191–200 of 613 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's wrong with mechanical bathroom and kitchen scales?
I tried to get such a kitchen scale and couldn't find one that wasn't either highly imprecise or ridiculously expensive (like three digit euros) If you have a vintage one that is reasonably exact, they're great.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Both bathroom and kitchens scales are large enough they can run on AA / AAA batteries and casually go a decade (or more) without replacement. Tangentially: I used to have a 3 button timer, it was a little LCD countdown display and 3 buttons. One button set hours, one minutes, and one starts / stops the countdown timer. I found this timer when I was a kid, used, and the 1 AAA battery it had lasted into adulthood, lite…
I buy a lot of those little timers for my business. They get pretty heavy use, maybe running timers for about 6 hours per day. They don't last anywhere near decades for us. Anyway, my insight is simply that some of them turn off the LCD after a while of non-use, and some of them keep it on indefinitely. Maybe that explains the difference between your two experiences.
The newer ones I am lucky to get a year out of the battery. Even using the on/off switch.
Examples lying around in my house: Bathroom scale: lovely it powers up when you tap it, but eats up 2 button cells a year for a few dozen uses a year Kitchen scales, bit more use, at least once a day but again 2 button cells a year electronic caliper: Same, eats up 1 button cell a year, just sitting in my toolbox Strangely enough none of our kids toys with batteries seem to suffer from this problem How much extra cos…
Get Vernier calipers! The scale is easy to learn and use and measurements will be at least as precise as electronic calipers. With no batteries required the tool has much less of an environmental impact and you never need to worry about whether the calipers will work or not.
Yep.
> and use
Nope, not once you get old and tiny things are increasingly difficult to read with or without assistance.
(Background: I work in product design/new product development, and conceivably might have designed this thing! If any of those were still designed in the Western world. Which they aren't. I have designed some stuff like it, though!) Oh, great, this debate again! I shall use this post as ammunition next time I am arguing with our stupid design team about why we need an off switch on the stupid product we are designing…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Great. Now I need to buy a faraday cage to fit my refrigerator.
Think bigger. Do the whole house. There's paint you can get for this.
Does a smart fridge still work if you rip the modem and Wlan boards out?
So true. I just found out in the hard way, by letting the battery in a home safebox expire. I cannot find the physical key and the electronic lock does not work without power. I will have to call some specialists to break in.
As a programmer my day job is "this isn't working the way it's supposed to, lets figure out why and fix it." I can't fathom ever wanting to deal with that stuff when I get off work. A lock and key have been working just fine since the Roman times, it's relatively easy to conceptualize how it works, the things you can troubleshoot on it is a relatively short list, the UX surface area is small and predictable (it's just a lock and a key). I could go on for a long time. If something got along just fine before bluetooth and wifi existed then I never want to own a version that requires bluetooth or wifi.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I've lost track of the number of times I've lamented "did anyone actually use this?" We have a combination oven and microwave (yes...) that seems to have been designed with the primary purpose of enraging the owner. The microwave can only be set in 15 second increments. But you can fine-tune it, in five-second increments, by spinning a dial. Except that you can't do that while the oven is on. The microwave makes a…
> The microwave can only be set in 15 second increments. But you can fine-tune it, in five-second increments, by spinning a dial Mine is similar, also a combi. You spin the dial and it will go up in 10 second increments to a point, then in minutes, then in 5 minutes, then ten minutes, etc. Fine, I get it, it's like floating point. But it starts doing 5 minutes at the 10 minute mark! So you can't do 11-14 minutes. Whi…
>> (Our design team will never listen. This is because they, one, don't listen to anyone ever; and two, never use the products they design. Oh, sure, there might be a user study or two. But they never actually have to live with or work with the damn things.) This is so obvious from everyday life that someone really ought to write a paper about it and have it published in Nature. Because it will certainly be published…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, but the point is that you can keep making these things and people will keep buying them, so "noone wants another e-waste" is clearly not true. Discussions about "the market", its effects on the environment, etc. are all important and worth having, but don't really have much bearing on whether or not "people want another e-waste".
I mean, if you look at it that way then people really want corrupt politicians and exploitative businesses because they keep electing the former and paying the latter. I think people really don't want e-waste. They don't want oceans (and now bodies) full of plastic. The industries have just done a great job of convincing them nothing can be done about the problem.
I think it's a bit more complex than that; a lot of properties that distinguish a "solid product" from "e-waste" are not at all obvious when you buy it, and it's not illegal and it is cheaper, and people got to make rent too, so... yeah. I agree: in the abstract most people don't "want e-waste", but they also look at costs and other factors, and they do "want e-waste" once you factor that in.
It probably shouldn't be strictly illegal too, but now you have a situation where:
1. Consumers blame industry and say that government should do something.
2. Industry says they're just producing what consumers want and that it's not illegal.
3. Government says they want consumers and industry to have free choice and call for different consumer actions and "self-regulation".
So basically, everyone is pointing at everyone else, and nothing gets done. And the arguments from the various sides aren't necessarily bad or malicious either: regulation does come with a cost, and cheap stuff does have its use.
Personally I think factoring in external environmental costs in to the product price would be good, but it's not so easy as it will make things more expensive, and already enough people are struggling to make ends meet (as the current high inflation rates show) so it all ties in to a lot of other issues as well.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This is because they, one, don't listen to anyone ever; and two, never use the products they design. Oh, sure, there might be a user study or two. But they never actually have to live with or work with the damn things. I wonder the percentage of consumer (and business - have you ever used a POS in a pub?!) electronics this applies to? It's gotta be high 90s. I've lost track of the number of times I've lamented "did…
> I've lost track of the number of times I've lamented "did anyone actually use this?" We have a combination oven and microwave (yes...) that seems to have been designed with the primary purpose of enraging the owner. The microwave can only be set in 15 second increments. But you can fine-tune it, in five-second increments, by spinning a dial. Except that you can't do that while the oven is on. The microwave makes a…
I would happily invest in kitchen appliances that have a silent mode for apartments and shared living spaces.
My microwave beeps at the end, and then beeps again 10 minutes later once the food has been removed. My old toaster beeped 5 times when the toast popped, which is unnecessary when the popping action is loud on it's own.