I dunno, does it warp probability around it so that no matter what, the egg is always fresh? How far does the effect extend? Does it affect people or just physical interactions? If people ask these questions are they under the effect and contributing to the egg’s defense and therefore continued freshness?
Not that guy. But: what people were promised was smartphone guts in a set-top box, for all the novel PSP-grade mobile titles that were limited by touchscreen controls and battery life. What was delivered was Not That. They turned the Kickstarter into a custom microconsole, which is a vulgar word in any context, because it means there’s no goddamn software. The central fucking point was to take advantage of everything on Google Play… or whatever the hell it was called that month. Instead you got a tiny selection of games which were forced to provide free demos. And you could play them with an abysmal controller, which was the one thing these geniuses were supposed to get right for free.
It was nothing more than an off the shelf ARM SBC inside. Some third party designed and made the board. Nobody had the bootloader keys to unlock the units. It was easily bricked. No keys to recover it. They had sold it as a device for “hackers” but nobody could really hack it. The whole concept was dead on arrival.
Several years later people discovered weaknesses in Nvidias bootloader code. The Ouya is vulnerable. So they’re finally wide open hackable. But nobody cares anymore.
Maytag dishwasher and gas dryer. Maytag had always purported themselves to be a top brand. However, both of these products would not last more than 4 years. I should have bought the Bosch dishwasher like consumer reports told me.
Gotta have one from 30 years ago. My dad’s secondhand Maytag dryer survived 4 moves, and 35 years. We had it serviced twice in that time. First time was at 30 years. It stopped running because it filled up with pocket change. Some of the coins were polished almost completely flat. Second time, the heat quit working. Bought a new dryer after that. It’s going strong, but it’s got a long way to go just to be half as good.
Yeah, it’s a common fallacy in appliance brand discussions: “my grandma has a <brand> and it still works! You should buy one, too!”. First of all it’s survivorship bias and almost always the quality has degraded a lot in the past decades (greed and consumers that don’t want to pay the price for reliable appliances).
Also, it’s not even the same corporation or factories behind them. It’s just a brand name at this point, and the product has nothing in common with the old, good one. For example, Maytag bought Amana, and then Whirlpool bought Maytag. (It’s enlightening to read the list of Whirlpool-owned brands.)
It’s probably a bit of both here. We didn’t have the “disposable” lifestyle 50 years ago that we have now, and a stronger push for efficiency and features has had trade-offs in complexity and reliability.
Example: My current dryer (and my dad’s new dryer) both have a lot more plastic in them. The motors are smaller, and quieter, while making the same power (or more). They are loaded with temp, humidity, weight and wobble sensors, and my dryer has 4 dials, 5 different temperatures, and 2 different modes. The old one, had a dial to control the heat, and a timer.
As for disposable, I think older generations had an expectancy that you would buy an appliance once or twice in your life. I’ve got a 1000 dollar poket shit-posting device that I’m going to get rid of because it is pushing 4 years old. We just accept that these devices are uneconomical to repair, and we toss them out. I think the only things American’s bother to fix anymore are cars, and that’s going away because every year, they get harder and more expensive to repair.
If you want truly bulletproof clothing appliances and live in America, look up Speed Queen. They’re built to commercial standards and are trivially repairable. Many last for decades with only minor maintenance and upkeep.
Unfortunately, Speed Queen not available outside of America. 😭 Or, at least, absolutely not available in Western Canada.
I went with LG, as Bosch didn’t have the capacity I was looking for. Pretty happy with LG for both washer and dryer, four years and counting without a single issue. Would be nice if the front-loading washer came with an automatic dehumidifier, tho, as we have to leave the door open to avoid funky smells developing.
Fun fact. The guy that made this was the “forensic expert” that claimed he could detect bamboo fibers in ballots in Georgia and Arizona. The GOP tried to put him in charge of their investigation.
I love Skoda. I love the Octavia. It was my fourth Octavia and I already ordered two more for my staff. PHEV would have been ideal for our use case.
Well,things didn’t go as planned.
The whole car was bugged with software and hardware problems from day one - controll units randomly crapping out, when my dealer wanted to replace them he often had to get 5 units because four would be DOA and the one that worked kicked the bucket before I left his premises. Highlights:
A steering wheel coming loose (only slightly,but still)
The main display that shows your speed,etc. randomly shutting down. (Especially nice as I live close to Switzerland with their exorbitant speeding tickets)
Randomly playing a screeching sound at full volume (especially nice at 3am or when on a highway)
Randomly shutting of AC, some motor controls , etc.
It took 12 months for VW to take that steaming pile back, and only we sued them (Shortly before the hearing).
Second place goes to LG which sold me a OLED TV for 2k that randomly showed faulty pixel lines exactly 3 years and 3 days after I bought it (so it’s out of the extended warranty programs as well). And when asked for a quote for the repair they had the audacity to ask for almost the new price for the TV back then, aka 150% of the current market value - without even looking at it first. Good way to make sure that I never buy LG anymore.
