> As someone who generally stays out of politics, I didn’t know much about the incoming administration’s stance towards tariffs, though I don’t think anyone could have predicted such drastic hikes.
I have an appreciation for very bright lamps, and the project is neat, but that stuck out to me.
I'm always fascinated by people who both feel comfortable ignoring maybe the single most impactful society-determining apparatus but will also say "no one could have seen that coming", where that is whatever they were unaware of because they chose to check out. I find the stance so fascinating because for myself, it would be impossible to not try and understand why the world is the way it is.
Everything is downstream of politics whether people want to recognize that or not, and choosing to ignore it is, in fact, a political choice.
ihaveajob 44 minutes ago [-]
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.
MichaelZuo 20 minutes ago [-]
Well wasnt that a good thing?
After the extermination of Melos they could credibly say they were less responsible for the actions of the polis.
And had a higher chance of deflecting the inevitable revenge on to the non idiotes Athenians.
janderson215 2 minutes ago [-]
Funny seeing people pushing for other people becoming more active in politics with the assumption that “being more involved” means with their political fights, then get worried when the other side grows or intensifies.
landryraccoon 11 minutes ago [-]
If one civilization is taking revenge on another I don’t think they would show that much nuance.
For one thing, wouldn’t everyone claim they were against their old polis? How would the invaders have any idea who was an idiote?
I just don’t believe it’s at all easy to avoid the fate of your nation , and I especially doubt that the politically ignorant have a better chance of avoiding that fate than the well informed.
MichaelZuo 1 minutes ago [-]
I did say higher chance, not guaranteed to avoid it.
The counter extermination was only 5% of Athens total population, or so historians say, so it seems like a lot of nuance was shown.
chillfox 9 minutes ago [-]
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.
46 minutes ago [-]
renewiltord 53 minutes ago [-]
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?
derektank 19 minutes ago [-]
It would have been very hard to find a counterparty that didn’t think Donald Trump was going to raise tariffs prior to his inauguration. He was very transparent about this (though the exact amount has fluctuated pretty wildly). Hard to make money when nobody else is taking the other side of the bet.
EarlKing 29 minutes ago [-]
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.
ungreased0675 6 minutes ago [-]
I did wonder how many less issues would have popped up if the lamp wasn’t manufactured in China. Was a little surprised it wasn’t addressed.
skybrian 58 minutes ago [-]
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?
skrtskrt 46 minutes ago [-]
This isn't about timing the market by being clairvoyant about the timing of a madman's tariffs.
This is about taking reasonable risk calculations as a small business with extremely high tariff exposure, when a president who did a bunch of high tariffs last time wins and election and says he'll do it again.
Sure multi-trillion-dollar financial institutions didn't run for the hills because they get paid when it goes up and paid when it goes down.
straydusk 40 minutes ago [-]
It was extremely easy to see them coming, because he talked about the repeatedly.
The markets priced in him backing down repeatedly, which he has.
derektank 16 minutes ago [-]
They were very much priced in, you had retailers purchasing a lot of imports in Q1 to prepare for them. What wasn’t priced in was the scale, which is what resulted in the initial sell off in April until the administration walked back the steepest rates
mmh0000 54 minutes ago [-]
He literally said he was gonna:
"Trump vows massive new tariffs if elected, risking global economic war"
“Living under a rock” is the technical term, I believe.
JKCalhoun 48 minutes ago [-]
Yep, in his first term he was called "tariff man" (among other things).
skybrian 43 minutes ago [-]
He didn't do it the same way last time. Trump's second term is significantly different.
cyanydeez 47 minutes ago [-]
Yeah, I find it curiously delusional, but the reality seems to be a segment of the population just refuses to accept the drastic change in pace to political change.
otikik 10 minutes ago [-]
Well yeah, but the man is also a pathological liar. I would not blame anyone for not believing he was going to do anything that he said he would do.
skybrian 46 minutes ago [-]
No, knowing that Trump really likes tariffs is not enough to know specifically how he's going to do it. (And which laws he's going to break to get there.)
swang 46 minutes ago [-]
let me guess... you don't follow politics either...
scandox 10 minutes ago [-]
> and choosing to ignore it is, in fact, a political choice
Why do people think this is such a gotcha? So what?
