[HN Gopher] O Holy Crap
___________________________________________________________________
O Holy Crap
Author : RickJWagner
Score : 235 points
Date : 2022-12-22 12:48 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thefp.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thefp.com)
| somehnacct3757 wrote:
| I just don't see it. My pens and my matchsticks work fine. My
| gloves are still gloves five winters later. Potato peeler, peels
| potatoes.
|
| I think the author doesn't understand that there's a tier of
| disposable goods for just about everything and if you don't shop
| wisely you'll take some of it home.
|
| Appliances for example: don't buy them from web pages and don't
| listen to Wirecutter. This is just letting marketers tell you
| what to buy. Instead go to a showroom that also repairs
| appliances. They'll know exactly which contemporary brands are
| crummy because they'll have been fixing them.
|
| Specialty stores will also have the entire price range for the
| product so you can see what quality costs for that good.
| Marketers prey on us during times of inflation, making their
| cheap goods look high end before we adjust to inflated prices. If
| you've only ever shopped appliances at places like Target, Best
| Buy, or Home Depot, you may have never seen a high quality
| appliance in your life. And if a brand you like starts showing up
| in these stores, run. (Famously, Levi in Walmart.)
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| If only. My three-generation appliance store sold me a fancy
| dishwasher that wouldn't release soap - the little door jammed
| against the wire rack in operation, opened a quarter inch and
| finished with a wad of gummy soap still inside. No way it could
| ever work.
|
| The store claimed it was 'supposed to work that way'. Lame.
| unregistereddev wrote:
| I've seen this problem before. While it's not a smart design,
| it usually works. Your racks are likely not pushed all the
| way into the dishwasher. It's possibly an installation
| problem; if the dishwasher is not level, gravity will pull
| the racks towards the door. Try adjusting the feet under the
| kickplate to raise the front of the dishwasher.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Nah. I returned it, for one that didn't need me to fix it's
| defects.
| user3939382 wrote:
| > there's a tier of disposable goods
|
| There are some product categories for which no strong options
| exist. For example, contemporary, top-of-the-line Kitchen Aid
| mixers have intermittently been produced with plastic motor
| parts. Go look at the reviews for sewing machines.
|
| Klein tools, which have historically been super high quality,
| made in USA, has started mixing in cheaper made in china
| products. Chippewa boots (Warren Buffet company) same.
|
| These are examples in a sea of examples. This is a trend.
|
| MBA types move into companies with brand trust and loyalty
| built slowly for decades, and mortgage it for shot-term profits
| by slipping in cost cutting measures. It takes consumers a
| while to catch on, and by then the execs have a nice line item
| for their resume. Or the holding company behind the changes
| divests, leaving a hollowed out husk of a brand behind them.
| crystaln wrote:
| Yes this. And it is hard for quality to compete with brand
| equity.
| syntheweave wrote:
| I believe some of this comes down to the product category
| being redefined over time.
|
| Kitchen appliances are really prone to this because the major
| processes actually needed in the kitchen - heat, cool, cut,
| stir - are all variations on a theme, and some of the
| processes have been usurped by "service" versions where the
| ingredient is pre-processed, e.g. instead of grinding coffee,
| buying pre-ground or instant.
|
| Where pre-processing works well, it becomes the norm, and
| then what follows is that the traditional product gets cost-
| cut into oblivion, until, decades later, some kind of
| artisanal movement springs up and there's interest in quality
| options again. Coffee really did follow this pattern, the
| original instant coffees set the norm for most of the 20th
| century, even though everyone can tell that they're nothing
| like freshly ground coffee.
|
| With the biggest, most-frequently needed stuff - stove,
| refrigerator, knives, pans - you can find good options in any
| year, especially if you search for the "do exactly one thing
| well" options in the category, like chest freezers. Once you
| get into a more specific category the pressure is off,
| though, and companies are more likely to sell you a
| disposable "experience".
| somehnacct3757 wrote:
| Kitchenaid, Cuisinart, these are the kinds of brands I'm
| talking about. They had their moment last century but the
| brand has been transferred to a new owner, or they've
| switched to volume sales in a big box retailer, or both.
|
| Kitchenaid is not a good brand. They haven't made top-of-the-
| line anything in decades
| jemmyw wrote:
| When it came to mixers I got a large Kenwood over a
| KitchenAid because it has a 10 year warranty vs 1 year for
| KitchenAid. People claim that modern Kenwood mixers aren't as
| good since manufacturing was moved to China, but if they're
| still standing by the products with a long warranty then they
| can't be that bad.
| pmarreck wrote:
| When everyone is manufacturing crap, there's value in non-cheap,
| good, honest products.
|
| Too bad all of our manufacturing went to China, a culture that
| has no concept of honesty. https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/in-
| china-honesty-is-not-th...
| https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/article/1879850/chinese-most-...
|
| I recently replaced a knockoff Leatherman (which of course broke
| without being old) with a real one. It worked so well, I bought
| two. https://www.leatherman.com/ I first discovered these when I
| worked in the USAF in the 90's. They're not cheap, but one should
| support quality products with your hard earned cash.
|
| I also needed to replace my belt recently. Discovered
| https://ansonbelt.com/. I'm not sure where they're manufactured,
| but they're quality belts with a unique self-measuring system and
| a latching mechanism.
| throw827474737 wrote:
| Those articles and our experience about modern obsolescense and
| optimizing the last cent of products out increase... yet I'm not
| seeing really the counter trend, but maybe it is yet so hidden I
| have just not found it? If anyone has..
|
| Why are there no companies claiming robustness / longevity above
| everything else? Really (my wife might have a say still), I would
| give a shit about the design and looks of a product if it
| guaranteed 10/20 years or even lifelong usage, and I would also
| pay double price at least for true guaranteed and proven quality.
|
| And also why are not more test reviews / magazines focusing more
| on this aspect? I barely find anything about that. (Yeah, I know
| one part to this is you will often only find out after 10
| years..)
|
| But still, it seems so many peope would be interested in such
| products, longevity, repairability.. but from multisockets over
| fridges to cars, every company is just releasing a dozen
| different products a year (and often you cannot even figure out
| the difference between SuperDuperRaido1080 vs
| SuperDuperRadio1085+) that will break soon.
|
| Besides it just making sense would also be very nice and
| important ecologically.. but where, how? HELP! I have gone on
| daylong web/magazine researches for all kinds of products, you
| get lost in advertisements, and usually you are still
| disappointed by quality 1 month or latest 3 years down the road
| :(
| armenlos wrote:
| In my student home, we own a stubborn cheap, little coffee
| grinder. I estimate it has grinded over 100kg of coffee beans in
| over 10 years time.
|
| Expected one of there parts to fail:
|
| - The motor - The cable - The button - The safety switch that
| detects the lid
|
| I wonder what happened to the employee who designed this grinder.
| Maybe they got fired because they should have used cheaper
| components to generate more profit.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Retirement? I got a feeling the prior generation or two of
| engineers had room for more pushback versus crappyness. I.e.
| could say no and that was it.
|
| It could also be the effect of attrition. Mechanical engineers
| nowadays maybe never have the time to become grinding experts
| before they switch job.
| thesaintlives wrote:
| A friend owns a bagless early 1960s Electrolux canister vacuum
| cleaner. It is still going strong. Really nice design, cast
| aluminum parts and sucking like a champ. Dyson? Don't make me
| laugh....
| phaedrus wrote:
| Regarding the short cords on appliances, my mother (retired) has
| actually taken the time to call up at least one appliance
| manufacturer and give them an earful about kitchen appliances
| whose cords don't reach. The manufacturer had the gall to try to
| tell her this is "what consumers want" and they're saving her the
| favor of having a cord that could tangle or be dangerous.
|
| So her kitchen features appliances plugged into orange extension
| cords.
|
| I had a German-made burr coffee grinder that died after a few
| months of use. When I went to repair it I found an approximately
| 2"x3" circuit board packed with components including relays,
| optoisolators, chips, and capacitors. I replaced that entire
| board with a single honking big momentary toggle switch.
| mauvehaus wrote:
| Modern code actually requires an absurd number of receptacles
| in kitchens with the express purpose of not requiring extension
| cords because using an undersized cord is a fire hazard.
|
| Unfortunately, appliance manufacturers haven't quite caught on
| to the fact that kitchen last rather longer than appliances,
| and so there are a great many kitchens without a ridiculous
| number of outlets that are home to appliances with too-short
| cords plugged into extension cords.
| pphysch wrote:
| What's better than selling a phone to a household of 10 people?
| Selling 10 phones to a household of 10 people.
|
| What's better than selling 10 phones to 10 people? Selling 100
| phones to 10 people over 10 years.
|
| Planned obsolescence is a necessary technology to ensure the
| endless growth of revenue, as required by our economic system.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Carrot peeler? What nonsense. Back of a knife does a fine job.
|
| Still, lots of crappy 'appliances' out there. If the labels
| aren't peeling or fading, then the knobs come off or there's too
| many parts to keep track of, and one falls behind something and,
| well, throw it away now.
|
| Our fancy dishwasher had a soap flappy thing in the door.
| Convenient location! Fill and fold shut and... the manufacturer
| didn't think beyond that. When in operation it would jam against
| the wire rack and open about a quarter inch. After each load, a
| wad of saturated soap paste still inside.
|
| Easy to wonder how such comprehensive failure to deliver (any)
| value can get all the way to a consumer. Is no one in the product
| process ever trying these things? Even once?
|
| Well, off to make coffee in a gadget that has too many buttons,
| generally just flashes lights when I press one instead of
| actually doing anything, steams milk listlessly if at all, and is
| very hard to clean.
|
| Marry Christmas!
| oblio wrote:
| > Carrot peeler? What nonsense. Back of a knife does a fine
| job.
|
| It does, but it's both slower and less safe than one of these
| things, if you know how to use it right:
|
| https://www.ikea.com/nl/en/p/ikea-365-vaerdefull-potato-peel...
|
| Personally I'd recommend that style over the "default" peelers
| that look like this one:
|
| https://www.ikea.com/nl/en/p/ikea-365-vaerdefull-peeler-blac...
|
| The vertical one is much faster.
| mikestew wrote:
| The 2nd one is "default"? In the U. S., I don't I've ever
| seen a peeler that _wasn 't_ like your first link. That, or I
| just never recognized the second link as a peeler. Looks kind
| of like a cheese slicer to me. :-)
| tesseract wrote:
| The straight style is more common in US home kitchens; the
| Y-shaped style seems to be more common in Europe. In the US
| there has been a trend of chefs and food writers
| evangelizing the Y-shaped peeler.
|
| In my experience the straight style is more ergonomic for
| carrots and parsnips whereas the Y-peeler works better for
| potatoes, citrus, and other roughly spheroidal foods.
|
| (I also use my [very sharp] Y-peeler for shaving hard
| cheeses into flakes so sure, I guess it is a cheese slicer
| too :) )
| matth3 wrote:
| Whilst simultaneously realising the absurdity of the topic,
| I feel compelled to say how much easier the second style is
| to use - a thought I've oddly had more than once.
|
| I like to cook with my child, they were able to peel
| carrots at age three using one, albeit with me holding the
| carrot!
| oblio wrote:
| Over here (Europe) the second one is all over the place.
| teekert wrote:
| I have Philips vacuum cleaner, I guess it's 30 years old. Some
| ducttape on the hose but still going strong. I bought a cordless
| one 2 years ago (also Philips, 8000 series), really love it, but
| it's starting to fail. I go back to the shop and the thing just
| works like normal, come back home... brush and leds fails
| periodically. So annoying.
|
| I also own a lot of supossed 25.000 hours-of-life Leds, that
| failed after 1-2 years of incidental use. Also annoyes the sh**
| out of me.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| I had this issue in my house that was built six years ago.
| Lights going out all over the place that are supposed to have
| really long lives. When I finally replaced a few of them, it
| didn't seem to be the lights. The lazy ass subcontractors hired
| by the worthless builder installed a bunch of the wiring
| incorrectly. Every light I have replaced so far wasn't even
| grounded. Ground wire just flapping in the wind.
| dave78 wrote:
| A missing ground connection would have no effect on the light
| bulbs.
| bayindirh wrote:
| > I also own a lot of supossed 25.000 hours-of-life Leds, that
| failed after 1-2 years of incidental use. Also annoyes the sh*
| out of me.
|
| Of all the compact florescent and LED bulbs I have bought, I
| has died because of a faulty component prematurely, and one has
| a whining driver. Other than that I failed to reach end of life
| of any of them. So, I never bought the second round because of
| that.
|
| Oh, I killed a couple of CFLs because of heat, possibly.
| doubled112 wrote:
| Speaking of vacuums, I bought a $70 upright Bissell 10+ years
| ago now. It is one of my examples of "win some, lose some" in
| products, and how high prices don't mean quality or durability.
|
| I've replaced the belt once. With the amount of hair I pulled
| out of the beater bar at the same time, I'm not sure the belt
| was the cause. Works as well as the day we brought it home.
| Jupe wrote:
| LED's will last 25,000 hours. The drivers (the components that
| convert AC to the required DC, at a constant/steady rate)
| however, apparently die long before the actual LED does. I've
| replaced many so far. It's not hard if you can use a soldering
| iron (and the light in question supports it). If your LEDs are
| blinking, that's a sure-fire sign that the driver is bad (not
| the LED).
|
| And, from my experience, it's probably the battery that's
| failing in your cordless vac.
