> (apparently they make left and right shoes in different countries now)

This feels like a joke about just in time inventory and globalization, but I'm worried that it might be true.

I'm not immune. I recently bought some New Balance shoes from Sheels, figuring I'd be getting reasonable quality footwear. Both sets had hole damn near worn through the soles and delamination in multiple locations after ~6 months of wearing them as an office worker who does no abnormal amount of walking or exercise in them. Come to find out their "non flagship" models are cheaply made garbage as opposed to the quintessential white leather model that costs, iirc, the upper $300 range and is made in America.

> if forced to choose blindly I'd pick Sony over WMFSENSY.

Only at the same price. If there's a big discount, I'm going to prefer the random letter jumble from China because it's probably a standard design that a lot of factories are producing because it works well enough.

The only reason I lean towards Sony all things being equal is because I know that Sony gets sued when things go wrong, and won't just drop the brand and close up shop like the random letter jumble.

Also I would prefer Sony if lead would be a problem somewhere in the thing I'm buying.

A more likely scenario is that display shoes of the same nominal size/model can be made in different factories, and when they are reboxed to be sold, they end up in a box from the wrong factory. Different factories make the same model but can have differences in processes so the shoes are noticeably different. Having left and right made in separate factories, much less countries, would be a total nightmare of inventory management.

Older brands have a motive to care for their reputation, because if people know *oldbrand* is bad. they will avoid *oldbrand* and it dies.

On the contrary, *insertanynonenglishnamebrand* (*newbrand*) doesn't need to have any care in the world. If the product is trash, they would replace the name next year, bonus points if they declare bankrupcy and don't pay their obligations.

> and people will start ignoring brands entirely

One problem is that business forces keep turning brands into rugpulls.

After enough of this nonsense, brands are less of a reliable indicator.

Amazon pushed that to its inevitable endgame, where each product is a unique look-at-reviews situation. (and coincidentally the amazon advertising business is there while you run the product choosing guantlet)

> My last Nike shoes weren't even the same size/shape

This is something that frustrates me to no end. How are clothing item sizes not standardized yet?

For example, I recently went to buy new Jeans, so I went to the same store where I got my current Jeans, asked for a size 28, and tried it on. How is it possible that my size 28W Basic Straight Jeans from Fox fit me, while a pair that fits the exact same description is too small?

I later went to a different branch, and there I found another pair which fits the exact same description, and it did fit me!

I have encountered this type of thing inany places, like when buying shoes one of the employees at the store told me "We don't have this in size 42 in stock, but we do have 41 and our sizes are larger".

Imagine if you went to McMaster Carr and asked for an M3 screw, and being told "We are out of M3, but our M2.5 is larger so it should work for you"

Enshittification is only going to get worse just like everything else.

To be fair mentioning Nike is kind of a straw man here — unless being explicit with the model/style. They manufacturer to many different price points, more than an auto maker.

This is fair. I should have been more explicit that my wonderment is how something that is gospel in the car guy/mechanic community has somehow completely avoided filtering into the greater consumer discussion with regards to catastrophic failure and reliability.

> This information is freely available if you google “[vehicle model] depreciation curve”.

That's just one of those secrets that you need to know, though. It's like knowing to ignore the unemployment rate (in the vast majority of cases) and instead to look at the prime-age employment rate. People rarely think of something like that without being told.

[1] "Video unavailable It was blocked due to the claimed content by Zodiak Entertainment."

someone did not like you linking that!

Google "jatco CVT nissan altima" and realize how extremely lucky you have gotten.

Must be the more recent models. My main complaint with my 2012 Altima is the sunroof drainage hoses leaking in the winter. I've had zero mechanical or electronics problems with it.

> My 2017 Altima has been great.

You don't have the CVT, do you?

Just make sure that belt gets changed on time if not a bit before. Its unpopular because if that belt breaks before replacement the motor will self destruct and you can't put off the not insignificant cost of it.

Now interference engines detonating when the timing belt breaks isn't new, but putting a belt in a bath of dirty and burnt oil that makes it a mess and expensive to replace and basically impossible to inspect is pretty silly. A chain would not have had such problems and become an efficiency and running issue from a stretched chain instead of sudden and catastrophic failure of a broken belt.

