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

821–830 of 994 posts

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

#821

Post by micro_cam »

dendrite9 wrote: post #471
micro_cam wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hah thanks! Unfortunately hillmap is in a semi defunct state. Most of the apis that made it work are gone or really expensive and i haven't had time to make my own replacements.

Oh man! Thank you so much, It is hard to convey how much I have used hillmap. I just had to check in and make sure the site was still up. Anytime I want to roughly get a sense of distance it is my first and only thought, from planning offtrail backpacking and ski trips, to trying to figure out how far I ran on a given day, or trying to talk my girlfriend into swimming various point to point routes. I'd say of the pin…

Thanks! It is all almost all client side and easy to keep hosted but the elevation and slope stuff has stoped working. If you or anyone on here wants to figure out a cheap alternative to the google elevation service and slope angle layers and wire them in let me know.

Yeah the original u spring design now used in race bindings is classic (I use afk trofeos now) but really it is the boot binding interface that is important and remarkably versatile/long lived.

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

#823

Post by edmcnulty101 »

masklinn wrote: post #642
edmcnulty101 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure they have separate ones for bidet usage and coffee usage.

Why? The boiling water disinfects the device when you make your coffee, no sweat. Think of it as home-made kopi luwak.

Doesn't it have to process through the civet intestine though to get the effect?

This would just be a little poop infusion which could definitely add a little robustness and richness to the mix. Sort of an earthy tone.

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

#824

Post by jazzyjackson »

TheRealSteel wrote: post #98
quiffledwerg wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The early shuffle mini.

There's no such thing, the Shuffle and Mini were separate models. The Shuffle was the size of a USB drive, used solid state storage, and had no screen, the Mini was the one with the first touch Click Wheel and metallic colour choices, and used a 4GB spinning hard drive.

the 2nd generation Shuffle moved to a more miniature clip-on design and required a dock to charge and sync, I gather that’s what OP is referring to

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

#825

Post by [deleted] »

yumraj wrote: post #393
stephenfin wrote: post #222

I'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

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.

[deleted]

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

#826

Post by auraham »

raz32dust wrote: post #130

Google flights is fantastic. Don't know if it is "the best-designed thing I've ever used", but it is on top of my mind as I just used it yesterday. Google doesn't get enough credit for the things that they did do well - including Search and Maps. Another is Macbooks - the pre-2015 ones at least. I haven't used the latest M1 ones, which I hear great things about. The Aluminum body, the flawless screen, magsafe, great…

New MacBooks seem to be good again, especially the model with MagSafe. However, non-replaceable SSDs is a big deal for me. I know that a MacBook can have a long life span, but I'm not sure how long its SSD will work with any issues.

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

#827

Post by oftenwrong »

joconde wrote: post #531
raffraffraff wrote: post #501

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 Lon…

> 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. They made design decisions that prevent simple things like "installing a .deb package from the host filesystem without keeping the package in an image layer", then fixed some of these…

You don't need buildkit for that; you can use multi-stage builds without buildkit to exclude your deb file from the final image.

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

#829

Post by papertokyo »

masklinn wrote: post #646
GordonS wrote: post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like a one-cup French press - what I missing that makes this better?

> what I missing that makes this better? The main part is that you unscrew the filter piece, so you can just push out the puck of coffee then rinse / dry through the tube. This makes them much easier to clean and dry than a french press where you have to send a jet of water through the bottom in case you had a bit too much coffee, then need an implement to actually reach the bottom of the device. Also makes it easier…

Seconded. I've been nomading for much of the past 6 years and having an AeroPress + Hario hand grinder means I can always make good coffee. It's compact, easy to clean, and as long as you're using good beans, somewhat difficult to brew a bad cup.

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

#830

Post by aristofun »

gnopgnip wrote: post #572
aristofun wrote: post #526

Airpods pro, ipod, logitech k308 keyboard, typescript language

For the keyboard, why this one specifically? A k400 is perfect for a home theater pc. Sometimes it is nice to have a trackpad at work and switch off using a mouse

I like its small size, layout, super long battery life, multiple Bluetooth channels and durability.
Post reply on HN