
Smoke alarms, fingerprint readers - why the HN community gets it wrong - innino
http://gwisrp.wordpress.com/2013/10/09/smoke-alarms-fingerprint-readers-and-liquid-meals-why-the-hacker-news-community-keeps-getting-it-wrong/
======
beloch
People who build stuff tend to think a lot about the flaws before they do
anything. If you pitch them your wonderful, shiny, new idea you'll immediately
see the gears inside their head spinning away trying to figure out how to
break it, why it's a bad idea or, worst of all, who has done it better before.

This might be bad for your ego, but it can also be tremendously useful.

Why post anything to hackernews? Do you want a bunch of ego-validating
fawning?

"WOW!!! That's the greatest idea ever!" "Brilliant!" "I could never come up
with something so ingenious!" "This is going to sell like hot-cakes and you
are going to be rich!"

These are all great comments to hear, but utterly useless. If you only receive
opinions like these you might spend your precious blood, sweat, and money
making something that nobody wants. Slightly more useful comments can let you
zero in on why your idea is good, so that no matter what else doesn't make the
final cut, the good stuff will.

"Good idea. I particularly like how it..."

The negative comments that make it sound like your idea is trash? Well,
sometimes they're right and sometimes they're wrong. You'll probably find
yourself wanting to grab the authors of these comments by their short-hairs so
you can shout into their face why they're wrong. If you can't think of
anything past the physical violence, they just might have a point.

Some things that pop up here spark less than useful conversations as a side-
effect of how HN people approach things. Take Apple's new fingerprint
scanners. They are being sold as highly secure when all they really are is
highly convenient. This hits that "easy to break" nerve builders have and is
then reinforced by the contrarian urge to bash the big guy. It might be
annoying to read if you're an Apple fan, but it's a natural result of the kind
of thinking that goes on in HN. It might even be useful if you're considering
using biometrics of some sort yourself!

In short, HN gets it right more often than not. People should keep bashing
brilliant and stupid ideas alike because that's how everybody learns. If your
ego gets hurt, take a break.

~~~
vacri
I find there's a corollary in going for user reviews of (whatever). The
positive reviews are rarely helpful, but skimming the negative reviews is
usually pretty informative. If the negs are mostly trollish trash, it's likely
to be decent. But if the negs are showing a common thread of criticism, it can
highlight issues that aren't showing up elsewhere.

Of course all user reviews need to be appropriately grain-of-salted, but the
negs are far more informative to me than the pros.

------
JumpCrisscross
" _The Conservative view of Protect (inherent ideology: fire prevention should
be as easy and user-friendly as possible) can be characterised (or
caricatured), I think, roughly as follows: [present fire alarms are good
enough, nobody needs these fancy doo-dads]_ "

Conservative ("Null") view: the primary objective of a smoke alarm is to (a)
detect and (b) signal the presence of smoke. Nothing, hand waving or not,
should compromise this.

Progressive ("Alternate") view: a smoke alarm must also maximise (c) the
probability of the signal being heard. This objective is compromised if
people, finding their smoke alarms a nuisance, turn them off.

In summary, Null says (a) and (b). Alternate says also (c). Null says adding
(c) dilutes (b) and so is harmful. These views _not_ mutually exclusive - not
everyone need have the same smoke alarm. The more disciplined may be safer
with a traditional smoke alarm. Those of us who just spent a minute searching
the ceiling may be better served by the Nest Protect.

" _Why not think about it this way: companies like Nest, Apple and Soylent are
offering us, no strings attached, brand new propositions for paths to a better
future._ "

Being sceptical of a fire safety product being brought to market is a good
response. While I, too, found the tone of the Nest Protect and TouchID
conversations combative, I was thoroughly informed by both. Constructive does
not have to mean positive.

 _Disclosure: I am in the Alternate /"Progressive" camp_

~~~
tetha
Interestingly enough, the best solutions come from both parts working
together. In this example, the conservative view is indeed correct, it is
very, very dangerous if you could disable a true alert. However, the
progressive view still has a darn realistic point.

But, once you combine both, you reach a really interesting third way: Don't do
binary detection, do trinary detection if possible. "No smoke", "Some smoke"
and "Ok this is completely fubar"-levels of smoke. "Some smoke" can be waved,
Fubar-Levels of smoke cannot be waved and the user is informed of this.

------
ekianjo
Mouhaha. Comparing Nest's HN reaction with the reaction on Soylent is just bad
writing and reasoning.

> In every case, we’re given a choice: do we react reflexively, hunting for
> anything and everything that we can think of to shoot down a new and
> challenging idea, or do we fight our first reflex, and give the idea a
> chance?

