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O Holy Crap

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Re: O Holy Crap

#221

Post by jerf »

yetihehe wrote: post #20
jtbayly wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Metal, vs plastic gears. Bigger vs tiny electric motor. Metal vs plastic moving parts in contact with the fruit. Plug-in vs battery powered. These are the things that I would place money on as the reasons the 70 year old one is still functioning, and none sold today will work in 5 years. (I’ve never looked at one of these items. I’m just guessing. But I’d still place money on it.)

> Metal, vs plastic gears. Sintered metal gears, last only a little longer than plastic and then fail catastrophically destroying half of the device so that you can't repair it. But at least they are much cheaper than proper machined gears.

Capitalism is successfully optimizing for what I as a consumer can detect. I am not capable of simply looking at a device and knowing whether the metal is the quality metal it needs to be, or if it is merely some cheap metal that will bend if I breath on it too hard.

($YOU may be. I'm not.)

Except that nowadays I tend to just guess the latter and I'm statistically correct anyhow.

Superman has a quote about living in a world of cardboard, where he must control his every move lest he rip through everything. I'm beginning to feel that way myself with these consumer products. If you take them even 5% out of spec expect them to catastrophically fail. They'll catastrophically fail even if you use them entirely within spec. I'd happily pay a bit extra for something that wouldn't but there's no way for the manufacturer to successfully convey to me that this is such a thing even if they wanted to. The metaphorical water is so metaphorically muddied that it's just dry dust now anyhow, with fake 5 star reviews and decades of refinement on marketing messages about how this vegetable peeler peels vegetables so well that it will even enhance your marriage prospects.

Re: O Holy Crap

#222

Post by pphysch »

What's better than selling a phone to a household of 10 people? Selling 10 phones to a household of 10 people.

What's better than selling 10 phones to 10 people? Selling 100 phones to 10 people over 10 years.

Planned obsolescence is a necessary technology to ensure the endless growth of revenue, as required by our economic system.

Re: O Holy Crap

#223

Post by myself248 »

datr wrote: post #112
derbOac wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to think if you looked hard enough and researched things, maybe paid more sometimes, you could get around it. I still think that is necessary, but not sufficient. It won't save you; you also need a bit of luck. My biggest bugaboo in this area is with clothes. At some point I started being more careful, but found the published specs won't help because they don't actually tell you everything you need to know, or…

I've run into this issue with jeans. They develop holes around the crotch six months after buying a new pair. A decade ago I'd buy jeans and they'd last years. Unfortunately my waist line has since increased and none of those survivors now fit me. I started with Levi 511s and -- when they started failing -- moved to Nudie Jeans (2x price) as they offer free repairs. When I tried to get them repaired though I was told…

In my experience this means they're fitting wrong and there's undue stress in the place that they're failing. For crotch area specifically, look into Duluth Trading's "Ballroom" pants.

Alternately, the moment you buy new pants, add some iron-on patch reinforcement across the area. A two-dollar giant patch can spread the force out quite a bit and probably double the lifetime of the unreinforced fabric.

But really, a tailor should be able to tell you what's wrong with the fit and how to fix it.

Re: O Holy Crap

#224

Post by lloeki »

bumby wrote: post #216
eternityforest wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True embedded software is a lot different. Smart TVs are desktop or phone class computers, and even then, the glitches are usually "A power cycle fixes it" or "One feature that wouldn't exist at all without software stops working" type of thing. For non safety critical stuff it's much better to crash every week than to wear out in 5 years.

> glitches are usually "A power cycle fixes it" Maybe I'm becoming a curmudgeon or maybe it's my bias as a former reliability engineer, but the fact that we've normalized this drives me crazy. Imagine your frustration if your car needed to be "power cycled" on a regular basis just to keep it moving forward, yet we've become accustomed to that in our day-to-day interactions with electronics. It's the bane of my existe…

> your car needed to be "power cycled" on a regular basis just to keep it moving forward

you'd be surprised how often watchdogs get their GIGO conditions triggered and things perform a cleanup reboot while you drive

Re: O Holy Crap

#225

Post by mattigames »

vages wrote: post #4

Be aware that survivorship bias may fool you when comparing the quality of new and old items. The single juicer that lasts 70 years may be the only one of its kind to last that long, the others from the same production year being left to rot and rust in a landfill. That being said, I definitely believe that planned obsolesence and unintentional bad quality is a plague on modern consumer items. I am lucky enough to ha…

I'm willing to bet that the "survivorship bias" of old products narrative is being pushed by modern planned obsolescence companies; back then people were still figuring out how to make a successful company, and many companies believed that if you made a product that lasted forever people will tell their friends and those friends would buy their product and so they would be rewarded for a job well done, now there is not a single company that believes that, the results came in and economically it makes much much more sense to make stuff that breaks after a few years, so no; I don't buy for a second is survivorship bias, at least not in most applications.

