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Comment by verisimi | Hacker News Reader

Does he talk about the design of the legal structure for his tax avoidance vehicle that holds the land he has bought up in the UK? lol

https://whoownsengland.org/2017/09/19/why-is-james-dyson-hoo... "By July 2017, Farmers Weekly was reporting that Dyson’s empire had grown to 13,355 hectares, or 33,000 acres."

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I really dislike Dyson.

1) Move to Singapore, citing that Britain won't join the euro as a factor. 2) EU energy efficiency test goes against his product 3) Campaigns for Brexit

I had one of his vacuum cleaners and it was under powered and always needed cleaning inside. I got a Meile with a bag afterwards. Much more powerful for less money.

Then the ventilators thing happened. "Don't give resources to medical firms that know how to build ventilators...give it to Dyson who will build it faster, better...unapproved and a complete failure

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/apr/22/covid-lan...

Although it looks like Dyson was not actually paid anything and covered the £20m development cost themselves:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52409359

And stitching up getting Dyson as one of only two brands of approved air ventilation in state schools. Grifter.

It's hit or miss. For a plug-in vacuum, there are others I would choose first. But for a cordless stick vacuum, nobody else is comparable.

> But for a cordless stick vacuum, nobody else is comparable.

I own one; if it is better than the rest then the whole genre of stick vacuum cleaners should be taken out back and shot.

Core function (sucking things up from my carpet and disposing of the content): charitably I would say it is poor for the half a room that the battery charge lasts for. Build quality: terrible cheap brittle cheap shattering cheap plastic. Price: extremely expensive, 2x anything else.

I have had some shitty appliances over the years, but those tend to at least be so cheap that the only guilt you feel throwing them in the bin is that you are destroying the planet and not your finances.

I wonder about this, I heard same claim before. I however owned 2 of them over the last 5 years(moved a country and did not bring first one). Fact that I bought the second one kinda tells the story.

Honest I never had any issue with them.. maybe if you have a huge house? Or really thick carpets. I find it incredibly convenient and it works well enough, convenient means you can use it every day and do not need to get through that barrier of getting something out of the closet. I have the charging station mounted next to the fridge and honestly I will never buy another kind of vacuum.

It certainly is convenient enough to use every day, but you have to. Any attempt to deeply clean a moderately sized room is going to involve considering a recharge, and certainly more work than basically any plug in.

I can think of a few small flats with all laminate flooring I have lived in that it would have been great in, but the $20 small plug in thing I had worked probably just as well, and not a lot less convenient.

Seems like a conventional, more powerful and cheaper vacuum that was the same factor to fit next to the fridge would suit you better.

I haven't seen a cordless vacuum that actually worked and have resorted to corded vacuums for my entire life.

Vacuums should suck, they should suck a lot but Dysons don't really suck all that much (haha)

Hmm that is kinda my point for my uses it does suck more than enough ;) but then we don't have any carpets except carpeting on stairs and it's charge is more than enough for that on max power.

If I had carpets in the house I think I would get corded as well. But why have carpets is a better question.

> if it is better than the rest then the whole genre of stick vacuum cleaners should be taken out back and shot

Great (and amusing) comment; we have three vacuums in the house: a 1984 Central Beam, a 2002 Miele corded canister, and a Dyson cordless stick vac. I've replaced the bearings, motor brushes, power head belt and beater, and smooth floor head exactly once each on the Beam. Other than changing bags and HEPA filters, the Miele hasn't needed a thing, and the Dyson, well as I detest throwing things out, I've fixed it several times to-date, but it truly is shoddy quality for the price.

The battery pack died twice - the first time, I replaced it with another Dyson pack thinking I could repair the original - no such luck as the PCB is sealed with a thick layer of silicone, and the thermal cutout pretty much has to be destroyed to be removed as it's epoxied between two of the batteries. I managed to remove all six batteries and found one faulty cell, damaging the PCB in the process. I repurposed the rest of the cells to fixing a laptop battery pack.

We were careful with the second pack and ensured it was only charged for three hours at a time after the batteries were drained, but it also died, while its cheap ($60 vs. $250) Amazon replacement has been solid ever since.

Then the powerhead stopped working. After taking it apart, it was obvious that the wires traveling through the swivel joint lacked mechanical protection from repeated stress . Most of the wires on "good" vacuums that pass through a swivel joint are protected by a coiled spring with plenty of slack. In the Dyson, there are two 18GA wires with thin insulation passing through the joint. The positive wire was severed, and the negative wire was very close to failure. I managed to strip away enough insulation to attach two new wires with appropriate slack within a protective spring (from a ballpoint pen). So far, so good.

I'd have to say Dyson stick vacs are engineered to fail in several ways. Interestingly, my wife purchased a Dyson canister vacuum for the night cleaners at her office, and it's still going strong 10+ years later.

