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O Holy Crap

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241–250 of 323 posts

Re: O Holy Crap

#241
Some things have gotten better, some worse.

Current car is at 202,000km and 11 years and essentially nothing has gone wrong with it except normal wear and tear replacement and it isn't even (in this road salt envioronment) noticeably rusty and it's never even had a spark plug out. Try that even 30 years ago.

On the other hand, motorized kitchen appliances really seem to be designed to be about 0.0001% better than the absolute minimum reliability requirement, lest a few extra pennies of manufacturing cost be wasted. That said, there are still gems. I have reason to hope that the current version of the Braun hand mixer is as good as my 20+ year one. I've had to open that up to resolder a transistor that had shaken loose due to vibration - design error; this heavy component should have been better anchored - but the mechanicals run as if it was new. One the other hand, the design of Braun food processors leaves me with little confidence in their long-term function.

When the delivery guys showed up with the fridge, 17 years ago, they said don't expect much, 10 years maybe. 17 years later the plastic parts on the outside are yellowed and cracked and the door seal is showing its age too, but it still works just fine. And I suspect chest freezers are still as good as they always were i.e. work for many decades (while consuming less power).

I'm not hopeful about the replacements for the washing machine (2000ish) and dishwasher (1987ish) when they wear out.

Re: O Holy Crap

#242

Some things have gotten better, some worse. Current car is at 202,000km and 11 years and essentially nothing has gone wrong with it except normal wear and tear replacement and it isn't even (in this road salt envioronment) noticeably rusty and it's never even had a spark plug out. Try that even 30 years ago. On the other hand, motorized kitchen appliances really seem to be designed to be about 0.0001% better than the…

Speed Queen on the washer will last awhile and parts are plentiful when they do wear out. You can replace the fridge door seal pretty easily, too.

Re: O Holy Crap

#243
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…

In our new house this summer, I sprung for a 77" LG C2 OLED. Almost embarassed by it looking back, since I could have bought a 75" "standard" 4K TV for about 1/4 the price.

Re: O Holy Crap

#244

Pyrex is a great example of the problem here. Original PYREX was borosilicate glass which is extremely resistant to shattering due to temperature differences and therefore excellent for cooking. The brand and reputation of quality was established. Time to profit. The brand was sold and gutted. The material was replaced with cheaper soda lime glass, which if you google “exploding Pyrex” you will discover is dangerousl…

> Original PYREX was borosilicate glass

Generally still is in Europe. For instance this: https://bakerenogkokken.no/borddekking/serveringsskaler/pyre...

Re: O Holy Crap

#245
post #46
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 really rooting for getting the onslaught of rubbishware to end but don't see the right to repair laws making a dent there. Those laws are engineered to make it possible to repair complex, expensive things. Dealing with intentionally misengineered things that are trash cheap is a completely different discipline.

My partner and I joke that nothing we buy remains unmodified for more than a day. It’s an exaggeration of the truth: that many many of our purchases require some customization before they’re really useful. We’re both the type to research heavily before a purchase, and we’ll gladly spend more for quality. Yet still the manufactured designs never quite meet our standards.

We survive comfortably by sharing practical skills in the household: sewing, woodworking, metalworking, electronics, CAD (for 3D printing replacement parts), painting, etc. Products straight from the factory are often substandard, but a good set of tools, library books and tutorials can close the gap to usability if you have the time.

Re: O Holy Crap

#246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on the capitalization. The good stuff is PYREX.

It's not that simple. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/exploding-pyrex/ > What's Undetermined > Whether Pyrex switched from using borosilicate glass to tempered soda lime glass only after Corning sold the brand to World Kitchen in 1998. … > In a January 2011 article on glass bakeware, Consumer Reports stated that they were unable to determine exactly when major U.S. manufacturers (including Pyrex) switched

That’s the most amount of word salad garbage I’ve ever seen on snopes.

The government hasn’t determined that soda lime glass is unsafe? Shocking.

I wonder why chemists use borosilicate? Hmm.

Re: O Holy Crap

#248
post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The trouble is finding manufacturers that actually do that, rather than just using a tiny motor with no computer and plastic gears with no torque sensing. If you design things with old fashioned methods, you need to use old fashioned heavy parts. Oh yeah. Like Surefeed smart cat feeders. They don't use end reed or contact switches to control the lid motor - they use current sensing on the motor and stop it when the…

The old model was impossible to clean. Did the designers never meet a cat? I've got two sure microchip cat doors. They've been reliable. Same problem, hard to clean. When one of our cats figured out how to break through the door sure sent me a 3d printed plastic part that clipped on over the latch. I think their customer care is pretty good.

> The old model was impossible to clean. Did the designers never meet a cat?

The new one isn't much better tbh...

> When one of our cats figured out how to break through the door sure sent me a 3d printed plastic part that clipped on over the latch.

I mean, my cats are smart enough to open doors, cupboards and drawers, but how on earth can a cat break through a cat flap?! Brute strength?

Re: O Holy Crap

#249

Under the Christmas tree this year: another Cuisinart electric kettle. Same model as always, this year recommended by wirecutter. They last two to three years and then break in various ways. This is our third one :( My dad gave me the advice "buy cheap now and be guaranteed to buy it again at least once if not more, or wait, save up, and buy the more expensive thing only once" as I was becoming an adult. I've tried t…

Why do you keep buying the same one?

Re: O Holy Crap

#250
post #224
post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

I have no issue if it automatically recovers to a safe or known state. My issue is when this doesn't happen and the user has to perform the recovery via a power cycle. From my perspective, this means the system has failed and is, by definition, not reliable. We just seem to accept low reliability in consumer software.
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