Am I the only one who looks at these projects with a combination of awe and apathy and jealousy? I do software, not hardware, and I like knowing how things work. When an expert in a different field glances at a PCB and identifies components, their purpose, by sight, and then rummages around a loose parts bin to go deeper, it dawns on me: this is someone's life. The same way I've been swimming in (application) software, and could do similar things with a repo, or even running processes, this person can do in hardware, and it's a set of interlocking skills that took an entire life to grow.
For what it’s worth, you could do a similar hack with 5 minutes of work and zero background knowledge if you’re willing to take a leap of faith:
1. Break open a used detergent cartridge and notice that there’s only one chip inside
2. Google the number on the chip and click the first link to figure out that it’s a “I2C Serial EEPROM”. Clearly it’s some sort of memory chip since they advertise its capacity
3. Without knowing exactly what an “I2C eeprom” is, google something like “i2c eeprom rewriter” and buy the first result: a $10 BIOS programmer for desktop PCs (which use the same 24 series eeproms)
4. Clip the programmer onto the memory chip and plug it into your PC’s USB port.
The author went a lot further because that’s what he wanted to do, but you don’t have to. He figured out the USB connector’s pinout, but your programmer comes with a clip that attaches directly onto the chip. He reverse-engineered the data on the chip and built a custom programmer, but you could just click the read button in your programmer’s software to back up the data from a brand new cartridge and then write that data to used cartridges.
For those willing to take leap of faith: be careful about electronic element orientation aka polarity: on each element (where it makes difference) pin number 1 is marked in some way (a dot, cut corner, red wire, coloured band, ...), though rarely there is physical restraint preventing you from putting the clip the other way around. Doing this will fry the eeprom and/or rewriter (on this particular chip it switches power rails and this will cause excessive current flow), but most importantly, it might cause frustration worse than failed compilation for syntax error. Like missing semicolons, this will eventually happen to you. Just be prepared for it.
So, I don't want to sound ungrateful But the what you say is true for ALL the roads someone else has traveled. It's true for electronics and learning the french horn and bread-making. It's true for making jewellery, learning to sew, to cook thai cuisine, and grinding your own optics. That's why the "apathy" in the list of emotions. I want to marvel at others who dwell in interesting spaces, without feeling the need to join them. I know I could, and it's tempting. But I already have a long list of interests, historical and current. Sailing, billiards, photography, piano, writing. I also know how to write in cursive, drive a stick, and change a diaper with one hand. I get that more is available; I want it, and I don't want it.
I was in the same spot when I met this brilliant hardware hacker at this hackerspace who had no formal EE degree but could design circuits in his sleep.
"How do you do it?"
"I read data sheets and a lot of wikipedia".
I already spend tons of time on wiki, so I started reading data sheets. And he was absolutely right, datasheets for components are often chock full of information on how to use them, often with recipe books for circuits that use them.
It's kinda bland and tedious but highly informative.
I think there is a bit more that goes into that (in particular a willingness to fry stuff, that's unavoidable in hardware, and MOUNTAINS of patience), but like software, it's pretty easy in today's day and age to teach yourself hardware stuff.
Same goes for construction materials. So many people fail to read the wood/adhesive/countertop/screw/paint datasheets which sometimes include recommendations against the way the product is often used.
reminds me of medications and antibiotics which include their own datasheets that not all medical providers cross-check against your current medications.
They’re clearly designed and revised over the years for that express purpose. I understand why they have to put that warning on the box and not market it for that use…but they 100% know who their market is.
> datasheets for components are often chock full of information on how to use them, often with recipe books for circuits that use them.
Curious, I looked into the datasheet linked in the post[0]. While I get what you mean by "chock full of information", I can't make the head or tail of it. Where do I get started? (genuinely)
There is usually an example circuit in the datasheet. I start there. Many ics now also sell that example circuit on a pcb you can buy from the same supplier you buy your ics from. Then to make your own custom thing you just start with that example circuit, change it or add to it as needed for your specific application, and then you can physically make those same modifications or additions to the example circuit board you bought and test your design before ordering custom boards.
It's basically like tracing an outline of a drawing with tracing paper and then filling it in with color. You trace the example design, add your own color.
When you don't understand a thing, you can google for it. Like it says it uses a Schmitt trigger for noise protection. How does that work? Wikipedia explains: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schmitt_trigger
If you have a specific goal for the chip, look up the words that seem to be related to that goal. Once you do that a bunch, you get better at figuring out which words matter.
Ah that datasheet might be a bad example because that component is so standardized. In this case you’d be better off searching “i2c eeprom” on YouTube and watching one of many tutorials that cover this chip. Then google “i2c eeprom application note” and skim the manufacturer’s tips on how to use it: http://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/Appnotes/01028B.pdf
I (being not a hardware person but able to blink a LED) would start with the diagrams of talking with the device on page 7 and refer to them while reading the text descriptions of same on pages 5–6, maybe refresh my memory on how I2C works[1,2] as well. At the same time, almost any controller you can get is happy[3] to talk I2C for you, so it’s unlikely the details matter beyond “controller writes device address and RW bit then (either!) reads from or writes to the peripheral accordingly until end of transaction” (whence the “dummy write” the datasheet says is needed to set the read address). Many even come with libraries that will talk to I2C EEPROMs specifically (because they are everywhere), so the diagrams might not be so important either.
The rest of the datasheet is (as commonly happens with simple digital components) concerned with “how do I wire this up”, “how good of a digital signal can I expect to get out”, “how bad of a digital signal can I get away with putting in”, a refresher on I2C, and miscellanea like power consumption, operating temperature, and sizes of little plastic boxes it comes in. Necessary if you want to design a board properly, not so much if you’re just going to wire it up for a quick hack (the device seems to have a supply voltage and logic levels of “whatever”).
The only thing you maybe do need these for is to look at the board photo and figure out how they wired it. Dot indentation marks pin 1. Pins 1–4 shorted, picture on page 1 says 4 is ground and 1–3 are address, so per page 4 it ends up with[4] address 1010 000. Power (called Vcc for reasons that are not important here) is on pin 5, wired up to top pin of connector on the close-up photo; the next one down goes to data (SDA as I2C calls it) on pin 8; following one goes under the chip but is almost certainly the bus clock (SCL) on pin 6 because that needs to go somewhere; and the bottom is at first glance only connected to an isolated island of copper but the small holes (“vias”) to the other side of the board probably connect it to the other islands so it has to be ground. That leaves write protect on pin 7, unconnected to anything but Vcc (through a dummy “pull-up” resistor to limit how much power the chip will waste examining it), which, to do a sanity check, page 3 says means writes are permitted (so the name of the pin is a bit unfortunately).
There. Done. You still need to find or make something for the other side of the I2C conversation, but either an off-the-shelf programmer or a tutorial for a cheap board with a controller should be sufficient for that. (Won’t be completely trivial the first time around, but it’s a one-time thing like any other development environment.)
Consider this a metaphor for any field expert. A chef looks in a fridge and sees a combination of ingredients that will make a tasty dish. A teacher looks at a struggling student and sees what strategies will help them succeed. A lawyer looks at a case and sees specific circumstances that help come to an ideal solution.
There's something very enjoyable about seeing knowledgable people dissecting things. As someone who can do - and has done - both hardware and software work, I also understand why people like to share these experiences. Every step in reverse engineering is a huge success and a nice boost of you ego, confirming that your accumulated skillset is powerful.
I believe you could get to that particular level (identifying and reprogramming an I2C EEPROM) pretty quickly as a software engineer. Just get started!
I’m here to say that you can. I spent many years in pure, high level software, but about five years ago, got an interest in electronics. Started with a learning kit, but just kept at it and now a project like this, while impressive, is 100% within my understanding and, while not underestimating or discrediting the amount of work and ingenuity put in by the author, my abilities. You can do it! Look to places like SparkFun and Adafruit to get started.
I think you have the right mindset, you don't need that much to start hacking digital electronics. Analog is harder for programmers because there is less skill overlap but simple hacks can't be that hard if you are willing to do it.
What always frustrated me with electronics was material considerations. You need all sorts of stuff, like a good soldering iron, oscilloscope, hot air station, magnifying glass/microscope, all sorts of wires, basic components, lab power supply, multimeters, probes, prototyping boards, etc... For programming, you just need a computer, but for electronics, you also need one.
It is not just expensive, in fact it is not that expensive for a full startup kit, thank you China. But what you also need is space, if you don't have a dedicated room for your workshop (i.e. not your bedroom or living room) it is going to be really annoying real quick. You need a bench to put all your stuff, and also enough space to store all the crap you will either repair or cannibalize part from. It also makes moving more difficult.
While it is not an absolute necessity, and there are things like hackerspaces, but there is a barrier that is not present when you are just working with computers.
>It is not just expensive, in fact it is not that expensive for a full startup kit, thank you China.
It is amazing how much more accessible it is these days. An oscilloscope or signal generator (even a used one) in the 80's and 90's, was a lot of money. There's also a lot of multi-purpose test equipment now.
Yeah, I've learned that my new amateur radio hobby is not very compatible with a newly-climbing, curious little human. Thank goodness I have my own little office so I don't have to unplug and carefully pack EVERYTHING every time, but forget anything involving soldering - there's just not enough room for even a small workbench anywhere I can close the door to the little guy who loves anything shiny or with a cable.
you should just try it. It’s not as bad as it looks. You’re reading an article in 5 minutes that contains probably a week’s worth of work or something.
trainee/failed grammar nazi here: you mean Envy. Jealousy is what the lord God feels, he's a jealous god: thou shalt have no gods other than him. Envy is "gee, I wish I was as god-mode as that" -which I think is more what you meant.
I am, more and more, deliberately choosing boring technology. Knobs in the car and on appliances. No screen interfaces. Low-tech where possible.
