Fujifilm Mirrorless Cameras (mine is 2nd gen XE2). First ever interchangeable camera I carry with me to all my family trips. Excellent build quality, physical controls, high quality lens options and not to mention insanely great jpegs straight out of the camera. I have taken so many wonderful pictures and captured so many precious moments of my family and kid, it is easily the best purchase I made by a long shot.
Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?
451–460 of 994 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?
#452I'm amazed no one has suggested Chromecast. It just works. Click a button on your phone or laptop and the video or song you were listening to or want to listen to suddenly appears on the TV. Even grandparents seem to get it. Maybe Apple TV is a similar experience but Chromecast is as good as it gets
Well, that's because most of that is untrue.
It's not a simple system. Technically all you need is upnp to perform all those functions. A raspberry pi with a build of VLC that only always plays full screen and a slideshow of some kind in between use. However, with the google product specifically it is deliberately designed to handicap itself and require all kinds of extra software (google at services, the YouTube app, etc) on the mobile device. It may look simple from the perspective of someone who already has all the added necessities, but try playing a video on the Chromecast with your own choice of software and you'll see it for the nightmare it is.
Re: Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?
#453some random things without thinking too much: - my regular Bialetti moka - my texas instruments ti-86 (still rocking strong since 1997) - thinkpads: T42, X220, w530, T440... they're just great. - my wenger/swissgear carbon backpack EDIT: actually my regular bialetti moka is replacing an induction moka (still from bialetti) because the induction moka is hard to open (due to the round base).
T440 had abysmally bad screens
Re: Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?
#454Rust. Because it’s amazing
Re: Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?
#455https://www.mcmaster.com/ Fast, snappy, responsive. No banners or cookie prompts, doesn't ask my to sign up for a newsletter or an account to continue and see more selection, it doesn't load in megabytes of JavaScript to show me products. Plus, responsive as all heck, and there isn't any bullshit prompts like "click here to see our selected offerings" or "check out our value products here" Like, from. The short url,…
I think it works because it is like the best parts of a part catalog without being too cute or clever. There are issues with searching sometimes if you want to browse to the part you have in your mind but cannot think of the name of, but usually it works. And yes, it is expensive to buy everything from McMaster, but that isn't what they are for. They also can be quite good about identifying the actual product/source if you ask.
Re: Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?
#456Re: Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?
#457The Kinesis Advantage keyboard [1]. The height of the keys in each column are different because, well, the length of each of our fingers is different. It’s so naturally comfortable that it goes unnoticed and one’s fingers just fall into the right position. Placing one’s fingers offset left or right is so obviously uncomfortable that it’s basically impossible to have off-by-one typos. There is a lot of subtly well-des…
> Contoured keyboard designed to provide maximum comfort and productivity for Windows and Mac users.
As a Linux user this leaves me really second guessing.
Re: Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?
#458BitTorrent 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.
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Re: Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?
#459Earlier quoted context omitted.
I almost listed this as mine. The design is still really good for the cost. Ease of use / cleaning / disposing of grounds is a smart design. I accept that the seal will wear, I actually think not over-engineering the seal and making it triple the price adds to the design.
It's not too hard to get a replacement rubber seal, and easy to swap in the new part. They say it will last longer if you don't store it with the seal compressed in the tube, but I always leave it like that and it still lasts years.
If you just push it all the way through, the tip of the seal won't be compressed. No effort to do it like that.
Re: Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?
#460If you split your own firewood by hand, a Fiskars splitting axe is insanely better than any standard splitting maul you'd find in a typical hardware store: https://www.fiskars.com/en-us/gardening-and-yard-care/produc... For mechanical pencils, the Rotring 600 is the best thing I've ever written with: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00AZWYUA4/
Any advice on technique with the splitting axe? Use the same way as the maul?
So happy to see the Fiskars mentioned. Grew up with farmers in the midwest US but love my fancy little splitter hitter from across the pond.
I find a subtle lift on the handle right at the end of the stroke, almost like a whipping action, seems to help a little. It may be in my head, but it seems to stick less.
Use the full length of the handle, the horn at the end provides a positive grip and you get more speed.
On large rounds don’t start in the very center, bisect the round but start near near the far rim so the crack is only supported on one side and has a better chance to propagate through the length of the round. Work your way back towards you and repeat if needed.
Always focus on where your strike lands. Most smaller logs will be one hitters but aim precisely anyway. On larger rounds stitch strikes together in one continuous line across the face. Don’t get sloppy, if you’re more than an 1/8” off left or right hit it again. Repeat across until she gives. Precision beats percussion.
Set your rounds on top of the biggest round you can find when splitting. This flattens the contact (tip #1) and the large round below provides some inertial resistance. Splitting directly on the ground provides more bounce, reducing effectiveness, and the bit gets dulled by contact with dirt and rocks.
Keep the cover, its durable, provides a great hanging handle. The blade doesn’t need to be razor sharp like you would want with a cutting axe, but it should be sharp and clean.