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Generation Junk

walterkirn.substack.com

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Re: Generation Junk

#461

Post by jefftk »

citizenpaul wrote: post #460
jefftk wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your grains, rice, cereals beans were probably made on a machine from the 1800's. Yep all the big brands. I don't see how that could work: the population is far larger than it was then, so our consumption of those must be up a lot. How could a stock of machines that was suitable then could be producing even half the volume consumed now?

I'm not an expert in this area so IDK. I could ask my brother if he knows if you really want? I imagine one of the differences is that they run 24x7x365 without any downtime unless it breaks (they never do maintenance only break/fix). These machines were super overbuilt so maybe they were never used at peak capacity back then either? Maybe there were improvements over the years? I assume the getting raw materials to…

My guess is that there is a bit of telephone and/or exaggeration involved, and the kernel of truth if thare a small number of extremely old machines in operation. (But they do not handle the bulk of the production.)

If you were able to check and report back, I would be very interested!

Re: Generation Junk

#462

Post by bbuff27 »

Before becoming a software developer, I spent 9 years as an HVAC technician, 5 of which were as an installer. One responsibility would be retrofitting new equipment into peoples homes, removing their sometimes 60-80 year old furnace/boiler. When I would take out such old systems, I would always get the same questions from the homeowner, “So this is going to last me another 60 years right?” In my head I would always laugh but kindly reply, “You’ll be lucky if you get 15 out of this one.”, which would be met with a look of disappointment and awe. Even the most expensive (and somewhat dangerous) appliances in your home are made as cheap as possible. The days you were taking out a 1920s boiler were some of the worst days. They were installed to stay forever.

Re: Generation Junk

#463

Post by keep_reading »

cameldrv wrote: post #406
spzb wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also a survival bias in that we don't consider the appliances from yesteryear that packed up back when disco was king.

Thinking back to growing up, we had an electric stove, washer, dryer, dishwasher, and refrigerator. All were purchased from '79-82 or so. 1. Stove died in about 2007 2. Washer/dryer were replaced with something "better", although they were still running in 2009 3. Dishwasher died in 2011 4. Refrigerator was replaced but still running in 2013 This was not just survivorship bias. Basically all of these appliances laste…

You can, it's SpeedQueen

> We test our commercial quality machines to 10,400 cycles or roughly 25 years of life in an average household.

> You probably want to hear that we test our electronic controls to one million depressions…yes, we actually do.

https://speedqueen.com/speed-queen-difference/

Re: Generation Junk

#464

Post by cameldrv »

keep_reading wrote: post #463
cameldrv wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thinking back to growing up, we had an electric stove, washer, dryer, dishwasher, and refrigerator. All were purchased from '79-82 or so. 1. Stove died in about 2007 2. Washer/dryer were replaced with something "better", although they were still running in 2009 3. Dishwasher died in 2011 4. Refrigerator was replaced but still running in 2013 This was not just survivorship bias. Basically all of these appliances laste…

You can, it's SpeedQueen > We test our commercial quality machines to 10,400 cycles or roughly 25 years of life in an average household. > You probably want to hear that we test our electronic controls to one million depressions…yes, we actually do. https://speedqueen.com/speed-queen-difference/

You're right, that's a good option for the washer. For the rest I have no idea...

Re: Generation Junk

#465

Post by MichaelZuo »

YouWhy wrote: post #452
MichaelZuo wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it does when there are several stages of prototypes and engineering builds before the actual production vehicle is shipped to customers... and the hundreds of other mechanisms and systems that major automakers use nowadays. I mentioned QC because it's the first screening for arriving parts, not the only thing that occurs. Do you not know how car manufacturing works? Anyways you don't have to take the quality of R…

Design iteration is typically a long tail phenomenon - new issues keep coming up as the system (car) faces new scenarios. Even a high-resource prototyping program can only go so far with scenarios like - wear and tear/part fatigue, adverse environmental conditions, local peculiarities (e.g. regulatory requirements for uncommon configurations), unintended but common maintenance mistakes etc. For example, a Fiat car my…

> Design iteration is typically a long tail phenomenon - new issues keep coming up as the system (car) faces new scenarios. Even a high-resource prototyping program can only go so far with scenarios like - wear and tear/part fatigue, adverse environmental conditions, local peculiarities (e.g. regulatory requirements for uncommon configurations), unintended but common maintenance mistakes etc.