VW really dropped the ball on software, no wonder they’re buying now into other car manufacturers like Rivian, in hopes to use someone else’s more developed software.
Is there actually any car manufacturer that has decent hardware and software? I have never driven a really “modern” car but from all that I’ve seen so far the interfaces are typically horrible to interact with and laggy to the point where I prefer my car as dumb as possible
Why bother with software, then? Late-80s and 90s Type III Jettas can be absolutely bulletproof if you find them in not-bagged and well cared for condition.
The main display that shows your speed,etc. randomly shutting down
I know two people who had this exact issue with their new-gen Golf. First cause was the French language would crash the whole dash if you cycled the dashboard views (to my knowledge they never fixed the issue and the workaround is to set the car to English). Second cause was a malformed JPEG from a radio station would cause the dash to bootloop until you drove far enough from said radio station, which would allow the car to work long enough to disable that feature (IIRC).
So yeah, QA is down the fucking drain with VW on their latest gen. They had a new CEO, and now a new one again I think? But the reputational damage has been done. Too bad, I really liked my '18 Polo.
My current Amazfit smartwatch. The only good thing about it is the long battery life.
It’s a piece of crap otherwise. Requires the data harvesting app to always be running in the background or it loses connection to my phone. It’s slow, has ugly watch faces and the custom ones are awkward to install. I can’t get it to work with Gadgetbridge. The always on display is so dim that it’s useless. Pinging my phone doesn’t work.
I don’t know why I let the Internet convince me that spending £120 on this thing was a good idea. I’m going Casio or something next time around.
Google Home. Bought them for $40 CAD and back then they were great. Responsive, did quick google searches, played my music all over the house.
Over the years they’ve lost functionality. Mine no longer accurately respond to voice queries and no longer complete google searches. I can still play music on them manually from my phone but when I ask it something, it responds back in French or does something completely different than what I had originally asked.
Worst part is that I ask it something, it does something different, and then when I say “hey Google stop” it just keeps going and going. Have to manually pull the plug for it to stop.
I have the ring doorbell and a home blob which I only use to play the doorbell tune in the house. It is 50/50 luck if the tune plays when someone presses the doorbell button.
A Canon printer. Not just a simple one, but a big (wide) one with real ink tanks, about 20 years ago.
Under Linux, I could only access basic printing services with that, and this only by using a default driver not made by Canon that happened to work. So I contacted Canon to get a proper user manual to create a proper device driver for this (something I could have done without problems), and basically got the answer that they would not support this, as “open source is theft of intellectual property”. They also had some very choice words about Linux in general.
I assumed I just got an asshole on the phone, so when I attended Cebit a short time later (back then the biggest trade fair in Europe for things like that), I went to the Canon booth, explained my issue, and basically got the same reply. So I sold the Canon printer and bought an HP one. At least HP supported Linux and supplied working drivers. Sadly, they have really gone down the drain since that, so the next printer will be a different brand again…
Well, the question for me back then was printing wide, so the selection was quite limited from the start. And laser was completely out of the equation, as anything printing wider than 21cm was industrial (size of a bus and price of a house) back then.
Ink stinks, but I’ll condone the toner. Inkjets are so unreliable compared to lasers. Good luck, but I worry you’re stacking the deck against yourself a bit with the ink and would hate to see you lose here.
I’ve had it for 8 years now, and so far it’s only on its second set of toners etc.
The only warning I give to brother printer owners is don’t leave them on. The capacitors in them aren’t the best and your printer will either not turn on without a long power off, or like mine it will turn on and off randomly all day and night.
So now I only turn it on at the wall when I need it, and unplug it after
1012 and ilk were also good, from the same era. I still have one of those running.
My LJ4+ lasted 21 years, the first part in an office setting and the latter a retirement in my home (and about 12 house moves). For its 19th I got its RAM filled. Woo! But we decided “as a household” that we didn’t need a reliable energy pig printer for a few pages a month. It made the lights flicker and the UPSes report a brownout. But it was a good printer.
Now we have an m404n and it’s everything today it needs to be.
In ear earbuds. I blimmin’ hate them but my Audio Technica over ears are too bulky for the gym.
Bit off topic, though if anyone could recommend cheap but decent wireless headphones, for the gym, that are not in ear I would appreciate it a lot (I’m in the UK).
Not cheap and i already said it in another comment. I absolutely love my aftershokz open fit. My ear hurt like hell when i use in ears and they never seem to fit. These i wear sometimes 10 hours a day. I went to the shower multiple times because i forgot i was wearing them. They sound really good imo, battery life especially with the charging case is fantastic. It’s perfect to cycle or in areas where you still need basic awareness. Like i can talk to people at work while i have some music in my ears.
Do they hurt the backs of your ears? I’ve had some cheap in-ear headphones that also had curved plastic to fit around the shell of your ear for stability. I’d have to take them off after an hour or two in pain, but not because of the in-ear component.
Not the one you replied to, and I have a slightly different model (OpenRun Pro) but in my experience, not at all.
