Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?

#41

Post by wrycoder » Sat, Nov 27, 2021, 12:01 AM UTC

tjalfi wrote: post #32

The Nack Pro utility knife[0][1] is a great tool; it's easy to operate one-handed and is virtually indestructible. The handle contains 30 blades in a rotating magazine; you change blades by rotating the base of the handle. I bought one in the early 2000s and it will probably last me the rest of my life. [0] https://toolmonger.com/2008/12/08/utility-knife-revolver/ [1] https://www.ebay.com/itm/324381893450

A step up from the cheap plastic units with the snap-off blades, but if you want to cut linoleum or do some similar heavy task, try this:

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B005HVYSSW/ref=ppx_yo_dt...

Re: Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?

#42

Post by samspenc » Sat, Nov 27, 2021, 12:37 AM UTC

lowkey wrote: post #39

Tonal is amazing. It is the fitness system of my dreams. A resistance training setup with digital weights that hangs on the wall. It is filled with high quality content that showcases how to take full advantage of the tech. An ai combined with a well designed adjustment system and suddenly weight training is so fun and fluid I can do it every day.

I've been looking into a home gym and am torn between Tonal, Mirror and other offerings. Just curious if you've compared Tonal against Mirror, Peloton, etc?

Re: Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?

#43

Post by mbrodersen » Sat, Nov 27, 2021, 1:02 AM UTC

Kinesis Advantage2 keyboard. Without it I would not be able to work as a software developer.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?

#44

Post by nikivi » Sat, Nov 27, 2021, 1:04 AM UTC

https://linear.app is great. I list all sites I love here: https://wiki.nikitavoloboev.xyz/design/design-inspiration#we...

Re: Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?

#45

Post by donatj » Sat, Nov 27, 2021, 1:06 AM UTC

muziq wrote: post #8

A 2011 era 27” iMac, that never booted to OSX, instead was installed from new with Windows.. Sheer, and unexpectedly, pure blissful experience..

Mine is still going usefully for me, albeit with High Sierra. For most tasks, it's performance is on-par with my 2019 MacBook Pro - which I suspect comes down to thermals more than anything.

A lot of what I use it for is just headlessly running FFmpeg over ssh.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?

#46

Post by jpgvm » Sat, Nov 27, 2021, 1:06 AM UTC

I'm an avid collector of Japanese chef knives. They are not only beautiful but design of each of the distinct blade shapes have been honed over hundreds of years for usability. Using a knife for the job it was designed for is a very pleasurable experience.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?

#47

Post by jftuga » Sat, Nov 27, 2021, 1:08 AM UTC

My Roku 3 is great. I bought it years ago and am still using it on my 1080p TVs. It just works, even behind a Pi-Hole ad blocking DNS server. It may crash once or twice a year (but then auto-reboot itself) and very rarely do I ever have to manually reboot it.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?

#48

Post by rmujica » Sat, Nov 27, 2021, 1:09 AM UTC

nikivi wrote: post #44

https://linear.app is great. I list all sites I love here: https://wiki.nikitavoloboev.xyz/design/design-inspiration#we...

Great collection! Thanks for sharing

Re: Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?

#49

Post by quercusa » Sat, Nov 27, 2021, 1:11 AM UTC

Estwing Nail Puller: https://www.estwing.com/products/estwing-nail-puller Perfectly designed for the task and good-looking too.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?

#50

Post by Buttons840 » Sat, Nov 27, 2021, 1:14 AM UTC

guidovranken wrote: post #27

BitTorrent is amazing. It just works. Anyone anywhere can create a torrent of their files, dump the magnet link somewhere, and everyone else can reliably retrieve it. It is self-reinforcing; the more people using a torrent, the better the robustness, redundancy and download speeds. You can often get better speeds from downloading something via torrent than from a web server. It's an open protocol that is relatively e…

Wish browsers had built in support for it. Imagine if by default most downloads were through BitTorrent, and your browser would then seed the file for 1.5x the download size and time.