skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I have sort of found this - some time ago (10 years maybe?) the "average" and unresearched purchase was "average quality". You knew roughly what you were getting by buying something that was a no-name brand or on a whim etc. "Cheap and cheerful" etc - it might not last as long as the more expensive brands but it would at least work and not break after 3 uses etc.

These days it feels like you need to do extensive research to make sure you are not buying something that is total crap. Amazon is literally flooded with totally random brand named (all weirdly uppercase? EEVYUI, XAATYE, WURIHT etc) trash which 9 times out of 10 (at least) will be awful shite. I have found myself going back to "traditional retailers" for a lot of things now as I cannot trust a lot of things I order online not to be the absolute cheapest possible shite ever produced. And it's not like they are priced cheaply either - example recently was a specific light bulb I needed - Osram and Philips had models on Amazon for approx £9 which I would vaguely trust, but they were hidden in a sea of made-up brands asking £7 to £8 which you know will fail within a month or two.

That said, I don't fully agree with the sentiment. With a little research and accepting that quality costs and so not buying the cheapest/second-cheapeat models we have appliances/things that have lasted many years - washing machines, dishwashers, coffee grinders, fridges, cars etc. Some of these we have replaced for other reasons like changing needs or wanting new features (e.g. we needed a dishwasher that dried plastic things since kids stuff is all plastic - the old machine was perfectly fine when we got rid of it and yea, no one wanted it).

It is somewhat galling to think "wow why am I paying £600 for a dishwasher when I can get one for £250!?" but then £600 only seems expensive because of the crappy £250 one that will only last a month or two past the 12 month warranty.
I read the comments on wirecutter articles. That's where the good suggestions are, if there are any.
It probably won't. Chances are it'll be just a shiny "high end" model which is the same parts and materials as the cheap ones but with some additional functions nobody cares about. High prices are just a market segmentation strategy to CEOs.

I've grown so disillusioned with these "products" that I've started trying to make them myself instead of buying them. It's difficult though. Even something "simple" like a high quality knife requires a lot of skill to create. I want to create at least one before I die though.
Sigh…there has never been an 0day Stagefright exploit in the wild. And even if there was it wouldn’t have worked on all Android devices due to the OS differences among OEMs.

Also, there are plenty of old iPhones that do not receive updates anymore and are just as vulnerable so I’m not sure why you needed to get that in.
Wirecutter is definitely hit and miss but I will say that their upgrade pick for towels (Riley Home) are phenomenal and have held up to everyday use for 3 years and counting:

https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-bath-towel/
I feel arguments that treat inflation as a magic singular variable around which the universe revolves ignore that decades of progress and technology and economies of scale are also factors, and they make possible in 2023 a hypothetical toaster that's both affordable and reliable.
Obligatory reminder that the internet is not a medical doctor and you should consult with your doctor/physician prior to actually doing something.

Or to put it bluntly: Don't take random medical advice from random yahoos on the intertubez.
For those goods which are in fact more durable and reliable (e.g. modern cars) the downside tends to be that they are less repairable.
They were simpler and easier to repair, but they absolutely did not last longer.
Does that include updated drivers? If no, then there are still many unfixed security vulnerabilities.
> I'd guess probably that logic analyzer supports X authorization, ...

Unfortunately, it doesn't. The screenshots in the blog posts are pretty much all there is. But even if it did, I wasn't even able to make my Linux laptop display an xclock on my desktop screen until I used the socat option. There's too many config files to get right. socat doesn't require any of that and it's only active when using the logic analyzer.

> A more secure alternative is to forget about X, and instead plug a compact PS/2 keyboard and pointing device into the logic analyzer.

Not enough room. Bulky test equipment like this lives on an equipment cart (I love it!) but it makes using a keyboard and mouse awkward. I'm not too worries about the security issues, TBH. In the unlikely case that attackers go through the trouble of entering my home network (why?), they're better at network ops than I am. The Linux machine that drives all this is for development only. All the stuff on there can be downloaded from my GitHub repos...
Just need to know how to fix it and have the tools. Have to perform good maintenance. Can keep them going a while. I’ve got blankets from decade ago and that time only because I flew to different country to start life. Have stitched up bags and shirts. Fixed bikes, peloton even. Motorcycle. Ducati from 2007. Dead in crash now but good till then.

Everything I haven’t lost mostly lasts. Don’t know what to tell you. Even like 55” TV I bought in 2014 for like $500. Life’s pretty good.
They didn't last longer.

https://auto.howstuffworks.com/under-the-hood/diagnosing-car...
+1 for Baratza. I have an old Virtuoso grinder that's about 10 years old and still going strong, never had an issue.
I wonder if this is the symptom of ever eroding purchasing power the average western person is experiencing. Everyone is looking to stretch their income further and are willing to buy ever cheaper, but flimsy goods.

