441–450 of 471 posts
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> 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…
Im very new to cars but I dont believe you at all My first car was from 2004 and I've been envy of many features, especially "security" ones of modern cars like cornering lights or QoL stuff like reversing camera that I had to mount as customization.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
> limitations imposed by governments to make it "safer". You have scare quotes there for some reason, but by pretty much all accounts cars now are so much safer than before. Like to an insane amount, over a 50% reduction in chance of fatality since the 70s/80s. > we have weak motors which roar like boeing at 5k rpm but still doesn't help to move car forward. And again it's working. Efficiency has increased even more…
Safety cones from driver knowledge how to avoid dangerous situations and hedge risks. “Safety” comes from useless bells and whistles, which give impression of “intelligent” system.
Bot sure what you mean under efficiency - at my books efficiency is how fast i can get from point A to B with minimal expense. Low engine volume cars lose it at every point
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My only point was that today you don't need to spend $5000 for a "good" couch. I don't know about the historical context.
To be clear, I wasn't refuting you -- you were correct.
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you really underestimate the living standards of 1950. in many ways higher than today.
I’m curious which ways you mean. Many things that we assume existed in the past were pretty unevenly distributed. Even something basic we take for granted like plumbing was only available in only a ~third of households in some states https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/dec/coh-plumb...
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The other day I was telling my wife that the next blender I'll get will be a "fuck you" blender. That's the name I gave to an old blender I had 25 years ago when I lived on my own while studying. The blender was an Oster brand and only had an on/off switch. I sold it to a friend when I left that city. Fast forward 25 years, my friend told me that his mom is still using the same blender. No programs, no memories, no m…
Blendtec or Vitamix are what you want. They have modes, but the motors are very very good and they stand by their products (8 and 10-year warranties, respectively)
> The strangely short power cords on electronics. That's lawyers, as well as the insane flagpole of stickers on each wire. The simple fact of the matter, is that people are willing to buy junk. They want a certain level of functionality, at low prices. Manufacturers (or software developers) have figured out how to provide a simulacrum of the functionality, for very low prices. These manufacturers put others, that mak…
I’ve had to buy a lot of furniture and other things for my new house this year, and one of the things that really sticks out to me is that practically every category of product seems to be split into a bimodal distribution: cheap crap & luxury boutique. There are practically no entries occupying the middle of the market that are on the basic end regarding features & frills but also high-quality. It’s incredibly annoy…
The gist I remember is that people lock onto a single differentiator: normally cost or quality. This moves most of producers to those outside points. Companies ‘trying’ to stay in the middle end up being more expensive (on a cost/quality measure) because they can’t reach mass production as easily as either the cheap or fancy.
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…
Of course, cars and engines in particular are more durable today. This is due to technological progress. Cars weren't designed to be unreliable back then, they were unreliable because they couldn't do any better. Two or three years ago, I bought a pair of headphones for 200 euros that looked pretty high quality. They're now so broken that I have to hold them together with gaffer tape. Soon they'll be rotting (or not…
I bought another pair back in I want to say 2019, and it's been just OK. The inline mute broke, but everything else about them seems just as quality (no pleather ear caps tho - just fabric which I think is an improvement).
In between those purchases, I've bought a handful of other headsets, all around 50-120$. They were universally crap. Either shit cables, shit comfort, or just wore out really fast.
Anyway, long story short - you can get some lasting quality products. It's super hard to tell when a brand has sold out to the capitalism devil though.