Goodbye non-KISS appliances
willbush.dev
willbush.dev
Even without brains, new appliances are shit.
I get it when it comes to alarm systems. Being able to get a notification when someone breaks in is nice, because the alarm system is mostly doing its job when you're not at home. It makes sense.
What it does not make sense, in my humble opinion, is pretty much everything else. Why do I need voice activated lights, outside of a cool party trick ("hey, I can turn the lights on with my voice")? Why should a vacuum cleaner, even if a robot one, be able to upload a picture of a woman on the toilet to the Internet (which has actually happened)? Why should the fridge talk to you?
Ironically, this kind of stuff might become less and less appealing with remote working. If you're at home anyway, can't you just stand up and look at the fridge or turn that light on?
What help is a temperature alarm if you are away. A fridge is used daily, surely you'll notice if the temperature is not what it's supposed to be.
Well yeah duh if the door was shut properly every time fridges wouldn't need door or temperature alarms at all (most have an audible one already). But it's called an alarm for a reason, sometimes shit goes wrong and it's handy to know before all the food has been at room temperature all day. We had a freezer door pop open overnight once, because one of the drawers wasn't quite shut properly... in 40+ years of interacting with a fridge/freezer, yes occasionally mistakes are made
I also have friends and family and at least one will be aware and be willing to go to the house if necessary when we are away (only happened once when our intruder alarm went off for no apparent reason) and my neighbours would also pop in if I was at work.
Seriously your response showed such a lack of thinking of real world situations and usage I can only assume you work for the Google UI team or something
Ok, I’ll bite. What do you do? Your phone has just told you the fridge door is open. Now what? You aren’t at home, so you can’t close it.
We came home on Sunday to the fridge and freezer completely ambient temp and had to toss everything.
If we had a mobile alert on our phone, we could have turned around and closed it just fine, or asked our neighbor to.
(of course, where they're really useful is as office fridges, when the perpetrator wanders off oblivious but someone else gets driven mad by the just-barely-audible-beeping and hunts it down...)
Laughed out loud. This is gold.
You make the perfect argument for a physical alarm. I agree, that makes perfect sense, and is a cheap addition that significantly improves quality of life.
Will you be woken up by a midnight phone notification that the fridge is open? I tend to sleep stuff like that.
Does a once in 40 years mistake justify carrying an app around that does god knows what else, and the extra expense and hassle of a fridge that might or might not spy on you?
Do we need to therefore instrument our stoves, ovens, baths and basins to insulate ourselves from the other common domestic nightmare scenarios?
Also, you talk about intruder alarms? I thought we were talking about "smart" wifi connected fridges? That's a completely different scenario, and I fully agree with you. I pay a security company to monitor my alarm, and they visit my house within 5 minutes of the alarm triggering. But my fridge can stay as dumb as it gets, thanks. Literally the only thing its allowed to do is go brrr.
>Do we need to therefore instrument our stoves, ovens, baths and basins to insulate ourselves from the other common domestic nightmare scenarios?
Exactly. There are a lot of things that could go wrong in daily life.
Let's say you are sleeping and one of the bed slats bends or breaks (this has actually happened to me). It's messy, especially because you wake up and putting the bed slat back is not easy. So what do you do? You either ignore the fact it may happen, or you say "well if it does happen, I guess I'll sleep on the couch or something". No one that I know, even among the most "smart home" obsessed people, has a bed which automatically beeps or sends a push notification if the slats are about to break.
Ok, now you wake up and nothing bad happened so far. You have breakfast (maybe you have a smart fridge which ensures you're not running out of yogurt or whatever). Then you go dress yourself. But then you realize your favorite shirt has a stain you didn't notice. Do you have a drawer that automatically beeps if your clothes have stains? Probably not. You either remember to watch closely your clothes and wash them properly, or say "whatever, I'll go with something else and I'll wash that later".
And so on. Life is full of minor inconveniences. That doesn't mean you should necessarily fill your life with sensors and beepers for every possible scenario. I might be getting too philosophical, but part of life is also becoming aware that things happen and you can't always be 100% safe in any possible scenario.
And you're ignoring the first example about falling from your bed which, if things go wrong, can cause bone fractures which, especially in the US, could cost a lot more than $100.
People are taking this waaaayyyy out of context. I said it was handy. I didn't say it was a must feature or even one that make me choose a particular model or pay more for. But the fact my current fridge/freezer does it is a nice handy extra... I already have a billion things that spy on me, gather data so no I'm not particularly worried about what my fridge knows about me, the cameras all over the country I cannot avoid know far more already.
It's not the end of the world if some stuff inside goes bad. Again, not worth making it talk to the internet.
Well, our parents, and for the younger, our grandparents too, and us, have managed to do fine for like 60+ years of using fridges without an fridge door alarm.
Fun fact: for an alarm for when you are away for days, and you want to know if the fridge power went off and back on in between, you can freeze a jar of water in your freezer, put a coin on top, and leave it there.
If you find the coin in the bottom of the jar at some point, the fridge power/temperature has been off for a while.
Nah, rather it's the comparison that is off.
Without cars, for example, transportation was slow and constrainted, affecting commerce, work, and lots of other things. Whether good or bad (since there are negatives too) the introduction of the car was a huge change.
Network connected fridges? The incovenience they solve is so rare and small that most people don't give a damn about, not to mention the incovenience from their assorted crappy controls, the privacy issues, and other such factors, can be even higher and more constant.
Might as well compare the invention of fire with the Shake Weight.
Why are you fighting the guy over this feature? Everybody here is in agreement that network-connected fridges are not particularly useful but you're trying to make a point about open door alarms.
I'm not fighting anybody. I'm stating my opinion, which happens to be different than his. Isn't this the purpose of a forum?
>Everybody here is in agreement that network-connected fridges are not particularly useful but you're trying to make a point about open door alarms.
The context here is the fridge sending you online messages about the open door.
Your examples aren’t really great for that reason.
And sure that you’d notice before anyone consumed unsafe food?
And how often does a fridge door open on its own? Most people don't need other people (or things) to remind them that they should tie their shoes before getting out. If you don't need that, I assume you know you should close the fridge door.
We had a freezer door pop open overnight once... it was because one of the drawers wasn't quite shut properly, all was good for hours after closing it and then suddenly it popped open when we were in bed and we came down to the food at the front of the drawers defrosted.
When you use something day in day out for 40+ years you occasionally have an accidental bad interaction. Sometimes you press the wrong button on the TV remote, sometimes one of the drawers in the freezer is further forward by half an inch on one side and you didn't notice, it happens.
Most people, especially on HN, don't need to be reminded to think critically about how real world interactions actually might occur before posting poorly thought out responses for the sake of evangelically pushing a point, but here we are
I'm saying it can be useful, but only very rarely.
If dealing with an ugly path means streaming data all the time to the Internet and potentially decreasing the reliability of the whole thing, just because once every 5 or 10 years stuff defrosts...
No, it's for when the kids leave the door open or just don't close it properly - which is VERY frequent. The door alarm goes off once per week here, at least.
I prefer the sound of air alarm now.
Yes, but how often do you experience power outages … I think in the last
15 years it only happened to me once.
or other things that lead to weird temperature changes?
I've seen some grumblings that the switch (in the US) to R600 is killing durability, but I'm not sure I buy that. If you dig through some of the service literature out there you'll see that companies across the board are also cheapening the sealed systems (e.g. aluminum replacing copper).
you know you should close the fridge door.
I to had a LG refrigerator declared "unfixable" and bought back by LG, but I actually decided they were idiots and fixed it myself after having not only their local repair people fail to fix it, but the "expert" from LG's regional center come out and diagnose it. (It should be noted that he diagnosed the condenser, the only part not already replaced at that point, and that failed to fix it so, they declared it unfixable).
Turns out in my case, the leak was in the yoder loop, a modern trick for increasing the efficiency of a refrigerator by running a high pressure refrigerant line around the doors to avoid needing electric defrost loops (what pretty much every fridge made pre ~2005 or so has).
And since the yoder loop is embedded in the spray foam insulation between the exterior and interior of the fridge is is largely unrepairable because the insulation would have to be destroyed and somehow partially refilled, which wouldn't be possible without adding a bunch of access holes/etc to the exterior.
So, I bypassed it, as a "research project" before buying another fridge, something the LG folks told me wouldn't work, and the tech refused to do. Which funny enough i'm an EPA certified small appliance repair tech (don't ask! lol) so, it apparently is just up my alley. And guess what 5 years later is still going. I've had to manually defrost the ice maker fan once in that timeframe and it does tend to get some condensation build up on the bottom of the french doors, but nothing that wipeing it away every few days doens't solve.
As an additional bit of fun, this refrigerator has a steel condenser and both aluminum as well as copper tubing/fittings.
When I'm talking about the heater on mine not working, I'm talking about the heater for the evaporator. Without a working heater I'd get enough ice built up on the evaporator within a week to cause problems with the evaporator fan. If the fan doesn't work you're not gonna get much in the way of cool air into the fridge or freezer compartments.
- Calling in a warranty claim involved going through a troubleshooting script that wanted me to do things that my fridge could not do. LG needs to get their documentation in order so that their call center staff can at least approach being useful.
- LG punted me to an authorized service center first thing. I'm in the Bay Area which should, IMO, be a large enough market to have sufficient LG direct staff. LG needs to hire more repair staff.
- The third party ignored me for a few weeks and then I started making noise in LG's general direction. LG probably needs to up their warranty rates to entice third parties to actually service these calls.
- LG finally sent one of their techs out. He called me, I described the symptoms and the temperature graphs to give him an idea of what's going on. He finally admitted that he didn't have ANY parts for this fridge on his truck. So I told him to order what he thought needed. That took about two weeks. On his first visit he identified more stuff he wanted to replace so that took another few days because the west coast distribution center didn't have the parts and he missed the cutoff for the east coast center. LG needs to get their American logistics in order.
- LG pushed really hard to get the tech out here ASAP even though he had some idea as to what was wrong and was in no position to fix anything. LG ought to stop relying so heavily on useless metrics.
It's been a long enough time I don't remember the precise symptoms and I've no idea what actually failed beyond a thermistor so it's impossible to suggest engineering improvements. However I think LG ought to work on training their own techs to get their diagnostic skills up to snuff.
Although I'm pretty sure it's not one of LG's horrific linear compressors, I suspect the compressor failed or there was a refrigerant leak. Unlike the above poster I've working knowledge of automotive A/C not small appliances. In a car the refrigerant will carry the lubricant, so a refrigerant leak can indeed cause problems as the compressor eventually runs dry. For all I know the fridge's compressor uses an oil free design and failed for other reasons. I think the tech checked temperatures at the condenser and was happy with that – but remember unlike on a car refrigerators have no ports to check pressures. That's crucial in diagnosing problems, so techs are kinda flying blind here.
If the problem was with the sealed system then the solution is: LG needs to engineer their fridges properly. Fixing the sealed system in the field is something you can do (except for the yoder loop in the insulation) but it takes time and skill, things that most techs don't have. Basically those repairs won't last. Working with aluminum (welding, brazing, soldering) is tough, although I think LG is moving to using fancy compression fittings for repairs.
If it's basically anything else they need to again work on training their techs to diagnose these things properly.
