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Comment by recursive | Hacker News Reader

Also sometimes formulated as "how can you people be having fun when cancer still isn't cured yet?"

So you're claiming that people are working on smartphone-controlled candles for fun? Because LuDela seems like it's a startup trying to make money, not a group of people trying to have fun.

No, I'm claiming that making smartphone-controlled candles isn't Serious Productive Work that Contributes to Society, and they should Feel Bad.

Here's a community of people who make things that you probably find useless for fun: https://makezine.com/

Here's a company that makes money off this community, which is probably made up of people who think making random crap you can control with your smartphone is fun: https://www.adafruit.com/

Things you don't understand can be fun, including make interesting gadgets that you don't find useful.

The purpose of those companies is to get and help people to make stuff. That's not useless. Making is the point, not so much the final product. And still 90% of what I've seen on Makezine was more useful than LudeLa.

There's a difference between selling parts to a community of people who use them to make things for fun, and selling pre-made things that some people would make for fun if they weren't already pre-made.

Some would argue there's a difference between having fun and dumping billions upon billions of dollars into unequivocally stupid shit.

Vote with your wallet. Put your billions into unequivocally useful progress.

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