The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality • Hacker News Board

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#761

Post by qwery » Mon, Jul 21, 2025, 3:16 PM UTC

palata wrote: post #437

qwery wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Planned obsolescence is very much an actively employed, functional, business strategy. I think you're only considering one aspect of planned obsolescence -- where the product is designed to have a short lifetime. I don't know why you would believe that that isn't part of "business as usual", but there's more than one way to make a product obsolete. The typical case is when a company releases yearly model refreshes fo…

Not sure I like the tone. Yes, I have heard the phrase "last year's model". Say you buy a smartphone, and you want it to last for 7 years. If you buy the model from 2025, the manufacturer commits to supporting it until 2032 (it already exists). Now if you buy the 2025 model in 2029, it will still last until 2032, so in 2029 it actually makes sense to not buy the model from 2025. But I would say that it's pretty great…

For what it's worth, I see now how that would read as condescending and I'm sorry about that. I mentioned the "last year's model" thing because, to me, it's a phrase most associated with automobile makers and advertising c. 1950 -- with that business in particular often being cited as the originator (or at least, codifier) of the "yearly refresh" planned obsolescence strategy.

> I would say that it's pretty great that the manufacturer commits to supporting the devices for 7 years.

Sure. Your scenario is describing planned obsolescence, though. As I understand it, you're saying that the device will be practically unusable when the support period ends in 2032. It doesn't matter if it's 7 years or 7 months, that's something that came about because of a decision made by the company -- it was planned. Further, the company releases a new version of the product in 2026. The older model still works, but it has nevertheless been rendered obsolete, by an (arbitrary) action of the company that produced it.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#762

Post by xerox13ster » Mon, Jul 21, 2025, 3:18 PM UTC

Der_Einzige wrote: post #732

steveBK123 wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think even normies know about the selvedge denim. But where are the quality tee shirt, Oxford, polo, etc pieces that don’t fall apart in 2 years?

Gustin makes them, also wash on cold and hang dry. Normies do NOT know about selvedge/raw denim at all.

This is the way I’ve been treating my clothes for years. I still have clothes that would’ve been thrown away a decade ago, but now they’re my favorite, softest shirts.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#763

Post by Igwe_404 » Mon, Jul 21, 2025, 3:21 PM UTC

The tie-break between producing better products and why some organisations get out competed even with better facilities and product fine-tuning is this, when starting out one should not think only of trying to change the world,if you have what it takes to be the great one,fine but a better approach is this, for every project,idea,invention etc try to find the utility delta of the state of the art in that field and how your product is going to affect the people under the curve. Your product may not change the world but it sure does make a lot of sense to start out from a well understood and occupied niche, and as we continue to transition to synthetic data these kind of planning will prove indispensable as products/brands get reinvented,replaced or legalese opaque reporting obfuscation gets the better part of our collective pretentious studies

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#764

Post by pas » Mon, Jul 21, 2025, 4:05 PM UTC

simgt wrote: post #363

pas wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there are of course more than enough "natural resources" to sustain such consumption, the problem is paradoxically the opposite, too much easy to extract shit that we then emit into our own environment the fix is also not complicated (remove GHG from the air, remove endocrine disruptors from the food cycle, etc.) the costs are high though, but not that high, compared to - for example - the famines of past but as popu…

> the fix is also not complicated (remove GHG from the air, remove endocrine disruptors from the food cycle, etc.) Are you abstracting away the technical complexity when stating that it's not complicated? GHG removal tech that would scale simply doesn't exist if we intend to have some energy left to do anything else, as for removing pfas and microplastics from the environment, we are at the stage of running experimen…

ah, sorry, I am not optimistic, I just accepted that it's not a technical, logistical, or "resource constraints" problem

it's a coordination problem as you mentioned

based on this I moved to a place where I think things are a bit less crazy with regards to that (well, famous last comments ...eheh)

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#765

Post by pas » Mon, Jul 21, 2025, 4:06 PM UTC

cung wrote: post #394

pas wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

my nothing phone (1) full of very ugly scratches (and one especially ugly testament on a corner to me dropping it one too many time) was stolen a few months ago while I was in a house of worship (I was introducing my favorite girlfriend to the forbidden pleasure of dipping fries into mcfreeze ice cream with caramel - and while in this trance state...) anyway, the new Nothing phone (3a) is amazing batterywise!

Is this written by AI or why does this make no sense to me?

it's not AI (at least I am not aware, but the simulation argument is pretty convincing!)

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#766

Post by torginus » Mon, Jul 21, 2025, 4:53 PM UTC

lxt204 wrote: post #750

torginus wrote: post #749

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kinda get what you're coming from - back in college i had a lab where we had to make a NES-style game console from scratch on an FPGA - including peripherals and video output - which used VGA, that's how I got to familiarize myself with the technology. It was super simple, you just output the correct voltages to the RGB pins and sent the proper HSYNC and VSYNC signals, and that was it, worked like a charm as long a…

have you ever dabbled in creating games too? or just the console

Yeah, we did do some games, though nothing crazy - we did breakout and asteroids if I remember - not exactly groundbreaking.

The interesting thing about it was that we had very little RAM but the FPGA was quite fast, meaning instead of a framebuffer we scanned out tiles and sprites to the scanline at realtime, at a relatively high resolution (1024x768).

