skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I noticed at the most recent Milwaukee power tools event that they’re really going all in on specialist tools. This is a strong signal that they’re going to continue to cream the competition because irrational or not, people end up preferring a single battery platform, it’s not guaranteed they’ll stick to one brand for future power tool purchases but it’s extremely sticky. The Milwaukee battery power tool ecosystem started off being better than the competition by having better battery technology on the market sooner. Now they’re going all in on diversification of specialist tools.

Should i buy a dewalt or makita or bosch battery power tool knowing that i can add other common tools in future or should i go Milwaukee and enjoy better battery choices, and a far far wider selection of power tools for future purchases?

If i hadn’t started out with team blue, I’d be buying team red. I might switch when i need to replace batteries next.
> They just don't last.

Two words: planned obsolescence.
> Planning Poker in Scrum Sprint Planning every two weeks

I would argue that isn't agile at all.
In my estimation the most likely scenario that US authorities were envisioning is this one:

* The US State Department revokes Snowden's passport while he is in one or in transit between two foreign countries.
* If the passport is revoked while he is on the ground, Snowden is prevented from exiting the country, and is deported back to the US because the local government refuses to grant him a visa or grant him asylum.
* If the passport is revoked while he is in transit, Snowden is denied entry to his destination and denied transit back to his origin due to the revocation, his destination refuses to grant him asylum, and he is deported back to the US.

There's another angle that you appear to not be considering: The US State Department _deliberately_ revoked his passport while he was in transit to or on the ground in Russia. By doing this, they give FedGov the ability to insinuate that Snowden is (and was) a Russian agent from now until the time he leaves the country. (And given that the US will almost certainly snatch Snowden if he ever tries to leave, the man is likely to die in Russia.)

This would give them a perpetual character assassination tool, nearly free of charge.

This scenario is more complicated than the "bad timing" one, but it's no more complicated than yours.
> an example of doing just enough to get by until it is someone else's problem

Sounds like what I've been noticing in grade school education. Perfect grades for everybody! Just please move on and don't check for any actual knowledge acquisition.
https://web.archive.org/web/20220618130308/https://www.theat...
The complaint is that one could manufacture those more expensive high quality products at a larger quantity and, through scaling effects, one would achieve a lower price, which would make them accessible to larger segments of the market. I suppose that would be the market "working". Instead you have manufacturers churning out tons of cheap shit that breaks quickly. I guess most customers don't know how quickly different household appliances break, so they also can't compare that together with price. They have to assume that the more expensive appliances are also higher quality, but how can you judge that as a non-expert?

Household appliances are textbook examples of adoption s-curves, and in different phases, different rules apply for the market. Especially in the last phase of the s-curve, those manufacturers are hurt the most which build lasting products, because their own past customers, usually the best source for new purchases from their brand, don't buy from them any more because the need is still met by the still working product. So they either go bankrupt or get bought by one of the manufacturers that put in planned obsolescence and got tons of money from that, or they change their strategy before that happens.
I would only feel a need to justify my existence if my baseline activities gave a net burden on the world, like if I wrote robocalling software for a living. Or maybe if my activities were inconsequential to anyone at all.
The latest commit is from May 23 of this year. That's not "abandoned for over a year". Fractal Technologies is still very suspicious though.
Without numbers it's really hard to say how good or bad these engineering choices were in regards to the consumer to come out on top or not.

In my experience appliances are a lot more efficient and cheaper than they used to be. My new stainless steel fridge has much more capacity while using the same amount of power than the 20yo one it replaced (Which didn't actually fail, but the white coating was rusting all over the place).

My HE washer doesn't fill the entire tub compared to the old upright ones, so my water heater is used less, and spins at ~1,200rpm, greatly reducing dry times for my electric dryer. The recessed lighting in my house went from 90 watts per bulb to 12 watts for LED, and saves me $$ on cooling when needed. My tankless water heater heats up only the water being used, no more, no less.

I'm paying roughly 32¢/KW all-in (after taxes, fees etc.) for electricity in the Bay Area, so efficiency gains build up quickly over time.

Anecdotally, the only issues I've had so far have been with poorly engineered Samsung refrigerators, where the fans would seize due to ice buildup, not mechanical wear.
In Germany there's an independent organisation, Stiftung Warentest [−4], that anonymously buys various products in stores and tests them quite rigorously. Some may say perhaps a bit too well (including things like the manual, how easy it is to set up a large appliance, or whether toxic chemicals are used in parts that are handled), but overall they seem to do a very good job. Testing and scoring methodology is published as well. I trust them a lot more than Amazon or YouTube reviews or some random blog that got the product sent by its manufacturer.

