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

What’s Wrong With The Honeywell Humidifier

angelalashbrook.medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 302 posts

Re: What’s Wrong With The Honeywell Humidifier

#271

Post by ttyprintk »

lemmsjid wrote: post #224
kortilla wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm well aware of why people don't like hearing they basically want slave labor. They don’t like it because it’s a bald faced lie. You’re accusing them of supporting slavery. Just a quick refresher on what slavery is (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery ) > Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave, who is someone forbidden to quit their service for another person and is t…

Slave labor is also a colloquialism for poorly paid work. The Cambridge dictionary for example says it has an “informal disapproving” sense of “very hard work for which people are paid very little” and has an example sentence of “It’s slave labor working in that office”. Dictionary.com’s example is “data entry at that salary is slave labor.” You can argue that colloquialism is a crass juxtaposition of horrifying slav…

As a colloquialism, with the day entry example, using “slave labor” means that the wage is so low that the employer is paying it only defensively in order to justify _not_ being a slave master or share-cropper landlord.

GP is competing with people who write as a hobby rather than a profession. Responses above are about the crass hyperbole in GP, not misunderstanding the colloquialism.

Re: What’s Wrong With The Honeywell Humidifier

#272

Post by mkingston »

ruph123 wrote: post #241
gnicholas wrote: post #80

A company accused Wirecutter of being pay-for-play, based on how how heavily affiliate revenue (allegedly) factors into Wirecutter reviews. [1] The Wirecutter responded here. [2] I wonder if this was part of the reason that the Honeywell unit was recommended. 1: https://www.xdesk.com/wirecutter-standing-desk-review-pay-to... 2: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/our-response-to-nextdesk/

As a German I and many others are religiously following what our consumer reports "Stiftung Warentest" recommends (except for high-tech products). Germans have very high confidence in the products and many companies print a good test result ("very good" or even "good" on their packaging). Reasons are that they are extremely thorough, unbiased, financially independent and can be quite tough. They have sophisticated te…

Anyone interested in a comparable organisation in their country might like to read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Consumer_Researc...

Obviously I can't vouch for the reliability of these organisations, but it may provide a starting point.

Re: What’s Wrong With The Honeywell Humidifier

#273

Post by g8oz »

RobertRoberts wrote: post #114
DennisP wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you perfect it, I hope you write up instructions and post them here!

I'm not much for blogging, maybe someone else can try it out and do better. I just wanted to share that it's not only possible to make your own, your first try doing a terrible job can be better results than store bought stuff. But it's ugly and a bit loud for most people I think.

I definitely think people would be interested. Instructables.com would be a good place to share your results.

Re: What’s Wrong With The Honeywell Humidifier

#274

Post by gandalfian »

Beside the point but if the water tank empties but the air stays dry where did the water go? You would think you could calculate at a given room temperature how much water you need to add to the air and see if the flow rate of your machine is great enough to work effectively?

Re: What’s Wrong With The Honeywell Humidifier

#275

Post by 8ytecoder »

gnicholas wrote: post #223
8ytecoder wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m assuming you have tried consumer report? They don’t accept any incentives from the manufacturers. They even buy all their test products.

I have in the past but not much recently. I got the impression they tested fewer products and had a bit of a lag in terms of publication. Perhaps things have changed though?

I’ve definitely seen missing products in the list. I usually don’t mind.

Re: What’s Wrong With The Honeywell Humidifier

#276

Post by sleepydog »

I use a Venta LW25 airwasher or a similar model. It performs very well, and there is no expendable wick to replace.

It is quite difficult to fully clean, as the main component is an array of thin plastic discs arranged closely together. If I wanted to clean it I would have to use a pipe cleaner to get between the discs.

Rather than doing this I have just started submersing it in a bleach or vinegar solution to kill whatever grows on it every 2-3 months. I've also started caring less about it being perfectly clean. My rationale is that it uses evaporation rather than dispersing water droplets, so it should be less likely for whatever grows on it to get into the air. I've used this humidifier every night for about 2 years, and so far I've only gotten sick when I travel away from home.

