Humane's daily returns are outpacing sales | Hacker News Reader

Humane's daily returns are outpacing sales

theverge.com

50 pointsminimaxir60 comments

>Once a Humane Pin is returned, the company has no way to refurbish it, sources with knowledge of the return process confirmed. The Pin becomes e-waste, and Humane doesn’t have the opportunity to reclaim the revenue by selling it again. The core issue is that there is a T-Mobile limitation that makes it impossible (for now) for Humane to reassign a Pin to a new user once it’s been assigned to someone.

Adding insult to injury.

How could anyone think that's good product design?

Employee – "Hey boss, slight problem. We are soldering in the SIM chip and T-Mobile says that they cannot be remotely reassigned to a new number. So these devices will be impossible to refurbish."

CEO with a Steve Jobs complex – "This device is going to be revolutionary and no one in their right mind will return it, so we don't need to worry."

Good thing that they have ~90,000 unsold units, so refurbishing isn't a problem.

That's a almost certainly a business / vendor contract limitation not a design choice

Contracts are design decisions.

Yes!

That was also my first thought. Could not possibly be otherwise ...

Sounds like one of those "later" problems which no one looks into till much later

It's funny thinking about how the founders raised 250 million. It's a reminder, when you see founders of unicorns, often they arent really an "entrepreneur" that started from nothing. They just had the right resume to attract large volumes of capital.

People should view founders as more similar to hedge fund managers, who get a cut of the money they manage. Its largely the same, raise 30m because you went to Harvard, you are bound to cash out a few million, regardless of your ability to leverage that money.

I always wonder where some of these get their money and what the demo for the thing that doesn't work, was. If there was a demo at all.

I remember stories of Theranos raising funds and a number of potential investors supposedly walked when they felt uncomfortable with not being able to see any of what was claimed ... actually happening. Good choice.

Except the founders were really critical to the development of the iPhone. That's a pretty great signal. You can't really compare it to having gone to Harvard.

Reminder that Juicero (which never made sense) and Theranos (which did make sense, but was physically impossible, which should have been obvious to anyone with even a passing knowledge on the matter) also raised millions.

"One alpha tester contacted customer support to describe the product [...] They launched the AI Pin anyway."

Reminds me of the PowerPoint/NASA paper, many many years ago. At some point you get external feedback, whether from gravity or real customers. The direction of gravity will not be changed, real customers aren't much more malleable. Sigh.

It's a shame stuff like this happens, because wearable tech is likely the future, but repeated failures like this of wearable tech will make investors a little wary of other similar products.

I had never heard of this at all, after learning about it I can't think of a single thing I'd use it for, and I am not a luddite with new gadgets - I love stuff that tries to do something never done before.

I don't think that will be the case, I think at first glance this is a failure of wearables but FitBit, Apple Watch, and others clearly prove that wearables are a desirable market. With Samsung doing their ring, that is only going to help (unless it is just the same vaporware, I have not seriously looked at it yet).

Taking barely a closer look at this and Rabbit (and likely "Friend" next) the answer is obvious. It isn't wearables that is the problem, it's shoving AI into things it doesn't need to be and then it barely working to do what it claims to do in the first place.

It just so happens that for some reason many of these products are wearables, but thankfully Rabit is there to show what the actual bad investment is.

> it's shoving AI into things it doesn't need to be and then it barely working to do what it claims to do in the first place.

Premature comoditization.-

I mean when you can just make some quick hardware and then spend a few hours (if that) setting up your queries to OpenAI and tweaking the system prompt for a boatload of money apparently who isnt going to do that... ...

That is basically what is happening here. Just different versions of hardware where the actual software side is the smallest part of the equation. It is incredibly ironic that we went from an over engineered App into Hardware and a Pin solving a problem that didn't exist, to probably the laziest implementation with "Friend".

> the laziest implementation with "Friend".

Given the (current) weaknesses in the AI underlying these gadgets, I feel we will look back to these widgets much in the same way the "crazy flying machines" of the early days of aviation look ridiculous now. They were ridiculous.-

(But perhaps a necessary part of the technology's evolution ...)