It also has the problem of rubber belt pieced clogging up the oil system.

Its fine for people that get all the regular maintence and oil changes strictly on time. But not everyone does it so diligently. And if you buy it as a random used car you have no way of really knowing how good that belt is without a list of every oil and belt change and how hard they drove it.

All I can imagine is they must be on massive amounts of drugs at Ford given the FCA level or worse crap to come out if there in recent history.

Can you possibly elaborate on the timing belt in oil? I’ve only known of dry timing belts or lubricated timing chains/gears

Ford EcoBoom?

My Samsung 3D TV is still going strong after 13 years.

That doesn't seem very "clear" to me. The article you linked mentioned those were made to go into defrost mode (and it didn't mention any brand). Meanwhile the affected Samsung devices are located in Korea and Samsung admitted it was due to their firmware update.

Also I don't see how it's unfair to expect refrigerators that cost a grand to do their one job without firmware.

Thank-you that link - it is very interesting. The cause I wonder about is another A.I. agent attack.

Sure but the infotainment/smart BS should be firewall off from the "keep the food cold" life safety part of the appliance.

Even Tesla which plays fast & loose with some things.. the car does not come to a halt if the infotainment/GPS/etc tablet reboots. It's VERY disconcerting as you have no speedometer, the car is eerily silent, etc.. but the car still drives.

Just sloppy, cheap, lazy engineering.

Maybe some fridges have cameras with object detection and can tell you what % your milk remains, but this one does not do any of that.

Features that are smart listed on the product page[1]:

Family Hub™ 21.5”: Family Hub™ keeps your family connected from anywhere; search recipes, share pictures, stream music, access YouTube and control your smart devices all from your the fridge* (*A WiFi connection and Samsung account required)

SmartThings Energy: SmartThings lets you monitor and manage your smart refrigerator's power usage; get energy saving tips and alerts to help lower your electric bill all from your phone.

Now Brief: The Now Brief provides a daily overview of information including the weather, your schedule and latest health data on your Family Hub ™screen, when it's not in use; customize your Now Brief dashboard using your favorite apps and widgets to get a quick glance of what's relevant to you.

https://www.lowes.com/pd/Samsung-30-cu-ft-Smart-French-Door-...

Extremely uncompelling stuff. Now add in that it is probably beaming your usage habits for your ad profile, always listening for voice commands, and apparently will break into freezing mode, and I cannot imagine why anyone would even consider this. If they were giving them out for free or paying people to put in their house, their existence would make sense tp me. Now I've learned that n>1 people paid multiple thousands of dollars for this and I assume it is not the only model out there.

> fridge with a camera inside

What they don't tell you: when the fridge door is closed the light turns off.

(yes HN this is a joke)

More seriously, in a previous job I did inventory/POS systems for pubs which would track the obvious things like "you got ten casks of beer delivered this morning and have sold 50 pints, at what point do you need to order more beer". It would genuinely be useful to have inventory tracking for fridges. At one point this would rely on barcodes, but machine vision should be good enough for now. The problem is, as with many smart things, it needs to be reliable and frictionless enough that it's better than just the Mark 1 Eyeball.

Also it's very difficult to trust if it might end up integrated into a purchase system. Does "you always have milk in the fridge" sound good? Yes. Is it going to be like "HP Instant Ink", a massive and slightly wasteful ripoff? Well, quite possibly.

Why not just open the door and have a look in the fridge?

My idea of a smart fridge: a fridge with Zigbee Temp/Humidity sensor connected to my Home Assistant automation system that alerts me if things get out of whack.

My idea of a dumb fridge: a fridge that updates firmware, bricks itself, and lets all my food spoil.

This wouldn't work in today's environment because any engineering capacity won't be directed towards making the thing useful when Samsung or whoever can sell the inside of your fridge in return for "recommended products".

It would be nice if that was all they were, but evidently a software update can render the fridge unable to run, so it is clearly much more. These things have transitioned from IT to OT.

