post the most worthless kickstarters and greatest investor rewards you got

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > YOSPOS > post the most worthless kickstarters and greatest investor rewards you got

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JawnV6: Jul 4, 2004; So hot ...

Sagebrush posted:

6.6Wh is the iphone's internal battery. i didn't realize the case had its own battery as well (yay, now you also need to charge your iphone coffee maker case)

and yeah the power draw they suggest is several times what even the most generous figures would safely allow

ah gotcha, it was close enough i thought you might be taking a reasonable energy density from somewhere else (iirc, the 730 ones are very temperature limited and ridiculously expensive?) but the device battery has a much bigger volume

EE's have knocked attempts at this kind of analysis because it's a lot better to just find the battery and go from there

BobHoward posted:

this is a real weak and disappointing fishmeching you're not even technically correct

# ¿ May 5, 2017 19:34

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# ¿ May 9, 2024 04:50

JawnV6: Jul 4, 2004; So hot ...

no, he's dissecting a precise claim made on the KS about what they're doing:

quote:

The 35x60x5mm battery lithium-metal able to heat 25ml of coffee from 15/20 degree up to 50/60 degree will happen in an estimated time between 5 and 8 seconds.

fish you've got zero ground to be going at sage over this, the KS claimed to do this and he's speaking directly to it. there's no "oh if they ACTUALLY did espresso," as a wholly separate failure from defying the laws of physics their warmed-over brew does not conform to the strict italian definition of espresso. that you've managed to conflate the two, separate, failures does not reflect on sage

now here's a retro kickstarter for y'all, some young traitorous upstarts left a good, honest company and tried to pitch some fancy new technology: https://www.fairchildsemi.com/application-notes/AN/AN-77.pdf
look at some of this "BUT WE'LL MAKE IT UP IN VOLUME" garbage:

quote:

Finally, there is no technical reason why CMOS prices cannot approach present day TTL prices as sales vol- ume and manufacturing experience increase. So, an engi- neer about to start a new design should compare the system level cost of using CMOS or some other logic family. He may find that, even at today�s prices, CMOS is the most economi- cal choice.

# ¿ May 5, 2017 19:49

JawnV6: Jul 4, 2004; So hot ...

fishmech posted:

oh so he's mad about some throwaway line where they just made some numbers up, as opposed to the rest of the kickstarter where they just made some poo poo up. so he's an idiot, got it.

at this point i'm not convinced you bothered to read the KS page before launching into this. did you even watch the video? this claim is repeated, it's central to the campaign:

it really looks like you read sage's mistake about the power coming from the iPhone, got confused with the addition of the italian espresso guidelines, and decided to poo poo up a few pages for no good reason

# ¿ May 5, 2017 20:17

JawnV6: Jul 4, 2004; So hot ...

fishmech posted:

yeah they made up some numbers, why should we care? this actually started because sageidiot thought 3d printing your prototypes isnt allowed on kickstarter, since he's an idiot.

no, it "actually" started when you aggressively misread a really impressive post where he laid out the physics on a specific claim of theirs, latched onto a throwaway comment at the end and needlessly conflated it with the capstone question meant to cover the bad physics, and are now backpedaling fast enough to brew coffee

that's the joy of KS for me and others, seeing such blatantly impossible claims get through their minimal vetting AND the backer's attention when they take off. you're not helping the conversation, you're just being an rear end

the loophole they're giving themselves is something about the special material in the resistor/heating element. so you could trickle-heat (lol) the element and have its mass at 45C (in your pocket, all day long) then when the "brew" moment comes, you don't need quite as much power from the battery in such a short time. so magic metal + supercap + magic battery... and I still can't make it all add up

# ¿ May 5, 2017 20:45

JawnV6: Jul 4, 2004; So hot ...

Sagebrush posted:

the stuff they have would be fine for a conceptual product in a second-year design studio, where the point is to have the student work through a design process and build a representational model to evaluate form and fit and not really delve into engineering questions. i don't know what kickstarter expects i guess but they are nowhere near what even a layman would call a "working prototype"

oh, meant to ask about this. the startup incubator i used to work with split things into 'works like' and 'looks like' models, like it's fine if you can't converge the two but you want something to put in front of humans and a separate engineering test vehicle. engineering-centric folks would balk at the ID one, but still get shocked when for example someone would pick up a brick and manage to use it "wrong" consistently

so i saw a lot of Model Solutions products, to the point where I could guess just based on the box. is that the kind of thing some rich student could order if their crafting wasn't up to snuff? or is the whole point to make it yourself and it'd be cheating to use them?