I had the yoder loop conversation with the tech on the last call when they came out to verify it was still broken/unfixable, and he basically said bypassing it wasn't possible, which is odd since other companies can.
With the bonus that in our particular case, we were paying for the "labor" and getting the parts under warranty, which means that in the end I paid ~$1000 for repairs and LG claimed to have provided ~$1200 worth of parts (which is bullshit because an aluminum evaporator coil doesn't cost $400 unless it has a 20x retail markup). So, when they sent a check, it covered our sunk costs. But I had a fridge with a brand new compressor, evaporator, and condenser, as well as an upgraded control board/etc. This is part of the reason I took a crack and just ran it without the Yoder loop.
So, a couple of points: some other companies fix yoder loop leaks by bypassing them and feeding factory-provided heating coils through the now vacant line.
Also, the LG parts all had copper brazing points, so the tech never had to work with aluminum/steel directly.
Finally, I wonder, after your initial comment, if there was just a problem with the refrigerant charge, which was causing your fan to ice over as a byproduct because it was slightly under/overcharged from the factory.
now they had access points to check the pressure.
Also, the LG parts all had copper brazing points, so the tech never
had to work with aluminum/steel directly.
Finally, I wonder, after your initial comment, if there was just a
problem with the refrigerant charge, which was causing your fan to
ice over as a byproduct because it was slightly under/overcharged
from the factory.
With the LG I was a renter, so I was willing to push things along with LG and do as much diagnostic work as possible. But at the end of the day I didn't really want to dig into fixing anything myself because the fridge simply wasn't mine. I also didn't have room for a second "project" fridge. The landlady wasn't out anything because it was covered under the extended warranty (my initial call was a year + 1 day after the purchase) and LG bought it back for full retail price.
One of many problems with LG is that they seem to have a rotating cast of metrics driven clowns running LG America. Junking a fridge is almost certainly more cost effective than spending the time to fix it, train their techs in depth, and get their logistics in order. The tech that came out had previously worked for GE and had worse things to say about their brand of chaos.
Funny enough the Whirlpool that replaced it did have exposed insulation (and gobs of epoxy everywhere). It would've been worse than the LG, except it actually kept things cool.
And that way the the fridge can't die...and quietly take its built-in alarm with it.
What I am saying (though I cannot speak for anyone) is that I, on the contrary, would go out of my way to not get, not because I have thin foil hat or whatever, but because the reliability and privacy concerns this kind of thing carries far outweigh (in my scale) the benefit of having something that will come in useful once in a decade.
Note that things like that have already happened.
When an AWS region went down, things like doorbells and lights stopped working properly (https://financialpost.com/technology/personal-tech/pitfalls-...). Which, if you think about it, is ridiculous. I cannot turn my lights on because somewhere, potentially thousands of miles away, some datacenters failed, even if those datacenters could, ostensibly, only give me ads and "improvements" and not any core feature.
And when it comes to privacy, Roomba employees posted on Facebook picture of a woman on the toilet, a picture that was taken by the Roomba itself while cleaning (https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/12/19/1065306/roomba-i...). Now, you might say that the Roomba algorithm has to train a lot to be able to work properly, but why take pictures? And why upload them to the Internet?
Of course everyone makes their own judgement calls. I'm not offended if anyone gets smart fridges or voice activated lights.
It appears there's a misunderstanding here. When smart lightbulbs lose internet connection, they still function as regular lightbulbs.
In such cases, you simply revert to the traditional method of turning the light switch on and off manually, instead of using voice commands or an app.
That's a better way to install things, but it's not the only way that installation is done, and it's still excessive to need the internet for what could easily be a purely local operation. For device classes where "on/off" has historically been attached to the device itself (washer, stove, ...), it's more common than in the lightbulb case for the internet connection to be mandatory.
Pushing closer to tin-foil hat territory, when your lights can be controlled over the internet by servers you don't own, that operator can do nearly whatever they'd like. A common pattern in other industries (ocean navigation apps, OB2 monitors, ...) is to require a server for no good reason, sell a device at full market value, and then later extort the customer into some sort of subscription/data-leak to continue using their own devices. It's common for the remote server to just shut down (startup goes out of business, manufacturer decides it'd be nice if you bought a new device, ...). Less likely but worse if it happened, the server operator _could_ trigger epilectic seizures or whatever.
It’s by far the most common. Most people just buy Hue lightbulbs and an hub to use with their existing home setup, which involves physical light switches still being present.
> Pushing closer to tin-foil hat territory…
For lights specifically: If this is a threat model that worries you, it’s quite easy to setup something like home assistant.io with zigbee lights.
Your repudiation appears to be about centralized services, not about “smart” devices as a general concept.
Your position seems actually to be though that you can make smart devices acceptable if you're careful enough. That's probably true. However, I've seen the code people write, and I still personally wouldn't want a smart oven or any number of other such devices.
> Your repudiation appears to be about centralized services, not about “smart” devices as a general concept.
There's some truth to that. I focused on that point just because smart devices usually have a markup for their extra features, even though you don't really own the product, manufacturers have a habit of shutting them down, and most of the "smarts" are just figuring out how to generate extra ad revenue. That's not _all_ smart devices, but it's a lot of them. Contrast that with a centralized service like Overleaf, where I know I'm renting server time and disk space, and it's obvious what the threat models are (they can read anything sensitive, and I should probably make sure everything is backed up). Selling living room audio recordings on a device you paid more than fair market value for just feels a bit slimy, and I thought that might be a good touchpoint to illustrate what sorts of things can go wrong.
The person I responded to said:
> I cannot turn my lights on because somewhere, potentially thousands of miles away, some datacenters failed, even if those datacenters could, ostensibly, only give me ads and "improvements" and not any core feature.
That problem doesn't exist. Your smart lightbulbs fallback to being regular lightbulbs in the absence of an internet connection, even for the most popular centralized service ones today (Hue).
> There's some truth to that.
That seems like a separate, if related, problem. There are plenty of smart devices that don't involve centralized services. Check out homeassistant.io. Plenty of devices where you own the product and they can't be shut down.
What about my robo vacuum cleaner?
Also, you keep mentioning Hue as if this is what people buy. People with lots of disposable income buy Hue. Everyone else buys some cheap $noname Tuya crap (or get it installed by the contractors), and whether or not it works offline, they find out during their next Internet outage.
Those aren't lightbulbs, which is what we were talking about.
OTOH, this item's context is "KISS, because the complex products are hot & steamy piles of failure modes, all eager to show themselves off". From that PoV, the alarm features kinda sound like yet more things to break down.
Fridge quality today is lousy enough (and warranties + return policies have all but evaporated) that spending money elsewhere would've been a big win. Even if we're not talking reliability, I had to replace a 20 year old fridge with split shelves only to find that this feature is now only available on more expensive, less efficient, less reliable bottom freezer units. Another modern fridge I've dealt with recently (Whirlpool) was just breathtakingly poorly built. It worked, but imagine if Whirlopool had sunk money into QA instead of gizmos.
Presumably your built-in temp sensors are WiFi or bluetooth. What are the chances that's gonna get updated when the next WiFi standard starts to become more common? Will it support the next version of WPA? What happens when the power goes out?
When I had to diagnose a dying LG fridge, I got some cheapie ($20ish) RF temp probes. They're battery powered, the included receiver can set an alarm, and a cheapie software defined radio kit can decode the signals on Linux. I run rechargeable NiCad batteries in them and have moved them from the LG to a couple fridges since. Hands down a way better (and more robust) experience than anything a fridge manufacturer could dream up.
Door open alarms are comparatively much simpler and a good example of a feature with a much smaller inherent downside.
BTW, I'd also add that folks (not necessarily you) championing flashy features are forgetting just how dead nuts simple fridges used be. To the best of my knowledge my current fridge (Frigidaire / Electrolux) has a mechanical timer for the defrost cycle. The LG uses electronic controls to eek out a bit more efficiency. I know which one I'd rather replace.
Besides, if you've got to replace a fridge every five years now that's a win for the appliance manufacturers. Although, really, who offers anything more than a 1 year warranty anymore? That should tell you how long these things are expected to last.
I do wonder if that drives the higher prices we pay here though...?
When LG bought my fridge back the original warranty had expired a day prior and things were being handled under the terms of the extended warranty my landlady bought.
I personally like the idea of smart home things and everything connected. It feels like it opens up so many possibilities or ideas.
Do I need it for survival? No. But I do like the idea and how it triggers my imagination.
What is missing and what I should buy are different things. If my fridge has yogurt, bacon and some hamburgers, you might say "well, you are missing eggs". Except maybe I don't want eggs. I may be even allergic. Or maybe I like eggs but I'm in some low-protein diet for whatever reason.
The goal of a fridge is not to have literally everything, is to store everything you think you need for some days.
As for recipes, yes, that's more creative, but I guess I would just actively Google that (or even use an old fashioned recipe book!) if I were looking for original recipes. Of course, you can also ChatGPT it, but the direct fridge -> ChatGPT interaction is a bit weird because maybe I don't want original recipes or maybe I'm going to eat out.
So a hypothetical (?) app that sends me notifications about what recipes ChatGPT suggests by looking at my fridge wouldn't be very appealing unless you're always looking for new recipes. If you're mostly cooking ordinary things, continuous "You could cook X" would count as spam, much like a lot of people skip (or try to skip) ads on Youtube and ignore random "buy this at 70% discount" emails. And if you're that passionate about new recipes I guess you're probably interested in cooking and don't need the fridge to tell you what's missing.
Any potential benefit from such a device would be destroyed by the cancerous advertising industry.
If it's a huge problem psychologically for you, maybe you can just take the following 5 years or whatever time you estimate you will be using the product and calculate that into the base price to make your decision.
Adding advertising into the mix almost always makes the incentives align more poorly with the customer's interest. For example, the refrigerator manufacturer now has an incentive to increase food spoilage to increase ad conversions.
>Having a subscription can actually be beneficial in terms of incentive to keep up supporting the product in my view
So you want to pay them to show you ads in the hopes that that means they don't stop supporting your refrigerator? What does that even mean? They're not going to extend your warranty.
Because if the product stops working, I also stop paying subscription.
Right now there's an incentive to make short lasting products to have customer buy a new one, but with subscription the incentive changes.
Think of it like working conditions getting increasingly poor and abusive year over year, while your salary stays fixed.
It matters not because the deals are increasingly shit and abusive, but also because them being much better is within most of our's living memories, and there's no actual reason for things to go this shit, except a supplier-driven market fucking customers over because they can, and race-to-the-bottom mechanics preventing any single vendor from reversing course.
If they can just keep increasing prices unfairly, then it means something is wrong with free market, not with subscriptions.
And yes, there's plenty of wrong with the free market, starting with that it's a hypothetical construct that doesn't exist, and even if it did, it's gameable and would have been gamed by the vendors the same way the real market is.
E.g. you start interaction by asking the fridge - I am a bit tired, what is an easy thing to cook based on what I have in the fridge and I am stopping by the store, is there anything I should buy to have a few more options.
So GPT vision takes image of what is in the fridge and then tries to solve for that question. If user is allergic to something that would be in GPT's prompt.
You would need a smart fridge if you wanted to directly connect the fridge with ChatGPT. Which is what I assumed in the previous comment.