| teekert wrote:
| It keeps the vacuum, it's really the brush head with the
| rotating brush and leds that fails periodically. Feel like as
| I move some conctact are broken and restored.
| Jupe wrote:
| Sorry to hear that.
|
| We had a few cordless vacs - each one has died due to the
| battery. No replacements available :/ Even the very
| expensive Dyson.
|
| So far, my Dewalt cordless vac (which has a replaceable
| battery, by design, since it's a Dewalt) works OK. It's a
| mini shop-vac, but we pull it out for various household
| uses as needed.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| When I was growing up, my mom got a Kirby vacuum. It was built
| like a tank, and seemed to hold up like one, too. When I was at
| college a few years later, I found a Kirby on a curb for the
| trash (landlord cleaned out an apartment). I took it, spent
| $100 on belts, bags, and attachments, and it's been with me for
| 15 years. When the pandemic hit, I finally bought more bags,
| and while I was at it, replaced the cord and light bulb. It
| very well might outlast me.
| pSYoniK wrote:
| I have most things that are made nowadays. The arguments for the
| status quo "you're getting it cheaper, it will actually last
| quite a bit, it's greener" etc are not really valid.
|
| Even if an item is cheaper as a one off purchase, if I have to
| buy 3-4-5-10 more of the same, am I not paying now for the same
| higher quality product, but in the meantime the waste I generated
| is there, pilling up somewhere "else" where it doesn't bother my
| Western sensibilities.
|
| The research part doesn't work that well either. I spent days
| researching a variety of products we have around our house and a
| bunch of different items a few friends asked me about. It's
| brutal.
|
| Days of reading reviews, days of looking for the faults, days for
| trying to find the factory that doesn't abuse people or pay them
| garbage forcing them into slavery. For nothing. Some products
| work out, some don't, I pay more than the average guy to get
| maybe an extra year out of the "thing".
|
| I used to have a Logitech MX518 (the original one that came out
| in 2006 if I remember correctly) and it still works. One of my
| parents is using it. It handled over 5000 games of Warcraft 3,
| over 4000 games of CS 1.6, easily 2500-3000 games of Dota and
| about 16 years in total of browsing websites and general usage. I
| replaced the skates once and that was about it. The new M590 I
| bought to keep quiet around the house had a faulty left switch
| within months... It also cost about half, but that would mean it
| should work... 8ish years then.
|
| I had an O'Neill backpack bought in the early 2000s and used it
| for almost 20 years. It's currently being used by a friend who
| needed a small and simple backpack. I recommended another
| backpack to a friend, it fell apart in 10 months after costing
| 100$+. Twice the price of the O'Neill...
|
| I'm tired. I'm tired of having to spend days to figure out if
| your product will fail within the year. I'm tired of having gone
| through about 6 milk hand-held frothers until I found a manual
| one that is a piece of glass and a handle... I had gone through 2
| coffee grinders until I found a manual one made out of glass and
| metal.
|
| Just...
| gottebp wrote:
| Breville coffee grinders fall into this category, and were
| impossible to get OEM internal parts for. When mine failed a few
| years back, I designed a 3D printed upgrade for the main wear-
| part in their BCG800XL SmartGrinder and it was not too much extra
| effort to document it on iFixit[0] with ShapeWays[1] as an easy
| way to get the part. I think there is a lot of room to do this
| for all kinds of stuff that would otherwise go to waste, and make
| a little bit of passive income on the side (enough to cover
| coffee indefinitely in my case).
|
| [0]
| https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/BCG800XL+Grinder+Jamming+due+to...
|
| [1] https://www.shapeways.com/product/NASLAGCCP/impeller-
| replace...
| gibspaulding wrote:
| Favoriting your comment since I have that grinder. It hasn't
| failed yet, but this isn't the first time I've heard of that
| issue.
|
| Do you by any chance sell the STL itself for those with access
| to a printer?
| julianlam wrote:
| I have empathize with the author's plight, but I don't have much
| sympathy for him buying multiple coffee grinders and throwing
| them all out because he bought cheap ones.
|
| > I can't say the same about my coffee grinders. I use the plural
| because I've owned a lot of them, all bought in their original
| packaging and dead within a year. They're good ones, supposedly,
| with burrs not blades, but they stop performing before long,
| ending their long journeys from overseas factories in unmarked
| graves in my local Montana landfill.
|
| A Baratza encore will last literally forever, and if it doesn't,
| you can replace everything in it.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| The existence of a Cadillac product doesn't refute the
| proliferation of absolute crap. Somebody sells a coffee
| grinder, it should grind coffee for years. No exceptions.
| darkwater wrote:
| At which price point?
| loganwedwards wrote:
| I have the exact same sentiment when it comes to the Baratza
| line of products. I have the Preciso, which is similar to the
| Encore. I have rebuilt parts of it twice and you could build a
| unit from parts if so desired. In fact, they should consider
| offering DIY editions ala Frame.work for enthusiasts.
| agotterer wrote:
| I echo the sentiment of this article. Im nearly 40 and for most
| of my adult life I've found that most things are frustrating to
| use, have unnecessary tech bolted on (and that's coming from a
| technologist), and in many ways barely work.
|
| My fancy Bosch dishwasher can't clean a dish if there's a tiny
| bit of food on it. My GE dryer takes two cycles and at least 1.5
| hrs to dry some cotton clothes. Don't get me started on Bluetooth
| headphones. My coded garage opener takes 3 or 4 attempts each
| time because I guess the button push don't register? When I want
| to watch TV sometimes I need to sit through a system upgrade
| which means I have to wait to watch. My town voted that cell
| phone towers are ugly, so there's basically no cell service
| anywhere and most calls have between 1 and 5 drops (I live on
| Long Island, not in rural America). Every year there's at least
| $1-3k of maintenance on my 4 year old "luxury" car. My smart lock
| works well as long as my fingers are perfectly dry and perfectly
| aligned. I replace my towels once every year or two because they
| completely fall apart. My "learning thermostat" doesn't seem to
| learn anything even though I've been setting the temp at the same
| every night. I replace my jeans at a similar rate to the towels
| because they get holes in knees and pockets. Holes develop at the
| same rate in a $25 pair and a $125 pair. Self checkout at every
| store is a horrendous experience and I've never successfully
| checked out without the support person scanning their badge to
| fix some absurd error, like the weight of the item placed on the
| bagging area scale not being the weight the machine expects it to
| be.
| TN1ck wrote:
| Modern dishwashers should be able to clean basically anything,
| most often when they don't perform well, something got stuck in
| the water dispensers and there is just not enough water
| reaching the dishes (this will rarely create an error code). At
| least that's my experience and I abuse those machines quite a
| bit in terms of what I put in there.
| onli wrote:
| There was a technology connection video about that -
| dishwashers are still good, the tabs are the problem. Use
| powder and make sure some is available in the first cycle (by
| putting it outside the container if necessary) and
| performance will come back.
| masto wrote:
| When we got our house 7 years ago, we replaced a bunch of
| appliances with brand new, modern ones.
|
| Fancy French-door Refrigerator: still going strong. I tightened
| the screw on the freezer handle a couple of times.
|
| Cheap fridge in the basement: still going strong, no repairs
|
| Washer and dryer: still going strong, no repairs
|
| Dishwasher: still going strong. I replaced a dish rack when one
| of the tines broke.
|
| Anecdata, it's fun and useless!
| winReInstall wrote:
| Would suspcription based applicances be better? Softwar
| supscription definitely did lead to a quality decline in
| software, as there is always a channel to fix even the sloppiest
| of implementations.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| I would say that high speed Internet is responsible for this :
| much cheaper than having to mail updates on physical storage !
| Tepix wrote:
| Juicero you mean? That was a great success... /s
| docandrew wrote:
| Funnily enough, Juicero is a great example of a rugged
| product. It had ridiculously over-engineered mechanicals and
| a very beefy motor. The whole concept was silly and the
| business model was ridiculous, but it was built to last!
| theK wrote:
| Who was the guy that said "humanity signed its death certificate
| once MBAs found out that they can literally sell trash as long as
| it is cheap enough to make it inconvenient to return"?
|
| No one? Was it just me then?
| PopAlongKid wrote:
| What the MBAs "found out" pertains to the consumer, not the
| product. Discovering that something exists is not the same as
| creating it.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Invention and discovery were the same latin word in the early
| modern age : patents were granted for discoveries in the
| Americas.
| rajman187 wrote:
| Perhaps the price of globalization, where it's considerably more
| profitable to import cheaply produced goods with the consumer
| happy about lower prices. I assume with inflation taken into
| account and price of raw materials that juicer from 70 years ago
| wouldn't be very affordable for the majority
| logicallee wrote:
| People are mentioning survivorship bias. (i.e. we notice old
| products that work well because they're still working, and don't
| notice the ones that failed since they're in a landfill.)
|
| I wonder, could the opposite reason account for all the companies
| selling crappy products? Could it be that all the companies that
| made the really high-quality products that last generations died
| out because they didn't have a sustainable business model?
|
| It could be that creating a truly high-value product is expensive
| and selling one that never needs replacement isn't sustainable.
| Maybe after a while you run out of customers: the ones that are
| still happily using the product you specialized in making an
| expensive high-quality version of for life, just don't have a
| reason to buy another.
|
| Thus perhaps the only companies that survive are the ones who
| have customers who keep rebuying after their products break.
|
| How can customers help e.g. a refrigerator company survive, if
| they only buy one from them ever?
| Maxburn wrote:
| The downward spiral of shopping by purchase price. If it can be
| made cheaper it will sell and here we are.
|
| Commercial kitchen equipment is out there and available if you
| want it, designed to last. It will seriously cost you to get it
| though.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Is it just me getting older or has this trend reversed? I don't
| the cheap brags anymore when people buy crappy cheap stuff you
| could hear in the 00s.
| Maxburn wrote:
| Perhaps a little, people who knew had higher end options for
| plenty of things. Now with a inflationary recession ongoing I
| fear we are back to initial purchase price.
| TrispusAttucks wrote:
| Tools are no longer tools, but instead toys.
|
| Cheap imitations of an artifact from a bygone era. Where playing
| with it too much or too hard will it break.
|
| They're more of a display item than an actual appliance. Only
| meant for looking at and instilling the idea of a useful tool.
| But don't dare use it!
|
| The reason is producers don't care if it works or not. The
| product is successful so long as they can trick enough people
| into buying it.
|
| The mental, emotional, and financial exhaustion borders on
| psychological warfare from foreign advisories.
|
| America needs to reboot it's manufacturing base with a focus on
| absolute best quality hands down, no excuses, survive nuclear
| winter American made products.
|
| Let's break this wasteful Earth destroying, GHG creating cycle of
| madness!
| MarkusWandel wrote:
| Some things have gotten better, some worse.
|
| Current car is at 202,000km and 11 years and essentially nothing
| has gone wrong with it except normal wear and tear replacement
| and it isn't even (in this road salt envioronment) noticeably
| rusty and it's never even had a spark plug out. Try that even 30
| years ago.
|
| On the other hand, motorized kitchen appliances really seem to be
| designed to be about 0.0001% better than the absolute minimum
| reliability requirement, lest a few extra pennies of
| manufacturing cost be wasted. That said, there are still gems. I
| have reason to hope that the current version of the Braun hand
| mixer is as good as my 20+ year one. I've had to open that up to
| resolder a transistor that had shaken loose due to vibration -
| design error; this heavy component should have been better
| anchored - but the mechanicals run as if it was new. One the
| other hand, the design of Braun food processors leaves me with
| little confidence in their long-term function.
|
| When the delivery guys showed up with the fridge, 17 years ago,
| they said don't expect much, 10 years maybe. 17 years later the
| plastic parts on the outside are yellowed and cracked and the
| door seal is showing its age too, but it still works just fine.
| And I suspect chest freezers are still as good as they always
| were i.e. work for many decades (while consuming less power).
|
| I'm not hopeful about the replacements for the washing machine
| (2000ish) and dishwasher (1987ish) when they wear out.
| bombcar wrote:
| Speed Queen on the washer will last awhile and parts are
| plentiful when they do wear out. You can replace the fridge
| door seal pretty easily, too.
| thewebcount wrote:
| Speed Queen washers are all tiny, though. Our current LG (a
| company I despise, but had the highest CR rating by far), is
| something like 5 cubic feet. The Speed Queens were all in the
| 3 cubic feet range. Depending on family size, amount of
| bedding, etc., something that small can be a real pain to
| deal with.
| crystaln wrote:
| Pyrex is a great example of the problem here.
|
| Original PYREX was borosilicate glass which is extremely
| resistant to shattering due to temperature differences and
| therefore excellent for cooking.
|
| The brand and reputation of quality was established. Time to
| profit. The brand was sold and gutted.
|
| The material was replaced with cheaper soda lime glass, which if
| you google "exploding Pyrex" you will discover is dangerously far
| less resilient to temperature changes.
|
| Presumably out of shame the brand changed to pyrex from PYREX
| except for lab glass which retains the capital letters.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| > Original PYREX was borosilicate glass
|
| Generally still is in Europe. For instance this:
| https://bakerenogkokken.no/borddekking/serveringsskaler/pyre...
| bingaling wrote:
| Yep confirming/restating, for kitchenware, lowercase pyrex ==
| tempered, capital PYREX == borosilicate.