This combined with the low color depth (the 'DAC' was a resistor ladder per color channel, giving us 2 bits per channel, or 6 bits in total), meant we had that dithered, Transport Tycoon-y look, with tilemaps and animaton, so it looked quite okay by the standards of 2d games.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#767

Post by palata » Mon, Jul 21, 2025, 5:46 PM UTC

qwery wrote: post #761

palata wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure I like the tone. Yes, I have heard the phrase "last year's model". Say you buy a smartphone, and you want it to last for 7 years. If you buy the model from 2025, the manufacturer commits to supporting it until 2032 (it already exists). Now if you buy the 2025 model in 2029, it will still last until 2032, so in 2029 it actually makes sense to not buy the model from 2025. But I would say that it's pretty great…

For what it's worth, I see now how that would read as condescending and I'm sorry about that. I mentioned the "last year's model" thing because, to me, it's a phrase most associated with automobile makers and advertising c. 1950 -- with that business in particular often being cited as the originator (or at least, codifier) of the "yearly refresh" planned obsolescence strategy. > I would say that it's pretty great tha…

I do understand how my "premature obsolescence" may sound exactly like "planned obsolescence".

It's just that in my mind, there is a difference between "I put efforts into making sure that it won't last longer than what I plan" and "I don't put efforts into making it last longer than what I plan".

- Actively making the product worse is an arsehole move. The way to prevent that is to make it illegal to do it.

- Not actively keeping it alive is actually rational if it is less profitable. We do agree that it is premature for a smartphone to be unusable after 2 weeks. We probably do agree that it is not reasonable to expect a smartphone to last for 10 000 years. So we need regulations that enforces something reasonable upon company. Then it becomes rational for the company to apply it, because if they don't they will get fines and it will be more costly.

I see the first one as "planned obsolescence". The second as "premature obsolescence". For the former, I think we should be extremely severe with companies (the CEO who clearly asks for that should go to prison, if it's at the scale of smarphones). But the latter comes from a lack of regulations.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#768

Post by sershe » Mon, Jul 21, 2025, 6:34 PM UTC

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…

I'm in the same camp of the people who like using things forever. However, I find that I'm in a small minority... I am not even talking about clothing, fast fashion etc., people around me are constantly doing kitchen renovations, changing cars every few years, phones every year, etc.

What's the point of building for durability if there's no demand for it?

Moreover, if you look at expensive cars or furniture, the markup on them has to be higher than cheap stuff. Honda Fit is like 20% of the price of a BMW, but I bet doesn't cost 20% to manufacture... So if people wanted quality it would be better for companies to produce more of the expensive option. Either companies are dumb or people don't want quality.

I just recently got a coffee grinder that costs 3 times as much as my old one and it's actually better across multiple dimensions, including material e.g. metal vs plastic . But how many units do you think the plastic junk at 0.33x the price sells vs mine?

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#769

Post by trod1234 » Mon, Jul 21, 2025, 6:39 PM UTC

Der_Einzige wrote: post #731

trod1234 wrote: post #640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The noise is so loud, you can't find any signal. Shannon's Limit has been reached. Also, the knowledge needed to differentiate has been lost by many, and suppressed given the economic disadvantage of quality vs cheap in a money-printing economy. Unless you have a fairly good knowledge of sewing, construction, chemicals/materials, you end up getting things that look the same but aren't the same. With Jeans, most of th…

>You won't find any company offering Jeans that last more than a year or so I literally just linked to a pair of jeans that you will try and fail to kill over a lifetime of use for most people. If you still need bigger, Naked and Famous make 32 oz and 40oz, but the heavy denim crowd has bought them all and it's hard to find them right now. Trying to teach HN how to buy high quality clothes is like talking to a brick…

The link isn't something people buying work pants would buy.

22oz Selvedge has its issues, and under heavy use would last 4 or 5 years given societal constraints (i.e. you don't walk around in stinky clothes multiple days in a row).

At ~$124 + tariff, we're looking at significantly more for a five year period or a comparable minimum of $40/yr replacement.

Comparable products can be found with a replacement every year for that price, often better than that price, if one knows where to look. Its not just the material that is important, its the aggregate of many factors.

Most people don't buy quality for quality's sake.

The value of quality is derived by the benefit to human action, at least in a functioning market where no money-lenders without reserve have caused havoc; and when compared against similar alternative opportunities.

You generally don't buy work pants and care about the country of origin insofar as the functional quality remains the same.

You care about the effective use, and the cost in exchange. Demand isn't need, its the subset of need, who have the money and are willing to make the exchange and buy this over other comparable products at a specific price.

Given alternatives all things being equal with regard to effective use during a period of time, demand goes to the lower priced item or inferior good which serves the need at the lowest cost. (https://austrianeconomics.substack.com/p/the-subjective-theo...)

You don't seem to understand how economics works. I can understand the increased labor requirements, and the love of a craft, but it needs to make economic sense when you talk about buyers and sellers. Anything else is just branding/hype/marketing meant to mislead from the underlying important factors.

> You just don't know how to buy jeans.

I do, and in doing so it must make real economic sense (rationally), not following blindly to the mistakes of Keynes and other misleading variants or factors.

Re: The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

#770

Post by sershe » Mon, Jul 21, 2025, 7:13 PM UTC

beaugunderson wrote: post #583

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…

> 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. My most recent experience with this was a Fjällräven 30L backpack. I'd had it for years, loved it to death but it was getting a bit ripped up. Went into the store, bought the exact same model, went out to the RV…

I complained the same way about Speed 40, my 2011 one is more intact than 2018 one and I use it more even after buying the newer one. According to people in the outdoor industry the materials are noticeably more flimsy cause everyone wants ultralight ultralight ultralight ultralight. Nobody wants sturdy. Just look at carbon poles .. these things have no reason to exist unless you are setting a winter record on PCT. But they all but replaced much sturdier aluminum poles. Interestingly a few years ago this brand was suggested to me as one of those bucking the trend, but I guess that didn't last.