We just replaced our "high tech" Maytag dryer and its "advanced" feature set for a low tech SpeedQueen, the same dryers you find in most Laundromats. Why? Repairability. While we could _technically_ replace the burnt out fuse in the Maytag, it would take at least two hours for a skilled technician (translated to several days for me and my spouse spread across a few weeks) and frankly we want to repair and get back to life. After a few days of looking into the issue and considering the option, we bit the bullet and bought a new one. The old one just had too many fault modes to consider even if we did successfully repair it.
I take the same neo-Luddite view on a lot of recent "technology" improvements. The BoringTechnology.club website has the right idea.
I want knobs in my car, but I specially want no GPS tracking, no connection to the internet. My not-that-old dead-dinosaur-powered car doesn't have it, but I'd like to switch to an electric car in the next few years and I'm fearing it.
Will anyone build an electric but dumb car? I know some of the earlier electrics were dumb (in this desirable sense) but they also had significat compromises. Will it be possible to buy a privacy-respecting, good, new-ish electric car in a few years? It looks unlikely...
(I'm honestly asking, someone here will know way more than me about this)
Well if you're in the EU then no, unless you can overturn the legislation.
> The Background: In 2019, the European Commission and the European Council jointly approved a regulation that will require new safety measures in motor vehicles starting July 2022, including the installation of so-called "Event Data Recorders," a device similar to "black boxes" in aircrafts.
From what I heard the car company has access to this device at all times and does not need a court order to listen in. They are supposed to only use it when the car has had an accident but it's a terrible precedent.
Thank you, I didn't know about this. I'll have a read but at first sight I wonder if this Event Recorder couldn't just work offline like an airplane's black box; would that just be super expensive?
My car recording what happens for accidents doesn't sound awful. It could even record my last 30 minutes of locations, all you would need to analyze a crash.
It recording my locations long-term, and specially sending them somewhere, sucks.
It ought to be possible to locate the cellular antenna on any car and disconnect it or wrap a Faraday cage around it. (The latter is probably a better solution because it makes it harder for the software to detect a fault. You want the software to think the car is simply in a no-cell-coverage area.)
Essentially every modern car is deliberately optimized to fail within 10 years and requires expensive subassemblies primarily made from fragile plastic.
I'd say Apple is basically your only hope. And it remains to be seen whether Apple's car will ever ship, and if it does, it might not be available for the public to purchase.
SpeedQueen owner here as well. Even more important than repairability is that the SpeedQueen actually cleans my clothes.
In the 80s I remember coming home with mud caked on my clothes, shaking them off and throwing them in the washer. I'd even throw my muddy sneakers in the wash. If I try that with a modern low-water unit there's still dirt on them after a wash. The SpeedQueen will handle this kind of heavy soiling.
It seems like modern washers are designed for modern (mostly indoor) living. They freshen clothes, but they don't really wash them.
This is about dishwashers, but I once read about regulation-enforced water/energy-saving cycles resulting in ineffective cleaning, which backfired, as people then got in the habit of always selecting the heaviest cycle or even re-adopted pre-rinsing.
Searching for the concept now, I can only find this article:
My “modern” (20-year-old, which is solidly modern by this standard) dishwasher cleans much better than I remember my childhood dishwasher cleaning. It also doesn’t melt plastic on the bottom rack, which is a fantastic feature. The main downside is it takes two hours, and I think my childhood dishwasher took one hour.
My modern front load washer gets clothes clean. It also doesn’t severely abrade them. As I understand it, this combination of features is unavailable in a top-loader. Top-loaders with agitators clean well but damage clothing due to rubbing against the agitator. Top-loaders without agitators don’t clean well.
(Fundamentally, front loading is just a better design. There is no reason to submerge clothes for the whole cycle; to the contrary, one wants the clothes to move relative to the water. With a top loader, the clothes and the water move as a unit and gravity doesn’t help at all except to the extent that it avoids needing a seal on the door. With a front loader, gravity actively assists the process. And, aside from saving water, the fact that less water is used means that less detergent is needed to achieve a given concentration.)
Make fun of modern low-water appliances all you like, but a lot of them are much better than the things they replaced even if you don’t care about water usage.
My new(2 years old) Bosch dishwasher cleans much better than any other dishwasher I used in my life. I'm like 60% sure that the buttons on the front don't actually do anything, because it cleans equally well in all modes, from ECO(50C) to Heavy Load(70C). Yeah the eco mode takes 3 hours by default, but press "Vario Speed" and is done in 1:05h with the exact same result.
Yeah I mean....of course. My sister got a cheap dishwasher couple years ago and it never broke, it just never cleaned properly, we cleaned the filters, all tubing, all the arms, used the dishwasher cleaner several times.....nope, would still leave residue and bits of food on plates, literally regardless of mode. It was basically useless for its main function. It was under warranty but the engineer came out and said yeah, there's nothing wrong with it, it's just not very good. We ended up recycling it and buying the cheapest Bosch Series 2, it's not fancy but at least it works as a dishwasher.
> Yeah the eco mode takes 3 hours by default, but press "Vario Speed" and is done in 1:05h with the exact same result.
I wonder about people complaining about this - whether it takes 1 hour or 3 hours, are you sitting in your kitchen waiting for the dishwasher to complete? Put it on after a meal and next time you're in the kitchen it will be done...
I mean, it's nice to have an option for a quick programme when you have guests over and actually it's good to do a couple loads in a single day. But yes overnight I don't care, it can take 6 hours and I wouldn't mind.
It's on a timer anyway because we have cheap electricity from 00:30-04:30, so I just run it alongside all the other appliances within thouse hours(and charge our car too).
Honestly my only complaint is that my Bosch dishwasher's beep cannot be disabled. If I start it late, the damn thing wakes me up in the middle of the night.
I've seriously considered taking it apart to remove the buzzer.
I cook a large meal for family maybe and bake some desert and then rest of the days build up and it's full. Put it on the 3hr cycle and by the time dinner is finished there is a while new load to go in, which has to sit around until it is complete (still 1.5 hour to go after we finish eating)
Dishwashers take longer now because they only run half of the jets at once. Cycling between the top and bottom half. Cleans just as well, uses half the water, takes twice as long.
I can’t say I have ever really cared about the time taken for a dishwasher as it’s set and forget.
Exactly. We pre-rinse the dishes, get the water running hot before starting the machine, and choose the heavy cycle. Even so, the dishwasher barely cleans our dishes. And it's a Bosch, well reviewed by Consumer Reports when we got it!
People in this thread are talking about the SpeedQueen washing machine. Is there something similar for dishwashers? I would pay good money for a dishwasher that actually cleaned my dishes. I don't even care if it's loud!
Are you using pre-wash detergent? My parents struggled with pampering their washer for 20 years, turns out a spoonful of detergent in the body of the washer gets the same performance as all the pre-rinse etc etc.
Are you perhaps using tabs? Dishwashers need detergent in the rinse cycle, otherwise they don't rinse well, and tabs don't let you do that. I've had friends who have always pre-rinsed because of wrong dishwasher use. Once they switched to powder and put some in the rinse cycle their dishes don't need pre-rinsing.
Thank you, I will definitely watch this. We have tried pre-wash detergent, tabs, liquid soap, powder detergents, in various combinations.
There may be something unusual wrong with our dishwasher. Although we clean its filter regularly, sometimes a kind of brown slime forms along the walls and around the filter, and I have to give it a deeper cleaning. Bosch had no idea what this was! I'm curious if anyone else has experienced something like that.
whoa. sounds like your drainage might be at fault. i have never heard of anything like this. I'm not a plumber, or anything related, but dishwashers should not have slime and should not need cleaning. yikes.
> get the water running hot before starting the machine
Interesting if this is a US difference - but here (in the UK) at least dishwashers (usually? I suppose I don't want to claim to speak for 100%) only have a cold water inlet; they do their own heating.
We have a Bosch 800 that is capable of heating its own water, but it's still plumbed for hot just because the gas-heated water is cheaper, and the only cold supply under the kitchen sink is unsoftened.
Overall I've been quite happy with my premium-dishwasher experience, though there are a few little things that I don't love, like the fact that the rollers on the middle rack are no longer independently-replaceable. Seems like a huge step backward to have to replace the entire rack for like $200 just because one of those fails.
This depends on the manufacturer. Some manufacturers make dishwashers that can utilize both hot and cold water and others only work with cold or hot water.
As an example Frigidaire, GE, KitchenAid, Whirlpool will only work with hot water; Samsung, Ikea, Beko will only work with cold water; and Bosch, Miele, Electrolux, LG will work with either.
Interesting, I don't think it does here other than extreme minority of cases - because it's just not standard plumbing. You typically have a washing machine & dishwasher hookup & waste under the sink; it's pretty standardised and it's on cold.
> As an example Frigidaire, GE, KitchenAid, Whirlpool will only work with hot water
Yeah, afaik without actually looking into it, of those only Whirlpool is distributed here (KitchenAid stuff yes for sure, but not I think dishwashers) and as above I'm pretty sure they must be different models, just like LH/RH driver cars.
Of course you can import whatever you want, but then you should probably expect to deal with some such plumbing (and potentially electrical, at very least changing the plug) oddities.
In the US, it's common to have a water softener on the hot water line, intended to soften the inputs for appliances and showers. The cold water line is not softened, to avoid drinking sodium-laced water.
I wouldn't like to estimate an installation percentage, but it's probably not quite 'standard' to have at all. In the systems I've known, I believe it's been on the cold-water line pre-boiler; in the scullery with the sink there pre-softener so you get one (cold) tap without.
I'm constantly confused by these threads; the only time I've seen these sorts of problems with dishwashers of any vintage is where people aren't cleaning the filters. You're cleaning the filters, right?
We are now, but there's a little more to it. When we first got this dishwasher, we never cleaned the filters. Our previous washer didn't need that, and we didn't know better.
So it got pretty bad before we realized we needed to do that. We cleaned it very thoroughly at that point and now clean the filters at least weekly, but we still have these problems.