| mojo74 wrote:
| It's always worth talking to the repairer they send out when
| something fails. Hopefully they will have seen at it long enough
| to witness change in the industry. Case in point my washing
| machine leaked underneath, not all the time, but at one point
| completely flooded the floor. Talking to the repairer they
| enlightened me with fact that a container underneath (made of two
| parts top and bottom) had calcified between the clips that held
| it together thus forcing it apart because of hard water in our
| area. This never used to happen in older machines as the part in
| question was moulded as one piece originally. Money saving was
| the motive but I failed to to push on this point.
| cdelsolar wrote:
| My house came with a large high quality washing machine from the
| 80s I'm pretty sure, or maybe even earlier. It crapped out at
| some point last year, and we were about to buy a brand new
| appliance, but I did some research, got out the multimeter, and
| was able to diagnose a blown fuse caused by a faulty part
| (replacing the fuse just blew it out immediately). I ordered the
| part online and installed it and now the washer has been fine
| since then. I don't think this would have been easier with a
| newer part.
| vageli wrote:
| My washer and dryer have the schematics for them inside the
| button console. I have only had to repair a faulty closed door
| sensor but it was very simple.
| TrueGeek wrote:
| I did this with my washer for years and kept it running until
| it was 20 years old. One day it broke again and I knew from
| experience the part that broke would take hours to fix. At the
| same time Lowes was having a sale where the fancy new units
| were on sale and included 5 years of 100% paid for labor and
| parts maintenance.
|
| The new washer / dryer wash more clothes at once using less
| detergent and far less electricity. They're also quieter. Like,
| a LOT quieter. And they text us when they finish which I
| thought was silly at first but in practice it means we get more
| loads done per day.
|
| It's been 3 years and we've had to use the Lowes warranty once
| for a leak. Watching the repairman it seemed like a huge hassle
| to work on these new machines so I don't see these being fun to
| own once the 5 year maintenance plan expires.
|
| We donated the old washer / dryer to a pet rescue group so
| hopefully they're still going.
| doug_durham wrote:
| Wow this guy has bad luck. I simply don't have any of the
| problems he mentions. Stuff rarely breaks. I'm sure that his 70
| year old juicer draws about 5 amps, and isn't grounded.
| taldo wrote:
| Besides echoing the survivorship bias warning in other comments,
| I'd like to point out that just a bit of skill and will can turn
| the fate of a lot of this 'crap' around.
|
| Dull peeler? Sharpen it. Now you have a sharp peeler that can
| probably last 10 years with occasional attention.
|
| Dead grinders? I'm sure at least one of them could've been fixed
| and extended its life significantly.
|
| Sure, things are getting less and less repairable, but most still
| can be fixed of some common faults. It just takes a pinch of
| skill and a bunch of will.
| jtbayly wrote:
| We got a hand (immersion) blender. Plastic gear to the metal
| shaft. Stripped out. Non-repairable. Can't find one without a
| plastic gear. Meanwhile, mother-in-law's is metal and who knows
| how many years old, still working fine.
| hammock wrote:
| Weren't 3d printers supposed to solve this problem?
| escapedmoose wrote:
| Our household has solved several similar problems with our
| 3D printer.
| pontifk8r wrote:
| Our expectations have also changed over the years. Despite the
| perception of a downward spiral in quality, cars have, in
| general, become much better. Remember when fuel injection was
| exotic (well, you probably don't). My first car, a 1971 Plymouth
| fury, required a special little ritual just to get it started,
| involving pumping the accelerator a precise number of times, then
| turning the key. When I started driving it in only it's 7th year
| of life, nothing smaller than a softball could be put in the
| trunk, because the thing was seemingly designed to soak up road
| salt and rot the rear quarter panels, and there were holes that
| large on both sides of the body work. Have to say that after
| that, driving a Toyota for the first time in 1985 was... a
| revelation. Today, cars last longer, have more features. Most
| econoboxes will make it past 100K miles no problem.
|
| But when today's cars break, there's generally no high school
| shop class knowledge to fall back on to fix the every-day small
| things, and anything major requires information, tools, and parts
| that are beyond most consumers. Remember that the people that
| work for the car repair places probably didn't have vocational
| courses in high school, either.
|
| Modern society's items have been value engineered, and it seems
| like the operating tolerances are narrower as well. Unless
| there's aggressive maintenance, today's stuff just breaks vs.
| limping along at some reduced performance level. And some items
| that previously were built to allow for maintenance are built for
| wholesale replacement now instead.
|
| It's rare for today's consumers to fix anything, let alone their
| electronics, but it used to be common for people to try to repair
| their own TVs by testing and swapping tubes until the 1980s. Of
| course, before digital TV and cable EVERYONE fiddled with their
| "sets" to get a good picture. "Snow" and "Rabbit Ears" are not
| terms associated with TV watching today. I couldn't buy a 40"
| color TV that spied on my viewing habits in the 90's for the
| equivalent of today's $299 either.
|
| Shop wisely for your kitchen appliances (mixers, toaster,
| blenders), high-end cutlery, and tools at thrift shops in
| neighborhoods transitioning from older demographics. Learn how to
| sharpen knives and maintain stuff.
|
| Use all your senses: learn what your major appliances and
| vehicles sound like when they're operating correctly, and listen
| to them periodically. Extra squeaks or rumbles when the furnace
| runs? Maybe a new blower motor is in your future. Notice the
| refrigerator cycling more frequently? You ARE vacuuming the
| cooling coils periodically, right? Dishwasher door seem easier to
| operate? Bet one of your balancing springs has failed.
|
| Troubleshooting and maintenance is a life skill.
|
| We were fortunate to be able to buy our first "new" house with
| new everything 8 years ago. Having all-new stuff was great for a
| while. The gas water heater lasted 5 years. A nephew plumber
| replaced it for the cost of the new unit (~1K) vs quoted $5K job
| by plumbing outfit. Took him 4 hours. The expansion tank started
| to fail two years later; $69 plus a few minutes of labor. The
| forced-air ducting between 1st and 2nd floor is undersized, so
| the single-glower furnace is inadequate to keep the house at a
| consistent temperature. Finally put in a heat pump this year to
| partially remedy that situation. Original wall timers for various
| fans failed about every 2-3 years. Choice is replacing the $20
| wall timer with now $25 wall timer, or fixing the original
| electronics ($1 with a replacement part from Digikey). Original
| washer, a front loader that came with the new home, failed 1
| month (yes, 1 month) out of warranty, with a bad trunion. To fix
| this required a literal complete tear-down and rebuild with the
| new tub. GE would do nothing other than send free parts. Our
| trusted appliance guy said he wouldn't do it, because it took too
| long (8 hours) and was uneconomic. I did it in about seven, but
| replaced the washer a few years later, since front loaders just
| don't get clothes as clean.
| nosianu wrote:
| I don't quite know what to say to what I found near the end in
| this article:
|
| > _Recently, my wife needed a carrot peeler. She needed one
| rather quickly. Off to Target. The one she bought (the only one
| on sale)..._
|
| I stopped at the phrase "the only one on sale". Inevitably the
| next part reads:
|
| > _looked handsome enough, and the brand was one she recognized,
| but it failed in the useful department, miserably. It wasn't
| sharp enough to peel a carrot._
|
| Is this deliberate, or did the author not notice a core problem
| _right there_ , in their own shopping behavior?
|
| As for coffee grinders, I've got a Eureka Mignon and machines
| like that are expected to last a few decades easily, with a
| little bit of maintenance. If you buy the $99 stuff, well...
|
| Especially in the kitchen some good stuff still exists. It's
| expensive, heavy - and lasts. Unfortunately you won't find those
| in many of the regular shops. In my city - Nuremberg, Germany - I
| only see that kind of (expensive) quality in a single specialized
| store (Kitchen Loesch, https://www.kuechen-loesch.de/). I myself
| was not aware of the kinds of good appliances that are still made
| until I went through the lower levels of that store for the first
| time. I too only knew the stuff most people know, which does not
| last long, visible at first glance already, with all the cheap
| plastics it's made of. Much of the better stuff is heavy and
| mostly made of metal. Even the hand blenders there almost all
| cost above 100 Euros, far more than I was used to seeing. On the
| other hand, those devices looked like they would last for a very
| long time, not like that shitty plastics Philipps model I own.
| Unfortunately it's not nearly the same to see pictures online,
| having the actual appliance right in front of you is very
| different as far as I can tell after that experience of actually
| seeing them there. The impression of solidity just does not
| transmit via some online shopping website picture.
| walterlb wrote:
| I noticed the "only one on sale" thing too. I suspect the
| author meant it was the only one for sale at the store, period,
| not that it was the only one with a sale/discounted price.
| nosianu wrote:
| Ah, true, I hadn't considered that.
|
| Now I'm just looking forward to see how more and more
| ubiquitous AI deals with real world language.
|
| When I look up "on sale" I get
|
| > 1. offered for purchase.
|
| > 2. NORTH AMERICAN - offered for purchase at a reduced
| price.
|
| so I guess I associated a US centric idea with the term,
| since that is what I'm used to.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| You are right but this very much reinforces the saying "it's
| very expensive to be poor". $99 for a coffee grinder is a lot
| of money for most people. At the US minimum wage it's almost 17
| hours of work, after taxes are taken out. So all they can
| afford is the cheaper version but then they have to
| consistently purchase a new one so end up paying more over
| time. Pretty interesting phenomenon.
| lodi wrote:
| Vimes' boots theory:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory
| crystaln wrote:
| So a high quality brand on sale should be presumed to be low
| quality?
| nosianu wrote:
| You should look at the specific appliance and not just the
| brand. Even known "good" brands mess up.
|
| For example and speaking about grinders, I had a Mahlkonig
| Vario at first, 370 Euro
| (https://www.mahlkoenig.com/de/products/vario-home).
| Mahlkonig is a brand for professional-grade coffee grinders,
| with some few expensive top-consumer-grade ones in the mix.
| It's their cheapest coffee grinder.
|
| That particular model wasn't their own, I think they got it
| from Baratza (https://baratza.com/grinder/vario/), probably
| to extend their presence in the top-segment of the household
| market.
|
| Too bad, that model is not a good fit for them at all. Lots
| of issues. I had mine repaired and it went so badly they sent
| me a brand new one after I complained with pictures. It's not
| _bad_ per se or terrible, it just does not _quite_ deliver
| what one expects from that brand. For example, the seal that
| prevents the espresso-grade finely ground coffee to get into
| the machine is just some barely attached rubber ring. Leakage
| into the machine is an issue. Also, lots of plastic. Very
| hard to disassemble, soooo many steps and parts, bad for
| repairs and maintenance.
| blueblob wrote:
| They also complained about pyrex not being durable because they
| dropped it. My pyrex has lasted 2 decades of use and I think
| it's an example of a durable product.
| willglynn wrote:
| Corning invented a particular kind of borosilicate glass
| about a hundred years ago and called it PYREX(tm). They left
| the consumer goods market about twenty years ago, divesting
| the brand. Nowadays that name might refer to either
| borosilicate glass or to soda lime glass.
| crystaln wrote:
| Depending on the capitalization.
|
| The good stuff is PYREX.
| Dan_- wrote:
| You can still get it in America from a company called
| icedteapitcher. It's the made-in-France true PYREX and is
| metric.
| willglynn wrote:
| It's not that simple. https://www.snopes.com/fact-
| check/exploding-pyrex/
|
| > What's Undetermined
|
| > Whether Pyrex switched from using borosilicate glass to
| tempered soda lime glass only after Corning sold the
| brand to World Kitchen in 1998.
|
| ...
|
| > In a January 2011 article on glass bakeware, Consumer
| Reports stated that they were unable to determine exactly
| when major U.S. manufacturers (including Pyrex) switched
| crystaln wrote:
| That's the most amount of word salad garbage I've ever
| seen on snopes.
|
| The government hasn't determined that soda lime glass is
| unsafe? Shocking.
|
| I wonder why chemists use borosilicate? Hmm.
| crystaln wrote:
| Pyrex replace borosilicate with cheaper and far less
| temperature resilient soda lime glass decades ago.
| tengwar2 wrote:
| She was sold a carrot peeler. She didn't receive a carrot
| peeler.
|
| It's not relevant what the price was: that's a decision for the
| shop. If they can't sell carrot peelers at a price that makes
| sense for them, the answer is to not sell carrot peelers, not
| to sell things that are described as carrot peelers but which
| cannot peel a carrot.
| doctorhandshake wrote:
| The author lost me in the seemingly endless list of poor
| purchasing decisions. I don't share their pain because I
| painstakingly research purchases, giving major weight to
| indications of durability and solid construction in all things.
| If you find everything you buy comes apart, but others don't have
| that problem, can you be said to be a victim of circumstance?
| ectopod wrote:
| Pyrex used to be exclusively borosilicate glass but some of their
| stuff is regular glass now. And as the author discovered, it
| doesn't like sudden temperature changes.
| pharmakom wrote:
| There are still great products out there, but how can we find
| them?
|
| Reddit was once a strategy, same with Amazon reviews. Sadly it's
| a never ending battle against stooge accounts.
| collinvandyck76 wrote:
| Under the Christmas tree this year: another Cuisinart electric
| kettle. Same model as always, this year recommended by
| wirecutter. They last two to three years and then break in
| various ways. This is our third one :(
|
| My dad gave me the advice "buy cheap now and be guaranteed to buy
| it again at least once if not more, or wait, save up, and buy the
| more expensive thing only once" as I was becoming an adult. I've
| tried to follow that but sadly I don't think the advice really
| holds anymore.
