Comment by marcosdumay | Hacker News Reader

Comment by marcosdumay | Hacker News Reader

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> My microwave has one knob for time, and one knob for intensity.

I don't think a knob is the optimal interface for time. In microwaves you need to input both low values of ~10s and very high values of ~600s with good precision on both cases. Sure, a logarithmic knob will give you that, but I don't think it's what you would expect.

For power it's good. It's even a much better interface for the power level than the usual. But then, anything is a much better interface than the usual microwave power level one.

> Wired audio. This device is paired to the device it's physically connected to.

There used to exist those wireless speakers with two pieces, one you physically connected to the audio output on the device, the other had the speaker. The transmission was analog and sucked due to noise, but it was much more reliable and had less lag than bluetooth.

For some reason, instead of fixing it into a digital transmission, everybody just stopped manufacturing the device.

I rarely need an exact amount of time. In fact I generally leave it with the door ajar and a few minutes on the timer.

Even then, a knob works perfectly. It does not need to set the value linearly. The first quarter of the timer could be 5 second increments, and the second half minutes.

>> My microwave has one knob for time, and one knob for intensity.

> I don't think a knob is the optimal interface for time. In microwaves you need to input both low values of ~10s and very high values of ~600s with good precision on both cases. Sure, a logarithmic knob will give you that, but I don't think it's what you would expect.

I definitely disagree. I had a stove once that had a perfect knob for setting time. The rate of increase/decrease was determined by the speed that you twisted it. Turn slowly for fine granularity, fast for large changes. I think it may have done something clever when you started fast and then slowed down (the natural thing to do), since I think the naive thing probably wouldn't work that well.

It felt *awesome*. It sounds silly, but it's been just over a decade and I still miss that control knob. I think about it every time I'm faced with the latest way of adjusting some quantity. It's definitely not just because it was a physical knob—plenty of physical knobs are irritating and only good for either small or large changes, or feel unpredictable, or don't have good tactile feedback (too smooth and too chunky are both bad).

I'm just curious what you cook in a microwave for 10 minutes.

It's not really cooking, but I find it useful to defrost frozen meat in the microwave if I have forgotten to leave it out of the freezer overnight. Defrosting in a microwave usually means letting it run at low power for a long time (> 10 minutes depending on the type of meat and weight). Of course, I use the presets that come with my microwave to figure out the right time/power combination, so I definitely find that feature useful.

Large thick skinned squashes with hard flesh like butternut, kabocha or spaghetti. Probably not on max heat, but on medium so they cook evenly.

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