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I doubt anyone needs this, but I want to buy it just for the product description! It's full of gems, e.g. "Sort of sleek mobile design experience with colors, numbers, and wobbly eyes that will turn heads".
Can't tell if this is inspired by market research, or if someone at the company simply had the freedom to create something that's just fun. Kinda wish it's the latter.
"A truly 'mobile' phone"
_Phone has wheels_
That's a Tesla
"You don't understand, it's not a car manufacturing company, it's a phone making company"
Fisher Price being faster than Apple in the four-wheeled mobile phone market.
At Apple the wheels cost extra.
portable too
Like the HN handle!
I do feel this is market research inspired. The fact that it is sold out between Thanks Giving and Christmas. This makes a brilliant secret santa gift for offices, friends, family.
It sold out in seconds when it went up on BestBuy a couple of weeks back. I had it in the cart but unable to complete the transaction.
"it makes both imaginary and real phone calls"
wonderful
My favorite line as well. Someone give this copywriter a medal.
> I want to buy it just for the product description!
there is a product demo video that does not load on the mobile app i browse HN with. you simply must see it, it is nearly a work of art.
if they werent sold out i would buy 4 of them for nieces, nephews, and my WFH desk.
Wow, I missed that, it's great!
"The past has finally arrived"
"Numbers. Colors. Eyes."
They could have totally reused the same, respectable jokes from the product description in the video, but they did something new. This is art.
Oh yeah the text is charming:
> Bluetooth® range: 15 feet; Fun: unlimited
"A real-working phone for a real adult desk"
Children love emulating what adults do. It’s how they learn and develop.
Wait, this is for children??? I’m not sure about that. I bet a range of adults would have fun with this phone on a very serious, very stern desk. Imagine interrupting an interview because your Fisher Price phone is ringing.
It's not. Check out the questions and answers section towards the bottom of the page.
This would be great, if it had a modem inside, and if you could limit the calls to only the parents.
On the other hand, how many children have actually seen any adult use any phone like this (rotary, or even any other landline)
Some years ago my then 3 year old picked up a payphone in a very remote area and said "hello, hello" into the receiver. I'm reasonably sure that is the first landline phone he ever say in his life.
If only they had picked up a
Yeah but they don't read product descriptions
Actually this could be quite useful for parents who may have conditions like epilepsy or diabetes or something else where they could slip into states of unconsciousness or incapacitation. The kid could be taught from an early age to ring 911 or 999 or some other emergency number listed here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_emergency_telephone_nu...
(what a anti-NWO list of numbers)
and hopefully get the appropriate service just by using their Fisher Price phone.
We read and hear about kids calling the emergency services all the time so I wonder how long before we get the first Fisher-Price mobile phone emergency call, which news organisations will be the first to run with it?
I feel like all the toddlers I know, including my own, would already know how to use a smartphone by the time they would be able to learn to use this phone.
We have a land line phone because I didn't want to have to teach the kids how to unlock my phone nor rely on my phone always being charged and accessible in case of emergency. The land line is always on accessible and always in the aame spot.
My phone at least allows for 911 calls from the lock screen.
One other thing I thought of: a land line is tied to an address without needing the child to be able to give the address verbally. My oldest can, my youngest is still learning, but I am also assuming all bets are off if they're scared.
Also, I'm sorry for the various typos in the previous post.
FYI, all mobile phone numbers in the US have the option of being tied to an address for 911 purposes. I assume the default is the billing address, but the address can be changed to be specific to each phone number.
https://www.t-mobile.com/support/account/change-your-billing...
https://www.verizon.com/support/knowledge-base-214957/
https://asecare.att.com/tutorials/officehand-e-911-emergency...
I distinctly remember the shock (and adults scrambling) that ensued when we discovered my 18-month-old niece figured out how to unlock an iPhone back in 2011.
That would be an obvious PR coup, but teaching a kid to use this instead of an actual phone is much less reliable in almost every way.
NWO?
New World Order
Niggers with attitude
:)
“Its intuitive bulky face design comes with a 'super-advanced' rotary dial”
I used to know someone that worked there and it always seemed like the engineers had a lot of latitude and enjoyed their jobs, so I'm guessing it bubbled up from the bottom.
