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Comment by jchw | Hacker News Reader

Let me guess: I need to pair it with my phone, create an account, accept a ridiculous EULA that forfeits my right to participate in a class action suit, and update the firmware to add a new mapping feature that tracks my whereabouts (as a feature of course, with a heat map or whatever.)

I feel like these days, when I see a flashy new product, I need to be immediately informed that it doesn't require a smartphone or cloud app. I don't want to be hostage to my fucking shoes because Oracle acquired the company that runs the server for them.

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It’s worse. They’ll try to get recurring revenue from what should be a one-off expense for the customer. You’ll be offered personalized coaching. They’ll partner with one of those dieting companies that wants to replace your groceries. God help you if you enable alerts because the app to control the device will hound you endlessly until you sign up.

This seems ripe for replaceable bearings or some kind of maintenance thing.

Maybe the maintenance will amount to you mailing it to them to throw away and them mailing you a brand new product

> You’ll be offered personalized coaching.

Thank you for reading this so that I don't have to. Coaching for walking is an Onion article I swear.

Is this speculation? The way that this and the parent comment read, it sounds like you have information that I’m not finding on the website.

Hey, we are all just getting older and grumpier by the second

Imagine if you spent a ton of time and effort to launch a product and people on Hacker News start attacking it brutally based on things that aren't even true.

At this point I wouldn't be surprised if it is a viral marketing strategy.

What a sad sob story. It's so unfortunate for founders that they have to deal with such things as skepticism and preconceived notions.

How about this: if you care about my demographic of people, I'm happy to be appeased to in the form of commitments to have offline-only functionality for the hardware I'm paying for. But if you advertise the 1 millionth tech product and expect me to not assume it is like the 999,999 previous ones out of good faith alone, sorry, I'm fresh out of miniature violins.

I don't really want to be this flippant, but do you know how burned I am by this at this point? I've started returning things based on not being able to use them without an account. Just scroll through Google Home integrations some time and take a look at the vast mountains of internet of shit devices. Sometimes, it's proudly advertised that it needs a smartphone. Other times, you'd be hard pressed to know it even supports it, less requires it. Tooth brushes, bathroom scales, literally anything a Bluetooth radio will fit in.

If you want to be mad at anyone, don't get mad at me. Get mad at Juicero and all of the other folks dropping turds in the proverbial punchbowl. I am not sorry.

It's also unfortunate for the HN community that a bitter, reflexive dismissal with no basis in evidence that pertains to this actual product is the top comment on this story.

So what's the alternative? Just accept it without complaining ever and hope that it gets better, while people leach free advertising for their fresh internet of shit garbage to a hacker community? Why?

If it said something about having open source firmware you could flash yourself, the entire premise would be different. Without something like that, this is basically just free advertising.

I agree that it is unfortunate that I need to be bitter about this. Totally. Not our faults though, and again, I provide an out: give me a reason to believe this is different.

Of course it is natural for hacker types to be skeptical and cynical but I swear to God, I just want an inch of confidence. As it stands now I would bet you substantial amounts of money they are planning on putting a Bluetooth radio in the shoe.

> So what's the alternative? Just accept it without complaining ever and hope that it gets better, while people leach free advertising for their fresh internet of shit garbage to a hacker community?

Again, how do you know this product is one of those "internet of shit" ones?

Don't ask me to debunk a claim I never made.

They'll start collecting DNA samples of you from your feet and then create a clone. They'll lure you away on a fraudulent whiteboard coding interview assignment and then insert the clone into your family. When you return, the clone will have you arrested for impersonation and you will spend the rest of your life in Guantanamo while the clone lives your life. At a crucial moment, they will speak a trigger word that will cause the clone to kill the President, who they will then replace with a clone President, who will then use his now vast power to remove max-speed regulations on these devices, allowing them to go up to 10 mph.

It's terrifying.

This sort of "late-stage capitalism" cynicism used to be concentrated on reddit but is everywhere now. These shoes are extremely technically impressive, highly novel, and very useful, and yet they're still met with a combative dismissiveness even on a site ostensibly dedicated to such things. Sign of the zeitgeist.

I think it's a helpful cynicism. Remember when everyone rushed to 23andMe and those other DNA testing services and only later did we realize this is a new frontier of selling people's data?

I wanna know they're not gonna sell my strut

Another idea for them: Walkatron for NFTs token for "....." causes....

Mom! I need $50 my rollerskate shoes subscription expired! Now I can't walk anywhere fast!

Remember the days we used to get excited about new technology?

This looks very much like roller skates with a ratchet in the back wheels. Not sure it’s new as such

Please make the effort to look into it before you post a deriding comment. There's a lot more to them than that and they are actually a very interesting piece of engineering both in hardware and software.

Back when it made my life better instead of worse.

its been my experience that aliexpress usually offers a similar product with about 90% of the functionality and often times more features, with no rent-seeking required.

so ill wait for my mega-walker pro's to come out instead i guess.

The exciting part is that 82% of the mega-walker pro's will work great and the rest of them well self-immolate and burn down your garage randomly. Life is an adventure!

There's nothing on their website saying there's an app or you need to pair it with a phone. It seems to be all contained within the housing.

That's the future of SaaS (Shoes as a Service).

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