The world is extremely dynamic, complex and unpredictable. We all have only one life. Some people think they've got something worked out: a political viewpoint which somehow puts a shape on it. Some people reckon they don't have a clue: They feel they have better judgement about things much closer to them.
Frankly when I meet someone who isn't preoccupied with the party politics of the day I say to myself I'm glad. I appreciate them. Most of the people I've met like that strike me as very sane people. It's not like most peoples' engagement with politics is by default having a positive effect. What is your perfect world? One where everybody has strong, well articulated and up-to-the minute informed views on the entire national and international political situation? I think it would be a nightmare.
seizethecheese 17 minutes ago [-]
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.
Polymarket isn’t a source for this, lol. Maybe google trends, since there’s no reason to manipulate it. There were also reasons to anticipate the amount of the tariffs, and the absolute stupidity of the tariffs (still reeling from the Heard and McDonald islands tariffs lmao).
spacebanana7 20 minutes ago [-]
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.
mmh0000 1 hours ago [-]
This is super interesting, and I'd actually be quite interested in buying a 60K-Lumen lamp... but not at $1200.
Years ago, there was an HN article "You Need More Lumens"[1], which in turn led me down a rabbit hole.
I ended up purchasing:
4 standard table lamps from Target,
28 2000-lumen Cree LEDs bulbs[2] and,
4 7-way splitters[3].
The end result is somewhere around 56,000 lumens. And I LOVE it. Makes me much happier in my home office, especially in the winter months.
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.
eek2121 41 minutes ago [-]
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...
Rychard 6 minutes ago [-]
I have a pair of PAR38 LED bulbs from Cree Lighting (2100 lumens) that are rated for 25,000 hours. They're in a flood-light mounted under the eaves of my house.
I never got around to putting them on a dusk-to-dawn timer, so they've been burning 24/7 since I purchased them at the end of 2020 (except for the occasional power outage, of course). I paid $20/each for them.
Sample size of 1 (technically 2), but there are definitely products on the market that meet your criteria.
Nition 21 minutes ago [-]
Have you seen the Philips TrueForce Core 40W LED bulbs? Not sure if they're sold in the US, but they're 4000 lumens, "last up to 15,000 hours" (whatever you make of that phrasing). They're quite huge but fit into a normal light socket. Not very expensive either.
hahahahhaah 15 minutes ago [-]
I throw 200w led onto my garden. Enough to see where you are but a long way from daylight.
JKCalhoun 45 minutes ago [-]
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.
jedbrooke 33 minutes ago [-]
I've found that a 250w incandescent bulb (can be had for ~$10) paired with a 4000 lumen LED produced decent results on a budget. Search for "reptile" or "chicken" lamps, they are usually red. You can feel the HEAT from a 250w light bulb.
The only thing to watch out for is that the lamp base you're using can support the high wattage.
huydotnet 1 hours ago [-]
> Due to a miscommunication with the factory, the injection pins were moved inside the heatsink fins, causing the cylindrical extrusions below.
What happened after this? the factory have to replace the casting mold at their own expense or you have to pay for it?
sberens 7 minutes ago [-]
We had to remake half the mold, and I split it 50/50 with the factory.
MagicMoonlight 12 minutes ago [-]
Selling a product you haven’t tested or built yet to members of the public, classic.
mircerlancerous 2 days ago [-]
Well-written and valuable for insight whether you have similar personal experience or not.
As someone who does hardware and software as well, I relate to the challenges of making something you can hold; it's very easy to underestimate the challenge difference between the two.
Your Murphy's law references are spot on; I feel comforted reading I'm not the only one this happens to! Misery does love company, and it's important to hang on that I think, so that you don't lose hope :)
sberens 2 days ago [-]
Thanks :) It turns out "hardware is hard" isn't an exaggeration!
kingforaday 1 hours ago [-]
Congrats on the first batch shipment! What an accomplishment. As someone who just crossed 10 years as a first time foray into HW, I'd like to tell you it gets easier. It doesn't but keep going anyway! Good luck.