If it was available here, I'd have ordered one today! Oh, the fun!
My new washer-dryer (not as much fun as the telephone) has bluetooth ,and I can monitor and control it with an app ('Homewhiz')..
...that connects to a cloud server 'somewhere'.
...for which the app suppliers want: my location and access to my microphone, camera and contacts - and the app won't install or run if you start denying access.
Nope, not happening.
I wish I was more of a hacker/programmer because I'd like to do some protocol sniffing and create a connector for Node-Red so that I could link the appliance to my home automation system without becoming a personal data asset for the manufacturer.
Are you aware you're commenting on a nostalgic bluetooth kids phone which pairs to your mobile phone in the same way a headset does?
Yep. My comment was more along the lines of 'connectivity can be fun/useful, but sometimes there's a privacy trade-off'.
I'd consider myself 'aware' rather than 'paranoid', but if we extrapolate for a minute....Some function or app on the phone (or distant cloud service) can recognise the MAC address of the Fisher price phone's bluetooth PHY and, coupled with GPS info, we have a location where there's possibly a young child (or an older one in their home office!). Maybe, worse case, your targeted ads contain more children's toys.
_Some function or app on the phone (or distant cloud service) can recognise the MAC address of the Fisher price phone's bluetooth PHY_
That’s not how MAC addresses work. Once a packet crosses a router, the packet appears to come from the MAC address of the router.
So for example a web site you connect to has no idea what your MAC address is.
> _So for example a web site you connect to has no idea what your MAC address is._
...unless you (or the app you're running) tells it.
Exactly.
Well, I'd disagree with the first statement having worked with IPX/SPX ;-)
But, yeah, you're not wrong for IP networking - however, an app on the phone could forward the MAC address of the bluetooth connected device.
Regular apps can't typically access the MAC address of the connected device. Additionally, with BLE (& Bluetooth 5?) the MAC address is required to rotate regularly as part of the spec (IIRC even while connected but certainly the broadcast address).
BLE has a privacy feature that enables MAC address rotation, but it isn't a requirement. Apple products and Android phones use the privacy feature, but other than that most products don't. The possibility of tracking someone via the MAC address of their Bluetooth devices is very real.
But you are correct that regular apps can't address the MAC address of connected Bluetooth devices, so the tracking vulnerability that OP is suggesting isn't really possible.
Bluetooth uses MAC addresses too, so this still applies.
And no one farther than 30 feet from you will see your Bluetooth hardware address.
Yeah, but someone in your home
might have a rogue phone app installed (or not even that, I bet companies like Xiaomi already so this with their smart home stuff) that scans bluetooth devices and sends the addresses so that they can be data mined.
So can you dial out on the toy? Or can you only dial out on the mobile device that the toy phone connects to?
The description seems to say that you can dial out on the toy, but it connects via Bluetooth to the mobile device to do so:
"Connects to your mobile device with Bluetooth® wireless technology to make and receive calls through your existing phone plan—no additional line required (Compatible with IOS and Android™ devices)"
Other than it making horrible noises, is there anything you’d want less on a kids toy?
Calling random people doesn’t seem like something that’s a good idea.
It isn’t for kids. It says so right on the page.
I’ve just re-read it and can’t see that it does. Reading it with that in mind however makes it obviously correct.
The closest I could find to it saying that was the customer questions, one of which was answered with, “This one is intended for adult collectors.”
Phones should have fake permissions for this kind of thing. Suuure you can read my SMS. Oh, I never get any SMS? Well that's how it is. Mine my contact info? Oh, look at that, I have no friends.
What's stopping them from just complaining when you have no SMS or contacts? They would just show a new dialog saying "Give us the real permissions".
Yeah but that’s a legitimate GFY situation where you would infuriately delete the application.
Assuming it's a built-in iOS/Android feature, hopefully app review would catch apps trying to circumvent the fake permissions, and the risk of blocking real users would probably discourage them (I almost never use SMS unless it's for a verification code, and I have no reason to keep those messages).
Then you get an app that can generate fakes. Seems very fun to make
Someone had that in the early days of Android. If you denied an app access to your contact list, the app saw a list of fake contacts.
iOS has this with the photo album permission at least. You can select to only reveal a select subset of your photos to an app. I assume Android has something similar.
