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Comment by tomjakubowski | Hacker News Reader

This site really has it all. Somebody took a whole lot of know-how about window blinds, organized it, published it online, _and_ they found a way to make some money to sustain it, without being obnoxious or burying the information in toxic SEO sludge. It's like the sheldonbrown.com of window blinds.

I wish I knew a site like this on every subject.

This page is a work of art, god damn it https://fixmyblinds.com/pages/troubleshooter

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Yes, that's great! A site similar to this for anything related to sleep seems to be:

https://www.sleeplikethedead.com/

It covers pillows, mattresses, etc. Labor love, makes no direct money, committed to and open about how frequent manipulation is in the industry. I followed its recommendations ~1.5 years ago when furnishing a new house and was very happy with the results fitting out 3 bedrooms.

Big Q: why is this still a niche situation? Why do only a few sites have this trait? I think it has to do with culture, habits, and laws for each language & culture. Does it vary by language or region? Are some industries more manipulable than others?

Similar: amazon somehow gets away with defaulting their search result page to "Featured" which means "people pay us to lie to you". They still do provide the option to sort by "best selling" which at least theoretically is better. I'd expect a mature citizenry to rebel and force them to have a better default, or at least let you configure your default.

I'm very interested in characterizing variation on these axes across the world and time. Is it really zero sum and always identical? Or do some habits and traits of a region, language, culture, education system make "better" systems more likely to survive? Can we even actually fairly characterize better systems? It sure feels like we can, but I've also seen people arguing that for example there is no actual difference between rent-seeking and "productive economic activity" on a theoretical level.

> Big Q: why is this still a niche situation?

Because - at least in the short term - you can make more money by selling your users.

But I'm asking why in some markets there are known relatively trustable sites, but not in others. What causes that? I also assume it varies dramatically by culture, language, region, population, period in history. Why? If you deny it varies, what maintains that? There either is a conservation principle (which must have some mechanism for maintenance) or there isn't (in which case variation probably relates to other aspects of reality, and what are they?)

Sounds like we need a meta-site to catalog all these sites!

> I wish I knew a site like this on every subject.

For water heaters, this was helpful to me once: http://waterheatertimer.org

It is not a pretty site (author only knows of HTML tables?), but for me it fulfilled the:

> Somebody took a whole lot of know-how about [x], organized it, published it online

The site at first looks like just affiliate links, but has a lot of useful info buried like:

http://waterheatertimer.org/How-it-works.html

http://waterheatertimer.org/How-to-troubleshoot-electric-pro...

> author only knows of HTML tables?

Last I checked the HN site HTML, it was tables.

It doesn’t look like it covers what I had to deal with to fix my Hunter Douglas blinds. (The kind you can lift and close by hand and they magically hold their position.)

They have a spring loaded thing called a “motor” and something with two cones and a string between them, called a transmission.

I managed to restring the transmission, but the motor went zing and broke inside when I was trying to wind it up again, so I ended up having to buy a new motor (I think around $30).

It does feel like this site has everything, but I can’t find a solution here to a problem I had with mine either. I figured out a fix on my own and made this video about it, which I’m pleased has helped others fix theirs too.

https://youtu.be/7fcxoEkgxZk

Here's one about shoe lacing: https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/lacingmethods.htm

And they do shoe tying: https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/knots.htm

Knots in general: https://www.animatedknots.com/complete-knot-list

Wow this is amazing. This is what the internet should be like

This site about glue comes to mind: https://www.thistothat.com/

sheldonbrown is a good benchmark.

It reminds me of how the Internet used to be in all of the right ways.

I agree this is well-made.

> This site really has it all.

It doesn't have German Rolladen though.

That system is very common in Spain. I didn't know it was German.

I had to fix several of them, sometimes with more success than others. Yes, I would be nice to also have a guide por the Rolladen system.

They're hella illegal in America because of weird fire code rules - so you rarely see any support for them on US oriented websites.

Assuming I’ve searched the right thing (are they external blinds?), what would make this particularly bad in a fire?

Perhaps difficulty escaping from interior.

In Canada at least it's because fire-fighters aren't trained to bypass them and, as you said, concerns about people within being unable to escape.

FWIW in Germany there's a requirement for buildings with automatic shutters to have one designated emergency exit window where the shutters can be operated manually. But fire-fighters shouldn't really have much of a problem if they carry an axe.

I would imagine that’s due to egress rules?

But searching (and assuming I found the right thing) it looks like they’re made and installed in some places in the USA.

Example: https://rolladenlv.com/

I would love to see German Rolladen here in the US. Thank you!

Oh, no! Another thing prohibited by weird fire codes despite more lax rules in Europe resulting in fewer casualties. We can't even have nice apartments because of fire code: https://www.niskanencenter.org/how-to-build-more-family-size...

I didn't know the name either. Yeah, I'm spoiled by them in Spain (at least in my region, pretty much every residential house or building has them) and I typically sleep too little when I'm elsewhere due to lack of them. No other alternative I have seen comes even close when it comes to making a room really dark at night.

I just call someone to fix them, though. It's quite a dark art for those of us who suck at DIY.

they named those shutters after my favorite food? crazy.

Heh, those are called "Rouladen" but yeah they're pronounced almost the same ;-)

And yes, they are delicious

Next step would be selling the best and most repairable blinds

I like to fix things rather than throwing them out and am glad I was able to restring a couple of blinds that didn't work in our new house. This site is where I buy.

If only there were similar sites for other home products. Currently on my list is the soap dispenser for the dishwasher which is nearly impossible to tell which part to order (and I don't want to replace a $500 appliance for what should be a $20 piece of plastic).

Jump on eBay looking for the soap dispenser for that model of dishwasher. You might find a whole replacement dispenser for that price.

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