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.
sberens 2 hours ago [-]
Looking back I agree it was miraculous lol, I don't know if I'd do it again...
waerhert 1 hours ago [-]
Great read, thanks for sharing this. I'm also coming from software and have recently started making some hardware for personal use in my free time. The idea of selling it as an actual product has occurred to me, but the thought of dealing with all the logistics quickly makes me reconsider. Congrats on your launch!
Joel_Mckay 1 hours ago [-]
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
Animats 16 minutes ago [-]
The lack of UL approval is a concern. This thing draws over 500 watts and runs hot.
mandeepj 34 minutes ago [-]
You designed and sold a lamp for $1500! You’ve won a lottery!!
JoshTriplett 59 minutes ago [-]
I'm curious, what would be the engineering challenges (either hardware or software) in making it dimmable substantially below 2500 lumens, so that it could continue to work as a primary light source when winding down after the sun goes down, rather than switching to other light sources capable of getting dimmer?
Miss posts like this on HN, thanks for the great write-up! I tried to launch a hardware thing like 10 years ago[1], but couldn't raise enough money. Fun experience nonetheless.
This is a great idea. What was your biggest blocker?
sberens 2 days ago [-]
Author here, happy to answer any questions about the journey!
necovek 11 minutes ago [-]
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)?
stbtrax 6 minutes ago [-]
How did you figure out how to price your product?
dickfickling 1 hours ago [-]
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.
Do you have any recommendations for FCC/CE testing providers?
technothrasher 1 hours ago [-]
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.
ishyfishyy 2 hours ago [-]
What was your marketing strategy once you had the $10 deposit landing page setup?
niobe 1 hours ago [-]
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
srtw 1 hours ago [-]
Just curious about the frequency of the diodes and do they pulse simultaneously? Quite often I can perceive flicker in moving objects indoors.
sberens 1 hours ago [-]
We use constant current reduction dimming so there's zero flicker!
srtw 1 hours ago [-]
That’s great to hear and a big plus, but I’m actually curious about the undimmed full brightness refresh rate of the LEDs.
drum55 1 hours ago [-]
If it’s constant current the “refresh rate” is infinite, or zero depending how you look at it.
srtw 56 minutes ago [-]
Didn’t realize how they actually function, looks like I need some new lights.
Neywiny 2 days ago [-]
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?
sberens 2 days ago [-]
The controls weren't working because we had wired them up according to the labels which were wrong (which is also why the measurements didn't make sense to us).
Neywiny 2 days ago [-]
Ah. A lesson from somebody who's built hardware that I'm sure you've now learned: make sure connectors can't plug into eachother unless they're supposed to. Even if they're different connectors, different keying, whatever, sometimes they can still be forced together.
sowbug 1 hours ago [-]
This is good advice for robust design, but I swear, 9 times out of 10, you will be the one who keys it the wrong way during CAD layout.
abdullahkhalids 2 hours ago [-]
I built a lot of Ikea last month. And I was just marveling how cleverly designed everything was so that it was quite difficult to put two wrong pieces together. Mostly, the only warnings in the manuals were to rotate a piece correctly.
39 minutes ago [-]
arjie 38 minutes ago [-]
Appreciate the war stories. Is the product still available? I'd love to get one, though fortunately the first false spring of San Francisco will hopefully be followed soon by a true one.
The store is still online so I assume it must be. Let me run this by my wife haha.
0xbadcafebee 1 hours ago [-]
> It was at this point I truly began to appreciate Murphy’s law. In my case, anything not precisely specified and tested would without fail go wrong
After 20 years of system engineering, I just expected this to always be the case. Until my most recent job with a bunch of startups, where people fly by the seat of their pants, there's no communication, documentation, protection or testing, for anything. I am pissed off daily that things don't go wrong, because people now think this is normal, and it goes against everything I've learned from experience. It seems I stumbled onto the corollary of Murphy's Law: when you expect everything to go wrong, nothing does.
stack_framer 55 minutes ago [-]
What a great idea; good luck! Also, it's nice to read a hardware story on HN (we need more breaks from AI this and AI that).
OsrsNeedsf2P 2 hours ago [-]
Super glad you found (and made!) a product that everyone wants. Hopefully you have brighter nights than this ..
