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

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

#191

Post by ethbr0 »

idlewords wrote: post #185
ethbr0 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a Sunbeam Radiant Control toaster that still works flawlessly. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1OfxlSG6q5Y They used a shielded bimetalic thermostat to measure the radiant heat coming from the toast surface , instead of a timer, to establish doneness (consistently toasting despite heating element variance) and implemented the mechanical lowering & raising of toast without a single motor (which is why 60+ year ol…

But how do you cancel without a cancel button?

If you make a toast-related error, by inserting bread into the toaster and then deciding you don't actually want it toasted, you unplug the toaster.

As the elements cool, your bread returns to you, unharmed.

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

#193

Post by pram »

mholm wrote: post #104
drcongo wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My Samsung fridge is the worst thing I've ever bought.

The worst part is that sometimes less price conscious customers will also get tempted in, because they're the only ones trying to push fridge features forward. The 'beverage center' door with a 64oz pitcher that gets refilled on close, allowing you to quickly pour whatever you want, then stow it back in the door to be refilled, is the greatest feature I've ever experienced on a fridge. It just pains me that if I get…

Agreed, I have the automatic pitcher fridge and it’s so convenient I wouldn’t consider one without it now.

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

#194

Post by thomasahle »

lb1lf wrote: post #130
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.

I'll recycle a comment I made in another thread a few years ago: When clearing out my grandmother's house a few years ago, my uncle and I almost broke our backs trying to get the freezer out. It felt like it weighed a ton, even empty. My grandmother told us it had been a wedding present, and that they had been totally awestruck at the time at the generous present from her parents-in-law. After all, a decent freezer c…

2,000kr is $300. If you earn that in five hours, you make around $10,000/month after taxes. So more than double the median of $4,632/month. But okay, even at that median, I guess it's just two days of work.

Are you sure you had to work 5 months for a freezer at median work in 1950? Seems nobody would buy them then.

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

#195

Post by adtac »

ben_w wrote: post #144
PartiallyTyped wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 hea…

The Schwarzschild radius [0], which defines the radius at which the escape velocity equals the speed of light, is given by 2GM/c^2. I don't know what the impact parameter is either, but given these two expressions, it sounds like b is dimensionless.

I don't know how fast the radius of curvature drops off as a function of the Schwarzschild radius, but I'd imagine it's at least R^-1. So assuming a spherical cow^H^H^H oven with gravitational lensing dying out at ~100x the event horizon, we need a Schwarzschild radius the size of a tennis ball in order to still see the curvature a few metres out. The oven needs to weigh ~4x the Earth's mass for that.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwarzschild_radius

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

#196

Post by MisterTea »

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.

I saw a Samsung floor model at Home Depot with a frozen screen and Android error message. "Stick a chip in it" needs to die a fast yet horrid and painful death.

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

#197

Post by rtkwe »

seer wrote: post #160

A side not I always wondered why don't we have refrigerator models that are "split system" as we have with ACs. As it stands now it's a heat pump that pumps the heat from your refrigerator into your home. Wouldn't it be possible to create way more energy efficient model that has an outside body? Or even better connects to the AC body you already have outside? Like in the summer it would "help" the AC by being another…

Most residential units match one outside compressor to a single interior evaporator because to use one exterior unit for both you'd need way more complex valves to control which unit is receiving cooling.

Even if your matching one to one you have the added cost of running all the lines associated with that including having a trades person coming out to install and charge the extra piping between the two units and installing the exterior unit that will need power. It's just massively simpler to have a complete unit you can drop down and optionally connect to water.

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

#198

Post by 1970-01-01 »

nickdothutton wrote: post #149

Next time you speak to an appliance repair guy, ask him what appliances he tends to visit most and least often and what the failure modes are.

That's worse than anecdotal data, because you're only seeing what they're trained and contracted to repair. It's like asking a mechanic if he's seen any Ferraris in the shop this week, and then assuming they must be reliable cars if he's seen none.

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

#199

Post by goodpoint »

Levitz wrote: post #24
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.

It's also a consequence of constant R&D improvements. We can make appliances that last for 20 years or more, sure, but then when 20 years pass you have an appliance that is 20 years old and doesn't have any of that new stuff that came out in the last 20 years.

With appliances lasting <5 years we are way below the sweet spot.

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

#200

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

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?

The insulation in non-commercial units is mostly to do with fire-safety. In a home kitchen it is likely the unit will be installed with wood-ish cabinets immediately adjacent to it. This is very much less likely in a commercial kitchen.
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