Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

501–510 of 994 posts

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

#501

Post by raffraffraff »

Garmin Fenix 5s Sapphire: notifications from my phone with custom replies, 6 day battery life, buttons. No touch screen (operate it "blind" and in the wet), waterproof, scratchproof. You do need to pay extra for the sapphire screen.

Swiss Army knife (they're sooo well made)

Under armour underwear: no seams, last ages, extremely comfortable.

Darn tough socks: extremely comfortable, last forever, never smell.

Altra Lone Peak trainers: foot shaped, light, comfortable, quick-dry. Right now every pair of shoes I own are Altra (but I'm trying out Topo Athletic phantom 2 next)

Gore-Tex. And Neoprene.

Docker. People like to hate a winner, and they've gone the paid route, and they did just take already-available kernel features and wrap them up... But man, they did it well and they revolutionised software development and deployment.

Debian, XFCE, Tailscale, Syncthing, rsync, ssh, ffmpeg

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

#502

Post by joeyjojo »

smt88 wrote: post #291
langcalvin wrote: post #278

I'll go a game route: Mario Kart. It's just so perfect. All of them from the SNES to the Switch. I've played countless hours and never get bored. The level designs are all so interesting and unique I find myself discovering something new every time. It's social and I've seen it dominate dinner parties.

This is a fascinating response, partly because of how passionately I disagree. I loved Mario Kart for SNES and N64. After that, Nintendo seemed to have no idea what people even liked about the games. They added more characters, more cars, and more level interference, meaning that you were competing less and less on skill. Worse, your choices for character and car could have enormous and difficult to predict effects o…

I wish Nintendo would just give us a decent battle mode, with the N64 levels.

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

#503

Post by tomjen3 »

The remote feature of VS Code. It is so good that I completely forgot I was on a remote machine and was pissed it had crashed - until I realized that my internet was down.

It is even so good that if you start something that listens to a TCP port, VS Code will just forward it for you.

VS Code itself is still not nearly at the level of things like IntelliJ.

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

#504

Post by balaji1 »

_jstreet wrote: post #88

I find it interesting that most of the comments are about physical products. The 'best design' is often something that's so frictionless and easy to use that it's invisible in day-to-day use. Everyday infrastructure like steps are something that's noticeable when they're off (e.g. spaced too far apart, or too steep); most are designed well. It's easy to find things that are designed poorly. But much less tangible to…

You are right, people are probably missing a lot of things in plain-sight. Most of the comments are about some esoteric product or software - so nothing to add to the shopping list :)

Only recognize Google apps and Apple hardware from the other comments - they are great.

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

#505

Post by alpaca128 »

amarshall wrote: post #239

The 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…

I use a custom keyboard with a similar columnar stagger. In addition it's small enough that I can reach every key without moving my hands, which means my accuracy is noticeably better. There's no chance I'm ever going back voluntarily. Typing all kinds of symbols all day just doesn't get more comfortable.

This is why I'm always so annoyed by all the "qwerty vs. dvorak" arguments. It's pretty much the least problematic part of conventional keyboard design.

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

#506

Post by petters »

palijer wrote: post #362

https://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,…

There is a big banner on mobile, asking to download the app.

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

#507

Post by tomcooks »

ghostly_s wrote: post #198
andersco wrote: post #117

The Technics SL-1200 turntable. The fact that the design has not changed except for minor tweaks since the product was released speaks for itself. I used it both as a DJ many years ago and now kept one of the turntables just for listening. The quality of the turntable is palpable not only in its physical weight but in the utter simplicity of the design. The dotted edges of the rotating plate are both aesthetically pl…

> The dotted edges of the rotating plate are both aesthetically pleasing while also informative communicating rotation speed. Isn't this pattern actually used as a rotary encoder for speed control?

Yes I've heard it's actually used to sync two plates

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

#508

Post by Eric_WVGG »

I’m not a knife fetishist or anything, but a weird number of my favorite household items are edged things.

I grabbed a Global 12” chef’s knife after reading about it in Kitchen Confidential twenty-ish years ago, reminded of its superiority whenever I’m in a friend’s kitchen. I am sad to admit that IKEA makes a very decent clone, though.

An old nemesis gave me a Benchmade serrated knife with this miraculous spring-button release, absolute joy to handle.

I used to tie fishing flies in Montana as a kid; fly-tying scissors are fantastically sharp and useful for all kinds of micro projects. I often use them for extracting slivers that tweezers can’t reach. For macro work, nothing beats a pair of sewing shears; get a decent set and you’ll never touch a standard office or school scissor ever again.

Oxo scissors for the kitchen, though — the blades comes apart so you can clean the space between the hinge, lotta gross stuff will build up there in the kitchen.

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

#509

Post by Toutouxc »

jcims wrote: post #460
gkfasdfasdf wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> start near near the far rim so the crack is only supported on one side

I have no professional background, so maybe I'm totally wrong, but I would advise against that, because if you aim a bit too far or the wood gives too easily, most of the impact will be against the haft instead of the head, and the haft can break this way.

I usually start at the near side and then work towards the far side, which is only dangerous if you don't have a wide base (another log maybe) under the piece you're currently splitting, because if you miss the near side, the axe is flying towards your feet.

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

#510

Post by Eric_WVGG »

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #508

I’m not a knife fetishist or anything, but a weird number of my favorite household items are edged things. I grabbed a Global 12” chef’s knife after reading about it in Kitchen Confidential twenty-ish years ago, reminded of its superiority whenever I’m in a friend’s kitchen. I am sad to admit that IKEA makes a very decent clone, though. An old nemesis gave me a Benchmade serrated knife with this miraculous spring-but…

The best bicycle lights ever made are the Sparse anti-theft lights. Unfortunately their business didn’t pan out, but you can find some remainders here and there on eBay.

The current best lights are the Knog cobblers. They have three drawbacks: dismal battery, usb-a, and easy to remove (thus easy to steal). I’m hoping that an inevitable “rev 2” will solve the first two problems.

Post reply on HN