| yetihehe wrote:
| My Tefal kettle is 10 yr old now and I have really hard water.
| Looks like Tefal still maintains some quality, I've bought a
| sandwich maker 3yr ago and it still works perfectly, their pans
| are still top-notch.
| reallydontask wrote:
| I've heard it as:
|
| buy cheap, buy twice
|
| Unfortunately, it seems that now it's:
|
| buy expensive, get some shitty cloud enabled feature, still buy
| twice.
| feet wrote:
| Get a Zojirushi water boiler. They're fantastic and high
| quality, you also don't have to wait for water to heat up every
| time you want to use it
| jemmyw wrote:
| Why do you keep buying the same one?
| collinvandyck76 wrote:
| Because we really like it, otherwise.
| jackcosgrove wrote:
| My parents' home has a boiler that dates from 1959. It still
| works great. Now boilers are well known to be durable, but every
| HVAC tech I've spoken to has said the new ones aren't expected to
| last sixty years.
|
| Meanwhile a comparable modern gas furnace lasts at best twenty
| years.
|
| I long for the time when I can start buying quality goods that
| last. As it is with small children a lot of stuff has to be
| disposable because the kids will destroy it. I'm talking couches,
| kitchen tables, etc. Small children are incredibly destructive!
| tarr11 wrote:
| [flagged]
| Jupe wrote:
| Any alternatives?
|
| We are "lucky" to have a Target, Walmart, Meijer, Nieman
| Marcus, Khols and Macy's nearby. (Sears and Hudsons have gone).
| But, from my experience, on many product lines, they sell the
| same "crap".
| jtbayly wrote:
| Where, pray tell, is one supposed to shop in order to find real
| products that will last?
|
| And I'll go further. Is there a single brand you can recommend
| that will last, regardless of where I'm supposed to purchase
| it?
| 83 wrote:
| https://hamiltonbeachcommercial.com/
|
| I've been quite impressed with the few of their commercial
| items I have. The important parts are metal, and clearly a
| lot of though went into design (things like the blender jar
| being designed so there's nowhere for water to pool after you
| wash and set it upside down). The only unimpressive thing is
| the price.
| ryanackley wrote:
| What's the alternative in modern society? The village craftsman
| building single-source hand-forged juicers no longer exists.
| carapace wrote:
| > Potemkin pens, mere props.
|
| I got a wire cutter/stripper recently that gave me that exact
| feeling: "This isn't a real wire stripper, it's a non-functional
| replica."
|
| (It's the kind that has a little adjustment screw/slider to set
| the diameter of the wire you're stripping. Only it's impossible
| to set the screw correctly because turning it to tighten it
| forces the slider to shift position. I wrestled with it for an
| hour and then ordered a different one. The handle plastic is
| weird too, it feels "icky" somehow. BTW, the new one, which works
| great, was the same price as the unusable one.)
|
| The unusable one is not worth returning. And what are they going
| to do with it if I did return it? Throw it away? Sell it to
| someone else?
|
| > And the world took the loss. A small one, but they add up.
|
| Again, that's exactly how I feel about it. What a waste, to dig
| up the materials, forge them into this device, send it who knows
| how far back and forth over the Earth, just so I can throw it
| back into the Earth because it's not worth fixing it. It's
| fucking depressing.
|
| I've got more anecdotes: a brand new soldering iron that doesn't
| solder; an aluminum folding beach chair that broke when unfolded
| for the first time; an air fryer with a custom grill that rusted
| in less than a year and can't be replaced; etc...
|
| As far as I can see, you have to go out of your way to find the
| manufacturers and retailers that care about quality (and repeat
| business) and patronize them exclusively. Don't give any more
| money to the folks who are ripping you off. Instead, reward the
| folks who are doing the right thing. You're going to pay the
| overhead anyway either by doing your homework or by throwing away
| time and money and garbage items.
| nicbou wrote:
| Your experience gets markedly better with a healthy fear of
| gadgets. Basic vehicles, appliances and tools are seemingly
| indestructible. Their fancy counterparts find the most creative
| ways to fall apart.
| cfeduke wrote:
| The thing in this space that has always bothered me was the
| simple can opener. (For those not in the US, yes, in the US we
| still need can openers.) The new ones which can be purchased in
| the grocery store break within a month or two. I don't even want
| to think about modern electric openers. I found a used vintage
| can opener from the 1970s on eBay six years ago and use it
| practically every day; as it was used it cost less than the shiny
| new ones in the store. Maybe there are modern high quality non-
| commercial can openers but they aren't at the grocery store or
| Pampered Chef or any of the other kitchen appliance stores at the
| local mall.
| escapedmoose wrote:
| My cheap ugly turquoise manual can opener from Target has been
| a pleasure to use for years. I didn't even realize good can
| openers were hard to find. Sorry for your bad luck :(
| groovybits wrote:
| Spot on. Even at the 'nicer' grocery stores in the US, can
| openers are made of the cheapest materials I've ever seen. At
| the moment you pick it up, you just know its going to break
| before a year from now.
|
| By now, you'd think we'd have reached a minimum viable quantity
| of products that have been ubiquitous for so long.
| eternityforest wrote:
| In store shopping seems to be a great way to pay more for
| worse stuff these days.
| jollyllama wrote:
| You get screwed either way. Buy something on amazon and
| it's quite likely to be just as bad, counterfeit, etc. -
| how many times have people complained about that?
| eternityforest wrote:
| It happens, but it's not common. Amazon lets you get
| stuff a generation ahead of what's in stores, which often
| uses better tech and fixes issues in the last generation.
|
| When "Cheap crap" first became common 20 years ago stuff
| got a bit worse, but it seems to be improving.
| jollyllama wrote:
| I don't think the comment about generation ahead is
| relevant or true.
|
| As a final thought, I'd say at least in a store, if you
| have the ability to determine if something is junk by
| looking and touching it, you can practice that.
| eternityforest wrote:
| I'm not sure how I would tell just by looking without
| reviews and specs, any more than I could tell from a
| picture, the differences are really subtle.
|
| The plastic cover on a bad switch looks an awful lot like
| the one on a good switch.
|
| Glass filled nylon seems to be somwhat reliable thought,
| not quite as much utter trash has a chassis made of that,
| at least for tools.
|
| And sheet metal, I usually assume anyone who uses that is
| cutting corners or wants to appeal to old fashioned types
| who hate plastic no matter what.
| crystaln wrote:
| As you would expect. You're paying to support an entire
| business including retail space rent and utilities,
| employees, and owners.
| CadmiumYellow wrote:
| Ikea actually makes really amazing can openers. I've had the
| same one for 8 years and it's still going strong. No signs of
| weakness at all.
| ihumanable wrote:
| I have an Ikea can opener too, I think it's going on a decade
| of quality service. It's mostly light blue plastic, I thought
| it would fall apart, but it still works great. One of those
| that cuts through the side of the can instead of the lid
| itself.
| philwelch wrote:
| My OXO can opener has lasted several years.
| blep_ wrote:
| ... do people outside the US not use can openers?
| thewebcount wrote:
| Who knows. The responses people in the US get from Europeans
| on HN for things are just the absolute oddest. " _Gasp!_ You
| still write checks?" Or " _Gasp!_ You use credit cards? Well
| I never!" I'm sure we do the same thing to them for other
| stuff, but I totally understand the desire to head off any of
| the faux outrage that often pops up here for such mundane
| things.
| blep_ wrote:
| I was totally expecting the answer to be something like
| "the EU passed a law in 2013 requiring all cans to come
| with pull tabs".
| mauvehaus wrote:
| You want a swing-a-way can opener. They make them like they
| used to.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Can anyone recommend a large room humidifier that might actually
| work reliably (assuming proper care and maintenance, no weirdly
| hard water) for multiple winter seasons? The last FOUR I bought
| from diff brands failed either DoA or within a couple weeks.
| Willing to pay for actual basic quality.
| cosama wrote:
| In my opinion there is only one humidifier that is worth the
| money, the honeywell warm mist humidifier [1]. It works great
| for us, just put it in a little tray in case it leaks. It also
| got one of the best written customer reviews on amazon I ever
| saw [2]. TL;DR, they use it on McMurdo station in Antarctica
| and love it.
|
| Don't buy a ultrasonic humidifiers, they actually reduce the
| air quality considerably [3], you need to get an evaporative
| humidifier and frankly there aren't that many.
|
| [1] https://www.honeywellstore.com/store/news/honeywell-warm-
| mis...
|
| [2] https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-
| reviews/R911WGTC1OHLL/ref...
|
| [3] https://learn.kaiterra.com/en/air-academy/humidifiers-
| cause-...
| assafweinberg wrote:
| I think the degradation in quality could be a result of
| advancements in marketing. With such powerful tools, the
| determining factor for winning products is now marketing not
| quality. The marketing arms race incentivizes companies to invest
| more in convincing customers their product is better and invest
| less in improving their product.
| hoosieree wrote:
| Part of the reason we equate "old" with "good" like that 70 year
| old juicer is survivor bias. We don't dig through the landfill to
| find out how many broken 70 year old juicers are buried there.
|
| That said, I suspect that in another 70 years, Walter's juicer
| will still work, but you won't find any working examples of
| juicers from 2022.
|
| It should be obvious to most people at this point that any
| appliance with the word "smart" in its marketing really means
| "smarter than you, sucker".
| ddejohn wrote:
| Isn't there something to be said for _the volume_ of anecdotal
| evidence of older appliances of higher quality? Like, is it
| really survivor bias if older appliances have a (perceived)
| significantly higher probability of lasting? Sure, some items
| may not have lasted, some may be flukes, but if you compare the
| relative quantities of "older appliances still working" vs
| "new appliances still working", the proportion of older
| appliances to the total from "that era" is likely much higher
| than now.
|
| I have no evidence to back my statements up, and I'm using
| extremely vague language, but this is at least my perception of
| this idea that "they don't make 'em like they used to."
| vages wrote:
| Be aware that survivorship bias may fool you when comparing the
| quality of new and old items. The single juicer that lasts 70
| years may be the only one of its kind to last that long, the
| others from the same production year being left to rot and rust
| in a landfill.
|
| That being said, I definitely believe that planned obsolesence
| and unintentional bad quality is a plague on modern consumer
| items. I am lucky enough to have the time, knowledge, persistence
| and money to research and buy long lasting goods. For example, I
| have bought kitchen knives made out of a single piece of metal,
| which are therefore less prone to breaking than the run-off-the-
| mill ones. My jeans are from a Swedish jeans company that offer
| in-store repairs as long as it's practical. This is saving me
| money and effort in the long run. However, I do not believe in
| such individual solutions to what is essentially a systemic
| problem; people should expect good consumer items without
| researching beforehand like it was their hobby.
|
| I'm glad that the EU is working hard on right-to-repair laws.
| schwartzworld wrote:
| For me, it's no replaceable batteries. Anything with an
| internal battery has a finite span of usefulness. There's no
| real excuse for making batteries inaccessible, other than
| forcing people to rebuy.
|
| A great example is Tile, little tracking tags for your keys. I
| bought one, and in a year the battery died, just in time to get
| an email from the company offering a 10% discount on a new one.
| derbOac wrote:
| I used to think if you looked hard enough and researched
| things, maybe paid more sometimes, you could get around it. I
| still think that is necessary, but not sufficient. It won't
| save you; you also need a bit of luck.
|
| My biggest bugaboo in this area is with clothes. At some point
| I started being more careful, but found the published specs
| won't help because they don't actually tell you everything you
| need to know, or the company selling them is being defrauded
| themselves by manufacturers making things out of spec. In many
| cases too I'm convinced people have lost communal knowledge of
| what good items look like because theyve never seen them. So,
| say, they're happy with a sweater that is made out of very poor
| yarn that obviously won't last because it's warm and has a good
| zipper. We're at 2/3 now I guess.
|
| However, even places like Consumer Reports will say they don't
| recommend an entire class of appliance, but then proceed to
| provide ratings, that are ostensibly good. How are those
| supposed to be interpreted? "None of these are worth buying but
| they are 95/100 in quality if you take that into account"? No
| wonder people are confused.
|
| I've bought clothes from reputable vendors, with fabric from
| named mills to specs that should be quality, and found instead
| the cut was off spec and wouldn't fit. Or something about the
| fabric just didn't last anyway. It seems like it's always
| something, like I'm constantly being tricked in some new way
| once I figure out some other problem. It's such an enormous
| waste of money, time, and resources.
| drewm1980 wrote:
| Agree. Even if you make a hobby out of researching purchases
| and pay top dollar, you still need a great deal of luck.
|
| Our 5000 euro door, made by local craftsmen with high quality
| materials, had an installation mistake that ruins ergonomics
| and compromises the airtightness. I even went for a non-
| sliding door in the expectation that it would be more
| reliable. Maybe the sliding door would have been entirely
| non-functional by now.
|
| My ~400 euro yamaha reface mini-synth has internal speakers
| that buzz. It's a known problem affecting every one ever made
| AFAIK.
|
| I'd guess only maybe 1/3 of the top dollar expensive stuff I
| have bought has been free of glaring defects, despite
| researching before buying.
| AJ007 wrote:
| Sizing is all over the place, even the same brand, same year.
| If the clothes are garment dyed, it's even worse.
|
| My biggest recommendation is buy 100% cotton and avoid
| synthetic blends at all costs. Some of that crap looks old
| after a single wash.
