Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A fridge from 70 years ago has better features than the fridge I own now

mstdn.social

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 531 posts

Re: A fridge from 70 years ago has better features than the fridge I own now

#141

Post by gruez »

vGPU wrote: post #11
starbugs wrote: post #3

> Thing is, producing crappy, cookie-cutter, uninspired, overpriced junk that falls apart within 5 years (generously speaking) pays more to the shareholders. That's how we got from there to here. This summarizes it quite well for me.

See: Samsung fridges. A huge touchscreen and a water pump/ice maker that will fail in <5 years are standard.

>See: Samsung fridges. A huge touchscreen and a water pump/ice maker that will fail in They still make models that aren't like that[1]. In fact last time I bought a fridge I specifically looked for a model without those features because they're known points of failure and I don't use them.

[1] https://www.bestbuy.com/site/samsung-25-cu-ft-33-3-door-fren...

Re: A fridge from 70 years ago has better features than the fridge I own now

#142

Post by ethbr0 »

marricks wrote: post #5

Some of those fridges are refurbished and still around[1]! It's my dream to own one someday when my fridge from the 90's dies. Every couple years there's a HN link to a blog post about how those appliances were built better in the day. Couple highlights I remember were: - Parts were dipped in paint rather than sprayed leading to fuller and thicker paint coverage - Motors had some changes so were actually built to las…

There was a motor teardown linked on HN at some point.

Essentially: electric motors from the 50s were vastly over designed, which meant they were extremely robust to physical failures

The larger point about stuff now vs then is likely the use of capacitors. And specifically, cheap capacitors in consumer electronics.

Absent electronics, you're talking an order of magnitude longer lifespan.

Re: A fridge from 70 years ago has better features than the fridge I own now

#143

Post by leidenfrost »

PartiallyTyped wrote: post #79
idlewords wrote: post #8

My girlfriend's mom has a teaching oven (used in home economics classes) from the 1950s. The 'teaching' part mostly means it has a more accurate and detailed temperature gauge. This gas oven is so heavy that light in the kitchen gravitationally lenses around it, but it's still going strong and the best oven I ever used.

On a serious note, how heavy does an object have to be for gravitational lensing or bending to be noticeable with a naked eye? s/visible/noticeable s/noticeable/noticeable with a naked eye s/lensing/gravitational lensing

Depends on how you define "noticeable". If you can measure a small enough distance, you can see the lensing effect of any object.

Re: A fridge from 70 years ago has better features than the fridge I own now

#144

Post by ben_w »

PartiallyTyped wrote: post #79
idlewords wrote: post #8

My girlfriend's mom has a teaching oven (used in home economics classes) from the 1950s. The 'teaching' part mostly means it has a more accurate and detailed temperature gauge. This gas oven is so heavy that light in the kitchen gravitationally lenses around it, but it's still going strong and the best oven I ever used.

On a serious note, how heavy does an object have to be for gravitational lensing or bending to be noticeable with a naked eye? s/visible/noticeable s/noticeable/noticeable with a naked eye s/lensing/gravitational lensing

That you'd be able to see it with the naked eye?

α = 4GM/((c^2)b), where b is the impact parameter[0].

Apparently human visual acuity is 0.3 milli-radians, so if b = 1 meter, that's approximately "the moon" (in at most a 1 meter radius volume)…

…assuming I didn't mix up my units in this formula I never used before, though it feels about right given the Schwarzschild radius of the Earth is ~ centimetres.

[0] never heard of this before just now; I think it's the shortest distance between the central point and the path the light would have taken if it hadn't been deflected?

Re: A fridge from 70 years ago has better features than the fridge I own now

#145

Post by masklinn »

UncleMeat wrote: post #81
quartz wrote: post #25

Wait is this actually better? It's well presented in the ad but: - that removable veggie holder in the door looks crazy heavy and super awkward to put back in place (lining up at a sharp angle while gripping likely slick sides) - you have to open the refrigerator door to get at the freezer - the door compartments are narrow and probably can't handle odd sized containers - the shelves have holes in them so anything th…

Yeah the only two features that this fridge has that my fridge doesn't have are the pull out shelves and the removable bin for vegetables. I've got no idea why you'd really want the removable bin for vegetables. Carry all my veggies over to the sink first and then pick out the ones I want? And look at how small that thing is. Pull out shelves seem nice I guess, but they'd only be useful on lower shelves. My fridge se…

Does your fridge not have crisper bins for veggies? I've had that in pretty much all my fridges, and the bins are always easily removable.