Good call! Reading "The Wright Brothers" by David McCullough did give me a deep appreciation for how their slow, steady, incremental progress was thoroughly grounded and authentic. It ended up beating all the deep-pocketed rivals, most of whom were aiming to capitalize on the gestalt of the moment. History sure does rhyme!

P.S. I wonder who is (or what applications are) today on that slow, steady path of leveraging AI using carefully thought-out + meaningful approaches? Time is the best filter :)

> wonder who is (or what applications are) today on that slow, steady path

I am afraid it is a "gold rush" situation. Also, maybe (maybe) if VC and Wall Street love slows down a bit , we might see more careful approaches.-

Under these circumstances I am afraid the slower, careful approach does not get much used.-

Maybe - maybe - Anthropic could be that company. But the environment is not conducive. And, the major players - it appears - lack leadership to approach the development in this incremental, wise, and secure way.-

Cell phones and smartwatches can already fill this niche. This is an expensive, single-function dongle. It was obsolete before it ever hit the market.

I’d like to see watches get bigger and phones get smaller. Phones should be the Managed Switch of your personal area network.

Right now my phone and watch are fighting over this role and I have to keep fiddling with things like Bluetooth connections because of it. I can’t carry my phone when I’m out training. It’s just too big. But my Apple watch struggles wi5 battery capacity. Some days I’m charging my watch twice. If I had a candy bar phone I wouldn’t have tho juggle.

Perhaps you're already using the Ultra (1 or 2) and just a lot more than me but the reason I went that route instead of the 9 is it has double the battery life. I hardly use the Ultra of the things they advertise it for.

I’m just using the regular 9 or maybe 8 I forget. A 3 hour workout plus music goes from 100% to 45% and that’s in low power mode. If the 10 doesn’t have more battery life I may defect to Garmin. But those are massive.

The "sell" here though was to untether people from their phones, which is a worthy goal and definitely a market demand, this one just didn't fill that.

It’s really not a good sales message. People love their phones. Replacing it with something that’s kinda like a phone but more finicky because it’s trying to not be a phone is pointless, and for those who do want to untether from their phones for part of the day but still have some functional coverage from another device, an Apple Watch can fulfill that just fine.

Personally I think the bodycam form factor is interesting for a new tertiary device category, but if there is a marketable product there, it’s not a replacement for your phone.

I think the bodycam will never be it on it's own.

Watch - Almost everyone can wear this daily, in almost any environment. Glasses - Almost everyone can wear this daily, in almost any environment. Bodycam - Depends on what you're wearing and where. Work at a hospital? Probably not. A night out on a date? Probably not. At the beach? No. Tank top? No. Rainy day with layers? Not easy. It's too dependent on something that varies considerably.

Well I meant as a phone accessory, like a watch or AirPods or Oura ring. I think there’s maybe some potential there.

As for mounting, if you look at Axon’s bodycam website you can see they offer a variety of mounting options. The solution Humane came up with is not the only one, but yeah, you wouldn’t take it everywhere either.

I don't think you can make the statement "worthy goal and definitely a market demand" without backing that up with any evidence. What makes it a worthy goal to create an internet connected wireless device that just isn't a phone? What is the real market demand for that sort of thing?

I don't see that as a worthy goal nor I do believe there is any significant market demand for such a thing. It's almost impossible to exist in modern society without a smartphone.

> I don't think you can make the statement "worthy goal and definitely a market demand" without backing that up with any evidence.

Presumably the billions of dollars invested in this space would be evidence enough, or the success of things like the apple watch, or how Meta is shifting towards wearables to achieve a similar goal. I don't know what kind of "evidence" you're looking for here.

Do you have evidence this is something the market doesn't want?

The total failure of this product and all similar products like it.

The success of wearables doesn't mean people are looking to replace their phone -- these are all phone accessories. This AI pin would have been more successful as a phone accessory than a stand-alone device.

People already have to or want to carry their phone around; they are not looking for separate phone-replacement device. They want something that compliments their phone, not replaces it.

Yep. "I don't want to put forth the effort of taking my phone out of my pocket so instead I'll talk to a lapel pin and hold my hand out to read a really crappy projected monochrome display" is sorta.... silly.