I choose the eco-mode setting and lie to the machine that it's only half-full and my dishes are still cleaned properly. This is a newish Bosch model.
I also choose the eco setting on my washing machine and wash at 30 degrees and my clothes become clean (but I don't roll around in mud very often). That's a cheap Beko model that is about 8 years old.
I have a dishwasher and washing machine from Siemens (nowadays the same as Bosch, just different branding). European models around 400€ each. Eco mode washes perfectly fine on both of them, that's what I always use. Takes over three hours but that's not an issue for me.
The Department of Energy actually banned the SpeedQueen TC5 washer model a few years back because it didn't have a sufficient eco mode (read this as: it automated more of the washing work for you than the government would allow)
The workaround is that modern SpeedQueen washers have a "normal/eco" default mode which doesn't do a good job at all. This mode exists to satisfy the DoE policy. The washer is intended to never be run on this mode, and all the other modes do a fantastic washing job.
I have the newer TC5 with the bogus "normal/eco" cycle. It's a great washer as long as the government mandated useless mode isn't selected.
Except speedqueen is a shell if itself. My dad recently got one, it's complete garbage. Yeah you can get parts for it, but it's missing the most basic features. No soak mode. He also complains it doesn't wash his clothes very well compared to his old washer that was a front loader. That thing lasted about 10 years too. After I think 2017 they started to really cheap out. Maytag now has a more professional line to target speedqueen buyers. Out of all the major appliances though the biggest thing to do is avoid ALL korean brands unless you're in South Korea.
Can it be that we are just getting old? The new generation will have their brains wired to ignore ads, will be ok with devices spying on them (it will be called something else).
And we will be something like that grandpa that can't unblock the mobile phone. (for example, use that new blockchain smart contract to open the fridge and order some food NFTs)
Societies and culture go in wrong directions frequently. The older you grow, the more experience and knowledge you have to recognize bad trends, anticonsumer practices, and outright abusive behaviors. While some of getting old for many is turning into a creature of habit fighting off any and all change, for many it's rejecting what is identified as bad/harmful change or change that exists for no apparent reason.
Not all old people are luddites or simply too inept to deal with change, sometimes they make conscious decisions to reject a given change yet are forced by the rest of society on occasion to deal with it. New technologies need to clarify the tradeoffs that exist and what the real value add is beyond marketing propoganda.
Many are obsessed with social media and smart devices all over their home (regardless of age). Meanwhile, people who frequent this site are largely technologists who are very tech savvy, sometimes the people creating these very systems, and many of them actively reject such technology and systems because they know exactly how harmful things can be. It's not because they're old, it's because they're informed.
More and more business practices are losing their alignment with society and pulling more value than they create and people simply don't want to deal with it. I applaud markets actually functioning healthily and rejecting abusive practices. This DRM may exist for a lot of good reasons, refillability simply may be impractical after skimming over the writeup for some. Meanwhile you have systems like DRM on KCups coffee makers that are completely ludicrous.
I remember my grandfather in Vegas lamenting that allowing people to wear trashy street clothes or anything less than formal wear / suit and tie into the casinos, or on airplanes, would lead to more and more bad behavior. This seemed incredibly uncool and old-fashioned at the time, but it turns out he was right. Decades of increasingly lax social codes around how people present themselves in public have led to generations of people who don't know how to behave politely in public.
This struck me with full force when I was invited to the Magic Castle in LA, one of the last venues to require formal wear at all times. One of the most magical things about that place is how it transforms a whole range of everyday visitors who might be people you wouldn't want to hang out with at their local bar into highly civilized men and women on their tip-top behavior. Vegas and air travel both used to operate on this principle. Now we might call it "LARPing" but when it was a social norm it was called "going out".
I don't think it's my getting older that caused me to think more like my grandfather. I think time proved him right.
> I remember my grandfather in Vegas lamenting that allowing people to wear trashy street clothes or anything less than formal wear / suit and tie into the casinos, or on airplanes, would lead to more and more bad behavior. This seemed incredibly uncool and old-fashioned at the time, but it turns out he was right.
I don't agree at all. A huge amount has changed since airlines enforced formal wear - for example, I can fly to Prague/Budapest/Amsterdam for under €30 from most of Europe, and I can fly return to New York from London for less than weeks wages of minimum wage.
> This struck me with full force when I was invited to the Magic Castle in LA, one of the last venues to require formal wear at all times. One of the most magical things about that place is how it transforms a whole range of everyday visitors who might be people you wouldn't want to hang out with at their local bar into highly civilized men and women on their tip-top behavior.
What makes you think that the dress code is what made them behave, and not that they were invited by someone who put their neck out for them, or the $50 cover charge, or the $20 drinks? Anecdotally, I've seen plenty of people behaving terribly in formalwear over the years.
>> I can fly to Prague/Budapest/Amsterdam for under €30
The three flights guaranteed to have a stag party.
The common way to look at this is that flying has gotten cheaper. Another way to look at - the way the Soviets would have looked at it - is that the masses have gotten much wealthier.
So if you agree that rich people are not necessarily better-behaved than poor people, and that anyone who can afford to fly for vacation is wealthy by the standards of 40 years ago, then there's some other explanation for why people feel alright making complete asses of themselves on RyanAir. I submit that when people feel like trash, they act like trash. When they feel like they're shown respect, they act with respect. When the people around you are dressed formally it's a sign of respect for the place and for each other, which creates a circle of respectful behavior.
This is why in my grandfather's time even the poorest folks had "Sunday clothes" and acted a certain way in them. Certain activities like flying or going to a casino called for your Sunday best.
> The three flights guaranteed to have a stag party.
I deliberately picked them as textbook examples. I can fly to pretty much anywhere in Europe for under £50 return. Air travel has gotten incredibly cheap - last time I flew back to Ireland it cost me as much to get to the airport than it did to fly.
> When the people around you are dressed formally it's a sign of respect for the place and for each other, which creates a circle of respectful behavior.
And yet formalwear is often seen at parties, weddings, work holiday nights. Go to a bar in Manhattan, Vegas,LA where people are wearing dresses and suits that cost as much as my car and see the behaviour.
> This is why in my grandfather's time even the poorest folks had "Sunday clothes" and acted a certain way in them.
They behaved a certain way because of the environment they were in, not because of how they were dressed. It was, and still would be unacceptable to show up to church being loud and boisterous, and in my time attending s church(albeit it's been about 20 years) I don't ever recall seeing anyone removed or acting out other than children, despite wearing "normal" clothes.
Weddings and funerals are the only places where it's still required, and there's quite a bit of bad behavior around both. What those have in common is that no one wants to go to them. That's not the same thing as choosing to go to a place where you're intentionally participating in a social act larger than a family gathering, with people you don't know, and where you're making a statement beforehand that you're a person of standards acting on your best behavior.
For instance, since I was 25 (I'm in my 40s), I've worn a suit, tie and sometimes a vest whenever I travel internationally. Especially aboard a train. I learned this when I was a poor traveler living from hostel to hostel, and camping. You will be surprised how you're treated if you dress well. You're showing respect to the people around you.
I think you're willfully missing the point I'm making, which is that the act of putting on better-than-your-usual garments is just one part of a whole set of customs which signal behavioral ideas that society has completely chosen to forget. The problems with social media could be solved by moderating and kicking people off. The problems with casinos and airlines could be solved by rejecting people who don't take the time to look in the mirror.
Those people aren't owed a flight, a seat at a blackjack table, or a voice on a private social media platform. These problems are all of a single piece.
You have to earn a position in society by your bearing and actions and speech. No one is owed it. No one is born "noble" and no one rich is born with what we call class.
But take a man who works in a clothing factory 6 days a week, and tell him he's going to see a show in Las Vegas: The man will buy a suit. And he will keep that suit in the closet for the rest of his life and say: That's the suit I wore to the show in Las Vegas! He wants to have class.
These experiences are not supposed to be cheap. They're important and memorable precisely because they are expensive. No one learns good behavior without receiving a certain amount of social disdain for bad behavior. The rituals and clothing and the imaginary world of luxe that we clothe ourselves in is for each other's and our own benefit; this is the meaning of civilization. What we have now is a kind of barbarism, with people barely worth the air they breathe. Put a suit on the man and see if he can stand and act like a man.
Weddings and funerals are the only places where it's still required, and there's quite a bit of bad behavior around both. What those have in common is that no one wants to go to them. That's not the same thing as choosing to go to a place where you're intentionally participating in a social act larger than a family gathering, with people you don't know, and where you're making a statement beforehand that you're a person of standards acting on your best behavior.
Surely that in and of itself exactly proves _my_ point - it doesn't matter that you're forced to dress up and be respectful, the person doesn't beget the clothes. What matters is the intent that you've made a decision to go to an occasion that demands respect.
> You will be surprised how you're treated if you dress well.
Having been forced to dress up for various events over the years, I can't say I've noticed a difference in how I've been treated when dressed up vs when in my civvies. One thing I _have_ noticed is I am treated more formally - don't confuse formality for being treated well. Formality means procedure and rituals. Being treated well means care, politeness and attention to detail. If you're on an easyjet flight from London to Alicante, no amount of dressing up is going to get you any better treatment. Similarly, if you fly business class Emirates from London to Dubai, as long as you meet their dress code you'll be treated like royalty - the difference is how much you're paying.
Here's an experiment for you - go into the fanciest bar in your town, order two beers and tip the bartender $50 and see how well you're treated for the rest of the night. Speaking from experience (accidental - stupid american notes are all the same colour), you will get the service you _want_, not the service they _offer_.
> I think you're willfully missing the point I'm making, which is that the act of putting on better-than-your-usual garments is just one part of a whole set of customs which signal behavioral ideas that society has completely chosen to forget.