Yeah, we should be giving a chance to use our brain and reason instead of
being fooled but a nice product presentation and a beautiful "NEW!" sticker on
it. As for Soylent, this product is an insult to reason and any kind of
nutrition studies done before, so let's not put it as the same level as Nest.
It's a different story altogether.

~~~
innino
Sorry, I'm not an expert on nutrition. Soylent is just an idea I found very
compelling.

~~~
ekianjo
It's not because an idea is compelling that it makes sense. Some people find
suicide a very good solution to end up their everyday life problems, it does
not validate it a good solution for everyone else.

The "give everyday idea a chance" is a lot like "respect everyone's opinion"
crap we have to deal with so much nowadays. On the contrary, I'd rather have a
fruitful discussion based on reason, data and reasonable assumptions with
someone instead of accepting everything just because it's fresh and new and
cool.

I think it's very healthy to challenge new ideas and to point out their flaws.
That's why I enjoy the discussions on HN, most of the time, because you have a
bunch of educated people here who usually are very reasonable when it comes to
debating and produce interesting arguments to think about. This should be
actually good feedback for people who produce new ideas, rather than a crowd
saying "bravo" everytime something "original" comes out.

------
ekianjo
> Every time we have this choice, and every time the conversation is dominated
> by a fight between Conservatives and Progressives, it’s a shame, because
> fundamentally, both sides agree on the same things. Nobody thinks it’s
> awesome when houses burn down. Nobody thinks it would be better if computer
> security on the whole got worse. Nobody thinks correct nutrition should be
> harder. Nobody, if you get down to it, thinks anything should be harder to
> use, that life should be less pleasant.

Blanket statements, out of context. Perfect writing again.

I can make blanket statements the same way too. We all want to be loved. We
all want to be healthy. We all want to be rich. We all like things to be easy.
So, fundamentally, we agree on the same things, right ?

WRONG!

> Nobody, if you get down to it, thinks anything should be harder to use, that
> life should be less pleasant.

There is pleasure in doing HARD things. There is pleasure in learning from
scratch and mastering something difficult. There is pleasure in exploration
and understanding instead of digesting something pre-made for you.

Not for everyone, maybe, but in the hacker crowd you will find lots of people
who are precisely like that.

~~~
innino
I'm sorry that you found my writing so objectionable.

I wasn't, for the record, advocate that life should be easy in the sense that
you seem to be thinking I mean it. Maybe we should distinguish between hard as
in unnecessarily complicated and poorly designed, and hard as in challenging.
I'm teaching myself how computers work at the moment, I really enjoy it.
That's challenging, and I like challenging things. Current smoke alarm design,
on the other hand, is not challenging in an enjoyable way. They're poorly
designed and annoying, and that's a type of hard that I think anyone really
likes.

~~~
ekianjo
> I'm teaching myself how computers work at the moment, I really enjoy it.
> That's challenging, and I like challenging things. Current smoke alarm
> design, on the other hand, is not challenging in an enjoyable way. They're
> poorly designed and annoying, and that's a type of hard that I think anyone
> really likes.

That's a type of hard most people don't care about because anyway it's not
something they have to worry about every single day of their lives. That's a
"LOW INVOLVEMENT" kind of problem. Unless you spend all your living time
working on smoke alarms you will rarely have to deal with the inconveniences
of their design. There are tons of things like that in life that nobody is
bothered enough to fix because it's not really worth the time or the
additional investment to fix it. Get over it. I'm pretty sure that even if
Nest is a great solution (which it seems to be), it will not appeal to many
people unless they price their product at the same range as the usual smoke
detectors. If you have to pay twice more or so, it's not disruptive, it's just
a premium product only premium-focused people will want to buy. The rest of us
will keep living with their crappy smoke detectors and still have a good life
nonetheless.

