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Comment by chomp | Hacker News Reader

Yes but refrigerators back then were around $2-3000 in modern currency (for a no frills ice box). You can get a cheap fridge now for like $90 (mini fridge). Much of our modern lifestyle was created by accessibility of home appliances like washing machines, refrigerators, and air conditioners, and that accessibility was driven by companies making things cheaper (but easier to break).

You’re free to buy appliances like the stuff that used to exist. They are found in the commercial realm, and you’ll still be spending about $3000 for a no-frills entry level fridge.

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The other interesting question to consider is: how long do consumers want to run the same fridge? How likely is the fridge to be damaged in some other way that causes the extra life of the 50-year fan to be wasted away in a refuse dump or recycling center? There's a balancing act to do, between too short a lifetime, wherein the customer is not ready to replace the fridge yet when it dies, and too long a lifetime, where resources are spent to make something last a long time, and it gets thrown away anyways. The original video didn't estimate a lifetime for that motor, but I would expect about 15 years is a standard lifetime for that motor, and that about fits with people wanting to replace their fridge at about every 15 years. Sure, some will go to 20 years, and others will fail at 10, but putting a 50 year motor in a fridge is a form of waste. (There's also the angle of increasing efficiency, that also pushes towards a more frequent replacement cycle than 50+ years)

Considering that fridges today have built-in 24” touchscreen displays running Android and cavity cameras so you can see inside your fridge when you’re at the supermarket - the useful life of a fridge is probably on the order of 1-2 years before Google obsoletes the firmware and Samsung shuts-down the video feed relay service.

I've messed with these in stores and just been blown away at what a useless feature this is. Ah, yes, an appliance running Android Cupcake what a fabulous idea.

It's clear that some items have hit peak functionality and manufacturers are just bolting on nonsense to keep up the facade of "luxury."

But I'm sorry, running Spotify on my fridge is hokey, gauche and entirely unnecessary.

That’s the point.

The problem is they've just run out of ideas.

Just being gauche and gaudy isn't enough to qualify; typically there's either enhanced utility or extravagance and an old-ass version of Android running on my fridge is neither.

Same with cars now too. What's the point of a leather dashboard and doors? How could that possibly be better than plastic? Or ambient lighting? Or heated arm rests?

Buying status.

> What's the point of a leather dashboard and doors?

Aesthetics, then passenger comfort. It's certainly a _nicer_ feeling when you rest your hand on quality materials in the passenger cabin.

That said, I drive a Tesla Model X with the all-white interior - Tesla is famously vegan - so it's all pleather - and it made me a pleather convert (it's just unfortunate most pleathers you see are cheap and nasty and wear-down too quickly).

> ambient lighting

That's not a luxury feature - some form of ambient lighting is standard in every car I've been in. It's essential to help you navigate the passenger cabin in the dark without turning on the dome-light which can dazzle or distract the driver, such as seeing where the glovebox is or other controls.

> Or heated arm rests?

Same reason we have heated-seats and heated steering wheels: passenger comfort in cold weather. Also useful for people with poor circulation where being stationary (in a car seat) gets really uncomfortable.

Who rests their hands on the dash?

And I don't mean normal interior lighting, I mean the kind that is light piping all over the dash and doors that can be set to any color of the rainbow.

Leather is easier to clean. You'll regret cloth everywhere if you have have dogs that ride in the car, kids, or you enjoy getting dirty. Leather wipes clean.

Leather is not easier to clean than plastic.

> You'll regret cloth everywhere if you have have dogs that ride in the car, kids, or you enjoy getting dirty.

I just pull the drains and hose out my Jeep.

Leather is better for the environment than plastic.

I wanted to buy a new microwave oven recently. Every single model I could find committed at least two of the following crimes:

- Loud, ear piercing beeps on every opportunity. Why would anyone need to hear a beep every time they press a button? Imagine if an iPad did that.

- Speaking of buttons: over-complicated controls, for something that should be two dials and one button

- Ugly, spaceship like industrial design that has no place in a home

- Inner surfaces with holes and protrusions that would be difficult to clean

- Bright glowing green or blue LEDs that are always on, contributing to indoors light pollution

There were a few expensive models that were less terrible (red lights, softer beeps (still beeps, mind you!), OK controls) but they were all too big to fit in my kitchen.