# ¿ May 6, 2017 00:20

JawnV6: Jul 4, 2004; So hot ...

wanted to be at a real keyboard when i responded, thanks for the info dump!

Sagebrush posted:

splitting your prototypes into "looks like" and "works like" variants is totally normal and expected in the design process

i never really know what's totally prevalent among ID/PD folks and what was the special split, good to know this is super common

Sagebrush posted:

when you bring people in for user testing, you say "ok, this is what it's going to look like, what do you think" and get their feedback, then "alright, now sit on this mechanical prototype and tell us how it feels." i'm simplifying that a bit, even -- sometimes you'll have pure mechanical prototypes that cannot be used without instruction (your brick example), and sometimes you'll have UX/ergonomics/affordance prototypes where you give it to the user and see what they do -- even the way they initially grasp some unfamiliar object when picking it up can give you tons of information -- and sometimes you'll have pure aesthetic models where you just ask people if it looks cool or swooshy or friendly or if they like the color or w/e.

I've seen the "unfamiliar object" one irl. i interviewed at a startup doing a chemical IoT thing, really really important that the test be done with the gadget "upright"

their first ID model they put in front of folks and the users just didn't get it, had the thing on it's side, rolling it back and forth, etc. like the designers thought it'd be 'natural' to put it one way, users did everything but. their next rev was this triangular thing with a fat base, much higher chance of the user thinking "up" was the same way as the deisgner

Sagebrush posted:

the process continues in a loop like that, getting closer and closer to the "real thing", until you either decide that the design's perfect (only very rare and elite design studios have that privilege) or you run out of time or money and have to ship (everyone else).

so yes, it's totally normal at an early stage to have a shiny plastic model that doesn't do anything but looks like what you want the thing to look like, and a real hacky looking thing with bolts and screws and wires sticking out everywhere that demonstrates how it works. these kicksharter guys have the first one, sort of -- they didn't even paint their 3d printed models, just left them the raw nylon -- but i didn't see any indication that they'd built a works-like model, that would at least show that they can heat up the coffee in the time they claim, that their cartridge-puncturing system works as described, etc. I assumed that was a site requirement, since to me a looks-like prototype of this sort of product, where the intended appearance is "a flat, unadorned plastic thing" and all the important functionality is internal, is like just barely above a rendering in terms of utility.

i've met pure, pure design folks who can't fathom engineering pushback. "we've wrapped fabric before, what's your issue?" "It's C2, what do you mean it can't be molded?!?" those are fun conversations

they COULD be pre-heating the metal outlet, so you're carrying around a block of super secret alloy at 45C in your pocket all day, but that invites more challenges than it solves

Sagebrush posted:

oh lol and with all that sperging i didn't even address this
...
when i was in school one of the other students was the son of some wealthy car dealer and when it came time for his thesis project, he built a solidworks model of the whole thing, sent the plans to a fabricator to have the pieces cut, took those parts to a welder to have them professionally assembled, and dropped it off at the powder-coater and went skiing for a week, while the rest of us were in the shops 18 hours a day. i think he spent like $4000 on it while most people's models probably cost a tenth of that, and the fit and finish was amazing. (the design itself was still just mediocre, ofc).

lol. guess it hadn't occurred to me that the point might not be the fabrication itself, big miss on my part there

the phrase that i never really got a working definition for as a lowly firmware guy was "design language," and by the end i was pretty sure the craftier ME's couldn't articulate one if they saw it

# ¿ May 8, 2017 22:54

JawnV6: Jul 4, 2004; So hot ...

thanks, making it concrete with the two examples helped. as little as i could pick apart the two cars, its easier to take a common element and pull out the styling/design

and this bit

Maluco Marinero posted:

anything that looks like a loving mess is probably at least partially because they didn't care to get a vocabulary going that informed the rest of their decisions.

just reminds me of TV remotes with 8 different button styles mashed together. i've seen the engineering-heavy failure mode a la "ls in a GUI" too

idk it still feels like the wrong base for the analogy. like is a hard-edged feature on a porsche mirror "outside" the language? "inexpressible"?

if i'm designing OXO grip #56, what kinds of challenges could a designer hit that would require... 'modifying' the design language? 'extending'? 'spoonerizing'?? like it'll be black rubber with fillets somewhere, but is 'symmetry' part of it where the new tool needs to break that?