Really the only thing that will fix it is stronger warranty law, this will make things more expensive, but it will massively cut down on landfill fodder.

A refrigerator that can’t last 20 years is terrible for the environment to throw away when it lasts 3-6 like many Samsung and LG fridges do…

I will keep repairing my ancient Sears washer and dryer for as long as possible.
My dad had a theory that "kids belong outside", though I think it was more of a theory that we lived in a small house and he wanted some peace and quiet to work on his thesis.

I guess he was more right than he knew :-)

Anyhow, a large part of my childhood was spent outside. I've worn glasses since I was 6, with farsighted astigmatism.
https://www.reviewofoptometry.com/news/article/no-refractive...

Seems like results may be mixed?
I've had good luck with toaster ovens, but even those only last 10 years before they die.

The heating elements should be replaceable!
Honestly if you could plonk down a ton of money for a reliable appliance that’d be great but that’s usually not what money buys you now. Spending more usually results in fancier styling, nicer materials if you’re lucky, and a bunch of unnecessary technological frippery that ends up making the thing less reliable, not more.

That’s the real problem is that the luxury tier of so many markets has thoroughly enshittified. I generally trust that Apple computers are Toyotas and a few other brands tend to last (or at least have robust enough support structures in place like with the former) enough that I feel more comfortable owning them but few others earn that trust from me.

I’ve heard good things about Miele vacuums, but apparently only the heavy duty canister vacs. Their more consumer friendly uprights are apparently mediocre. Other appliances I have no idea.
> If the story or characters or dialog are similar enough, he has to pay Puzo, even if the work he created was quite different and not a literal “copy”.

I don't think that you can copyright a plot or story in any country can you?

If he re-wrote the story with different characters and different lines he wouldn't have had to to pay Puzo. I'm sure it would have been frowned upon if its too close, but legally ok.
(Most) comments moved to:

Operation Triangulation: The last (hardware) mystery - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38783112 - Dec 2023 (71 comments)
What are you expecting? Toasters are not complicated devices. Are lots of people having toasters randomly fail?
Would agree 100%

fzf supercharges your shell history I can’t imagine my life without it since I spend most of my day in terminal
The author decries this phenomenon as a bad thing, and indeed it is from a sustainability perspective, but, as someone who owns a very old fridge, I have a slightly different perspective. Does my fridge work? Yes. Would I replace it if I could? Yes, definitely. Old fridges suck. They don't cool evenly. Modern fridges have much better layouts and compartments. Being able to dispense water is nice. Old fridges place the fridge below the freezer, meaning you need to bend down to access the fridge, which you access much more often than the freezer. The list goes on...

New things don't last forever, but they also don't normally need to last forever. You can't universally say the modern incarnation of something is the end-all-be-all. Generally, products are enhanced over time (modulo the enshitifcation factor), and this means people want to upgrade after certain periods of time. Making things cost more so they last longer than most peoples' desired lifespan for an object is a waste of money.

All that being said, it's never been easier to put junk out there on the market. The rise of online shopping has greatly reduced the role of "buyers" in the market. Without an experienced taste maker vouching for the quality of an item, it's very easy to end up buying shit.
XDA works a lot on reputation and realistically you will infect like 1k phones none of which will be high value targets. I don't see the motivation. Those maintainers do quite a lot of work to backport patches every week/month and offer OTA. Also I dont enable root when flashing, that is not required at all.
I wonder if it's going to stay legal to foil-wrap such boxes.

As for stopping them - there's no-one but yourself to stop them.
I share your sentiment. I prefer naive datetimes that are always UTC. Fortunately I wrapped all of these methods in a core utility module ages ago so changing it won’t be very hard for our project… but still feels like a silly thing to deprecate for seemingly no reason.
Maybe in 5 years apple with release a native version of this.
Totally agreed. I actually have both and Wirecutter recommendations have been utterly useless for me. Their entire focus has become "buy buy buy", just look at their homepage with deals and articles.
you do realize that a QR code "attack" doesn't have to be malicious, yeah? it could be some gorilla PR campaign of something like a local band essentially rick rolling the users. or sending them to the menu of the competing restaurant up the street. or goatse. or or or...

at that point, it could just be someone that printed up a bunch of stickers and plastered them on anything they could find. people love jokes. like unscrewing the salt/pepper shakers before they leave the restaurant type of asshattery. you really just need to get off this white knighting of the QR code and be a little more creative in your thinking of what could go wrong.

at this point, i'm just trying to keep going to make it look like this reply's length is worthy of what ever rabbit hole you went down in some vain attempt at trying to prove a point.
And yes, specifically talking about plugin based architecture. Not just a code refactor. Decoupling is the first step and the plugins will be created by internal team initially, the next will be to ensure security when external users publish their own plugins. The tech stack is Node.js.
I use a cast iron pan to toast bread :-/
I think you’re really over-risking Elon Musk (whom I loathe) and Autopilot and not understanding that on a day to day basis you will deal with drivers who are far, far more dangerous than Elon with Autopilot without the nudges. Don’t mistake a dislike for a rich guy seeming to get something others can’t have with actual risk assessment.
When I did it, it just required plugging wires into the port. The only difficulty I had was that it was a slightly unusual spacing so I struggled slightly to stick the jumper wires in, but after that it worked fine. Have subsequent Z10s changed this?

