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I've found that although I'm the "most techy" person in my group, yet I'm also the most "luddist" --- I have zero "smart devices" in my home, and all my white goods are mid-century if not older. The idea of having an always-on surveillance device owned by Big Tech in one's home has always felt incredibly dystopian.

As a comment on an article when Alexa first came out said: "we don't need to force the proles to install telescreens, they'll do it themselves."

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This became a bit of a text meme for a bit. I think there's actually an origin in some fantasy fiction narrative about a wizard and a magic rock, but I cannot find it now.

    Tech Enthusiasts: Everything in my house is wired to the Internet of Things! I control it all from my smartphone! My smart-house is bluetooth enabled and I can give it voice commands via alexa! I love the future!


    Programmers / Engineers: The most recent piece of technology I own is a printer from 2004 and I keep a loaded gun ready to shoot it if it ever makes an unexpected noise.

source: https://biggaybunny.tumblr.com/post/166787080920/tech-enthus...

Pet Rock Remote Control with Finger Pie Menus and Speech Synthesis:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SG0FAKkaisg

My printer makes unexpected noise once every 2 or 3 weeks -_-'

my printer is a nice guy at the printshop named jose and he makes an unexpected noise often after lunch.

> white goods are mid-century if not older

Unless I misunderstand the meaning of mid-century ('50-'70), sounds over-board, no? You're unnecessarily paying for a second-hand 10 year-old Energy Star fridge many times over in electricity costs. Inexpensive of an upgrade too, got mine for 100 CAD, as well as a perfectly functioning and clean kitchen stove (ballpark '05) for 50 CAD (tho for this I doubt electricity or gas consumption is an issue even if you go older).

You don't need antiques to avoid mic'ing up your kitchen.

You didn't misunderstand at all.

You're unnecessarily paying for a second-hand 10 year-old Energy Star fridge many times over in electricity costs.

Actually, my fridge is probably the oldest appliance --- it's a '38 Frigidaire I restored (reinsulated and rewired - it still has its original compressor and refrigerant) that consumes <300kWh/year. With fridges, 70s-80s were probably the most inefficient (very thin insulation to allow for extra interior space).

You're right that the energy consumption of a stove doesn't matter much, since all the energy goes into heat anyway. I just like the styling of that era, and they are definitely more solidly built and simpler to service.

Efficient fridges these days use 90-125 kWh/y, so that's still terrible. But as I understand it, that's par for the course for fridges in the US.

https://www.mediamarkt.de/de/product/_siemens-kg39e8xba-2710...

https://www.mediamarkt.de/de/product/_samsung-rl-38-a776asr-...

I can't read German and the page requires JS, but I could see the models in the URLs so I looked those up, and those are both not cheap[1] and don't seem to be available in the US. I'm not sure if the differences in numbers are due to different testing methods either --- if you leave the doors open on those I bet they'll also use a lot more than 90-125kWh/y, compared to basically never opening them at all and seeing what the energy use eventually settles down to (insulation losses only). I'm averaging around 280kWh/y on mine when it's actually in active use, where the door gets opened a few times a day and it's used to cool things from room temperature.

[1] From what I could find, the Samsung RL38A776ASR costs over £1200, or a little over $1600 US. That's enough to pay for 40 years of electricity on mine.

Those were just the first two I could find in efficiency categories A and B. Here's one for 317 EUR that's rated at 118 kWh/a (with a C efficiency label). The rating is supposed to reflect typical usage.

https://www.heise.de/preisvergleich/amica-kgc-384-110-e-a212...

>Efficient fridges

those look like... really small fridges? The top selling fridge on bestbuy.com is this: https://www.bestbuy.com/site/lg-20-2-cu-ft-top-freezer-refri..., which has 572L (20.2cf) in capacity and is 50% bigger than the samsung fridge you linked. It costs much less: $800 USD vs $1357 USD for the samsung fridge (after factoring in currency conversion and VAT). It does seem to be much more efficient (60% less energy after normalizing for storage capacity), but it's doubtful that you'll ever break even on the purchase price disparity.

Then I suggest buying fridges that are smaller in addition to being more efficient... SCNR. The average US household is larger (2.5) but not that much larger than the average German (2.0). I'd guess a typical fridge is more like 300l (but I don't actually know).

but you forgot that 1960s appliances lasted about 80 years. 1970s were almost as good and lasted about 60 years. 1980s were noticeably worse and last about 25-30 years. 2005 appliances were dead 10 years ago.

