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Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

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Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#401

Post by ghaff »

lozenge wrote: post #321
orzig wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are those people optimizing for having every product available at every time? They have to balance against the very real cost of spoilage, so I don’t think they consider the occasional out–of–stock as the system breaking

Yes they are. Product availability is the most important factor in choosing a grocery store, as unavailability makes people need to visit additional stores or change recipes/plans on the fly. Some spoilage is factored in and is just a minor bit of negative PR. However, the supply chain disruptions since 2020 are too big for any grocery chain to "solve". https://hbr.org/2004/05/stock-outs-cause-walkouts

>Product availability is the most important factor in choosing a grocery store

For many people, price is almost certainly at least as big a factor. Many, perhaps even most, people are willing to accept things being out of stock now and then for 10% lower prices.

Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#403

Post by Retric »

Ekaros wrote: post #283
namdnay wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many miles are you putting on that i10?! An oil change is every 2 years or 15k km. I think it’s a bad example btw, it’s a famously reliable car (the taxi of choice in Bogota fwiw)

Even in Finland it is one oil change a year, and that includes proper winters... The price difference buys lot of maintenance. And gas...

The i10 is a rather low end car, but the upgrade could be worth it. Finland gas prices are 8.464 USD/gallon right now. That’s unusually high but assuming 200k miles at say 35 mpg that adds up to 48,000 USD in gas over the lifetime of the vehicle.

Not that electricity is free or that we have long term cost data, but I suspect the EV / plug in hybrid premium is a very easy choice in Finland.

Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#404

Post by vishnugupta »

ksec wrote: post #395

Haven't seen anyone discussing it yet. > For example, in my social circles, there have been two waves of people migrating from iPhones to Android phones over the past few years. Both waves happened due to Apple PR snafus which caused a lot of people to think that iPhones were terrible at something when, in fact, they were better at that thing than Android phones. I wonder what Apple PR snafus is that? >Amazon eventua…

> what Apple PR snafus is that?

I suspect this is it

https://www.apple.com/child-safety/

Which it seems they abandoned or paused

https://www.macworld.com/article/559731/apple-csam-icloud-ph...

Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#405

Post by kube-system »

dotancohen wrote: post #367
PinguTS wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? Oil change every three month? WTF is wrong with the US industry? The very same cars in Europe will have an oil change every 2 years or so. My Volvo S60 Model 2000 has an oil change every 3 years. There must be something that you get sold on by marketing that is so wrong. BTW. Also a Tesla has oil in their gearbox, even if it is just a single gear integrated into the single unit combined with motor and inverter.…

I'm not in the US, but I have lived there and I did learn that frequency there. Like I mentioned in another thread, I worked as a service technician at Ford and that was the recommendation then (1990s). As for the Model S fluid change, thank you for mentioning it, I did not know that. I believe that there is no fluid change interval defined on the Model 3, which I just recently bought.

There are many gasoline vehicles that specify no fluid changes for certain parts, infamously, transmissions. Longer lasting synthetic fluids allow them to advertise lower maintenance costs, but they still do wear out. They’d rather the transmission wears out after 150k miles anyway.

Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#406

Post by ksec »

vishnugupta wrote: post #404
ksec wrote: post #395

Haven't seen anyone discussing it yet. > For example, in my social circles, there have been two waves of people migrating from iPhones to Android phones over the past few years. Both waves happened due to Apple PR snafus which caused a lot of people to think that iPhones were terrible at something when, in fact, they were better at that thing than Android phones. I wonder what Apple PR snafus is that? >Amazon eventua…

> what Apple PR snafus is that? I suspect this is it https://www.apple.com/child-safety/ Which it seems they abandoned or paused https://www.macworld.com/article/559731/apple-csam-icloud-ph...

Arh... Thank You. I keep thinking about all the PR disaster with Mac and completely forgotten about iPhone CSAM.

Imagine what Russia would do with CSAM now.

Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#407

Post by pclmulqdq »

ownagefool wrote: post #318
kccqzy wrote: post #242

> An example from another industry: when I worked at a small chip startup, we had in-house capability to do end-to-end chip processing (with the exception of having its own fabs), which is unusual for a small chip startup. When the first wafer of a new design came off of a fab, we'd have the wafer flown to us on a commercial flight, at which point someone would use a wafer saw to cut the wafer into individual chips s…

What if the saw breaks, what if the person who knows how to use the saw leaves? There are good answers to these problems, but I find folks who find comfort in outsourcing assume it's easier for the downstream org solve them. Personal experience suggests it's often a false sense of security, and you often have to have your own experts anyway. Saw the same in software. We won't get budget to patch so let's outsource. T…

A lot of outsourcing decisions seem to be made on the premise of "what if it breaks?" It's a terrible fallacy.

Your wafer saw (or server) that is utilized 1% of the time is going to need a lot less maintenance than a shared wafer saw that is used 16 hours a day. You will actually experience a lot less downtime by investing in your own wafer saw (or your own servers) rather than outsourcing (to a foundry or a cloud provider).

I think the real draw of outsourcing is diffusion of responsibility: when it breaks, you can blame someone else.

Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#408

Post by servytor »

yrral wrote: post #16

I think it's that you don't notice things that work well. House foundations, light switches, filesystems, silicon manufacturing, water delivery, grocery store logistics, etc etc etc. These are all things that most people never notice because they just work. It doesn't even occur to people day-to-day that these things can fail.

I read somewhere, and this guy was talking about how if you want your house to sell for more, invest in everything you physically touch. High quality doorknobs, faucets, and light switches have a marked impact on our unconscious valuation of a house.

Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#409

Post by cupofpython »

ownagefool wrote: post #318
kccqzy wrote: post #242

> An example from another industry: when I worked at a small chip startup, we had in-house capability to do end-to-end chip processing (with the exception of having its own fabs), which is unusual for a small chip startup. When the first wafer of a new design came off of a fab, we'd have the wafer flown to us on a commercial flight, at which point someone would use a wafer saw to cut the wafer into individual chips s…

What if the saw breaks, what if the person who knows how to use the saw leaves? There are good answers to these problems, but I find folks who find comfort in outsourcing assume it's easier for the downstream org solve them. Personal experience suggests it's often a false sense of security, and you often have to have your own experts anyway. Saw the same in software. We won't get budget to patch so let's outsource. T…

> you often have to have your own experts anyway.

+1 on this

IME the most successful outsourcing arrangements revolve around scale of work, not substituting an entire department. Keeping the amount of in-house experts lean and having them manage outsourced resources. So it is more of a tool for someone internal who has the needs organized rather than a dependency on a 3rd party to know what is best for you

Re: Why is it hard to buy things that work well?

#410

Post by oblio »

Retric wrote: post #403
Ekaros wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even in Finland it is one oil change a year, and that includes proper winters... The price difference buys lot of maintenance. And gas...

The i10 is a rather low end car, but the upgrade could be worth it. Finland gas prices are 8.464 USD/gallon right now. That’s unusually high but assuming 200k miles at say 35 mpg that adds up to 48,000 USD in gas over the lifetime of the vehicle. Not that electricity is free or that we have long term cost data, but I suspect the EV / plug in hybrid premium is a very easy choice in Finland.

I was curious so I did some math about this.

The average car life in Finland seems to be 15.6 years (let's round that to 16, helping the case for EVs).

The average distance traveled by Finnish cars, based on 2018 data, is about 13600km per year (let's make that 14000km per year, also helping the case for EVs).

That works out to 224k km over the lifetime of a car. That's only 140k miles.

Regarding your 35mpg (was 30mpg before the edit), that's 6.7l per 100km (7.8 before edit), let's make that 7l per 100km (and 8 before edit), further helping the case for EVs.

But in reality a small car such as the i10 probably uses more like 5-5.5l per 100km (40-45mpg).

Then the gas price is super high due to the Covid economic bounceback coupled with the supply chain issues plus the latest conflict.

I'd say your numbers are too optimistic plus they're for the entire lifetime of the car. The average owner probably has the car for half that duration, at best. So they don't really care about the entire lifetime.

Still, things seem to be getting closer than 10 years ago, for example.

The really bad thing is the upfront price. There's no comparable EV in the i10 price range, which is a very cheap car (we're talking about a car around €12k).

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