I would hope this is just using bluetooth headset profile, and doesn't require anything like that. It really doesn't need anything else with the feature set as described.
From the product page: _"a phone smart enough not to come with any apps"_. Sure looks like it's a plain BT headset.
Can I use it as my office phone?
Just have it on your desk paired with your cell. Would work fine I think :)
My Cisco 8851 has Bluetooth and supports headsets. I'll be using this with it.
> I wish I was more of a hacker/programmer because I'd like to do some protocol sniffing and create a connector for Node-Red so that I could link the appliance to my home automation system without becoming a personal data asset for the manufacturer.
You may find this post (
https://ptx2.net/posts/unbricking-a-bike-with-a-raspberry-pi...
) inspirational.
Without knowing the App, but the location permission could be required for Bluetooth 4.X LE to work. That still doesn't justify why a dryer needs your phonebook.
Yes you need Allow Location Permissions for your App to use Bluetooth on both iOS and Android :$
> for which the app suppliers want: my location and access to my microphone, camera and contacts - and the app won't install or run if you start denying access
Could these things be virtualized? And provide a fixed location, silent sound, and an empty contact list to whatever applications you don't trust?
Yes, if you run an android version with root there are frameworks for doing this. That said, some apps detect when things are too static and won't necessarily work even with these workarounds.
This should be built into the operating system. Didn't Android (or maybe it was iOS) add a feature recently where you can set your camera to be a black screen unless you explicitly give permission to the app even if you gave permission to the app earlier?
> This should be built into the operating system
I agree, but I doubt it will happen. It was already a battle to get the permissions in android as fine-grained as they are. Even though they are fine-grained now, the permissions don't mean anything when every app demands that you give it everything it asks for (even though it clearly does not need them to work).
Oh, fake data generators it is, then.
You are not the first person with this problem - fortunately smart people figured a way to fake all these data but it requires additional effort.
Any pointers where to start?
https://github.com/M66B/XPrivacyLua
I haven't kept up with it, it needs a rooted phone and Xposed Framework, and some apps don't like that and stop working.
But in an older version of this app, you can set it to prompt you for any activity the app wants to do, e.g. read clipboard or phone status, where you can say "Allow/deny always, allow/deny for 10 minutes" etc.
If you are on Android, there are ways to give phones fake access to microphone, camera, contacts etc.
How?
Why did you buy that washer and dryer? Surely there were non-"appified" versions available? You appear to hate the idea, but you just told that manufacturer that that's what you wanted.
> Surely there were non-"appified" versions available?
Ironically, those are probably more expensive. Privacy has become a commodity.
You've hit the nail on the head. Americans will do anything to save $1, and this is the future we deserve.
Can you use the machines without an app?
I'm perfectly happy using appliances like it's the pre-smartphone era but the moment using an app becomes _required_ is when I'll flip my shit
Fisher-Price is doing amazing things these days. I don’t know what happened and I can’t find any press about it.
I got a Soothe’n’Snuggle for my 3 year old child and it is a full on sleep-inducing soft robot. It works. Very sophisticated for less than $40.
https://www.fisher-price.com/en-gb/product/soothe-n-snuggle-...
Last month HN was angry at them because the music box now only pretends to be mechanical:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29048819
.
Last month _a few people_ on a single HN thread were angry with them.
Sorry, I find it a bit annoying when people make broad conclusions about a large group of people while ignoring sampling bias.
It's already understood HN is not a single collective of ideas in just one prevailing direction.
Is this satire? I can't tell.
(because it's quite clear to me that _many many people on HN_ act like it's some kind of hivemind collective, and so it continually needs to be pointed out)
Don't both feelings go the same way ?
Last month people were angry they released a lazier version of their toy, and today they're praised for their efforts on new toys.
People like nice things.
I mean, faking out a mechanical music box with electronics, and then driving the only physical part with a decapitated, silent music box is sort of outrageous.
I don't know how Fisher-Price manage to get the quality they do. No other toys in our house come close to being as unbreakable. The cash register I played with in the 80's is still working just as well as it did back then.
A pretty neat trick considering they shipped their manufacturing overseas.
Managed. Past tense. The old stuff was quality.
