It's really frustrating. I currently want to buy a mattress and a refrigerator. The results for those are so awful as to be useless.
Here is what I mean. Photos apps used to let you search through your photos using filters.
The same kinds of things are happening on the web which already happened to apps (desktop and mobile).
In the modern world, some marketing company wants to tell YOU which of YOUR photos you wanted, so they can sell you some prints, harvest your data, or something.
I would like any apps that have to do with collections of files, photos, music, etc to be more of a deterministic DATABASE and less of a nondeterministic algorithm.
You just described what I missed about the older software. Older software gives users control over sorting and show data in a tabular format. Modern software sorts data with an algorithm, with ads mixed in, and shows data in a card format, making it a lot less usable.
(I actually worked for one of such "better off as an .xls file" startup in the past, and its main competitor was an incumbent that sold the same stuff as an Excel extension. Trying to replace that with a React app is not a worthwhile use of life.)
Algorithms are fine. I'll happily apply the most advanced ones I can get. The problem is with who applies them to what - as you and GP said, it's about user control - or, currently, lack of.
Sending sqlite databases to the users which they can interact with using both sql and a viewer is where it's at.
Other options might be SQL Server Express or SQL Server Express LocalDB, the latter of which seems conceptually very much like SQLite within the MS ecosystem, and both of which are usable for production purposes at no cost within the technical limitations that differentiate them from paid editions.
We are not front-end people, so the app is built with the expectation that people will be doing their filtering, searching and using the intelligence we provide, but in their home turf (excel).
Our app also lets users "track" certain events, and we do not use push notifications, rather we respect our user's attention and email them a short summary, and link to a csv that they can use!
I'm old and tend to agree, but I suspect this is similar to "you used to have a knob on the TV that showed the channel it's on".
A lot of change is for the better, but quite a lot is a regression.
I have access to around 1000 "channels", if you include live broadcasts and network-like apps. How exactly were old TVs better at helping navigate that?
With digital broadcast TV and cable whenever you switch to a different carrier there is a long delay (at least 0.5 sec) for the radio and the rest of the processing train to sync up. With streaming you have to do multiple network round trips to establish a stream. Either way you don't have the immediacy that old TVs had.
The question of UI in modern TV is interesting. 15 years ago the 500 channel problem looked difficult, my impression was that Comcast Xfinity (2010) was the first really good STB interface for the digital age.
I have a NVIDIA Shield which has an Android TV interface that convincingly makes FAST services like Pluto, Plex and Tubi look like linear TV on an STB. What you find though is that going "back" from one of those channels can put you, disorientingly, in the app for those channels, and also that you can usually navigate better if you start out with the FAST app (and have a more consistent experience watching FAST on a computer, tablet or XBOX) Except for those things which, for some reason, are easy to find in Android TV but hard in the app.
Knowing what was on 500 channels may have been difficult, but that's equally difficult now. The problem of navigating 500 channels was solved more than 25 (not 15) years ago by remote controls that had numpad buttons on them. You navigate to channel 351 by pressing buttons 3, 5, and 1 in sequence.
After the digital switchover, there was now a set-top box, and electronic program guide and three-figure channel numbers thrown into the mix, as well as stateful aspect such as whether the TV was set to AV or still trying to use its now-obsolete tuner.
For someone with poor eyesight, limited feeling in his fingers and limited ability (and admittedly willingness, too) to build a mental model of how the menus worked and how they can be navigated, it spelled the end of his unsupervised access to TV.
The big difference for me between database-query-driven and algorithmically-driven is that the latter makes it very hard to know when you've completed an exhaustive search. Indeed for the likes of meta and tiktok that's a feature, not a bug, since their goal is to keep you engaged and plugged into "their" content forever.
You can avoid this by using the physical power button, which is conveniently located behind the TV. It will still take forever to turn on, but there's no ambiguity over whether you've started the process.
I still have trouble believing the device was allowed to reach customers in this state.
There are people out there that will pay. The issue is not that there isn't willing consumers to pay for it, it's that you're undiscoverable until word-of-mouth builds around your product among people(like those in this very thread) know and talk about your product going against the grain.
Look at defunct sites like Nextag that were moderately useful in the space-- they had free and paid placements. They were steadily growing search visibility until Google started pushing their own product (Froogle, free product listings in 2014ish) and Nextag suddenly "violated Google's policies" and lost 90%+ of their traffic rather quickly (probably 1MM daily visits to under 10k basically overnight). Google shopping technically offers "free product listing placement", hidden well below the ads-- likely as a defense to anti-trust on monopolization of that specific space.