It would be directly connected to GPT and you can either use it as mobile app or with other devices or fridge itself directly.
So for example you are at work, about to leave home, store is on the way and then you ask this question from the app. Fridge takes photo, forwards it with certain prompts to OpenAI APIs and then gives you the response.
Now, if this was an explicit user-GPT interaction, you could prompt the GPT with "hey, I'm Muslim, what can I cook with this stuff?" or "hey, I'm lactose intolerant, what else could I buy?". You do need to trust the OpenAI provider, but not the fridge.
Instead, the fridge automatically talks to GPT. So if you want to avoid "dumb" suggestions you wouldn't be able to follow, you would have to tell your fridge you're Jew or Muslim or lactose intolerant or diabetic. Don't you see an issue with this?
I'm not "tinfoil hat" paranoid, I don't think people are out there to get me. But a certain dose of skepticism when it comes to data usage should be healthy, especially when many companies have been known to mess up this aspect (from Cambridge Analytica to Roomba employers sending pictures of a woman on the toilet to Facebook, and much more). You cannot avoid this 100% unless you go to extreme lengths, but if you can avoid sending data to one more company, why not?
If you don't like certain foods, you can just customise the prompt that fridge sends to OpenAI. You can customise it through a web app or mobile app.
> you would have to tell your fridge you're Jew or Muslim or lactose intolerant or diabetic. Don't you see an issue with this?
What's the problem with storing your food preferences somewhere? People use dieting apps all the time on mobile.
> You cannot avoid this 100% unless you go to extreme lengths, but if you can avoid sending data to one more company, why not?
You are already sending your data in thousands of different ways and exposing yourself at any moment. I'm not saying you should do more of it, but food preferences seems like a very minor drop in the bucket of all that you are already exposing.
Most people store their images in a cloud, which already indicate amazing amount about them. Just using a smartphone is 1000x worse than having food preferences stored somewhere.
I accept that when I Google something Google and maybe other companies know what I searched, because Googling things is useful. I cannot bring an encyclopaedia and a detailed map of the whole world with me all the time, so it's a tradeoff I can accept.
I accept that, on the rare occasions I turn geolocation, someone will know where I am, because if I do turn it on, it's probably because I got lost. Then I turn it off and off we go.
Divulging food preferences for... an AI that suggests me what I should buy doesn't look like it's worth it. And it's not just food preferences. Remember people store medications in their fridge. A fridge so advanced it can recognize any food is probably capable of reading labels and knowing I bought medication for X,Y and Z. Which is definitely something I'm not explicitly telling people (or things) without a reason.
And don't forget the power of correlating data. Correlating food preferences with other data you could easily understand if someone is ill, pregnant, whether they follow a certain religion (think Ramadan, or not eating meat on Friday,...), whether they are living with someone else (buying twice the amount of stuff they usually buy?) and so on.
This is all stuff I try to avoid telling everyone. Yes, my doctor could be hacked and people could know I'm on medication anyway (hypothetically), but why divulge that voluntarily for essentially no reason?
yes it’s an “exciting feature” if your AI fridge can know that you’re pregnant and not recommend recipes that contain certain ingredients. what the other person is alluding to is that the data it has about you specifically will not stay contained between you and your fridge. what if you’re not married and your employer is like dave ramsey and fires women for being pregnant out of wedlock? or you live in a state with much more grim conditions currently around women and miscarriages? what if the meds in your fridge are related to HRT and there are orgs actively buying data to find these people to target them for bullying online (or worse)?
all of your data will inevitably end up in the hands of people that aren’t at all interested in improving your health. they’re interested in extracting value from you and your data or they have ill will towards you.
what starts as “exciting features” leads to your fridge tracking what groceries you purchase and what you consume. then it (or a third party that gets this data) makes determinations about your religion, your lifestyle, if you’re pregnant or not, etc without you knowing.
when every device in your house is collecting and selling off your data as a business model, there’s a significant mental overhead that needs to be expelled to ensure that you are able to keep your life private if you choose to. you may say: “don’t buy the appliances with the feature, then!” once a company can integrate these features effectively and subsidize hardware costs by selling the data, they’ll have other companies competing to offer the same so they can hit those target features and prices. eventually the market is flooded with appliances with these “exciting features” that are just gathering and selling data. in the end, we’ve traded our option to _choose_ privacy for a solution to a problem that doesn’t really exist. personally, i don’t believe the public is currently aware enough to understand the consequences.
The thing about data, unlike many common objects (ignoring 3d printers), is that you can easily copy data you control. So the fact that the fridge tells you "as an additional comfort in your pregnancy, I would add X" (if it even says that clearly) does not mean it also don't send data to other people.
Again, this is not a science fiction example. Many companies have successfully sent personal data to other companies or leaked that somehow to the Internet.
Personally this still makes me uncomfortable, even if I know this cannot be 100% avoided in today's world. So if I can avoid volunteering additional data to some company in exchange for voice activated lights, I'm happier. Maybe it's just me, though... but probably not.
We live in this World for a very limited time. If things can be automated, they should so we can choose exactly what we want to do with this time.
the problem is that “the market” doesn’t care what you believe in or what you “opt out” of.
there are devices that have programmed in alternate ways to phone home even if you choose to intentionally not connect it to wifi.
> If things can be automated, they should so we can choose exactly what we want to do with this time.
there’s very likely a CSA in your area that you can pay to deliver you fresh meats, eggs, fruits, and vegetables. some also provide recipes alongside.
it’s a much simpler solution in lieu of shoehorning tech into an appliance that will likely stop receiving bug fixes or security updates in 3-5 years when the company releases a new version.
like most of the tech industry, this is a “solution” looking for a problem.
Do current smart fridges even get security updates at all?
It should not trigger just your imagination, but your paranoia.
So...
do you upgrade your fridge OS? Maybe, maybe not. What happens if you do and an upgrade fails?
does it talk to the Internet? If it has to (by design), then all bets are off. You could try to mirror traffic and take a packet capture, but a fridge OS could easily use HTTPS over a "smart.myfridge.com" domain and you wouldn't know what's going on.
How does it even authenticate to whatever remote server they have? If it uses tokens or client certificates, what happens when they expire?
I'm a sysadmin, I know things fail. Even laptops and phones. But, while I can see valid use cases for laptops and phones, I still fail to see the actual appeal of most "smart home" appliances, outside of security systems. And I don't want to have nightmares about my fridge certificate expiration or not being able to turn your light on because my fiber connection went down.
You could install open sourced things to that fridge. E.g. the fridge could either come with sensors immediately available or just have convenient mounts to place your own cameras.
Maybe the fridge could have a simple linux box, raspberry PI or whatever set up. There could be a market where you can flexibly pick how immediately available solution you want or if you want to put in everything yourself and control, depending on how concerned you are about privacy and how technical you are.
If you want to have full control, you can just do that.
> do you upgrade your fridge OS? Maybe, maybe not. What happens if you do and an upgrade fails?
Most smart home devices in my experience update through a mobile app connected to your WiFi.
> What happens if you do and an upgrade fails
Fridge itself would still work, just the picture taking and ai guidance wouldn't.
> How does it even authenticate to whatever remote server they have? If it uses tokens or client certificates, what happens when they expire?
Through mobile app can update, reset everything.
> And I don't want to have nightmares about my fridge certificate expiration or not being able to turn your light on because my fiber connection went down.
These basic things like light and other base features you make sure can work even if smart software fails.
Even ignoring the potential privacy concerns, you're assuming too much in terms of reliability.
When an AWS region went down a couple of years ago, a lot of smart fridges and lights didn't work properly (https://financialpost.com/technology/personal-tech/pitfalls-...).
I'm not. My phone, laptop and computers all run software that I get to install down to the OS (Linux, /e/OS), and I would never install something like the ChatGPT app on my phone.
> it should be possible to build those smart devices with similar security
It should be possible, but they are not. Don't forget: the "S" in IoT stands for "Security".
In any case, this is not even what I am talking about. What I am talking about is the "attack" being done by corporations into your house. It pains me to hear that people are willing to give so much of their privacy in the name of "convenience" and don't even show any slight concern over the thought of having so much data going to Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and (now) OpenAI.
If you went to someone's home and they told you "by the way, my home is full of microphones and video cameras which are always on and used to power my digital assistant", how would you feel?
Everyone are already walking around with smart phones that are perfectly able to do all of that.
> I'm not. My phone, laptop and computers all run software that I get to install down to the OS (Linux, /e/OS), and I would never install something like the ChatGPT app on my phone.
Fine if you do that.
> What I am talking about is the "attack" being done by corporations into your house. It pains me to hear that people are willing to give so much of their privacy in the name of "convenience" and don't even show any slight concern over the thought of having so much data going to Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and (now) OpenAI.
I personally am not concerned about this, although I understand how people can be. I don't want to go my whole life avoiding things, concerned about what is being done with my data, and then I die. I have long dated option calls really out of money in all those companies (except OpenAI of course), in case one of them gets a massive data advantage and happens to discover singularity from this, so I would benefit from it anyway. Before that happens, they just use it to optimise ads for you, and I prefer optimised ads over random ads. Otherwise I'll do my best to block them, but if they get through, I prefer something I might actually be interested in and that might help me.
I prefer to see inventions and technology. At certain point humans will be outlived by technology anyway, and that's bound to happen. New inventions and tech are what is exciting and why I like living, seeing those things coming together.
Being able to do it is not the same as actually doing it.
The rest of your argument, sorry but I can not respond without feeling angry. It just feels like the rationalizations of a selfish, too-clever-by-half neomaniac.
You could have smart devices similarly only react or go to active mode when you press a button on your watch etc.
> The rest of your argument, sorry but I can not respond without feeling angry. It just feels like the rationalizations of a selfish, too-clever-by-half neomaniac.
Okay, I agree that your words can describe me well, but what do you think the end game for humans or tech is? Why do we exist here? Are we just here to reproduce over and over again with no change? And if there's always change, aren't you curious what will happen in the future?
Change simply means that something becomes something else. It isn't inherently good.
For example, now I walk with both legs, but if a car hits me, I might stay on a wheelchair for some time, which is change, but not a welcome one. Before you say "this is a strawman argument", think about technologies like "cloud seeding", which are supposed to enforce specific weather conditions by spraying certain substances in the air (not clear on the details). This sounds like a cool idea, but is it, when some studies suggest this is dangerous for the environment? Shouldn't we (as humans) think about the effects before embracing change?
So, to me, change can be good or bad (or, often, a combination). If the goal of human life was change, it should probably be "change for good". Which is complicated - what is good and what is bad? Who gets to decide? Can I know in advance? What if something is eventually to be bad, can we get back? But that's how life is, no matter the end goal: complicated.
What do you think the goal is?
I just think that at some point we will find out anyway and why not quicker then? Why let 5 or 10 more generations of humans go on if at some point we might reach an answer or an endpoint of some sort.
Because you and the corporations you support are making the lives of people worse now, and you are trading their wellbeing for your very minimal, personal comfort, and rationalizing it away with Pascal Wager-style of technocracy where "tech" could save you from dying.
"Tech" is a means, not an end. What problems are we solving with this tech, and what problems are we creating with the introduction of new technology? These are the only questions that I have when talking about technology, and I really don't see much sense in trying to turn into an existential question.