They work a little differently with bone conduction. This requires a tiny bit of pressure just below your temple in front of your ear. It doesn’t hurt, but if I wear it all day long (way more than a couple hours) I find myself a little bit… Annoyed with them? Just a little. I still happily put them on again the next day. Zero pain.
Oh, and bass comes out a little differently and kinda tickles a little bit. If you listen to stuff with a lot of bass frequently it may not be your best option. Sound quality is generally like a pair of Sound Blaster speakers from the 90s: it gets the job done just fine, but it’s not for audiophiles.
I also stan aftershokz. For gym use I use ear plugs to block out machine sounds and I can still hear my book/music/video just fine. The battery life is great - I charge them nightly to be certain they won’t die, but haven’t had any problems running them two days at a time for 8+ hours on the occasion that I forget.
Also a huge fan of mine (OpenRun Pro). Worth mentioning that they’re pretty lousy in noisy settings, like airplanes or mowing the lawn, but I love being able to listen to things without separating myself from the outside world
I know you’re looking for on or over ear, but for the gym, it might make more sense to get the non TWS earbuds like the LG Tone or similar. They’re light in your ear as all the battery weight stays on your neck.
Every piece of hardware I’ve used past 2010 or so seems to have just gotten worse and worse, I honestly think I’m cursed.
2013 (? can’t quite remember), Sager gaming laptop with sli gpu config, gpus drew too much power for the battery (I believe), leading to black screen and reboot. Company feigned ignorance, ran unrelated tests on RMA, Socially awkward at the time and was scared to ask for a refund. Convinced to this day it was a scam.
2015, desktop computer I built randomly powers off during usage, no errors, not the power supply, unsolved to this day.
2020-2022 5 cheap ebay thinkpads, all with one hardware problem or another. My beloved T60p was the last to go.
2022-present Framework laptop, ports suffer intermitent failure, webcam microphone stopped working. Replaced webcam/microphone, works for a day, breaks again. Unsolved.
2022-preset Steam deck, had to RMA 3 times for various hardware issues, works now, but the right trigger still rubs against something but I can live with it. Spilled coffee on the left trackpad so it’s sticky; that’s my fault though so I can’t blame it on the curse.
I had a laptop a while back with a fingerprint scanner that would work for one day, then stop working completely. I reinstalled the drivers, and it would work for a day and then stop again. I eventually gave up using the fingerprint scanner until I “upgraded” the laptop to Windows 11, and it worked again. No idea if it still works, since I rarely use that laptop now
You could either have the world’s worst luck, or you are genuinely cursed
Alternatively, you keep spilling coffee on your devices and going into a blind fit of cleaning rage that blocks out the memory of the original coffee spill
I usually buy Asus for computers, and I go for a mid-range business model with dedicated graphics. They’re cheaper than the gaming counterparts, still have good specs, and they are much more reliable and easy to work on.
Had a secondhand Alienware, circa 2017, and that thing looked nice, but it was heavy, bulky, and you had to remove the back cover, drives, battery, WiFi antenna, and a bezel just to swap the CMOS battery. But that’s everything Dell IMHO.
August wifi smart lock. Originally wanted the zigbee version for my home but apparently they stopped making those in favor of wifi, however wifi needs more energy to communicate and would go through they special batteries in a week’s time. Even replacing the unit with another one didn’t solve the issue, so I just returned it and deleted my account.
I have the same lock. I didn’t want it but it was the only lock I could find that would work on my sliding door. The key is to buy rechargeable batteries. Mine last maybe a month before they need to be replaced.
I think it is more about the power required to run the lock motor.
I have several z-wave door locks as well. They all need battery replacement within a few months. Unless I don’t open/close them very often. They can go much longer.
But it really isn’t to big of a deal. Home Assistant tells me when they are getting low and I just swap the batteries in a few minutes.
To this day I don’t know what problem smart locks are supposed to solve that hasn’t already been solved by the good old lock and key combo. Requires no electricity, no internet, just works.
Letting people in without giving them a key (or if they forgot their key) is the use case. Also if you have smart home stuff like home assistant, you can program it to lock on its own based on conditions (like night time or your phone leaves the house).
Re the first part: nobody enters my house if they don’t have a key and I’m not present. Re the second part, I don’t trust any software-based technology near enough to rely on that kind of stuff without double-checking. . Turn the key, done.
My last ever Nokia phone, a half way house between old Nokias and smartphones circa 2008.
No touch screen, but could play music, videos, had a calendar etc.
Absolute piece of garbage. Got super hot at times doing who-knows what, and had a software bug where the audio would completely stop working until you rebooted it… which meant that multiple times my morning alarm went off completely silently and I was late for work.
Bought an iPhone 3GS as soon as my 1 year contract was up, Nokia were never relevant again after that era.
As someone who runs a Windows phone launcher to this day, I think you’re wrong 😂 had they actually pursued them, and supported them better. I think we’d still have Windows phones today, The app store was truly the killer.