When we were purchasing a clothes washer and dryer, Samsung had a special promotion. The sales rep at the store told us that the Samsung machines got the most complaints and she would recommend the LG machines. But we wanted that promotion, it was oh so nice. We bought a 5-year warranty just in case.
Sure enough, it's year 3 and the washer has stopped working. Repair guy came and decided he needs to order new parts to fix it. It's been a week or so without doing any laundry. Glad we purchased the extra warranty, but maybe we should have gone with the LG like the sales lady recommended.
Without knowing anything particular about Miele, all this anecdote suggests is that they were great thirty years ago. They could well have enshittified between now and then.
I'm at the point where I don't trust any brands at all anymore. The next time I need to make a major appliance purchase I'll buy a subscription to Consumer Reports and blindly follow their recommendation - I still trust them.
But isnt that the crux of the matter? You buy what consumer reports say, and the reviewers have no way of knowing if it will break down in 3 years. No one rates their gadget after three years so we have a massive blind spot where the best thing is still word of mouth.
My parents bought an Miele washing machine, rock solid even after pushing ten years.
Yeah, totally. That's where branding used to be a valuable signal, under the assumption that a company wouldn't deliberately choose to destroy their long-term value. I don't believe that anymore, so I'll place what remains of my trust in reviewers I know are independent (God help us all if it turns out CR is taking kick-backs or something) and figure know more about, say, washing machines than I do.
Apparently Miele has started to have quality issues. But they still might be a good bet, if only for the fact that they are (probably?) the last family run business in the market.
I did not know that! Thanks. Indeed, "family run", depending on where they are in the internal-to-the-family management-transition cycle, is more encouraging to me than "publicly held". ("Private equity" is always and everywhere a huge red flag.)
It's depressing to me that we have to think about those things. I mean, "buyer beware" has always been the case, but it seems like we have to be more wary (or more wary of more factors) than we did a decade or two ago. Or maybe I'm just getting older. I dunno.
"Capitalism" is very much in the eye of the beholder, and different regulatory models create market economies with different incentives. What you're talking about is "normal" in certain places.
I didn't mean that, though, and I don't think it's what the other people in this thread did, either. I was thinking of the practice whereby private equity funds purchase companies and exploit the "brand equity" they've built up over the long term, whilst deliberately enshittifying them, in order to make a short-term profit for the new owners. That's been normalized, in some places, but I wish it were not, and would prefer that financial markets be regulated in ways that make it un-profitable.
What is fascinating to me about technical people is the particular subculture that sincerely believes that technology will solve the people problem. I recently got into a long thread argument with someone on HN about this. The person was adamant that people problems can NOW finally be solved by designing technology to be able to handle adversarial and incompetent actors. But the problems that such software tries to solve are tightly defined in scope and cannot deal with actually messed up people or organizational problems. Unless engineers are willing to acknowledge people problems, they will keep banging their heads against the door when the organization isn't doing what it's supposed to do.
But it's far easier to acknowledge the people problem first and see if there is a solution for that, rather than trying to ram technological solutions through a people-shaped hole. And if the people problem can't be solved (i.e., it will often involve a change in culture and leadership style, or else a change in leadership, both of which are difficult), it may be best to give up anyway and wash one's hands of the whole mess. In which case, one just sits there going through the motions to pass the day and collect the pay. If they're motivated, they'll find another job, rather than try to fix the mess, and they'll likely be happier doing that too. This is also why it takes a certain non-technical skillset combined with technical skills to succeed in leadership roles. It's a completely different game to play.
I was watching some interview long ago when the guest hit it square on the head. My guess is that it was Joel Spolsky, but only because no other names come to mind as being plausible.
Essentially the rant goes: So all of these people who were not particularly good at people skills in high school go into a career where they think people skills won't matter as much, and check out for 4 years while their fellow classmates are honing their interpersonal skills in one of the most intense personal growth periods of a young adult's life.
Then they graduate, get out into the world and realize that it is all people problems, and now they're even further behind their peers than when they went into college.
Being friendly, honest, and learning when to keep your mouth shut (biggest mistake when I had engineers chat with customers) is more than enough to keep everyone happy.
Honestly, I think finding a non-software project to volunteer on is a good start. About half of my better acquaintances are landscapers because that's what one of my hobbies attracts.
Also turns out they don't really like tech for tech's sake. Who knew!
Tech is still a pretty good option though. Having poor people skills but good tech skills means being a not-too-senior IC forever, a job with decent pay and hours relative to other career options.
I actually belive that a lot of the world's hard problems have been, in many ways, made worse by this attitude. Fb being so slow and reluctant to acknowledge their pivotal role in polarizing the world for instance.
To be honest this is what I usually see, not what GP describes. I've never worked with anyone who was ignorant of the people problems around them. Interns, maybe.
I would argue that all of the ideology-based advocacy for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is/was advocating to solve a people problem with technology.
It's more along the lines of "most world governments are actively sabotaging their own citizens. This happens for various reasons, from corruption, to dictatorial panic, ... and Bitcoin provides payment while avoiding to deal with them"
Of course that probably is not the concern Swiss banks have on Bitcoin, but it's still what they offer.
> But the problems that such software tries to solve are tightly defined in scope and cannot deal with actually messed up people or organizational problems.
In many cases the solution comes in the form of "go away or I will replace you with a very small shell script."
For example, suppose that you have regulator captured by construction companies who want construction to be labor-intensive because they're the ones who get the money. The problem here is not that we need technology to reduce construction costs, it's that construction costs are being artificially inflated by regulators.
But now you come up with a technology that allows construction to be performed in a factory and the local part is limited to taking the thing off the truck and putting it in the building, which takes ten seconds and can be done by the truck driver. Can this solve the problem?
