Cynically speaking, to me that's a paid article to keep hype around the persona since he's losing a lot of PR points lately.
I am not taking such a "visionary" seriously unless he manages to ship the one consumer-level product he promised.
And yes, many of his ideas are COMMON SENSE, I can't for the life of me understand the praise.
Hasn't been a good month for Essential. The phone he promised in June didn't ship in July, lost VP's of marketing and communication and today Google hired away his lead UX designer to fill the same role for Google Home.
Both of these aren't promising.
You're thinking of hygrometers, which measure relative humidity using capacitive, resistive, or gravimetric methods.
New devices and manufacturers don't typically improve the 3rd or 4th generation.
Rushed devices are largely premature, unusuable, and still move things forward: iPhone 1, Galaxy Note 1..
When did quality, functionality, delivering on scale and time get better? iPhone 3-4, Galaxy Note 3-4, LG G3-G4, Samsung S3-S4, iPad 3-4, Nexus 4-5.
Hype aside, the first effort isn't something that should be undercut.
What I am saying is that writing such articles is embarrassing and reads like a paid hype. Plus the guy really doesn't have much under his belt.
I and many other practical people dislike person cults. Especially such forced ones.
Guys like Rubin have built something that touched a lot of people, and grew to be much larger than them. I think that's not really something I can look to anyone to credit, or discredit, than, say someone else who has done the same.
I'm not sure if everyone is the type to take an the article immediately as gospel, or trying to immediately debunk it as gospel.
Maybe Wired has been been in my life through a few internet generations. Wired once was a key way of bringing attention to corners of the internet that weren't always easy to locate.