Pull-out shelves not so much (all the fridges I've had, had adjustable but "locked" glass shelving, I would assume for hygiene as a glass shelf is much easier to clean regularly or after a spill, plus they don't block light so much), but they are available on expensive or professional fridges.

Re: A fridge from 70 years ago has better features than the fridge I own now

#146

Post by maccard »

masklinn wrote: post #127
jrochkind1 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, in general, things we buy today are a lot more "affordable" while being lower quality. Googling says the average cost of a refrigerator in 1950 was $250 to $400 (for 10 cubic feet -- a fridge today is 20 to 30 ft^3), which would be $3K to $5K in 2023 dollars. If you pay $3K to $5K for a fridge today (for a fridge 2-3x as big as the 1950 fridge), do you get a better longer-lasting one? I'm not sure.

> If you pay $3K to $5K for a fridge today (for a fridge 2-3x as big as the 1950 fridge), do you get a better longer-lasting one? I'm not sure. One of the difficulties is it's become very hard to know if an item is more expensive because: - it's better quality - it's full of bullshit - it's marketing However 3-5k for a fridge is well into "professional kitchen commercial refrigerator / refrigerated cabinet" range. At…

You don't need to go to anywhere near that price to get before you hit a sweet spot. For like $600 including tax one of the biggest retailers in the UK will sell you the most energy efficient fridge on the market with a 5 year guarantee. Like most products, you're reaching diminishing returns at a certain point and that seems to be it as far as I can tell.

Re: A fridge from 70 years ago has better features than the fridge I own now

#147

Post by VectorLock »

UncleMeat wrote: post #81
quartz wrote: post #25

Wait is this actually better? It's well presented in the ad but: - that removable veggie holder in the door looks crazy heavy and super awkward to put back in place (lining up at a sharp angle while gripping likely slick sides) - you have to open the refrigerator door to get at the freezer - the door compartments are narrow and probably can't handle odd sized containers - the shelves have holes in them so anything th…

Yeah the only two features that this fridge has that my fridge doesn't have are the pull out shelves and the removable bin for vegetables. I've got no idea why you'd really want the removable bin for vegetables. Carry all my veggies over to the sink first and then pick out the ones I want? And look at how small that thing is. Pull out shelves seem nice I guess, but they'd only be useful on lower shelves. My fridge se…

The pull out fridge doesn't even seem that great, I just think of shit sliding off the back or you push them in and then you push everything off the front.

Re: A fridge from 70 years ago has better features than the fridge I own now

#148

Post by Swizec »

usefulcat wrote: post #119
bombcar wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is it - high quality stuff is often still made, but it's expensive and/or has other downsides that you really do need to be aware of. For example, commercial equipment is often bullet-proof and long-lived, but it can be louder than you'd want in a home kitchen. Commercial dish washers have no noise insulation, get hot, but can wash dishes so fast they can crack them from the temperature changes. Commercial ovens…

> Commercial ovens have no or minimal heat insulation This seems counter intuitive to me. Why would I not want more insulation in an oven that's going to be used a lot more? Seems like the cost of the insulation would be amortized more quickly than in a home kitchen, since a commercial oven is presumably being used a lot more?

> Why would I not want more insulation in an oven that's going to be used a lot more?

Primarily different regulations. Everyone interacting with a commercial oven is a trained professional getting paid to be there and the space is designed to a certified standard. This means you can focus more on pure performance and less on liability stuff.

And commercial equipment, because it needs to last long, is optimized for maintenance. I imagine insulation makes it harder to access and clean (or fix) the internals of an oven. Not to mention how often you’d have to change the insulation to keep your kitchen up to health standards.

Re: A fridge from 70 years ago has better features than the fridge I own now

#150

Post by [deleted] »

passwordoops wrote: post #18
rascul wrote: post #4

A lot of those features are available in today's fridges. Also, they use less power today. And you really don't have to get one with wifi and a touchscreen.

Yeah but I'd bet the one we see in the video is probably still working, while I'm on my third fridge in 20 years. I think that negates any energy efficiency gains

[deleted]
Post reply on HN