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Electronics are built with death dates. Let’s not keep them a secret

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Re: Electronics are built with death dates. Let’s not keep them a secret

#41
The (bad) Capacitor plague; https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague

A higher-than-expected failure-rate of non-solid aluminium Electrolytic Capacitors

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search: >'bad capacitors' @DDG : https://html.duckduckgo.com/html/?q='bad capacitors'>

Re: Electronics are built with death dates. Let’s not keep them a secret

#42

I have been a long time enthusiast of high power flashlights. We typically use 18350, 18650, 21700, or 26650. But I have been in dismay as even in this community, companies are starting to move away from these standards and provide proprietary batteries (Olight) or sealed (some newer Fenix models). It would be good if * We could safely obtain reputable Li-ion batteries from reputable sources. I trust a handful of com…

> I have been a long time enthusiast of high power flashlights. We typically use 18350, 18650, 21700, or 26650. But I have been in dismay as even in this community, companies are starting to move away from these standards and provide proprietary batteries (Olight) or sealed (some newer Fenix models). We went through this exact cycle with laptops and cellular phones. The hardcore internet users were furious when compa…

> The market will avoid the proprietary solutions if that's really what the market feels

I don't really buy into (no pun intended) any argument that relies on the efficient market hypothesis. As this article pointed out, there's a vast asymmetry of information, which prevents an efficient market, even in theory.

> but I suspect these companies actually have a good idea about what their customers are looking for.

I suspect these companies have a good idea about what will cause their customers to purchase more often, and which parts cannot be evaluated on a showroom. Replaceable batteries would add tremendous value for customers, and battery life is frequently the most desired feature in surveys.

Re: Electronics are built with death dates. Let’s not keep them a secret

#43
post #12

At this point, I only buy Apple products because of inertia. Give me an out-of-the-box Linux laptop that's as easy to use and that supports the software I need for my work, and give me a way to port over all of my cloud stuff, and I'm done with Apple forever. They're trading on the reputation they earned decades ago. This said, the problem isn't limited to one company. It's how capitalism works. In order to succeed,…

I’d really like to switch from Windows to Linux, but the software situation seems like a real problem. According to ProtonDB, a third of the top 1000 games have issues on Linux, and popular creative software (Affinity, Ableton) is right out.

Re: Electronics are built with death dates. Let’s not keep them a secret

#44
post #9

I've made AirPods last longer than any other pair of earbuds I've ever had. It's the cord. For me, a max of six months of fiddling with the damn thing and it breaks. I've had real headphones last quite a bit longer— but I buy the ones with replaceable cords. The pair I still have is on its fourth cord and second pair of muffs. I don't view it as any sort of economic, human, or environmental catastrophe, that they sto…

  > I've made AirPods last longer than any other pair of earbuds I've ever had.
same... now if only i could easily replace the batteries, it would be almost perfect (they just die on me mid-call sometimes)

Re: Electronics are built with death dates. Let’s not keep them a secret

#45

I have been a long time enthusiast of high power flashlights. We typically use 18350, 18650, 21700, or 26650. But I have been in dismay as even in this community, companies are starting to move away from these standards and provide proprietary batteries (Olight) or sealed (some newer Fenix models). It would be good if * We could safely obtain reputable Li-ion batteries from reputable sources. I trust a handful of com…

> I have been a long time enthusiast of high power flashlights. We typically use 18350, 18650, 21700, or 26650. But I have been in dismay as even in this community, companies are starting to move away from these standards and provide proprietary batteries (Olight) or sealed (some newer Fenix models). We went through this exact cycle with laptops and cellular phones. The hardcore internet users were furious when compa…

The market made a mistake and the resulting E waste is a bad externality for the environment.

Re: Electronics are built with death dates. Let’s not keep them a secret

#46
Sadly, I found many other devices are also designed to become trash. The battery in my Philips Sonicare toothbrush not only can’t be replaced — it’s fixed so firmly inside that the manual says you have to take a hammer to it just to throw it away (because batteries can cause trash fires). “The battery is firmly placed, in a water-resistant handle, to ensure safety, durability, longevity and robust performance,” says Philips.

It makes me sad to see them claiming waterproofing as the reason, when the art of sealing easily disassembled components has already been perfected over many centuries... the other comment here mentions flashlights, another object of a similar shape which does often come in a waterproof version with replaceable batteries. I have no doubt they could design an electric toothbrush which is both waterproof and has replaceable batteries; they just don't want to, because they'd rather you buy a whole new one.

Adding to the irony, water ingress and resulting damage often occurs to them anyway, but not at the bottom where they seal in the batteries; instead, water gets in around the shaft seal and then corrodes the insides from the top. Once again, it would probably be an easy task to make a better seal design, but that would cost just a tiny bit more than they'd like.

Re: Electronics are built with death dates. Let’s not keep them a secret

#48
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have been a long time enthusiast of high power flashlights. We typically use 18350, 18650, 21700, or 26650. But I have been in dismay as even in this community, companies are starting to move away from these standards and provide proprietary batteries (Olight) or sealed (some newer Fenix models). We went through this exact cycle with laptops and cellular phones. The hardcore internet users were furious when compa…

Cellphones are devices that cost hundreds of dollars and gave a store on every other streetcorner that can repair them. Doing this to flashlights is just creating e-waste. Your average company knows the average buyer is an idiot and will gladly burn the earth selling them junk. We had to heavily regulate the food industry to prevent bad actors from causing negative effects, looks like the same needs to happen with e-…

> We had to heavily regulate the food industry to prevent bad actors from causing negative effects, [...]

Sounds like 'post hoc ergo propter hoc' to me.

Re: Electronics are built with death dates. Let’s not keep them a secret

#50
My Samsung TV has built-in apps for Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. Currently both of them fail with generic "oops, try again later" error messages despite things like YouTube working fine. My conspiracy theory is that they've just end-of-lifed the apps on that TV model and don't have the balls to tell me.
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