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

fart simpson: Jul 2, 2005; DEATH TO AMERICA

excuse me, can anyone explain why you'd even want a battery in a router, or why you'd want to wirelessly charge it? i thought the "wireless" in "wireless router" meant it gave you a wi-fi network

thanks in advance

# ¿ Jul 17, 2014 18:51

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# ¿ May 9, 2024 10:57

fart simpson: Jul 2, 2005; DEATH TO AMERICA

i just clicked on this thread for the first time in over a year and lol

# ¿ Jul 26, 2015 15:35

fart simpson: Jul 2, 2005; DEATH TO AMERICA

maybe its because people like to have fun

# ¿ Jul 30, 2015 18:30

fart simpson: Jul 2, 2005; DEATH TO AMERICA

Nintendo Kid posted:

Uh what the gently caress does that shower head really do that's meaningfully different to existing, $4, low flow showerheads

uh, it uses less water? idk

# ¿ Aug 16, 2015 06:25

fart simpson: Jul 2, 2005; DEATH TO AMERICA

Sagebrush posted:

it's super garbage that the chinese government doesn't give a poo poo about intellectual property

do you really think fidget cube kickstarter filed for a chinese patent?

# ¿ Jan 8, 2017 19:01

fart simpson: Jul 2, 2005; DEATH TO AMERICA

Sagebrush posted:

i doubt they filed for any patents at all, and in this case it's just an example of foreign manufacturers undercutting westerners. but nearly every product these days that's any good gets a quarter-price 100% shamelessly ripped off chinese copy within weeks of its appearance. earlier this year there was the case where that selfie stick iphone case was copied and on sale before the kickstarter for it had even closed.

like politicians trading stock based on their insider political knowledge, there's frequently nothing explicitly illegal about it -- it's just infuriating because it's unfair

so what kind of intellectual property rights should the chinese government, in your mind, enforce here

# ¿ Jan 9, 2017 02:00

fart simpson: Jul 2, 2005; DEATH TO AMERICA

Jabor posted:

do you think the accessory designers include a "don't use our manufacturing templates and production line to create identical widgets you sell to someone else" clause in their contracts with the factory?

because that's both the sort of thing you might expect a government to help enforce, and also the sort of thing a kickstarter createrer might not even think about ("I just need to get them to make me this many units, right?") and then get blindsided when it happens

a clause like that only protects you from that specific factory from selling knockoffs. any other factory you didn't sign a contract with can make whatever they want unless you've filed for an invention or design patent

# ¿ Jan 9, 2017 05:03

fart simpson: Jul 2, 2005; DEATH TO AMERICA

you could likely start producing knockoff fidget cubes in a factory inside the united states unless they filed for patents. china has nothing to do with it except chinese factories are really good at quickly spinning up production of cheap, easy to manufacture crap like the fidget cube

# ¿ Jan 9, 2017 05:05

fart simpson: Jul 2, 2005; DEATH TO AMERICA

Notorious b.s.d. posted:

but why would they make something on their own when they can just run a second shift on the original production line and claim it's an entirely separate business enterprise with no connection to the first factory's beneficial owners

since the courts don't really work in china, people get pretty loving shameless about contract terms

well if you have an actual good idea you better be filing for patents in addition to getting a good contract with your factory. these kickstarter guys probably do neither

# ¿ Jan 9, 2017 08:11

fart simpson: Jul 2, 2005; DEATH TO AMERICA

also everything i hear is saying the courts are getting significantly better in china so the actual value of protecting your ip here might go up in the future so there's no real reason not to do it

# ¿ Jan 9, 2017 08:12

fart simpson: Jul 2, 2005; DEATH TO AMERICA

Boiled Water posted:

neither patent or contract will help you in china.

yes they will

# ¿ Jan 9, 2017 09:45

fart simpson: Jul 2, 2005; DEATH TO AMERICA

if anyone is actually interested in this type of thing you should read china law blog

# ¿ Jan 9, 2017 10:17

fart simpson: Jul 2, 2005; DEATH TO AMERICA

yep. we regularly shut down production of knockoff versions of our products and protect our ip in china and the process basically works ok, you just need to know what you're doing and figure out if it's worth it to spend the time and money to fight each individual case. sometimes it feels like there's thousands of different factories all making knockoffs of the same thing

# ¿ Jan 10, 2017 06:10

fart simpson: Jul 2, 2005; DEATH TO AMERICA

i suspect a lot of the stories of foreign companies getting owned in china come from people who were basically shooting from the hip and hoping for the best instead of consulting actual lawyers with relevant experience beforehand