Brickseek and CamelCamelCamel are the two most successful/long lived tools in the space-- and they grew their visibility from the now defunct but once huge deal site FatWallet and SlickDeals. Walled garden subreddits frequently disallow posting of specific tools, so it makes organic growth super challenging-- given that pretty much all commercial queries start with Google or Amazon.
Everything from Voidtools is a dialog window, accepts patterns and is really fast.
It’s so annoying that it’s almost impossible to find a legitimate store. Well maybe that’s not the correct way to word it. It’s so frustrating that it’s almost impossible to know whether or not the top shops you get in your search results are stores you want to use or not.
There is a mushroom grower in Shanghai, for instance, which grows very inexpensive but tasty beech mushrooms in a giant vertical farm where workers only touch the mushrooms with a forklift (see https://www.finc-sh.com/en/about.aspx#fincvideo)
There are numerous photography equipment vendors in China that make innovative and value-conscious products (like this inexpensive manual focus lens which takes pictures like you've never seen: https://7artisans.store/products/50mm-f1-05) that excel in customer support. They post real manuals to their web sites where you can easily find them, they correspond to you with email and not a ticket system behind a CAPTCHA, they don't have a huge list of unauthorized vendors for whom they won't support your product if you bought from them, etc. I hear back from them in 24 hours most of the time compared to an Italian vendor that makes great tripods but takes more like four days to respond.
If Chinese vendors are working that hard to get my business I very much want to support them.
https://www.venuslens.net/product/laowa-100mm-f-2-8-2x-macro...
There are also several Chinese graphics tablet companies that Wacom still doesn't realize it's in competition with.
https://mastodon.social/@UP8/111077882869934997
(freakin’ at night!) I bought this ring flash
https://godox.com/product-d/MF-R76.html
which requires manual metering to save more than $100 off one which has TTL metering as I am using it for studio work where I am going to set it up once and take 20 shots.
At this point everything you buy is from China in some way or the other. From iPhones to Nikes, from your electronic batteries to garlic. At this point stuff from China isn’t exactly a bad thing, considering how poorly things made elsewhere are doing. I have had so many issues with American made things that I almost prefer items made elsewhere. From cars to refrigerators.
I can’t tell the authentic stores with legitimate quality control apart from the ones which will shut down and reopen with a new name next month.
I found countless Web stores pretending to be UK businesses complete with founder stories and convincing copy... All turning out to be Chinese fronts.
They know the tide is against them and see starting to employ some shady tactics to get sales.
At the same time the big money in China is buying westernised historic brands to trade through.
I'm not anti-China for goods and services, but I am against the deceptive practices I've been seeing.
Either you do deep research, or you find a trusted friend to advise you. The Internet is largely useless at this point.
https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-water-bottle...
I think there's an opportunity here for a review platform that only shows you reviews from individuals that you personally trust. "Find a trusted friend" but for the internet.
This will lead to you getting a product that’s good enough, but there may be a superior quality/value option that you don’t know about
Friendship requires regular contact anyway. We don't need somebody to intermediate that.
It's not about being price insensitive but recommending things that are relatively mainstream and that don't seem risky, especially for major purchases that have to be installed and potentially serviced.
(Did have a service issue on my recent GE Profile refrigerator but it took one phone call and was a no-brainer.)
But you're probably right in general. Wirecutter mostly doesn't recommend unknowns it thinks are potentially bargains. Which I probably wouldn't do in its position either.
They are a great review site, and normally do categories like "absolute best", "best value", and "best budget".
They are very thorough, and always buy their own stuff, never take sponsorships or freebies.
They usually have a midrange "top pick", followed by a "budget pick" and an "upgrade pick".
It's not "the best money can buy" at all -- that's what they reserve their "upgrade pick" for. E.g. look at humidifiers:
https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/the-best-humidifi...
Also it's full of Chinese brands. The top two humidifiers are Levoit, from Shenzen. Or if I look at dehumidifiers, Midea is their #1 pick:
https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-dehumidifier...
So I don't think anything you said is true. Maybe for some individual products, but certainly not for the site as a whole.
You don't want to research and recommend a product from a random seller on Amazon that won't be available six months from now.
Their budget recommendations are, correctly, products that have proven to be reliable and available.
Yes. Refrigerators, at least, are made by a relatively small number of companies with established brands. They have EnergyStar ratings, and there's some objective evaluation.
