I feel like 80% of the microwave's downfall was adopting VCR-like push button interfaces.
The two dial microwave was peak UX. Quick, painless, no wondering what sequence to press on a strange 'wave, zero time delay between input and cooking, and easy use of the (essential) power function.
It even lets you change time or power mid-cook. For maximum laziness it's possible to leave the door cracked with time on the dial, throw in the food, and adjust the dial while it's already on (slightly reducing the wait before eating). Using the microwave becomes forgiving instead of foreboding, because it's so easy to change your mind.
The only downside is that it's slightly less precise, but getting the exact time down to the second is probably less important than you think. It's also a mechanical part to fail, but I've had microwaves die because the push buttons failed too, whereas my dial unit is still going strong. YMMV
There are some use cases where exact time is very important. Warming milk for a baby for instance - it’s pretty low volume and the difference between 30s and 40s is huge. I used to favour the 2 knob microwave, but since having to do that a lot I’d always choose a digital timer. Some have decent interfaces.
The CDC recommends against heating milk in a microwave[0] whether it's human milk or formula meant for a baby due to the creation of "hot spots" and also the potential destruction of nutrients.
At least there's a good reason there - they're easier to clean. That's not much of a concern with microwave controls.
But I disagree with the idea that we don't need precise times on a microwave. The article / book disagrees with that, and the think I most regularly microwave (milk for my kids) needs 1 minute 50 seconds. 2 minutes and they'll reliably complain it's too hot.
The real problem with microwave UX is that the interfaces are often simply bad. People think the power/time dial interface is good but that's because it's difficult to mess it up (though they usually manage anyway by having them go up to 30 minutes or whatever).
It's really easy to mess up a button interface but you can also do it well. My microwave is close to doing it really well. You press a high/med/low button, then 1s/10s/1m/10m buttons to the desired time, then start. The only things they got wrong are that it requires pressing the power when 99% of the time you want high, and you could probably get a more useful distribution of time increments (I'm literally never going to use the 10m button).
But apart from that it's nicer than dials, which are often very cheap and imprecise.
I've never had an issue cleaning the dials. They're smooth hard plastic, and they don't get particularly dirty.
>though they usually manage [to mess up the interface] anyway by having them go up to 30 minutes or whatever
What's the issue? I've microwaved that long before.
>My microwave is close to doing it really well. You press a high/med/low button, then 1s/10s/1m/10m buttons to the desired time, then start.
We're very different people! That UX sounds dreadful to me, one of the worst I've heard (and unfortunately encountered).
Enter time on the keypad, optionally press Power and enter that, press Start. Also needs a Plus 30s button. This is the one and only correct way to implement a push button microwave. ;)
I count five presses instead of 3 to get 90 seconds, including one way that's just pressing the same button 3 times (+30s).
>needs 1 minute 50 seconds. 2 minutes and they'll reliably complain it's too hot.
Seven presses?
The dial microwave I use can distinguish between those two. It helps that the shorter times are given more room, so you can adjust them more precisely. 1:50 vs 2:00 will make a difference in my experience, but 7:50 vs 8:00 generally won't.
You could have a hybrid approach of course, but then I suspect the engineering tendency would be to "lock in" the time after starting the oven, so it can't "accidentally" be changed.
Looking for a photo of my microwave dial, I came across this surprisingly relevant post:
> What's the issue? I've microwaved that long before.
Really? What for? Anyway the vast majority of microwaving is going to be in the 1-5 minute range. By making the dial linear and giving it a huge range up to 30 minutes, you end up making e.g. 30 seconds and 1 minute impossibly close.
The commercial microwave oven someone else linked had a solution - make it logarithmic.
> Seven presses?
Eight actually, but it really is quicker and easier than doing the same with a dial though. I agree it could be optimised though. It shouldn't be necessary to select the power and a 30s button would be good (down to 5 presses).
The vast majority of microwaving is in the 1 to 5 minute range only for those who use a microwave oven only for reheating.
For cooking, times from 10 to 15 minutes are more frequent, though things like potatoes or sweet potatoes need only 7 to 8 minutes. Only a few delicate vegetables or fruits may be cooked in the 1 to 5 minute range, e.g. onion, garlic, leek, parsley and dill, etc. Meat needs to be cooked at low power, which in turn requires long times, typically over 20 minutes. There is also a very small number of vegetables that need cooking times over 15 minutes, e.g. the common beans, for which even times of 30 minutes may be needed.
That said, all the microwave ovens that I have used (in Europe) had rotary knobs with variable resolution, fine for short times and coarse for long times.
