from Hacker News

Goodbye non-KISS appliances

by willbush on 2/3/24, 6:24 AM with 490 comments

by brodsky on 2/3/24, 7:49 AM
When we upgraded our appliances, the "smart" or "wifi-enabled" ones were specifically avoided like the plague. "Dumb" appliances - especially fridges, for some reason - are becoming hard to come by, but they do exist. Electrolux, KitchenAid, even LG all make some no-frills models that can save both money and frustration. Hopefully those companies continue serving the "luddite techie" market.
by alwa on 2/3/24, 3:54 PM
One of the happier things I’ve done for myself lately, at the advice of this forum, was to get a rock-solid, dumb, black-and-white Brother laser printer. It sits there and just does its job and I never have to think about it.
Does anyone have any tips as to the white-goods equivalents? Fridge, freezer, laundry machines, that kind of thing?
by imjonse on 2/3/24, 7:35 AM
Appliance engineers probably have their equivalent of "Kubernetes and SPA used for no good reason at all and now we can't focus on the actual features"
by spdustin on 2/3/24, 7:14 AM
I just replaced the condenser fan (was squealing) and the evaporator defrost heater (it wasn't working at all, leading to the coils icing over) on my 20-year-old GE fridge. I threw in some SwitchBot BLE temp sensors that I monitor with Home Assistant, with alerts set to fire if it can't hold temperature or if the defrost cycle doesn't seem to be working, as measured by the swing between the "pre-chill" before defroster heater kicks on, and the temperature/humidity rise as it works.
$40 in parts rescued a fridge that my subdivision neighbors each traded up years ago the first time theirs started acting up. I already had the BLE sensors.
Runs like a champ, and remains free of an IP address.
by Solortho on 2/3/24, 8:02 AM
In France, we have a name for French-door fridges, it's American fridges...
by cranium on 2/3/24, 7:19 AM
At first, I thought "Wow, this guy knows a bunch about fridges!" but then I realized it's not by choice. I like not having to know anything about my fridge except basic maintenance, it feels like a gift now.
by kmoser on 2/3/24, 7:49 AM
My parents have a clothes drier from the 1970s and a fridge from the 1990s. They have needed repairs, but they were infrequent and not so costly as to necessitate buying a new unit.
My A/C is only four years old and the maintenance guy is telling me one of the fans is drawing too much power and will need to be replaced soon. Despite the part being free under warranty, they want $600 to replace it. This seems to be standard in the industry. Same for the capacitor: the part is only $17 but the authorized service companies want several hundred dollars to replace it, a job that should only take 15 minutes. It's almost as if they know they have us over a barrel.
by em3rgent0rdr on 2/3/24, 3:10 PM
If you want to keep it simple, don't even bother with filtered water and just drink out of the tap. It is safe in the developed world. If you are concerned about germs, which can get through the filter anyway, you should boil the water instead.
by starkparker on 2/3/24, 8:07 AM
Bought a dumb white top-freezer Whirlpool fridge 11 years ago (WRT359). No water dispenser, no ice maker, not even a light in the freezer; temperature and airflow controls were just knobs. The freezer drain line ran inside the back panel and was a PITA to clean, and the butter compartment lid squeaked so loudly that it was physically painful, but otherwise it was solid.
Had no issues until the plastic drain pan cracked while moving the fridge to redo the floors. Rather than deal with the repair (a replacement drip tray alone was $120 shipped) we sold it to an appliance flipper and put the money toward a new one. I was bummed, but when the buyer came to haul off the old one he was pleasantly surprised that it had made it a decade mostly intact.
Replaced it with a dumb white top-freezer Whirlpool fridge (WRT318). Both were about the same price, inflation adjusted, when new (~$650 from Lowe's). It was in stock and installed the next day. Only tech "upgrade" in the new fridge is a membrane button to control the fridge temperature instead of a knob.
When my wife wanted a touchscreen in the kitchen so she could queue up Spotify, I got a refurb last-gen Lenovo Duet chromebook/tablet for $120. The tablet back has a strong magnet for the cover that made it perfect for slapping onto the side of the fridge. We put a pair of used Kantos on top of the fridge and charge the tablet off its USB port; Google Keep also handles the shopping list, Google Voice on functions as our backup phone. 100% of our "smart appliance" needs done and dusted.
by userbinator on 2/3/24, 8:41 AM