Re: O Holy Crap

#226

Post by onemoresoop »

yourapostasy wrote: post #157
datr wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've run into this issue with jeans. They develop holes around the crotch six months after buying a new pair. A decade ago I'd buy jeans and they'd last years. Unfortunately my waist line has since increased and none of those survivors now fit me. I started with Levi 511s and -- when they started failing -- moved to Nudie Jeans (2x price) as they offer free repairs. When I tried to get them repaired though I was told…

Have you tried selvedge denim jeans? Try a pair of Uniqlo brand ones for an entry level good value before getting into the more rarefied brands that are even more durable but more expensive.

> selvedge denim jeans

I got these from uniqlo and like them quite a bit but, beware, they're unwashed and will shrink some when first washed so keep that in mind when buying.

Re: O Holy Crap

#227

Post by jjtheblunt »

philwelch wrote: post #190
datr wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've run into this issue with jeans. They develop holes around the crotch six months after buying a new pair. A decade ago I'd buy jeans and they'd last years. Unfortunately my waist line has since increased and none of those survivors now fit me. I started with Levi 511s and -- when they started failing -- moved to Nudie Jeans (2x price) as they offer free repairs. When I tried to get them repaired though I was told…

I switched from jeans to cargo pants for this exact reason a few years ago.

upvote as in "ditto: same solution here, worked great".

Re: O Holy Crap

#228

Post by tesseract »

mikestew wrote: post #161
oblio wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Carrot peeler? What nonsense. Back of a knife does a fine job. It does, but it's both slower and less safe than one of these things, if you know how to use it right: https://www.ikea.com/nl/en/p/ikea-365-vaerdefull-potato-peel... Personally I'd recommend that style over the "default" peelers that look like this one: https://www.ikea.com/nl/en/p/ikea-365-vaerdefull-peeler-blac... The vertical one is much faster.

The 2nd one is "default"? In the U. S., I don't I've ever seen a peeler that wasn't like your first link. That, or I just never recognized the second link as a peeler. Looks kind of like a cheese slicer to me. :-)

The straight style is more common in US home kitchens; the Y-shaped style seems to be more common in Europe. In the US there has been a trend of chefs and food writers evangelizing the Y-shaped peeler.

In my experience the straight style is more ergonomic for carrots and parsnips whereas the Y-peeler works better for potatoes, citrus, and other roughly spheroidal foods.

(I also use my [very sharp] Y-peeler for shaving hard cheeses into flakes so sure, I guess it is a cheese slicer too :) )

Re: O Holy Crap

#229

Post by jemmyw »

datr wrote: post #112
derbOac wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to think if you looked hard enough and researched things, maybe paid more sometimes, you could get around it. I still think that is necessary, but not sufficient. It won't save you; you also need a bit of luck. My biggest bugaboo in this area is with clothes. At some point I started being more careful, but found the published specs won't help because they don't actually tell you everything you need to know, or…

I've run into this issue with jeans. They develop holes around the crotch six months after buying a new pair. A decade ago I'd buy jeans and they'd last years. Unfortunately my waist line has since increased and none of those survivors now fit me. I started with Levi 511s and -- when they started failing -- moved to Nudie Jeans (2x price) as they offer free repairs. When I tried to get them repaired though I was told…

I've tried various expensive jean brands and really expensive with custom fitting and none of them lasted longer than the cheap local brand I buy from now. Not only can I get 3 pairs or more for the same money, they do repairs for free if it's their fault or really cheaply if it's my fault.

Re: O Holy Crap

#230

Post by Fatnino »

taylodl wrote: post #175
vages wrote: post #4

Be aware that survivorship bias may fool you when comparing the quality of new and old items. The single juicer that lasts 70 years may be the only one of its kind to last that long, the others from the same production year being left to rot and rust in a landfill. That being said, I definitely believe that planned obsolesence and unintentional bad quality is a plague on modern consumer items. I am lucky enough to ha…

People forget things used to cost a lot of money. I remember when our family bought our first color TV set back in the early 70's. You can buy a 65" HDTV set today for the same amount of money - and that's in today's dollars which are significantly less valuable than the dollars in the early 70's! That TV didn't last 20 years - it was a huge hassle continually testing and replacing tubes. Meanwhile I bought a 55" HDT…

20 years ago tvs didnt have all manner of "smart" crap stuffed into them. If you buy a TV today there is a good chance much of it will stop working or change for the worse in an overnight update.
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