No, that's not what you said. You said, and I quote:
> I remember my grandfather in Vegas lamenting that allowing people to wear trashy street clothes or anything less than formal wear / suit and tie into the casinos, or on airplanes, would lead to more and more bad behavior.
That's not claiming that society has chosen to leave behind the customs associated with formal dressing, that's saying that the decision to do so has led to more and more bad behaviour. I _do_ agree that society has decided to leave behind those customs, but that in and of itself has not caused more bad behaviour. The advent of cheap air travel is almost certainly the single biggest cause of behaviour changes in air travel, and the increased individualism is (IMO) responsible for the changes in other areas - to use your magic castle example again, the reason people _behave_ there is because they have their invitee's standing to uphold. Remove that, and the magic castle becomes just like any of the other expensive bars in the area.
You're right that the Magic Castle is not about money, it's not that expensive; it's about the average Shmoe getting a night as a high roller. Being invited there is not the defining thing in someone's behavior. It's the fact that people are afforded the opportunity - incredibly rare in society now - to look and act like important people, respected people, and they don't want to mess that up. Clothing's just one part of it. You said you've been forced to dress up... well, that's not the same thing. Not the same thing at all as being excited to look your best. No one forces you to look your best when you want to make an impression.
I always tip well at bars, and I get served well. But that's not the test. The test is walking up unknown to a crowded bar and having the bartender come to you first, knowing you're going to be a good customer. It almost makes you feel the need to tip extra well. And that's what society should be about.
I don't care that flights are cheap. Great. I just want people to live up to that. I don't blame them for being maleducated, but I think they should be educated in showing some class.
>What makes you think that the dress code is what made them behave...
Well, for me, it's a lifetime (nearly) of observing how people who dress up for an occasion behave as opposed to those who don't. Churches would make for an interesting exploration in regards to this topic, some still dress, many don't. I don't think your points your other three points are invalid, though.
I didn't know that the Castle had become so expensive. I was a member for about three years in the 80's. At the time, as a blue-collar stiff, I found it quite affordable -- of course, I paid no cover charge.
While some hoped to see celebrities there, a not infrequent occurrence, I was thrilled to meet close-up magic icons like John Carney, Derek Dingle, and Dai Vernon, and to watch many other notables such as Daryl, Bruce Cervon, Eugene Burger, Paul Harris, and Earl Nelson.
One day, a couple of blocks over, at Hollywood Magic (a magic retailer) I watched Harry Anderson of Night Court fame, throwing three-card monte on the customer side of the counter while holding his three-year-old daughter in one arm as he did it -- perhaps he just stood her on the counter with his arm around her as he threw? Not sure, it's been many years. Despite, being very familiar with the sleight, I could not follow the movement of the queen any better than any mark would/could. He was about as humble as they come, and I couldn't have cared much less about his celebrity, but I sure was impressed with his technique.
> I didn't know that the Castle had become so expensive.
I've only been once as an invite, from what I recall it was ~$50 for the cover charge, we paid about ~$50 a head per meal, and spent probably another ~$100 on drinks each. It was a unique evening, I had a great time, and wouldn't take it back, but it was definitely one of the more expensive evenings I had in LA.
Any nice bar in LA is costly, but for what it is there really aren't a lot of other places on Earth like the Magic Castle. You could easily toss away the money you'd spend in a night there in 30 minutes waiting at the Bellagio to see a Cirque show.
Short take: Going to the Magic Castle is roughly equivalent to flying on the Concorde. It's an expense well worth it for an unforgettable experience.
[edit: yeah, I'm not dead, I know the Concorde isn't around anymore but that's the point]
Completely agree with this! As an aside, I was actually on a concorde plane recently, there's one at an airfield museum not too far from where I live. the thing that stands out to me is how small the interior is, compared to even a 737. It really feels quite cramped!
A lot of the time HN users just have very different priorities and tolerances. I see all the time people ranting about induction stove touch controls. I have used both gas stoves and inductions for years and the touch controls never bothered me, yes they beep and disable if you spill water on them, but you wipe it with a paper towel and move on. While cleaning a gas stove with knobs is a huge pain that impacts me so much more.
There is no objectively right opinion. It just depends on how much you are bothered by either downside.
I've justed installed 5 years' worth of Revit on my new laptop today, and with each year the UI on their installers are getting worse. On Revit 2022, some of the splash screen prompts are not resizable and not MOVABLE, ie they don't respond to alt+space for windows menu. This is not OK. On one of them, I had to answer input prompts that they rendered OFF SCREEN. I solved that by changing display resolution.. Another showed a clipped path of a missing install file, which thus couldnt be identified.. I solved that by moving the install files to c:/2/ (to get a shorter path it could display).
No, things are getting worse, today's ui is made with crayons :-/
Revit installs are the worst. Iused to freelance for an engineer and once I moved on from that it was amazing how much cruft from Autodesk was left on my machine.
I'm guessing most of it was based on anti piracy measures. I often wonder how much overlap there is between anti piracy, ani cheat, and "productivity" measuring tech.
> I often wonder how much overlap there is between anti piracy, ani cheat, and "productivity" measuring tech.
I've never heard it put this succinctly. Are the same companies doing all of these things because the expertise transfers? Do they have journals and conferences together?
It's encouraging to read that young people are starting to get a good foothold on the ground. Tech is cool and helpful but only as far as we can throw it when it breaks.
Hold on there. Ads popping up on YT are annoying but it's up to the user to decide if they are worth the content they're watching, same as TV or print or the radio. Using an Ad blocker in my view is no different than stealing.
Toss in SponsorBlock to auto skip time wasters and Unhook to hide the manipulative recommendation feed and other noise, too! Life is too short to waste it on advertisements.
Not using a piece of a service (the ads) is not stealing, nor likely is it violating any service contact.
Nope. Website sends information to my computer, my computer displays it the way I want it to be displayed. The website sending the information doesn't own my computer.
Maybe? My microwave has something like 20 buttons, I really wish it had two knobs:
- Time
- Power
Hell, print a guide on the inside of the door on how to adjust power for defrosting or whatever. I rarely ever press more than :30 button, and changing power is more annoying than it should be.
You can buy whiteware with a usable UI, but you need to go to a display room and try the models with the intent of checking usability, and then paying the premium that usually occurs. Also if possible talk to the service guys and work out what is reliable and maintainable.
I regularly hear people complain about their devices, because usability wasn’t considered due to different root causes. Some people don’t know anything about usability (not a “Senior Support Engineering Manager”), some people buy cheap, some people don’t get to choose (rent), many people don’t think to check usability, some people let their partner buy something unsuitable.
If you use a kitchen, then pay attention to what other practical friends use. Your appliances are tools you work with: spend effort to buy good tools.
I bought a Breville Quick Start microwave, chosen for combination of brand trust, price, and usability. It has a rotating power knob, a rotating timer knob, a 30 second quick start button, and a bunch of feature buttons which I don’t use hidden in the door jam. Rotate the knobs to change power or time while the microwave is running: https://www.breville.com/au/en/products/microwaves/bmo735.ht...
Discussions around microwaves are always so fascinating as it's hard to tell for instance if you just don't care at all, or if you decided to micro-manage your device temperature and mode to get tailored results no automation would provide.
As an example pre-steaming has become a well rounded feature, and it will be done as a separate phase during the pre-heating, to switch to full-blown oven mode from there. I could totally time and set it all myself, but honestly I wouldn't bother half of the time and settle for the worse result to spare my time.
Same for cycle like lower temperature fermentation -> cooking for bread dow, or auto-stop by temperature detection for simple reheating.
All of these actually work well, and I feel in the "before" time we were just more accepting of mediocre results and/or spending half a day on it.
The other day I accidentally grilled my instant meal because I selected the wavy grill icon instead of the wavy microwave icon on my combi-oven. Molten plastic everywhere :-/ It does have a knob for selecting the time though.
I get that icons are easier because you don't need to translate things for every country, but surely it can't be that much effort or expensive? My washing machine has text in Dutch and French, and it was one of the cheaper options.
Some of the fancy microwave features can actually be useful though.
The "sensor cook" on mine does a really great job with potatoes for example. They come out about as good with that as they do when I bake them in the toaster oven or regular oven using a thermometer to determine the cooking time, but the microwave is a lot faster and less effort.
>If depression rates in children and young adults are anything to go by, younger people absolutely cannot ignore ads(sic).
If you had toddlers in the early 00's(the only time I witnessed it), or were a toddler then, you were likely exposed to plenty of Disney Channel and the frequent barrage of 10 second commercials. Bad programming, IMO.
This is why my near two year old is unaware that there is an uncountable number of hours of video made specifically to appeal to his age group. I know he'll find out sooner or later, and that it can even be called up on demand if your mommy is nice enough, but I want to keep those little brain cells engaged primarily with the quiet, physical world as long as possible.
> If depression rates in children and young adults are anything to go by, younger people absolutely cannot ignore adds.
There's some reason to think that this has already happened to some extent. In particular, many of the changed purchasing habits of millennials vs genX and boomers are usually attributed to ad-blindness. You'd expect this to go even further in the next generation.
The door on our $1200 2 year old refrigerator started cracking at the hinge. I had a credit card warranty on it, so I foolishly tried to hire an appliance repair company to fix it. They charged $150 to look at it for 10 minutes and say all they could do is replace the whole door, and quoted $900. I spent 45 minutes fixing it myself with some extruded aluminum and some rivets. The warranty coverage allowed for self-repair, so I ended up "earning" roughly my equivalent hourly rate as a software engineer.
I advise you to go visit a Stasi museum in Germany sometime, look at what they were able to do with paper documents and film/tape.
Now imagine what they could do with today's telemetry obsessed economy.
When I was in my 20s I thought democracy was a given... "getting old" might just mean you've been alive long enough to realise that democracy is fragile and the shit sometimes hits the fan... We are one misguided vote away from handing over the ultimate panopticon to a malevolent government, and we will never be able to organise a resistance to win power back, because it will be snuffed out in its infancy .
