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

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

#601

Post by urbanmiffs »

klntsky wrote: post #541
urbanmiffs wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Qbittorrent client has a built in search engine. Add the jackett plugin and you can search every public tracker in one click. I haven't visited a torrent site in years.

This is cool, but unfortunately the best content is on private trackers (you also need them to reduce the risk of abuse reports to your provider). Not sure if the need to use private trackers can be fixed by the protocol, though. But, maybe adding a bit more of anonymity would be enough? i2p torrents provide that, but sacrifice speed. Clearly it's a spectrum and we need more "points" in the middle of it.

I disagree completely. I downloaded my first torrent months after the first client was released and my latest yesterday. In those 20 years I've never failed to find what I need and never had any problems with ISP(and would use a VPN if I did). I've never felt the need to check out private trackers.

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

#602

Post by Demcox »

carlgreene wrote: post #485
grech wrote: post #151

This may be a normie response - but Apple Airpods Pro are one of the best products I've used. After years of using several bluetooth headsets that get finicky (with connections that is), having a set that just connects and works every single time is refreshing. They really changed my behavior - I went from not liking phone conversations at all (getting agitated after a few minutes)to comfortably having long phone cal…

I agree, unfortunately however I've recently developed worsening tinnitus that I've attributed to them. There appear to be several others who have a similar experience[0]. I've stopped using them in favor of my over-ear VModas the past couple weeks and my tinnitus is significantly better. I rarely listen to music loud and the volume only seldom goes over 50% so I'm having a hard time attributing it to excess listenin…

This is something I've been concerned about for quite some time with nose-cancelling in-ears.

Being an avid user of my AirPodsPro for commutes, working out and just taking calls in general, I figured that the constant noise cancellation, and tight seal in the ear canal, might cause tinnitus.

I haven't experienced any symptoms yet but I fear that prolonged use will further highten the chances of such a diagnosis. I'm sorry to hear that you might be experiencing tinnitus from AirPodsPro use, but I can't say that it haven't cross my mind, that it would lead to that.

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

#605

Post by johnwalkr »

mrweasel wrote: post #481
yumraj wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know a lot of people seem to love Chromecast, but for some reason using a phone to control TV never made sense to me. I prefer the physical remote. And for sending screen to the TV, the quality was never good. Our Chromecast and the one included with TV haven’t been used for years.

The Chromecast was never amazing, and having to use a phone or Chrome to control your TV is really weird. Having a Chromecast was better than nothing though. However if you’ve used an AppleTV you realise that the Chromecast is actually a pretty terrible solution, compared to just having a device with apps.

I have an apple TV at home, but for the price chromecast works well. It's really great for 2 cases:

1. Connected to a tv in a workplace, anyone on the local network can easily use Chrome to share a screen instead of passing around an HDMI cable.

2. Lately hotel rooms sometimes have a chromecast or apple TV, and it's a welcome feature of the room to open netflix on my phone and cast to the TV. In fact I think I should ditch the HDMI cable I keep in my suitcase and replace it with a chromecast. They are pretty small, too.

In both of those cases, I would prefer to only use casting/mirroring and not actually login to the device and/or install apps.

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

#606

Post by Oddskar »

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…

It was very good about 5 years ago, and is still quite comfortable.

However I would say that today this has largely been superseded by a myriad of better choices. For the adventurous type there's e.g. Dactyl Manuform. If one does not care so much for the keywell there's Lily 58, Iris or Kyria. For built-in tenting there's ZSA Moonlander, Redox etc.

All of these have better customizability, repairability and portability than a Kinesis Advantage.

Want to try diffent key switches? Use hot-swap sockets.

Want wireless? Drop in a nice!nano microcontroller.

Want to create a crazy custom key layout or macros? You can do anything you want in QMK and flash it to the microcontrollers.

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

#607

Post by hutzlibu »

minikomi wrote: post #373
japhyr wrote: post #134

If 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/

Do you think their shorter axe (n12) would be good to take bike camping?

Unless you want to make a fort at night, I really would not bring an axe along. Finding firewood for a campfire is usually not a problem.

But a too heavy bike is.

I did it bike camping a lot and my advice is, only bring what you absolutely need. Without extra burden, everything is much more enjoyable and you will have more energy to reach the nice spots.

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

#608

Post by edmcnulty101 »

WorldPeas wrote: post #111
edmcnulty101 wrote: post #71

These are the brands Ive had good success with, almost everything Ive bought has met or exceeded my expectations: Apple, Levis, Patagonia/LL Bean/North Face, Garmin smartwatch, Goruck, Toyota, Bosch or Milwaukee tools, Fender, Sonicare, Thule, Yakima, Ankur cables, weather tech floormats. Well designed websites: Google, Old reddit, and HN, can't believe they've stayed true all these years. Brands, I or a friend, has…

Just to be the contrarian I am, I'll say that dell is still actually pretty good. You just have to buy the business models like the precision to get the best experience now

Maybe that's the issue. I bought consumer XPS's. One had a fan go out after 1 year. One had a keyboard failure out of the box. My co-worker had hardware issues on theirs.

It was too many issues in too short of a span.

All consumer grade though.

Maybe business is the way to go.

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

#609

Post by rakwoelq »

extrapickles wrote: post #319
toomanyrichies wrote: post #155

One example of quality design which I gleaned from reading Don Norman's "The Design Of Everyday Things" is the metal plate I've frequently seen on doors which are meant to be pushed. The only affordance of such a plate is its push-ability, and the fact that someone actively installed a metal plate (instead of just relying on the door's natural flatness), as well as its location at the point of maximum leverage (all t…

The plate also makes it easier to clean as without it peoples handprints will be in a wider area. For wood doors its even better as wood can be time consuming to clean well.

I always avoid touching that metal door plate, I've gotten 'stainless steel cleaner and polish' on my hands too many times for me to consider using it again.

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

#610

Post by Lhiw »

ycombinete wrote: post #396
squarefoot wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Support in the browser would require the browser to stay on the whole time, along with the computer. Bittorrent clients are better run on small less power hungry boards (RPi, etc.) or on hardware that is meant to be running 24/7 anyway. For example, I run the Transmission daemon on my XigmaNAS home file server. The NAS is headless, but I can control the daemon through its remote GUI, so as soon as I click on a torren…

I don’t know about others, but my browser is open about 100% of the time

Yea this was a super weird complaint. My browser is open for far more time than my torrent app.
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