Ok after reading the docs, it looks like that board specifically fixes the non standard pitch. I managed without it, but I did have some difficulties with poor connection that the board would have avoided
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Post_Road
Again, it goes back to my original point: Some groups decided that they were going to adopt domination strategies and so they won because they were more unethical.

This memetically reproduces over 12,000 years such that we’re stuck with predominantly unethical growth pattern. In fact, there are many other options, but because dominance has so dominated, its the only thing people can conceptualize as a way to deal with existential anxieties.

This is all discussed in the chalice and the blade, and basically every other anthropological record. Egalitarian groups will eventually be overrun and dominated by property focused “growth“ and domination based cultures.

This is why we have the “turnings “and the political cycle, etc. none of the historical writers writing about these types of things like Polibius looked prehistorically because they didn’t have the information to look prehistorically because Paleo biology and anthropology didn’t exist.

It was only after Claude Levi Strauss that the real shape of human prehistory comes into view.
I think that is an odd comparison. Yes, there's parts of an industry like aerospace where innovation is slow, but then again if airplanes were build like web apps they'd get twice as heavy every year and fall out of the sky once per day.

Compared to the relatively high engineering standards and slow but at least continuous improvements in actual engineering disciplines, software is built so badly most of it should never see the light of day. If most machines we build were as insecure and crappy as software we'd have brought the Code of Hammurabi back already.
> The children most at risk of developing myopia are prescribed atropine alongside their time outdoors, and the results have been spectacular.

When I was a kid I got sometimes atropine drops, so my myopia could be measured precisely. I just hated it. I was forbidden to read while my pupils were stretched wide.

I wonder do Taiwanese medics forbid children to read when they prescribe atropine to them.
Ok no.

First of all: survivorship bias. All of the old appliances that still work are only the ones which still work. This goes for the author's juicer.

Second: things which have investment attention now are excellent quality and things which are waning towards the end of their lifecycle are having the last few corners cut before the Private Equity firm that now owns them throws in the towel, throughly wrung dry. Author's examples:
staples - the age of paper documents is over.
matches - the Bic lighter is a modern marvel.
plastic grocery bags - banned in more places every year.
pens - same as staples.

But now, turn your eye to products being actively invested in now? Some may be at their peak this very moment.

And if you want something quality, go spend for it. I've got an industrial stapler like you wouldn't believe, 50 sheets of paper easy.
There’s no need to change any region; just open Wallet, press the + sign in upper right corner, scroll down to transit cards, and scroll down to Japan section to find Suica as well as PASMO and ICOCA.
You might have to switch to, say, a JR train line. But that’s not a function of the paper tickets. Just different lines. Honestly the much crazier thing is that some trains go over tracks of different companies because they simply cooperate for the benefit of the consumer. You mostly don’t need to know whose line it is ever. The niche exception is for tourists with a JR Pass.
Personally this is what ends up happening to me when I try to fix small electronic devices like coffee grinders:

https://xkcd.com/1994

In reality I need to consider the cost of my time. It’s much cheaper to buy new, already keyed CAT-6 cables than to split and order a raw cable end myself into an RJ45 jacket.

If reducing waste is more important to you than time, then yes by all means try to repair things. But remember everyone has different priorities.
>there's no existing tech that will make it "like you're actually there."

A couple years ago a friend was over from the UK who was a serious American Football fan. When I was a kid, we could get good seats in the Kingdome for maybe $20, and those were not the cheapest available. Now it's on the order of $250/ ticket, for nosebleed section. Anyway... so we go with our $250 / seat tickets, and the jerks behind us proceed to just be completely obnoxious the whole game. Crappy generic pilsner beers were $20/ can. Likely needed a second mortgage for a hot dog. Seat was barely wide enough for one cheek.

Last time I was at a concert (Fleetwood Mac of all things), a fight broke out in our row. Haven't been back to a major concert or sporting event because it's pretty much the same -- super high prices for limited accommodation.

So I share all that to say - I've come around to believing that my living room is a better place for most shows. VR + live shows would be amazing - feel like you are there, with none of the down side.
All of the toasters sold today will be in the junk heap within 10 years
Because many engineers decided long ago that you’d handle these concerns at the perimeter and assume UTC everywhere internally. Should and can be a decision left to the developer, no reason to take this away.
Big part of the problem is the disappearance of brick and mortar stores, along with the constant bait and switch from e-rerailers making product reviews impossible.