[−4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stiftung_Warentest – the article also has a few pointers to international, similar organisations near the bottom.
I dunno.

>and suitable backup devices

First of all, I wonder how many people actually have suitable backup devices.

Secondly, stuff does happen. There are a lot of circumstances where a very simple compass and map--and knowledge that doesn't require elite M&C navigation skills can be the difference between "Um, I have no idea where I am and how to get home" and "Damn, I guess I need to do this the old fashioned way." Yes, there are conditions and locations where the "old fashioned way" is really difficult to do. But often there are trails and some visibility and you just need some basic ability to read a map and know what direction you're headed in.

Do I bother when I know an area and the weather is good? Nope. But for anything more advanced, I carry a map and compass as pretty cheap and easy insurance.
Habitual flint and pyrite usage negatively impacts basic bow drill fire making skills.
No moral framework. Have fun, experiment, do drugs, help others, learn stuff and then die. Pretty easy actually.
Same issue with a Dremel. Stopped spinning so opened it up and found it had a plastic coupler. Junk. Luckily I was able to find a 3d file and print a new coupler with my printer.
What/who in the world does justify its existence and to whom?
It's worse now - the cheaper product often lasts longer (as it's simpler) - I have a fridge/freezer thing that has basically no controls and no computers, and it chugs along.

Newer refridgerators with fancy water faucets and computers and locks have failed in the time I've had it.

Had a washer blow out on a computer control board; $750 for the board.

A similar washer blew out on the dial, $35 for the dial.
... that's possible? Don't companies from outside china have to set up joint ventures with a chinese company?
Why would I need to justify it? Justify it to whom?
Is the App Store part of the OS or not? The News app? All those your running out of iCloud storage messages? Or the Music app "helpfully" reminding you that Apple Music exists and you should totally try the free trial?
The market does, but good luck getting anyone in business management (in all but the most visionary of companies) to understand the need, let alone adapt a new solution.
I doubt they'll lower their prices anytime soon.
My company is working on changing the economic incentives for manufacturers, so that they will make high quality durable goods.

Here's how it works:

1) Each item has a unique serial number, and a database for storing maintenance records about the item.

2) When the item is going to be resold, third parties including the original manufacturer sell warranties on the item to protect the new owner. A manufacturer would inspect, refurb, and re-warranty on each iteration.

3) The new buyer pays more for the item, and the warranties on top of that, because they're getting goods closer to new goods in performance.

4) The manufacturers are profiting every time the goods are resold, possibly as much or more than selling a new one.

We think this model of the circular economy is a lot more likely to succeed than the current model which involves ripping things down to their raw materials then reusing those materials to manufacture new things.

https://mattereum.com/circular-economy/ <--- more here
I tried to use Thunderbird for this for a while, but there's a weird bug where it creates copies of emails that have the deleted attachments. You then have to delete those copies to fully delete everything.

Switch to the featured app here and everything worked seamlessly. Definitely worth it, as this way I don't have to pay for Google storage and can clean out a bunch of pure junk from my emails.
Ask HN: Best way to back up cloud accounts?
I have 15+ years and 500+GB of personal data in my Google account. I'm personally happy with Google's services, security, and privacy, and am not looking to switch away. However, I would like to protect myself against losing access to my account (random unilateral Google termination, ransom, etc).

What services do people use to back up their cloud accounts, such as Gmail, Google Photos, Google Drive, etc?

Searching for "cloud backup" is useless, because it only returns results for backing up local data _to_ the cloud, not _from_ the cloud.

I am aware of Google Takeout, but it is a horribly manual process to wait for them to export half a TB of data and then upload it someplace else. I need something much more "set and forget".

For Gmail I have considered syncing everything to ProtonMail (or similar) via POP/IMAP. Curious if anyone uses this approach? Although unfortunately it would only cover Gmail and not Photos/Drive/etc.
Are there adapters to migrate between some battery platforms?
Why can't a new competitor come in, make non-shitty products, and make billions? Is there really a grand planned-obsolescence conspiracy, or is this a mixture of survivorship bias, recency bias, and a strong imagination?
People value low prices more than they value longevity.
Could be.