No, I can ignore ads very well. I just buy what I need after a lot of research (and sadly good/real reviews are harder to come by).
All new advancements in "tech" have actually been in money making. Like appliances that require special cartridges for no good reason other than it being more profitable for the manufacturer. They finally adapter the printer-ink model, heh.
Did you know most contracts forbid recycling companies from taking out parts and selling them? Because it would cut into profits on overpriced spare parts, of course (official reason is "we can't trust that they'll perform well"). And so they go to landfills or at best, are melted down into something usable at huge energy costs.
Yes, people will put up with it. I hope not for long. I know people making 50k/year (good salary for EU) and literally spending it all on the "best" shit, who wish to buy a house and saying it's impossible. Then there's the people making 20k/year who save for many long years and buy a 300k+ house, or at least an apartment.
Willing to bet who will be better off in a decade or so? Or whose kids? Ha ha, I might actually lose that bet if a war or catastrophic natural events happen.
I think it depends on the specific technology. I know older people who were excited to get a smart TV where younger people use a phone, dongles or even a laptops. Sometimes they need the smarts more and are less able to escape it. And there are still older tech fans who love finding the future.
I think part of this is inevitable, but I am still very concerned because we cannot rewire our brains in less than single generation, and despite what many think you are paying attention to those ads. My parents might struggle with technology but I'd argue it's because they are trying to do something basic (like access the internet) or of value (like watch their favourite streaming series). I'm not convinced these new "value extraction" pain points that cause us hardship are the same.
> The new generation will have their brains wired to ignore ads
...upon which the brain wiring experts get bought and rewire those brains to only see "approved" ads which gives the wheel another push. Around and around it goes, like a circle game.
>I am, more and more, deliberately choosing boring technology. Knobs in the car and on appliances. No screen interfaces. Low-tech where possible.
But how much time is still possible to find boring technology? Unless you find used? And you won't find used for a very long amount of time.
Maybe this is a good business case, produce boring technology for people who don't want connected cupboards and dish washer and prefer physical controls over digital interfaces.
yes, people will take the chip out of the key and glue it to the sensor in the steering column for the ines that are still key based. for prox based ones, not sure.
It might be easier to produce retrofit (pun intended?) kits for appliances that have good core components but could be improved with some tactile dials and what have you.
I know an executive working for Haier who doesn't really think the smart home thing is going to work out in it's current form.
His view is that people probably want a washing machine that can keep track of it's duty cycles and let you know if water quality is affecting it's performance or if a part is getting close to end of life and organize purchase of the part and an repairer to do the fix. The gimmicks of being able to get alerts about the status of appliances to your phone are just fluff. But it's early days and people at the top who make this decisions are still working them out.
> people probably want a washing machine that can keep track of it's duty cycles and let you know if water quality is affecting it's performance or if a part is getting close to end of life
Sounds good, but you can do it with a few sensors leading to an LCD screen (and a manual in a yellowing clear plastic bag taped to the back of the machine.) And you don't have to disable the machine if that microprocessor burns out, or god forbid put an entire computer in there.
> and organize purchase of the part and an repairer to do the fix.
Not only do I not need any appliance to do this, but
1) if they cared about parts and service, they could have a nice website for this stuff, and they don't. So judging them based on that, this will also be neglected (after being marketed.)
2) this would really be a way to prevent people from getting parts who don't have a current service contract, and to screw them on the prices. It would also be a way to take a huge cut from the repair companies who participate in the program, who would also be large rent-seekers (who could make a deal with device manufacturers to be included in the software) skimming just as much by farming out the work to subcontractors.
End result: single thing goes wrong, repair and parts cost more than the device. Don't worry, they're running a promotion that gives you credit towards buying their latest model.
I baulked at installing the 'Homewhiz' Android app for my Beko washer/dryer because not only did it want access to my mic and camera, but also GPS and contacts.
Instead, I installed a smart plug with power sensor and hooked it up to a phone dashboard via MQTT and Node-RED so I can work out the current state of the machine (by power draw), and as a fun bonus I get an email at the start and end of each wash/dry cycle.
That's good enough for me - I can't see the point of being able to set the wash program by phone as I have to be physically at the machine when loading it.
If I could use an official app to see machine anomalies or predicted failures without the feeling that I am being bugged or data mined that would be handy.
Allegedly, the Homewhiz protocol is 'Open', but references lead to ISO/IEC 30118-4:2021, which is a multi-document spec for which you have to pay. I also would not be surprised if the appliance's Bluetooth connectivity won't play nice unless there's an outbound 'heartbeat' to a remote server via the phone.
I avoid anything that ties me to the manufacturer. Once one of their MBAs decides that the product line is no longer profitable, the servers go offline, the software stops getting updates, the cartridges stop being produced.
I like self-contained products that I can repair myself (within reason). I have growing faith in my ability to repair things. However, manufacturers find it profitable to withhold the tools, parts and knowledge I need to do this.
I loathe MBAs and business schools - I strongly feel like that have seriously ruined much of the last 30 years through wasted talent and short sighted profiteering. That and they are so self assured. Oh add in VC for putting such high pressure and excess returns. The model is broken.
* I know not all MBAs are like this but there's considerable damage *
The bearing of my Whirlpool washing machine got corroded due to a leaking seal. So when the drying cycle started, the bearing started screeching so loud that my kids woke up.
I decided to replace the bearing and (after measuring) found the correct SKF bearing. After picking it up at the local dealer and paying 7 euro's, I started. But what did Whirlpool do? They made it impossible to remove only the bearing and seal. You had to replace the whole drum, which costs about half of the machine.
Why? I emailed Whirlpool and got a reply where I could buy the new drum..SIGH
I've been semi in the market for my first car, and fully touch interfaces are a hard deabreaker for me, as are subscription services. I don't want to have to look away from the road to change the volume or turn the Radio off, and I don't get why so many cars force you to these days.
I bought a Whirlpool washer and dryer set in 1982 based on Consumer Reports testing. In 2017, I replaced the washer with a Speed Queen. It was recommended by a friend who owns a few rental houses. The Whirlpool dryer is still running.
I do. I bought a house a few years ago, and needed to buy a whole bunch of stuff (lawnmower, generator, washer, dryer, freezer, bed, etc). Really helped pare down what was out there. Largely use it for bigger items, though.
I just didn't have it in me to "research" all that stuff online. On one side, you have scummy review sites or sites with uneducated reviewers, and on the other, very opinionated aficionados who want you to spend $$$$$ on every little thing, or else it's just an inferior experience (of mowing the lawn or something).
I'm sure CR isn't perfect, but sometimes I just need a recommendation that's not complete garbage and then to move on with life.
My house came in 2007 with a quite old fashioned GE washer [1] and GE dryer [2]. The washer was made in August 2003 and the dryer was made in April 2004.
They still work fine and have required no repairs in the 15 years I've had them.
Repairability is great but it does often come at the cost of efficiency. I found this to be the case with my washer. You can end up spending so much extra on electricity that you could have replaced the washer anyway.
This was also the case with my subcompact car. It needed a $400 repair but the entire powertrain is integrated so you have to spend $4000 in labor disassembling and reassembling it.
Yep. Check out their website in the sibling comment. The places around me tend to be for "luxury" homes -- surprisingly, the items at these shops tend to be quite low tech. Low tech == modern luxury?
We went with a lower end model that cost about 50% more than the similar sized models available at Lowes/Home Depot. Considering we'd already repaired the old unit a handful of times and it cost in that range, we only need it to last about 4 years before we break even.
Great project and writeup; just one more example why we should always be cautious about "smart" devices, for that smartness nearly always aimed at eliminating customers choices.
I wonder what does the device electronics do beyond checking for the original cassette and its eeprom; it doesnt seem it would have to do anything more complex than opening water, and detergent valves/pumps for a certain time while keeping the right temperature; nothing that even the simplest uC and couldn't do; a further development could involve probing all signals at sensors and actuators during normal operation, then getting rid of the old electronic to allow the device taking detergents directly from the tanks, so resetting the cassette eeprom wouldn't be needed anymore because there would be no need to insert one.
This of course would invalidate the warranty, but for some of us that is a plus point:)
It is very heavy on the jargon indeed. Just in case someone's wondering, the author isn't being facetious it really is a very simple thing. If you google 24C02 you'll get a PDF that probably has this exact schematic in the application examples section.
If you want to take up electronics design as a hobby, you'd probably be at the level where you could have this designed and manufactured within a month or two of evening/weekends studies.
edit: Just for fun, let's go through the jargon. 24C02 EEPROM is the name of a popular chip that stores a tiny bit of persistent memory. Mouser at the moment has more than 80 variations of this chip with hundreds of thousands in stock and hundreds of thousands more in back order. 4.7k pull-ups, this means there's a small resistor between the signal lines and the positive voltage rail. This enables the chip to communicate by pulling the signal low (by shorting it to ground) this way of signalling is very common, someone told me it's because how the telegraph worked but I'm not sure if that's true. I2C is a simple communication protocol that works if chips are really close together (i.e. I think guideline is within 10-15cm). A bypass capacitor is a component that blocks continuous voltage but lets oscillating voltage through. Most chips don't deal well with oscillating voltages on their power supplies so the manufacturer will recommend you (through that PDF I mentioned before) to put a bypass capacitor between the power supply line and the ground, so that the dirty oscillations go directly to ground instead of into your chip. A diode is a component where current can only go in one direction, in this case that's handy because chips usually break if you wire them in reverse polarity. If a user would force this cartridge in backwards, instead of the chip blowing up, the diodes will simply block the current from coming in the wrong way and the device won't work.
And that's it, I think all you need to understand how this cartridge is designed.
We do the same, right? Oh, it's simply routed to by a reverse-proxy nginx behind a round-robin load balancer with a long deregistration delay, probably to let the application shut down gracefully. If I try to forget for a second.. what the fuck did I just say?