> aren't you curious what will happen in the future?
Not really, no. When facing a moral dilemma, I look to the past to see what mistakes can be avoided. I try to live in the present and take things as they are. I might look at the "current instant" to see where things are headed and if there are new opportunities being presented, but "the future" is something so out of reach and so out of control that I really give as little thought as possible.
Or even in a more mundane situation, do you think that someone volunteering on a hospital to entertain sick kids do not find meaning in what they do because they are not effectively helping to cure cancer?
There is another thread where you say you are not religious. I don't want to tell you how to live your life, but if you are bowing down to the Altar of Technology to find meaning for your life, maybe religion is not so bad after all?
But now that we do, I do think we should figure out what is going on here. I don't knownif you can call it religion or whatever, but the point is completing this puzzle and tech is necessary to do that.
You don't care about what is behind all this?
Please, stop falling for the Kurzweil and Singularity crap. It's just the nerd version of the coming of the Messiah, with an extra dose of hubris on top.
I don't know who you are talking about. It's my own thoughts. I'm not falling for at least anyone else's crap. If it's crap, then it's my own crap that I'm falling for.
> I don't care enough to sacrifice my present to pursue some crazy Singularity and I certainly am not interested in sacrificing myself to give so much power to any single corporation, no matter how "good" their promises are.
I think there should then be initiative to include everyone in the World in the top tech companies. E.g. similarly you give everyone in the World a right to buy in to an ownership in limited amount given such a thing should occur. But every individual in the World can only buy one, equal unit.
This is why I buy those call options myself, but I think everyone in the World should have such call options.
I'm trying to problem solve here, because I want to see this tech.
My old washing machine had nobs (dials) you turn. You put the clothes and soap in, close the door and press the button. My preference of type of wash and water temperature were all "saved" by the nob position.
My current washing machine, nob is type of wash, capacitive touch buttons for everything else. Keeping the nob "on" keeps the digital display on and consuming power. And the wash options like temperature, extra rinse etc are all controlled digitally with no memory. Want 60 degrees water? Press the water temperature button 8 times, each with a delay of about 3/4 of a second for it to register before a press works again. It's utterly terrible.
Capacitive touch buttons became cheaper than mechanical buttons. That's why they're suddenly on everything now.
However I agree on the complexity. I deliberately buy appliance with as few optoins as possible. My dishwasher has two cycles: normal or heavy-duty, and one more option for heat or air dry. It has a single button to start/stop. If you just load it and press start, it runs the last cycle chosen.
My washer and dryer (LG) have some more options but if you just load them and press Start they run the "normal" cycle which is what I want 90% of the time. Simple.
Do not want internet-connected appliances with apps and excessive features.
I'll never again have a water line connected to my refrigerator. They eventually leak and in one case did significant damage to the floor before I noticed. For cold water, keep a pitcher in the fridge. For ice, use ice trays. Simple and they always work.
You just made me realise Americans don’t use the word ‘knob’… or do they?
I say this because maybe it goes to show that different people are different. Maybe someone gets use out of the silly camera that shows them the inside of the fridge. It sounds ridiculous to me, but evidently my lights sound ridiculous to you.
My parents are getting older. Their knees appreciate being able to tell Siri to turn off the downstairs lights from upstairs.
It's actually very convenient :) I hated when I forgot to turn some light off and had to get out of bed just to flip it. And you don't need Internet for that, just a local hub with voice recognition (though most off the shelf stuff does everything it can for you to go with Google/Apple systems, which do need to be connected all the time - besides requiring you to be logged in at all times for no benefit to you, obviously just so they can either sell your data or to ensure you're properly locked in and can deny you service if you somehow get out of line).
My heat pump does require Internet, though. Apparently the firmware must self-update continuously and you can probably be denied warranty if you don't let it do so. But at least there are genuine use cases: it can monitor the electricity prices with 1-day in advance, so it can "plan" the best time to power up and down to save electricity (at least they say it does it)... and it can control the temperature better as the temperature outside goes up and down, knowing it beforehand via weather forecasts. But of course, to actually control the machine via the app requires a paid feature :D no thanks.
I can't stand vendor apps. They're always garbage. In fact, the main reason I set up Home Assistant, and the main reason my wife embraced it and uses it daily, is because hooking up our A/C to it made it infinitely more useful than having it operated over the vendor shit app. With HA, either of us can reconfigure all A/Cs and then go and make tea or whatever, in time it took the official vendor app to fully open.
IoT is a disaster, Home Assistant and some tinkering is the only thing that makes it reasonable to have a smart device.
Though personally I think we’re barking up the wrong tree by trying to smarten up every appliance. The objective of having remote control/sensing of all your stuff would be better achieved by having a single robot “butler” that can check on state and interface with everything, but the appliances themselves should be simple and easily controllable. As long as there’s a universal communications standard for all devices to be able to communicate with the “butler” the mechanical interfacing could basically be designed in as accessibility features. That way the software and smart capabilities are all in one package that can be upgraded or modified instead of scattered across a bunch of individual things that are expensive to replace or repair.
I’m basically imagining a drone that runs around the house along a rail track on the ceiling and has a little dongle it can plug into devices to control them like Star Wars droids. Bonus points if the method of control is purely mechanical without needing much computing power in the appliance at all.
The reason this will never happen, of course, is obvious. You’ll never get everyone to retrofit their houses for a robo-rail.
Of course if any big FAANG-company does this expect it to be beaming everything it sees straight up to the cloud. Amazon already tried this with their Ring security drone.
Actually, those features seem to have become so common that they don't seem to command a price premium anymore. My washing machine was the cheapest that ticked all the boxes I wanted (most importantly size), and it still has some kind of wifi thingy. Ditto for my dishwasher.
They both work perfectly well without any connection to anything, and not once have they even tried to get me to connect them.
For the washing machine, a notification that it's done can be useful. I usually do laundry while I'm either working or playing some game, so 9 out of 10 times I won't hear that it's done and forget to take the clothes out. Now I've taken the habit of setting an alarm to check on it after the estimated time is up.
For the dishwasher, I really don't care. The dishes can stay there until I need them.
Is there an open Wi-Fi network nearby?
And it's not like they're TVs, I doubt they'd be able to show me any add on their 7-segment displays. So I'm not sure what would be the benefit of trying to connect to a network and let LG know that I've washed some clothes.
Those will soon also not require you to connect them to your wifi, NB-IoT both chips and plans cost for businesses are already very good.
Thanks to Tuya, the software and infra side for making a garbage-quality IoT device is effectively free now. You may be surprised just how much of those you have around you. Any random device class that suddenly gained optional "control through app/voice assistants" feature is likely Tuya in disguise - magic of white-label IoT.
I think the European market is different, in general.
>The EU just made it so that any new major appliance must be repaired by the maker for 10 years
I'm not sure how true that is, but I set by VPN Dublin, Ireland and did some shopping to see what brands are avaliable.
Lot of interesting brands I ran across:
BEKO
BOSCH
CANDY
HOOVER
HOTPOINT
INDESIT
LIEBHERR
MIELE
NORDMENDE
NORKO
POWERPOINT
SIEMENS
TCL
WHIRLPOOL
When the replacement thermostat of my fridge broke I replaced it with an ESP32 with a DS18B20 and a relay, now it posts temperature data to a logging server and the temperature range can be adjusted over WiFi when needed. Here again, I guess if it were really smart, that this would mean that the vendor would place the requirement of me sharing all the data with them so that they then give me a subset of data.
I've had multiple Subzero basic commodity or commercial refrigerators last 15-20 years with only minor parts replacements which are easily found. Of course these are not cheap, but isn't that what everyone here is asking for? Something made well that lasts a long time?
They don't look fancy at all and nobody even knows it's a Subzero because there are no labels on it and no stainless steel front.
$10k-$15k for a refrigerator?
I’ve only ever owned fairly “basic” refrigerators (e.g. LG or GE), that are about 1/10 of that cost, and have never had any problems with them going out or even degrading in quality (e.g. 10+ years). Maybe needed an ice maker repair, but that’s about it.
Do people need to spend that kind of money for a refrigerator that lasts?
Maybe if you’re going to be in your home for 30-40 years, but not many people stay in one place long enough to outlive these “basic” refrigerators. And even then, I’d argue that a $1k-$2k refrigerator can still last that long.
(I’m using “basic” in quotes here because I feel like our refrigerators weren’t even the bottom tier — they’re quite large, and have the features we need. But now seeing other brands that cost as much as some vehicles, to some they may seem basic.)
Subzero might in fact be a decent-quality fridge--I have no idea because I refuse to pay a status tax on appliances.
Designed to impress who? You can't tell a SZ fridge by looking at it, there are usually no labels. I know of a few professional chefs who buy these fridges, does that mean they are just buying them to impress?
But this discussion is more around what average people are looking for (e.g. smart vs. dumb appliances), and not so much about commercial appliances that most people aren’t the target consumer for.
Re: impressing people and the lack of labels, just looking at images of SZ refrigerators, these are clearly distinguishable from consumer grade refrigerators. They clearly have the appearance of belonging in a commercial chef’s kitchen.
Out of curiosity, though, you said you’ve had multiple SZ refrigerators — why did you choose those over, e.g. a $1k-$2 LG/GE/Samsung refrigerator? Did you not think it would last more than a few years?
You said:
> I've had multiple Subzero basic commodity or commercial refrigerators last 15-20 years with only minor parts replacements which are easily found.
I could replace “Subzero” with any of the above brands, and say the same thing. So just trying to figure out what you’re willing to pay 10x for.
Genuinely curious, as I feel I may be missing something.
I avoid LG/Samsung because of the countless articles here an other places were people complain about the quality of appliances, but yet the mass majority of [different] people still buy these crappy appliances with touch screens and glossy finishes.
My point is that these appliances do exist, no feature, long lasting, easily reparable, expensive. People do not want to pay for them as much as HN says they do. For a bunch of smart Engineers I don't understand why this is difficult to grasp. If you want quality, you have to pay for it.
I definitely agree, but I also believe this applies to some products more than others, and I think there are also diminishing returns as you pay more.
For example, I can say I’ve probably owned 3 refrigerators over the past 20 years (two different homes), and probably paid less than $5000 total. The refrigerator in the last home is probably still going strong, and the one in this home will probably last another 5-10 years at least, and definitely longer than we’ll be in this home.
I think we may have had one repair call at the last home, and none yet on this one (though I’ll admit that the ice maker is currently out, and I’ve not taken the time to diagnose it, and may or may not need a repair call).
Would I pay 2x if I knew I was guaranteed not needing a repair call. Maybe, but not definitely. Would I pay 10x though? Definitely not (unless I was gaining other benefits).
But I also believe I did decent research before purchasing all of these, and that probably played more of a role vs. how much I paid.
But again, will agree that a lot of times you do get what you pay for. I’ve been bitten before by trying to save money.
I just also believe that people with money can tend to overpay for things with diminishing returns, and there’s a balance that can be struck between quality and cost. And I’ve also been bitten by overpaying for something that wasn’t worth the premiums cost in the end (e.g. upper end computer parts can definitely have diminishing returns).
You opened the door, and there was SPACE. The refrigerator was taller than I was, and very wide. I think it was subzero, but I could be wrong.
