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For all that's holy, can you just leverage the web, please?

blog.tomayac.com

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Re: For all that's holy, can you just leverage the web, please?

#51

Post by Workaccount2 »

toastal wrote: post #41

> Electrolux washing machine I had to buy one a couple of years ago. Snarkily I asked the floor salesman if I could get the washer “without all the smart features”. He said “let me check”, which had me puzzled. He came back to inform me that they still had last year’s model which was before the “smart” features were rolled out. He said they can sell it on the same warranty, & since it was older I would get a signific…

They are called "Commercial TVs", selection is more limited and the cost a bit higher, but no smart-TV BS.

Re: For all that's holy, can you just leverage the web, please?

#52

Post by bux93 »

crinkly wrote: post #13

This stuff really annoys me but the problem is really well solved elsewhere. When you buy an Apple product it has a number on it Axxxx and a serial number somewhere. That's all you need to identify your product to anyone. That includes service manuals and spare parts. And as far as warranty registration goes, they register it at the point of sale/activation as the warranty starting. Job done. No humans / lookups / an…

I mean, the thing is, the warranty starts automatically, there's no need to register or activate anything. As per EU consumer protection laws (the author lives in Spain).

As for finding service manuals and user manuals - maybe what they need isn't the web but FTP. I mean, if it were still supported by browsers. I remember when some vendors just used to have folders with PDFs you could browse.

The problem with "the web" is that this is no longer a website, but a content management system, or worse, a "customer engagement platform" that is hostile to creating a folder full of PDFs that have stable links. They probably still have that FTP site in a webified form somewhere for service partners, just not for Joe Public.

Re: For all that's holy, can you just leverage the web, please?

#53

Post by bee_rider »

shellac wrote: post #16
LauraMedia wrote: post #8

I fail to see a useful usage for AI in this case. Couldn't you just print the product number as a barcode/qrcode and let a "dumb code scanner" read it, instead of having to download a multifunctional LLM?

The author works in Google developer relations, and while devrel aren't quite marketing they will use the latest and greatest Google hammer.

His demo is pretty slick, though. Less than 100 lines of code to get “the box I want on literally every customer service site.”

Re: For all that's holy, can you just leverage the web, please?

#54

Post by xp84 »

Liftyee wrote: post #6

Not criticising the article or the decision to buy a new washing machine (20 years is a long time), but just noting that the old machine was likely fixable. If spare parts are even still available, that is. Whether it's deemed worth fixing is another matter. This must be the case for so many discarded appliances these days, especially underengineered ones with common issues. Also, not using the QR code protocols prop…

> QR properly

I'm pretty sure that's the fault of terrible tooling being available to most people. No devices have built-in easy-to-find QR generating abilities, so to create a QR code most people end up searching the Web which is overrun with trashy URL-shortening-and-analytics services, freemium or paid, that wrap your link in their crap and make the URL expire or die with their fly-by-night website. Hackers know that it's possible and free to just make QR codes of the right type, and are able to find proper software to do it, but most people are throwing darts with the assistance of Google so they end up with crap usually.

Re: For all that's holy, can you just leverage the web, please?

#55

Post by Workaccount2 »

exabrial wrote: post #20

Why not just print a $.0001 sticker and stick it the machine listing all of the info needed to fix the machine... instead of building a $86million datacenter and burning through $100,000 of clean electricity every month that could have been used to power homes, but was instead used doing this?

As someone who has a side job doing repairs, I charge more when customers try to repair things themselves.

There is a whole class of people who are smart enough to fix simple things, but not smart enough to recognize their limited ability. They will strip out all the screws on the machine and then claim warranty after replacing random electronic components on the control board. In reality the problem will be a dirty contact that is a 5 minute fix.

Re: For all that's holy, can you just leverage the web, please?

#56

Post by toastal »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #51
toastal wrote: post #41

> Electrolux washing machine I had to buy one a couple of years ago. Snarkily I asked the floor salesman if I could get the washer “without all the smart features”. He said “let me check”, which had me puzzled. He came back to inform me that they still had last year’s model which was before the “smart” features were rolled out. He said they can sell it on the same warranty, & since it was older I would get a signific…

They are called "Commercial TVs", selection is more limited and the cost a bit higher, but no smart-TV BS.