In layman's terms: It's an integrated circuit that has non-volatile storage, resistors on the data lines so that the voltage sits at 'high', as per the spec for I2C (the communication protocol), a capacitor to stabilize the voltage, and diodes that protect the circuit in case voltage were applied in the 'wrong direction'.
Wow. So I'm watching the Techmoan review and it's just amazing. You've got this pretty awesome product.... up until you can clearly see the business types shoving their grubby hands in the way of UX and good engineering.
Oh no no no. We can't just sell a product. We need recurring revenue. So we'll make DRM proprietary detergent pods that require electronics in each one. Ah, but people will reject that because they know (and we clearly know) it's a horrible product design. So we'll include an option to just use your own. Of course, we'll turn the screws over time, incentivising use of our proprietary detergent until eventually we just get rid of the other option.
That whole thing seems to offer absolutely no added value to the customer. It's just making a good product inferior in order to grift more money from the customer.
If your business model requires this kind of thing, you should feel unceasing shame and failure.
Devil's advocate: the only reason the product is so nice is because the grubby handed business types could raise the money by promising MRR to the investors. Reverse devil's advocate: and this is why hacking is so essential, so that some of us get to have our cake (meticulously and expensively designed stuff) and eat it too (opt out of MRR). Although this does create a new kind of 1%, but its one based on merit so its okay?
> Although this does create a new kind of 1%, but its one based on merit so its okay?
I think about this a lot. There are so many ways that the people who can least afford to be fleeced are getting fleeced the most, while people with the right savvy and some spare time, who are more likely to be earning well, are also able to avoid a ton of unnecessary cost. It's kind of a double whammy on the poor and unskilled.
Wonderful. Love Doctorow, and this piece makes good points, even if it does veer into Black Mirror "contrived circumstances to maximize cruelty potential of new tech" territory. The key aspect of this story is that poor people are forced to use bad tech to secure housing. Doctorow captures the pathos of it, the resentful landlords getting back at "the poors" any way they can - this rings true. But at least in my world, it really is a matter of choosing a Brother laser printer instead of a shitty Epson color laserjet - and it's a $100 mistake if you pick wrong. Which is low stakes in my world. (of course one of the key elements of this story is "when worlds collide" and $100 is life-changing stakes for some)
Did you see the price tag? This device is super cheap for what it is, same as inkjet printers are. It's easier to sell a $50 printer and recover your losses through ink, than it is to sell a $200 printer.
You could solve the "system" by regulating that companies are not allowed to sell products at a loss, but that would be unamerican.
Anthropomorphising companies is a trap. I mean, it's a trap that SCOTUS fell into, but still. Companies are more like organisms in nature, responding to incentives in a mindless way. Just as it seems foolish to hate a tapeworm for its 'exploitative' life-cycle, it seems foolish to hate this kind of business model, or any other. Are herbavores really the only good animals, and farmers the only good workers? I find that hard to accept. It's almost impossible to judge good or evil, especially in the long run. Consider that mitochondria probably started out as an infection, or a parasite. Your gut flora, too. Not to mention all the weird ways ecosystems interlock, until its no longer clear who's exploiting whom. (That said, I think it's reasonable to want to live in Mayberry, but its highly unfair when the only people who get to live there are the ones who make the rest of the world Hamsterdam.)
> You could solve the "system" by regulating that companies are not allowed to sell products at a loss, but that would be unamerican.
To memory, Nintendo is the only console maker that turns a profit on the hardware (which is part of why their hardware specs are always outdated). Sony & Microsoft don't turn a profit until you buy ~3 games.
I think people would be surprised at how often products are sold at a loss.
Definitely, this is also why the "this is unamerican" (meaning of course the argument is against free market) is not an unjustified argument. It is very likely that inkjet printers have become much better due to inkjet printer manufacturers being able to compete much better having such an effective marketing strategy.
Buying these devices is effectively the same as taking out a small loan, that you're repaying by buying the games/cartridges, and it's a well known fact that loans leverage economies. I wonder if some day we'll have a less intrusive ways of establishing these micro loans to enable consumers access to excellent technology.
Inkjet printers, this tiny dishwasher, the Sony Playstation 4, they're all incredible devices that people get through this scheme. It's not just that the price is spread out by the way, a consumer could easily achieve that by using a credit card, but also the consumer is shielded from a bit of risk. If that $50 inkjet printer turns out to be shit they can simply not buy any cartridges for it, and won't be out $200 bucks on it.
There are a lot of similar mini dishwashers that don’t have that business model and use regular detergent. This is more like a lifestyle product, designed by a French startup rather than a Chinese manufacturer.
> Devil's advocate: the only reason the product is so nice
No - the only reason the up-front price is so low, while the hidden price is much higher. This is nothing more than technologically enhanced exploitation of information asymmetry and and human behavioral quirks that cause poor financial decisions.
I agree there's an argument to be made for the mechanics of capitalism to create such a product. I think it's still disgusting and shameful.
I also think, as I think you're pointing out, we should be incredibly careful to appreciate that over 99% of customers won't have any awareness of, or capacity to hack the problem away.
I'm only playing devil's advocate, I actually agree.
But people are ignoring the fact this tiny dishwasher likely REQUIRES commercial grade concentrate. If you look at the design of it, it is almost identical to countertop commercial dishwashers but scaled down (and using plastic instead of stainless steel). Those also need to use concentrate. If that's the case, then the manufacturer had to figure out a way of selling commercial dishwasher concentrate directly to consumers that was both safe but also makes it hard for them to use the wrong product (e.g. avoid them buying off-the-shelf dishwasher liquid/gel at the supermarket).
Again, I'm totally playing devil's advocate here, but I do feel like they maybe started out with an actual design goal here (reduce mistakes, improved UX, protect detergent during shipping) then got greedy when they decided each "cassette" only contained 30x washes, and that they'd cost like £5~/per. So I'm giving them credit for solving one problem while criticizing them for getting too greedy anyway.
I feel like they could have struck a nice middle-ground by copying "ink tanks" from inkjet printers. Just downward facing 1 liter bottles of commercial concentrate, with the reset being done in software exclusively rather than tank-DRM (simpler/more reliable anyway). They could still upcharge, but with less waste/less re-ordering.
It's interesting that we have already had this exact same transition with pure software: It is increasingly difficult to just buy an indefinite license to use a program that is dowloaded or shipped to you on physical media, to be run on your device.
Instead, companies find increasingly flimsy reasons to ship "Software as a Service," which in many cases exists solely to generate Annual Recurring Revenue, or "ARR."
I'd like to make a joke about ARR Growth Hacking, or "ARRGH," but I'm too depressed to take pleasure in it. Sure, there are convenience factors involved in apps you can just use from a web browser. Sure, many apps require a centralized aspect to be valuable, like social media. And sure, maintaining compatibility requires ongoing overhead, and companies need a revenue model that is aligned with their expense model, or they will close their doors.
But the end result is still a world where the ability to just buy a thing--whether physical or not--is rapidly shrinking.
Well, is it perhaps the case that the device would cost a ton more if consumables weren't DRM'd?
I'd say the problem here is disingenuous marketing. If producers honestly communicated beforehand that it is not really a sale, but rather a sort of pay-as-you go leasing, it would be clearer for everyone.
Even HP -- for all its faults -- have started selling honest ink subscription services and unless they DRM the printers to reject after-market refills and refuse to sell unlocked ones for a premium, I would accept it as fair.
The device costs a ton more because of DRM. It's a shell game, intended to trick people into thinking it's cheaper. They're just happy to put you on an installment plan forever.
I agree that more honest marketing can help ameliorate the problem, to an extent.
I mean you can get pretty comparable counter top dishwashers for a similar price or even less that just use regular dishwasher detergent with no DRM features.
The problem here is that in a perfect world this would not be a viable business model. This device makes so many trade-offs (both in terms of performance as well as eco-friendliness - shipping back spent cartridges for recycling significantly offsets if not completely eliminates the benefit of recycling) that it wouldn't exist.
The only reason why this exists isn't because it's a good product, it's because they can use marketing to mislead people into thinking it's a great eco-friendly product, grift ecology-related government grants or raise investment to keep their sinking ship afloat (this is where the DRM comes from).
The issue here is that in today's world we've normalized lying and screwing people over, both the investors and end-users alike.
I don't want to quote Elon Musk as a matter of preference but I'll do so anyway:
"If they[people] have, um, implicit, um, assumption that the economy is zero-sum, then the only way for one person to get ahead is by taking from one another".
The context is that the economy is ever expanding, values are being created, and future is bright, but my thought is it characterizes the market today precisely if it had not been for the context.
I care about music, the details, the style.. others know that, but only care about selling the tickets, the cash and the control. It has been this way always.
Your call to shame is not only naive, it is sheep leading sheep to slaughter. Economic Darwinism is only a shade of the Horesman called War. Do not forget, your countrymen might let you starve, it has happened before and it will happen again.I will stop there, but there is more to that...
I see the point of that dishwasher for someone who doesn't have easy access to a sink like a student in a dorm, but I can't fathom why you'd put one in a house or apartment. With such a tiny capacity you're better off hand washing.
1. Handwashing is water inefficient compared to a lot of dishwashers; if this is something that's important to you, a device like this makes ecologic, if not necessarily economic sense
2. Dishwashers are expensive to people not on tech salaries. All upfront costs are difficult; a smaller upfront payment with a recurring monthly/quarterly subscription payment is much more manageable for many people.
3. There are many homes in America that aren't configured for a dishwasher and it would be expensive/difficult to remodel to get one to fit. Anecdotally, my cousin out in <small town outside a college> has this problem - he and his wife would greatly appreciate a dishwasher in their lives, but their home was built in the 1940s and renovating isn't happening on a post-doc + special ed teacher's combined salary
> Handwashing is water inefficient compared to a lot of dishwashers
My grandmother insisted the right way to hand-wash dishes was to plug the sink and fill it up, scrub with your hands in the water, then drain and rinse everything all at once.
