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Overkill objects for everyday life

neil.computer

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Re: Overkill objects for everyday life

#601

Post by hutrdvnj »

abawany wrote: post #560
jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to disagree. One of the reasons I've used Macbooks for work for ages now is if something goes wrong, I can just pop over to the apple store and have a replacement within about 30 minutes. Don't even have to restore, can just target boot my backup and be back working immediately, and can save the restore until the evening. I've had one instance where this saved me 5 figures easily (wasn't even the macbook's fau…

This didn't work out for me in spite of going to the apple store: I was told to drop off my laptop. They then proceeded to 'lose track' of the machine and I eventually got it back after nearly 5 weeks and multiple escalations with 'customer support'. This is a 6 month old mbp pro 16" from work with applecare.

Exactly this. You make yourself and your ability to work depend on applecare. If everything works fine, lucky for you, if not well that is when the problem starts.

When you repair the device yourself you are independent from such a service. You could get hardware parts from any store you like and you might have some replacement parts at home.

Don't get me wrong I don't think that applecare is bad, but I do think it is better to have more options. Therefore I think it is best to have something like applecare plus the ability to repair the device yourself if necessary.

Re: Overkill objects for everyday life

#602

Post by Grustaf »

megablast wrote: post #441
Grustaf wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me that's one of the selling points. Modern life is so ridiculously over engineered to be comfortable, we can all use some rough edges.

You are in a car. That is already over engineered. Get a bike or hike.

I’m not in a car though, I bike or walk.

Re: Overkill objects for everyday life

#603

Post by ltbarcly3 »

airhead969 wrote: post #600

In one job, I used to support just about every size of networkable color and b&w printer from 2 manufacturers. In the cost analysis to operate these things, it became clear: the larger and more expensive printers were not just faster, more reliable, and easier to repair, their supplies were cheaper per page. Their acquisition costs were higher. For anyone needing to churn out flat dead trees more than once a week: I…

You don't even have to get them used, if you watch for large color laser printers to come up on clearance when they are a generation or two old you can get a steal. I got my huge dell color laser for about $150 with free shipping. I have two kids who print stuff all day and in 3 years I have replaced the toner maybe one or two times (each color + black is a different cartridge). I haven't had to replace whatever you call the discard toner collector yet. Replacement toner is available in many brands of generic, costs $12 on amazon (less if you buy multipacks, which I don't because I would have to store them for years), and you can print many hundreds of pages before having to replace it. It's a huge monster that has never had a single issue other than a paper jam once or twice. Print quality is as good as you can expect from a laser printer. (It goes without saying I guess that it has a built in duplexer)

Re: Overkill objects for everyday life

#604

Post by cmendel »

ornornor wrote: post #578
cmendel wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Always buy generic drugs, they're exactly the same. I'm sorry to say. This is false. This will be a bit technical but often, generic drugs are a racemic mix (both L and D conformations in some mixture) where as a branded drug may be a specific conformation or specific racemic mix (e.g. 75% L, 25% D.) The issue comes from the fact that L-conformations may have different (better, worse, otherwise) effects than the D-…

I have no idea what that comment meant to say. Am I being thick or it the same for anyone not manufacturing drugs for a living/as a hobby?

I'll do my best to explain. So in chemistry, there is a thing called 'chirality' essentially this has to do with how a molecule is shaped. It's assessed by how a beam of polarized light that is passed through a molecule rotates.

There are a few different types:

Achiral, no change Levorotary (L), Rotates anticlockwise Dextrorotary(D), Rotates clockwise

The reason that it matters and what I was talking about above is that the sites in your body that a drug interacts with aren't universal. So if you have a (L) version of a drug that might have different effects and interactions than a (D) version.

A 1:1 mix of both (L) and (D) is called a racemic mix.

When you are talking about Brand name drugs, you're typically discussing a particular mix (e.g. Adderall XR is a 3:1 (D):(L) mix) or a particular conformation. That is not necessarily true with generics which may have a different ratio of (D):(L).

To give an example of how different the effects can be: Penicillamine (L) is used in the treatment of primary chronic arthritis. Penicillamine (D) not only has no therapeutic effect, it is highly toxic.

Here's a link to some Wikipedia pages on it if you're interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chirality#Chemistry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racemic_mixture

Do note that this is a bit of an oversimplification, but it's 3AM here so I hope you can forgive me.

