For all that's holy, can you just leverage the web, please? • Hacker News Board

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

#151

Post by inetknght » Wed, Sep 03, 2025, 5:52 PM UTC

> For all that's holy, can you just leverage the Web, please? Don't make me talk to people!

Twenty years ago I would have agreed with this sentiment.

Today... definitely not.

Leveraging the web is an unfortunately-implicit invitation to all kinds of tracking about me, my computer, my stuff. I already get too much spam, no I don't want your f***ing newsletter that I will not read when you send it to me after I already declined receiving it.

> They could still offer to register the machine by telephone as an alternative

They "do". You had the experience of that call. They literally do not want you to actually call. That's a tragedy because even in 2025 there are plenty of people who don't have smartphones, don't have computers, and many of them don't even want one. I certainly don't want to have to install some f***ing app on a smartphone just to register a washing machine. Do you?

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

#152

Post by Workaccount2 » Wed, Sep 03, 2025, 5:53 PM UTC

Hackbraten wrote: post #113

Workaccount2 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> but not smart enough to recognize their limited ability. Exploring the boundaries of one's own ability is not being "not smart enough." It's learning.

You're only gonna learn you made a dumb mistake when you go poking around $10k equipment with no documentation, no schematic, and no community support.

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

#153

Post by username135 » Wed, Sep 03, 2025, 6:09 PM UTC

observationist wrote: post #26

The point isn't to make it easy to register warranty for a product. The point isn't to make it easy to talk with customer service. The point isn't to make it easy to communicate with the company. The point isn't to make it easy to obtain service or replacement parts. The point is to "technically", and therefore legally, offer those things and minimize the cost of offering those things. All of these things are working…

Its amazing to me that people still dont get this.

A business is in the business of making money. Full stop. I dont care what the service or the product is. The goal in a capitalist society is to make profits. Some are more socially conscious than others, but the goal is the same.

All decisions derive from this goal.

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

#154

Post by BobaFloutist » Wed, Sep 03, 2025, 6:10 PM UTC

dwedge wrote: post #123

mooreds wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huge competitive opportunity here. All you have to do is hire customer support who is empowered, knowledgeable and actually cares. Source: support is a competitive differentiator for $CURJOB.

I've been at two different companies who also had support as a competitive differentiator. Both of them were bought, both had support stripped and outsourced and both are more profitable than they were. Sadly, as much as we want to believe it, support does not seem to make enough market difference to justify the outlay.

It's not that support doesn't make a market difference, it's that customer loyalty is a liquidatable asset, and almost everyone wants to retire someday, so good companies almost inevitably will eventually become bad companies and cash out all the good will they've accrued over years and decades.

The only possible solution is some sort of regulation of transparency in ownership structured similarly to banking regulations (routinely moving amounts of money just under reporting limits or in any other way seeming to attempt to dodge scrutiny is considered malfeasance), so customers are promptly and continuously informed when Mom and Pop Shop is bought out by Established PE Vultures™ or Scrappy Small Business gets acquired by S&P #342, Enshitiffication Incorporated or a majority of Public Infrastructure Corporation is owned by Slacktivist Investors Group.

I want it to be obvious, and I want ownership to necessarily be as prominent as branding. "A Unilever Brand since 2003" needs to be just as big as "Natural Small Local Foods Coop Inc, since 1913," so that we can start to associate the corrosion of service and product quality with ownership and acquisition and corporate mandates, and any attempts to overly convolute the source of a clear business direction with scattered minority ownership just happening to band together needs to be treated as fraud.

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

#155

Post by exabrial » Wed, Sep 03, 2025, 6:49 PM UTC

imgabe wrote: post #29

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?

The sticker will get lost, peel off, get scratched until it's unreadable and then the user has no way to get that information. Maybe if they are really on top of things they will take a picture of the sticker when they first get the machine and save it somewhere that they will remember 5 years later when they need it, but most people will not do that. And if you aren't the first owner of the machine, well then, you'r…

Absolute garbage. I have node.js code < 6 months old that won't work anymore because some ding dong removed backwards compatibility or the infrastructure needed to run it.

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

#156

Post by exabrial » Wed, Sep 03, 2025, 6:50 PM UTC

Workaccount2 wrote: post #55

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…

You have an obvious financial incentive to prevent people from trying to fix their own things...

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

#157

Post by inejge » Wed, Sep 03, 2025, 6:57 PM UTC

inetknght wrote: post #81

Night_Thastus wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get why people care about about whether a TV is "Smart". I have a "Smart" TV and never use the features, and it doesn't bother me. I have a PiHole in case it tries to do anything funny, and that's good enough for me.

Wait until TVs come with their own cellular modems so they can give the corporate middle finger to people like us.

Someday I'm going to download one of HN data dumps and find the earliest mention of this particular scare story. It must be ten or even fifteen years old by now, ever since Amazon started offering 3G equipped Kindles with an always-on connection.

Sneaky cellular access hasn't happened so far, not because the vendors wouldn't like the capability, but (IMO) because it would introduce enough of its own costs and complications to be unprofitable. It's easier to piggyback on customers' internet and disregard the small fraction of privacy-conscious buyers.

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

#158

Post by nathan_douglas » Wed, Sep 03, 2025, 6:57 PM UTC

Workaccount2 wrote: post #152

Hackbraten wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but not smart enough to recognize their limited ability. Exploring the boundaries of one's own ability is not being "not smart enough." It's learning.

You're only gonna learn you made a dumb mistake when you go poking around $10k equipment with no documentation, no schematic, and no community support.

Speak for yourself. I can make dumb mistakes with $5 equipment and all of the docs, schematics, and the spectral presences of the implementors there to counsel me.

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

#159

Post by vorpalhex » Wed, Sep 03, 2025, 7:05 PM UTC

edoceo wrote: post #110

qwerpy wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 da…

Open the remote, put insulator over the contacts. Works on Roku/Samsung - voids warranty but, it looks like you're already past that (or moving in that (correct) direction)

A bit of kapton tape under the button works and is reversible if you change your mind. Also works well for childrens toys that produce music.

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

#160

Post by vorpalhex » Wed, Sep 03, 2025, 7:12 PM UTC

joezydeco wrote: post #107

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…

My LG washer and dryer send a push notification to my phone when the load is done, or I can check on the minutes remaining from anywhere. The other stuff I don't care about, but that feature is pretty useful for me. Having an open API would be better, but I know 99% of their customers wouldn't know what to do with that.

$10 smart home vibration sensor works great for this. I have it all fancy in HomeAssistant so I can toggle if I want to be notified or not. You can also cue off the light if it has an led to indicate it's running.