I used to have the honeywell unit described in this post. I don't understand the author's complaints. It was easy to clean. You can open the upper fan compartment from underneath, although I'll admit it does look inaccessible at first glance. I don't know if the author is being hyperbolic, but the fan noise was a low-pitch drone, not too loud and honestly drowned out by other ambient noise. I got rid of mine because I wanted to use it for a bigger room and I wanted something I didn't have to buy a wick for every N weeks.

Re: What’s Wrong With The Honeywell Humidifier

#277

Post by dylan604 »

m8s wrote: post #234
dylan604 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what makes the internet fun. You want to research something, but then you have to research the trustworthiness of the sites your are finding in the search.

We might have different ideas of fun :)

You must have been looking away when I used air quotes around the word fun.

Re: What’s Wrong With The Honeywell Humidifier

#278

Post by JohnJamesRambo »

throwanem wrote: post #263
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that too much bleach though? I do just a few drops in my ~1 gallon humidifier that works continuously in my clone room and it stays clean and even keeps the Serratia bacteria that make the pink stuff in the reservoir at bay. I do use reverse osmosis water to fill it though. Is breathing that much aerosolized chlorine a concern? A calculator I use is here. Tap water is about 2 ppm. https://www.publichealthontario.c…

Your what room?

I am a legal cannabis grower haha.

Re: What’s Wrong With The Honeywell Humidifier

#279

Post by devchix »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #220
DoreenMichele wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody is forcing you to write. I write because it's something I can do. I'm seriously handicapped and there are a lot of things I simply cannot do. That's a lousy argument. I use myself as an example for various reasons, but the reality is this a widespread problem and the state of journalism is a real problem, as I noted above. I'm well aware of why people don't like hearing they basically want slave labor. I've li…

> And that's why I say it boils down to an expectation of slave labor because, yeah, people basically get mad at being told "this is why this goes on" rather than going "oh, I had not thought to connect those dots. I shall have to keep that in mind going forward." Someone getting mad doesn't mean they disagree with you in that specific worst-case way. > These so-called "ethics" seem to boil down to "we expect writers…

> you could replace "writer" with almost anything and make the same analogy. Even something like "hitman"!

This is some extraordinary specious reasoning, comparing "writer" with "hitman". How is "hitman" a creative force for good for society?

There is value in good writing. We haven't figured out how to judge and pay for it directly. It's not hard to see that if you continue to not pay for something, it doesn't get done. And one day a billionaire will pay for it, as some special project. Bezos owns the WaPo, I'm not making any statement about editorial influence, but is it a reach to surmise the WaPo is more hesitant in publishing negative articles about things in Bezos' influence? He can probably give the paper away for free, or subsidize it. Then you will say, is everything bought and paid for by the billionaires? Do I declare for the fiefdom of Elon or the barony of Zuckerberg? It's miserable. This was literally a comment on HN last week.

There's value in writing, music-making, art, cooking, photography. That the world doesn't pay well for these things, or the pay curve is depressed except for the very few, is not a convincing argument that they are inherently not valuable. The HN crowd is in the Maslow hierarchy to be able to afford to pay for it.

Pay for the things you want more of. If you don't pay for independent writing, someone else will pay for it, and it's not to support your interests.

Re: What’s Wrong With The Honeywell Humidifier

#280

Post by analog31 »

gh02t wrote: post #143
analog31 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About the energy, maybe you can throttle it with a timer and still get enough steam.

They basically do that internally already, there's not much point. The power usage is offset if you're primarily using them during the winter in that the energy used is all converted to heat. It's not gonna be as efficient as a heat pump so there is some loss, but the heat added is heat your HVAC doesn't have to provide so it's not exactly wasted. I haven't actually run the numbers to calculate the effective power us…

Ah, good point. The real cost difference is the difference between heating your house with electricity or gas (or your landlord's gas). I think of that when I run my oven in the winter too.
Post reply on HN