I just bought it for my 14 months old and Im not sure which combination is the best but the results are not as good as yours. Are you using only breathing or the sound and light as well?
Same age baby here, it worked well for mine when she was 6 to 10 months old. After that these kinds of tricks didn't really work anymore.
A normal stuffed toy now has the same effect as a sound and "breathing" one, she holds it and goes to sleep and when she doesn't want to sleep the toy makes no difference.
Wish my kids were still young enough for the excuse to buy it [...for myself...]
How long does the battery last? I got a similar product Whisbear, and it needs to be charged every 2 days... We just took the electronics out and it seems to work just as well :D
I have one of those too for my son’s crib, two AA batteries will last you about a month or two (we use it each night.) Highly recommended!
Funny thing is he’s 8 months old now and I’m not sure he actually likes having it play the music any more? He’s learned to turn it off by pressing his face against the stomach… not every time though. But when he doesn’t want it on, he very deliberately crawls over to it, presses his nose to it, and it turns it off. At least he can decide when he doesn’t want it on!
Dialing could charge the batteries.
Why do they need to load javascrit from 9 domains though...
"... a phone smart enough not to come with any apps. Its intuitive bulky face design comes with a 'super-advanced' rotary dial..."
Love their marketing speak here :)
it actually seems to be made for adults with the Bluetooth connecting to the mobile phone for real calls.
All I want to know is, can I Bluetooth audio device it into my work laptop's SIP client? It could sit inside webcam view for those important conf calls
Probably, as I expect its just a bluetooth headset
I don’t think it’s just a headset, more of a hands-free interface. A headset can’t establish outgoing calls to arbitrary numbers like a hands-free interface can.
I dunno man texting grandma to call, syncing the phone, and having it ring with grandma actually on the other end would be great for toddlers.
Agreed. My nieces who are still young enough to get a kick out of that live with their grandma (and the other lives in Senegal and doesn’t speak much if any English) so I’m not sure who they’d get a call from … me, I guess!
I suppose I _should_ be a better uncle and call my nieces and nephews sometime, cute phone or no cute phone. There’s just so freaking many of them now.
> Your childhood is calling, now you can actually answer.
Seems to clearly target adults.
My custom phone shell in 2004:
https://flickr.com/photos/alx/1491266/in/photolist-8Diu-4j1o...
That’s neat, thank you for sharing. Was it a lot of work to do?
Love the product video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKKFNV0m3SQ
"Bulky design"
"Colors"
Haha that's great
This is pretty cool, but I wonder if toddlers nowadays even understand what a cord phone is. After all, playing is often just mimicking adult behavior, and adults aren't using corded phones anymore, so to a child this might not be a fun toy. A cool toy for adults, though.
Weirdly enough there’s one of the original versions of this toy in the toy box at our local pub and my three year old saw it and immediately knew that it was a phone. I have absolutely no idea how.
_> I have absolutely no idea how._
Nurseries have a lot of old books, and TV channels repeat a lot of old cartoons & other shows, so a kid may be exposed to old-style phones in passing quite a lot. And “in passing” is enough at that stage, when a growing brain readily hoovers up any and all available information.
We made an effort to not expose our son to that at a young age (no screens at all, and we didn't send him to daycare) He still figured out the first landline phone he saw.
Sesame Street still includes their old sketches with corded phones. I'll bet other kids TV does too.
I've found the answer to pretty much every "how do they know that?" is "A TV show". Although now that the older one can read and is in-person school, the answer is increasingly "Books" or "Someone at school".
Movies/tv shows/books?
Possibly the shape. The symbol/icons for a phone are still old style corded phones, even an an iPhone.
Maybe they have one at nursery
Well, even the most modern smartphone uses an icon of an analog landline handset to represent "make/end a call". She may have recognized that.
Playing is often mimicking adult behaviour, but certainly not always... They may not use the phone "correctly" but kids have a special skill of using anything as a toy.
My 1-year old had a toy with a small plastic non-functioning telephone. After 1 demonstration where we pantomimed using a phone, he started picking up everything and holding it to his ear. Fruit, books, other toys, pretending it were a telephone and trying to speak into it. Every time he did this, we'd play along and say "Hello?" into our own nearby imaginary phone. He got a reaction from us that reinforced the game.
