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

Goodbye non-KISS appliances

willbush.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 499 posts

Re: Goodbye non-KISS appliances

#241

Post by madaxe_again »

qwertox wrote: post #162
brodsky wrote: post #25

When we upgraded our appliances, the "smart" or "wifi-enabled" ones were specifically avoided like the plague. "Dumb" appliances - especially fridges, for some reason - are becoming hard to come by, but they do exist. Electrolux, KitchenAid, even LG all make some no-frills models that can save both money and frustration. Hopefully those companies continue serving the "luddite techie" market.

I've "smartified" my washing machine by using as smart plug with included power meter. This gives me all the info I want to know about the washing machine and there are no vendors spying on my washing habits. When the replacement thermostat of my fridge broke I replaced it with an ESP32 with a DS18B20 and a relay, now it posts temperature data to a logging server and the temperature range can be adjusted over WiFi wh…

I’ve done the same with my washing machine, and a tiny bit of automation has homeassistant tell me when the laundry is done.

Re: Goodbye non-KISS appliances

#242

Post by api »

RajT88 wrote: post #231

My fridge is not pretty, but it has been running for 20 years straight with the only hiccups being power outages. I really do not expect that a newer fridge will last as long. I may try and find something in brushed aluminum off Craigslist which has been sitting in someone's garage since 2000 when this one eventually goes. I have an aunt who has had a fridge running without issues since about 1962. It is all white ce…

Real world control systems need to be able to scale up and down. Our financial and corporate systems only know how to scale up, middle along, or fail catastrophically. There is no mechanism in the world of capital and corporations for scaling something down gracefully if a market is mostly saturated but we still need some of something.

One solution could be to side step the issue by getting really good at flexible just in time manufacturing. This lets you decouple the company from products. When someone needs a fridge, a fridge is made. The companies running the factories could be big build to order companies that could make a huge variety of things and the plans could be for sale by “fabless” appliance companies or open source.

This is sort of how chip and electronic parts manufacture works.

In this model making something with a really long life span is fine. You might run low on fridge orders, but that just means your factories are free to make e-bikes or server racks or heat pumps or whatever the thing with demand happens to be.

Re: Goodbye non-KISS appliances

#243

Post by thfuran »

comboy wrote: post #150
al_borland wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should also hope they remain cheaper, and companies don’t start selling the “smart” appliances for less with the idea that they can somehow makeup for it on data collection or ongoing upsells and subscriptions.

I wouldn't. Cost to make a device "smart" is much less than $1 in parts, app and infrastructure are not rocket science and even with no evil intentions you get very valuable data on usage, what breaks first, environment, location etc. Seems like a no-brainer. Those will soon also not require you to connect them to your wifi, NB-IoT both chips and plans cost for businesses are already very good.

Where are you shopping that you can find a 20" touch screen for under a dollar?

Re: Goodbye non-KISS appliances

#244

Post by api »

madaxe_again wrote: post #239
kd913 wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They may run, but the power consumption your old fridge freezers are wasting would cover multiple brand new fridges many times over. Anything over 10 years really should be replaced. A bit like leds vs incandescent at this point time. Especially problematic given a fridge freezer runs 24/7 and is the largest contributor to your energy bills. Also isn’t this a classic example of old things that survive are likely more…

The longevity and the power use are connected. Modern appliances use a very low viscosity oil in the compressor pump, and as a result use less power, but also wear faster. The old ones use a much more viscous oil which gives decades of use at the expense of higher power consumption.

There has to be ways to make the more efficient models more reliable. There’s just little incentive since units failing keeps the orders coming. You want the unit to last the warranty duration plus one minute.

Re: Goodbye non-KISS appliances

#245

Post by shepherdjerred »

czechdeveloper wrote: post #59
imjonse wrote: post #9

Appliance engineers probably have their equivalent of "Kubernetes and SPA used for no good reason at all and now we can't focus on the actual features"

By now, making UI with (by now not completely) SPA frameworks specifically made for that task is just better developer experience. I won't go back to pretty much html string concation via templates. Why do people keep pretending it's better in any way is lost on me.