| datr wrote:
| I've run into this issue with jeans. They develop holes
| around the crotch six months after buying a new pair.
|
| A decade ago I'd buy jeans and they'd last years.
| Unfortunately my waist line has since increased and none of
| those survivors now fit me.
|
| I started with Levi 511s and -- when they started failing --
| moved to Nudie Jeans (2x price) as they offer free repairs.
| When I tried to get them repaired though I was told there was
| a six week waiting time which seemed excessive.
|
| Next I went with a local atelier (3x price) figuring if I
| spent more that would solve the problem but it happened
| again.
| myself248 wrote:
| In my experience this means they're fitting wrong and
| there's undue stress in the place that they're failing. For
| crotch area specifically, look into Duluth Trading's
| "Ballroom" pants.
|
| Alternately, the moment you buy new pants, add some iron-on
| patch reinforcement across the area. A two-dollar giant
| patch can spread the force out quite a bit and probably
| double the lifetime of the unreinforced fabric.
|
| But really, a tailor should be able to tell you what's
| wrong with the fit and how to fix it.
| ziml77 wrote:
| As someone who has also had these issues with the crotch
| of pants wearing out, I would also suggest trying these
| options.
|
| It's a combination of stretching and friction. Jeans have
| it especially bad because they have prominent seams right
| where the thighs touch, causing an extra large amount of
| friction. A gusseted crotch (which I believe the Ballroom
| jeans have) both helps with the stretching and moves the
| seams around.
| jemmyw wrote:
| I've tried various expensive jean brands and really
| expensive with custom fitting and none of them lasted
| longer than the cheap local brand I buy from now. Not only
| can I get 3 pairs or more for the same money, they do
| repairs for free if it's their fault or really cheaply if
| it's my fault.
| yourapostasy wrote:
| Have you tried selvedge denim jeans? Try a pair of Uniqlo
| brand ones for an entry level good value before getting
| into the more rarefied brands that are even more durable
| but more expensive.
| onemoresoop wrote:
| > selvedge denim jeans
|
| I got these from uniqlo and like them quite a bit but,
| beware, they're unwashed and will shrink some when first
| washed so keep that in mind when buying.
| philwelch wrote:
| I switched from jeans to cargo pants for this exact reason
| a few years ago.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| upvote as in "ditto: same solution here, worked great".
| haradion wrote:
| In my experience, this often indicates a poorly-fitting
| cut. If your belt naturally sits below your hips, you'll
| probably want jeans specifically designed for that.
| robert_foss wrote:
| I've got several 5-10year old Nudie pairs. Enough of a
| buffer to get me through 6-12weeks waiting times easily.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > I'm glad that the EU is working hard on right-to-repair laws.
|
| The EU will just give fines and nobody will care. Regulation is
| not the best path here.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| If you able to tell us that regulation is not the best path
| perhaps you could enlighten us by telling us what would be
| better.
| darkwater wrote:
| > My jeans are from a Swedish jeans company that offer in-store
| repairs as long as it's practical.
|
| Nudie jeans by any chance?
| mathattack wrote:
| Quality manufacturing in the Good Ole Days is a myth. The
| Japanese are our lunch in auto in the 70s due to a lack of
| Quality.
|
| Planned obsolescence is a thing. So is building or making for
| the short term. There just wasn't this great era where people
| made things for the long haul out of pride or something else.
| People always took the short term view when the market
| structure or incentives encouraged it.
| RunSet wrote:
| I distinctly recall the existence of television repair shops,
| which suggests there was a time when market structure /
| incentives did not encourage planned obsolescence.
| eigen wrote:
| when your $2000 TV breaks in 1985, you get it repaired
| because the current models cost just as much and are
| basically indistinguishable.
|
| when your $400 TV breaks in 2022, you buy a new one because
| its relatively inexpensive and you can get a larger one for
| the same price.
| bumby wrote:
| > _when the market structure or incentives encouraged it._
|
| I think one argument is exactly this. There has been a march
| towards a market that expects a constant supply of cheap
| shit. When all the margins have been wrung out of
| globalization, reduction in quality provides the next
| mechanism of lowering price.
|
| People know where to find $150 denim that lasts, just like in
| times past. But there has been change in expectations that
| makes $25 denim the norm.
| rzwitserloot wrote:
| The 'plague' - the one that feels utterly needless, is
| deplorably bad quality crap.
|
| The key is that there are 2 completely different things going
| on and I think it's very bad that we keep conflating the 2:
|
| * Bad quality crap, which took shortcuts which impair
| repairability for no reason other than to save a cent, make it
| impossible to find replacement parts because it's a fly by
| night operation that didn't think about it in the slightest,
| and which in general is going to break down on you within the
| year.
|
| * Devices which are hard to repair.
|
| That second category contains a lot of reasons ('save half a
| cent on a screw' is one of them, as is 'planned obsolescence' /
| 'make sure our pricey resellers get plenty of work'), but some
| of those reason are GOOD - such as 'it is a heck of a lot
| easier to make a robust product if we don't make the battery
| swappable (e.g., iPhone, which got plenty of flak for this)'.
|
| For the first, the only 'good' reason to do that, is to ensure
| some product is available even to those who have _very_ little
| to spend, but, [A] environmentally this isn't a good idea, and
| [B] how 'available' is it when the only category you can buy is
| dinky crap that doesn't work well and breaks down within 6
| months?
|
| So how do we get rid of _that_?
|
| Right-to-repair laws are barking up an entirely different tree,
| e.g. fighting the kind of bullshit where a farm tractor
| manufacturer intentionally makes it impossible to work on
| computer-guided stuff basically just to be dicks and get more
| money from their official repair/reseller program. And to a
| lesser extent, acts where a manufacturer makes a device
| significantly harder to repair with as only goal to save a cent
| or two on an errant screw, or cheaper glue or whatever.
| MisterTea wrote:
| > Be aware that survivorship bias may fool you when comparing
| the quality of new and old items.
|
| Indeed. So I skim the article and wind up agreeing with how
| some things seem to be built to fall apart or under perform
| (modern HE washers, I'm looking at you). Then I get called to
| the shop floor to check a machine and the operator, an older
| gentleman gets to talking with and starts the same
| conversation! He is in his mid 60's his you'd think he'd go on
| lamenting the loss of the sturdy goods from his youth but nope!
| He too said there was plenty of cheap flimsy crap to be had.
|
| Though one thing I will say has changed: the ability to repair
| stuff. Computers stuffed with proprietary code have taken
| control of even the simplest appliances (washers, stoves,
| refrigerators). Things that were made from multiple pieces of
| stamped or cast metal are now made from a single piece of
| plastic that is less sturdy which melts or deforms under heat
| (some eventually become brittle and crumble). I can see how it
| makes things cheaper and easier to make but they don't sell the
| plastic bits separately requiring me to toss everything over a
| single broken piece. And even if something is made of metal,
| the stamping or casting is so thin that it might as well be
| made of plastic (e.g. the tin foil harbor freight stock carts.)
|
| But the retailers and consumers are adjusting to this model:
| goods are so cheap they are disposable. Don't bother returning
| it, just toss it. This has lead to people buying new items and
| tossing them right into the trash because amazon will ship
| another. Or maybe return the broken item in its place. Or you
| buy a new item to take a part off and toss it because amazon
| told you to. Consumers get to keep buying cheap crap and
| companies keep the money rolling in. This low effort thinking
| is filling landfills with unused or barely used items at an
| alarming rate which is a great example of unchecked capitalism.
| Whats worse is I guarantee you most people could live happily
| without most of the shit they buy.
| Yeroc wrote:
| Indeed repairability may have been the biggest change. Major
| appliances centralize virtually all functions including on
| one or two main circuit boards including the high-voltage
| relays which in my experience are very prone to failure (they
| used to be mounted separately in a different location on
| older appliances). Those circuit boards typically cost ~1/3
| the cost of a new appliance assuming you source and swap it
| yourself.
|
| In conjunction with the decline of repairability in the
| appliances I think there's a corresponding decline in repair
| skills among the general population as well.
| waynesonfire wrote:
| > Swedish jeans company that offer in-store repairs
|
| That's cool. But, more than likely it'll be your body that will
| need the repairs.
| waynesonfire wrote:
| > Swedish jeans company that offer in-store repairs
|
| That's cool. I like high quality clothing too but noticed as I
| age that it's my body that needs the repairs. It's been a
| tight-fitting last couple years and my clothes still have so
| much life left.
| mattigames wrote:
| I'm willing to bet that the "survivorship bias" of old products
| narrative is being pushed by modern planned obsolescence
| companies; back then people were still figuring out how to make
| a successful company, and many companies believed that if you
| made a product that lasted forever people will tell their
| friends and those friends would buy their product and so they
| would be rewarded for a job well done, now there is not a
| single company that believes that, the results came in and
| economically it makes much much more sense to make stuff that
| breaks after a few years, so no; I don't buy for a second is
| survivorship bias, at least not in most applications.
| theK wrote:
| I'm really rooting for getting the onslaught of rubbishware to
| end but don't see the right to repair laws making a dent there.
| Those laws are engineered to make it possible to repair
| complex, expensive things. Dealing with intentionally
| misengineered things that are trash cheap is a completely
| different discipline.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| My solution is handle this through enforced long warranties.
| And require muni waste transfer stations to back charge
| manufacturers for broken appliances under warranty
|
| AKA: Your dishwasher dies and you send it to the dump.
| They'll look it over document the failure and back charge the
| manufacturer for the retail price.
| escapedmoose wrote:
| My partner and I joke that nothing we buy remains unmodified
| for more than a day. It's an exaggeration of the truth: that
| many many of our purchases require some customization before
| they're really useful. We're both the type to research
| heavily before a purchase, and we'll gladly spend more for
| quality. Yet still the manufactured designs never quite meet
| our standards.
|
| We survive comfortably by sharing practical skills in the
| household: sewing, woodworking, metalworking, electronics,
| CAD (for 3D printing replacement parts), painting, etc.
| Products straight from the factory are often substandard, but
| a good set of tools, library books and tutorials can close
| the gap to usability if you have the time.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| I ordered a pair of buffalo jeans the other day and they
| arrived missing a belt loop on the front. Pretty frustrating as
| I've ordered jeans from this company without issues before
| this. I generally only have 2 pairs of jeans on hand at any
| time so my go to brand shipping flawed jeans was a bummer.
| starkd wrote:
| Maybe its time more people learn how to sew.
| bsder wrote:
| Sewing denim, leather, canvas, etc. is generally a pain in
| the ass. Even old consumer grade machines would have a
| tough time. You either needed an industrial machine or an
| old-school treadle machine that you could overpower.
|
| What I want is someone that I can pay to sew stuff for me
| and _have it not suck_.
|
| The problem is that someone who does that is continually
| having to hunt down new clients since their stuff doesn't
| fall apart. And they can't charge enough because the crappy
| stuff is _soooo_ cheap that it sets the floor of the
| pricing.
|
| If we want artisans to make a comeback, we're going to have
| to help them somehow.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Maybe, but I would prefer they just sent me a proper pair
| of jeans. I do agree though, sewing appears to be a dying
| art in laymen.
| taylodl wrote:
| People forget things used to cost _a lot_ of money. I remember
| when our family bought our first color TV set back in the early
| 70 's. You can buy a 65" HDTV set today for the same amount of
| money - and that's in today's dollars which are _significantly_
| less valuable than the dollars in the early 70 's!
|
| That TV didn't last 20 years - it was a huge hassle continually
| testing and replacing tubes.
|
| Meanwhile I bought a 55" HDTV almost 20 years ago that's still
| running fine.
| Fatnino wrote:
| 20 years ago tvs didnt have all manner of "smart" crap
| stuffed into them. If you buy a TV today there is a good
| chance much of it will stop working or change for the worse
| in an overnight update.
| bdcravens wrote:
| In our new house this summer, I sprung for a 77" LG C2 OLED.
| Almost embarassed by it looking back, since I could have
| bought a 75" "standard" 4K TV for about 1/4 the price.
| function_seven wrote:
| I remember asking for a color 13" TV for Christmas back in
| 1988 I think?
|
| For _months_ I would grab the Sunday paper and pull out all
| the ad inserts looking for the perfect TV. It had to be
| cheap; I didn 't want to ask for anything crazy. I finally
| found one that was under $200 and showed it to my parents. It
| was some unknown brand. It wasn't "Cable Ready", and it still
| had separate tuner knobs for VHF and UHF. I didn't care, main
| use would be for Nintendo.
|
| Parents decided to splurge instead and spent almost _$400_ on
| a Toshiba unit with a digital channel display and a
| remote(!). It also understood cable. I could watch Nick at
| Nite on it when I went to sleep.
|
| $400 for a 13" TV, in 1988. That's $1,000 in today's money. A
| 75-inch 4K TV.
|
| EDIT: For a nostalgia hit, I went searching for it. This is
| the model they got me:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15wiYAEOYAE
| listenallyall wrote:
| > $400 for a 13" TV, in 1988. That's $1,000 in today's
| money. A 75-inch 4K TV.
|
| Those 1980's tvs could display Knight Rider, Miami Vice,
| The A-Team and Moonlighting natively, without the need for
| any kind of streaming service.
| jtbayly wrote:
| Metal, vs plastic gears. Bigger vs tiny electric motor. Metal
| vs plastic moving parts in contact with the fruit. Plug-in vs
| battery powered. These are the things that I would place money
| on as the reasons the 70 year old one is still functioning, and
| none sold today will work in 5 years. (I've never looked at one
| of these items. I'm just guessing. But I'd still place money on
| it.)