Re: Overkill objects for everyday life

#605

Post by cmendel »

neilpanchal wrote: post #552
cmendel wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Always buy generic drugs, they're exactly the same. I'm sorry to say. This is false. This will be a bit technical but often, generic drugs are a racemic mix (both L and D conformations in some mixture) where as a branded drug may be a specific conformation or specific racemic mix (e.g. 75% L, 25% D.) The issue comes from the fact that L-conformations may have different (better, worse, otherwise) effects than the D-…

Thanks TIL, I had no idea. I'll stop giving medical advice I guess.

Ha, no worries! I'd thought the same until I went off and got a degree in Chemistry.

Re: Overkill objects for everyday life

#606

Post by ltbarcly3 »

Lio wrote: post #571
gostsamo wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll disagree. A right to repair law would make most products equally servicable and it will naturally displace the replace-when-broken type of products because this is an enormous waste of resources.

Is that correct? To my knowledge most people campaigning for Right to Repair don’t want change the designs of the things we currently buy. They just want to stop companies banning their suppliers from selling spares to consumers. That is, most things are already reparable enough but certain firms are going out of their way to stop that happening.

It's a combination of not restricting parts and not encumbering replacement parts with chips that can only be 'unlocked' by an approved servicer. Things like tractors are now sold that you literally can't repair yourself unless you hack the DRM, which is absurd.

Re: Overkill objects for everyday life

#607

Post by theshrike79 »

kovvy wrote: post #499
MereInterest wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Moreover, consumer items beyond a price point are both very well made and backed by long term warranties anyway. Except that there isn't a good way to distinguish between something that is expensive because it has quality construction and something that is expensive because it is a brand name. Searching for information online is nigh-useless due to aggressive SEO on the part of advertisers. Sometimes I can get luck…

Research is also hampered by non-obvious changes in the product. Even when a good, reliable product is released, it can be modified to be cheaper to make/more expensive to maintain with no external indication. This isn't even necessarily about cost-cutting, a component may no longer be available and is swapped for something that claims to be identical but is not as reliable.

Case in point: AvE dissecting a Made in Japan Makita drill, made for the Japanese market: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2EpdRN2h6A

This thing is built like a fucking tank, it will never ever ever fail.

Compare that to the same model sold outside of Japan, and it's most likely made in Indonesia and the quality is nowhere near.

Re: Overkill objects for everyday life

#608

Post by aeontech »

franga2000 wrote: post #362
ValentineC wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is the same for laptops, but most of the people (I assume?) buy Macbooks for programming which is... kinda weird, since it's difficult to repair. Personally, I don't think I've found anything that beats Apple's laptop trackpads, and I think that my UX matters more than repairability. Then again, I'm still using a 2013 MacBook Pro with an upgraded NVMe SSD.

Idk, not being able to get it fixed without data loss in the case of even a minor hw failure seems like pretty bad UX to me...

If you don’t have a (preferably bootable) backup that you can use any time your machine explodes / gets dropped / gets soaked in coffee / gets a random hardware failure / gets hit by a ransomware / is stolen - then you have a serious redundancy problem no matter what OS you are running.

On any OS you use it’s possible to have both a long-term backup and a bootable drive clone that is synced from your internal drive and updated on a schedule. I haven’t needed to use it often, but when I did it was priceless to be back up and running 30 minutes later without having to waste two days setting up a new machine or losing any data.

Re: Overkill objects for everyday life

#609

Post by Doxin »

powersnail wrote: post #573
gostsamo wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll disagree. A right to repair law would make most products equally servicable and it will naturally displace the replace-when-broken type of products because this is an enormous waste of resources.

> A right to repair law would make most products equally servicable How is that possible to enforce? If a company comes up with a design that is less serviceable than its competitors, but has other advantages, is it forbidden from selling its new design? If a company comes up with a design that is more serviceable than its competitors, are all the competitors now forbidden from selling their old design?

Just banning all the zany things manufacturers come up with to thwart repair should be fine. No security screws, no tamper seals, no plastic clips that you must break, no cryptographic verification of components, cartridges, or firmware.

I'm probably missing a load of other tricks, but just doing the above would go a long way to ensuring products can be repaired reasonably.

Re: Overkill objects for everyday life

#610

Post by swiley »

aeontech wrote: post #608
franga2000 wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Idk, not being able to get it fixed without data loss in the case of even a minor hw failure seems like pretty bad UX to me...

If you don’t have a (preferably bootable) backup that you can use any time your machine explodes / gets dropped / gets soaked in coffee / gets a random hardware failure / gets hit by a ransomware / is stolen - then you have a serious redundancy problem no matter what OS you are running. On any OS you use it’s possible to have both a long-term backup and a bootable drive clone that is synced from your internal drive a…

meh, acumulating state is bad. You're much better off with automations That can recreate your environment than bootable backups.
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