E.g. the majority of consumer grade ice machines on Amazon (at least in the UK) uses a mechanism that is near identical. This extends to mostly copying a design flaw: Most of them a compartment used to immerse cooled metal rods in water, which then rotates out of the way to let the ice cubes fall into the ice compartment when done. Most of these are made out of plastic, with a motor rotating only one side. Problem is when it's stopped mechanically by simply hitting the end of the range of motion, which means the motor effectively ends up trying to twist the compartment. This works fine for casual use - the plastics holds for a while. But use it enough, and you get cracks developing. It's trivial to fix - some of the designs have an optical diode to stop rotation in one direction, but weirdly not in the other, and doing that in both directions would solve it

But I'm thinking that apart from not just coming up in testing (it takes a lot of cycles before it breaks), a lot of these problems spread because of cost cutting in the product development phase. It's a pretty obvious flaw if you observe the above mechanisms, and while you can cut a few cents of the bill of materials, without extensive testing you won't know for sure that it won't fail within the warranty window (they do if you use them as heavily as I use mine) and it doesn't take a very high failure rate to make an extra optical diode and wiring worth it. If people did product dev from scratch you'd expect at least some of them to decide it'd be worth it, but almost all of these are clearly just blindly copied designs (I'm sure multiple models must also be manufactured on spec by the same manufacturer).

As a result there's little real competition, and few customers will be aware there are better alternatives, especially because it takes quite a bit of wear and tear and so most people don't shop for these types of products often enough to realistically compare, and as you point out it's hard to prove (and takes a long time to develop a reputation).
Presumably this relies on some sort of private signing key being stored securely on the camera somewhere. Do we really trust Sony's abilities to make it impossible to read out that key?
It's just a little advertisement:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_IaVMsCbf8

They didn't post one in Ops.
I had a bad Hostinger experience. Within a couple hours of registering a pair of domain names through them in 2017, I started receiving spam emails and phone calls on that specific email address and phone line. Within a few weeks, I was getting upwards of 50 emails and a dozen or more calls every day. It took months to calm down, and even now 5 years later, I still get 10-15 emails and maybe 5 phone calls a month regarding one or the other of those two domains.

I have domains registered back to 2008 (and older ones I've let expire) and newer ones that are in their first year, and as far as I can tell *NONE* of them generate any kind of spam (or it's so infrequent that I literally miss it completely).

This only ever happened with Hostinger. And for the first couple of years, every email and phone call would explicitly reference one of the two domains I registered.

So I can recommend their hosting I guess, never had any problems with it, but I would never, ever register a domain with them again.
I'm talking about the "exports dwarf their imports" bit
>Last year, a Reuters investigation by Rina Chandran found dozens of lending apps in India that appeared to violate Google’s policies against short-term loans

just FYI - this is contrary to the product and the law of India. Google is not the regulator.

For example Manndeshi foundation runs 24 hour loans for women vegetable sellers - who take a loan in the morning and pay back at night.

Google Play "ethics" is US-centric. It does not take into account the realities of the local demographics. for example sub 90 day loans are illegal on Play - a lot of microfinance in India/Bangladesh is sub 90 days.

What ends up happening is demonisation of everyone not playing by Google Play's rules and gets termed as "predatory".
Yes, you can remove attachments with Thunderbird, but it requires a lot of configuration and it is highly error-prone. Disclaimer: I'm the author of Unattach.
I expect nothing less from a culture of people who buy a new cellphone every 2 years. Longevity in consumer products is not something we optimize for anymore.
Heck even without going "premium", you can pretty much just buy LG or low-end Bosch models of most things and be fine. But if you buy Samsung, you might as well budget for a replacement ASAP.
.Net Core* is supported

> cloud.gov supports applications written in Go, Java, Node.js, .NET Core...

.Net framework is tied to Windows, and is now considered legacy tech. Both AWS and Azure support Windows containers if you really need them, but they're nowhere near as easy to use as Linux.

* I'd assume that .Net 5/6/7 are also supported (insert rant about dumb MS naming conventions).
Or there is one or two manufacturers for all the various brands.

"Whirlpool brands include Whirlpool, Maytag, KitchenAid, Jenn-Air, Amana, Magic Chef, Admiral, Norge, Roper, and others. See all items in Dishwasher Dishrack.
Whirlpool also makes various appliance models for Sears / Kenmore."

And once you start looking up part numbers you realize it goes even further.
By not adopting marxist based ideologies
That's not at all what I said. I merely said that excluding leisure and an integrated life as similarly important traditional values is ahistorical. Work is a traditional value in western culture, but it's not the only one.
Someone did a review of his previous work on Riemann hypothesis [1]. Not into this field, but apparently that blog is being run by someone credible [2]. I have found a link to [1] via this forum [3].