That should be similar efficiency (or greater?) vs a modern dishwasher, but I'm not sure anyone does that anymore. Everyone else I've seen leaves the water running the whole time.
Only if you don't know how to wash dishes by hand. Hand washing can be more efficient.
If you live in one of those unsustainable cities built in a desert, this probably matters, but as someone who doesn't, I'm sick of subsidizing that lifestyle by having to deal with cleaning devices designed for those conditions that don't work well.
> renovating isn't happening on a post-doc + special ed teacher's combined salary
It just makes me sad that we so deeply undervalue skilled, highly educated people who choose to dedicate their lives to helping raise up and advance the next generation, and help empower and enable those with disabilities and other disadvantages. The fact that it just seems obvious that these people based on their professions won't be able to afford a remodel goes to show just how deeply ingrained this undervaluing is in our collective psyches. :(
Yeah, I don’t think this would really have a market in much of the US or Canada where even older apartments typically have dishwashers, maybe in cities like NYC there are folks that would find it useful?
But lots of U.K. homes don’t have a dishwasher and the kitchen without probably a full renovation wouldn’t accommodate one. In that context - I think this is a pretty great product. I wouldn’t be surprised if the situation is similar elsewhere in Europe, where the buildings predate dishwashers being a common appliance.
>2. Dishwashers are expensive to people not on tech salaries. All upfront costs are difficult; a smaller upfront payment with a recurring monthly/quarterly subscription payment is much more manageable for many people.
I really think this line of thinking needs to die. Micro financing isn't helping the poor, it's exploiting the poor. It doesn't help to make the total cost of everything much more expensive.
What's the difference between the Bob dishwasher and buying this[1] and financing with a a payday loan center?
Bob- and apartment-owner here. We have a small kitchen and just don't have the space for a full-sized dishwasher. Bob fits snugly in the cabinet under the sink and runs once a day for a 2-person household.
It's perfect for our needs and saves us a lot of both time and water.
If it was my only option due to lack of space or not being allowed to install a full-size, I'd still find it worthwhile now that I eat at home much more often.
One to two loads a day would handle everything but the pots and pans for me and my partner while we can do other things, plus it would still use less water and electricity.
I did my own dishes for a while. It wasn’t so bad, but if I didn’t have a machine now I’d love something like this to handle the small plates and flatware.
I wonder if you could just tie pin 7 (VCC) to pin 8 (Write Protect). I wouldn't be terribly surprised if they didn't check for success on the write. Would be a much simpler hack.
(Hmm, the images are loading in way after my browser has scrolled to the anchor, pushing it far offscreen--first time I've had that in a while, actually)
Well, now that everything is understood, there is no need for every user to get destructive with a cartridge (it's not easy to access the board) in order to tie those pins together.
Looks easy enough to me if you have a dremel and a cutting disk. Then you just solder the one you removed/modified into the 4 wires in the machine, leaving the machine socket wired to nothing. And never mess with it again.
Why buy such a thing in the first place? It's 300e and for that money you can buy a full sized one. I'm seeing similar priced mini dishwashers on amazon.
As a sensible cosnumer you should have considered buying something standard and invest you time in something else.
If they would sell the dishwashers and 1/2 price and rely on recurrent income from detergent that's a different story but in this case I see no really reason why would someone even consider it. Let these companies bite the dust.
> No need to manually measure and add detergent each wash, very convenient!
No difference between adding a dishwasher tablet in the detergent holder of a regular machine. In both cases you're manually adding 1 item into the machine.
Except in the case of the dishwasher tablet, it comes from a box of 40 that you can easily buy in any supermarket.
I often wonder what the CEO and investors of Juicero actually felt when the video of the ease to self-squeeze was released. I can't imagine that level of just instantly knowing everything you've worked on is absolutely fucked and there can be absolutely no recovery or hope for it.
Talking about a 20 year old dishwasher in the https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31555629 post I doubt this company will still sell you a cartridge in 20 years making it yet another paper weight although it would still function.
In older buildings in Europe it's a royal pain to install or upgrade plumbing for a dishwasher or washing machine, or even install a dryer vent to the outdoors. Plus kitchens are often quite tiny by US standards. This device shines in that market.
ohmuhgawd! Until now, I had never seen this "tech". It is so obviously the ink jet of washers. why on earth would this seem like a good idea to anyone other than the manufacturer knowing the ink jet games that could be played. as a consumer why would this ever sound like a good enough idea to actually purchase?
> as a consumer why would this ever sound like a good enough idea to actually purchase?
Because as far as I know, there's no competing small sized kitchen-countertop dishwasher; that said, there's enough money on HN and its investors to start a company that does the same thing without the DRM and custom cartridges.
It's mentioned briefly in the writeup but those cardridges are not needed, the dishwasher works with standard tablets as well. It's sold as a convenience thing.
I love reverse engineering. I've done it a few times in software to pull the encryption keys out of proprietary vendor software to be able to decrypt the customer/consumer files they write on disk.
Has anyone put together a list of RE "use cases" like this one where people are looking for help solving the puzzle?
Had a look through the website, and while the headline sounds pretty upsetting I think it's important to note that the thing works just fine with regular detergent tablets. This DRM'd monstrosity seems to be an "upgrade" so you don't have to manually put detergent in every time.
Interesting how there are still many internet connected products that don't have subscription fees and don't (as far as I can tell) track and sell my info. Some stuff from my home: Lutron Caseta lights, Bali motorized blinds, Secure360 outdoor security lights, MyQ garage opener, simplisafe entry sensors, cameras, and door lock (assuming you don't pay for the monitoring service). LG thinq products also (fridge, oven, dishwasher, washer/dryer) minus LG tvs (which I believe sell my info/deliver ads). Most of these products are something a household would buy once in many years (if ever a second time). So what's the business model here? High up front cost to subsidize the service for X number of years? There has to be some point where they are losing money on old customers.
There is still a market for one-time purchases. I'm not surprised if companies don't build planned obsolescence into blinds, doorlocks, cameras and ovens.
You can't outlaw stupid. It would be nice if things like this that were obviously "anti-competitive" were treated as such though. Maybe a nice exception for bypassing anti-competitive DRM carved out specifically in the DMCA, or something like that.
There's no DRM though? This just looks like the simplest thing the engineers could have done - the only extra change they could have made is not requiring a cassette be present, I guess.
Precisely. Congress should get off their butts and decide what kind of washing machine America needs. I hate having to choose between glossy black and matte black finishes. Why won't Chuck Schumer help me?
Maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but if you buy a product because you like it and admire the design and engineering on it, isn't this type of hacking actually a disservice to the company who made it? I mean, I'm not saying this should never be explored (hacking is fun), but in a way you're cutting the resources from the company and potentially helping to bring it down. After all, a business is not made only on top of "cost + small profit percentage". Maybe their business model requires such prices and is impossible without them (especially if it's a small company).
Maybe this is a popular opinion, but if you sell a product because you want people to continue giving you money and freedom to make make money, isn't it a this type of DRMing actually a disservice to the guy who gave you money? After all person is not made only to prop up companies. Maybe their life requires not ballooning costs on brand name generics and is impoverished without them (especially if it's a family).
The idea of buying to transfer ownership in exchange for a good. Ownership implies responsibility for the single good purchased, not for the coalition of sellers who relinquished their claim in exchange for my wealth.
It’s perfectly reasonable to think both “neat design” and “fuck them” at the same time.
No-one’s nice design has a right to exist nor does their business have a right to work out. Personally I’ll do what I can do make DRM fail and companies that implement it go bust.
No. Someone else decided to do some 'growth hacking' on a finished product. This sort of feature isn't something that originated from the person doing the actual design.
Hacking is capitalism at it's best. If someone else can do the same thing faster/better/cheaper, then they should! No one owes your business anything - certainly not patronage for bad ideas.
I should buy one for my own but turns out you can put detergent between washing cycles, as long as you don't connect the dishwasher to a water line (well, I didn't check the other way around to be fair)
So I'm still weighting the convenience of turning it on and forgetting about it versus being able to buy the detergent for cheap at the mall...
Finding where you can buy the correct products for the cartridges can be quite the puzzle, last time I found a cheap-ish one with a "nice" 99€ delivery charge.
This was a fantastic read! The Bob seems like a very cool device for those in specific situations (small apartment, van-life, etc).
I'm wondering if anyone has recommendations for similar write-ups, whether tech related or anything else really? I was thoroughly engaged with this in a way I can't seem to get with books or many other articles and written documentation.
Not sure what you mean with "puck-style" detergent, but here in the UK, I always tend to buy 100 dishwasher tablets for £12, which works out to £0.12 per wash, and Rinse Aid for £3.50, for which the company claims 80 washes (though I haven't measured), which works out to £0.044 per wash, for a total of £0.164 per wash. £43 for 90 washes is pretty outrageous.
Brilliant! I looked at one of those too a while back. Didn't realize they had gone the way of printers who get you addicted to their product and keep stringing you along. :)
I bought a cheap black and white laser printer and it's been working great for me. I don't print that much, and if I do it's text anyway or things like plane tickets which don't need color. I don't have to worry about refilling four inks at once, I don't have to worry about ink spilling.
Hacking inkjets to use continuous refill has been a thing for like 20 years at least.
I mean I don't know the current situation (a happy laser printer user here) but last time I checked you could buy kits to convert many inkjet printers to just refill from a bottle.
I know, I'm just making a joke that this looks like an attempt to hide the value behind a simple operation, and rot13 is the ultimate low cost way to do that.
The industrial revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. (...) The continued development of technology will worsen the situation.
I personally quite enjoy many of the things that the industrial revolution has brought us, such as cheap and ubiquitous electricity, food safety, the internet and even cheap countertop dishwashing machines. Detergent DRM is a bit much though.