My conclusion is that these manufacturers have no clue and no culture to figure out what a “luxury” product would look like today. They still think people find LED screens, chromed plastic and digital buttons impressive.

These are all things that drive me crazy! Minimizing and simplifying would be easy and save these companies heaps of money. I hope somebody will fix these things soon. Then, they can move on to fixing the clicking mouse.

Regarding the piercing beeps - I popped open the case on mine and put a piece of tape over the piezo buzzer speaker, which brought the volume down to just the right level.

I’ve had the same thought, but dismantling a microwave radiation emitter doesn’t seem like a bright idea unless you know what you’re doing.

You can usually turn off the beeps.

Go on Amazon - or go down to a Business Costco or whatever similar restaurant supply place (that sells to the public) is available in your area - and purchase a commercial microwave; Sharp or Amana are the ones most sold.

My wife and I got sick of our microwave always dying after a few years, plus having a ton of "features" we never used. Too many buttons, too much complexity, and too expensive to be buying year after year. So we went with a commercial 1000 watt microwave:

1. It has only a single knob to set the time limit in 15 second intervals - up to 6 minutes.

2. No turntable to break, clean, or wear out.

3. One cooking level - HIGH.

4. An interior that is super-easy to clean - just wipe it out, all surfaces are smooth and seamless.

It's only real downside is the fact that the light doesn't turn on when you open the oven door (it's only on when it is cooking).

Other than that, it's been a joy to use. It takes a bit of getting used to not having cooking levels, but other than that - it's not an issue. The trick is knowing that in a regular microwave, "cooking levels" are done in a "slow PWM" fashion - a duty cycle of the magnatron - so much turned on for so long, then off for a period. You can simulate that yourself if you have to, but we usually just thaw things in our fridge ahead of time (or put them in our sink or on the counter).

Not having a timer that can go more than 6 minutes also means you have to be paying attention if you are doing something long-term (cooking rice or something); just pull it out, stir it, pop it in for some more time. If you have to rotate something for even cooking, do that manually too.

Less functions, less parts, less junk to wear out, clean, or break. Win, win, win. Unfortunately, it wasn't cheap - but given we were replacing our microwave every 3-5 years, it'll pay for itself in a short amount of time.

I went Fridge shopping yesterday at Home Depot and only 2 out of the 20 models we looked at had Touchscreens.

at Home Depot

You just answered your own question right there.

If I look at Best Buy and Lowe’s it’s pretty much the same. Samsung and LG have more useless features than any of the others combined.

Can you explain? They aren't a discount retailer or anything like that, which you seem to be implying.

Another sample point and a different concern...

We just bought a new refrigerator this weekend, replacing the $3500 2011 Bosch that came with the apartment.

The Bosch burned out the compressor’s ECU - a $350 part that with labor would have been an $800 repair.

We comparison shopped all the appliance stores in NYC and ended up with a $2k Samsung side by side (not my favorite brand, but it fit in our tight galley kitchen)

PC Richard had only a single model with a touchscreen on the floor (Samsung French door). Best Buy and Home Depot had maybe one more from LG.

So on one hand, the concern that every refrigerator will have a useless touchscreen seems unfounded.

But... I was reading through the manual and was surprised to find instructions for connecting the appliance to my wifi. (MAC address available two hex digits at a time flashed through the temperature gauges)

Ostensibly this is to provide a channel for electric demand response (they even documented the api). It also connects up with Samsung’s SmartHome ecosystem (why??)

I have no doubt there is a full Android stack hidden what appeared to be a normal “dumb appliance”.

These hidden smart appliances are going to be great attack surfaces. I’m sure soon enough they’ll automate the wifi connection by making a back channel the nearest lightbulb or something.

Of course who’s following CVEs on their mesh connected toaster?

You probably could have found the control board for sale online for half that cost and replaced it yourself. It's no more that a couple plugs, refrigerator repair is very over priced unless they have to tinker with the refrigerant.

Meanwhile my French door fridge from 1992 runs fine and does the one thing I care about: keeps food cold.

What fridge is that? I don't remember seeing true french-door fridges in the 1990s (or do you mean a side-by-side?)