# ¿ May 9, 2017 20:46

JawnV6: Jul 4, 2004; So hot ...

Sagebrush posted:

putting the lamborghini mirror on the porsche would be outside the porsche's design language, yeah. like see the hard line through the center of the lambo mirror? there's no creases of that type (meaning two surfaces intersecting at that angle with that fillet radius) anywhere on the porsche. it would stand out as something different.

i never really got to the point where i could in-band articulate my complaints about a design, but idk if i ever really tried when "there is no way this will work" was the required bit

most of my input was "no, induction charging is bad, just use pogo pins ffs"

also i meant "fins" when i said "fillets"

Sagebrush posted:

so anyway this sort of consideration to subtleties of form is what makes a well-designed object. edge fillets in particular are something i always look at, and it's really obvious when something was designed by a designer vs. hacked out by an engineer. trivial example:

in the first case you just click "fillet all", pick a radius, and call it a day. all of the fillets collide at every corner and you get this weird little ball-shaped surface that catches highlights weird and adds tension to the corner points.

in the second case, i've used a larger fillet on some edges and rolled a smaller fillet around the others. this creates two distinct surfaces with optical continuity. it feels better. serves the same purpose as fillet-all but this way is just better.

but its not symmetric now :spergin:

Sagebrush posted:

any kind of functional requirements might change the form in a way that requires some alteration to the language. maybe it's a grip for a new kind of tool that has to be held in a different way (potato masher or smth i dunno). so you have to move the grip points around, change the shape somewhat. ideally the designer will invent a clever way to reuse key elements that don't need to be altered. so maybe the handle shape changes and the grips move, but you can still use the OXO-style thin finned grip areas, and the same black rubber, and the shiny black hanging hole element, and the same general radii, and so on.

when you're dealing with a legacy design language like that, is there any choice left? like we're all in a room, agree that the old grip won't work (i was imagining a hinged thing like a garlic press rather than a flipped grip potato masher), the senior designer goes through the existing 55 handles and makes the design language clear, then sends 2 juniors off to make #56, does the previous language constraints guide them towards a common solution or would you expect some variation? is this making the whole process to cut and dry to even consider?

Pryor on Fire posted:

Yes please worship oxo in this design jerkoff talk just had one of their chinese garbage handles snap in half on me cutting the poo poo out of my wrist

wow looks like someone brought their easy-grip scallion axe to grind

# ¿ May 10, 2017 20:40

JawnV6: Jul 4, 2004; So hot ...

Casual Encountess posted:

having been the engineer in a room full of designers quite a few times I can appreciate the different approaches but designers are also loving stupid sometimes.

:h5:

# ¿ May 10, 2017 20:40

JawnV6: Jul 4, 2004; So hot ...

Trig Discipline posted:

the laws of physics are basically the terms of service of the universe

psh, common misconception. a lot of 19th century physics relied on the idea, but michelson-morely disproved the existence of a EULA in 1887

# ¿ Jun 12, 2017 21:34

JawnV6: Jul 4, 2004; So hot ...

haven't read this screed yet, but anything that opens with "AGAINST THE ADVICE OF COUNSEL," is bound to have some gems
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hybratech/sound-band-finally-a-headset-without-speakers/posts/1885610

# ¿ Jun 19, 2017 22:39

JawnV6: Jul 4, 2004; So hot ...