Eventually I gave him a real handset from an old rotary phone to play with. He might never have the experience of calling someone on it, but babies are at least able to figure out pretty quickly how to use these things in play.
I think this is actually targeted at adults. The only pic with a person in it is an adult. Think "secret santa" gift.
> I wonder if toddlers nowadays even understand what a cord phone is.
It's the thing they see at grandma and grandpa's house.
Uhm, at like my grandma and grandpa's house - sure. But my kid(who is 7 months now) won't see one at my mum's house, because....why would he. She's already young enough to be cellphone-only, landlines are just an ancient relic(that yes, my 80 year old grandma still uses, sure).
Well, my parents (who are in their late 60s and grandparents) still do have a landline. An actual, honest to goodness analog AT&T landline. I've been trying to get them to at least switch it over to their cable company, but they are stuck in their ways.
They actually built this as a volume product. I'm impressed.
I'm waiting for the Elf on the Shelf to become Amazon Ring enabled.
"He sees you when you're sleeping. He knows when you're awake. He knows if you've been bad or good..."
"...he reports to headquarters".
...And waits for you to get paid.
"so buy now for goodness' sake"
This is such a funny product. The original chatter telephone toy is one of my mom's favorite toys when she was a kid. She always brings it up and eventually found one at a garage sale to buy for herself. This would make for a funny Christmas gift seeing as you can use the handset for real.
This would be great for someone who spends a lot of time on the phone - salespeople, etc.
I guess call centre employees would count too but that would be just cruel.
Comes with speakerphone you say? I can only assume this will be ironically used in the conference room of some hip startup.
Trying to get one right now...
I feel like the audio might not be stellar, and nothing worse than being on calls with bad audio.
I am very disappointed that I missed this when it was in stock. I needed a new headset for my most important meetings.
I built an Ebay Bluetooth headset into a clunky kids mobile phone I got from a charity shop. Fun to use in public. Total cost ÂŁ3.
Holy shit, I have wanted exactly this product (minus the "child" styling) for years for my actual office, as a productivity tool. I just want to be able to take and make calls on my phone without being dragged into a vortex of tangential nonsense.
There are devices you can buy that add Bluetooth capability to any landline phone. I've never used one, but my brother has an old rotary phone on his kitchen wall that he was considering considering doing this with, which is how I heard about it. I think it would be quite cool.
This made me dig:
https://www.amazon.com/Panasonic-Expandable-Link2Cell-Blueto...
That's interesting, thank you. Funny how ugly the product is, I almost prefer the goofy kid car phone.
“Bluetooth retro phone handset” has lots of results. And there are corded ones that plug into your phone. Most of these don’t have numpads, but they must be out there!
"Eyes". I love the teaser. But this would mean that the user would have to memorize the phone numbers again?
1 is for mommy, 2 is for daddy, 3 is for big sister, big brother has a secret number, 5 is for grandparents, etc.
_1 is for mommy, 2 is for daddy, 3 is for big sister, big brother has a secret number, 5 is for grandparents, etc._
Security through obscurity doesn't work.
It really depends on your threat model, and can definitely be of benefit when complementing other good security practices.
And locks are only for keeping honest people honest.
That's why we build defense in layers. The obscurity layer is extraordinarily effective for the effort it requires. It also keeps log files clean!
It's not remotely security or intended to be. Not everything needs to be locked down. Just because it's a number doesn't mean it's a PIN.
Surely you could tell that he was joking?
For those reading just the headline:
Bluetooth is for making actual calls via your phone, just like a bluetooth headset.
This is aimed at adults.
Isn't the idea that your toddler can call grandma but without holding your actual $ 1000 iPhone?
They've got a video parodying the iPhone announcement video style, so I think the idea is mostly to be a sort of cheerful nostalgic joke.
Ideal yankee swap gift, IMO. Too bad it is out of stock.
My toddler nieces demand video calls, fight for the phone and show stuff around the home. They even tell between Facetime and Whatsapp.
That description is amazing, it reminds me of Woot in the pre-Amazon era. Maybe they'll make more of them considering it seems like they probably already sold this first batch.
I don't know how many people here have interacted with toddlers on phones, but I'm not sure this will take off.
