading.

I'm still asking what style it's supposed to be. If it doesn't have a name, it could use one.

> If it was, people would read the first paragraph, move on, and then complain that they wasted their money in buying whatever newspaper/magazine they're reading.

If this blog post was written in a way that isn't scatterbrained, people would complain about the money they wasted on "whatever newspaper/magazine they're reading"? I think the word I'm looking for here is "no".

The fact that people enjoy different things does not mean they are all as intellectually valuable. Children like stories with talking animals, but that doesn't mean all talking animals are appropriate for all venues. Likewise, we can reasonably (even if contentiously) make value judgements about some format that people really enjoy, like pulpy romance novels, clickbait teasers, or outrage porn.

HN is supposed to be about gratifying intellectual curiosity (explicitly in the guidelines). Romance novels, talking animals, and run-of-mill human interest pieces don't belong.

Indeed, HN is a place for gratifying intellectual curiosity. If you feel a submission (or comment, for that matter) is inappropriate for HN, please flag or down-vote it and move on. We all play a role in curating HN. Writing excessively negative comments (or comments written in an excessively negative way) lead to a worsening of discussion.

"Excessively negative comments"? I don't know what you mean by that. Content-wise, criticism is just as valid as agreement. Tone-wise, yes everything should be civil and friendly, but khazhoux's tone was fine.

You can't downvote submissions, and the post wasn't flag worthy (i.e., spam or off-topic).

Because I felt the same and wound up looking up another article here's one that does precisely that:

https://www.fastcompany.com/3066610/how-a-vibrating-watch-he...

> A new watch-like device has changed that: Strapped on Lawton’s wrist, it counteracts the tremors through vibration.

I'm glad they took the time to write down what I was thinking while reading the article.

> You probably spent those two minutes writing your post.

Let's spent two years linking to that comment under every article it applies to.

Why not give us what we were baited with, and then put more backstory below for those interested? Instead it's just a jumbled mess, paragraphs just jumping all over the place.

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