Heh - I should do something like that for my cheap home fridge:

1. JB weld some magnets to the back of a cheap Android tablet and stick it on the front.

2. Build a small RasPi Zero W cam with an LED light, running MotionEyeOS, pipe it's feed out to the internet...

$60.00 later and some sweat equity - I could have the same setup, and not have to worry about it going "obsolete"...

A fridge is overhead to most people. It's not worth more than the bare minimum in terms of resource allocation (money, time, attention). It's like a sink or toilet or some other home fixture. As long as it works most people will keep using it unless the cost of replacement is so low that you can do it on little more than a whim. The only time people replace them is when they break or if you're high class you replace it when you renovate the room because keeping it would "look dated" or some such.

Appliances don't magically disappear when they're replaced. When your "built to last five+ decades" fridge hits 15 and you want a newer model, you can sell or give it to someone else, who'll pull another 15 years out of it. There's plenty of people who don't care or can't afford to care about their appliances being in mint condition. As long as the fridge still cools, they'll take it. And after something finally dies, that fridge could still be taken apart and used to repair other models.

As for the increasing efficiency angle, I'm not buying it. I have a strong feeling that all efficiency gains are eaten by manufacturing. E.g. imagine you replace a fridge every 5 years, and each one is 2x as efficient as the previous one. I can't imagine how this uses less energy than running the first (least efficient) fridge for 15 years, once you account for the energy costs of designing, making and shipping the two newer fridges.

> As for the increasing efficiency angle, I'm not buying it.

It used to be true(r). As you keep halving electricity consumption with each generation of products, eventually it isn't worth replacing just to save electricity, even if the new appliance is cheaper than the previous generation.

The problem with fridges is... they're almost all used 24/7.

Re-using old inefficient devices is fine/encourage-worthy in low-duty cycle applications, but there's just a lot less usage variability with fridges.

Yeah but you trade a few watts for a pile of electronics with custom Asics, and "no user serviceable parts inside". And then combine that with a board 1/2 the cost of a new device.

Software and smarts SUCK on things that should be boring and reliable.

Worse yet, this is also directly related to the climate catastrophe issue. What would our world look like if we maximized for durability and repair?

I'll give you all a hint: we maximized for cost. And vehicle, appliance, junkyards, and trash dumps show it.

It's high time we make these companies with "manufactured limited reliability" to pay directly.

Fridges have a need to be cool 24/7, but not run 24/7. It's quite remarkable how sparsely insulated they are compared to 1980s kit. It's very clear that insulation depth has undergone the same transition to "as little as we can get away with" as shown with the motor in the video.

Efficiency gains have come from better compressors, and to a lesser extent increasing use of built in drawers and compartments, to stop all the cold pouring out the moment you open the door. Were they still insulated well, particularly as we have better materials to choose from, running costs could be reduced far more...

The real aim of modern appliance production seems to be to sell you the extended warranty/service contract.

The better fridges use technology like vacuum insulation panels to make the walls thinner whilst still providing the same level of insulation. This gives more interior space for a given appliance size whilst still keeping it efficient. I think there's diminishing returns from adding more insulation, partly because heat loss from things like the door seal and opening the fridge starts to become more important than loss through the walls themselves.

All I can say is the time that a fridge or freezer takes to warm in the event of fault or power outage has decreased markedly. Even trying to stick to best manufacturers and top end of ranges. There may well be more space, but that seems at the expense of at least some of the insulation ability.

These companies do predictive reliability engineering that targets 5-7 years. That aligns with how long people own homes and their liability for repairs.

There’s no waste associated with putting an electric motor in a durable good that would potentially last 25-50 years. If that were the engineering goal, they would be able to achieve it while adding a very marginal cost to the bom.

The goal is to produce consistent, known failure rates that maximize revenue for new sales and high margin service plans. The appliance maker does not pay for disposal, recycling or any other indirect cost that isn’t imposed by regulatory requirements.

> marginal cost to the bom

and far from marginal cost to engineering

Spending money to make things break isn’t free either.

> There’s no waste associated with putting an electric motor in a durable good that would potentially last 25-50 years. If that were the engineering goal, they would be able to achieve it while adding a very marginal cost to the bom.

Now, when you don’t stop at just the condenser motor, and apply that line of reasoning to every part on the BOM, your appliance now costs double the competition.