So I can get a 1960, 1970 or 2015 appliance for about the same price and they are all about on their last legs. Except the old ones can be repaired!

If you can find a good or rebuilt 1960s or 1970s appliance, the lifetime electricity costs are dwarfed by not having to buy another one every 5 years. You can hand that old mixer down to your grand-kids and that is no exaggeration.

You're also looking at selection/survival bias: only the good appliances from 1960 survived that long.

Likewise, some 2020 appliances are likely to survive 60 years, though not most.

Every 2020 appliance you find in 60 years will be built robustly, probably in a serviceable manner. And it may last much longer.

Time is a nice tool to select robust artifacts that… stand the test of time. I certainly hope old survivors help guiding design choices. If you look at buildings, that's usually the case.

In any case, don't just throw these away! At least donate them to a nonprofit.

I've considered that - and it's true in a way - the ones you see are the survivors. But it's surviving the trends and whims of size and style. And people wanting ice-makers and automatic defrost cycles. Not that like only 5% of the 1960 refrigerators were somehow built far better than the rest and they kept working.

I'm 100% certain that all 1960s refrigerators need repair eventually - but it's a simple compressor and that's it, one part probably fits dozens of models for 20+ years too. No sensors, controller board, ice-maker, fans, touch screens, seals, pumps, valves, etc. The difference is that you can't, at least economically, fix the newer appliances.

> every 2020 appliance you find in 60 years will be built robustly, probably in a serviceable manner.

true - but that number will be very close zero. Because there is not a single brand or type that is built that way today. If there is, it's some $10,000+ professional kitchen equipment. Sure some are better than the rest, but they are all essentially un-serviceable. We can mandate right-to-repair and force the vendors to sell parts for 3 years, we can't make them sell them at a reasonable cost. But in 20 years, somethings going to break that isn't worth fixing and nobody is going to stock specialized repair parts for your exact model.

> In any case, don't just throw these away! At least donate them to a nonprofit.

Have you ever tried donating a broken appliance? they don't want them and won't take them. Because they can't economically fix them either.

> 2005 appliances were dead 10 years ago.

What a sad truth. I have a refrigerator I bought 8 years ago that's on its last legs. Barely cools, ices up constantly.

I am actively avoiding replacing it purely out of spite.

It's 30+ year old predecessor is still kicking in the basement. I'd probably just move it upstairs if it weren't a horrible shade of yellow-green.

Sounds like a leaky door seal, easy to replace.

My understanding is that it’s a design flaw of the defrost heater in that generation of Samsungs. That’s at least what the warranty repair guy told me.

Yep, Samsung defrost heaters suck. Also the seals in the ice machine suck, a slow drip will eventually cause the freezer door to not seal completely, which causes a larger drip, which will over the course of a long day with overtime and a night out and going to bed without opening it cause it to leak enough to damage the subfloor.

The fans are crappy, the lights are crappy, the drainage and evaporative system is crappy... But I guess, technically, when everything is perfect, it does keep frozen stuff frozen. It won't stop spoilage in the fridge as well as literally any other brand, though, even when set to the lowest temperature.

Samsung is forever on my "do not buy; and mention the personal boycott every time the brand is brought up as an option" list, just like Nestle.

> if it weren't a horrible shade of yellow-green

You may try any of different methods of making it white again: https://www.howtocleanstuff.net/how-to-whiten-yellowed-plast...

Looks really neat using Peroxide method: https://www.hardwarezone.com.sg/feature-learn-how-whiten-you...

You misunderstand, that’s the factory color of the exterior of the old refrigerator. It looks a lot like the following

https://www.automaticwasher.org/TD/AWJPEG/SHP/2013/ovrphil++...

It can be painted.

I recently donated a three year old Samsung to my neighbor for his beer because it would not stop icing and leaking inside the refrigeration area. Supposedly a revised part fixes it. The revised part was installed...still crap. $2000 POS

I replaced it with a new frig using an old basic design from GE. $800

I should have known better.

If 1960s appliances lasted 80 years then I'd see many homes with 60s appliances still (as the 1960s was only 60 years ago). I don't see that, the appliances I see day-to-day in the wild are modern. I don't know a single person (including my grandparents when they were alive) that has appliances that old at their house that are still functional.