> That was the worst period of my life; I would go to bed literally shaking with stress. In my opinion, Not Cool!
sberens 1 hours ago [-]
Thanks! The ups and downs of startups are very real (maybe doubly so for hardware)
robertvc 53 minutes ago [-]
Great post, I really want to see more stuff like this on HN. And congrats on shipping!
atif089 2 days ago [-]
For someone who has no idea about light engineering or electronics if I stack two 25k Lm lamps next to each other does it make 50k Lm light?
I recently changed my car's headlamps to Chinese LED which claims to be about 37kLm and I don't know how much it is probably less than that.
Two of those lamps costee me around $24 on Amazon US (pretty sure under $10 in China).
What makes this $800+ ?
mint5 2 days ago [-]
Please don’t put in extra bright headlights on cars. Stock LED headlights being to bright for other drivers is already a massively common complaint — and then we have people installing even brighter ones? Please don’t.
kevin_thibedeau 51 minutes ago [-]
It is also illegal to use non-DOT approved lighting in the US. Was behind a jackass today with a receiver mounted accessory red light that was excessively bright and made it look like the brakes were applied.
ploxiln 54 minutes ago [-]
In addition to the all the other stuff, including light spectrum differences, you can't just trust that a "37000 lumen" light (cheap from China ...) is such a thing. Some examples of "100,000 lumen" flashlights that ended providing more like 2000 to 3000 lumens: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6q_0wxzClkg
It's possible, they exist, many such LEDs are probably manufactured in China ... but the legit ones are probably more expensive, and you may need a more recognizable brand to do some QA, and keep pressure on the factory to not slip quality or inputs.
Consider the cheap screwdriver included with the lamp in this story: unexpectedly, many were more faulty than the cheapest $4 screwdriver you'd find in any hardware store. The more stories you read about manufacturing stuff in China, the more you'll see very strange things. It's not about nationality or anything, it's an extreme kind of optimization. If you didn't catch it already, maybe you didn't really need what you thought you asked for ... they're just checking/optimizing
fxtentacle 2 days ago [-]
For colours to look natural you need your white light to contain lots of different wave lengths. It’s usually measured as Ra. Artificially looking LEDs are easily 10x cheaper than photography grade LEDs. Also, this guy is probably paying taxes and handling stuff the proper legal way. If you order from Alibaba, chances are you’ll not be paying taxes. Plus if they offer a 5 year warranty, they probably need to keep some money around for repairs.
Just to add context those are just dumb lamps and I acknowledge that the product here has a lot more features including IoT support and the ability to change Hue.
Is it the ability to change Hue that makes this expensive?
sberens 2 days ago [-]
The main cost driver is the sheer size/weight/power. Dimmability, adjustable CCT, and smart home controls do add a decent chunk though.
sberens 2 days ago [-]
Yep lumens are additive (though your eyes perceive them logarithmically).
I don't know much about car headlights, but chatgpt says high beams are typically 25-45 watts, and assuming a generous 200lm/w that gives you 5000-9000 lm.
Roughly speaking, it's expensive because it's 50 lbs & tons of electrical components (that are much higher quality than $24 headlights).
nicoburns 2 hours ago [-]
Oh boy, I want one of these. This would absolutely perfect for winter depression (I suspect much better than the "SAD lamps" marketed for this purpose which are bright not even close to this bright). But £889 is a lot of money for a lamp!
riotnrrd 1 hours ago [-]
If you're not afraid of DIY and it looking (much) uglier than these lamps, you can buy extremely bright "cob lights" and make something yourself: https://meaningness.com/sad-light-lumens
egypturnash 1 hours ago [-]
Find a garden shop, a 2' square full-spectrum light from "The Indoor Sun Shop" was very important to my mental health when I lived in Seattle and cost a lot less than this. Especially after I added a mechanical timer so I could never be too depressed to turn it on in the morning.
fix4fun 2 hours ago [-]
50k lm is quite high. What electric power consumption does it have ? I estimate around 500 Watt, am I right ?
It's 60k lumens now, and it draws 580W off the wall
michaelt 48 minutes ago [-]
Am I right in thinking you're dissipating that 580W using passive cooling only?