| eternityforest wrote:
| Reliability now isn't done with the same methods as it was
| then.
|
| Back then, the good stuff might have been good because the
| motor was big.
|
| The modern good stuff probably has a brushless motor that can
| prevent stalls. It doesn't matter if it's big or small, the
| computer won't let it overheat, so they can make it smaller
| to save money that they can spend on whatever part is the
| actual failure mode.
|
| The trouble is finding manufacturers that actually do that,
| rather than just using a tiny motor with no computer and
| plastic gears with no torque sensing. If you design things
| with old fashioned methods, you need to use old fashioned
| heavy parts.
|
| Nylon gears in contact with ozone, and switches and
| connectors of all kinds seem to be the problem on everything
| I've seen. Which is why I always say I would gladly use 10k
| lines of code to save one moving part or one switch.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| 100% agree, but I think the issue here comes with a typical
| phased design process:
|
| - Mechanical: "Here's the physical specs, no need to
| account for A, B, or C, as it's been handled in software"
|
| - Electrical: "Here are the physical constraints and
| electrical spec. No need to account for X, Y, or Z, as it's
| being handled in software."
|
| - Firmware: "You need to handle A, B, C, X, Y, and Z, but
| if you run out of time or don't have the budget to make up
| a test rig for validating all those cases are handled
| correctly, no worries we'll just ship it anyway."
| eternityforest wrote:
| The other issue I see is when mechanical and electrical
| don't actually give firmware the data or control they
| need.
|
| You'll see stuff like a lack of battery level monitoring,
| or relays without current sensing.
|
| I'm not sure why we don't do things the other way, have
| firmware people present at every step. Some things can't
| be fixed later.
|
| If mechanical puts a weak link gear designed to fail
| before the motor, firmware might not have enough margin
| to not wear it out with auto-stop.
| bumby wrote:
| Completely anecdotal, but my experience was that a large
| amount is attributable to systems engineers and project
| managers not having adequate software background.
| Invariably, this leads to software rigor being
| deprioritized or with just little oversight. After all
| "it's just software"
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > The trouble is finding manufacturers that actually do
| that, rather than just using a tiny motor with no computer
| and plastic gears with no torque sensing. If you design
| things with old fashioned methods, you need to use old
| fashioned heavy parts.
|
| Oh yeah. Like Surefeed smart cat feeders. They don't use
| end reed or contact switches to control the lid motor -
| they use current sensing on the motor and stop it when the
| current surges due to reaching the end position. The
| problem is, they also use cheap-ass plastic gears on an
| apparently pretty strong motor... my old Surefeed from five
| years ago is still going strong, but the newer revision
| (which is, admittedly, easier to clean) failed after not
| even a year because the motor had shred the gears and could
| no longer detect if the lid was fully closed or opened,
| making noise for so long that the cat refused to use it.
|
| Fucking hell, these things cost 150EUR+ apiece. Two contact
| switches and wiring would have cost them less than ten
| cents. Now they have to pay for the cost of handling the
| warranty claim... but I'd rather like to have a well-
| designed product in the first place.
|
| (Oh, and it doesn't like rechargeable C cell batteries
| either, because they apparently saved the dollar that would
| have given them a boost voltage regulator, so you're stuck
| buying disposable alkaline batteries)
| eternityforest wrote:
| One of my general rules is not to buy anything that uses
| disposable batteries, unless battery life is measured in
| years. Not only does NiMh always seem to be a hassle, it
| usually seems like rechargable-based devices are more up
| to date in general.
|
| They probably wouldn't even need a reed switch, just a
| wad of foam for some buffering plus a more sensitive stop
| algorithm. Or better yet, don't give the motor enough
| current to shred gears even at full stall.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Meh, I have grown to dislike devices with integrated
| batteries. For whatever the fuck reason, I seem to burn
| through batteries... like eight or so phone batteries,
| original Samsung at that, an Apple MBP2015, various
| gadgets, all gone to swelling, and often enough an utter
| PITA to replace. No, no bad chargers either - Anker and
| original chargers that came with the devices only.
| jemmyw wrote:
| The old model was impossible to clean. Did the designers
| never meet a cat?
|
| I've got two sure microchip cat doors. They've been
| reliable. Same problem, hard to clean. When one of our
| cats figured out how to break through the door sure sent
| me a 3d printed plastic part that clipped on over the
| latch. I think their customer care is pretty good.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > The old model was impossible to clean. Did the
| designers never meet a cat?
|
| The new one isn't much better tbh...
|
| > When one of our cats figured out how to break through
| the door sure sent me a 3d printed plastic part that
| clipped on over the latch.
|
| I mean, my cats are smart enough to open doors, cupboards
| and drawers, but how on earth can a cat break through a
| cat flap?! Brute strength?
| jemmyw wrote:
| He's a big cat. There was a little gap at the bottom
| where the latch came up into the door. He would get his
| claws under the gap and then he could wrench it open. The
| clip on part covers the gap. I guess they have enough
| people with that problem to have designed a fix but not
| enough to update the product.
| bumby wrote:
| > _I would gladly use 10k lines of code to save one moving
| part or one switch_
|
| This creates a whole new reliability problem. Software
| reliability is notorious for its interface failures and
| there can be many more of those modes (where hardware
| typically has a few wear-out style failures). I think about
| my relatively high-end TV that seems to always struggle
| with software updates without any glitches. It seems like
| we've just been lulled into accepting software glitches as
| the price of having software control everything. Luckily,
| most of the software is not safety critical.
|
| I think this is one of the dangers of relying on software
| to close reliability gaps. Yes, you can change it quickly
| and cheaply and it's versatile, but it's often very hard to
| identify all the failure modes.
| Damogran6 wrote:
| Got a nespresso Machine last year...worked
| great....hooked up to Wifi and the phone app and had it
| firmware update and it turned it into a brick.
|
| They sent me a replacement that works great and is
| entirely ignorant of the outside world (and will stay
| that way.)
| eternityforest wrote:
| Are you on a network with some kind of firewalling or
| tracker blocking? I wonder if they are programmed to stop
| working if they can't phone home after exiting dumb mode?
|
| Or if there's an activation step they never planned to
| need recovery from failure of?
| Damogran6 wrote:
| I don't think it was intentional, talking to their tech
| support, there was no way to restore it to function. I
| suspect a bricked firmware update.
| eternityforest wrote:
| True embedded software is a lot different. Smart TVs are
| desktop or phone class computers, and even then, the
| glitches are usually "A power cycle fixes it" or "One
| feature that wouldn't exist at all without software stops
| working" type of thing.
|
| For non safety critical stuff it's much better to crash
| every week than to wear out in 5 years.
| bumby wrote:
| > _glitches are usually "A power cycle fixes it"_
|
| Maybe I'm becoming a curmudgeon or maybe it's my bias as
| a former reliability engineer, but the fact that we've
| normalized this drives me crazy. Imagine your frustration
| if your car needed to be "power cycled" on a regular
| basis just to keep it moving forward, yet we've become
| accustomed to that in our day-to-day interactions with
| electronics.
|
| It's the bane of my existence that I have to continuously
| power cycle a device to do something seemingly simply
| like change a tv streaming service or scan a document.
| Interface failures are rampant.
| eternityforest wrote:
| It's definitely not ideal, and I obviously try to do
| better than that in any product I work on.
|
| But I've seen so many things fail due to bad switches,
| connectors, and other simple parts, to me it's a great
| tradeoff to occasionally reboot something as opposed to
| having it totally fail at some random time within a few
| years.
|
| I wouldn't trust my life to it, but I'll trust my watch
| party to it.
|
| Plus, a consumer now only needs to power cycle or factory
| reboot, so untrained people can keep stuff going.
|
| I'd much rather they need reboots than need skilled work
| like they used to, that just wouldn't be practical in a
| digital first world.
|
| Oddly enough having failures be so normalized makes them
| less problematic, because the victim doesn't get many
| complaints. People who have to wait just assume that's
| how it is, nobody will tell you you shouldn't have used a
| computer for that
|
| Before all these complex systems we used pen and paper
| and things subject to human error, and we had to deal
| with that quite a bit.
|
| Computers suck compared to what they could be but they
| are amazing compared to a lot of older stuff.
| lloeki wrote:
| > your car needed to be "power cycled" on a regular basis
| just to keep it moving forward
|
| you'd be surprised how often watchdogs get their GIGO
| conditions triggered and things perform a cleanup reboot
| while you drive
| bumby wrote:
| I have no issue if it automatically recovers to a safe or
| known state. My issue is when this doesn't happen and the
| user has to perform the recovery via a power cycle. From
| my perspective, this means the system has failed and is,
| by definition, not reliable. We just seem to accept low
| reliability in consumer software.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > It seems like we've just been lulled into accepting
| software glitches as the price of having software control
| everything. Luckily, most of the software is not safety
| critical.
|
| And the thing is, somehow every vendor seems to skip out
| on ensuring a working out-of-band upgrade process -
| despite U-Boot bringing _everything_ you need with it to
| provide recovery via whatever means you want. Ethernet,
| USB, a serial debug port... hell, I did A /B partition
| support and bootloader checks with a watchdog years ago,
| hacked together in an afternoon but able to first attempt
| booting from the fresh firmware, if that failed three
| times it would attempt the B partition containing the old
| image, and if that failed it would attempt booting from a
| recovery partition that was intelligent enough to bring
| up the base board with enough networking to be able to
| bring up a web server and accept a signed firmware image.
|
| Or, if that's too complex, a fucking button that the user
| has to hold and it will boot into the recovery image
| directly.
|
| It's not rocket science, it's not even much effort, all
| you need is a fucking week at least and a couple of cents
| for a switch. Pure penny pinching, and I hate companies
| that produce hardware that can turn to e-waste because of
| it.
| yetihehe wrote:
| > Metal, vs plastic gears.
|
| Sintered metal gears, last only a little longer than plastic
| and then fail catastrophically destroying half of the device
| so that you can't repair it. But at least they are much
| cheaper than proper machined gears.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| My KitchenAid mixer ate a gear many years ago. They would
| lead you to believe they are a high quality brand, no?
|
| After disassembly, it turned out to be perhaps the _only_
| plastic gear in the thing. It occurred to me that it was
| perhaps designed to fail rather than the mixer continuing
| to break the bones of the person who got their hand caught
| in the paddle.
|
| So, I throw the engineer a bone for that one. I was bummed
| though to have to order a replacement gear from some
| obscure place in Florida for like $75 or whatever.
| yetihehe wrote:
| Yeah, sometimes there are plastic gears designed in
| specifically for this, in blenders and kitchen
| appliances, some lathes even have a set of several copies
| of one plastic safety gear. But sintered metal gears in
| planetary gearbox of a cordless screwdriver which fails
| faster than it's battery (Einhell) - not acceptable.
| [deleted]
| S_A_P wrote:
| The real crime is that there are only like 5 appliance
| parts companies that stock parts and they each seem to
| look at the other companies for what to stock. Meaning,
| if someone else has it they won't. But what ever they do
| stock ends up selling for 500% or more of the wholesale
| price.
| blueblob wrote:
| I had the same gear fail. It's called a worm gear and is,
| indeed, intended to fail before damaging the other gears.
| They're much cheaper if you buy a non-oem part. I bought
| one from amazon for ~10 USD.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Yeah, this was a time when Amazon was in its infancy. :-(
| generalpf wrote:
| A worm gear! It is indeed designed to take the fall so
| the entire machine doesn't shred itself.
|
| I bought an official replacement from KitchenAid for $12
| including shipping.
| mattferderer wrote:
| > It occurred to me that it was perhaps designed to fail
| rather than the mixer continuing to break the bones of
| the person who got their hand caught in the paddle.
|
| This is a good call out of potential other reasons an
| engineer team might make something cheaper & easier to
| break. It would be awesome to read a summary of the
| trade-offs the teams discuss in their process.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| My Electrolux Assistent N8, from 1978, also has a worm
| drive. Not plastic though, instead it has an
| electromechanical stall detector that shuts down the
| motor if it stalls. No need for sacrificial parts!
| aidos wrote:
| For those who want to see a teardown, AvE has one on his
| channel here; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qKp-0h9P18
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Interesting -- it is the "Professional" version and
| appears to have different internals than my consumer-
| grade one.
| jerf wrote:
| Capitalism is successfully optimizing for what I as a
| consumer can detect. I am not capable of simply looking at
| a device and knowing whether the metal is the quality metal
| it needs to be, or if it is merely some cheap metal that
| will bend if I breath on it too hard.
|
| ($YOU may be. I'm not.)
|
| Except that nowadays I tend to just guess the latter and
| I'm statistically correct anyhow.
|
| Superman has a quote about living in a world of cardboard,
| where he must control his every move lest he rip through
| everything. I'm beginning to feel that way myself with
| these consumer products. If you take them even 5% out of
| spec expect them to catastrophically fail. They'll
| catastrophically fail even if you use them entirely within
| spec. I'd happily pay a bit extra for something that
| wouldn't but there's no way for the manufacturer to
| successfully convey to me that this is such a thing even if
| they wanted to. The metaphorical water is so metaphorically
| muddied that it's just dry dust now anyhow, with fake 5
| star reviews and decades of refinement on marketing
| messages about how this vegetable peeler peels vegetables
| so well that it will even enhance your marriage prospects.
