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Comment by liminal | Hacker News Reader

The launch looked like a hostage video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th3vzKTE0O8

Can you imagine working at such a cold, brutalist tech company? Devoid of any color or perceptible emotion or excitement? I think it says a lot about the character of the types of people who would give money to a venture like this. Probably brought up in uncaring, unloving homes themselves and now they feel it is their duty to inflict the harshness of their souls onto the rest of the world.

I think the issue is just bad direction on that video. They released this "video handbook" a couple weeks ago that's much more human.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyPxwp3SxdU

If there's anything about their work atmosphere I've gleamed from seeing employees talk about the company over the past few months it's quite the opposite of a cold, brutalist tech company. It's cult-like if anything. They've been acting way too impressed by their own product, and now that it's out and reviews have panned it, they tweet about how we all need to be more "optimistic about the future" and similar handwaving. It takes real faith-like buy-in to be shipping something like this and not feel totally embarrassed.

Sadly I have worked for such places. At the top somewhere is someone with an ego so large it will always prevent them from taking any accountability or offering a shred of humility. If the market doesn’t like the product, they will blame the market before admitting to any defect in their own thinking.

Narcissistic personalities are constantly rewarded in tech, they play right into the greed of VCs and unmask the fact most investors are completely incompetent.

> Can you imagine working at such a cold, brutalist tech company? Devoid of any color or perceptible emotion or excitement?

That doesn't sound Humane. (sorry, I'll see myself out)

wow it looks horrible. did their "AI" got the eclipse location wrong? April 8th was over NA but the AI said that the ideal location was in Australia?

The interaction is awful. you have to touch it to operate it via voice commands? that means you cant use it in public. There's also a notification light? how is someone wearing it on their chest supposed to see that? I dont think this is a scam for the consumer, because no one in their right minds is going to watch this and want one. They are just cashing in on the AI crazy happening right now.

Yeah, that video infamously had mistakes of it telling him the wrong location to view the eclipse, as well as saying a handful of almonds had WAY more protein than it should have.

There were more than a few “Wait a sec, that’s really hard to do” light bulbs that popped into my head watching that.

I wonder if the result is more of a product management/focus failure than a technical one? Perhaps the outcome would have been better if they had just picked one or two hard problems instead of trying to make the everything device right at launch.

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