# ¿ Jan 10, 2017 06:24

fart simpson: Jul 2, 2005; DEATH TO AMERICA

Notorious b.s.d. posted:

if i make a contract with a manufacturer in the u.s. i can count on its fair and equitable enforcement whether or not i have any local allies in the area. worst case scenario: i have to hire a local lawyer

the situation just aint that pretty in guangzhou. you need extensive expertise and advice, local and overseas, just to avoid being ripped off from the outset

edit: gently caress, fart simpson appears to be one of these people who actually does scm or contracts management and still denies there is a problem?

no im not. i dont do any sort of contract management stuff i just work in china. i'm not denying that the situation is worse than it is in america, i'm just saying it's not as bad as a lot of people seem to think (like the guy who says contracts will not help you in china. that's just false)

# ¿ Jan 16, 2017 00:41

fart simpson: Jul 2, 2005; DEATH TO AMERICA

hifi posted:

in arizona you can conceal carry without a permit, so there goes your ideas about teaching

lol

# ¿ Mar 17, 2017 12:06

fart simpson: Jul 2, 2005; DEATH TO AMERICA

Sagebrush posted:

I don't think it even has a bladder in it for the coffee. I think it's a 3d-printed block of plastic with another 3d-printed block of plastic that slides into a hole and they're pretending that they have something that works. I know this because industrial design is literally my field of professional expertise. like -- they have some process photos halfway down the page that are showing gloved hands doing something mysterious and technical, but they're just cleaning resin off a stereolithographically-printed model. plastic models, nothing else.

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"

sorry but actually fishmech knows more than you about literally your field of professional expertise

# ¿ May 5, 2017 05:51

fart simpson: Jul 2, 2005; DEATH TO AMERICA

shut up fishmech, you're wrong

# ¿ May 6, 2017 03:46

fart simpson: Jul 2, 2005; DEATH TO AMERICA

Sagebrush posted:

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

like say you're designing, i dunno, a new kind of exercise bike. at an early stage you want to figure out the general mechanical layout of the system and verify that it's ergonomically and mechanically viable. but it's still early phases and you can't waste the time and money making a bunch of cnc'd aluminum parts and welded pipe frames and such when you haven't even tested the basic concept. so you get some bicycle parts and 2x4s and make a chunky wooden model that has the key human-interface components (seat, pedals, bars) in the right places, that's strong enough to hold up when someone sits on it, but it only took you a week in the shop and 200 bucks instead of months and tens of thousands.

meanwhile, you start using your killer sketching skills and conceptualize the look of the finished product. you design it to use all kinds of sweet organic forms and fancy billet aluminum pieces and custom bent tubing and stuff. but machining aluminum is expensive and bending tubes is hard. so you make a full-scale model that looks real, but it's still made of wood sanded and painted to look like glossy plastic, and heat-bent black ABS pipe standing in for metal tubing, and 3D printed things spray-painted silver to look like the fancy billet parts. it can't stand up to use -- indeed it's probably not functional at all -- but it looks the part and gets people excited and the other designers can critique the form and so on.

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.

now ideally you've got confirmation that the design is mostly good and the mechanicals are mostly workable, and there isn't any huge problem that would require starting over. so you can start buttoning down specific features, making decisions about some materials, dimensions, manufacturing processes, etc. using the information from your first round of testing, you refine and iterate, and build another set of prototypes that are more accurate (to the intended production model) than the first ones. maybe you do get a few billet parts machined this time around so you can stress-test them. maybe you weld up a tube frame for the appearance model but the body panels are still painted wood. maybe you get the first run of a circuit board fabbed so you can start testing the electronics.

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 gotta cut this off cause i can do forever cause again this is like my literal career and all but yea that's why you have all kinds of different prototypes for different purposes

sorry, you're wrong. fishmech knows best.

# ¿ May 6, 2017 06:57

fart simpson: Jul 2, 2005; DEATH TO AMERICA

Sagebrush posted:

i once worked with a designer who wanted to make a magnetic something-or-other, and specified the substrate material as aluminum. when i questioned that she said "oh it's magnetic aluminum." i blinked and stared and she was like "wait, don't they have that?"

i also worked with an engineer who took my solidworks model of a kitchen product and sliced a bunch of vent holes right into the top surface. i pointed out that this ruined the look of the surface, made ingress points for liquids to spill into the device, and made it impossible to wipe the surface clean in a single pass of a sponge. he irritably replied "well if we put the vents on the side the convection won't be as good."

right now im working with a packaging designer who keeps specifying a certain type of packaging that by all accounts seems to be literally impossible to manufacture. everyone keeps telling her this but she just shuts down and says "we're not supposed to be a company that makes cheap products" and gets mad and yells at everyone. this fight has reemerged every 2-3 weeks for the past 5 months and its getting pretty annoying

# ¿ May 11, 2017 05:25

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# ¿ May 9, 2024 10:57

fart simpson: Jul 2, 2005; DEATH TO AMERICA

my most favorite product name is probably the new ipad. lol

# ¿ Nov 8, 2017 14:33

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