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Goodbye non-KISS appliances

willbush.dev

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Re: Goodbye non-KISS appliances

#361

Post by thsksbd »

Projectiboga wrote: post #316
thsksbd wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A RO undersink system costs $200 dollars. And it blocks everything but dissolved gasses.

Only downside with RO is it uses more water, but depending on water quality and cost it is often wirth it. Over on the carbon filter side there is KX media, which does a redox reaction and can kill giardiasis and help with slight contamination. It also does a great job against chlorine but chloramine is harder to filter.

If you live in my corner of the USofA the concept of "wasting" water is meaningless. I actually posed this question to an LA water conservation engineer guy. He didn't know how you could possibly water here.

Re: Goodbye non-KISS appliances

#362

Post by thsksbd »

startupsfail wrote: post #289
thsksbd wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That really isn't a good assumption. The West is undergoing a bureaucratic collapse where incompetent or out right maliciously corrupt people are subverting regulators. I dont trust regulators and have a five stage reverse under the sink filter. Result? In the last five years in my little section of the midwest: - I've dodged Pb poisoning when my local water authority switched corrosion inhibitors (note, this is afte…

Yes, and it’s a good idea to not trust bottled water as well. You could have some grandpa in Nevada having his own ideas how « Real water » should taste . And then its gets grandfathered and sold at WholeFoods. https://arstechnica.com/health/2023/10/jury-awards-229m-to-v...

I avoid bottled water too. A PhD in mtls science on plastics will do that to you.

Re: Goodbye non-KISS appliances

#363

Post by Liftyee »

arter4 wrote: post #147
midasuni wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“You are missing Evards brand milk, buy Evards for that fresh taste, I’ve added it to your list for you” Any potential benefit from such a device would be destroyed by the cancerous advertising industry.

Exactly. This would turn a fridge into yet another thing serving ads. No thanks.

This is why we can't have nice things. Any new technology is instantly leveraged to shove ads down people's throats and get them to buy more things they don't need.

Re: Goodbye non-KISS appliances

#364

Post by thsksbd »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #305
thsksbd wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That really isn't a good assumption. The West is undergoing a bureaucratic collapse where incompetent or out right maliciously corrupt people are subverting regulators. I dont trust regulators and have a five stage reverse under the sink filter. Result? In the last five years in my little section of the midwest: - I've dodged Pb poisoning when my local water authority switched corrosion inhibitors (note, this is afte…

You could move to my small village in New Mexico and join the water board. There's about 70 of us on the water system, and we could use more people to help provide oversight. The well itself is about 500 yards from my front door, and the water tank and pump house are right up the hill, I go by them on most morning walks.

No thanx. Spanish cartographers were very clear about the suitability of the Southwest to sustain human life:

Ari-zona. Zona Arida.

Re: Goodbye non-KISS appliances

#365

Post by amluto »

throwaway09223 wrote: post #359
Der_Einzige wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big note on this - Only the top loaders are available in the old-school "ultra-reliable" version that I think many want. Top loaders are more rough on clothes than front loaders. Many reputable repair techs claim that LG makes very solid and reliable front loaders which are more gentle on clothes than the speed queen front loaders. I was dead set on a speed queen top loader and then my wife started showing me this st…

I've used both a top loader (currently a speed queen) and a front loader washer each for more than a decade. I have many t-shirts that are 20+ years old. Any wear from the washer seems negligible in comparison to the wear from actually wearing the clothes. There's no discernible difference. But there's a HUGE difference in terms of ability to clean. If I'm out doing yardwork and I have a pair of jeans with deep mud s…

The LG front loaders are very good at cleaning clothing. Wirecutter has done actual tests, and they seem to perform nearly as well as top loaders with agitators, but they don’t damage clothing anywhere near as much. My experience matches — mine cleans even better than the top-loader-with-agitator than I remember as a kid, and it’s much much better than the crappy commercial coin-operated top-loader I used to use.

(They do try to minimize water usage, which means that if you have the water soluble sort of mess on the laundry, you may need to select a “heavy soil” mode or add something wet and heavy to the load. The former takes two straightforward button presses, although LG sadly seems to have switched to capacitive “buttons” on newer models.)

Also, the speed wash cycle is genuinely fast and seems to work fine.

edit: What do you mean top loaders with normal water usage? Most top loaders want as much water is needed to cover the clothing. They gain nothing except longer cycle time if you use more water, and they don’t get clothing clean if you use too little.