It seemed like you could take the 30 lb turkey from thanksgiving and just set it on a shelf, without giving up much space.
Afterwards looking at other refrigerators, even the ingenious ones, I was struck by how complicated they were. You would still be fighting to find a place for something in the refrigerator, or looking for something you lost.
For computer folks, it was the refrigerator equivalent of an organized rack of servers, instead of a bunch of systems crammed under your desk with wires going whereever.
Another example is Speed Queen for washers and dryers. They are substantially more expensive and look very plain and even old fashioned. But they are built to last a long time and be repairable. They have a large part of the laundromat market because the laundromat owners do value these qualities. But they have very little of the consumer market, because consumers don't.
Consumers also tend to favor nice-sounding features that are in fact unreliable and frustrating, such as ice makers in the refrigerator compartment.
Those appliances are built to handle much more usage, and for a much longer time. E.g. a washer in a laundromat will be used probably 10x compared to a consumer washer over the same amount of time.
Also, a laundromat wants the washer to last as long as possible, probably 20-30 years, but at least 10-15.
There’s no reason for consumers to spend 10x on commercial appliances, when they’re not used as often, and won’t need to endure the misuse/abuse that commercial appliances take.
Also, few residents stay in one place long enough to need an appliance to last more than 15 or so years, and most consumer appliances last that long.
Consumers ain't choosing shit. People are talking here as if most people were drowning in money, and shopping around for low price as a pastime. On the contrary, people are starved for funds, they buy cheap out of necessity, enduring whatever abusive or lazy bullshit the manufaturer pulled off to offer their wares slightly cheaper.
One problem I see is that the higher priced items are not necessarily higher quality these days. A lot of brands are coasting on their reputation while selling cheaply made items at premium price.
I had a similar era whatever of Whirlpool's bargain basement brand was in my apartment in the city. That one did stop cooling reliably, but a $20 relay and 10 minutes fixed that right up. I didn't even bother to call the landlord.
With few exceptions you'll find similar stories from most well known brands up through the mid 00s.
I honestly wonder how big that market has gotten in the last few years, and I’m including software/services in it.
I know I’m definitely part of that market and also that the most technophile people from my list of friends and acquaintances are mostly working in non-tech industries. For example I was very surprised when visiting an acquaintance that works in the media and the first thing he did when he entered the house was to “talk” with Alexa, we have such a device at home but to this day it still is unboxed, hence uninstalled (received it at an IT event).
Its only after I bought it (and the free trial expired) that I discovered that an additional subscription is required to use the integrated "cooking recipe" service that guides you through cooking various dishes - insanely cheeky given how much it cost!
To top it off, I'm constantly nagged to connect the thing to WiFi so it can update god-knows-what. Never. Again.
Does anyone have any tips as to the white-goods equivalents? Fridge, freezer, laundry machines, that kind of thing?
I second Whirlpool, though, when I remodeled, I donated my working whirlpool washer and dryer that I inherited that was from circa 1980 or so....
As far as I'm concerned these tools are feature complete and can be used without subscriptions that phone home constantly.
Only the washer dryer was able to get online, and it's the only appliance that had to be replaced after 4 years, but not because of that. The build quality was so-so, it had problems drying and repair was considered unreasonable (leaky hot air ducts, fast wear on the bearing).
The microwave spontaneously loses screws in the door though
Par for the course for Samsung, in my experience.
I have a 30-year-old fridge that I would seriously consider getting repaired if it ever stopped working before I would buy a replacement.
Unfortunatley for appliances these days, to get fewer options you actually have to go up in price. It took me a long time, for example to even land on an oven that was minimalistic with knobs that you turn to set the temperature and turn it on (overall the oven isn't simple enough, because it still has too many logic boards that were replaced three times in the first year, until they got it right).
I gave up my old gas stove that cost $400 new, worked for 25 years, without fail.
Even when I was at the new appliance store, looking at the fancy stuff, the sales guy was impliying short life span, and repair contract needs, etc...
You’ll maybe want to do firmware updates now and then, but you can plug it in temporarily for those. It’ll still do more than you strictly want it to, but the most invasive behaviors will be off the table.
Alternatively you can get a huge computer monitor and use that as your TV. But there’s some issues with that approach. Monitors are designed for sitting closer up and may not have as good viewing angles.
YMMV, anecdotal, it might get patched out later, I don't know. I hope EU consumer and privacy laws are protecting me in this case.
Your fridge and freezer don't need any more screens than a LED panel telling you the current temperature and the laundry machine can make due just fine with a LED panel + some buttons and turning knobs.
It works but I definitely don't love it, and I'm left wondering how hard it would've really been to remedy most of the annoyances. For the price (and given the reviews) I was definitely expecting better.
I was dead set on a speed queen top loader and then my wife started showing me this stuff (specifically detailed tests showing speed queens top loaders being rough on clothes)
But there's a HUGE difference in terms of ability to clean. If I'm out doing yardwork and I have a pair of jeans with deep mud stains on the knees the old style top loader agitators can clean them just fine. The front loaders cannot no matter how many times I run them through. I end up having to scrub the jeans between my knuckles in the laundry sink - moderate agitation breaks up the mud and it rinses out easily.
I suspect a lot of this "agitators are rough" nonsense comes from modern washers that don't use a sufficient amount of water. But the SQ has a setting to use the normal amount of water so it's a non-issue. Most analysis I've seen (eg: from Consumer Reports) refuses to consider top loaders with normal water usage settings -- the data is basically invalid. A lot of Consumer Reports analysis has this type of problem where the entire study is built on a false premise.
Front loaders might be fine if your clothes never get dirty and only need occasional light rinsing. They're really terrible for actually cleaning dirt.
(They do try to minimize water usage, which means that if you have the water soluble sort of mess on the laundry, you may need to select a “heavy soil” mode or add something wet and heavy to the load. The former takes two straightforward button presses, although LG sadly seems to have switched to capacitive “buttons” on newer models.)
Also, the speed wash cycle is genuinely fast and seems to work fine.
edit: What do you mean top loaders with normal water usage? Most top loaders want as much water is needed to cover the clothing. They gain nothing except longer cycle time if you use more water, and they don’t get clothing clean if you use too little.
Wirecutter doesn't publish their methodology, but every "tester" who has focuses on questionable metrics -- such as testing stain types that don't require agitation to remove.
In my experience most people who are happy with them don't have very dirty clothing to begin with.
Regarding normal water usage: It is not true that washers "gain nothing" by using more water. More water protects clothing under agitation and aids in removing dirt. From the SQ manual:
"Wash delicate items usually washed by hand on this cycle. A full tub of water is recommended (even for small loads) to allow the delicate items to move freely through the water. More water helps reduce fabric wear, wrinkling, and provides for a clean wash."
https://speedqueen.com/au/wp-content/uploads/sites/21/2019/0...
This is the precise issue:
1) Regulators required low-water modes
2) Low water modes clean less effectively and are rougher on clothes
3) Front loaders are designed to work with low water loads, but still don't clean well
3) All modern washers are now terrible, except models that intentionally skirt regulations - such as SQ
High-water agitation is the best by far. The only drawback is increased water use - which is insignificant. The entire issue is a result of bad washer regulations.
And while I don't doubt your SQ top loader with a full agitator does an absolutely fantastic job when compared to a modern front loader you have a big apples/oranges comparison problem.
And if you live in Austin, I would be willing to have a cloths cleaning video made against my 25 year old kenmore/frigidare front loader. :) And that is simply because (as of a couple years ago when I checked) my front loader uses closer to as much water as a modern top loader. It puts a good 6" of water in the tub and has a much smaller capacity that most of the modern front loaders because it has a very small opening and a fairly deep tub but is also narrower front to back. Given the agitators are about the same as the water depth, the cloths can be fully submerged/agitated out.
I to do a lot of outdoor work/repair (including that stupid washer's bearing), and things get dirty/greasy/etc and that washer has consistently amazed me just how good a job it does, and as a bonus when I got it I was also amazed at how much longer it seemed many of my cloths were lasting. I have 25 year old shirts that still look fairly new. So IMHO that washer has been a bit of a miracle worker, which is why despite being used at much greater duty cycle than your average home washer for the past 15 years (think ~15-20 loads a week, don't ask), every time it starts to need another bearing set, I upset my wife by fixing it. The parts cost like $30, and now that I've done it a few times its a ~2 hour job. Although, last time I sorta re-engineered the bearing set after discovering some new bearing technology better suited to being in a wet/soapy environment like a washer, so its possible I may have significantly extended how long it goes between bearing replacements (aka hopefully I never have to do it again). It also seems to spin significantly faster than many of the modern front loaders, which is seemingly at least part of the problem with the bearing loads.
Now, we have speed queens and I no longer am using buckets to fill our washing machine, don't have to babysit it, it doesn't randomly jump in the air suddenly as it's gotten out of balance for the 4th time in the day. I would never willingly wish that upon someone.
Buy whatever you can get service for. This rules out Samsung and LG, but in a smaller area this might rule out some other brands. In general avoid LG unless you want a front loading washer, and avoid Samsung in general.
There aren't that many manufacturers. Bosch, Thermador, and Gaggenau; Whirlpool / Amana / KitchenAid / Maytag / Jennair; Electrolux / Frigidaire / Zanussi / Westinghouse /; etc etc etc. Ikea's all Frigidaire these days, and Kenmore you've gotta check the part number (typically Whirlpool or LG).
Dishwasher – pretty much the universal opinion is Bosch. The quiet part is that their current lineup has design decisions you may not like (no heating element, no grinder). And they definitely feel cheap. But they're quiet and USA made.
Washer – Speed Queen for a top loader, but again read up on the caveats. Whirlpool's commercial lineup is basically their consumer lineup from 20 years ago. They may be cheaper/easier to buy and service than Speed Queen. Lots of folks seem to love LG front loaders.
Fridge – top freezers with no ice maker are about as simple, efficient, and reliable as you can get. But Whirlpool's current top freezers are junk. Supposedly Whirlpool's more expensive fridges are still decent. Other designs (e.g. bottom freezer) are more complicated and will be less efficient. At the higher end Bosch's big side by sides with the dual compressors are supposed to be pretty solid.
Ranges – figure out what you want and go from there. Samsung is reportedly pretty bad with gas ranges, and obviously electronics aren't their strong suit either. Induction ranges will typically have more assemblies and fewer individual components to replace ($$$ to service). With induction the low end Frigidaires don't have any WiFi bullshit, but only the higher priced brands (and Samsung) will eschew the touchscreens.
Microwaves – American kitchens tend to feature those big hulking units hung right over the stove. But counter top models are waaay cheaper and all mostly the same guts.
Webservers shall create and provide the readily HTML so browsers can render the website without JavaScript. Actually text-browsers should render it and also allow disabled persons using it without hassle.
Instead SPA (or more direct JavaScript) is used to force the browser to assemble the HTML and it is slow and waste resources. Creating website which create load on the client-site is bad because we’ve power on the server dedicated for this task - not so on client.
Looking back web-developers need something imperative and more direct than CGI, PHP or JSP. The initial backslash against JS was right. I sadly shipped JS.
When a powerful application is needed? Make a native application and use an appropriate toolkit (Gtk or QT).
JS was a terrible language but nowadays it is pretty good in some areas, passable in others, with some horror shows left in. The ecosystem and tooling are the real problems. I don’t understand why these issues haven’t been addressed by Google et al.