Astro gets you the best of both: https://astro.build

Re: Goodbye non-KISS appliances

#246

Post by asystole »

AndrewDavis wrote: post #113
arter4 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I agree. I'm not a luddite per se - heck, I make a living out of making stuff talk to one another on a network. But I don't get the appeal, from a customer standpoint, of having all physical objects talk to you or to the Internet. Like, why? I get it when it comes to alarm systems. Being able to get a notification when someone breaks in is nice, because the alarm system is mostly doing its job when you're not at…

Even appliances that aren't internet connected are going down this terrible UX path. My old washing machine had nobs (dials) you turn. You put the clothes and soap in, close the door and press the button. My preference of type of wash and water temperature were all "saved" by the nob position. My current washing machine, nob is type of wash, capacitive touch buttons for everything else. Keeping the nob "on" keeps the…

Unrelated, but the word knob has a k in it. :)

Re: Goodbye non-KISS appliances

#247

Post by yarekt »

AndrewDavis wrote: post #113
arter4 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I agree. I'm not a luddite per se - heck, I make a living out of making stuff talk to one another on a network. But I don't get the appeal, from a customer standpoint, of having all physical objects talk to you or to the Internet. Like, why? I get it when it comes to alarm systems. Being able to get a notification when someone breaks in is nice, because the alarm system is mostly doing its job when you're not at…

Even appliances that aren't internet connected are going down this terrible UX path. My old washing machine had nobs (dials) you turn. You put the clothes and soap in, close the door and press the button. My preference of type of wash and water temperature were all "saved" by the nob position. My current washing machine, nob is type of wash, capacitive touch buttons for everything else. Keeping the nob "on" keeps the…

knobs are more expensive :(

Re: Goodbye non-KISS appliances

#248

Post by asystole »

midasuni wrote: post #144
beAbU wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what do you do if you are not home?

So the fridge just opened itself? Ok, I’ll bite. What do you do? Your phone has just told you the fridge door is open. Now what? You aren’t at home, so you can’t close it.

Some people have family or close friends who have copies of our keys to deal with just such a scenario (or to water our plants when we're away on a longer holiday).

Re: Goodbye non-KISS appliances

#249

Post by inferiorhuman »

arter4 wrote: post #81
darreninthenet wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fridge/freezer one is handy for temperature and door open alarms

Yes, but how often do you experience power outages or other things that lead to weird temperature changes? I think in the last 15 years it only happened to me once. And how often does a fridge door open on its own? Most people don't need other people (or things) to remind them that they should tie their shoes before getting out. If you don't need that, I assume you know you should close the fridge door.

  Yes, but how often do you experience power outages … I think in the last
  15 years it only happened to me once.
You must not live in Texas or California.

  or other things that lead to weird temperature changes?
You're a lot more upbeat on current fridge reliability than I am. LG lost a class action suit regarding their junk "linear" compressors a few years ago, and despite multiple supposed revisions you can still find appliance repair folks badmouthing their current crop of linear compressors on youtube. To the best of my knowledge, my vile LG ex-fridge didn't have a linear compressor, but it did have a habit of icing up the evap coils until the fucking thing couldn't keep the temp down. LG sent a tech out twice, he couldn't figure it out. I got tired of throwing out food and tired of ice buildup hitting the fan and making an absolute cacophony in the middle of the night… so they finally bought it back.

I've seen some grumblings that the switch (in the US) to R600 is killing durability, but I'm not sure I buy that. If you dig through some of the service literature out there you'll see that companies across the board are also cheapening the sealed systems (e.g. aluminum replacing copper).

  you know you should close the fridge door.
A common complaint about my current fridge is that the doors do not close on their own. The detent is wicked strong. I suspect you'd have to tilt it back to an uncomfortable degree to overcome it. E.g. the door probably wouldn't stay open at all on its own.

Re: Goodbye non-KISS appliances

#250

Post by thfuran »

michaelt wrote: post #171
bee_rider wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lower population density and bad zoning means the trip to the grocery store is farther, so you only want to go once every week or two. So, you get a bigger car, to fit more groceries and a bigger fridge for the same reason. Then, some stupid person fills their car completely with groceries, can’t see out the back window, and backs into you. So, you get a still bigger car, so they can’t possibly help but see you, and…

> you only want to go once every week or two How are y'all getting decent bread and milk?

They probably aren't getting decent bread. Grocery store bread is mostly crap and/or ridiculously overpriced (like $6 for a mid-sized loaf of 'brioche' with more sugar than butter), and bakeries are much less common than grocery stores.
Post reply on HN