Yes! I've been thinking about placing a tiny camera in the fridge for such a long time. This is especially important if you have a summer house or another apartment — you never know/remember what is in the fridge.

Taking photos of the fridge is a solution, but then phones were too stupid until recently to be able to find those. Even know it's a mixed bag.

We live in a world of dumb devices that could be so much smarter.

Why does it have to be a camera? Surely there are other sensors in this age of untethered innovation that could apply. Give me a "smart nose" that will explain whether the unusual smell is coming from the vegetable drawer, dairy section, or no man's land in the back of the top shelf. Give me a top-of-the-line thermometer that can warn me if leftovers are going into the fridge too hot.

They have started trying it when the problem was much more difficult than it is now. I think a fridge that does this itinerary well is not too far away.

Thankfully, we were born with eyes and brains.

The trouble here is that this smart fridge put safety-critical features behind a single internet-connected piece of shit. Appliance manufacturers really need to take inspiration from automotive manufacturers in terms of redundancy and localizing failure.

I just open the fridge and look. It's not an onerous task.

Why? Just open the door and look in it.

Why do you want that? Generations of humans have existed just fine with modern refrigeration without any of these extra... What you would call features and I would call simple bullshit.

Maybe they were testing spoiled food detection /s

Those are undoubtedly useful features, I just question why they should need the cloud:

> - Reminders to change the ice/water filter get sent to my phone.

How do you deal with all your other maintenance tasks around the house? with other appliances? with your car? Why not use a central system, like a task/reminder app?

> - When we had a teenager living with us, getting remote notifications that the refrigerator door was left open probably saved us a few fridge-fulls of food.

I would understand a child leaving the door open but a teenager doing it that often is kind of wild? Regardless, wouldn't a reminder beep that starts when the door has been open for 5 minutes be better? Must everything be on your phone? It's not even actionable if you're not in the house, where you'd hear a local beep.

> The app also records when the filter was changed

The filters I buy come with little date stickers to put on it.

> Reminding you what food is going to be bad soon. Letting you know a list of recipes you can do with what food you have

I feel like this is what people say a smart fridge _could_ be good for, but can they even do that? From what I understand the most sophisticated ones can tell you if some specific items are in your fridge, and otherwise they just do basic shit like display photos and tell the weather.

All of those features just seem so gimmicky, and I could never imagine myself actually relying on them. If you are a functioning adult, these things are barely convenient, and the novelty wears off very quickly.

I will take a solidly engineered fridge with a good energy usage profile every single time over some overengineered wifi-connected piece of crap.

> Reminding you what food is going to be bad soon. Letting you know a list of recipes you can do with what food you have.

How? Are there cameras inside the fridge that check best before dates, and what food is in there? Having a fridge that is actively spying on what I eat seems even worse.

It's one of the tragedies of modern tech. We could make a time saving smart fridge but we end up with ads and data collection with a veneer of usefulness.

Why not just attach a tablet to your fridge? Then you can easily upgrade and replace it over time. Maybe the fridge maker could integrate some internal sensors and let a generic tablet interface with them, if you want to? No need for some integrated "smart" (dumb) feature that bricks the fridge and fails at doing the basic job a fridge is supposed to do!

I cannot relate to this. The past 15 years have made me so tired of connected devices (and subscriptions) that simple products feel like a relief. Side note, I bought a great, magnetic timer for my daughter that we keep on the fridge for just a few dollars.

any instances of this in the wild? it seems like fridges are pretty cheap anyway and ones with smart features are more expensive? i don't think this a tv-like scenario.

Have any data that the savings are passed on to the consumer? I'm not saying you're wrong, I just don't see any modern, late-stage capitalism companies doing anything that actually benefits the consumer.

Just solder a jtag connector to them and let AI dump the firmware, decompile, reverse engineer and flash a non-updating, sanitized version.

"I want my appliances to last far longer than devices like my phone or computer."

... and hopefully be simple. My washer and dryer (made in late 90s) are dirt simple inside, with parts readily available. I recently had to replace the belt in the dryer, and a water valve in the washer. It was a diy job, with the help of a few youtube videos.