My parents owned six rentals for almost 20 years from 1980s-1990s. They had to replace at least one appliance in all six rentals during that time, and they only bought second hand appliances for their rentals for many, many years (they stopped doing that when an oven came complete with roaches once).

They often get replaced for reasons other than "not working"; the most aggravating of which is "it's old".

Oh, come on, no they don't - I've been observing the reason people replace appliances for four fucking decades.

You really think my parents are replacing working appliances because they are "old" in their rentals? Come on.

Wouldn't be HN without something bikeshedding the most insignificant of shit in a post.

I think ideally technology that is beneficial does just one thing, it helps you get something done more effectively and it is otherwise invisible.

By that standard most gadgets today probably qualify as anti-technology. A big pile of electronic garbage that wastes people's time and is in the way and does virtually nothing useful for the cost it comes with.

The last newer thing I actually like is the Kindle. You can carry a few hundred books around, the battery still lasts forever and it just displays books.

Seconded - people always comment "but you're in the tech industry!" and I reply "It's precisely because I'm in the industry that I stay far away from all this new-fangled gizmos".

Regular people are terrified of being left behind technologically (or perceived as such), so jump on every bandwagon that comes along. Technology people are able to distinguish between useless and useful tech, so they are comfortable ignoring most of the cruft the industry pumps out.

Considering how fast my Twitter timeline turned into bored apes I'd have to cast some doubt on this theory

You probably could buy a new mid range priced modern dumb fridge and save a lot of money over 8-10 years vs operating your 1970 vintage fridge. Depending on electric rates in your area of course.

I think fridges have gotten worse since they stopped using CFCs and reduced the mass. They are more efficient, but almost all make constant annoying noises instead of the occasional steady hum of good old ones.

I tried several high end models and even ammonia absorption before ending up building a sound insulating box instead.

CFCs were banned not because of inefficiency, but people carelessly letting them into the atmosphere and destroying the ozone layer. (I can't blame them much though --- nontoxic, nonflammable, and otherwise inert under normal conditions, they were widely considered to be a miracle material, a triumph of engineering.) They were used as refrigerants because of efficiency among their other desirable properties.

The sound mainly comes from the compressor, and maybe the evaporator/condenser fans[1]. You're right that the older low-speed designs, especially the rotary ones, are definitely less annoying to listen to, but I think the sound insulation and mounting makes the most diference, and the newer ones save material cost there.

I agree CFCs were more efficient; my point was removing them made it more challenging to design quiet fridges, because the coolant is less effective.

That's interesting, I have the exact opposite impression. I don't have what people in the United States would consider a modern fridge by any means, but it was recently bought brand-new (2021) and it's so quiet it's almost uncanny. The only time I'm reminded fridges are even supposed to make noise is when it beeps a jingle from being turned on after the power goes out and returns.

You guessed about 30 years newer than the actual age of the fridge (see my other comment here.) ;-)

It costs less than $50/year to run. I don't think a new one today would last 80 years.

> The idea of having an always-on surveillance device owned by Big Tech in one's home has always felt incredibly dystopian.

The layman’s capacity for embracing dystopia cannot be underestimated.

This phenomenon is quite old. I still remember early 2000s craze with payed ringtones and text chats and what not that no tehchie would ever use

>The idea of having an always-on surveillance device owned by Big Tech in one's home has always felt incredibly dystopian.

So you don't have a smart phone then? They're even worse because you have the device on you 24/7 and not just in your home.

Do you have a phone?

My kids don't.

Also, I have a very strict privacy hygiene with my own phone. Ungoogled Android [0], No Facebook/Amazon/Google apps installed. Apps only from F-Droid.

[0] https://e.foundation

Yes, a landline one.

If you mean a mobile, yes to that too, but it's rooted and off most of the time.

I prefer e-mail.

The laser eye surgeon with glasses. ;)

I get the irony, but sometimes you can have a problem that is easily correctable with glasses yet falls within the error bars for laser eye surgery.

I need glasses for everyday life (including having any kind of low-light vision at all), but when I looked into having laser eye surgery they told me my current vision was within the bounds of what they would consider a successful outcome of the surgery and therefore I shouldn't have it done unless my vision deteriorated further.

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