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20220128195023/https://motls.blo...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lubo%C5%A1_Motl

[3] https://www.scienceforums.net/topic/124368-has-the-riemann-h...
Yep. I’m considering using ionic for our mobile website. One thing I really dislike about it though, is that it uses a ton of shadow dom everywhere with encapsulated styles.

That works if the abstractions are perfect, but we know they rarely are. When you need to do anything outside of the box, you’re in for a rough ride.

I’ve been thinking about building a tailwind-backed version of the same idea as ionic.
No it's doesn't work "fine". One of the failings is the artificial information asymmetry imposed by the companies' constant churn of products. By the time we get some non-seo actual reviews of the model A1000, it's out of stock and you can only buy A1000b and A2000, both made from different components. The market can't work as intended under these circumstances, because there's no way for the consumer to make an informed decision.

Consumers signal their preference for quality all the time. By buying the pricier stuff. But sometimes, somehow, there's no option anymore to buy X stuff - try buying a desktop CPU without Intel ME or AMD PSP for example. They just put it in every one of the CPUs at one point and that was that. People are not going to not buy newer CPUs.
Reminds me of even Apple recently having problems with one of its suppliers pulling a bait and switch on lcd screens.
One-liner if statements is another pattern I stay away from as much as possible...
I wanted to buy a framework, but they don't accept crypto payments. So I bought apple gift cards with Bitcoin and bought a MacBook pro instead.
I don’t know what it costs, but adding an axle doesn’t come for free.

If it did, those axles would always be on the ground. So-called “lift axles” can be raised because keeping multiple sets of wheels on the ground makes cornering harder, increasing tyre wear and energy usage.
After CSAM, I switched the main office machines to Manjaro. A lot of my colleagues sold their beloved iPhones and moved to De-Googled Android.

Luckily, the fiasco with Little Snitch was resolved, and I can enjoy a mac for occasional design work, but Figma is running well in the Browser and if I see any attempt to push me into Ad Hell, it is totally over.

Vertical integration is important for Apple, but as an old Apple user, this will be "no-fly zone" for me.

Actually, CSAM had a positive in my life. Since then, I am using my smartphone less and with basic apps, some banking, calls and chatting.
I would assume they can sign both RAWs and JPEGs. I can imagine a hardened coprocessor that can sign things coming from the sensor and image processor, so you get signed RAW and/or JPEG and you can't extract the private keys. Any modification later on means it's no longer signed. Unless I'm missing something, this is pretty good until someone extracts or leaks the private keys. Maybe they came up with something much smarter :)
Milwaukee is owned by Techtronic industries, a Chinese company
I think Kitchenaid's have that too, I remember repairing one years ago with my dad.
It's triply annoying as the computers in these devices absolutely pale in comparison to a Raspberry Pi - it would be nice if all appliances used one general purpose board that could be easily sourced; as it is nobody will pay $750 for a control board to fix a washer when a brand new one is less.
Crypto depends on blockchain. You clearly don't know much about the technology you're peddling.
I had a higher end Dremel that would intermittently die because the brushes got stuck in their channels once the motor warmed up. I was so happy when the speed controller died and I replaced that garbage with a $20 Menard's unit that's been bulletproof.
I’m more the opposite - I spent decades driving without GPS, and I got to see very little of where I went because I’m trying to read a map or atlas, not crash into anyone, and cross six lanes of traffic because the exit is on the opposite side of the highway. I drove the equivalent of twelve times around the equator and it was all a blur. With GPS I can actually look beyond the car in front of me and enjoy seeing what I am driving through. In recent years I’ve started setting the Avoid Highways feature and taking back roads everywhere - no traffic, no cops, no people driving crazy, lots of wildlife, lots of sights, cheap gas, etc. generally only adds an hour to my travel time.
100%. Information asymmetry, and also the glut of options make informed consumer decisions much harder than they need to be.
Someone reviewed that specific paper here [1].

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20220128195023/https://motls.blo...
You can get experience without being in charge of something
There are exceptionally talented 20 year olds. There are none with significant leadership experience.
easy.

people live and conduct business inside of my work product, perhaps for generations.
Yeah, sure, buying "physical asset NFTs" from you will suddenly convince major appliance manufacturers to change their ways and part with millions of dollars in profit.

Sorry, the problem you mentioned is 100% valid, but the NFT-based solution you are offering is a pure grift.
Because it's hard to make non-shitty products and be known for it.

By the time you have a reputation for quality products, you're often acquired or out of business. There are actually cases of this in some specialty equipment.
I never thought of having to justify my existence
I like this, if we can fool humans with VR goggles then surely we can fool the camera by using a sufficiently detailed print or a high resolution display