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Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

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Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#641

Post by jefftk »

etchalon wrote: post #574
amluto wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, you’re still missing the point. If you are taking air, running it once through a filter, and using the air that comes out for an application that needs very few particles, then a 99.99% filter is “10x” as efficient as a 99.9% filter in the sense that the air coming out will have 1/10 as many particles. For example, a 99% efficient face mask is “10x” as efficient as a 90% efficient mask (assuming both fit perfe…

I understand the point. The point doesn't matter. Air purifiers operate on a fraction of available air. That air supply is continually being cycled, refreshed and mixed. Particulate matter within that air is not evenly dispersed. That, for a single minute, as a percentage of total air, a 99.5% and a 99.95% purifier produce a minor difference in total air quality is deeply irrelevant to the overall performance of the…

> the original WireCutter article showed such stark differences between the performance of the Förnuftig and the Levoit Core 300, over a 30 minute span. If you were correct, over those 30 minutes, the amount of particulate in the test room would have been roughly equal for both purifiers. It wasn't. The Förnuftig removed only 64.5% of the particulate while the Levoit removed 97.4%.

Note that you are talking about the 0.3 micron measurements: if we look at larger particles the difference is smaller. But that's fine!

There are two big ways that that comparison is different from what we're talking about here:

* Those two purifiers have very different capacities: 135 CFM (CADR) for the Levoit, 82 for the Förnuftig

* The filter on the Förnuftig is much less effective against very small particles. The math above is comparing filters that are 99.5% vs 99.95% effective, while in this case it's more like 70% vs 99.97%.

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#642

Post by kup0 »

fartcannon wrote: post #476
teh_klev wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hope you are right because he's got quite a bit of power these days. Oh c'mon. The guy is just a YouTube celeb like hundreds of others and easily disposable, what is this "power" he wields?

On the most recent wan show, his fans located and harassed an ex employee of the new facility he bought because he was mildly perturbed over the state of the building. That's some unchecked power.

Which he told them beforehand not to do, and afterwards chastised them for doing so, being clearly frustrated that his fans would so something like that and make things worse for everyone.

If he wielded the power himself (encouraged that behavior) that's one thing, but fanbases of scale will eventually always have a subset of people that behave poorly like this despite even being directly told not to by the person they're supposedly a fan of...

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#643

Post by napkin »

hypersoar wrote: post #51

The Wirecutter is a highly flawed review site, but at least it's a real one. There are vanishingly few left for general consumer products. There's WC, Consumer Reports, and what else? They've seem to have all been killed off. When I'm researching some category of product, I feel lucky if I find any professional reviews written by people who have actually touched the thing they're reviewing. I know we've all had the e…

Adding my personal beef with the majority of tech 'reviews': The lack of honest distinction between a (medium-term usage) product review, and hands-on/impressions. Even with some hard data/testing methodologies- when you're a media outlet relying on page views and advertising, and you're racing to get your 'reviews' posted sooner or at least at the same time as the other sites- the reviews are going to be based on increasingly short-term impressions.

We need a better place than reddit where a wide variety of users can congregate and honestly discuss their experiences with products. Very hard problem when the market is basically at odds with what consumers want, in this regard.

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#644

Post by Cthulhu_ »

KoftaBob wrote: post #185
kettleballroll wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It regularly gets gamed very hard. You can sell old high karma accounts for quite a lot of money, because those are best for such things. It's also a thin line between astroturfing and fill on spamming products. But I have no doubts that some reviews on Reddit are payed for.

> You can sell old high karma accounts for quite a lot of money, because those are best for such things. Why is the accounts karma important for something like that? Does the Reddit algorithm favor high karma accounts when deciding what posts to rank higher?

I'm guessing here, but a lot of subreddits have a minimum karma requirement to make posts or comments (it's a decent anti-spam measure, but easily gamed by low effort bots reposting content every month or so, pretty high chance a lot of people won't have seen it before).

And as with other social media companies, the company behind it is fine with it; bot engagement and bot content is still content, people still watch it, upvote it, and ads and other things are still sold.

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#645

Post by kup0 »

plushpuffin wrote: post #337
applecrazy wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any TV is stupid if you don’t connect it to the Internet.