Native applications are just so much more expensive to develop and maintain. Given the nuances of different platforms, it’s also very difficult to keep different versions in sync. People expect collaboration as table stakes, which makes that task even harder.
I agree accessibility is a problem.
Ironically the Java applet had the right idea, as a compromise between our positions, but wrong time and maybe wrong language? Its Swiss cheese security didn’t help either.
Quality isn't free, yes.
> Given the nuances of different platforms, it’s also very difficult to keep different versions in sync.
Don't tightly couple applications and backend service versions (where a backend is even needed, otherwise make it all local) and this is not a problem. You should be using open (relatively stable) protocols wherever possible anyway.
Web apps "solve" platform differences by completely disregarding them and expecting users to adapt to the application instead. This does not make them better.
Quality isn’t free and native applications provide quality (reliance, performance, integration, usability).
The platform issues just moved to WebKit, Blink and Gecko. New platform issues and the web developers complain like application developers ;)
Companies favor the web usually to lower their own cost, give them control over users and being free of rules. Users pay for it. With higher hardware requirements (Electron), loss of data, loss of control and the absence of usability. And as states above, a website shall not stress my CPU or RAM.
The worst example is Microsoft Teams. The best example is your preferred Matrix client application.
For what it's worth, the developer experience is also highly subjective.
The need to deal with whole NPM ecosystem is another point, that significantly negatively impacten my dev XP compared to rendering plain old school templates in other ecosystems.
If you want something more structured data, look at sxml (see Racket or Guile). Then implement that in a library and use it in place of the default of most (all?) SPA frameworks.
There are lightweight frameworks (like knockout) that keep things simple but keep you safe with bindings, without giving up control to a bigger framework.
$40 in parts rescued a fridge that my subdivision neighbors each traded up years ago the first time theirs started acting up. I already had the BLE sensors.
Runs like a champ, and remains free of an IP address.
I have a 'keezer' - a chest freezer I run at fridge temps to store and serve homebrew beer.
Buying a new A+ rated chest freezer cost me £199 but only costs £35 a year to run. A friend scored a free 15 yo freezer from Facebook and it costs just under £100 a year to run. So he saved £200, but now is down £65 a year. It won't take long for my keezer to be significantly cheaper over a 5 year horizon.
I hate to see old tech wasted, but the energy and cost savings can be significant.
Also, if his is not a chest freezer, that's another big difference --- a chest freezer is inherently better if opened often, since the cold air stays at the bottom, whereas in an upright one, it spills out.
I'll get them to check it is clean, but I'll assume it is as he's pretty on top of that sort of thing.
This infuriated me greatly because of the waste, not one of money, but for the environment. I considered paying the $2100 just to avoid the environmental waste, but realized this would probably be only one in a line of upcoming repairs.
I am not commenting on taste which may end up more than fine, just looks. But that thick crust adds tons of empty sugar calories to the food that originally doesn't have so much.
The "side by side" standard US frige is what we call in France American fridge because it has two door and look so oversized and fancy compared to the standard fridge in france.
The US "french-door fridge" take the oversizing a step further by adding a third door on the bottom of the "side by side" design. We don't even have a name for theses fridges as nobody buy theses, so I guess we'd call them big American fridge.
Symmetrically EU "regular fridge" probably don't sell in the US because it's perceived as too small. An thus is probably called small/tiny fridge.
Seeing the cars was most shocking thing for me when visiting US.
Then, some stupid person fills their car completely with groceries, can’t see out the back window, and backs into you. So, you get a still bigger car, so they can’t possibly help but see you, and then you crash into them, and it goes back and forth until we are driving around in these land-ships.
Funny but it seems more complicated : https://youtu.be/oOttvpjJvAo?si=1KfRQYKZLdg4d5Bo
How are y'all getting decent bread and milk?
Now Australia’s food quality is pretty damn good compared to most other countries, but it’s just as much if not more of an indication that the average quality of food in the US is abysmal. From the week or so I’ve spent in the US, in a major coastal city, as a ‘rich’ person seeking good food, I’ve gotta say that this is my belief.
So in short I don’t think that many Americans are getting decent bread.
American milk is very pasteurized and might last a month before being opened. But I think I’m mildly lactose intolerant anyway, can’t stand the stuff.
What I don't remember (as someone who left North America) is how we managed to have so much food without wasting all of it.
Quite a lot of my fridge is taken up with random jars that I'll probably never eat. A bigger fridge would just enable more of those.
And also actually food in US does somehow seem to last for longer, as probably the manufacturers anticipate this need and optimize for that (as there's no free lunch, likely at the expense of other factors); I'd never ever buy a half-gallon of milk in a single container in EU because it would start to go bad by the time I get to the end of it, but in USA that was fine.
Maybe something about vastly different food quality standards between the sides of the pond.
Chemical treatments are not the only factor- in terms of fresh commodities (fruits and vegetable) varieties grown play a big role; so too might post-harvest treatments such as irradiation (might be for phytosanitary reasons, but often can extend shelf life if the commodity can withstand it and remain high quality), nano particle coatings that reduce water loss and spoilage.. these are just a few of the things that are going on "behind the scenes" to make our food last longer and reduce food waste.
If you would like to learn more here is a good review on physical treatments specifically for cereal crops: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5920410/ . There is an awful lot that goes into "food quality", and there are important trade offs with every choice.
Probably taste, at least anecdotally - every single person from my side of the world that visited the US that I talked to, mentions the food there tastes just bland in general - and that's both veggies and highly-processed foods.
Sadly, you're right. It doesn't.
In my experience, american fridges contain products that do not perish as easily. Lots of frozen goods and processed foods. Even the fresh foods seem to last longer out here. Milk lives for 2 weeks, their bread is unkillable and longer lasting greens (Kale) are more popular.
where I live the groceries are in the next town over and most people I know go once a week. At the end of the week you have improvised casserole to get rid of anything that is on the verge of funkiness. Always keep some amount of frozen and shelf stable in reserve as well.
I also do canning out of my garden and that stuff will last for ages.
At some point you just have to accept that there are certain things the Americans have gotten right, and we haven't. Family-sized fridges, laundry machines which are roughly colocated with clothes storage and (arguably) sink-based garbage disposals are examples of that.
For the biggest fridge you describe, the extra space is usually a freezer. If you are going to have a freezer anyway, it seems like an overall savings to include it in the fridge. If you don’t have a freezer, you won’t have any icecream, and then is life really worth living?
In the "french door" fridge, the two doors on the top both open to the same compartment, which is the refrigerator. The bottom compartment is a freezer and opens as a drawer.
While I’m glad enough to save the money, definitely not eager to learn how to fix the fridge too.
Or if it is the same thing each time, that's equally frustrating.
My A/C is only four years old and the maintenance guy is telling me one of the fans is drawing too much power and will need to be replaced soon. Despite the part being free under warranty, they want $600 to replace it. This seems to be standard in the industry. Same for the capacitor: the part is only $17 but the authorized service companies want several hundred dollars to replace it, a job that should only take 15 minutes. It's almost as if they know they have us over a barrel.
I’ve started to learn how to do everything myself via YouTube.
Am I an expert? Heck no. Can I do a dang reasonable job for easily 1/10th the cost? Sure seems to be true.
On the other hand some fixes aren't worth getting the tools and doing the research, nor taking the risk of making the problem worse.
A big part of adulthood is figuring out what is and isn't worth fixing yourself.
Nearly every industry feels like a scam now.
Outright lying to customers, over-charging them. Heck, I get it, they’re a business and need to make money. But there are reasonable limits.
Depending on local power costs a modern compressor dryer will easily pay for itself in a couple of years compared to sticking with the old one.
It's a fairly decent one, AEG. rrp was ~£650 IIRC
How many of those old appliances had to break and fail in the first 10 years for these two to survive.
So yes, many old appliances have broken and were likely not worth repairing, but on average all the evidence points to newer devices being more finicky, easily broken, and harder and more expensive to repair than older, simpler devices. Every engineer worth their salt knows that simpler is usually more reliable.
I myself have repaired everything from toasters to microwaves in the last few years as things have aged in my house, and it got me a reputation that has encouraged family members to bring things to me to be fixed. There's a stark difference in how things are made post 2010, and the quality only gets worse post 2020. Often times the cost cutting goes so beyond making manufacturability easier that it makes it impossible to use whatever it is for it's intended purpose for more than a few times.
For example older smoke detectors have the boards on legs where the screws go through them, and for high quality ones the legs have threaded brass inserts so that if you tighten things down after replacing the battery you don't have a chance of stripping the threading. Newer ones the boards just float freely inside the case and are held in by snap clips which become brittle after just a couple of years and break easily, meaning you have to glue the board back in after replacing the battery. Key fobs and remotes often suffer the exact same problem of using plastic snap clips which will break the first time you have to pry the body open to replace the CR2032 battery inside. I've had to buy a new car key specifically because of that. Showerheads use soft compound plastics for the flow rings which break down unlike their older rubber variants, not only clogging some of the showerhead's openings but also failing to function as a flow ring and allowing the full force of the pipe's throughput. Freestanding lamps no longer route the cable through the bottom and attach it via a ring inside the body as a double insulator. Instead often times the cable is just glued into a hole in the side, and if you're lucky there's a rubber ring to cap the hole and act as an insulator. I've gotten shocked from cheap metal desk lamps because of this. Clocks these days are just single chips blobbed onto a cheap board with an induction motor powered by a single AAA battery and three plastic gears to move the hands. Most have as severe a drift as minutes per week which gets worse as the batteries lose charge. Old ones used batteries to periodically wind springs under tension or the 60Hz frequency of the electric grid which would move a gear system at a consistent ratio, keeping drift under a few seconds a month.
Survivorship bias may be real, but even cheap garbage from the '90s is far better built than anything I can buy now that isn't hand made.
However, most people now base how water tastes from bottled water. So the preference at home is to not drink off the tap.
Here in Sweden and many other European countries, the tap water is indistinguishable from bottled water.
The Royal Society of Chemistry is calling on the UK Government to overhaul its drinking water standards, after new analysis reveals more than a third of water courses tested in England and Wales contain medium or high-risk levels of PFAS, more commonly known as forever chemicals.
https://www.rsc.org/news-events/articles/2023/oct/pfas-clean...
Don't take this as a recommendation though. I have no expertise in this at all and I haven't done any tests to confirm whether Epic's claims are actually true.
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1681/3573/files/Epic_Pure_...
I dont trust regulators and have a five stage reverse under the sink filter. Result? In the last five years in my little section of the midwest:
- I've dodged Pb poisoning when my local water authority switched corrosion inhibitors (note, this is after Flint MI)
- I've dodged vinyl chloride poisoning from the Palestine OH fire that Federal regulators pretended was a nothing burger until dead cows started showing up everywhere.
Not to mention the countless times the lines are fixed and the water comes out brown (this is "safe" because it's iron oxide. Except it is only mostly iron oxide plus all the crud that has caked onto the pipes.)
Best case scenario I trust the regulators. Even then F- ups happen and Id rather have a filter I keep myself.
https://arstechnica.com/health/2023/10/jury-awards-229m-to-v...