For many years, I have also belonged to "most people" and I was cooking in one of the weekend days by traditional means, which required many hours, then in the rest of the week days I was reheating the food in a microwave oven.
Only a few years ago I began to experiment with cooking raw ingredients in the microwave oven. After discovering how much this simplifies cooking I regretted very much that I had not tried to do that earlier.
Because cooking at microwaves is much faster, nowadays I cook most food immediately before eating it.
I have used only microwave ovens with rotary knobs.
They had a finer resolution of 10 seconds for short times, then the resolution was progressively coarser for longer times, e.g. of 30 seconds for times over 10 minutes.
This is perfectly adequate for finding optimum times, and I cook in a microwave oven all the food that I am eating, from raw ingredients.
So this can only do the full 1000 W power? Kind of a one trick pony, no way to melt butter or a dozen other things that need lower power. For a restaurant that only needs to heat a few different items at high speed it's probably fine.
Up voted for basic commercial unit recommendation.
I have one of Panasonics upper model flatbed microwaves that also acts as a fan forced oven with traditional oven element and fan, and as a grill with two overhead halogen grilling elements.
I picked it up for 50% RRP as it marked down for a minor defect I can’t even recall.
It’s 1900 watt on full microwave power, if I recall correctly, where most on the market amend here are 1400 watt. Makes a lot of difference, browning the top of food is easy with a bit of oil.
I can’t really fault it, it’s super easy to keep clean and works great for baking where using full size oven is overkill.
I quite like how mine has a rotary knob that sets preset programmes (which I never use) but also you just tap it to increase the time in 30 second increments. Tap tap tap - wait - <HUUMMMMMM> and it's on for a minute and a half.
I kind of despise that part about nightshift, since i almost always like to keep it at medium anytime indoors and during winter. But in the later evening I want it max, and when i got to bed i want it even more. And ive always despised flux for that too. It's even worse since a lot of times i sleep in two phases each night and it doesnt allow to change the length of night time. So dumb.
In a way it's mildly frustrating, but also slightly insane to me that some of these things are so limiting in control. I cant just be given a simple on/off toggle? There is a project manager(s), paid millions collectively that sit in a room and decide "No, you cannot keep nightshift on, it will turn off at 7 AM every morning." Like... WTF.
Stuff like this just keeps on getting worse and worse - and more and more common.
Ive created shortcuts to jump directly to night settings and a shortcut to enable color filters. Still...
Per the video it seems the songs are not being listened to so much, but rather artificially boosted by fake traffic and/or (less likely imo) Spotify itself.
Spotify is definitely pushing these "fake artists". They do the same thing for real artists that they propagandized as "up and coming basement artists", while they were instead carefully engineered to be successful on their platforms.
Cause and correlation, education gives you options, it always comes to a choice, I know the donuts lead somewhere but I choose to eat two anyway.
Education doesn't cause good choices but it is sometimes correlated to better situations, the difference between the criminals in prison and the ones in the C suite is only education.
There is a great book on this topic. My in-laws gave me a sword that supposedly had a map to one the gold locations. But today it is quite a bit of myth. I do believe the explorer did find a gold statue as there were pictures. But the rest of the claims of gold I am skeptical about.
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson does a good fictional take on it.
The actual founder of Bitcoin cannot touch their money without causing a lot of panic in the market. I believe Coinbase's 2021 S-1 prospectus explicitly listed "the identification of Satoshi Nakamoto... or the transfer of Satoshi’s Bitcoins" as a business risk factor.
>Despite decades of research and sophisticated computational climate modeling, the magnitude and pace of these events have surprised scientists, raising questions about how well current climate projections capture risk.
"Yet again, worse than we predicted."
When this always-revise-in-one-direction phenomenon happened with the electron charge, it was considered a priori "proof" that scientists were fudging their data to match expectations. The Millikan Oil Drop Experiment is still studied in fundamentals of science class.[0]
If climate scientists are constantly revising their predictions upward, then this is equally "proof" that climate scientists are under pressure to revise their estimates downward. Far from being "alarmist," such terms are actually cudgels used to discourage climate scientists from making their data look too bad.
The result is the predictable fudging of climate data to look better than it really is.
Precisely, it's just a selection effect. There's always uncertainty, and scientists are heavily incentivized to "prune" models that show large effect sizes. The result is the observed systematic underestimations, punctuated by (suspiciously monotonic) upward revisions any time the new data comes out.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2025/03/17/youtub...
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