I applaud your fine work. Funnily enough I had first gen canister way back in the day and it was a reasonably good product, didnt quite get the 10 years out of it, but respectable nevertheless.

I will keep in mind your experience, the nature of this beast and break out the tool kit at the first sign of trouble, as it appears many of the faults are really just quality or design issues.

Repurposing battery cells is probably just beyond how far I will go, I never got the battery building merit badge in my scout days, but never too late to try!

Thanks that was very informed and helpful.

I don't really disagree. They seem flimsy, battery life ain't great. But they suck better than any other cordless stick vac. Which might say more about the competition than anything else. I'm actually pretty impressed with what it picks up, given that it runs on a battery.

I had a Dyson cordless. I couldn't clean a while room on a charge. I live in a 2 storey house, it couldn't do the whole stairs. It got quickly worse. Lovely light format, but far too weak to be practical.

I find their stick vacuums are complete junk. I'll never buy a Dyson again. They get clogged almost every time you use them (you gotta either jam a butter knife down the main intake or take apart the filter, both susceptible to blockage). The max button gets stuck in the on position, the battery only lasts a few months. I don't understand the appeal at all.

The max button is like the old turbo button for your computer.

Does anyone really use 'slow' mode?

What type of floor do you and others complaining in the thread have? I own one, and almost never use the "max" setting. I have hardwood floors and a hardwood floor-specific head for the vacuum, so I'm wondering if all the negative experiences are coming from folks with carpet.

I use max for carpet, weak mode for hardwood. Doesn't take a lot to pick things up off a hard surface, but running the carpet beater off air suction needs a lot more oomph.

Carpet, and rugs; hardwood floors get hand polished in my house, we are not savages.

Turbo mode kills the battery faster and stresses the battery harder.

So basically when I push that 'max' button I am overclocking my dyson. Walking the glorious tightrope between a performance boost and molten mess of silicon.

Cleaning day just got a whole lot more fun.

Slow mode would increase the battery life from 5 to 10 minutes though.

It also reduces suction, thus requiring 20 minutes to do the 5 minutes of vaccuming.

>They get clogged almost every time you use them

Sounds like Dyson would be a perfect to start making consumer printers!

With air flow based paper loading mechanism.

I guess I've had better luck. It doesn't clog for me (but it does suck up so much fur from apparently clean carpet that it fills the basket fairly quick). My only real complaint is that the charging base is flimsy. I haven't broken it yet, but that's because I'm fairly careful with it because it looks so fragile.

They are generally the most powerful stick vacs, but in my research it seems like there are several more practical options (and for a lot less money). I like the vacuums with a single head containing both a soft roller with an exposed front face (for picking up larger debris while maintains decent section with hard floors) and a traditional brush roller behind it. The Dysons I have seen come with two heads that are interchangeable, and in my apartment changing the head between hard floors and carpet is a total non-starter.

If you want to suck sand out of a groove in a hard floor with sheer power, or get the most debris you can out of a thick carpet, Dyson might be a great choice. But if you just want to quickly do a routine vacuuming of your (smallish) home I think there are better cheaper options.

We mostly end up using ours for touch up work between deep cleaning with a corded commercial vac that I bought years ago. The battery just lasts barely long enough to make a halfway decent pass over the living room. Good for when I want to just quickly get the place tidied up without dragging out the rest of the cleaning gear. I find that we keep the house cleaner in general if it's trivial to run a vacuum over the floor pretty often.

Their hair straighteners are also awesome - the only brand able to put a curl into my wife's hair.

Hmmm, straighteners, put in a curl, sounds defective.

No, it's called a 'straightener' but it's a generic tool for controlling the shape of hair - can straighten or curl - both are intended use-cases.

Can hair curlers also straighten hair or is it a one way process?

I think hair curlers are cylindrical, while straighteners are flat. You can curl with a flat surface by heating up and then curling around the whole thing. But with a curler there's nothing flat to shape against!

I have googled it, a person on youtube claims to be able to straighten hair with a curler; some kind of magic I think - I am not willing to suffer the pain that watching the video would inflict on my youtube reccomendations to determine the exact form of magic or witchcraft involved.

Just searching for it probably did harm in and of itself. "Because you searched for..." type of stuff

Probably best I log out of youtube on the tv otherwise someone is going to expect dyson hair curlers/straighteners/curlers for christmas.

I have a Shark Vertex Cordless. It has a duo dry roller and a no-tangle roller. No other Cordless Vac had that.

It's last year model though, not sure what the improvements are now!

> I got a Meile with a bag afterwards.

Hiyo neighbor! I love my Miele bagged vacuum (Powerline C2), my partner hate it because it is lumpy to move around. So we have a second vacuum, the Shark one, for "less lumpy". I always use my Miele when I want to vacuum because I need powerful suction and brush to remove my dog stubborn fur which Shark one failed to do so.

Does "lumpy" mean "heavy" or "unwieldily" in this case? Or does it not roll smoothly or something like that?