> Presumably the billions of dollars invested in this space would be evidence enough

That is only evidence that gambles are getting desperate.

I never really understood that pitch, personally. The sell is to untether people from their phone by tethering them to something else (that is inferior in almost every way) instead? Where's the win?

"Untether from your phone" is a great sales pitch because the reality is somewhere between "tethered to ${totallyNotAPhone} instead" to "tethered to n+1 things" but the listener's thoughts go to not being tethered at all instead.

I’m not surprised. The attitude of build a prototype and ship it fast, we can fix problems with software updates only works if the hardware and the UX are really compelling.

IMHO humane pin was dead on arrival, using a pin to interact with an AI sounds great on paper until we realize it’s awkward and slow in real life use

Most new products and companies are dead on arrival. That is simply the statistically correct assumption and the weirder it looks, the more reasonable it feels to make that assumption.

Somehow this seems obvious product of something that should have been first verified as an app... And if that is popular make a stand alone product... Jumping to stand alone product seems just insane...

If I were less moral I might try to get funding for something like this myself...

The company backed itself into a corner. Since day 1 they sold a grand vision of a product that would "free you" from your smartphone. When it was obvious that it would only work as something you tethered to your phone, their collective ego was too big to say "we were wrong, here's an accessory instead".

But you can't own the ecosystem that way. So many user-hostile product decisions are made in order to own the user and potentially extract recurring revenue. Whether it's this or printer ink subscriptions.

Building products that user's want is secondary to owning the market.

So many "AI" products have already fallen flat or crashed and burned that I can see a day coming when the word dissapears from marketing, that it becomes a net negative as a buzzword.

It's already here:

"Using the term 'artificial intelligence' in product descriptions reduces purchase intentions" https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/07/240730134844.h...

I think that day is already here. But it's hard for an industry to suddenly reverse course on billions of dollars in business funding even if the industry collectively wanted to do it.

As it ever does. We cherry pick a couple of ideas every AI hype cycle and distance them from AI and call them something else. Once upon a time Dynamic Programming was considered to be in the AI domain. We’ve narrowed the scope of AI many times since, but there are still algorithms we can tease out and make boring.

People have tried to extract tensors once now (wisdom of crowds era), and they have hardware support now so

It already has a negative connotation for potential buyers, so we're not far away: https://news.wsu.edu/press-release/2024/07/30/using-the-term...

Note: this is about people returning the product in greater quantities than people buying the product

My initial thought was about stock price appreciation diverging from fundamentals. Private company anyway.

The name of the company makes the title really wonky.

I do not quite understand how these sort one off tech lifestyle products take off like they do. That pin just never looked like it would do what it promised.

The fact that they are selling a negative number of units shows that they aren't, in fact, taking off.

I don't disagree, but they did get the sales in the first place.

A few thousand sales, which can probably be attributed to the millions they spent in marketing.

Valid point.

indeed, it's more of an emergency landing

I think people are being way too hard on the AI PIN. It makes a great stocking stuffer for Christmas! Kind of like those wonky Sharper Image devices. They can change their marketing to gadget enthusiasts and as a gift for that weird uncle who has everything, and I think it could be a hit.

Integrate with an LLM like OpenAI's digital Chatline you could license the guts as the brains to a talking parrot or a new kind of Big Mouth Talking Bass fish.

A $699 stocking stuffed is gonna have a very, very small market though.

Don't forget the $24/mo subscription that is required to keep it from being a paperweight.

Augh, you're right. So $699 initially, and then another $288/yr until the end of time :P

> until the end of time

*until Humane sells to someone like HP for its patents and services are all turned off

How could this have failed?!

Darn economy ruining perfectly reasonable company ideas.

Does that include the T-Mobile bill or is that another $10 a month?

Are you perhaps thinking of the Rabbit R1 and not the pin? I can imagine a somewhat affluent person doing a $199 stocking stuffer.

I don’t see people doing a $699+perpetual subscription stocking stuffer. That’s kind of a significant burden you’d be putting on the recipient.

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