Which is why automakers typically recommends a maintenance schedule that catches the vast majority of potential failures before they occur on the road.

How does this, or anecdotes of your family's Fiat, relate to engineering and verification practices of parts coming in from suppliers?

Re: Generation Junk

#466

Post by cereal_cable »

cameldrv wrote: post #406
spzb wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also a survival bias in that we don't consider the appliances from yesteryear that packed up back when disco was king.

Thinking back to growing up, we had an electric stove, washer, dryer, dishwasher, and refrigerator. All were purchased from '79-82 or so. 1. Stove died in about 2007 2. Washer/dryer were replaced with something "better", although they were still running in 2009 3. Dishwasher died in 2011 4. Refrigerator was replaced but still running in 2013 This was not just survivorship bias. Basically all of these appliances laste…

I bought a new Maytag washer/dryer when I moved. We were so frustrated by it that we decided we would replace them and then give them away. Had friends who were interested but, they couldn't get them to work at all either. They were literally junk straight from the factory. We had them serviced under warranty as well, just a huge waste of time and money.

This has to be a race to the bottom and yeah, technically somehow it did sort of wash our clothes, but it was a huge hassle.

Re: Generation Junk

#467

Post by keep_reading »

cameldrv wrote: post #464
keep_reading wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can, it's SpeedQueen > We test our commercial quality machines to 10,400 cycles or roughly 25 years of life in an average household. > You probably want to hear that we test our electronic controls to one million depressions…yes, we actually do. https://speedqueen.com/speed-queen-difference/

You're right, that's a good option for the washer. For the rest I have no idea...

If you find other American manufacturers of quality appliances please share! I'm always on the lookout

Re: Generation Junk

#468

Post by vinnymac »

ctoth wrote: post #127
vinnymac wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don’t even call them toasters anymore in my household. Our Cosori air fryer has a toast setting that works beautifully. It cost less than $250. It warms, bakes, roasts, dehydrates, as well as 10 other settings. It has 3 different racks, so I can toast 3-4x as much bread than I could in a regular toaster. I’ve only had it for 6 years, but it has held up nicely, no issues whatsoever. I guess what I am trying to say,…

> Our Cosori air fryer has a toast setting that works beautifully. If you're not aware, they had a recall on a bunch of models recently, you should check to see if yours was one of them!

Appreciate the heads up! I looked it up here: https://recall.cosori.com/

Fortunately my model is not on the list of recalled products. The one I use is an older version of the `Cosori - Original Air Fryer - Silver`.

Re: Generation Junk

#469

Post by thegrim33 »

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…

Wow, a cited source about modern vehicles being much more reliable, let's check it out!

- I click the link; it's a press release from JD Power which I thought is pretty well known to be a corrupted institution that more or less just sells off awards to whichever manufacturers want to pay the most for them. Oh well, let's give it the benefit of the doubt and read the actual study which surely has data to back their assumptions.

- The study isn't actually linked anywhere for me to review

- There's a link to " learn more" about the study. I click it, and it's another press release about the study. It has a download button at the top, surely this must be for downloading the study. I click it, and it's a 1 page PDF of the press release with no actual details.

- At this point I can click a link to go back to the original press release but nothing to actually read the dang study.

All checks out I guess, modern cars are more reliable!

Even if I did actually find the full "study" I can absolutely guess that it's entirely based on trash data like random surveys of consumers and would be near worthless without having a single real data point around how often cars/parts break down.

Re: Generation Junk

#470

Post by ranger_danger »

josephcsible wrote: post #169
ranger_danger wrote: post #16

Also don't buy anything that has a gibberish manufacturer name in all caps. https://www.readingeagle.com/2020/02/12/all-your-favorite-br...

Or anything that uses "【" or "】" anywhere in its title or description.

Full-width characters are not only used by Chinese, but legit Japanese things as well. Example: https://www.amazon.com/%E6%A3%AE%E3%81%AF%E7%94%9F%E3%81%8D%...
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