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

381–390 of 471 posts

Re: Generation Junk

#381

Post by CobaltFire »

ghusto wrote: post #280
CobaltFire wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Miele vacuum cleaners are great. Our Dysons and other newfangled bagless crap came and went, but the Miele is still here, and still rocking.

I forgot to say we have a Miele vacuum as well. Great machine.

Re: Generation Junk

#382

Post by gumby »

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.

I enjoyed the rant nature of the essay but your comment hits the spot.

We admire the Victorian era bridge still in use but forget all the bridges that long ago collapsed, and ignore the overconstruction required of the survivors because mechanical theory was still developing at the time.

Also we used to have more single-application devices; while a juicer is often still a single-application device today, at the other extreme our phone has absorbed a deskfull of other single-application devices (and more). Usually with some improved reliability, some less, and also some loss of affordance.

Re: Generation Junk

#383

Post by CobaltFire »

denton-scratch wrote: post #329
CobaltFire wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Miele and Bosch are the only brands I'll rely on for "white goods". As far as I can tell, most other (european) brands are owned by Electrolux, and all built to fail the day after the warranty expires. My toaster is a Dualit - pricey, but very reliable, and very repairable. My coffee grinder is a manually-cranked burr grinder made of aluminium. There's nothing to fail (and I don't mind cranking for a minute in the mo…

I forgot to say that we bought a Bosch refrigerator, for exactly that reason.

Re: Generation Junk

#384

Post by raisedbyninjas »

jesterson wrote: post #341
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…

> Modern cars are much, much more reliable and durable than ones built at any time in the past May I know the timeframe and your experience on which you base the conclusion? Been driving for last 35 years. Every newer car is crappier in every possible way - comfort, speed, durability, quality, reliability. It's not some subjective observations - some 40-50 years ago automakers were accomodating customers, now they ac…

The F150 I grew up with only lasted to 130k miles. To make that feat, it needed an engine rebuild, transmission replacement, air conditioner repair, alignments, power steering repair, numerous other minor repairs. The dash had cracks from the sunlight. The paint faded without clear coat. The fuel gauge didn't work. The windshield leaked.

Our modem vehicles are virtually new by comparison with only oil changes and replacement of wear items. The leather seats have some wrinkles and the floor carpeting looks worn.

Re: Generation Junk

#385

Post by nunez »

> I can’t say the same about my coffee grinders. I use the plural because I’ve owned a lot of them, all bought in their original packaging and dead within a year

Grind size and consistency are everything when making coffee. As such, good coffee grinders are expensive as hell because of the blades and motors. Mostly the blades.

You can easily spend thousands on an espresso grinder (a grinder that can only grind ultra-fine espresso grounds, nothing else) because of this.

My Fellow Ode, which can only grind for drip coffee, was $300. It is a significant improvement from the Breville Smart Grinder I had previously, which was a significant step up from the Mueller single-speed, single-size grinder I started with.

I'm going to guess this was also the case 30 years ago, especially since they were bigger.

Re: Generation Junk

#386

Post by seanmcdirmid »

dl9999 wrote: post #333
dehrmann wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m surprised that this machine is still running very good I'm not. It's a Honda.

This isn't specifically about Honda quality, but I think it's a nice Honda anecdote. My wife bought a used Accord before we got married. Eventually it died on the highway and we had it towed to the dealer. The engine needed to be replaced because of the failure of a part that had been recalled (when it was owned by the previous owner) had not been replaced. Since it was due to a recalled part, Honda replaced the engi…

My Acura (up line Honda) was nice, but Honda has been really slow with the EV transition, so I left them for my next car even though I liked their quality. Hopefully they make the EV transition eventually.

Re: Generation Junk

#387

Post by cs702 »

Many of these junky mass-market products are currently stuck in a Nash Equilibrium[a]:

Each manufacturer is unable improve the product's quality without increasing its retail price, but increasing the price would make the product more expensive than competing products made by other manufacturers, who are in the same situation. No manufacturer can improve quality without raising prices and losing market share.

Their position is analogous to that of prisoners in the Prisoners' Dilemma[b]: Their best choice is the least-worst option for everyone.

---

[a] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium

[b] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner's_dilemma

Re: Generation Junk

#388

Post by hscontinuity »

I think the undertone of the article is missed by a lot of people reading.

A) The premise is that physical items which were produced because "machines" was the "power of the future" still; didn't become replaced by "code aided machines" sometime in the late 1970's and early 1980's.

B) This premise fell upon society's roles in life at the time! As mentioned in the article, likely most of the devices were made and used because often they'd be purchased "once" and "for life". Because - if you were cooking in a kitchen in 1940, 1890, 1840, etc... You weren't going to switch careers/positions in 3-5 years. This applied to many industries. Then pad on all the cultural norms; women in the home, men working on farms, factories, etc. To much greater degree than today.

C) Comparably purchased products had much, MUCH more limited competition in yesteryear. Mass competition did not show up utnil the turn of the 20th century, thanks to the industrial revolution of the 19th.

So, in summing it up I think the undertone of the article if reading 'between' the lines explicity implies that today's society has reached a point where the needs of what we purchase are identically matched to what is readily available for purchase, the norm ecomonimcally, and the completely and vastly different society we live in - has proven exactly what Victorian moods had suggested: useful or beautiful; all else has no value.

And yet we find the most absurd value in things we likely need not to.

Re: Generation Junk

#389

Post by nunez »

Mostly agree and disagree.

Kitchen and household appliance quality in particular suffered because many of the companies that make them are now brands owned by a small set of very large companies who outsource manufacturing that used to be done here.

Examples:

- GE sold off GE Appliances to Haier, a Chinese conglomerate. Their appliances used to be made in Louisville, KY; they now mostly do final assembly, with significantly fewer appliances being made there

- most refrigerators are made by Whirlpool, Haier, or Electrolux. Everything except high-end refrigerators are made overseas.

- many appliances are incorporating more complex electronics to "provide more value" in the form of mostly-gimmicky features at the expense of repairability and lower bills-of-materials (I.e. basically everything that Samsung and LG make). Think: oven ranges with touch screen controls that render the entire thing inoperative should the screen or digitizer go out, washing machines with smart features and touch screens that cease to work when they throw codes, etc.

However, most of these decisions are being made to make things cheaper to satisfy what customers want. Most customers will buy a $400 4K 75" panel that will maybe last three years and track the ever-loving shit out of them and their viewing habits instead of spending $4k 75" panel that will last ten years or more because quality doesn't matter; they just want cheap TVs.

Re: Generation Junk

#390

Post by limaoscarjuliet »

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…

Top Gear had a few episodes with old vs new comparisons. Needless to say the not-so-old classics were destroyed by average modern cars quite often [1].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hw-zCsybNtg

Post reply on HN