My vacuum is canister one, so it is two-pieces vacuum which is why it is lumpy to my partner. The shark one we got is a upright vacuum.

I got the C1 after having a Hoover bagless one that was so weak it didn't even pick up all the dust from my laminate floors.

The Miele is excellent and strong and the official bags aren't even that expensive.

I hate my shark so much because it feels like cheap plastic and is weighted weird so it constantly falls over. Also the bin is comically small.

He's really good at building things that sound like they're better but aren't. Collecting dust and filth in a bag is just _better_ than putting it in a bin that you now have to empty and clean out. Large blades are better at moving air than tiny blades.

I've got myself a Miele vacuum and a Winix air filter. They are simple, and work great.

Don't even get me started on the worst designed hand dryers ever. Who wants to put their hands into two thin streams of air and move them up and down while avoiding the sides, and not being able to rub them together to distribute the moisture? Give ma an XLERATOR any day.

(And I hear the hair products aren't all that.)

I had forgot about those. An expensive and worse alternative to a powerful regular dryer

And his hand dryers in public bathrooms are so noisy I wouldn't be surprised if they cause hearing damage in the long term. Those things are awful.

Completely different vacuum cleaners, there's a dedicated reddit for it.

Check it out.

For the Meile or some other one? Please name it. Thanks.

I can't name it, Miele is probably good enough. That's y'all mean right? Miele.

Bag is in the "lower-end" "better", than bagless.

With bagless to get mostly the best experience (until you figure it out yourself) you will need the original bags from the manufacturer since they fit the best. Otherwise you can use other ones if you figured out it's been the same.

I choose for a bagless one, since my apartment isn't that big and my floor consist of wood. But the filter needs to be cleaned too, yes even the bagless ones need to be cleaned. But it depends how much stuff you are vacuuming and big your house is.

If I had two kids and a partner, I would take a industrial vacuum cleaner. (Since the price is not much higher than the consumer one.)

Bill Gates is doing the same thing. It's annoying.

https://agfundernews.com/gates-if-not-for-climate-then-why-i...

"Despite sustainable agricultural development being one of the key focus areas for his nonprofit Gates Foundation, the Microsoft co-founder claims that his farmland investments are not tied to climate. But while Gates might be solely focused on returns, one should not overlook farmland investing’s potential to drive sustainability on a massive scale."

how is a non-profit able to make farmland investments at all? What exactly is the difference between an investment vehicle and a non-profit?

But... these guys care for us!

Because a non-profit in the US just means that they can't distribute profits to the shareholders, not that they can't try to make money. They just need to use their profits to further their mission instead of distributing to shareholders. For example, the Gates Foundation could own a completely conventional farm, and run it like a conventional farm, but any profits they generate could be used to buy and deliver malaria pills to at-need countries (or something like that). That would be an acceptable reason a non-profit owns farmland.

The giant German conglomerate Bosch is structured in a similar way. 92% of the company is owned by the Bosch family charitable foundation 'Robert Bosch Stiftung'

any profits they generate could be used to buy more farms to make more profits to buy more farms with

sure - it could buy malaria pills, or it could just buy more farms.

I think in the US there are also a good tax breaks for creating 'farms' on your land. Since we give so much subsidy to the industry. IIRC lot of billionaires will get sheep grazing or something like that to claim their mega mansions as farms. I thought I remember Marc Cuban is an example but can't find a quick source. So maybe my memory is wrong on this one.

Here in NJ a typical middle class house pays 10-25k/yr in property taxes. But if you have 5 acres and sell a few thousand dollars worth of pumpkins you pay near zero because you're a farm. https://www.nj.com/politics/2019/09/how-to-cut-your-property...

I don't get why people hate him so much. I already do the most that I can to reduce my tax basis, is that immoral? I know several people who have moved to Nevada/Texas to avoid paying estate taxes.

With great power comes great responsibility. If you're not a billionaire, the so-called* hatred isn't directed at you and you shouldn't be taking it personally.

* not hatred, actually, just greater expectations of those with greater power

No, it just means you're next.

Yep, it's immoral, and it gets more immoral the richer you get.

You're not a super influential figure with the prime minister in your WhatsApp.

Nor did you lobby an entire country to do something stupid to enrich yourself.

It's an oddity of UK tax law that farms are exempt from inheritance tax and so a sensible investment for old rich people who want to pass stuff on. Clarkson's farm was bought for the similar reasons some years before they decided to do a TV show. You don't need odd legal structures - just buy a farm.

The real oddity is that the government takes 40% of your stuff if you die.

If we didn't have that oddity wealth would largely still belong to landed gentry.

Which it does, as they dont pay any inheritance tax... for the upper tier in society it is openly called a voluntary tax that only the poor (what one might consider middle class I guess) or stupid get stuck with.

Curious. Do you have referance to the legal text here ?

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