| eggy wrote:
| Products with guarantees are for a replacement with the same
| short-lasting product, not a guarantee on the one physical item
| you originally purchased. It's cheaper for manufacturer's to send
| you another POS than to spend the time and charging a bit more
| for a product that will last. People have been conditioned to
| follow the percolator-drip-French press-espresso machine-Keurig
| cycle! I keep a steel cone sieve and buy beans I have the store
| grind for me. I too have gone through 3 or 4 coffee grinders. I
| just got back from Saudi after working there for 6 months, and
| being sober for years, I found it a land of coffee shops vs. pubs
| and bars. Most people had a simple, traditional Arabic (now
| rebranded "Saudi") coffee setup, or a Keurig or Nespresso machine
| in their home or Bedouin tent. My Mom and Dad had the same
| percolator for over 18 years. Maybe not a coffee connoisseur's
| preference, but it always worked if the gas bill was paid!
| woah wrote:
| Old man yells at crap
| wincy wrote:
| My $4000 GE refrigerator has broken twice now in the five years
| we have owned it, both times in the exact same way. The way the
| fridge works seems simple: the cold freezer is on the bottom, and
| then a fan blows air up through a shaft to the relatively warmer
| refrigerator as needed to keep it just above freezing.
|
| Instead, the failure state is that the fan that handles this
| broke with no warning. I lost a bunch of groceries, but luckily
| managed to figure out the issue and replace the part myself.
|
| Then a few months ago I heard a clack clack like a fan was about
| to fail, so this time I replaced the fan after only about two
| days of no refrigerator.
|
| I don't understand how such an expensive device can have such a
| terrible failure mode that ruins basically everything inside my
| fridge, twice now (the freezer is fine though, it just gets
| colder).
|
| Before this fridge my wife and I were totally broke and just had
| a $400 hand me down fridge that we literally never had any
| problems with. I don't really know why modern stuff seems so bad.
|
| I know I know, survivorship bias and whatnot, I don't see all the
| broken refrigerators in the landfill, but even if that's the case
| why not fire half your design engineers just trot out those old
| 1945 GE Ultracool (or whatever) designs and sell those?
| cfeduke wrote:
| I have the original refrigerator the previous owners installed
| when we purchased the house. It's from the 1990s. It is
| sometimes loud, but I am afraid to replace it. I am sometimes
| awed by the new, sleek fridges in the home improvement store
| but then Admiral Ackbar's voice rings in my head and gives me a
| +8 to my Will save. So far so good.
|
| Every 2-4 years I replace the dishwasher, dryer, and washing
| machine. The first replacement dishwasher caught on fire; we
| are on dishwasher #4. The current washing machine has a leak,
| the water sensor* which somehow functions after being there for
| over four years (four!) notifies me reliably.
|
| * Samsung has discontinued the water sensor
| wincy wrote:
| Ah yeah I paid for Consumer reports and instead of buying an
| expensive dishwasher got the $500 Bosch that they claimed
| washed as well as the $2000 Thermador dishwasher. It has been
| going strong for a few years, no complaints here.
|
| I know Consumer Reports can't really account for durability
| although I think they survey their members to see what's
| still working, so it's better than most places.
| philwelch wrote:
| CR and Reddit seem to agree that Bosch is a solid choice,
| which is why I went with Bosch.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| My washing machine is over thirty years old, a no-name
| Italian one. Electromechanical controller, so no electronics.
| The only fault is that the program knob fell off, I tied it
| back on with a piece of string ten years ago. It looks like
| it should keep going for another decade or two.
| CadmiumYellow wrote:
| Every 2-4 years?! That's wild. I live in a rental house that
| still has all of its appliances from the 90s. They definitely
| look dated - all white, lots of plastic, no stainless steel
| or water dispenser or anything - but they all still work
| perfectly. I haven't had a single problem with any of them
| since I moved in several years ago, with the exception of the
| dishwasher coming unplugged and having to be removed so it
| could be plugged back in. This post is making me grateful for
| my shabby appliances (and the fact that I'm not on the hook
| for fixing them if they do break)!
| H1Supreme wrote:
| I think there's a real opportunity for a company to release a
| (affordable) fridge that has zero gadgets, and markets the
| quality of the cooling system. How can a 40 year old fridge
| that lives in the garage be more reliable than a new Samsung
| (or GE in this case)? Obviously, it's cheap components. But,
| considering how much of a pain in the ass moving a refrigerator
| is, "won't break" is highly marketable here. I'd certainly buy
| one.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| In contrast the $120 freezers in my garage have given
| improbably years of service without a single issue. New from
| big box store; reviews warned of possible failure and loss of
| content. But mine must be the good ones. Somebody has to get
| the good one I guess.
| HeXetic wrote:
| Chest freezers cannot be compared to household kitchen
| refrigerator-freezer combinations. There's way, way, way less
| complexity.
|
| * No need to split & balance the refrigeration between fridge
| & freezer
|
| * No expectation of a defrost cycle on the freezer
|
| * Generally less stuff: no water or ice dispenser, less
| lights, less fancy bins & trays & veg drawers etc.
|
| * Chest freezers get opened less, and the top-opening lid
| lets less cold out when they are opened, and without the
| defrost cycle the compressor just doesn't have to work as
| hard.
|
| * Usually greater consumer tolerance for these items being
| large/heavy machinery so the designers don't even have to
| worry too hard about keeping things compact.
| wincy wrote:
| My refrigerator works fine _as long as the fan holds up_.
| I'm not sure why they used such a terrible fan though.
| crystaln wrote:
| If years of service is the expectation for a refrigerator,
| then something is wrong.
|
| Refrigerator life should be measured in decades.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Two reasons:
|
| 1. Newer fridges have much more complicated air flow patterns
| requiring more fans and elaborate designs (my fridge runs all
| its fans for 2 seconds to homogenize air every time I close its
| door, for example).
|
| 2. That fan is a standard fan in GE line-up which happens to
| fit that bill. It's not a fan made extra robust and reliable
| because it's going to end in a $4000 fridge.
| ejb999 wrote:
| I have a 2nd fridge in my garage, an old philco one - still
| running perfectly, 365 days a year for almost 70 years. Never
| needed a repair in the 25 years I have owned it.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Throw it away! It is costing more in annual electricity than
| a new one. Never mind it's old; it's insulation is worthless
| and its compressor is very inefficient.
| ejb999 wrote:
| baloney - what is the cost to the environment of producing,
| transporting and then throwing away a refrigerator every
| 7-10 years? How about the gas used for the service calls?
|
| My old fridge is running perfectly, and costs me less than
| $10-$15/month.
|
| A typical modestly price refrigerator these days cost $1000
| at home depot (and easily more) - even if I could cut
| electricity by 50%, saving 7.50 a month in electric, a
| typical new fridge won't even last long enough to justify
| the savings..
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| 70 years old? Really?
| ejb999 wrote:
| yes, amazingly it really is - built in the early 1950's
| and still works perfectly. Not pretty enough to keep in
| the house anymore, but still hums away day after day.
| They truly don't make them like they used to.
| jtbayly wrote:
| Is this a joke?!
|
| Are you a fridge salesman or something?
|
| You do understand that many of us would pay more for that
| fridge _and_ gladly pay way more in electricity to have it
| perform its job reliably, right?
| carapace wrote:
| The idea is to have inexpensive refrigerators that use
| less energy _and_ last many decades. (And when they are
| superseded by even more efficient models there should be
| a clear recycle /reuse "exit" for the old appliances. I
| hear they have laws to that effect over in Germany,
| something like that. Keeps the old obsolete appliances
| out of the landfill.)
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| We have laws like it in Norway too. Old appliances can be
| taken to the local recycling centre or to any shop that
| sells appliances of the same general type. All shops that
| sell electrical goods have to be willing to take back
| discarded appliances even if they did not sell that
| specific article or even brand.
| ejb999 wrote:
| taking them back is good, I guess, but if they take them
| back and then throw them into a landfill, what has been
| accomplished?
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Replaced my 30yo appliances. My electric bill dropped in
| half.
|
| Sure you have the resources to burn all the electricity
| you want for convenience, you do you.
| jtbayly wrote:
| But how much did that cost, and how long ago was it? Have
| you recouped the cost yet? I ask because if it's a 5 year
| payback, that's ignoring the cost of food spoilage from
| your new fridge that quits after 6 years.
| rzzzt wrote:
| We got a compressor fridge from the now non-existent GDR 50-ish
| years ago, and it finally broke this year. Still cools, just
| non-stop (the temperature sensing switch gave up the ghost). I
| occasionally think about cybernetically enhancing it with an
| ESP8266, a relay and a sensor.
| empyrrhicist wrote:
| Just grab a Johnson Controls temperature controller. Set and
| forget.
| bambax wrote:
| > _Many blamed these problems on the government. They believed it
| had crippled certain products (major home appliances,
| especially)_
|
| This is a claim that was already present in _Death of a
| Salesman_. Here 's the quote:
|
| > _I am always in a race with the junkyard! I just finished
| paying for the car and it 's on its last legs. The refrigerator
| consumes belts like a goddam maniac. They time those things. They
| time them so when you finally paid for them, they're used up._
|
| The play came out in... 1949.
|
| It's not been my experience that everything is crap nowadays. But
| of course one needs to shop wisely.
| robinsonb5 wrote:
| The difficulty is that the abundance of cheap crap often makes
| finding the good stuff like finding a needle in a haystack.
| Yes, price is the first indicator, but there are plenty of
| chancers who are quite happy to sell the cheap crap at the
| premium price point.
| crystaln wrote:
| Also the expensive stuff is often built to last a few years
| instead of decades.
| yourapostasy wrote:
| Carefully buy b2b and you can still get to decades of
| service life for many types of equipment. It is also much
| more expensive than the most expensive "prosumer" grade
| offerings you see. But for some of this type of equipment,
| that's because they staff competent technicians supporting
| 24x7x365 service calls coming in from shops hiring
| certified technicians rolling repair trucks any time of the
| day or night for the right fee.
| theK wrote:
| Yes that is exactly the problem. Especially with cheap as
| garbage direct sales from China and internet shopping being
| the norm, your chances of finding legitimate high quality
| sellers on amazon or else are practically zero. Even worse,
| nowadays on amazon you find the exact same product in all the
| price ranges sold by "different" sellers.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| There's a need for legislation here IMO.
|
| Trademarks identify the origin of goods that a business
| wishes a consumer to believe. We need to expand that law to
| also indicate _actual_ origin.
|
| For example, this DVD player came from this manufacturer
| and then got badged as Alpha Inc, but this other DVD had
| the same technical origin (despite the different case) and
| got badged as Beta Inc ... consumers should get that
| information. Capitalism relies on such things so that the
| best products can be chosen.
|
| Instead, we get things like companies selling the same
| product code from different factories with wildly different
| quality. Or, far more egregious companies sending a product
| to reviewers and early adopters, then making a worse
| product and passing it off to consumers as the same.
|
| There's much more to do (I should be able to see exactly
| what a product had done to acquire it's 'country of origin'
| - another area companies deceive consumers), but this would
| be a start.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| I am surprised that nobody pointed out the obvious : avoid
| items with the minimum legal manufacturer warranty.
|
| Though this too can become hard in categories dominated by
| cartels : warranties for (magnetic) hard drives have been
| going down (not to mention the recent frauds by Western
| Digital, how they have fallen, sigh...), or, for (non-
| related) reasons, boycotting Intel and Ryzen CPUs (or Android
| an iOS smartphones) doesn't leave you many options, though
| RISC-V (and "real" Linux) have been making great strides in
| the recent years.
| Jupe wrote:
| Unless the company goes out of business, or as may happen
| more often today, just dissolve the company and re-
| brand/re-incorporate.
| robinsonb5 wrote:
| > I am surprised that nobody pointed out the obvious :
| avoid items with the minimum legal manufacturer warranty.
|
| I have to admit that particular strategy hadn't occurred to
| me - but it's a good idea. Of course, it has to be an
| actual part-of-the-standard-deal warranty, not the hard-
| sell extended warranty that's really just an add-on
| insurance policy...
|
| (Wondering where I find a box of staples warranted to
| pierce more than five sheets...)
| derbOac wrote:
| For what it's worth, some things in my lifetime have seemed to
| get much better, and cars and refrigerators happen to be in
| that class.
|
| Many other things seem to have gotten worse though, like
| clothes and linens. I suspect there's some pattern to those
| things that have improved and those that have declined, and
| everything in between, but I couldn't explain it.
| H1Supreme wrote:
| I have some anecdotal evidence to the contrary on
| refrigerators. I want a fridge to do one thing. Keep food
| cold. No ice maker, no water, no godforsaken app, or camera
| on the inside. Make a robust, reliable cooling system that's
| built to last. That's the only thing I want to pay for.
| mbfg wrote:
| watching many youtube mechanic channels, i get the sense that
| they seem to think that 2000 era cars were better than
| today's car. The common missive is that they now have really
| cheap parts, and the cars are over controlled by computer
| systems making them brittle and expensive to repair.
| chinabot wrote:
| and impossible to replace with the same part from a
| scrapped car due to the module being paired to the specific
| car and the reuirement for the dealer to install it. All
| car parts should become open source 10 years after the last
| one was produced to prevent them just getting scrapped.
| mattferderer wrote:
| >cars are over controlled by computer systems making them
| brittle and expensive to repair
|
| I've heard this many times while at auto body shops. It
| seems that it's not the electronic parts cost that is
| expensive but you have to dissemble much of the car to
| replace the parts.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Regulations. Also probably how cars and refrigerators need
| energy to work ?