All my appliances are mid-century or older. Parts are simple and easily fabricated if necessary. Having a restored 85-year-old refrigerator (compressor and refrigerant still original) in active use, it's amazing how efficient it actually is. It's manual defrost, but doesn't need defrosting all that often either.
Reading about the failing condenser fan and compressor reminded me of these items, worth watching again:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32462954
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20856036
by msadowski on 2/3/24, 7:23 AM
I’m about to buy all the appliances to a new place in Europe and could use some more horror stories and learn which brands to avoid. So far I’ve been told to stay away from Samsung ovens. Anyone has any regrets on appliances?
by astrostl on 2/3/24, 6:30 PM
Our ancient basement fridge died. We replaced it with a Best Buy Insignia SKU 6472692. It's currently $500, and we paid $550 plus a bit more to take away the old one. Its primary features include having two doors, staying cold on the bottom, and staying really cold on the top. We love it.
by computator on 2/3/24, 8:02 AM
> the combustion engine and hybrid cars are surprisingly reliable
The OP brings up an interesting contradiction: appliances have become less reliable but cars have become more reliable. Cars have become worse in some of the same areas as appliances, like the use of touch screens instead of physical controls, but cars have nevertheless become more mechanically reliable. What would explain this opposite trend?
by JimDabell on 2/3/24, 8:52 AM
This is something I’ve specifically noticed in relation to televisions. Televisions used to be primarily hardware-driven. The functions worked reliably even if they were limited. Then things changed so that televisions are now primarily software-driven, but the software still seems to be written by developers working in the hardware industry, not the software industry. They have terrible quality problems.
Before, it didn’t matter because the feature set was so limited that software bugs were make or break. If you can’t decode a signal or change a channel, it’s not getting shipped. But now, where there’s an entire OS, GUI, applications, network access, etc.? Now there are vast areas where a million mistakes can be made and shipped. The software industry is (relatively) well-equipped to deal with this. The hardware industry is not. So they ship garbage quality over and over again.
That’s not even covering the perverse incentives vendors have to make their products cheaper and make up for it with spying, adverts, etc. That just compounds the problem.
by _kb on 2/3/24, 8:54 AM
The descent into feature laden, landfill destined shite is a seemingly universal trend. It's the same across appliances, TV's, computers and wider 'consumer tech' and extends to cars, footwear, and (at least in Australia) homes.
Minmax'ing cost and marketable shiny features over literally every measure of quality, usability, repairability, and longevity is abhorrent. It's an accelerating arms race to the bottom.
I can only hope we reach point where the market segments and opens space (with sufficient demand) so that more people and companies can focus on making sane, well designed, simple things again.
by zbrozek on 2/3/24, 3:05 PM
It's increasingly difficult to get high-end performance with a simple device with a good user interface.
Incidentally, I happen to have almost the same refrigerator as the author (same thing, but without the hot water dispenser). My only failure so far has been the condenser fan after seven years of operation. It was clearly an electronic failure of the onboard motor controller, which honestly has no excuse to fail.
I also have a more-recent Kitchenaid 48-inch-wide side-by-side purchased in 2020. It's a remarkably simple appliance given the year of manufacture. Yet the interior lighting is horribly unreliable. The freezer killed three lighting modules in its first three years. They inevitably go high impedance, usually emitting zero light. One of the three was still emitting a tiny amount of light post-failure. The lights are all in series, so when one fails the entire chamber goes dark. I've even had one of the replacement lighting modules fail already. This component is clearly flawed and I'm tempted to design my own replacement.
by sunpazed on 2/3/24, 9:25 AM
After our fancy fridge died, we purchased a “dumb” Mitsubishi Electric WX Series fridge. No LCD panels, no wifi, no time.
It’s tiny at only 470L, however it’s designed for maximum storage in small Japanese apartments, so we can fit heaps of groceries and frozens. It also has a chilled compartment specifically for sushi meat!
Also, 10 year warranty on all parts.

