As always, HN never fails to make sure the top comment is negative in some way.
Dan, I think this is a phenomenal product. I didn't know much about laser cutters and their potential, and you did a great job making this accessible. I wish you luck and hope to see your company grow.
I think this is part of the reason I actually very much appreciate the comments section on HN. Not for negativity, but because often the top comment is a good summation of the caveats to whatever's behind a given link. People selling products are not wont to tell me why their product might not be as great as it seems, unless required to by law. Even then, only in tiny print.
I'm certainly not an expert in many areas (Lasers for one), including many of the areas that these products pop up in, so when something seems too good to be true (or if I happen to have said expertise) the first thing I do is hop over to comments to see what the rest of the community has to say.
I always try to take both links and comments with a grain of salt and a healthy dose of skepticism and try to come to my own conclusions. That's not easy to do if I only get one side of the story and I don't happen to have years of experience in the relevant fields.
True, you make good points. I just think in this case, the product warrants some kudos as the top comment. This is probably in the top 1% tier of quality startups.
I'd consider the original comment a positive contribution. Just because it can be seen as having a negative tone, this one of caution, it is backed up with a heft of substance explaining the thought process behind it. It also resulted in another informative response from the founder. That's a good thing we should encourage.
A negative comment is one that doesn't contribute anything. A negative generalization about a community that doesn't provide an explanation could be seen as an example of a negative comment.
Negative comments are appropriate in this case. This looked so amazing, but the comments here point out the very important fact that this requires access to the internet to function, something that the co-founder so far hasn't addressed in the comments despite numerous requests for an answer.
Also, I don't disagree with your comment, I just hate that the top comment always seems to put a damper on every truly promising launch or product - with Dropbox's launch being a famous example.
I didn't want to be negative or put this product down. I just wanted to be sure the people who are looking at this to know what they are getting into. The points I made about this machine could apply to ANY laser cutter.
As a class of machine, they're just not as easy to use as, say, an inkjet printer. As I said, the camera feature looks nice, and according to danshapiro, they've done a lot to help with the maintenance issues by enclosing the optics.
Dan, I think this is a phenomenal product. I didn't know much about laser cutters and their potential, and you did a great job making this accessible. I wish you luck and hope to see your company grow.