181–190 of 233 posts
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25 years ago, we were all bitching about having to program our parents' VCR for them. In 25 more years we'll be asking a teenager how to get TikTok beamed directly into our brains like they're doing.
I am 100% sure I will never be asking for that. Now, figuring out how to get a containerization platform running in there might be a different matter...
> "An employee manually entered a wrong number somewhere, causing an incorrect update. As a result, all combi microwaves of this type no longer work in the Benelux," says a spokesperson for the umbrella company Electrolux. All????? They didn't roll out the release gradually? Holy hell.
>They didn't roll out the release gradually? Holy hell. Have you looked at dev wages for appliances? That explains everything in short. Everything has to be done for the cheapest price in the shortest amount of time. Fractions of cents are cut in every directions when possible. So when you're operating dev teams on shoe string budgets under constant crunch, there's no talent nor resources for sane management, dev and…
It's different for e.g. cars where it's typically millions, at least for the computing parts.
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Or more likely because that costs money to implement "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity"
>Or more likely because that costs money to implement Kinda like how paying devs to push firmware updates to a damn microwave costs a lot more money than making a microwave that just works and doesn't need OTA updates?
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I wouldn't buy one. Especially at that price point. But I admit that a faucet which could reliably do things like "dispense 6 ounces of water" is kind of a neat idea. But I wouldn't want it tied to Amazon or anything like that. It'd need to be self-contained, with it's own computer, speaker, mic, voice analysis, no internet connection required, and a reliable failure mode that never interferes with the handle working…
Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.
I want to point out most cars made after 2004 or so have no physical connection between not just accelerator and engine but more importantly wheels and steering wheel. So their usability is as good as the software written to control them and the motor/sensor windings, etc. Not unlike the software controlling that microwave.
Drive by wire systems replaced a mechanical throttle linkage with an electronic control, and the reason for this is because it's massively better in every aspect, using EFI vs a throttle body. There are some hybrid designs called TBI (Throttle Body Injected), which are meh. EFI controls fuel and air mixtures dynamically using servos and relays driven by the ECU in response to signals from the drive by wire system.
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I wonder if that percentage of tech-savvy "elderly" is going up over time. I know I remember hearing that about anything computer related 20 years ago, but many of the people in the upper age ranges now lived with computers for a majority of their life. My grandma is not tech savvy, but can follow directions pretty well. My spouse's grandma is tech savvy to a certain level and manages her own computer and photo libra…
25 years ago, we were all bitching about having to program our parents' VCR for them. In 25 more years we'll be asking a teenager how to get TikTok beamed directly into our brains like they're doing.
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I'm starting a kitchen upgrade, and the number of "connected" kitchen appliances is astonishing. I don't need my faucet to have Alexa, I don't want to read news on my refrigerator, and I don't want an app for my oven. I'm not aware of any companies keeping servers running for a product that matches the life expectancy of a kitchen appliance, nor do I want an AWS outage to keep me from making nachos.
It's the same horseshit with smart thermostats. I expect a thermostat to last ten years minimum, if not twenty or thirty. How many times do these companies have to fuck their customers before people stop buying them? The very instant you become more profitable to abandon than to support everything you bought will stop working. If it can happen to Revolv customers it can happen to you. I recently bought a thirty year…
Many Texans discovered this the hard way.
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Buy professional appliances, for restaurants. For some reason, they are often better along many axes: cheaper, easier to clean, more customizable, more powerful, more flexible, etc. I really like the professional induction stoves, with actual physical dials, no touch crap. And the best part, there is a huge used market for professional appliances in really good shape, for even lower price.
Can you recommend any particular sellers? My oven stops working with some nonsensical error message when I try to use it above 350F, so I'm in the market for a new one.
Electrolux are a horrible company. They seem to have borged a whole load of other brands, which all have now descended to Electrolux's abysmal standards. - They don't support their own products; the warranty is served by a third-party - Their products are built to a price-point, and fail just after the warranty is up - Spare parts are expensive - They apparently have neither an email address or phone number The water…