Comment by rurp | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rurp | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I'm glad I'm not the only one noticing appliances getting worse across the board. I don't buy enough of them to really know if the trend holds overall but the correlation is pretty much perfect between how new an appliance is and how much I hate it. For example the controls on my new LG washer and dryer are incredible bad. They've made it hard to impossible to just set the run level manually to push you into set programs for bedding or whatever. But they never work right! We've given up on using those programs entirely because they are terrible.

The main culprits I've seen are cheaping out on quality, replacing traditional controls with touch screens or "AI" magic buttons, and squeezing in more monetization streams or adding gimmicky features that actively make the product worse.

Maybe things will turn around someday. There are a few rays of hope, like the touchscreen fad in cars gradually losing its luster, but it seems like we've been on the wrong path for a long time and I'm not sure it will ever correct.

I'm also a software engineer and recently got new LG washer and dryer.

I have not yet figured out how to manually change the settings, as the buttons don't do anything when you press them.

I leave it on "normal" and it seems fine, and surely there is a way to activate those buttons, but I haven't found it.

I could probably install the app on my android device and use it to connect them to wifi, where I could presumably configure them.

Instead, however, I am looking at electronics-free diesel trucks.

Maybe a washer can be made without electricity. Have a tank of cold compressed air and use a blow torch to heat it and make new compressed air.

Look up the Wonderwash. It basically looks like a small propane tank on an axle that you manually spin to wash your cloths. It works surprisingly well for washing cloths without electricity.

How long does it take to manually dry a normal load with that thing? My dryer takes at least an hour to dry a modest sized load of normal clothes so I would expect a non-powered one to take many hours, but maybe my modern dryer is really so bad it doesn't save much time.

With the first few loads I wrung cloths out by hand and tossed them in the dryer. I didn't notice it being longer, but I also didn't time it so 20-30% longer wouldn't surprise me.

After a few loads I bought a hand crank cloths wringer, basically two rollers that squeezes the water out. That thing honestly works better than a spin cycle, cloths are more dry than coming out of the washer and I have noticed the dryer finishing faster (I usually run it on an auto sense mode rather than a timer).

You can avoid buying crap with obfuscated UIs... mostly.

I have an LG washer/dryer as well. On mine, you need to rotate the large central knob by one "click", then the buttons start to work.

Why? No idea.

How's that diesel truck research going? I've thought about getting into auto repair as a hobby, but wrenching on modern cars would basically be my day-job with added wire fiddling.

I learned that most diesel cars and trucks are still dependent on electronics for fuel injection and also have a higher minimum-quality of diesel.

The prepper nerds seem to advocate for Cummins 12-valve engines from the 1990s or the Toyota 1HZ.

There's a whole lot of old diesel LandCruisers out there. I'm guessing that's the sweet spot for it still being a normal car that mechanics can maintain while still being comfy and looking cool.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com