In Athens, an "idiotes" was a citizen who focused only on private matters rather than participating in the polis (city-state). Because civic participation was considered a duty, this term carried a negative connotation of being socially irresponsible or uninvolved.

This term evolved into the modern "idiot" which we are familiar with.

I find the "no one could have seen it coming" crowd extremely tiring, they usually always say that about something anyone who paid a tiny bit of attention could see coming.

It's genuinely baffling to me why business owners pay so little attention to the politics that will directly impact their business.

The entire tariffs thing was incredible obvious to me (I am Australian) and I only check in on US politics for 10 min a couple of times a month, any less and it would be zero.

You could also say politics is downstream of other forces that are less global and more local. Some people choose to stay aware of their more local forces rather than the grand ones.

I had a university friend who spent hundreds of hours on his YouTube channel whilst the rest of spent hundreds of hours arguing about politics.

He’s now unimaginably successful at YouTube but at least I’m better at predicting the content of tomorrow’s newspapers.

Realistically, everyone always seems to think everything was predictable but I have maybe a handful of friends who sold the Russell 2000 futures short and then rebounded long who made millions off the various tariff trades. Ironically, Ukrainian and Russian. Ex-HFT but just doing very normal click trading. So I don't get it. Why isn't everyone who can predict the future so accurately a (deca-)millionaire?

What I find particularly galling is that he failed to learn perhaps the most important lesson: Maybe he wouldn't have these kind of problems if he hadn't outsourced his manufacturing to China but kept in on-shore instead.

I'm doubtful that knowing how much politics matters, but only in a vague way, would have been enough to help them. Could someone who was obsessed with following the Trump administration's every move have predicted the tariffs in advance? I don't think financial markets priced them in?

Classic hindsight bias. In fact, you could be paying a lot of attention to politics and still think tariffs were not going to go so high. Here's [1] a betting market that regularly was below 5% chance of tariffs above 40% on Chinese imports in first 100 days of Trump's second term.

https://polymarket.com/event/trump-imposes-40-blanket-tariff...

> ignoring maybe the single most impactful society-determining apparatus

It's only impactful in aggregate over a large area. At each individual location is has a negligible effect.

I think if you step back and look at what affects your life.. it's mostly not what the federal government does. I don't live in the US anymore, but I travel back to visit once every year or two to see family in San Francisco. Going back this year.. if I had lives under a rock I would have had no idea there was some terrible stuff happening in the District of Columbia. Day to day life hasn't change much in the past two years, except there are maybe fewer insane homeless? and it feels a bit less sketchy and people seem a bit more happier. If I were to guess all those changes are related to city government policies. TSA was a lot faster and friendlier - maybe that's due to the federal government? Or a fluke..

in the end sure this guys got burned by not knowing some political news thousands of miles away.. but there are more pressing issues

I did something similar, but a slightly different approach. I installed grow lights in my ceiling conches: amazon.com/dp/B07BRKT56T?ref_=ppx_hzsearch_conn_dt_b_fed_asin_title_1

In my office I have 6 of these, for a total of around 13,000 lumens. It effectively 6x'd my light output for around $150. Worked wonders, especially in the PNW winter.

Just a fun random fact from me: We do need more lumens. Not for normal (non-production) indoor lighting in most situations, however, I always want a bright light for my outside lights, and I find that most 100w-equivalent (1500 lumens) are just not quite enough. 2,000 lumens is almost there, however, 2,500 lumens would be beneficial. Both 2,000 and 2,500 lumen bulbs either don't last in temperature extremes, or are super expensive. The power on time (think hours per day of use) and color of the light matters as well. In my use case, I need a bulb that can withstand long periods of time being run from dusk till dawn. I am willing to pay a decent amount for a guaranteed warranty for X years, however most bulbs of ANY amount of lumens only guarantee 1-3 hours a day for 1-5 years. When you need 7-10 hours a day, well...

Curious if LEDs can really match the black-body that is our sun (and therefore incandescents).

I would get/build such a thing for my mental health, but I worry the LED illumination will be counter-productive.

We had to remake half the mold, and I split it 50/50 with the factory.

Thanks :) It turns out "hardware is hard" isn't an exaggeration!

When I read the "I had no prior experience in hardware; I was counting on being able to pick it up quickly with the help of a couple of mechanical/electrical/firmware engineers" I was ready to curl up into a foetal position... the fact that the author actually got something like this manufactured and shipped is nothing short of miraculous, it's not just a board off JLPCB and a plastic case, this involves custom manufacturing of metal parts and whatnot, and I take my hat off to him for managing it.

This is also why so many crowdfunded projects fail, people go into it with no idea of how hard it is to get something to market and waaaay underestimate the time and cost. Years ago for the first project we did we took an absolute worst-case estimate, then doubled the time and cost on that. We came in on time and under budget, but only just.

Once you get your design polished, than consider partnering with a good Contract Manufacturer to do a trial run. Some will handle the ISO, CE, IC, UL and FCC paperwork for you. Make sure your Patents and Trademarks are locked down in both the manufacturing and marketed countries, or some ambitious folks will try to rip you off later. If your projected volumes attract profit sharing offers, than expect 10% to 14% of wholesale cost as a normal ask.

Tooling up a production line for even a toothbrush is well over $1.5m to get the first unit off the line. Building these factories is a different skill set, and everybody is bad at it at first.

Note hardware has a 1:6 success rate compared with service companies.

Best of luck, =3

Got a discount code for the HN family? ;-)

Congrats on shipping. I'm living in the EU working California hours (4pm-1am) and will definitely be buying one.

Being 6'5" myself, I am worried I'd be blinded by the lamp when I stand up: to avoid adding a base under (an already bulky) base, is there a way to separate the lamp itself and have it wall/ceiling mounted (still pointing upwards)?

Do you have any recommendations for FCC/CE testing providers?

What was your marketing strategy once you had the $10 deposit landing page setup?

I definitely feel your pain. I own a company that makes custom process controls for industrial and commercial clients, and while we work from a large library of hardware and software designs from past jobs, every job has a lot of the same "start from the beginning" feel as what you went through. Especially, the one thing you didn't check is always the thing that is somehow screwed up, and the sleepless nights wondering halfway into the project if you're in deep trouble.

How did you figure out how to price your product?

Hello, nice write up. I'm curious about your deal with the factory and downstream suppliers.. did all these iterations and fixes cost more every time? Or it was a fixed contract? How does that all work

Just curious about the frequency of the diodes and do they pulse simultaneously? Quite often I can perceive flicker in moving objects indoors.

So just to confirm, the actual cause for the controls not working is still unknown to the reader but the reason the measurements didn't make sense was swapped labels?