5 days x .5mW = 200J battery, which comes to some fraction of a mL? idk how much volume a ring has

i spent way too much time thinking he was w/ motiv power systems, EV startup that's been around a really long time

# ¿ Jul 13, 2017 03:50

JawnV6: Jul 4, 2004; So hot ...

https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.03377

quote:

We introduce the Deep Symbolic Network (DSN) model, which aims at becoming the white-box version of Deep Neural Networks (DNN). The DSN model provides a simple, universal yet powerful structure, similar to DNN, to represent any knowledge of the world, which is transparent to humans. The conjecture behind the DSN model is that any type of real world objects sharing enough common features are mapped into human brains as a symbol. Those symbols are connected by links, representing the composition, correlation, causality, or other relationships between them, forming a deep, hierarchical symbolic network structure. Powered by such a structure, the DSN model is expected to learn like humans, because of its unique characteristics. First, it is universal, using the same structure to store any knowledge. Second, it can learn symbols from the world and construct the deep symbolic networks automatically, by utilizing the fact that real world objects have been naturally separated by singularities. Third, it is symbolic, with the capacity of performing causal deduction and generalization. Fourth, the symbols and the links between them are transparent to us, and thus we will know what it has learned or not - which is the key for the security of an AI system. Fifth, its transparency enables it to learn with relatively small data. Sixth, its knowledge can be accumulated. Last but not least, it is more friendly to unsupervised learning than DNN. We present the details of the model, the algorithm powering its automatic learning ability, and describe its usefulness in different use cases. The purpose of this paper is to generate broad interest to develop it within an open source project centered on the Deep Symbolic Network (DSN) model towards the development of general AI.

we're just the ideas guys, could some of y'all coders give this a shot??

# ¿ Jul 15, 2017 18:23

JawnV6: Jul 4, 2004; So hot ...

MrMoo posted:

GURUIST - First ever personal GURU device

This is more like it,

jake's fukken pumped for his digital motivational post-it note

# ¿ Jul 28, 2017 21:51

JawnV6: Jul 4, 2004; So hot ...

collecting a sample of pixels for cataloging what you�re watching for the manufactures benefit?

# ¿ Aug 9, 2017 22:51

JawnV6: Jul 4, 2004; So hot ...

just think, if they'd shared office space with a shoemaker they'd be pitching to five families of motivated angel investors instead of begging for scraps on KS

# ¿ Sep 1, 2017 01:19

JawnV6: Jul 4, 2004; So hot ...

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1042731515/aire-a-self-flying-robotic-assistant-for-the-home?ref=ekngwj

aire u not entertained??

# ¿ Sep 25, 2017 20:04

JawnV6: Jul 4, 2004; So hot ...

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/petflair/petflair-custom-swimwear-featuring-your-pet

ill be licensing my cats for a v. reasonable rate

# ¿ Sep 28, 2017 04:08

JawnV6: Jul 4, 2004; So hot ...

Sagebrush posted:

so the watch adds an additional 0.18% to the person's normal metabolic heat. or, to put it another way, the 5300 joules contained in the battery is energetically equivalent to 1.25 kilocalories -- approximately as much energy as in 10 grains of rice (1/3 gram).

aha! but we're taking advantage of the... uh... *scrambles for old lifehack*

uh... pulse points! that's right, we're cooling off the wrist blood and it goes around the body to cool it off!! this somehow invalidates the energy math writ large

# ¿ Oct 16, 2017 22:33

JawnV6: Jul 4, 2004; So hot ...

Shifty Pony posted:

theoretically you could gently caress with ... this watch is a bunch of bullshit though.

this is the convo i get backed into a lot re: poo poo kickstarters, like yeah it's not inconceivable that such a device could exist, but 3 dropouts in boston ain't the crew that cracked that nut

# ¿ Oct 17, 2017 00:18

JawnV6: Jul 4, 2004; So hot ...

the only scam that got popped was the whitelabel bike folks, right?

like they picked through the pieces of the failed magic drone, but the bike was intercepted pre-funding

# ¿ Oct 17, 2017 04:39

JawnV6: Jul 4, 2004; So hot ...

Best Bi Geek Squid posted:

I'm the engineering grade abs plastic dip holder

abs kills millions of people a year

# ¿ Dec 19, 2017 20:06

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# ¿ May 9, 2024 04:50

JawnV6: Jul 4, 2004; So hot ...

Just-In-Timeberlake posted:

say what now

horrific supply chain that kills workers, needlessly specced when a cheaper non-food-grade plastic would do fine

like are you defending acrylics in general, a huge fan of soft touch, or thought i meant the braking system?

# ¿ Dec 19, 2017 23:43

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > YOSPOS > post the most worthless kickstarters and greatest investor rewards you got

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