Yet another Hacker News

Tree-mounted machines connect to web app to let users knock on wood remotely

38 points surprisetalk 3 days ago 20 comments

jtickle 1 hour ago | parent

This seems exactly like the sort of shenanigan that would piss off rather than appease the wood spirits.

itissid 1 hour ago | parent

I am ratting this out to the Tree Beard

dvh 1 hour ago | parent

It's like FakeBlock from Arrested development

fancyswimtime 20 minutes ago | parent

knock on cousin remotely

tinyplanets 1 hour ago | parent

Or just, you know, walk outside in the fresh air, find a nearby tree, and knock on it...

dimatter 1 hour ago | parent

r/whoosh

TehCorwiz 1 hour ago | parent

If an app knocks on a tree and nobody is around…

classified 1 hour ago | parent

The knockers are missing solar panels to continuously charge their batteries. So there will be sustained costs to keep them running. And how water-proof are they? Apart from that, it's going to sell like hot cakes.

krunck 1 hour ago | parent

There are societies where rather than knocking on wood one turns one's head and spits. For example: "Grandad is looking well after his fall, let's hope that doesn't happen again. Ptew!"

Looking for this in app form.

random_cat_8745 44 minutes ago | parent

the true SaaS (Spit as a Service).

markdown 25 minutes ago | parent

I'm imagining a thousand people in a spitshop in (Mechanical) Turkey in a sitting at desks with a spittoon, waiting for a signal to spit.

weirdish 1 hour ago | parent

I'd only buy this if it included a subscription-based AI upsell to predict and adapt to my adjusting superstition needs over time

yetihehe 1 hour ago | parent

Knocking on wood was about knocking on unpainted wood, so that you have actual direct physical contact with wood. Remote knocking seems to go in the other direction...

thaumasiotes 1 hour ago | parent

> Knocking on wood was about knocking on unpainted wood, so that you have actual direct physical contact with wood.

How do you know this? For example, there is a wikipedia page section entitled "Origin of use in the English language"...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knocking_on_wood#Origin_of_use...

but the contents of that section make it extremely clear that no relevant facts are known to wikipedia.

skinfaxi 1 hour ago | parent

Found this other experiment, part of the same series "Machines Responding to Superstitions".

https://www.dezeen.com/2023/10/31/kinky-kashayam-portable-bl...

Though it seems less like machine response than humans integrating technology into superstitious belief.

gosen 1 hour ago | parent

I can't explain why but it's amazing! Maybe because in my culture "knocking on the wood 3 times" helps to avoid the bad luck and I lived with that for 20 years, or maybe it's just fun to imagine that you're knocking on the wood remotely ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Cpoll 1 hour ago | parent

Looking forward to one that will let me touch grass from my computer.

lofaszvanitt 31 minutes ago | parent

You have to do it with a right hand, from under. So this is 100% fake.

nkmnz 18 minutes ago | parent

What’s next? Touch-grass-as-a-Service?

ButlerianJihad 8 minutes ago | parent

Nothing can surprise me. Every day at college, I would walk past these "Trees".

https://stuartcollection.ucsd.edu/artist/allen.html#about-th...