This story have been going around the internet:
The Juciero is a $400 device that squeezes proprietary bags of juice into glasses.
Here’s what makes it hilarious:
What bothers me about this is not the Juicero itself. It’s that people treat these stories as individual instances of crazy. These are not isolated incidents! 99.9999% of Silicon Valley startups are on some level the same thing as Juicero. Whether it’s Uber, Theranos, Soylent, etc. they are all complete bullshit. Burn the whole fucking thing to the ground.
[quote=“Raithnor, post:1, topic:662”]
Since just squeezing it with your hands produces results similar and possibly superior to the machine…I wonder how much it would piss them off if an old-school mangle would outperform their $400 squeeze machine. Because, I’m like 85% sure it would.
[quote=“Apreche, post:2, topic:662”]
These are not isolated incidents! 99.9999% of Silicon Valley startups are on some level the same thing as Juicero. Whether it’s Uber, Theranos, Soylent, etc. they are all complete bullshit. Burn the whole fucking thing to the ground
[/quote]Hey man, some of them are perfectly ethical and entirely positive in regards to their impact on the world. Like these guys, for example.
I posted this more in the interest of mocking and shaming the device.
The thing is. Why be greedy and evil trying to sell the expensive do-nothing machine? Just sell fruit bags!
If the grocery store had bags of fresh fruit I could squeeze myself to get fresh juice out of later, that’s a legit product. In fact, it’s a great product.
Here’s how it works. You sell empty bags in bulk to grocery stores. You make money. The end.
How does the grocery store make money? They take fruit that is still good to eat, but doesn’t look good enough to keep on the shelf. They cut it up so it looks good. They already do this, and sell the fruits in fruit salad in plastic containers.
Instead of putting it in a plastic container, they put it in the bags. Customers buy it at a marked up price. Then they squeeze it later to get delicious juice.
Why not just sell juice? Well, once you turn it into juice, it’s not fresh squeezed for so long. People like to buy juice that was squeezed just now. Buying some fruit however, you can squeeze that later if you put it in the fridge.
Someone said they literally could not get the venture capital if there wasn’t a technical dimension.
There always been this disturbing “snake oil” trend: Create something of absolutely no use that exists only for the purpose of separating them from their money.
I think Here Comes The Airplane will be like Zombocom – a parody that lives on beyond what it parodied.
[quote=“Apreche, post:5, topic:662”]
The thing is. Why be greedy and evil trying to sell the expensive do-nothing machine? Just sell fruit bags!
[/quote]What, and juice it yourself? Like, with a juicer that doesn’t even connect to the internet? What are you, some kind of luddite with a passion for hard physical labor?
How do I get in on this gravy train? Apparently you can make any kind of garbage slap a WiFi receiver on it and some rich fucker will give you a ton of money to do it.
Remember you’re awesome light-up shoes from the 90’s? Well now they’re back, but with wifi!
New Bic ink pens now come wifi enabled, so they can order replacement Bic pens when the ink runs low!
Bird feeder, now with wifi! Can’t have those birds burning up their data plans, now can we?
So, it’s basically an “As Seen on TV” infomercial product.
Between Kickstarter Nonstarters and Internet of Shit there’s a pretty constant stream of wifi or bluetooth enabled garbage to make fun of.
I find it interesting how despite adding microcontrollers and stuff to everything they almost never add any functional improvements. Kitchen appliances with PID controllers would be cool. I might even be willing to give an appliance internet access if it could notify me when something goes wrong.
What functionality can you add?
The most fancy device in my kitchen is a stand mixer. If it had wifi and an app on my phone, what functionality could you add that would make it better? Controlling it via wifi would be less convenient than just pulling the lever. I can think of absolutely zero ways to improve it.
All the functionality I actually want requires significant additional technological advancement.
Look at the fridge. I want it to track every item I’ve put in. I want to be able to hit a web page and see how long that milk was in there, or have it automatically order more butter whenever I’m down to just one stick.
Oh yeah, I can’t think of a reason to add wifi to a juicer or my stand mixer. Pretty much the only use case I can think of is notifying you if something goes wrong, which is really limited to things that run when you’re out of the room (like a fridge). I assume they don’t put effort into that because reminding you that your fridge might break isn’t a great way to market it.
I would like to point out that modern kitchen-aid mixers have micro controllers in them which control the motor and in most cases it will probably be the first part to fail.
You know, a refrigerator that has a built in touchscreen that allows you to order groceries sound pretty useful if they don’t make models that already do that.
I see your juicer and raise you a hairbrush.
At least the hair brush will still brush hair even if all its Internet parts break. But for that money you can get about fifty normal brushes.
I want exactly what Rym wants with one giant thing he left out included. I need it to be at least as secure as windows itself. I need it to be able to be updated and for it to automatically update. This raises the price significantly. I don’t care I want to incur that additional cost.
I want to choose a recipe on my phone on the way home from work. Then it should compare the inventory of my fridge and cabinets against the recipe to see what I need to buy. Then it should look at all the grocery stores near my apartment and figure out what to buy at which ones, taking into account price, but also quality of fresh ingredients. Then it should call each grocery and get everything delivered. Also call a personal chef to come cook it in my apartment. And then I walk in the door and eat. The chef just leaves because they got paid with Apple Pay.