The thing that kids love about communicating on mobile phones is _video_. They love to see themselves and love to see you. I would be very surprised if a 3 year old would prefer this over a WhatsApp video call / facetime.
From the product page itself,
> Your childhood is calling, now you can actually answer.
> A real-working phone for a real adult desk
> The Fisher-Price® Chatter Telephone® toy has been helping littles get walking and talking since 1961. To commemorate this incredible milestone, we’re inviting you to give your childhood a call with a real, working Chatter Telephone™ desk phone! Let’s remember what it was like to be little. When everything in the world could be something to play with and all it took was a little imagination to make something really fun happen. Let’s get down on the floor, sing at trees, spend less time growing up and a little more time growing down. Let’s be kids.
This product was made for adults. It's a joke / nostalgia play. Limited edition at Best Buy, while supplies last.
This has an extremely high i-want-this factor for me, personally. No way my kids get to touch this thing (if I could get a hold of one in Europe, seems sold out or unavailable)
I want to use this during video calls for work, where people can see me listen and speak into the thing.
> I'm not sure this will take off.
This sold out within hours of being released, so I'm pretty sure it already did :)
I have a 1 year old, and he has phone toys but he doesn't pick them up and do the fake conversation play like we did as kids. Obviously because a phone today is a pocket Facebook machine and device to Facetime grandma with.
Who said anything about kids?
Battery life could be better. 9 hours of talk time seems pretty low compared to much smaller devices.
This one does have colors though.
For some reason it reminds me of this from a couple of days ago:
https://twitter.com/nikitonsky/status/1465247347550703618
Has anyone made a guide on how to move the guts of this into an actual old-school dial phone? I have an old rotary dial phone I've been wanting to turn into a Bluetooth extension as a project.
There's a device called Cell2jack that just plugs into any landline phone (including rotary) and connects it to your cellphone via Bluetooth.
I bet if you cracked it you wouldn’t need one. Rotary connected to some IO pins. Speaker and microphone off the DAC and probably some more IO for lights, ringer, and stuff. I bet you label the wires when disassembling you could put it in anything fairly easily.
A number of people have done this in various ways over the years. Search for old blogs the hacker news archives and should find them.
I'm already imagining a sea of hipster tech bros with one of these on their desks right next to their nerf guns and mini basketball hoops.
If I was a boss, I would want it on my desk. Or maybe something like the "red telephone", it would be reserved for the very urgent calls only.
Its certainly very charming. Although I don't see many people using the rotary dial in the year of our Lord 2021. Knowing the phone numbers has fallen out of fashion almost completely.
Wait, so the dial actually works? Like, it will send the dialed numbers to the phone?
I want this for that feature alone. Make a second model that looks like a Bell/Western Electric rotary phone and weighs enough you could bludgeon someone with it.
"Inuitive"
Since when is a rotary phone intuitive?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHNEzndgiFI
Reminds me of this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KXoBcQER_0
That's how I'm making all of my calls from now on. And I'll feature it prominently in my background during zoom calls
Note that -- "This product is not intended for kids. This one is intended for adult collectors."
I don't think I'd ever give this to a kid but it looks like a great gag gift for adults.
I wonder how may other toys could be re-released as adult toys. I think this could be a big market.
I am sure nostalgia inducing toys (and anything else) have been a known business strategy for a long time. See all the recent movies with young people listening to 80s music.
Am I the only one who expected an interesting DIY hack as opposed to an actual product?
So can the phone interrupt a child's playtime with spam phone calls?
child phone you say? how about landing this bad boy on the desk at work and patching all your calls through it. only thing that would make it better is if it had a speaker for conference calls.
C’mon, man, even for Fisher-Price articles you still need to RTFA:
“Press the speakerphone button to chat hands-free”
The video is a great parody of the iPhone launch hype videos. Well done.
A bit off-topic but does anyone know what music is playing in the video?
According to Shazam: Havana (Jonnas B Remix) by Arnold T. & Alain Pauwels
Had a quick listen and it does sound like the right track.
https://soundcloud.com/ravvenmusik/premiere-arnold-t-alain-p...
