Darn Tough socks. You won’t be able to go back. Great feel, super durable, different styles and thickness for any use-case.
Oh and a lifetime warranty (I have personality returned one pair 5 years later for a new pair).
Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?
761–770 of 994 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?
#762Earlier quoted context omitted.
As an espresso snob, I'm going to go with a Breville Double Boiler machine. Many espresso machine snobs used to crap on Breville as being "consumer grade", but they really succeeded with their Double Boiler machines, especially their more recent models that make it easy to descale the boiler at home. The BDB includes features that can cost literally 5X as much on Italian machines (stainless steel boilers, a preheatin…
I owned a Breville Dual Boiler for a few years, was always happy with the coffee it produced, and I thought it was very good value for the price... until it failed in a manner that caused it to constantly trip a GFCI. I brought it back to the shop where I bought it (who service all varieties of espresso machines), and they told me that Breville won't sell them parts for repair. I then contacted Breville, and they wan…
Don't disagree, and I realize this isn't the solution for most people, but home-barista.com has some excellent forums on how to make the most common repairs yourself.
For a tripped GFCI, dollars-to-donuts you had a leaky o-ring on your boiler, which was letting steam into the innards of your machine. The replacement parts can be acquired very cheaply and there are great YouTube videos on how to do the repairs.
With the BDB there are a couple of primary failures after a couple years (failed o-rings, pump or solenoid that needs replacement, new grouphead gasket), which have fortunately been well-documented in online forums and YouTube.
Re: Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?
#763Late to this thread as usual, but I might as well submit mine:
My Fender Telecaster. It’s a paradigm of simplicity, reliability, playability, and tone. From the original barrel-style string saddles to the 2-pickup/3-way switching system to the high-output single coil to the bolt-on neck construction to the straight string-pull head stock, there is no better guitar on the planet. What’s even more impressive is that it was designed by a non-guitarist and was one of Leo Fenders earliest designs (and is largely considered to be the first mass-produced electric guitar). I own far too many guitars of various styles and cost, but I nearly always perform and record with my Tele. It’s my proverbial desert island guitar.
Re: Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?
#764Earlier quoted context omitted.
What do you mean familiarity with American measurements? Unit conversion is a solved problem.
I assume they meant that they default to making things that come in imperial-unit sizes (e.g., quarter-inch nuts instead of 6mm ones or whatever). It's not really practical to mix and match.
McM is just a warehousing and distribution company; they don't make any of the things they sell. They define products by specs rather than manufacturer (is few brand names are used in the catalog/site), which makes it much easier to stock parts of every nearly every flavor (imperial, metric, dozens of odd pipe threading standards, thousands of ASME/ANSI/DIN/other-standards-body-standards).
McM absolutely mixes and matches.
Re: Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?
#765"Ever" is a tough one but ..
Python is still the best-designed language I ever used, warts and all. It's often grouped with Javascript because they're both interpreted and "duck-typed", but imho the gap between them is huge.
Svelte is amazing for UI logic. It makes hard things feel easy and simple, and really hard things to feel possible.
QBasic was a horrible language, but its IDE (if you can call it that) was incredibly helpful for beginners. Maybe I'm nostalgic, but I never experienced such helpful hand-holding in programming ever since.
Sorry it's all about programming. Most real world design is either too trivial or too impossible to make an impression.
Re: Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?
#766Thermapen Unfold, stick in, see the temperature. If it's dark, it will highlight the screen, If it's upside down, it will flip the screen. Very fast, because it uses gradient descend and not linear estimation. Pull it out, place it down and it switches off. Move it, it switches on. Single moving part, no buttons. You want it in Farneheights - open it up with a screwdriver, flip a microswitch. Fairly big in size for n…
Thank you so much for this. I've been through 3 terrible thermometers in the last year and have been looking for a replacement.
Re: Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?
#767ThinkPad laptops (W520/T420s/X220/...) up to 2011 - with 7-row keyboards.
Also Dell Latitude D630 laptop with great idea on the extended battery that extended up front as additional rest pad - also with 7-row keyboard.
I did not realized how great they were until they were gone ... now all laptops have these counter productive island type keyboards ...
Re: Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?
#768Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> Set your rounds on top of the biggest round you can find when splitting. That's fine advice for someone who wants to burn a campfire for a night. I heat with wood in remote Canada and I estimate I split somewhere between 600 and 800 bucks for a season's supply of firewood. If I had to lift each one of those into the air and balance it (if possible, and it's often not possible) on another piece of wood I'd never get…
You'll get no argument from me about using a hydraulic splitter. Around my property there are a few species (I don't know which) that are quicker to split by hand. Anything that I have to sit there and smack on gets the ram. I burn 3-4 cords per year but mostly to keep from going broke on propane.
>especially when I'm as behind in getting my wood in as I always seem to be.
I'm convinced anybody that isn't behind on getting firewood for the season has too much time on their hands. xD
Re: Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?
#769I love my electric toothbrush. It cost me 20 bucks and it’s amazing. I analyzed it from a UX point of view and couldn’t come up with any designs flaw. - it’s waterproof, so easy to clean - it has a single physical button, nothing else - it has a small flat stand on the back, so I can put it somewhere horizontally and it won’t roll, and the brush won’t touch the surface - the heads can be easily changed, so we share t…
"I like an escalator because an escalator can never break, it can only become stairs. There would never be an escalator temporarily out of order sign, only an escalator temporarily stairs. Sorry for the convenience." - Mitch Hedberg
Turns out this isn't true. A Boston subway station had a pretty grim escalator failure a month or two ago[0], where the escalator broke and the stairs started to free-fall backwards piling people at the bottom.
[0] https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/mbta-investigates-back-...
Re: Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?
#770My 2000 model year BMW M roadster. Not counting the radio, the car had a tiny number of buttons and switches- window up/down, headlight knob, and 5 buttons. There was nothing extraneous or redundant. There were no door lock buttons- the lock indicator was the button to lock the door, and the door open handle was the unlock button. Also, every darn control in the car was exactly where it was supposed to be. It’s hard…
I'd like to throw in my 2000 VW Golf MK4. Was the last model they made before the design turned all bubble like. All the interior controls were actual buttons and knobs and had a good feel to them. Probably one of the last cars to have glass headlights that don't get plastic corrosion too.