Do they come in OLED now?

Re: For all that's holy, can you just leverage the web, please?

#57

Post by benbenolson »

toastal wrote: post #41

> Electrolux washing machine I had to buy one a couple of years ago. Snarkily I asked the floor salesman if I could get the washer “without all the smart features”. He said “let me check”, which had me puzzled. He came back to inform me that they still had last year’s model which was before the “smart” features were rolled out. He said they can sell it on the same warranty, & since it was older I would get a signific…

I got a Spectre TV (pretty cheap, they sell it at Walmart). It's a little more expensive than other TVs in the same class, but has no smart features: you plug HDMI into it and it displays it. You hit "Source" and are greeted with a no-nonsense menu that lets you choose the HDMI port, composite input, etc. It's great.

Re: For all that's holy, can you just leverage the web, please?

#58

Post by hedora »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #34
hedora wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conterpoint: We had a new samsung washer dryer pair with a 90 day warranty; they advertise something like 10 years, but it is a lie. The electrolux in the article is probably similar. Anyway, it said it lost communication between two boards. I opened it up, checked the wiring harness, and found zero visible problems. I replaced both boards. Same error code. There are 3-4 other computers in that model, so I guess the…

>There’s no reason these things shouldn’t last more than 20-30 years on average. This is actually a difficult problem I feel. Misaligned incentives aside. How do you keep a company running if it is so good it captures the whole market in 15 years, but it takes 30 years before it's products need replacing? (This is a simplistic presentation of the issue, but I feel it's understandable enough to start to formulate idea…

I can think of a few solutions:

- support model. You pay 1/10th the manufacturing cost per year. They immediately give you a new one if it fails. Profits are dictated by the difference between the real mean time to failure and ten years. “10” is set by law.

- the price of the machine includes the cost of supplying the above service contract for 30 years, by law. The price of the machine therefore drops as the reliability increases.

- all machines must be 100% recycled by the manufacturer, who also pays for environmental externalities. They pay a prorated multiple equal to the number of years under 10 that a machine is in service before replacement.

- warranties must be 10 years and renewable, and must cover parts, labor, and installation, including things like modifications to cabinets and and legally required code improvements

Not everyone would buy a new fancy machine the same year, so in steady state, they should be able to sell machines, just fewer per capita than today.

Re: For all that's holy, can you just leverage the web, please?

#59

Post by qwerpy »

toastal wrote: post #41

> Electrolux washing machine I had to buy one a couple of years ago. Snarkily I asked the floor salesman if I could get the washer “without all the smart features”. He said “let me check”, which had me puzzled. He came back to inform me that they still had last year’s model which was before the “smart” features were rolled out. He said they can sell it on the same warranty, & since it was older I would get a signific…

It was a pain to do, but I have a Sony "Google TV" that I fixed to remove or hide the Sony bloatware and Google adware. I hated how the home screen would display full screen loud ads and the TV would constantly want to update so that it could display an even more obnoxious screen layout with more ads, so I loaded a simple launcher that always displays a static list of hand-picked apps. It required (or successfully dark patterned) me to sign in with a Google account, so I created a dedicated burner account. Google really didn't want to let me create one "please provide a working phone number to verify" but I managed to create one.

Of course I'd prefer a plain dumb TV but there weren't any cheaply and conveniently available at the time. Second best thing is a de-Googled TV. Now if only I could figure out a way to disable the Google buttons on the remote so that kids don't accidentally get into the app store (ads!) or activate the voice control.

Re: For all that's holy, can you just leverage the web, please?

#60

Post by floatrock »

Telemakhos wrote: post #7

I tried hitting the "identify" button but got the error "LanguageModel is not supported." This is on latest Safari, iPadOS.

Yeah, that's the irony here.

Article: "Listen to this overcomplicated warranty registration process with some jabs at overcomplicated IoT bullshit. They print the custom unit serial number on the sticker anyways, why not just also customize the QR code to also embed the serial number?

"Anyways, here's an overcomplicated way that uses AI ML to parse that custom unit serial number from a picture.

"Oops, it doesn't work for complicated browser jerry-rigging reasons."

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