You can buy these appliances today, they’re designed for commercial use.

I looked into commercial ranges, not because I actually intend to purchase one, but because I'd gotten spoiled cooking on one and got curious if it was even feasible to get one. For those of you who haven't cooked on one, one huge perk is that you can get a low simmer with the heat spread fully across the bottom of the pan, not just in the center.

It turns out, however, that the standard depth for a commercial cooktop is quite a bit larger than the standard depth for a domestic one. Having worked (briefly, a long time ago) at a chain bakery, I vaguely recall the fridge being a very different size than a domestic one.

Sure, you're free to get commercial gear, but you aren't just paying more for the appliances: you're going to be paying to renovate your kitchen to fit them.

Completely ignorant on this, but ... how does this differ from a decent home-grade gas range? Does it not depend heavily on the cooking vessel?

Commercial ranges get hot. Fast. In a big surface area. My father in law was a higher up at a major food company that sounds like a major network equipment manufacturer. He put a commercial kitchen in our barn. It has roughly double the width and 30% deeper than a consumer cooktop. It has 6 eyes and will bring 3 gallons of water to a boil in less than 10 minutes. Preparing a meal in it cooks in a matter of minutes. We use16-20” skillets on it and there is no issue with hot spots. I don’t have the numbers but I wouldn’t doubt if it had triple the btus of even the best home model. The oven is gas and convection and cooks about 30% faster than a standard electric oven. The whole experience is just faster and larger scale. If you have the room and a father in law to pay for it I highly recommend buying one!

Looked up the model we have it it is a 30,000 BTU cooktop. Looks like the high end “home” cook tops will top out at 18000 btu. I bet the average home cook top is 10-15,000 btu. So I was a bit off, but it is definitely a much hotter stove. It is a very effective heater for the house as well so keep that in mind if you want to go “pro”.

We have some industrial washing machines and dryers and they each break down at least once a year. But so far it has always been easily fixable. Can't say the same thing about modern home appliances.

Try induction. It's like swimming in a salt water pool...

I'll recycle a comment I made in another thread a year ago: When clearing out my grandmother's house a few years ago, my uncle and I almost broke our backs trying to get the freezer out. It felt like it weighed a ton, even empty. My grandmother told us it had been a wedding present, and that they had been totally awestruck at the time at the generous present from her parents-in-law. After all, a decent freezer cost at least 2,000 kroner! (At this time, the average yearly gross pay was just in excess of 7,000 kroner.) My grandparents married in 1950. Since then, monetary value has been reduced twenty-fold. You can still buy a top-loading freezer for 2,000 kroner; I just checked. So - in 1950, you had to work for five months to earn money for a freezer (after taxes.) In 2017, I have to work one day for a freezer (after taxes.)

That’s what you assume, but entry commercial appliances are garbage just as much as consumer devices.

Your best bet is to look for used stuff older than circa-2005. That’s when the efficiency standards increased and manufacturers started undersizing motors in earnest and using all electronic controls that fail. This is especially relevant for refrigerators and washing machines.

Our current washing machine is a speed queen laundromat model (sans cash box) that was manufactured in 1988 and that I pulled out of the garbage in 2006 for $0, and put a new clutch in for about $50. There is literally not a better machine made on the market, and the efficiency claims made by modern devices are both questionably accurate and overtaken by the expected lifespan of 5-7 years.

Yeah, our house came with a Viking commercial cabinet depth refrigerator, and it has been warming up on us semi-regularly for no apparent reason and, after a bit of research, I discovered that this isn’t all that that uncommon for these units.

Is it running a de-icing cycle?

I don't think so: I didn't touch anything and it just starts beeping its "high temparature" warning.

I completely agree, and a major growth segment of electronics and appliances has been “pro-sumer” style devices. These are basically the same as their regular consumer devices but either more commercial features and management, or easier support and repair, or is just marketing glitz. It’s very easy to get fooled in this segment and think you are getting quality when you actually aren’t.

+1 for Speed Queen. I hear the newer ones aren’t the same but still way better than the same ol’ white labelled electrolux appliances that are rebadged to every brand on the market.

Laundry mat in college used speed queens. They destroyed a lot of my clothes, so no thanks.

My mid range top loading HE washing machine doesn't try to beat everything I own to death.