Impressive if so - every time I've designed something approaching that power level I've ended up needing forced air cooling.
genezeta 13 minutes ago [-]
> Q: Does it get hot/how is it cooled?
> A: It's cooled through our large heatsink and ultra quiet Noctua fan. The fan only turns on above 75% brightness. At max power, the heatsink is cool enough to put your hands on it for a couple of seconds.
christkv 2 hours ago [-]
Whats the expected life for the leds at that power draw level?
sberens 1 hours ago [-]
LEDs are pretty insane these days - the ones we use have an L90 (time until they hit 90% brightness) of >50,000 hours (17 years if you use it every day 8 hours a day).
ceroxylon 2 hours ago [-]
Good estimate, the official website for the lamp says 580W
lastdong 1 hours ago [-]
Congratulations on the successful launch and excellent write-up. Hardware is fun but also much more challenging.
ArcaneMoose 1 hours ago [-]
Great write-up! Thanks for sharing your journey
hahahahhaah 16 minutes ago [-]
Love the intersection of geopolitics and hardware design lead times. Trade wars can be waited out why getting the design right.
Soerensen 42 minutes ago [-]
The $10 deposit validation approach before committing to manufacturing is underrated. So many hardware projects fail because founders fall in love with the build before confirming anyone will pay.
What stood out to me: the factory miscommunications and quality issues compound because you can't iterate as fast as software. Each mistake costs weeks and thousands of dollars.
For anyone considering hardware: if you're not getting deposits or strong signals of purchase intent before tooling up, you're basically gambling. The author's approach of getting commitments first is the right playbook.
dmwood 2 days ago [-]
Just a few slots down in my YC feed: the benefits of bright light
580 watts..... :D. Why not work on cheap solutions to bring in natural light into darker parts of the house?
johng 1 hours ago [-]
What a great article. It's amazing to see how many simple things can go wrong, and I'm sure there could have been more. Great work keeping your tenacity up and sticking through it.
atentaten 2 hours ago [-]
Very interesting. I would like something like this, but not with LEDs.
conormccarter 2 hours ago [-]
Hydrargyrum medium-src iodide lamps are an alternative (artificial sun lights for movie sets), but you'll want a good AC unit in your office
kens 2 hours ago [-]
I thought hydragyrum was a made-up word, but it's the Latin word for mercury, which explains the Hg chemical symbol. (Just in case anyone finds this interesting.)
I have an appreciation for very bright lamps, and the project is neat, but that stuck out to me.
I'm always fascinated by people who both feel comfortable ignoring maybe the single most impactful society-determining apparatus but will also say "no one could have seen that coming", where that is whatever they were unaware of because they chose to check out. I find the stance so fascinating because for myself, it would be impossible to not try and understand why the world is the way it is.
Everything is downstream of politics whether people want to recognize that or not, and choosing to ignore it is, in fact, a political choice.
This term evolved into the modern "idiot" which we are familiar with.
After the extermination of Melos they could credibly say they were less responsible for the actions of the polis.
And had a higher chance of deflecting the inevitable revenge on to the non idiotes Athenians.
For one thing, wouldn’t everyone claim they were against their old polis? How would the invaders have any idea who was an idiote?
I just don’t believe it’s at all easy to avoid the fate of your nation , and I especially doubt that the politically ignorant have a better chance of avoiding that fate than the well informed.
The counter extermination was only 5% of Athens total population, or so historians say, so it seems like a lot of nuance was shown.
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.
This is about taking reasonable risk calculations as a small business with extremely high tariff exposure, when a president who did a bunch of high tariffs last time wins and election and says he'll do it again.
Sure multi-trillion-dollar financial institutions didn't run for the hills because they get paid when it goes up and paid when it goes down.
The markets priced in him backing down repeatedly, which he has.
"Trump vows massive new tariffs if elected, risking global economic war"
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/08/22/trump-tra...
(https://archive.is/20231125045858/https://www.washingtonpost...)
EDIT - Found this after my post, a MUCH better "he said it":
https://www.donaldjtrump.com/agenda47/agenda47-president-tru...
“Living under a rock” is the technical term, I believe.
Why do people think this is such a gotcha? So what?