For mattresses, the whole industry is a scam. Mattresses actually cost about US$50 to US$80 in bulk. Search Alibaba. Almost all consumer-facing companies are resellers. Markups are huge. Essentially all the mattress review sites are paid promotions.
Pillows as well. Mike Lindell (the My Pillows guy who sank himself with "election manipulation claims") didn't get his fortune from nothing. The markup is insane there as well... if you want decent pillows go to Ikea.
Sure, I can buy a mattress from a factory in China, but getting it to my door is a whole other thing.
Last time I bought a mattress, admittedly, an overpriced one. I got to test out a sample at the store, and then a truck with two guys showed up, put on special booties to keep my house clean, carted away the old mattress, placed the new one, etc. I even took advantage of their 90 day guarantee to swap to a slightly less firm mattress, and the whole process was repeated for no cost.
Hiring a truck and two men to deliver a large item, and then haul another large item to the dump, and then pay the dump fee for a mattress (a lot more than standard dump fees), is something that would cost a few hundred dollars otherwise.
I'm sure that they made a profit off of me, but I have my doubts that there are riches to be made in the mattress industry given that there seems to be VERY low barriers to entry.
I try to buy natural materials like latex or cotton - which cannot and are not mass produced (difficult to roll and transport from across the world)
When I was looking for a fridge a year or so ago I heard that Samsung was trying to fix their bad appliance rep and quality of parts had gone up, but I went with a different brand.
There’s been an issue the last few years of fiberglass escaping through the cover on memory foam mattresses. If I was mattress shopping I’d probably still get foam, but look for one without fiberglass or find some kind of allergy cover to at least contain it.
Costco and Samsung are big enough that you can achieve reasonable signal.
When your local car dealer offers you a full drivetrain warranty though (assuming it's a full warranty and not one of the other ways people are often fleeced), will they honor it when the lemon they sold you breaks the first time? the 2nd? the 3rd? Will they, instead, note that most people buying that car don't have much money (or, if you used any form of dealer financing, know for a fact you don't have much money) and require you to retain a lawyer and sue them to recover any damages?
1. Colloquial use of "lemon" differs from the legal definition. In the given example, this might include a 15yr old vehicle (far outside any normal "manufacturer's" warranty) with numerous defects both known to the dealer and lied about to the consumer. The dealer would likely lose any civil complaint, but in Texas, and most states, this doesn't count as a "lemon." You're protected, if at all, by the fact that the salesperson warranted a thing, and perhaps any actual written "warranty" (really insurance, not that it necessarily matters) the dealer might have sold you. You usually waive the warrant of merchantability, so the fact that the car is a dud isn't enough by itself for you to have any damages (all state-specific, consult a lawyer in your jurisdiction).
2. Picking on Texas, since you brought it up, if you only bring the car in 3 times for a major defect covered under the lemon law, it's not a lemon yet. If the dealer refuses to deal with you on the 3rd instance then you'll have to sue with some other justification.
3. In the vast majority of states, you don't have an automated (minus filing fees) hearing process pertaining to lemons. Even in those which do, you're much more likely to succeed with the help of an attorney. In either case, in most states, attorney's fees are not part of the damages you can claim, and when squabbling about a $5k used car it can easily cost more in attorney fees (plus incidentals like renting a car and missing work for the actual hearings -- usually not covered even in states granting damages for incidentals (including rentals and missing work in other contexts) arising from the lemon), often making it not even worth pursuing.
...
Usually, even with moderate legal protections, you don't want to enter into an agreement where you expect to have to rely on those protections. Your best-case scenario is that you waste a bunch of time and still have only as many resources as you started with. You'll usually do even worse. Why take a losing gamble?
Then you just search for those two things online.
That's how I found an amazing natural latex cooling mattress online.
And the best part is that most online mattress retailers have 90 day try out periods. We didn't like our first one, and instead of having us ship it back they told us to donate it and sent us the next to try. So now we have a really nice spare bedroom mattress as well as the perfect mattress in our bedroom.
I'm surprised that people haven't caught on yet. Maybe something to do with the nature of the purchase. In a better world, even a "luxury" mattress would cost a couple hundred bucks, at most, but then be extremely difficult to return.
Gmail is next I predict. They have a monopoly over consumer email, so it’s revenue growth just waiting to be unlocked when times get tough. A higher percentage of your inbox is going to become paid Gmail ads and there’s nothing you’re going to do about it. Nobody wants to go to the hassle of changing their email address (the amount of boomers still on Yahoo mail is staggering).