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The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

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Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#641

Post by atoav »

jpalawaga wrote: post #457
atoav wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run a media-lab at a art university and both HDMI and USB-C is flaming garbage. What you want is a digital video standard that simply pushes an A/V stream over the wire and negotiates the acceptable resolution on the fly. What you get is something that does too much, doesn't work half the time and does things nobody cares about. Last time I plugged in an HDMI source and the darn "smart" television showed the image…

The duty cycle on hdmi connector is like 10k. I imagine probably some of your cables in a lab would actually plausibly hit that without too much issue (then apply standard deviation: some will have broken much earlier, and some won’t quit)

You don't want to know what my headphone extensions (TRSm 3.5 -> TRSf 3.5mm) or my XLR3 cables go through. That is way, way worse than anything the HDMI cables experience, based purey on the look of the cables returned.

I get that HDMI is higher frequency and smaller faults show earlier, but the plug is just inadequate. The plugs are levered off by the stiff cable, the thickness of the cables would require at least something like a Neutrik-D-norm connector, but they do as if something smaller is ok. By this point I am just glad that the receiving side seems to be sturdier 90% of the times, but by this point I also wonder why the heck we don't just use BNC connectors and coaxial cables..

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#642

Post by nfriedly »

kevincox wrote: post #607
nfriedly wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not saying that a high price label guarantees high quality, just that the spectrum of cost vs quality has broadened, even within big name brands. I think this needs to be repeated. People tend to think more expensive equals higher quality (I want this to be true!), and I think brands frequently take advantage of that to increase margins without significantly increasing quality. For example: I've been through th…

The main problem is that the average person has no way to evaluate quality. The closest most people get is heaver == built better (which is probably a correlation overall, but not that accurate for any two random products). At the extreme end of this you have companies putting little steel plates into things they want to appear higher quality. How can consumers evaluate how robustly some Bluetooth firmware is written…

That reminds me a bit of The Market for Lemons.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#643

Post by [deleted] »

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #584
ericmay wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Oh, I didn't realize till the end that you were treating this as a team thing, and capitalism is "your team", so you must attack "the other team". Do you think that attitude affected the rest of your response, too? It’s just empirical. Both Communism and Socialism are failed ideologies. Millions dead. Millions more starved. It’s like when Libertarians want to bring about their ideology and people tell them to move…

50,000 people died by suicide in the USA in 2023. 12.8 million thought about it. 3.7 made a plan for it. 1.5 million attempted it. https://www.cdc.gov/suicide/facts/data.html 105,000 people died by overdose in the USA in 2023. https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/trends-statistics/overd... In 2023 the average daily incarceration population in the USA was 664,000. https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/jail-inmates-…

[deleted]

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#644

Post by comfysocks »

WalterBright wrote: post #543
klik99 wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly what I came to say - growth as the primary goal DOES create innovation, until innovation in that field yields diminishing returns or bottoms out completely, then it creates shittier and shittier product. The entire American version of capitalism is built around growth as the primary goal, which did great things, but now (unequally, some sectors are still innovating) is creating more and more shitty th…

Do socialist economies produce superior products?

It’s hard to compare. Almost everything at a mass market price point is made in China. From luxury iPhones to cheap commodity crap. With the exception of maybe cars, made in USA, Europe or Japan tends to be niche or specialty.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#645

Post by kldg »

just gonna throw this out there: I started a garden plot this year, all dug up by hand with a mattock, and harvested my first bush beans today; hecking great.

I got components in yday for a variable DC-DC power supply (though I can't seem to find the DACs I know I have because I have everything inventoried -- but I'll find them). Will give me wireless control and read of test routines for products I review (funnily enough, given point about reviews in article) via an ESP32. China takes my eCAD design and ships me PCBs I've had no issue with, and at less than $1/board (granted, it takes them a couple weeks, but I'm in no rush).

if you don't like what society's offering up, DIY. nothing wrong with being a little antisocial sometimes, even if only for exercise; "what would Terry do?" hoist the bird, fly the flag, and reject glowies.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#647

Post by wazoox »

xattt wrote: post #190
layer8 wrote: post #176

Many comments here are arguing that quality has actually gone up over the past decades. However, a common experience for me is that I own something of good quality from 5/10/15 years ago and now buy the successor model from the same brand, but the product has gotten worse, being cheaper made. And I have a hard time finding a replacement that matches the quality of the old version. It’s a regularly reoccurring frustra…

E.g. the race to the bottom of the Billy bookcase. In the last 5 years, IKEA has started using plastic fasteners to secure the backing.

Ah ah I have several white "Billy", the oldest dating back to the late 80s. The shelves are painted solid wood planks. The latest one has shelves made of beehive cardboard.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#648

Post by forgotusername6 »

gilfoy wrote: post #118
forgotusername6 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I owned a Nokia in 2003. The battery lasted a week and they were virtually indestructible. The phone never crashed or reset, the keys were so reliable and well placed that I could text without looking at the screen. The phone did not get slower with age. None of these things can be said about my current smart phone. Granted it does a lot more, but the quality of the things it does do is much worse.

> virtually indestructible Owned a Nokia in 2003 as well and it was destructed by some water. It had no Nokia Care and my grandma refused to buy me a new one. > text without looking at the screen I do it all the time by dictating.

Try doing that in class. I could message my friends without a teacher spotting it.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#649

Post by mousethatroared »

Zambyte wrote: post #478
mousethatroared wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The state of modern cars is scary.

The state of modern personal electric vehicles (PEVs) is outstanding though; good enough to replace owning a car for most people! I personally have been riding an electric scooter this summer, and paired with a nice backpack, it has comfortably replaced all of my regular driving. For people who want to carry more than me, an e-bike with panniers or a cargo e-bike would likely meet your needs. Electric longboards and…

I have two problems with EVs:

- I believe they're more immoral than ICE vehicles. They're existence displaces batteries for hybrids (yes I did the math)

- They're not practical for me for my use scenario. I have kids.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#650

Post by ants_everywhere »

swed420 wrote: post #620
ants_everywhere wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't easily recognize (post-)modern social construction in his worldview, especially construction of reality at large The most relevant piece is probably Theses on Feuerbach. Feuerbach advocated a materialist (e.g. essentially naturalistic) point of view to which Marx objected. His basic argument is that it doesn't make sense to talk about an objective materialist universe. That point of view leads to middle cla…

> he most relevant piece is probably Theses on Feuerbach. Feuerbach advocated a materialist (e.g. essentially naturalistic) point of view to which Marx objected. One must have a very warped understanding of Marx to claim he didn't advocate for materialism. Are you unfamiliar with his dialectical/historical materialism?

Of course I'm familiar with it. But beyond an unfortunate name clash the ideas aren't very related.

Materialism is the view that everything is fundamentally matter. Historical materialism is almost the opposite. It's the idea that there's some supernatural force guiding human history.

To quote Bertrand Russell:

> His belief that there is a cosmic force called Dialectical Materialism which governs human history independently of human volitions, is mere mythology.

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