If I had to guess after a quick listen, it's probably some royalty-free 30 second 'epic space synth' track they licensed directly. Didn't strike me as a song that's been released elsewhere, but I definitely could be wrong!
Did someone at Fisher-Price forget to delete the page on April 2nd?
I kind of want one just so I can use it in a teleconference.
I wish the improved the length of the cordle instead of adding BT.
I think that's a toy safety thing, so that kids can't strangle themselves with it :-(
It’s detachable for safety-that even say a regular 3.5mm lead can substitute
I want one of these to use as my mobile phone in the street
Out of stock. I guess it's a hit.
I want one for my desk, its sold out.
My toddler is currently dragging the original version of this toy back and forth across our house. I think I'll stick with that one.
I want one.
Is it April 1st already?
Cool product, awful website.
13 trackers found --> cookie dialog --> select 'only required' --> 13 trackers still.
Why? Not hipster enough?
Because this:
https://i.imgur.com/wFUvj1F.jpg
When you land you get a full-screen Cookies consent dialog (which according to another poster ignores the preferences you choose), overlayed by a notifications dialog.
It's a great idea to include Bluetooth in a child's toy, so as to better prepare them for the crushing frustration and disappointment of adult life.
"...and the hits just keep on coming."
https://brian.carnell.com/articles/2017/fisher-price-soul-cr...
Love the jacket and tie.
Just wait until you have to write a bluetooth stack. Summoning cthulhu is easier and less likely to drive you insane by comparison.
I once heard the Bluetooth stack referred to as a "layer cake of sorrow" and I think that's a pretty fitting description.
FWIW, I didn't find writing a TCP stack any fun..
Standards are more a guidance.
(or were, back then)
Oh, standards were a guidance back then? You had it good!
I'm only half kidding.
The bluetooth standard is very heavy on the architecture astronaut factor and light on the specification. It isn't so much a "standard" as an anthology of visions for wireless connectivity, each of which delegates all of the important decisions to the layer above. Which means that all of the decisions wind right back up in the implementer's lap, and the implementer has to sort out the compatibility matrix the old fashioned way, one compatible partner stack at a time. But everything still has to be built out of the lego pieces the architecture astronauts came up with, of course. Ugh.
It's like if someone asked for a standard to send mail, and instead of SMTP they came up with "The English Language." All the necessary degrees of freedom are there, but it doesn't constrain the problem space, so it's almost completely useless as a standard.
EDIT: No, that's too simple, a lot of people already speak The English Language. Klingon, then. All the necessary degrees of freedom are there...
It's a maddening web of profiles which maps to a tree of protocols which seems to be the result of design by committee. Such a bloated system for something that just needs to send friggin bytes.
I'm holding out for the inevitable Apple Child's Phone. It should make the pairing process with the Macbook Preschool simpler.
I'm waiting for the iChild. You can have a child that's exactly the way Apple wants it to be.
it just works?
Yes, it's very adept at making clothes and iPhones.
For Foxconn ?
To be honest I have kids, I’m kind of ready for that….
My car’s intermittent Bluetooth connectivity problems could crush the soul of any man.
Great, more gimmicky plastic crap that'll be fun for five minutes, stored away for a decade and then ends up in a landfill. Good job you guys.
bah, humbug
Why is this nr on HN rn?
It's a fun piece of technology.
Because it's genius PR.
Why advertise when you can create a product people want to talk about?
It's the fisher price of Amazon delivery drones.
Bluetooth capabilities to a toy that sparks nostalgia. Also, the time this was posted. I don't expect to still see this post in 8 hrs.
"nr"?
I meant to say nr 1
Gotta start them young. See also:
https://www.insider.com/mom-finds-a-camera-inside-the-teddy-...
This is clearly aimed at adults, the text gives it away.
That's because the target demographic can't buy it for themselves. It's aimed at being a Christmas present.
Someone on that page asked about recommended safety age, choking hazards, etc. and support answered with:
> This product is not intended for kids.
Nah, the product page is a gentle rib at smartphone manufacturers, whenever they release a new device and have a flashy video to go with it. Check out the video on the product page. It's definitely "you're a grown-ass adult and you kind of want this on your desk" lol
It’s only hinted at in the main copy but in the Q&A they explicitly say this one is intended for adult collectors.