|
| The downside is that cars especially have not gotten cheaper.
| (This is starting to change, sadly by necessity rather than
| choice, ~ton personal vehicles will soon be the thing of the
| past even in rich countries.)
| oblio wrote:
| > soon personal vehicles will soon be the thing of the past
| even in rich countries.
|
| https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/global-car-
| sa...
| bitexploder wrote:
| Check out the history of light bulbs, an actual amazing
| conspiracy few people know about :)
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| One perhaps continued to this day, if maybe in a different
| way (we'll know in a few decades) : toxic fluorescents and
| most diode bulbs not having separated transformers (they are
| DC !)
| bitexploder wrote:
| Though my LED lights do last a lot longer and cost way less
| to operate overall, so that is nice.
| jtbayly wrote:
| I've been singularly unimpressed with the rate my LED
| bulbs are failing.
|
| Definitely not even close to 10-15 years I was promised.
|
| And this is why warranties are pointless. How am I
| supposed to get one of these bulbs from a four-pack
| replaced by the manufacturer two years after I bought it?
| bitexploder wrote:
| Yeah, nowhere near as long as they should last, but
| better than it was.
| plastiquebeech wrote:
| Might be worth mentioning the name of the conspiracy: the
| Phoebus Cartel.
|
| It sounds cartoonishly evil, but "cartel" is just an economic
| term for a market where a small number of participants
| collude to control supply and pricing. Like OPEC.
|
| https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-l-e-d-
| quanda...
|
| IMHO, we should be more aggressive about converting
| industries which gravitate towards cartels into regulated
| natural monopolies, like power/water supplies. Some kinds of
| markets really are more efficient with fewer participants,
| and we should find ways to encourage that efficiency without
| letting the lucky winners indefinitely dictate the terms of
| the market.
| pphysch wrote:
| In contemporary America, cartels are euphemized as "trade
| associations" and they dominate Washington DC (and our
| national consciousness) with their collective lobbying and
| PR resources.
| ejb999 wrote:
| Yep, bulbs are now all complete crap - they used to last
| decades.
|
| Was having my house painted a few years back, I have a triple
| set of spots near the very top of the roof (so about 30 feet
| in the air) - painter helpfully suggests - do you want me to
| replace those bulbs up there while I have my ladder up there?
| I agreed.
|
| Big mistake, the bulbs their were still working 17 years
| after I moved in - now I have to replace them about every 18
| months with the cheap crap the government only allows to be
| sold.
|
| Not sure how replacing bulbs and throwing them in the
| landfill every 1-2 years is doing anything good for the
| environment.
| crystaln wrote:
| What kind of bulbs are you using? LED bulbs should last a
| decade.
| ejb999 wrote:
| my led bulbs in the house are burning out every 18 months
| or so - no way they last 10 years - not even close.
| oblio wrote:
| Your anecdata is bad. Even after the conspiracy was
| discovered, incandescent bulbs still had a much lower life
| expectancy than LED lights.
|
| It's simple physics :-)
| docandrew wrote:
| The LEDs themselves are very robust, solid-state
| semiconductors that will function for a very long time,
| but they need additional electronics to function in a
| 110/220V socket, and those electronics seem to be
| crummier than the old incandescent filaments.
| ejb999 wrote:
| perhaps in theory - not in real life.
| m3047 wrote:
| Yes, I was going to mention that.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel
| bambax wrote:
| Not a good example that everything turned to crap _right this
| decade_...
| lordgroff wrote:
| It's a matter of shopping wisely and, at least sometimes, of
| spending more money up front. People always reach for the
| smelling salts when I tell them how much my (hand) coffee
| grinder cost, but that thing is almost certain to outlast me.
| voidee wrote:
| I also would like to know what hand grinder you have!
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I've got my selling salts, please tell me which coffee
| grinder you own?
|
| And by the way, since the topic of "where do I find the good
| stuff" keeps coming up, why is there no site that is your
| one-stop recommendation destination for finding quality
| appliances, tools? We all know we can no longer trust Amazon
| reviews.
|
| Consumer Reports has been around for ages but I don't feel
| they've kept in lockstep with the changing times. Maybe the
| Cool Tools site? But it seems a little too casual and not as
| rigorous as CR, too eager to direct you to Amazon as well. I
| don't know really. Just spitballing.
| docandrew wrote:
| I feel like there's a great opportunity for a founder to
| start a new eCommerce site with supply chain verification
| to weed out fakes, and who would do their own testing a la
| Consumer Reports in addition to customer reviews.
| gibspaulding wrote:
| /r/buyitforlife is a decent start if you don't mind Reddit.
| lordgroff wrote:
| https://eightouncecoffee.ca/collections/hand-
| grinders/produc...
|
| And yeah for products like these you really need to search
| prosumer forums for the specific area in question, Consumer
| Reports would be useless.
| Damogran6 wrote:
| I think there are a LOT of societal ills with sending too many
| people to College...who then get MBAs.
|
| You're going to want to use what you earned, right? So you're
| gonna maximize profit and shareholder value.
|
| Individually, none of them are particularly egregous. A little
| less sugar for your dollar, a sticky subscription on your credit
| card, A Washing machine that doesn't QUITE live as long as it
| should.
|
| But in aggregate you end up with /gestures broadly at everything.
| inkcapmushroom wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-nasir
|
| Those MBA types have been cutting corners on quality for a
| while...
| Damogran6 wrote:
| It's not that it's been happening, it's that it's happening
| in such volume.
| [deleted]
| eternityforest wrote:
| I just don't see it. Were I to go shopping at wal-mart, and if I
| didn't understand anything about failure modes, I might, but I
| find it very easy to find things that last.
|
| Partly because out lifestyle now is lighter on things, and we
| need fewer of them. I don't need a juicer because... I don't
| juice.
|
| Another factor might be that we still have an obsession with
| "Power". Look at how impact drivers are reviewed, based on how
| fast they screw some insane fastener most people won't ever need.
|
| If consumers prefer and recommended more powerful stuff rather
| than stuff that's better at protecting itself, stuff is gonna
| break.
|
| My vacuum does shut off if you run over the wrong thing. That's
| not a case of clogging and choking, that's a sensor detecting
| that I've given it something it's not meant for, protecting
| itself. I would take that any day over something that would
| happily self destruct on something, or even chew up whatever it
| hit.
|
| My Rite in the Rain pen never has issues and very well could last
| my whole life with no refills. There are bad pens out there, but
| I have no memory of any time when cheap ballpoints actually
| worked correctly.
|
| I have not had any experience with a new washer or dryer for very
| long.
|
| However, new appliances are lighter, cheaper, and more efficient.
| If the scrap is recycled, they may well be just as good as old
| ones in terms of cost and environmental concerns, even if they
| break faster.
|
| There are certain categories of things that may be worse overall,
| but in general, there's close to nothing I'd prefer the old
| version of.
|
| However, there are probably lots of things where the cheap
| version now is worse than the old version. But that old version
| probably cost $40 in today's money and the cheap version cost
| $20.
| jtbayly wrote:
| A broken fridge ruins lots of food, worth lots of money.
|
| A broken washing machine or dishwasher can flood your house,
| costing 10s of thousands of dollars.
|
| A broken dryer can burn your house down.
|
| And even if some of those aren't common failure modes (fridge
| is common), it is incredibly inconvenient and expensive to be
| without a major appliance for (insert supply chain guesstimate
| number of) weeks every year or so.
| eternityforest wrote:
| I've only personally seen one failure like that, a bad washer
| flooding a friend's house.
|
| I would imagine a heat pump dryer would be _very_ unlikely to
| burn anything down.
|
| It is a really big inconvenience when they go offline, but
| there are still lots of brands that seem to work fine for 10
| to 20 years.
|
| I'm surprised ultra high reliability isn't more of a consumer
| selling point. Refrigerators in particular could do it with a
| redundant compressor and valves, they could share the
| evaporator and condensing coils. It's not like fridge
| compressors cost that much to make. They could even use 2
| small ones and run them all the time, so if 1 fails you get
| half power but it still works.
|
| Washers and dryers could do redundancy by selling pairs of
| identical combo units instead of 1 washer and 1 dryer, but I
| suppose people don't need to replace both at once very often.
| sevensor wrote:
| If you're willing to tolerate not owning things when they're new,
| survivorship bias can be your friend. I especially recommend
| saying yes whenever an elderly relative / friend offers you a
| hand-me-down. You'll get things that are no good, to be sure;
| sometimes trash survives because people have inexplicably taken
| delicate care of it for decades. But often, you get things of
| great utility. Wool army blankets from the 1940s. Brace-and-bit
| drills. Old sets of Encyclopedia Britannica. A flour sifter. A
| nightstand. A handmade rug. A shearling coat. A sharp machete.
| Furthermore, accepting these gifts is an act of love; it tells
| the giver, "it was not in vain that you cared for this thing you
| can no longer use."
| gibspaulding wrote:
| This is great advice! Over the years, most of the shiny new
| household goods from our wedding registry have ended up donated
| or binned, and more and more of what we use every day is either
| inherited or bought used. Estate sale cast iron cookware and
| shop tools, inherited fiestaware, utensils, and dining room
| table, a commercial deep freezer from Alejandro's used
| appliance store.
|
| When inheriting or estate sales aren't an option I've actually
| been buying a lot of used stuff off of eBay lately. PC's (the
| trick is to select "no OS included" to find the business ones
| IT departments are discarding), a label maker you could use as
| a bludgeon in a pinch, a vintage flannel that's actually wool.
|
| I've come to really like second hand. Clothes don't shrink when
| you wash them, boots are already broken in, and things have
| generally survived past that first failure spike that weeds out
| the lemons.
| phaedrus wrote:
| I have a set of "spade" drill bits for wood that once belonged
| to someone's grandfather. The operation of this style of wood
| drill bit is sometimes jokingly referred to as "slapping chunks
| of wood off" until a hole appears, and I agree - for the ones
| sold now. Not these ones.
|
| They're noticeably sharper and truer than the ones you find
| now, more perfectly symmetrical in profile and grind, probably
| a half-dozen other subtle differences. When you drill a hole
| with one of these bits, all of the shavings are uniform and the
| sides of hole aren't ragged. There's less vibration, less heat,
| more progress.
| h2odragon wrote:
| Who needs most of this crap?
|
| I have a knife. It is a simple piece of metal that peels carrots,
| apples, and many other things with great reliability. It also
| performs other functions that a "carrot peeler" could not. It has
| done so for 20 years and can be expected to remain functional for
| several more decades.
|
| "Coffee grinder"? how many iterations of the idea of the blender
| does one kitchen need? (I count a half dozen in my kitchen
| without trying. 4 more if you add in the lab gear)
| thesaintlives wrote:
| I tried grinding coffee in the blender just after my divorce.
| Did not work so great...
| wincy wrote:
| I mean I use a peeler because my kids like to help cook and I
| don't want to give a four year old a sharp kitchen knife.
|
| I don't drink coffee but a nicely built hand powered coffee
| grinder is great at home or even on a camping trip for people
| who are really into coffee.
|
| But you're probably right, I bet my $400 Vitamix could grind
| coffee. Actually, I just googled it, and Vitamix helpfully
| sells a coffee grinder attachment! Haha, the gadgets never end.
| zenexer wrote:
| It depends.
|
| You probably have a typical coffee brewer. Those aren't too
| picky about their grind, but they take up a lot of space and
| only do one thing. Most don't last long.
|
| You could instead get a V60 for about $10 and a nice hand
| grinder, neither of which take much space. Combine those with
| an electric tea kettle, and you've got nicer coffee in a
| smaller footprint. The tea kettle still takes up space, but
| it's a tea kettle. The grinder is the size of a pepper mill,
| and the V60 is an indestructible little plastic cone. Tired of
| cranking the grinder by hand? Hook it up to a drill.
|
| You could use a blender-style grinder with a V60, but you're
| going to run into trouble getting it to work right.
|
| Everything is a compromise.
| robinsonb5 wrote:
| I had a knife. It wasn't a simple piece of metal - it had a
| nicely sculpted handle with that horrible tactile silicone
| coating which gets gross and sticky over time and is really
| hard to clean (mild abrasive such as bicarbonate of soda will
| either clean it or remove it - and frankly I'm good with either
| outcome!) A few months back this knife fell to pieces when the
| handle split, causing the blade to do an interesting backflip
| maneouvre that I'd have preferred to spectate from much further
| away.
|
| While I'm ranting about kitchenwares, I'm getting tired of
| saucepans with a life expectancy of less than two years -
| they're another item I'd expect to last decades. But again the
| existence of the cheap crap makes it harder to find the better
| stuff, and certainly hard to have any confidence that what
| you're looking actually _is_ any better, and not just the same
| crap with a higher price tag.
| lentil_soup wrote:
| well, using a peeler (not just for carrots) is a way faster way
| to peel things and it's tiny. Mine has lasted years and peeling
| potatos is just so so fast. I understand what you mean, but in
| this case I think it is a pretty useful tool
| indymike wrote:
| > Be aware that survivorship bias may fool you when comparing the
| quality of new and old items.
|
| This is true, but there is an area where newer products are not
| able to live up to older products: repairability. There's far too
| many products that simple cannot be maintained or repaired -
| laptop computers from a particularly successful maker of Unix
| powered machines comes to mind.
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