The kicker here is that the "industrial revolution" (aka, not living hand to mouth and dying in the wilderness) also provides a way to avoid things like dishwasher DRM. Now this guy has a product that solves the problem: https://www.tindie.com/products/dekuNukem/bob-rewinder-renew...
The real problem here isn't the availability of technology as much as broken laws which prevent us from modifying the things we own to best suit our needs.
I don't have much issue with selling convenience. Most people I know will happily pay multiples of an optimal price for small convenience (most people I know will buy bottled water). As long as the law doesn't interfere with people who want to add their own caustics and detergent this way, then what's the actual issue?
It’s a prescient manifesto by Ted Kaczynski (an MKUltra’ed domestic terrorist). I often show it to friends who doubt that todays state of mass manipulation and over socialization could have been predicted.
I highly recommend reading it. His killing people to get it published put me off reading it, but a friend recommended it so I relented. I found it a good read.
I should point out that the consequence he was warning about was being made into a techno serf and that the danger was so great that it was worth abandoning technological comforts to prevent it.
You’re seriously recommending the manifesto of an anarchist that lived in a cabin in the woods without running water and sent dozens of mail bombs to innocent people?
Come on, you can’t find something to support your ideas that doesn’t help glorify random murders?
I am recommending it. He is clearly a smart person. If it was the ravings of a lunatic I would not. He is not a random murderer, he was psychologically tortured by the government as part of MKUltra before he killed anyone.
You just need to get on with the times. To read somebody now, you must: A) Be sure that whatever they wrote you agree 100% with. B) That person must share your full worldview and must have a pristine moral reputation. Anything else is dangerous, wrong and frankly subversive so I dont mind if you get punished by violating these simple principles.
I've read books or articles by far worse people. Reading != morally approving the character of the author. Even easier in this case when the content is very interesting and relevant and the criminal author is not getting any revenue from me reading his content.
Yeah this isn’t reading it though, this is going online and praising a serial killer. Imagine a loved one dies from a mail bomb and someone online says “yeah but he made a good point tho”
You're seriously trying to censor one of the most influential anarcho-primitivists in the world, on the basis that talking about his work somehow "glorifies random murders"? Talk about oversocialization.
I don't support his murders in the least. He is rightfully locked up. I just think some of his ideas are interesting. I see ideas as entities separate from humans - one human can have many ideas and one idea can be had by many humans. The ideas would be the same even if someone else wrote them down.
If you spend a few minutes looking you’ll find that many other people have written them down, even pre unabomber. His manifesto is popular because he blew people up, not because he was an original thinker.
To me it feels immoral to promote reading what they wrote, because it was used to justify murder, and popularized as a result of said murders. It's a similar reason for not recommending Mein Kampf. It's a similar reason why some countries won't report the names of mass murders in the news.
If this were a unique idea not repeated since by others, I'd be more likely to agree with you... but it's not.
If you were recommending this reading as a cautionary tale about extremism, I'd also be more inclined to agree with you.
But in reality, all of the information found in the unabomber's manifesto can be found from sources that weren't serial murderers... so what does recommending this writing, and not other related writing accomplish? from my perspective it only serves the murderer. The original publication of the manifesto was also forced under the threat of murder.
> But in reality, all of the information found in the unabomber's manifesto can be found from sources that weren't serial murderers... so what does recommending this writing, and not other related writing accomplish?
You're trying to shift the burden of justification to me, when you are the one trying to censor.
What does censoring me accomplish in the real world?
Does me talking about him make his murders worse then they are?
Are Kaczynski's murders going to disappear once every single person stops talking about him?
Why should I even bother figuring out alternative sources, what difference does it make in the real world whether I talk about him or about any other anarcho-primitivist?
Isn't it rather precedented to do this? In most readings (that I've seen, anecdotally) of Timothy McVeigh's writings, or Hitler's Mein Kamph, people read these works specifically in the framing of a path to the atrocities, rather than in erstwhile debate of normative claims.
It's not a dichotomy though. I've got a boring dishwasher which works fine and I'm not a medieval serf, so I get the benefits of the industrial revolution and the big scientific leap (or to use hipster phrasing, I've got a dishwasher robot) at the expense of money (a new dishwasher would be a week's worth of wages).
Noise pollution is my number one. There is simply no way to escape it living in the city, and there are no job opportunities for software engineers on the countryside (not that it's perfect on the countryside either - given all the motor-based tractors, chainsaws, lawnmowers, leafblowers...). I hate it and it's driving me crazy and all I want is peace and quiet, but apparently, that's too much to ask and I'm spoiled and it's all in my head and I should shut the fuck up and stop bothering the noisemakers.
There are many others that I can't think of right now, I don't really keep a list.
When I worked in San Francisco I lived in a quiet suburb a few miles from BART. I couldn't hear much of anything.
In any event, nowadays it's extremely easy to get a full time remote gig and live in a truly remote location - especially factoring in lower cost of living. This doesn't seem like an actual problem. Actually, it seems like the industrial revolution has provided an idyllic outcome for people in your situation.
That's a good point, and one I have considered many times. It has its tradeoffs. I suppose right now it's much more important for me to be close to humans and to learn and develop myself, so it's a necessity for me to be here. Once I get a good enough remote job I will definitely move somewhere far away from everything.
Regarding the original point, I think it's important to highlight that without the industrial revolution humans wouldn't be able to live closely together in cities. Living in a city is a choice, and you've chosen the modern option because it's superior.
This doesn't seem like a disaster as much as a net-positive with some fairly mild tradeoffs.
> Regarding the original point, I think it's important to highlight that without the industrial revolution humans wouldn't be able to live closely together in cities.
Note that settlements have naturally occurred around rivers because of agriculture (e.g. Mesopotamia), so "cities", in some sense of the word, have existed long before the industrial evolution.
I am aware that civilization brings good stuff with it - it's hard to not be aware of it - but I don't think the tradeoff is worth it. I think it can be, and ought to be, much better than this. It is my opinion that each and every human deserves to (be able to) live in an environment that is pleasant to them. I see it as a fundamental human right.
I mean with the growth of renewable energy, satellite internet and WFH you can work from the middle of the woods (and there's actually many woods out there still). All of that thanks to ever progressing technology.
Interesting, what makes you say that? Autism also typically comes with noise sensitivity and is about 100x more common than hEDS. Or were you suggesting that it may have a genetic basis in general (which would be useful to diagnose)? That makes sense.
It’s an example I’m more familiar with, but yes it’s a behavioral indication of a genetic condition. hEDS is massively under diagnosed (by at least an order of magnitude) and many with hEDS have ASD. Someone who is high functioning ASD has a much greater probability of having hEDS. Fewer people have heard of it and it is more treatable.
>Nonsense, humans are no different than any other animals and survive best in equilibrium and always die out in cases of uncontrolled growth.
Yet left on their own they will uncontrollably grow like what happens with invasive species. Then they'll collapse. Repeat a few times and some type of equilibrium may happen for a while until something else breaks it.
Animals have no magic "equilibrium" sense but rather the surviving ones have evolved to have an equilibrium with their environment. That doesn't even mean the animal changed genetically but rather that other animals (ie: the environment) did to provide competition.
That quote (and the work it is taken from) is becoming more relevant by the day. I am very pessimistic about the future and I don't believe that we can fight against the enormous power that technology gives to those that can use it on a massive scale.
I just hope that the eventual dictator will be a "soft-hearted leftist" and decide to turn the world into a huge human zoo, instead of some sadistic overlord that will turn the world into a huge human cage.
I always considered that work to be optimistic in that he considered the predicted dystopian future to be avoidable. I never did. The ability to manipulate humans with technology is improving more rapidly than the ability to resist manipulation and there is no way to stop it.
It's just a business model, similar with printers, coffee capsules, software and music.
Essentially, the idea is that you get your payment for your work and resources over the course of use without using intermediary for financing the customer. You spend the resources upfront(record music, film a movie, produce appliance and give it away for cheap) and later you enforce payment per use where usage almost doesn't cost you anything.
From consumers perspective, you can achieve similar savings on games, music, movies and software if you use torrent trackers and a seedbox.
IMHO, it's only a problem when prevents legitimate use cases like lending it to a friend(was not a problem with DVDs, huge problem with DRM protected video purchases).
> "We give up a piece of ourselves whenever we adjust to conform to society's standards. That, and we're too plugged in. We're letting technology take over our lives, willingly."
Exactly I hate the industrial revolution. I much preferred getting a splinter and then dying of a bacterial infection a week later.
Edit: in case anyone was wondering, the industrial revolution, namely the dye industry, started mass production of antibiotics, without the industrial revolution = no antibiotics
Non-joke answer: DRM wouldn't exist if it wasn't for Steam Engine. That argument is central to anarcho-primitivism - industrial society will enslave people more and more through technology, and there is no way to prevent it, therefore industrial revolution is a mistake.
Well, most games did not have online DRM and such until Steam spearheaded the way. You needed to activate the game online through Steam to play Half-Life 2, in a move very criticized back then. Fast forward 15 years and people are threatening not to buy the game unless it's released on their DRM platform of choice.
After reading through the thing, I don't see any DRM at all. Just a simple counter for the machine to know when the cartridge is empty. Frankly, I feel deliberately mislead by the headline, as seems to be getting the norm these days.
As far as the average end user is concerned, this amounts to the same thing as full-blown DRM; rather than being allowed to do the sensible and (for you as a consumer) cost-effective thing, this counter forces you to replenish detergent supplies at an artificially inflated price.
Article: "you can [...] add detergents manually [...] however they strongly suggest against this", so I can't see how anybody is forced to buy the cartridges. Also, they did obviously not put any work in making their "DRM" secure. At the most, they're hoping that people would buy the expensive new cartridges, because it's more convenient than manually adding the detergent. It's a grey zone at best.
