It's great that umbrellas can now contain more toxic chemicals, rare minerals and disposable batteries, but can we also please make it depend on an app and a paid subscription, contain an AI assistant that tells you whether it's raining, and report in real time on all your movements and conversations?
this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2026
18 points (95.0% liked)
Hacker News
5103 readers
498 users here now
Posts from the RSS Feed of HackerNews.
The feed sometimes contains ads and posts that have been removed by the mod team at HN.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Can’t go outside, my umbrella is charging.
As someone who also makes weird shit. The media have their weird obsession with everything being practical.
Most of the time, the people making these are doing it purely for the amusement/challenge of it. Think of it as art, not product development.
not a fan of over complicated solutions that are worse for the environment simply to save very little effort
it doesn't save effort tho it requires like a lot more effort than multiple alternatives lol
nah i feel like there are use cases where use would be less physical effort
besides where do you even put thar when you get to your destiny
I mean I guess but now imagine having to charge it or it discharging while you're walking outside or it falling behind.
It's just very inconvenient and bad for crowded places too, easier to steal.
Imagine carrying that while you travel.
But backpack umbrellas already exist and require no batteries or connection
You know what else you could use with two free hands? Use one to hold an umbrella. Seems a bit much for most people. Still cool though.
I was going to say the same: while cool I think we’re wasting a lot of resources reinventing stuff that doesn’t necessarily need reinventing.
We’re in the middle of a climate crisis but digging up rare earth metals, assembling plastic pieces all for a self-moving umbrella doesn’t seem very in tune with nature.
No but the innovation and the economy. The curve must go up!
Same problem with heavy, gusting wind that a hand-held one has. It would be bobbing all over the place. Where I live we only get rain with wind making standard umbrellas almost useless.
Fun to mess around with, great for views and clicks, but not practical at all.
I’ve been thinking, the next big personal electronics shift on the level of smartphones will probably be some kind of drone.
BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
"AND SO YOU SEE, IT'S JUST SO CONVEN...I SAID...WAIT WHAT?"
Edit: it is neat, just being around this in public would be annoying lol