Maybe. It depends on whether the incumbents have enough political power to have it banned or made prohibitively expensive. If they do then it won't work. But if they don't, the technology solves the people problem, by removing the problematic people from the operation. Or forcing them to improve their own efficiency so they can remain competitive with the new technology.
Sounds like a lot of companies. I got hit by an SUV a few months ago while I was riding my bike and the driver's insurance company said that "they weren't sure he was insured". And then, the day after I filed the police report, all of a sudden they were in a hurry to settle.
Only one of those sectors would justify the act. This is a case of not caring about collateral damage. Most of us will not be in a position to say whether or not the collateral damage was acceptable in order to attain the goal. But we can't pretend that the collateral damage was nonexistent.
It may hurt economically by affecting things like aviation, but is unlikely to directly cause any loss of life. Humans aren't very sensitive to indirect loss of life that only shows up in statistics. It's similar to blowing up Russian oil refineries and gas infrastructure, in that it will impact civilians, but unlike such attacks it won't directly kill civilians. If this already concerns you, you should be very concerned about the economical sanctions imposed on Russia over this war, which have a much greater impact.
It's fine to have opinions over how wars should be fought and where to draw lines, but sadly implementing those opinions and having them survive contact with the reality of war is only realistic if all parties agree on the battlefield. We pretty much just have the Geneva Conventions for this, which Russia has been ignoring[1] anyways by attacking targets like grain silos.
Duh. Attacking an oil refinery or lubricants factory would also have "collateral damage" in terms of impacting civil society. So does attacks on port infrastructure. There are very few "strategic" targets that don't.
I feel much better about this kind of "collateral damage" than Russia blowing up Ukrainian grain silos, apartment buildings, and hydroelectric dams.
What hardware repair would require handing over your passcode? If it's to test that the phone is working fine after the repair, can't you test it yourself in front of them before you pay? If they were doing software repairs, what would be the nature of the repair? Hard for me to imagine anything to repair software-wise, given how iOS is.
Anything that requires turning off the phone will need a passcode once it powers on. This includes battery replacement, screen, microphone, camera, etc. Only for camera repairs is it feasible to test fully without entering a passcode.
Of course you could leave the testing until you pick it up and pay but then if something is faulty you’ll have to come back later and wait longer when they might have been able to repair beforehand if they’d known.
Having watched full screen replacements, button replacements, and battery replacements on my iPhone, I suppose I don't understand why one wouldn't just wait the extra 5 minutes to get the issue resolved. Repairs can get done really fast in my experience.
As a non-physicist and non-chemist who keeps running into quantum mechanics only through headlines, extra thanks for pointing this out. It's quite obvious in retrospect to acknowledge that quantum mechanics is the physics of chemistry, and I don't know why I didn't see that before. It certainly helps to view a lot of things in a new light.
So out of curiosity, are Americans not taught to stop at a red light and check their right-side mirror and blind spot for cyclists or pedestrians before turning right on a red light? Because I certainly was taught that when I signed up for driving lessons? Just Americans don't do this?
It's certainly taught but the practical reality is that a lot of people are very sloppy and careless in driving. As a frequent pedestrian in big cities that do allow right-on-red it's extremely common to see cars that try to make a quick right turn immediately at the same moment that a pedestrian crosswalk "Walk" sign comes on, risking running over a pedestrian. When the reality and law is that the car has to wait for the pedestrians to cross and then make its right on red after they have cleared the intersection.
I think the main reason why right on red is banned in NYC is for pedestrian safety and traffic flow reasons.
I imagine the insane traffic volume in NYC also incentivizes more aggressive driving. There's a higher trip time penalty for not making the turn, compared to a city with less jammed roads. This matters for people who need to make appointments or any other driving where time matters (does anyone still offer pizza delivery in 30 minutes or it's free?).
I live in Boise, Idaho. I can confidently say that the behavior described is not unique to NYC scale. I don't have the context to say it's not worse there, but I can confidently say that license plates coming from more rural counties don't appear any less aggressive or careless than local plates.
There's a vast difference between what is taught and what is actually done. Everyone (well almost everyone) knows what they are supposed to do as drivers, but few do it.
Sure, except Americans may also have a weird obsession with driving that makes them oblivious to pedestrians, whereas many other nations may be more aware of pedestrians and thus have fewer fatalities per capita. I have no data to back up such a statement. Just anecdotal experiences.
I don't think that's something the roads prioritize. That's something that the drivers choose to do. A better word might be that roads afford or allow drivers to prioritize speed. I've been in cities where drivers don't prioritize speed. It's nice driving in such cities. People are civil on the road. It's really nice.
It was absolutely the intention for traffic/urban planners to prioritize motorist travel times, which is why you see long delays on "beg buttons" at intersections, or making peds wait for a cycle or more of the lights, and so on.
Some cities like Cambridge, MA integrate a default pedestrian cycle at all phases of the lights, sync the lights to not provide a "green wave", and have an extensive arrangement of one-way streets to discourage drivers from using residential roads as shortcuts.
Instead of penalizing those nice cities with RTOR rules designed for reckless cities, we should step up enforcement in areas where the drivers choose to speed, until they also become nice.
"Nice cities" ? Mind elaborating? Sorta sounds like youre implying some cities are just 'nice' based on like personal choice and not other variables like urban design. If so thats naive...
It doesn't matter if your city is nice because it only has cobblestone streets, because it's populated by the Amish, or because police lasers zap speeders. Once it becomes nice you should get to reap the benefit by enjoying safe right turn on red.
Sure enough, it's year 3 and the washer has stopped working. Repair guy came and decided he needs to order new parts to fix it. It's been a week or so without doing any laundry. Glad we purchased the extra warranty, but maybe we should have gone with the LG like the sales lady recommended.