That rave review was for an identical toaster with different guts, or with amazon reviews, something else entirely.
Baratza publishes service and diagnostic manuals too - if you’re handy enough you can disassemble your grinder, locate the faulty component, and order a replacement from them. I replaced our grinder’s faulty motor (died after 8 years or so) and the grinder is still going strong 5 years later.
> less idle time
Parents were not in old age when kids were 18
My granddad was just telling me of cars in the '40s that needed an oul change and "lube job" every 1000 miles.
You are making the assumption that Tesla will survive. A lot of things can happen in the next 85 years.
A huge number of the things most people buy weekly are made on machines not even made last century. Your grains, rice, cereals beans were probably made on a machine from the 1800's. Yep all the big brands.

My brother works at a co that makes custom repair parts for these machines he sees them all the time. They often have to fly people out to the factory to do measurements and calibrations because no documentation exists.

(Its sadly not a small mom and pop shop its one of the biggest mfg part corps in the worls. If you hoped it was some mom and pop shop that keeps these running.)
Related:

4-year campaign backdoored iPhones using advanced exploit - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38784073

(We moved the comments hither, but the article might still be of interest)
Don't get me started on game consoles....
I listened to a bunch of Car Talk episodes from the 80s and early 90s and holy cow, those cars were all breaking down constantly!
The Two John's
My problem with self-regulation is that time for that was 10 years ago. Maybe 20 is too much, but certainly over a decade ago... The industry had their change, they fully squandered it. Now it is time for the whip.
I’ve had the same toaster for at least 5 years and it’s fine. It’s… a toaster
It feels at least some of it has to be survivorship bias. Although I do believe there’s tons of cheap, low quality products now more than ever.
It isn't a misstatement, it is (as I explained) a common argument that falls within Marxist/materialist viewpoints such as Robert Allen's account of global IR, it was the dominant viewpoint when this guy was at uni, you often hear people in the UK of that age saying this stuff (I know, I studied economic history during this time) but the field has continued to progress since then. Water energy wasn't a "starting", it was the IR. Coal didn't come until significantly later (and the major issue with materialist history is also what happened in the 20th century, you had multiple countries attempt and fail to industrialise using this idea that energy intensity was the only thing that mattered, the biggest issue with anti-Eurocentric theory is that it was designed to explain a 40-year period around the end of the 18th century and completely fails to generalize).

What is anti-woke? You realise that stuff existed before zoomers starting saying everything was woke/anti-woke. Eurocentrism is a school of thought within economic history, it is nothing to do with wokeism...I have no idea how these two things are related apart from you trying to relate it to something you understand, i.e. pop culture.

"Pure innovation" fluff is the dominant theory today, McCloskey's books are the most important ones in this school. To call this "fluff" suggests ignorance rather than the superiority that you seem to be trying to portray.

Petroleum wasn't a key ingredient of IR...at this point, I am assuming you know nothing about basic aspects of economic history because petroleum wasn't widely used as a fuel until the 1930/40s (again, you seem intent on talking about things that you know rather than the actual subject).
I’ll offer a list of things I’ve owned that have lasted a lot longer than I’d expect:

- 2017 MacBook Pro and iPhone SE

- honestly, the Dre beats that came with above MacBook

- every Lexus sedan ever, hybrid or not

- Tumi backpack and carryon

- Sonos soundbar

- M Audio 88 key midi controller keyboard (survived 7 moves)

It sounds like the author’s problems largely center around things with motors and pumps, which tbh doesn’t surprise me. The high-end brand I’ve been most disappointed with in that regard has been Dyson. Been through about 4 of their full size and hand vacs.. so many random issues. Really not worth it.
You can probably access CR for free through your local library!
They don't force you to look at ads for a set amount of time though.
The concept of direct drive solar is very interesting to me.
The numbers in your post do not march your claim of the text not being there. Scaling production of existing tech 10-100x, or even 1000x, will surely result in new discovery too, but it we only need a few orders of magnitude increase in production, that's proof that the tech is there.

Compare this to nuclear. Let's increase our production levels 100x. Where does that leave us, assuming that it was magically economically acceptable to electricity customers to pay higher prices than necessary. 15 years for 2.2GW is about 150MW/year. 100x would be 15GW/year. That's nowhere close to being where we need for a full energy transition in the US.

Nuclear, if it figures out its huge problems with construction, will be a small player to help with climate change. But in the year 2023, we know the big players: solar, wind, and batteries. There's no more time for anybody else to scale to catch up. Nobody else has a tech that can compete with such fast dropping costs. The numbers and pace of change are hard to compete with.
Baratza also sell replacement parts for their grinders on their web site, and provide clear instructions on how to install them. I am delighted to support a manufacturer that builds repairable products.