I guess you see my point now ?

~~~
innino
No, I don't see your point at all. You don't seem to have any point - just
anger and empty cynicism. In fact, to me you seem to embody everything bad
that I was trying to describe in my original post, so thanks for providing an
excellent illustration of one of the worst styles of Hackernews participation.

I'm sorry, but I don't agree with you at all that smoke alarms are irrelevant
or not relevant enough or whatever it is you seem to be trying to say here. I
don't spend my life working on them but I've installed them for student
tenants, thinking I was doing a great thing and maybe preventing them from
killing themselves with an unattended cooking fire, and you know what, two
months later when I went around every single one, every single flat I manage,
had knocked their alarms down. Every single one. I wanted to slap the stupid
fucks, but then I realised that hey, most people really are kinda lazy and
stupid and you will get nowhere getting angry over that fact, you have to
accept that and adapt as best you can.

At the time I imagined something very similar to Nest - an alarm over your
oven which turns it off if it detects sudden heat. An alarm which sends me,
the property manager, a text if it goes off. An alarm that can distinguish too
between "a little smoke" and "a shitload of smoke and heat." I imagined that,
and I talked to the local fire service, and they laughed and shrugged and said
it'd be great but who's gunna do that.

And now guess what, here's a company that's actually made and prepping to sell
something even better than what I thought about. It's a beautiful looking
object, for starters. It talks to you in intelligent language - "there's
carbon monoxide in the living room". It distinguishes between potentially
dangerous and critically dangerous situations. It can send push notifications
to your phone when something goes wrong or when batteries are about to go out.
It can be silenced with an elegant hand gesture. And it gets better: it lights
up a room when it sees you walking through it at night. It can turn off your
furnace if CO levels rise, if its connected to Nest's Thermostat. And it will
help your Thermostat get smarter about power usage by detecting your activity.

And this is just a version one product. Keep in mind - the name is "Protect",
not "Smoke Detector." What's to stop them making v2 smarter, and maybe it can
sense when people in a house become panicked and call emergency services?
Maybe it detects unusual activity when burglars enter? Whatever - use your
imagination - the possibilities are huge. And don't forget, this is only the
second product that Nest has produced. And already with two they've made them
better together. This is the Internet of Things man. It's happening, and it's
going to be massive.

If you're not seeing the breakthrough yet, then I just don't know what to say
to you. What, are you angry because they made such a good product? Because
they're selling it for a fraction of what it's worth? Because they're smarter
than any of the unimaginative companies making crappy smoke alarms we had to
put up with up until today? Are you angry because it's "not enough"? Because
the whole world's not going to run out and buy this one product tomorrow, and
so therefore for some weird reasons we shouldn't bothered being excited about
it, because obviously it's gunna go nowhere?

Get over yourself man. The world is about to explode with companies like Nest
- and new products and opportunities will emerge to improve every single facet
of our life. And people like you are going to look like the worst kind of
assholes when the transformation becomes obvious. If the false binary choice
you seem to offer is between a chorus of blind praise and your brand of
negative bullshit, thanks but no thanks, I'd rather take the former.

~~~
ekianjo
Hahah. You are the one full of anger because someone has a different opinion
than you, it seems. Look, I don't know how to spell it to you if you don't
know how to read my post. I mentioned "LOW INVOLVEMENT" in big letters so that
I'd hope you would read it, but it seems like I wasted my time.

> I've installed them for student tenants, thinking I was doing a great thing
> and maybe preventing them from killing themselves with an unattended cooking
> fire, and you know what, two months later when I went around every single
> one, every single flat I manage, had knocked their alarms down

This sentence proved that you are not a regular person who uses only a single
or two smoke detectors for their home. So you are not relevant. Almost nobody
is like you. I have two smoke detectors and they only triggered once in 7
years living in the same place, and I had no issue whatsoever to stop them.
This is probably in line with most people who have LOW INVOLVEMENT with these
kind of things. You know, when you only use something like once a year or
less?

> The world is about to explode with companies like Nest - and new products
> and opportunities will emerge to improve every single facet of our life.

If you think everyone is going to buy the best of the best in every category
of prodcuts and spend all of their cash on things they don't really care
about, you are in for a big surprise.

> What, are you angry because they made such a good product?

I'm not angry, I was merely explaining my point of view and I have no idea why
you take my view as one of an angry person or something. I found their video
nice, they did a good job, I'm just saying it won't change the fact that most
people will not care and will not even know about it and keep going on with
their business as usual.

> And people like you are going to look like the worst kind of assholes when
> the transformation becomes obvious.

Actually you are going to look like the worst kind of asshole for calling me
names while I have never attacked you personally. That's ad hominem at best
and frankly this is not surprising for someone who makes blanket statements
about everything.

Cheers.

~~~
innino
I'm sorry if I lost my temper, I've tried to understand your position here and
respond calmly and reasonably to you but clearly I've failed.

------
iamshs
Brudgers comment is at top because community thought it was worthy. Brudgers
comment garnered 120 posts, meaning it sparked interest and posters
contributed to that discussion. This is the underlying message of HN.
Discussing.

"But why not focus on the underlying idea – if we could make eating and
nutrition easier, how? If we could make phones more customisable and modular,
how? Where could this lead? The possibilities, once you start thinking along
these lines, are endless."

To me, that brudgers discussion does directly and tangentially hint at making
things better and benefits of existing solutions. And moreover, some people
are good at fine combing ideas and not propose some new. Criticising people
because they are being "negative" amounts to living in a bubble.

Btw ironic, considering OP's comments on this article:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6464120](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6464120)

~~~
dylangs1030
_Brudgers comment is at top because community thought it was worthy. Brudgers
comment garnered 120 posts, meaning it sparked interest and posters
contributed to that discussion. This is the underlying message of HN.
Discussing._

What you say here is true. But it also lacks context - Hacker News is not
intended to be a pure democracy. Combative discussion fostered by an
incendiary comment shouldn't be acceptable just because it features factually
accurate content upvoted en masse by the community.