The world is extremely dynamic, complex and unpredictable. We all have only one life. Some people think they've got something worked out: a political viewpoint which somehow puts a shape on it. Some people reckon they don't have a clue: They feel they have better judgement about things much closer to them.
Frankly when I meet someone who isn't preoccupied with the party politics of the day I say to myself I'm glad. I appreciate them. Most of the people I've met like that strike me as very sane people. It's not like most peoples' engagement with politics is by default having a positive effect. What is your perfect world? One where everybody has strong, well articulated and up-to-the minute informed views on the entire national and international political situation? I think it would be a nightmare.
https://polymarket.com/event/trump-imposes-40-blanket-tariff...
He’s now unimaginably successful at YouTube but at least I’m better at predicting the content of tomorrow’s newspapers.
Years ago, there was an HN article "You Need More Lumens"[1], which in turn led me down a rabbit hole.
I ended up purchasing:
The end result is somewhere around 56,000 lumens. And I LOVE it. Makes me much happier in my home office, especially in the winter months.[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10957614
[2] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08H4RJQTT
[3] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01FKIE6M4
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.
I never got around to putting them on a dusk-to-dawn timer, so they've been burning 24/7 since I purchased them at the end of 2020 (except for the occasional power outage, of course). I paid $20/each for them.
Sample size of 1 (technically 2), but there are definitely products on the market that meet your criteria.
I would get/build such a thing for my mental health, but I worry the LED illumination will be counter-productive.
The only thing to watch out for is that the lamp base you're using can support the high wattage.
What happened after this? the factory have to replace the casting mold at their own expense or you have to pay for it?
https://blog.iotdef.com/celebrating-10-years/
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.
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
[1] https://www.pcgamer.com/introducing-gameref-the-anti-cheat-h...
Congrats on shipping. I'm living in the EU working California hours (4pm-1am) and will definitely be buying one.
The store is still online so I assume it must be. Let me run this by my wife haha.
After 20 years of system engineering, I just expected this to always be the case. Until my most recent job with a bunch of startups, where people fly by the seat of their pants, there's no communication, documentation, protection or testing, for anything. I am pissed off daily that things don't go wrong, because people now think this is normal, and it goes against everything I've learned from experience. It seems I stumbled onto the corollary of Murphy's Law: when you expect everything to go wrong, nothing does.
> That was the worst period of my life; I would go to bed literally shaking with stress. In my opinion, Not Cool!
I recently changed my car's headlamps to Chinese LED which claims to be about 37kLm and I don't know how much it is probably less than that.
Two of those lamps costee me around $24 on Amazon US (pretty sure under $10 in China).
What makes this $800+ ?
It's possible, they exist, many such LEDs are probably manufactured in China ... but the legit ones are probably more expensive, and you may need a more recognizable brand to do some QA, and keep pressure on the factory to not slip quality or inputs.
Consider the cheap screwdriver included with the lamp in this story: unexpectedly, many were more faulty than the cheapest $4 screwdriver you'd find in any hardware store. The more stories you read about manufacturing stuff in China, the more you'll see very strange things. It's not about nationality or anything, it's an extreme kind of optimization. If you didn't catch it already, maybe you didn't really need what you thought you asked for ... they're just checking/optimizing
That's all there is to it. Take a look at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CJqAJ2LXw8&t=852.
Is it the ability to change Hue that makes this expensive?
I don't know much about car headlights, but chatgpt says high beams are typically 25-45 watts, and assuming a generous 200lm/w that gives you 5000-9000 lm.
Roughly speaking, it's expensive because it's 50 lbs & tons of electrical components (that are much higher quality than $24 headlights).
https://getbrighter.com/
Impressive if so - every time I've designed something approaching that power level I've ended up needing forced air cooling.
> A: It's cooled through our large heatsink and ultra quiet Noctua fan. The fan only turns on above 75% brightness. At max power, the heatsink is cool enough to put your hands on it for a couple of seconds.
What stood out to me: the factory miscommunications and quality issues compound because you can't iterate as fast as software. Each mistake costs weeks and thousands of dollars.
For anyone considering hardware: if you're not getting deposits or strong signals of purchase intent before tooling up, you're basically gambling. The author's approach of getting commitments first is the right playbook.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s44271-025-00373-9
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-026-35389-6