Re: Goodbye non-KISS appliances

#366

Post by jmcharnes »

EasyMark wrote: post #323
the_snooze wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, simple is good. Software is not simple. Internet-connected software is definitely not simple. If you want anything to work reliably long-term, avoid devices with remote dependencies that the manufacturer will deprecate as soon as they get bored of maintaining them. Anything you want to last more than 5 years should be able to work completely offline.

Yes, analog stuff can be built tough too. See the vacuum cleaners that still work after 50 years lol, because they were overengineered. That's not nearly as profitable, though. So bean counters (fail early, but after warranty period, fail often) are ever at war with engineers who'd rather make a good product for a fair price. I have heard good things about Bosche but yet to buy anything. I will definitely consider th…

My uncle gave me his used (!) Bosch dryer 12 years ago. It’s outlasted every other appliance we’ve bought since then.

Re: Goodbye non-KISS appliances

#367

Post by mlrtime »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #343
jader201 wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had never heard of Subzero before this post, and just looked them up. $10k-$15k for a refrigerator? I’ve only ever owned fairly “basic” refrigerators (e.g. LG or GE), that are about 1/10 of that cost, and have never had any problems with them going out or even degrading in quality (e.g. 10+ years). Maybe needed an ice maker repair, but that’s about it. Do people need to spend that kind of money for a refrigerator t…

Subzero became a "status" brand in the US 25 years ago. It's common to find them in US kitchens that are designed to impress rather than to cook in. (Just like Viking ranges.) Subzero might in fact be a decent-quality fridge--I have no idea because I refuse to pay a status tax on appliances.

"I have no idea" but I have strong negative opinions.

Designed to impress who? You can't tell a SZ fridge by looking at it, there are usually no labels. I know of a few professional chefs who buy these fridges, does that mean they are just buying them to impress?

Re: Goodbye non-KISS appliances

#368

Post by killthebuddha »

Related, thinking out loud:

Why is the following timeline counterfactual (as far as I know) for basically all household appliances:

  1. it was invented
  2. it was commercialized
  3. some decades of varying modes of specialization, advancement, innovation
  4. reach technological maturity/saturation
  5. open source designs with idiot-proof manuals emerge
  6. everyone uses the open source versions
  7. maybe a freelancer market emerges
  8. it's no longer commercially viable
  9. it becomes a near-zero-cost improvement on the baseline human condition
  10. focus on new technology
The hopeful view (IMO) is that we're just at a point historically where things like washing machines and refrigerators are still at step 4 and people like me are starting to wonder why we're not further down the road? In 10-20 years maybe we'll be at 6 or 7?

The cynical view (IMO) is that the capitalist system operates by pulling a bait and switch on the average consumer. As technology becomes commercially viable, we use the slack it creates to pump everyone full of skittles and pretty little liars and then sell refrigerator-television-vending-machine appliances until the Decadent Society collapses under its own weight.

Maybe a more moderate view (IMO) is that it's naive to think that everyone could possibly have the time or desire to maintain their own refrigerators? FWIW My take on this particular view is that we should be trying to develop a society where it's not naive, where the average human stands on top of centuries of innovation rather than cocooned inside of it.

/idk

Re: Goodbye non-KISS appliances

#369

Post by paganel »

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.

> luddite techie" market.

I honestly wonder how big that market has gotten in the last few years, and I’m including software/services in it.

I know I’m definitely part of that market and also that the most technophile people from my list of friends and acquaintances are mostly working in non-tech industries. For example I was very surprised when visiting an acquaintance that works in the media and the first thing he did when he entered the house was to “talk” with Alexa, we have such a device at home but to this day it still is unboxed, hence uninstalled (received it at an IT event).

Re: Goodbye non-KISS appliances

#370

Post by Liftyee »

bee_rider wrote: post #116
Twisell wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seem even funnier. From my research. The "side by side" standard US frige is what we call in France American fridge because it has two door and look so oversized and fancy compared to the standard fridge in france. The US "french-door fridge" take the oversizing a step further by adding a third door on the bottom of the "side by side" design. We don't even have a name for theses fridges as nobody buy theses, so I…

We do have a thing in the US called a micro fridge. College students will often get one for their dorm rooms. For the biggest fridge you describe, the extra space is usually a freezer. If you are going to have a freezer anyway, it seems like an overall savings to include it in the fridge. If you don’t have a freezer, you won’t have any icecream, and then is life really worth living?

Are these fridges compressor-based like the larger fridges or Peltier (thermoelectric) like a lot of food "hot/cold boxes"? The latter are hugely inefficient, though on such a small scale maybe it doesn't matter as much...
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