Not sure what the cost breakdown is there, but I like buying 100 shirts that last 5-8 years. A washing machine that ate them up in half that time would have a rather significant financial impact.

Weighing that against the cost of the washing machine itself? Eh, I'd have to think about it some more.

"Líterally not a better machine on the market"

There is Miele. They design their machines for 20 years of use. The cheapest models are as durable as the most expensive models and you usually don't need the extra features. They are still (more or less, depending on appliance class) very expensive.

We have a Miele Hoover (heh) and it's a brilliantly engineered piece of kit, expensive but it'd suck a golf ball through a hose pipe on max setting.

When I was a kid, my friend's mom had an old all-metal Kirby vacuum cleaner - thing sounded like a jet engine running. One day we decided to see if it could pick up a roll of quarters (his mom wasn't home). We ran it over - it shuddered, the lights in the house dimmed and flickered briefly, but it kept going, making a glorious racket. Eventually every single quarter was picked up and in the bag, and it ran normal thereafter - no damage at all. We opened the bag, fished all the quarters out, then went down to the arcade to play some rounds of Gauntlet and Smash TV.

It takes fractions of a penny to make something with electronics last several years longer than just the minimum 2-5 years. Yet the device manufacturer chooses the short-lived version.

Consumers should demand devices that have a long life and can be easily repaired ideally by yourself. As long as there are rapid technological advances, consumers do not care about the lack of longevity and the resulting waste.

Our parents had long-lasting household appliances, radios and TVs that could be repaired. It was considered standard to receive a circuit diagram with your device.

It costs more BOM money now and manufacturers will sell fewer of them in the future. And so they don’t choose that path...

>You’re free to buy appliances like the stuff that used to exist. They are found in the commercial realm, and you’ll still be spending about $3000 for a no-frills entry level fridge.

You can certainly pay that. And they are better than residential. But they are not like old residential.

Often these "made to fail" products actually cost more to engineer than products that last longer. It's just the company makes more money by selling you two of something than one of something.

Something to also be aware of is that some commercial "appliances" should never be installed in a "residential" (or anything close to it) setting.

I once had an employer who had this extreme Icee addiction. Our office was near a 7-11, and he'd be over there getting an Icee all the time. Well - one day he was one Craigslist, and found an Icee machine someone was selling for a few hundred dollars.

Since I was the only one with a pickup truck, he enlisted me and all the other software developers to go and pick up this machine - he was going to install it in the office. Yeah - he made terrible decisions like that - apparently paying us to do manual labor at software development rates was a-ok.

So we go and get this machine - heaviest darn thing I've ever seen, short of the cast iron fire place insert my parents had. We get it wrestled into my pickup, and drive it back to the office. We carefully get it up to the office.

Then began the long process of making it functional. He dragged me all over the place, I'm not sure why I was the picked guy. But we went to ace hardware, various welding supply places (needed CO2), and several other places - to get all the special hoses and other parts to fix the darn thing. Some parts we could only get from Icee itself - fortunately there was a local distributor - and I don't know how he swung it, but he managed to not only get parts, but also to get Icee flavors (we toyed with the idea of using boxes from Costco, but they had a different connector or something for the hose IIRC).

We got the thing all together, then began the process of cleaning it - because it hadn't been run in a long time, and there was gunk and other junk inside the parts, etc. It's crazy how complicated Icee machines are - heck, you wouldn't believe the manual for programming them (it used some kind of small 8-bit microcontroller system from the 1980s - probably 8051 or something like that - maybe even a Z80 - but anyhow, it could be programmed to make "the perfect Icee" - of course, in order to really do that, you needed a special scope to allow you to measure ice crystal sizes - I am not joking - the manual was easily 500 pages long).

So - we got it clean. Now mind you, again, my boss is paying me as a software developer to do all of this with him, instead of - you know - working on client's software. I don't know what was going thru his head. "Must have Icee" or something crazy like that.

So - we get it all done. It's clean, it's right. We plug it in, pressurize the system, follow the steps and turn it on. And it runs...

A few hours later, we pull the first Icee. A little runny. Pull a second an hour later. Better. Pull a third 30 minutes later. Pretty much perfect. So there we have it - an Icee machine in our office. It probably cost him $1000 not counting my paycheck - but "free Icees"?