My neighbor guest's car got stuck in their driveway recently when an electronic parking brake malfunctioned. It really feels like all the gadgetry is a step backwards.

Are you sure that's all it does?

My $150 "smart toothbrush" (some Oral B iO model) has accelerometers to track its head position and the app lets you know if you're not covering certain areas well enough. Since using it properly (i.e. checking the app and adjusting my brushing) I don't have to go to the hygienist as often.

I think it’s at least equally important to be sceptical of bad ideas, in order to let good ideas win. From a consumer perspective, smart fridges are usually bad.

I genuinely cant tell if this is sarcastic. Im all for innovation where its productive, but some things already just work.

There's innovation [nods head] and innovation [shakes head].[0] We've seen what kind of "innovation" "smart" fridges have been.

[0]https://youtu.be/OvUr00GPcIo?is=zSoGzA6fV49JTSpV

Escalator manufacturers actually don't recommend having people use stationary escalators as stairs, as they're potentially in a problem state and may experience additional failure and become very unsafe.

If you have an option of regular stairs or stalled escalators, use the stairs.

“Sorry for the convenience!”

https://youtu.be/vrIw2i4WtA4?is=AWJK7ywVgImbVcTD

Right lol. How is there no default fallback?

Driving the compressor with software is not intrinsically a problem, but critical functions have to be isolated to a minimal safe kernel that will always run, like the kernel space/user space distinction. Smart features can read and send messages to the minimal kernel, but should not themselves be in the critical loop. Boggles the mind that this is not standard practice.

I also remember an incident where a rental car refused to start the engine because the driver made the mistake of parking it in an area without reception and it wouldn't start without phoning home to a server.

Having worked in software at a legacy car company (Mercedes specifically), I wouldn't actually be too worried about most of them either (note: in this regard specifically, I could certainly criticize plenty of other things). There's a lot of institutional discipline keeping the stability and operation of the driving stuff separate from the screen stuff.

A relative recently bought an electric Renault. When you open the door and sit in it you are greeted by an annoying voice assistant talking to you (can be disabled at least). It's also got sound effects for everything, but you cannot throttle its charging speed and the charging status shown in the app is often delayed by hours.

If you reboot infotainment in a Polestar 2, all HVAC stops working until the system is finished booting...

“Ahh, and yet to participate in society.”

This is a direction all manufacturers are going into, so there is little actual choice. And buying used is not a real solution; where do tomorrow’s used vehicles come from?

As others pointed out, your argument is a fallacy. Technically a "Tu Quoque", in practice this explains it better: https://iea.org.uk/yet-you-participate-in-society-in-defence...

A chunk of smart features are either legally mandated (eCall) or soft-required for "safety" (Euro NCAP lanekeeping etc).

all cars made in the last 15 years do it

Starting own car company is not a viable solution for a typical person.

> There were product managers on both sides of that decision to prioritize enabling such a stupid feature.

Probably not. And that is why it happened - nobody thought about this at all until everything working as designed fails.

That is the thermostat probably is an off the shelf tablet with a speaker that they put other things on to make it a thermostat - this is the obvious thing to do and a lot cheaper than making your own completely custom hardware for this job. The software on the thermostat is likewise off the shelf (probably android) which has spotify in the base install and nobody took it out. Then you set the thermostat to be in the living room - again because that is the obvious thing to do. Finally your wife plays music and spotify sees two devices in the living room and picks one - which happens to be the wrong one but they have no way to know that.

The above is entirely likely and at no point (until know when I point it out) has anybody thought of it.

Yes I don't care. I like it a lot better.

You can just not connect it to the internet

Decidedly not the ones who approved the design of those fridges...

I don't think this is a good argument to make in general, as the contrapositive is that if it has good engineering, it was a good idea to build.

For example, nuclear weapons are certainly well-engineered, but I think it's reasonable to disagree on if they were a good idea or not.

Except for all the eating disorders that make people eat too little.

Or even worse like chemtrails, reptilians or "poor innocent Russia got attacked" and on similar level of silliness.

yeah the actual crazies distract from the actual concerns