Yes, the KFConsole Is Real and It's Spectacular | Hacker News Reader

Yes, the KFConsole Is Real and It's Spectacular

collider.com

23 pointsmlthoughts201816 comments

Two thoughts here: first of all, the ROI on this marketing stunt is amazing. It's been covered in so many outlets, gotten positive PR, and just looks great for KFC. Can't have cost more than $100k to get the casemod built and the marketing executed. Excellent move coming from a fried chicken company.

Secondly: there is actually a really clever bit of engineering here. There's a grill on top (!). This is using the heat generated by the machine. So the cooling here is basically a heatpipe used to grill chicken. I've never seen heat being used in such a way in a console. I think it's really creative and shows good UX thinking (at least within the constraints).

I wonder if there are interesting ways the heat from a CPU or GPU could be used. Maybe to power fans? It reminds me of how scooters charge up their batteries by having the wheels spin. What other applications could there be?

Heating houses : https://qarnot.com/en/home/

Basically they install 'heaters' in your house which are actually servers in disguise. I think they also have a boiler now.

They're not the only ones though - I believe that in a number of places in Northern Europe, if you want to setup a datacenter in town, it has to be plugged to a (public?) water heating system.

It doesn't grill chicken, it keeps it warm.

Wow. Cleaning greasy chicken fat out of that computer looks like it'd be less than idea.

The build up of "dust bunnies" in servers over years will have nothing on what horrors this could create. ;)

The KFC PR Video: https://youtu.be/G2xa7vabDkE

What an incredible opener.

Not even overselling it to be honest...

I feel there was a missed opportunity by not calling it a tendies tower.

This will sell like hot .. chickens?..no. chicken legs,...anyone..wings:)

Yey for capitalism...

I can't help but feel this a silly gimmick and waste of engineering time.

The practicality of this whole thing feels non existent, creating a product for a market that does not exist (people who wanted chicken warmers in their PC) - this just feels like a exercise in creating more unnecessary e-waste/plastics.

Are you kidding? The gaming public are hungry for this.

This is like candy for streamers.

"The first time Peter Thiel spoke at YC he drew a Venn diagram that illustrates the situation perfectly. He drew two intersecting circles, one labelled "seems like a bad idea" and the other "is a good idea." The intersection is the sweet spot for startups."

http://www.paulgraham.com/swan.html

;)

It’s too transparent for me to even ironically play into the joke, but yeah I mean it’s not much more than a custom case. I don’t mind the joke. Honestly at least 2 people on their team will go around saying “outrage is still good PR” so if you’re trying not to let them win....

Obviously this marketing campaign only worked because they went through with fab. The joke didn’t make headlines, the lengths they went to did.

It’s not purely landfill. Those dumb cases will do their job. As a marketing campaign, they obviously won this one

Check out the comments on the youtube videos and on twitter. I think the KFC team understood their audience really well here, and appealed to a sense of humor most companies don't understand.

Shows how out of touch I am with what people want!

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