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Comment by pavel_lishin | Hacker News Reader

This is a good idea, but a lot of products are only sold for a few years before being discontinued; reading a review for a printer that's no longer sold (except secondhand) is unfortunately not very useful.

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I think this practice is hand-in-glove with the general commercial model that a review site like this inherently pushes back against, though?

In any case, I've daydreamed about doing something along these lines, plus an aggressive list of policies that companies/products/brands are delisted for violating (i.e., delisting brands when teardowns find anything they went out of their way to engineer for predictable failure).

Engineering things for predictable failure is often necessary when the alternative is a worse, dangerous failure further down the line. The classical example of this is the fuse - it's a device designed to fail first in order to prevent other, more destructive failures. I know that's not the kind of engineered failure point you're thinking of, but it's important to understand that things like this may actually have good reasons.

You could then buy it second hand no? Buying second hand is the best possible outcome from the environmental perspective. One of the downsides is that there’s often no warranty. This site could help alleviate that because you can pick out the products less likely to need that warranty in the first place.

Product revisions are indeed a challenge. I plan to add a way to say "this was an older version, but here is the current model, which has still the same level of quality".

There are precedents for this. One that comes to mind are updated editions/versions of board/tabletop games, which https://boardgamegeek.com/ tries to handle.

You're right but if a company can convince consumers that they've done it once, they're surely able to do it again. Unfortunately, technology changes too quickly for that to work in many cases.

I’ve also seen companies with quality brands milk it for all it’s worth. Newer products get made with 1/4 the quality while trading on the reputation they built with their previous higher quality products.

Craftsman was a good example of this. They use to have high quality tools with lifetime warranties. Now, that warranty is gone and they don’t seem much different than any other low end manufacturer.

Anyone have other examples?

Pyrex. The new stuff you buy now is a different product made out of a different material than the original glass cookwear they sold. The new stuff has much poorer thermal shock resistance.

https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/pyrex-glass-is...

Sadly, this is because the old stuff was _really great_ for making illegal drugs. Pyrex is just one bit of collateral damage in the war on drugs: https://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-03/gray-matter-c...

Yup, the Made in USA Craftsman has long been gone since it's been sold to China. MAC and Snap-on still maintain their quality but I don't run an auto repair shop to justify my purchase. I try to look for the Made in Taiwan Craftsman tools as a compromise or pay extra to buy German steel. I like the concept of Buy it for Life but sometimes you just need something once (like a Harbor Freight tool).

The Harbor Freight hand tools I've bought are really pretty decent. Wrenches, sockets, screwdrivers. I'm not a pro mechanic but I do a lot of my own auto maintenance. HF hand tools are least as good as current Craftsman, probably better IMO.

They're fine for home stuff, but take it from someone who used to be a small engine mechanic; they wouldn't last a week in a pro shop. that doesn't mean they aren't useful obviously for someone who uses them a couple times a year. I have some HF stuff as well but all my wood working stuff comes from name brand companies. Also China makes some good stuff, but you have to pay for it. I don't think they're building dams and airplanes with HF tools :) . I helped a friend on his motorcycle a couple of weeks ago and I was kind of shocked at how loose some of the HF wrenches were on bolts bordering on ready to strip them. I stopped and went home and got my set of old craftsman I got handed down and they fit much tighter. I would suggest getting some of the more "expensive" tool lines at HF if you're going to go down that alley for hand wrenches/screwdrivers.

Harbor Freight (and to be fair Home Depot's Husky) have replicated the hand-tool warranty of Sears - buy either of those and if the hand tool breaks at ANY TIME just take it to the store and get another one. No shipping, no fuss.

THAT was the real driver for Craftsman.

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