Guess what - an office of a few people can't drink that many Icees - not even with a boss who has an addiction. We tried, we couldn't do it. We burned out quick.

We also found out that a commercial machine like an Icee machine, if it isn't kept running and used constantly (like you'd see in a convenience store or such) - that it will break down often. And this machine did. Each time costing a lot of money and time to source parts and fix it. One time we had to make a custom tool to pull the impellers that stir the mixture in the freeze chamber (the actual tool was god-aweful expensive), in order to change some seals. It was crazy.

Then one day, after Christmas break, but before New Years - one of my coworkers and I had to go into work (we didn't take the days off). I get there early in the morning. Our office was on the third floor. I walk down a hallway to the elevators as normal and see that the ceiling is leaking. I think nothing of it, but plan to call maintenance to let them know. I take the elevator up to the office.

I step out of the elevator. Squish. WTF? Look down the hall - water running under the door from our office. SMH.

Long story short, my coworker and I got things cleaned up in a jiffy using a shop vac and a rented rug doctor. We called maintenance and let them know, but we played stupid on the water connection and the machine (after they left, I checked the machine, and what had failed was a solenoid valve for the water supply). My boss wasn't pleased when I told him about the problem, but we got it cleaned up (he was at Disneyland over the break) over the day. Maintenance also helped with the cleanup (fans and more shop vacs). I'm not sure what/how maintenance or management said/did to my boss, but the machine was gone in a week.

Converting the cost into "modern currency" is missing the larger problem though. As companies are making things cheaper to produce, the overt government policy is to debase the currency so that nominal prices go up instead. Wages nominally rise too, but not nearly as much. So we get left with cheaply made appliances that actually aren't cheap, while the savings get funneled upwards.

> you’ll still be spending about $3000 for a no-frills entry level fridge.

And if you purchase it for use in a non-commercial environment, that'll usually void the warranty. That said, I'd still take it over the standard consumer models.

My wife and I wanted to do that ourselves, but without a major kitchen renovation (our house was built in 1973), nothing commercial would fit. So the last time we replaced our fridge (earlier this year) we just got another side-by-side. But you know what?

New side-by-sides have (mostly) become larger! And they don't fit into the spaces meant for the refrigerator in 1970s homes! So we couldn't even purchase our "new" fridge "new".

Instead, we went to the place where we purchased our first fridge, a local used appliance refurbisher/dealer (who's been in business since the 1970s). We got that fridge when we got our house in 2002; there was actually nothing wrong with the cooling/freezing functions - just that the icemaker and on-door water dispenser no longer worked. So this used appliance lasted us a good 17 years. We ended up getting a similar style fridge and so far it's been great.

But anything else, we try to buy commercial, because it's so much better quality (but you have to pay for it). We have a commercial microwave oven (we were tired of having to buy a new oven every time the old one died after a few years of normal usage) - it only has a single knob with a max of 6 minutes of setting and high-cooking only, but that's never been a problem - and the interior is super easy to wipe out, and not having a rotating turntable has never been a problem (if you need to even the cooking out, just stop it and rotate the plate yourself like old-times). It'll probably last forever.

A couple of years ago I bought my wife a Robot Coupe food processor. Ugliest appliance I've ever seen - it's basically a box with a 1.5 HP motor in it, with 3 switches (on, off, and pulse). The blade is like razor sharp and heavy steel. Shakes the whole counter when running. Chops and blends anything. Her old Kitchen Aid thing just died after a few years.

We also have an older model (early 90s) 4.5 qt Kitchen Aid stand mixer - not their largest model, but the next size down. It's a beast, and has never let us down. I'm not sure if their currently models are any good; I think I would likely go with their commercial offerings if I had to (Hobart).

So yeah - commercial is where it's at, if you have the space (for some things) and don't mind the utilitarian look of most of the appliances (we don't care - it needs to work, first and foremost) - oh, and the cost (none of the appliances I mentioned were inexpensive - but that's worth the peace of mind). I also like that they are all super-duper simple; if you know how to cook, you don't need all those fancy controls and settings, and fortunately for me, my wife does know how to cook (she used to work at a place that didn't have an oven, but the place next door was owned by the same owner and had a pizza oven - she learned how to bake cookies properly - and fast - in a 700+ degree oven).

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