I haven't bought a TV in about ten years and I've started shopping recently, knowing I'll probably have to get one soon. What I'm interested in, knowing I'll probably have to do this (smart TV with no internet), is what the out-of-box experience is without internet. Will it have preloaded ads that will never change because it can't download new ones? Will there be huge gray boxes where the ads should be in the UI? Wi…

I'll give you my anecdotal experience with a TV that has Amazon's FireTV built-in. It is disconnected from any network. It allowed me to set a setting that says "remember last input" so it always looks at a particular HDMI input for signal when it's turned on (because I always have it set to viewing input, not the smart interface itself). Set like this, it essentially acts as a non-smart TV.

The only downsides are that, being a smartTV, even in this pseudo-non-smart mode, if the TV loses power (rather than just being in an "off/standby" state) then it takes a bit longer for the TV to start up the next time. I wish I could avoid a TV having a "boot sequence", but my experience is close enough to a non-smart TV that it works for me

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#646

Post by evancox100 »

etchalon wrote: post #134
jefftk wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article explains it well: Here’s a thought experiment: Take a 1000 cubic feet room and a purifier that processes 100 cubic feet of air per minute. (I follow Wirecutter in using vulgar imperial units.) Assume pessimistically that all particles are the worst-case size. If you run that purifier with an E12 filter, the fraction of particles that will remain after one minute is .1 × (1-.995) + .9 = 0.9005. That’s beca…

The idea that the difference between 0.9005 and 0.90005 is "small" is … weird. The moment I read that I checked out on the rest of the authors opinions.

This entire subthread is the math version of "most programmers can't even do fizz buzz".

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#647

Post by Cthulhu_ »

janandonly wrote: post #602
hypersoar wrote: post #51

The Wirecutter is a highly flawed review site, but at least it's a real one. There are vanishingly few left for general consumer products. There's WC, Consumer Reports, and what else? They've seem to have all been killed off. When I'm researching some category of product, I feel lucky if I find any professional reviews written by people who have actually touched the thing they're reviewing. I know we've all had the e…

The Dutch "Consumentenbond" is real and paid for by real users. But alas, it's in Dutch, and most is paywalled. https://www.consumentenbond.nl/

I'm also really skeptical about their impartiality; I wouldn't be surprised if they have a lot of underhanded deals with whatever they review and advocate for.

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#648

Post by freemint »

9935c101ab17a66 wrote: post #596
bradlys wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People should also understand why he said he would be offended. He would be offended because it meant they didn’t talk to him and work with him - and that he did such a bad job as a manager that they decided to unionize. He’s pro-union - he just hopes he is a good enough boss that his employees don’t feel like they need to unionize. He clarified his viewpoint in later videos. Offended was probably not the best choice…

Anyone who is truly “pro-union” would recognize that seeing yourself as a good manager/boss doesn’t mean you don’t take advantage of your employees. Furthermore, there is ALWAYS a power dynamic at play that makes it difficult for individuals to speak up about their concerns or ideas for improving working conditions — even “nice” managers will disagree or see certain things as pointless / unnecessary / frivolous. Not…

Do you have a source for the work hours? I had the impression that he very much tries to not ask for more then he pays for. Do you have a source that the compensations at LTT are somehow unreasonable?

As for not having a YouTube channel, i find that a reasonable demand for employees of a company running YouTube channels. They are allowed to do game streaming stream on Twitch and stuff like that.

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#649

Post by freemint »

fartcannon wrote: post #475
criley2 wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Salacious is an eminently accurate word for your string of source-less comments describing your feelings about their advertisements under the guise of actual accusations of wrongdoing. I don't "disagree with you", I dismiss you. I provided an accurate description of their financials and incentives and demonstrated that your salacious claims literally don't make sense. This is good and normal! We should always dismiss…

Now you're just being rude.

I didn't perceive it as rude but as harsh.

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#650

Post by freemint »

criley2 wrote: post #636
hoseja wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>LTT makes almost all of it's money from floatplane, youtube premium, and youtube advertisements In the recent video they did on their most profitable videos Linus explicitly said money from YouTube is only a small fraction of their revenue. I don't imagine Floatplane is much of a profit centre either...

Linus did a video on how much money they make from youtube premium/ads and the numbers can get as high as $50k-$100k/video for their most popular streams. It's not nothing. Floatplane is profitable because it's a subscription based system, and that's where the money always is. Hence patreon.

Oh LTT also sells a lot of expensive but high quality merch.
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