If that were the case, Hacker News would not have guidelines or moderators.
You could allow Hacker News to operate like a pure free-market economy,
excusing this as long as it's democratically supported - but that is
detrimental to the community's purpose in the long term. Online communities
require involved government because the participants (demonstrably) cannot
govern themselves when in a group. At worst, discussion devolves to chaos; at
best, it becomes inefficient and bothersome. Like anything else, there are
pros and cons to combative discussion, and the negatives outweigh the
positives.

Examples like the Touch ID discussion and the Nest alarm discussion are
particularly informative in this regard, because combative, rehashed meta-
discussion took up an _entire page_ in each instance.

------
Sukotto

      it ought to be remembered that there is nothing 
      more difficult to take in hand, more perilous 
      to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, 
      than to take the lead in the introduction of a 
      new order of things. Because the innovator has 
      for enemies all those who have done well under 
      the old conditions and lukewarm defenders in 
      those who may do well under the new. 
      (Machiavelli, The Prince, Chapter VI)

------
kayoone
For me, the problem with many of these new "world improving" products is that
the founders/creators are often very young and inexperienced in their fields
and frankly a bit naive.

This applies more to things like Soylent which i find is dangerous in the way
its marketed now as opposed to the experiment it was in the beginning but its
also true for Nest.

There are companies in this business producing smoke alarms for decades and
they most certainly know more about its challenges than the NEST guys and
given the fact that their thermostats are by no means flawless, one should
atleast be cautious and not drink the whole can of marketing induced and VC
funded cool-aid without thinking. This is not a touch enabled music player
after all.

Being naive and fresh in a decade old market is usually great, but there are
certain areas, for example those that can affect peoples health in negative
ways, where experience is simply invaluable.

------
brianlovin
Feels like there's a fine line between having a negative attitude about a new
product and exposing real weaknesses - whether those are weaknesses in the
product itself, or the market within which it falls. Probably nothing wrong
with exposing weaknesses, as long as its done in the context of "here's what's
wrong, and my idea of how it could be fixed or improved."

I agree with your assessment though, the Nest post this morning really was
quite 'over the top' so to say, as far as negativity goes.

------
DennisAleynikov
I'm in the same boat as you.

This is exactly what was going through my mind as I traversed what could be
aptly described as a flamewar over the product announcement of the Next
Protect alarm this morning and after being unable to find any under all of the
people claiming to be experts are cooking without setting off their alarm and
teaching people how to use existing alarms instead of talking about the device
that the comments were supposed to be about.

I'm not saying these comments were off-topic, but they were very distracting
to me.

~~~
xerophtye
Yeah i didn't expect a Flame War on HN. I have seen angry mobs (JustFab
incident) and very whole hearted debates but they usually have some really
nice points on both sides. This incident... well it was wrong. BUT that does
not in any way mean that HN is wrong as a community to criticize products etc.
That's called "peer review". And it's usually very productive on HN because
the people here are really good at distilling through you pitches and
analyzing what's good and what's bad about a product.

------
the_cat_kittles
I think a lot of the negativity and naysaying might also be spawned by
jealousy of the attention the product is getting. You can critique and point
out flaws without being negative.

------
aaron695
I think large sections of the community think emotively and large sections
thing logically.

Emotive thinking I think goes without saying is worse since it's not logical.

But emotive people can still be quite good at their specialities and if the
topic is not pushed by emotions.

No idea on the solution, have a Vulcan filter on emotive threads?

Is HN about learning from other people or about other people or both?

[edit] And will say emotive people also have other great skill sets like
motivating others. Just are not good when you what to find the right decision.

------
mikesena
This might be one oy the best articles posted here.

Doesn't matter the negativity it may receive, we all know you hit the nail on
the head.

~~~
innino
Thank you, that's very kind of you :)

------
MarcScott
This post is lazy and probably dangerous and I know how to use a browser add-
on to collapse comments and so should everyone else, so there’s no need for
this and no real problem beyond how incompetent people are, and if they can’t
read past the first negative comment it’s their fault.

------
orph
I hope HN continues to treat great new ideas with muted ambivalence. Reading
articles with >10 comments is a waste of time.

