Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Generation Junk

walterkirn.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 471 posts

Re: Generation Junk

#241

Post by mijamo »

hooby wrote: post #225

My grand parents live in an old farm-house, 100 years old or more. When that house was built - there was no electricity. That had been added later - and you could still see where channels had been hewn into the wall to put in cables and later plastered over again. But everything electrical in that house was repairable to a degree that seems unimaginable today. For example, every single power plug had screws. If you r…

I do not know where you are from but the description of the plugs basically match the ones still installed in France (although many don't require screws because they have built it fixations that just "click"), and I have never seen one that requires glue or soldering. Appliance life expectancy has also gone way up statistically, just like cars, although people often complain about the complexity of both. Most washing machines are pretty easy to fix for the parts that do break for instance. Of course if you get a dead motherboard it is not easy to fix, but usually wear and tear happens more on the mechanical pieces that are well documented and also now full of tutorials on how to change them on the internet. My parents and grandparents never dared doing anything on their appliances because nobody taught them to. I am not particularly handy but I have been fixing their appliances just following some basic instructions.

Re: Generation Junk

#242

Post by jeffbee »

neilv wrote: post #9

> For the remains of the Pyrex casserole that shattered when I removed it from the oven, Noteworthy example. Current Pyrex-branded kitchenware is no longer borosilicate glass. I shattered a Pyrex casserole dish with what I guess was probably thermal shock, by moving it out of the oven, into a stainless steel sink.

I don't understand why anyone would do this even with real borosilicate glass. It is unreasonable to expect glass to survive with something massive and hot on one side and something massive and cold on the other side. Even flawless pyrex will break with temperature differentials above 300F.

Re: Generation Junk

#243

Post by kaetemi »

There's a generation of electronics that were plagued by failing capacitors that contained a flawed chemical that was produced based on a stolen formula that contained errors. There's also the wave of electronics that had issues with lead free solder.

Recent appliances and devices seem to last longer again, aside from smartphones with pesky unreplaceable batteries that turn into spicy pillows after a year or two.

Re: Generation Junk

#244

Post by bigodbiel »

spzb wrote: post #119
woopwoop wrote: post #12

So this article implies that a number of things that we buy previously were built to last longer, and indeed did last longer. The first few examples are kitchen appliances. In this case I don't really know, but I'm at least willing to listen. Ultimately the evidence is people responding to a thread on Twitter where he solicited complaints. Not so compelling. But then he mentions a "hybrid sedan". Here I'm aware of th…

There's also a survival bias in that we don't consider the appliances from yesteryear that packed up back when disco was king.

Planned obsolescence is industry standard, from toasters to iphones.

Re: Generation Junk

#245

Post by hooby »

mijamo wrote: post #241
hooby wrote: post #225

My grand parents live in an old farm-house, 100 years old or more. When that house was built - there was no electricity. That had been added later - and you could still see where channels had been hewn into the wall to put in cables and later plastered over again. But everything electrical in that house was repairable to a degree that seems unimaginable today. For example, every single power plug had screws. If you r…

I do not know where you are from but the description of the plugs basically match the ones still installed in France (although many don't require screws because they have built it fixations that just "click"), and I have never seen one that requires glue or soldering. Appliance life expectancy has also gone way up statistically, just like cars, although people often complain about the complexity of both. Most washing…

Not the sockets - I'm talking of the plugs that you put into the sockets.

I haven't seen a plug with screws in ages. They all are a single molded piece now, aren't they?

See: https://www.kulthifi.de/WebRoot/Store19/Shops/80012341/5E84/... for example.

Re: Generation Junk

#246

Post by Der_Einzige »

CobaltFire wrote: post #197
LiquidPolymer wrote: post #106

We have friends that just laid out $3000 for a new washer drier set and washer is already leaking from the front door. Pursuing warranty repair has been a major hassle. My wife and I use a washer and drier set from the late 90's that are nothing to look at but work really well. They appear to be designed with service in mind and changing components is usually extremely easy - something I have done infrequently. These…

There are brands built to super high standards, but no-one wants to pay for them or deal with their compromises. We have been buying Miele appliances, and have nothing but excellent experiences. They aren't cheap, but the general opinion I've seen online is that they are one of the few brands that build quality modern appliances. My experiences would tend to back that up. Specific to the Miele washer and dryer, we ha…

Speedqueen is that brand, and their stuff isn't even all that expensive. The issue is that its washers destroy your clothes by being rough on them.

Re: Generation Junk

#247

Post by hasoleju »

Their might also be one other statistical artifact:

Todays households simply own much more stuff. We possess so many items that we experience the failure of an item much more often than in the past where we owned less stuff.

Re: Generation Junk

#248

Post by xethos »

analog31 wrote: post #83
willis936 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Toasters are an interesting case study. I went on a tear last year after being fed up with every toaster doing the same bad job. I thought maybe someone made a proper toaster. What I found is that when you pay more the coat of paint gets nicer and maybe there's an MCU+LCD, but the guts and logic are identical. There is no good commercially available toaster today. It's sending a very loud message about how markets op…

The MCU is the problem. They toast by time. This just can't work well. My parents' Sunbeam had a temperature sensor.

My Sunbeam has a temp sensor. This toaster is at least twice my age, and it will likely outlive me. It's such a rare feature that I'm sure your parents and I have the same model (though likely a different year or style, as it varied by decade)

Re: Generation Junk

#249

Post by jahewson »

adrianN wrote: post #227
LiquidPolymer wrote: post #106

We have friends that just laid out $3000 for a new washer drier set and washer is already leaking from the front door. Pursuing warranty repair has been a major hassle. My wife and I use a washer and drier set from the late 90's that are nothing to look at but work really well. They appear to be designed with service in mind and changing components is usually extremely easy - something I have done infrequently. These…

I use the cheapest washing machine with A+++ rating that I could buy about ten years ago and it shows no signs of aging so far.

Same for me, until it broke.

Re: Generation Junk

#250

Post by jacobn »

xp84 wrote: post #175
shepherdjerred wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a mind-boggling anecdote. As an example, Crate and Barrel are known to make good, high-quality couches, and many of them are far less than $5000

I went to try to see conclusively if you were correct. A pretty basic sofa at C&B is $1,800 - $2,000. In 1990 you could buy a basic Bassett sofa at J.C. Penney for $599 [1] -- $1407 in 2023 dollars. Furniture from Sears and Penney's (regardless of whether it was fashionable) was of fine quality, in that it held up for decades. I know because we had furniture like this in our home at the time. So this tells me that th…

Interesting point that abundant cheap-but-bad products can effectively choke off the second hand market. It complements the boots theory nicely [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory

Post reply on HN