Ari-zona. Zona Arida.
https://azlibrary.gov/collections/dazl/arizona-almanac/meani...
Humans have documented remains close to this village going back 4000 years, and likely were here much longer than that. The creek has (so far, even in the worst drought in 1200 years) never stopped flowing.
I don't know where you're getting this from. Generally speaking, regulations and enforcement are tighter than they've ever been. That doesn't mean they're perfect, but you're going to have to show some evidence it's getting worse.
I really don't think you want to go back to the 1970's and 1980's, or the 1940's and 1950's.
I mean, I totally believe you about your water -- I just don't know where you get the idea that it was better in the past. If anything, you as a consumer just didn't have the ability to detect it or filter.
Corruption has generally gone down significantly over the decades, and knowledge and training have gone up.
I'm not saying there aren't problems, but you're presenting a narrative where bureaucracies are "collapsing", when the reality is that things have actually been improving in general, and quite a great deal.
I personally don't like my water to taste like diluted swimming pool. After the first time I tried a blind tasting of tap water vs. Brita-filtered at home, I never drank straight from the tap again.
https://tappwater.co/blogs/blog/can-you-drink-san-francisco-...
Also, "the developed world" is a very polarising statement to make.
Had no issues until the plastic drain pan cracked while moving the fridge to redo the floors. Rather than deal with the repair (a replacement drip tray alone was $120 shipped) we sold it to an appliance flipper and put the money toward a new one. I was bummed, but when the buyer came to haul off the old one he was pleasantly surprised that it had made it a decade mostly intact.
Replaced it with a dumb white top-freezer Whirlpool fridge (WRT318). Both were about the same price, inflation adjusted, when new (~$650 from Lowe's). It was in stock and installed the next day. Only tech "upgrade" in the new fridge is a membrane button to control the fridge temperature instead of a knob.
When my wife wanted a touchscreen in the kitchen so she could queue up Spotify, I got a refurb last-gen Lenovo Duet chromebook/tablet for $120. The tablet back has a strong magnet for the cover that made it perfect for slapping onto the side of the fridge. We put a pair of used Kantos on top of the fridge and charge the tablet off its USB port; Google Keep also handles the shopping list, Google Voice on functions as our backup phone. 100% of our "smart appliance" needs done and dusted.
Reading about the failing condenser fan and compressor reminded me of these items, worth watching again:
I don't think the word efficient means what you think it means.
Have you ever measured their power consumption?
Apparently, I'm not the only one (mine looks cleaner than this, and is a bigger model): https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyItForLife/comments/13obhfp/my_gr...
See this message from an independent parts seller:
https://spares2repair.co.uk/search-results?main_page=advance...
> Miele have unfortunately changed their sales policy in UK and Europe.
> This applies to all online spare parts retailers including Miele directly.
> Most Genuine spare parts are now only to be available to repair engineers and not directly to the public.
> Unfortunately we have had to remove thousands of parts from your view.
> Hopefully Miele will change their sales policy again in the future.
Our fridge however is Japanese Panasonic. Not a common choice in Europe but it’s been great so far. Zero maintenance. No frost. Has some minimal digital control but we don’t touch it. YMMV.
But the first year service rate for even high end dishwashers is very high(over 10%!). Got a Bosch and got lucky so far but it still feels like luck..
I just can’t say the same over the other appliance brands in my house.
My washing machine is a Bosch series 8 which has also been really good, same age, no problems.
So a tfal pan is legit in Europe, but a Chinese cheap knockoff in Canada, the brand name sold to Canadian Tire.
Bosch, Siemens, Neff, is all the same brand underneath and there is little difference between the models across years. Just get something that is offline.
Case in point: factories producing my mother's washing machine model were located in three different countries. Depending on the country of origin, one important part would be either integrated with a few others or not. In the former case repairs were not worth the cost.
Only way to tell if your particular machine would be repairable was to check the country of origin.
The repair guy told them that the thing breaking was their own fault since the manual clearly started you need to run one of the other modes every X cycles if you normally do ECO, otherwise all the internal tubes gunk up. They got a rebate on a new one, but they refused to replace it. I'd been done with Miele at that point, but they just bought a new one. How a company known for quality and engineering can't implement a simple logic that the device would automatically use more water/temperature every X runs, or at least show a warning on the display, is beyond me.
Oh, and the new one, according to my parents at least, occasionally just stops in the middle of the washing cycle and they need to restart it. But I wouldn't rule out that this is some sort of user error. Maybe you just shouldn't go with the model that has a dozen buttons and knobs when you're 80. :)
Fridge: still working perfectly, light, temp control, auto-defrost, fans. I think the compressor got a bit louder but that's it.
Dishwasher: still working fine, the upper basket (or whatever that's called) and its rails show some wear ie tilting downward when pulled out. Sometimes the drainage pump sounds a little strange, maybe something's stuck in there.
Stove: induction, still working fine. Unfortunately all the models they had available had touch buttons on top, probably to make it appear modern. They don't work when your finger is wet or greasy, and the whole stove turns off when water spills on any of the buttons and it starts beeping like crazy. For some funny reason, the stove stopped making beeping noises on button presses. I guess when you don't have real buttons you want this as some form of feedback that the press registered, but the beep sounded really cheap like a square wave. It still beeps when you turn it on or off, and when there's water on the buttons.
Oven: working apart from the bottom heating element. It broke about 3 to 4 years ago. Never bothered to replace it, just using hot air mode now.
They all look like simple no-bells-and-whistles appliances, but also not sturdy. I think in all cases I picked one of the cheapest options.
Bonus nerd stuff on the stove: when the beeping-on-button-press still worked, very rarely one of two things happened: a) a button press registered, but no beep was emitted. b) a beep was emitted but nothing happened. I was suspecting that there's something going on like two completely independent sets of wires going to all the buttons, one for actual functionality, the other one just for beeps, like it was bolted on later by a different department or even company. Maybe the original design had it just beep on power on/off and they wired this in after the fact.
All 3 are quite good, and knowing this you can try to get more bang for your money.
The OP brings up an interesting contradiction: appliances have become less reliable but cars have become more reliable. Cars have become worse in some of the same areas as appliances, like the use of touch screens instead of physical controls, but cars have nevertheless become more mechanically reliable. What would explain this opposite trend?
That stove top broke after a couple months, but luckily we're in Denmark where the warranty is a year, and when something gets repaired like that it's also under warranty for a year (actually sometimes more). We got that stove top replaced about every 4-6 months for 4 years until finally they did a good enough job that it lasted. The repairman said yeah sometimes it's just like that, ha ha.
No monetary cost but every few months you can't cook for a week.
Luckily I also bought a portable non-induction stove with two plates which we use whenever the main stove has problems.
You may or may not be a fan of the Euro, but EU law is two year warranty for consumers.
So far that has worked decently well : my kitchen water heater (3 year warranty) is going on nearly a decade and only now is starting to have issues, while the previous one, albeit significantly cheaper (minimum warranty), only lasted half a year.
(One should not underestimate the cost / effort spent dealing with a poorly working / broken tool.)
The reliability of cars, on the other hand, used to be pretty awful. Lots of maintenance, regularly needing repair work done - not to mention regular servicing, oil changes and tyre changes. And people replacing their 5-year-old cars because 'old cars just aren't reliable'. So there was a lot of scope for improvement.
Ford's EcoBoost and Peugeot's Puretech engines come to mind in particular, with the latter being so bad, that they tend to fail well before 100k km, and there's an active investigation going on about it by European Commission.
Before, it didn’t matter because the feature set was so limited that software bugs were make or break. If you can’t decode a signal or change a channel, it’s not getting shipped. But now, where there’s an entire OS, GUI, applications, network access, etc.? Now there are vast areas where a million mistakes can be made and shipped. The software industry is (relatively) well-equipped to deal with this. The hardware industry is not. So they ship garbage quality over and over again.
That’s not even covering the perverse incentives vendors have to make their products cheaper and make up for it with spying, adverts, etc. That just compounds the problem.
Minmax'ing cost and marketable shiny features over literally every measure of quality, usability, repairability, and longevity is abhorrent. It's an accelerating arms race to the bottom.
I can only hope we reach point where the market segments and opens space (with sufficient demand) so that more people and companies can focus on making sane, well designed, simple things again.
Incidentally, I happen to have almost the same refrigerator as the author (same thing, but without the hot water dispenser). My only failure so far has been the condenser fan after seven years of operation. It was clearly an electronic failure of the onboard motor controller, which honestly has no excuse to fail.
I also have a more-recent Kitchenaid 48-inch-wide side-by-side purchased in 2020. It's a remarkably simple appliance given the year of manufacture. Yet the interior lighting is horribly unreliable. The freezer killed three lighting modules in its first three years. They inevitably go high impedance, usually emitting zero light. One of the three was still emitting a tiny amount of light post-failure. The lights are all in series, so when one fails the entire chamber goes dark. I've even had one of the replacement lighting modules fail already. This component is clearly flawed and I'm tempted to design my own replacement.
It's actually not at all, but people [in general, not here] want Cheap + Features. There are expensive "prosumer/consumer" level no-feature refrigerators but people don't want to pay for them.
I've stated earlier here that I've had Sub Zero refrigerators last 10-15+ years with mostly no maintenance, however you will spend around $7k at the low end. For kitchen appliances talk to chefs who work with these brands daily or read around their forums.
Most people don't want to do this or will vote with their wallet by buying something cheap that needs replacing in ~5 years.
It’s tiny at only 470L, however it’s designed for maximum storage in small Japanese apartments, so we can fit heaps of groceries and frozens. It also has a chilled compartment specifically for sushi meat!
Also, 10 year warranty on all parts.
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We bought a Samsung (would have preferred LG) fridge 4 years ago and have not needed a single repair. But it is pretty bare bones — French door and in freezer ice maker — no water dispenser or door controls.
My oven on the other hand - it's a GE Cafe slide-in dual-oven. I'm very happy with it. And I know how much people here rail against it, but I like being able to preheat it, turn it off remotely. Of course, baking is a hobby for me, so I wanted the extra oven.
As evidence, check out some of the manufacturers that do make higher-quality dumb appliances, like Subzero and Speed Queen and notice how little consumer market share they have. Of course they are more expensive, but that's where the supply and demand curve cross. But where people like business owners WILL pay more for quality and longevity, they do have a major share of the commercial market.
[0] this doesn't mean it's a sufficient, let alone universally applicable, argument in favour; I'm well aware of many examples of central planning failures.
E.g. a decent toaster in 1984 in the UK was about £18. That's £72 now. Only posh people spend £72 on a toaster. Most people I imagine want to pay no more than £40.
Microwaves were around £200. That's £805 now. Nobody is spending £800 on a microwave.
But I think the "Other appliance anecdotes" part suggests that the author has very different requirements than I do. I grew up without a garbage disposal, but its a huge convenience to have one. Also I've had top loader washing machines that don't have easy access to the trap, gimme easy access to the trap ANY DAY and I don't care how its loaded.
I've also heard landlords say garbage disposals are a net-negative for maintenance visits: disposal-related problems are more costly than the occasional clog because someone put down something the disposal would've stopped.
Also, in multi-tenant buildings, disposals can be a nightmare. Too many people with varying folk wisdom of what's good to put down it. Some people create blockages for the entire stack or more, which ends up causing powered backflows of nasty wastewater into some units. And then what eventually gets snaked out of the drain, and dragged across their kitchens... mere bleach will never get that sufficiently clean. (Even after 3 of these kitchen-apocalypse episodes, you just can't get some people to understand that they can't keep grinding orange peels in their disposal to freshen the air, even when the rot of previous orange peels in the increasing blockage they created might be the reason they want to freshen the air now.)
I try to tell people that pretty much only water and dish soap should go down the drain, and that one of those few-dollar mesh drain strainers is a great tool to help follow this rule. (Also, a container for collecting most of the grease/oil that would otherwise go down the drain.)
That's like saying bicycles encourage people to ride bicycles. It's supposed to encourage it. That's the literal purpose of a garbage disposal unit: "a device that shreds food waste into pieces small enough—generally less than 2 mm (0.079 in) in diameter—to pass through plumbing."[1]
> Some people create blockages for the entire stack or more
I don't know how that could happen since if you put something into a garbage disposal unit that can't be shredded to tiny particles, then it's the garbage disposal unit itself that will get clogged, not the pipes or drains. Whatever gets through the garbage disposal unit is going to be less than 2mm in size, and generally much smaller and liquified. If you're referring to oil or grease buildup in pipes, that is irrelevant to the use of a garbage disposal unit since people can and do pour oil or grease down the drain whether they have a garbage disposal unit or not.
In my opinion, a garbage disposal unit is an under-appreciated and supremely useful kitchen appliance, and extremely environmentally friendly (see the brief Wikipedia explanation[2]).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garbage_disposal_unit
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garbage_disposal_unit#Rational...
And the disposal, and myths about what's good to put down the pipes, means a lot of people put that food waste down there.
I don't know the original reason for the adoption of disposals, but smells like it could be corporate lobbying to create a market for a product:
> In many cities in the United States in the 1930s and the 1940s, the municipal sewage system had regulations prohibiting placing food waste (garbage) into the system.[5] InSinkErator spent considerable effort, and was highly successful in convincing many localities to rescind these prohibitions.[6]
On top of that, with scratch and dent, you do get what you pay for at some point. If an appliance is visibly damaged you don’t know what happened to it: could have been dropped, hit with a truck, returned due to problems/abuse, etc. When physical damage is involved you don’t know if it can exacerbate a design weakness, loosen some screws, whatever you might dream up.
I get it, a lot of appliances are cheap shit that aren’t “built like they used to.” But also, nobody twisted OP’s arm to buy a fridge with an LCD touch screen.
Here’s another thing: good, built-to-last-decades appliances exist and just cost a lot because that’s what they cost to produce. We can’t really blame appliance manufacturers for either the decline of American purchasing power and/or the change in consumer preferences toward shopping on price and nothing else.
You can buy a tank of a washing machine like a Speed Queen but you also get into it knowing you’re paying three or four times the cost of an equivalent shit box. And here’s the thing, if the shit box goes for 6 years without repair/replacement and the Speed Queen lasts 20, congratulations, the shit box wins on TCO. On top of that, your money can sit in your bank account or be used for something else instead of being paid up front for the appliance.
It’s the same deal with refrigerators like Sub-Zero. I talked to an appliance technician who told me all the luxury brands are less reliable, but I think the more accurate statement is that customers don’t call for repairs and blow money on labor costs for their cheap refrigerators, they just buy a new one. When you look at Sub-Zero and similar offerings, they mostly eschew gimmicks, often not even bothering with a water dispenser and going with a basic ice machine instead.
They’re not universally good, because there are shit brands in that space too (like Viking), but you’ve got a lot more quality options at that price point.
I think one solution to the situation of disposable goods might be a disposal tax that the manufacturer and customer share half and half. Or, improve warranty laws for product categories that should last longer. Nobody’s going to make a shitty fridge if you make a 10 year warranty mandatory.
Ceiling fans that can only be controlled using a remote. No way to wire at switch.
I am very much into local home automation, that is where no internet connection is required or allowed (HomeAssistant anyone?).
One thing I always watch out for is the automation must allow manual interaction. These fans have no pull chains, or switches when the remote breaks or more likely get lost.
For other parts of life this is great though: keeping track of what is going one with some friends I don’t often see or distant relatives.
Impressive.
So I've invested more times in Emacs than I'll probably ever get back in timing savings from ripgrep'ing through my notes.
However, they're nice to have when I need them.
It often seems impossible to buy things that are quality or free of extraneous features no matter what you are willing to pay. It's frustrating.
Nobody has done it, yet.
I have hope for the Chinese to figure this out and create a national standard.
https://www.webstaurantstore.com/avantco-a-23r-hc-29-solid-d...
looks great!
Also, like military hardware, industrial appliances rely on a long chain of logistics to keep going. They generally will however degrade more gracefully and be easier to maintain - because they're designed to be maintained.
I really do not expect that a newer fridge will last as long. I may try and find something in brushed aluminum off Craigslist which has been sitting in someone's garage since 2000 when this one eventually goes.
I have an aunt who has had a fridge running without issues since about 1962. It is all white ceramic over stainless steel and a thing of beauty.
This is the kind of product engineering modern companies seek to avoid.
I seem to recall a Heinlein novel about inter-dimensional travelers who wanted to take over the world by destroying the economy. The first thing they did was found companies which made products which never wore out (razors and cars).
It's a lot more efficient than my old fridge though and a lot bigger. The old one had issues with it's design and defrosting as well that the new one has fixed esp being a lower cold drawere model vs the old one with freezer on top. I can't block the vents on the new one and they can't freeze up, but it does use a blower. The old one could ice over the vent and I had to modify it with a extra passive heating wire to keep it from freezing up.
Anything over 10 years really should be replaced.
A bit like leds vs incandescent at this point time. Especially problematic given a fridge freezer runs 24/7 and is the largest contributor to your energy bills.
Also isn’t this a classic example of old things that survive are likely more expensive and well made. However, the cheap stuff back then likely got replaced sooner. Probably a similar thing applies where an expensive modern fridge will last ages too.
Modern appliances use a very low viscosity oil in the compressor pump, and as a result use less power, but also wear faster. The old ones use a much more viscous oil which gives decades of use at the expense of higher power consumption.
One solution could be to side step the issue by getting really good at flexible just in time manufacturing. This lets you decouple the company from products. When someone needs a fridge, a fridge is made. The companies running the factories could be big build to order companies that could make a huge variety of things and the plans could be for sale by “fabless” appliance companies or open source.
This is sort of how chip and electronic parts manufacture works.
In this model making something with a really long life span is fine. You might run low on fridge orders, but that just means your factories are free to make e-bikes or server racks or heat pumps or whatever the thing with demand happens to be.
T-Shirts are probably the first one I am aware of which got there. But strangely enough, Guitars are moving that way. It used to be to get a signature series you had to be a pretty big artist. These days, there's players from cover bands getting signature series! You look through all the lists of signature series guitars, and quite a lot of them have been released in just the last ~12 years. PCB's are going there now too - I've read on HN itself hobbyists talking about how cheap it is to get individual custom boards printed for them for projects shipped from China. Manufacturers taking production runs of less than 100, and happy to do it.
It's worth noting - production on demand doesn't provide any guarantee that the products will have good longevity. In fact, many printed-on-demand T-Shirts are pretty crap and you end up tossing them after a couple years.
I've never hooked up water lines for ice makers for my refrigerators, including refrigerators at my other properties. Call it a hunch.
Mine's an LG, we've had it for roughly 10 years now and never had a problem with it. But we don't even use the icemaker in it (we have a separate ice maker as well).
The fridge that was in my house when I bought it (recently) has an ice maker fully contained in the freezer at the bottom, you have to open the freezer section fully to get at it. Apparently that can work fine.
Just some tips for the future :)
Unfortunately in my house the kitchen appliances are on display and so “need” to look nice. If I were to build a custom house, I’d just hide all the appliances and buy the $500 basic white fridge like I have in my garage.
Because over here, northern Europe, only the high end refrigerators have ice makers, for example.
Why would one ever want that?
I need my fridge to connect to the internet about as much as I need my oven to operate as a fax machine, though.
(Also Northern Europe btw.)
And second, it's the single point of failure of the entire fridge. Everything else, from the rubbers to the pump will last longer and be easily repairable. I'm convinced it's mainly there because producers of fridges know it obsoletes the entire fridge faster. That without these fragile "addons" the machine might just last for years or decades. During which this family does not buy a new one.
It's not an SPF as the rest of the fridge doesn't rely on it to operate. Ours broke down last year (after about 14 years of continuous operation in a hard water area). The fridge continued to work fine and after about a month we had the ice maker replaced.
I vowed to never buy another fancy appliance again and took it off the WiFi network.
It was on an isolated WiFi network so it couldn’t communicate with any other devices in the house, but I didn’t count on ads being served directly on a $3000 device.
I compared many machines to that of a mocca spanish/italian espresso maker. Simple design as simple can be.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moka_pot
Advocate US navy KISS design principle.
Are a smart phone smart when it distracts you from close ones?
Smart devices can get hacked Dumb devices much harder. Which is more secure old CRT or new smart tv?
Same goes for IT shiny new complicated thing or simple kiss thing.
We are past the point where you can not buy a "dumb TV" anymore or to do so you need to pay an absurd premium. The next in line are our home appliances. Your fridge, your vacuum cleaner, your clothes iron... everything will be built in a way that makes you dependent on the vendor.
I know it is easy and tempting to blame "late-stage capitalism" and corporations' endless appetite for growth bringing up Planned Obsolescence, but have we really made ourselves so helpless that we are unable to say "no, I refuse to accept this crap you are offering me"?
I've had one for ten years and it didn't have any issues, and I didn't buy a premium model either (no ice machine on the top door tho).
But a friend of mine has a new one and it has the issues of the heat exchanger freezing due to bad insulation or something.
I feel it's not that these things are very complicated, as much as the fact that it's a market for lemons.
Some people argue it's just incompetence, not PO. But if you've been in the business of making the same type of hardware/appliances for more than a few years then it's definitely planned obsolescence.
tl;dr: side-by-side = one side freezer, one side fridge. french door = freezer on bottom, fridge on top with two doors
Capitalism in action
Why is the following timeline counterfactual (as far as I know) for basically all household appliances:
1. it was invented
2. it was commercialized
3. some decades of varying modes of specialization, advancement, innovation
4. reach technological maturity/saturation
5. open source designs with idiot-proof manuals emerge
6. everyone uses the open source versions
7. maybe a freelancer market emerges
8. it's no longer commercially viable
9. it becomes a near-zero-cost improvement on the baseline human condition
10. focus on new technology
The cynical view (IMO) is that the capitalist system operates by pulling a bait and switch on the average consumer. As technology becomes commercially viable, we use the slack it creates to pump everyone full of skittles and pretty little liars and then sell refrigerator-television-vending-machine appliances until the Decadent Society collapses under its own weight.
Maybe a more moderate view (IMO) is that it's naive to think that everyone could possibly have the time or desire to maintain their own refrigerators? FWIW My take on this particular view is that we should be trying to develop a society where it's not naive, where the average human stands on top of centuries of innovation rather than cocooned inside of it.
/idk
Having a good reliable appliance is just a matter of buying good stuff and caring for it properly.