by Animats on 2/3/24, 7:47 AM

    An error occurred: API rate limit exceeded for willbush/blog. Sign in to increase the rate limit

Unsure if that is a joke or a real error message.

by nytesky on 2/3/24, 3:53 PM
The old Kenmore was probably built by Whirlpool in a US factory. GE cafe is a rebranded Haier fridge from a Chinese factory.
We bought a Samsung (would have preferred LG) fridge 4 years ago and have not needed a single repair. But it is pretty bare bones — French door and in freezer ice maker — no water dispenser or door controls.
by sircastor on 2/3/24, 8:43 AM
I've done more than my fair share of washer repair over the years. I have benefited from Whirlpool reusing the same basic design in a half-a-dozen brands and 40 years. There are some minor differences in the last washer we had and the current one, but it's basically the same wash basin, the same agitator, the same gearing system. I've watched enough videos on youtube that have taught me the ins and outs of that machine. I don't want it to have any more features. I just hope they don't stop making parts for it.
My oven on the other hand - it's a GE Cafe slide-in dual-oven. I'm very happy with it. And I know how much people here rail against it, but I like being able to preheat it, turn it off remotely. Of course, baking is a hobby for me, so I wanted the extra oven.
by ongytenes on 2/3/24, 6:05 PM
I have a Whirldpool that quits cooling about every three years. I've fixed it each time. The problem is a inverter/frequency shifter keeps burning out. The compressor, an Embraco, is a 230 vac, 3 phase requires a inverter to convert 120VAC single phase to three phase 230VAC. The inverter does double duty as a frequency shifter to control the speed of the compressor while keeping the voltage constant. After the third time it burned out I plugged the refrigerator into a large surge protector. It has since died again. The other refrigerator from the early 90s is still working without any problems. The amount of energy the three phase compressor saved was more than canceled out by the cost of the parts to repair it
by HumblyTossed on 2/3/24, 3:13 PM
How long until we can’t get ice because we let our water filter subscription lapse? I feel like that’s where we’re headed. Gotta get that MRR.
by Nifty3929 on 2/3/24, 3:52 PM
It's very fun to get angry at appliance makers - but if they actually made the appliances that we think they should, they would go broke because nobody (except a few of us) would buy them. This is how these newer "smart" appliances started taking over in the first place.
As evidence, check out some of the manufacturers that do make higher-quality dumb appliances, like Subzero and Speed Queen and notice how little consumer market share they have. Of course they are more expensive, but that's where the supply and demand curve cross. But where people like business owners WILL pay more for quality and longevity, they do have a major share of the commercial market.
by aartav on 2/3/24, 8:03 AM
For the most part I agree with this, over engineered feature creep is really just horrible stuff. I never need a fridge with wifi and I absolutely swear that that anything more than auto-off is a waste in a coffee machine.
But I think the "Other appliance anecdotes" part suggests that the author has very different requirements than I do. I grew up without a garbage disposal, but its a huge convenience to have one. Also I've had top loader washing machines that don't have easy access to the trap, gimme easy access to the trap ANY DAY and I don't care how its loaded.
by dangus on 2/3/24, 8:01 AM
It sounds more like OP didn’t do research on which brands and models are good/reliable.
On top of that, with scratch and dent, you do get what you pay for at some point. If an appliance is visibly damaged you don’t know what happened to it: could have been dropped, hit with a truck, returned due to problems/abuse, etc. When physical damage is involved you don’t know if it can exacerbate a design weakness, loosen some screws, whatever you might dream up.
I get it, a lot of appliances are cheap shit that aren’t “built like they used to.” But also, nobody twisted OP’s arm to buy a fridge with an LCD touch screen.
Here’s another thing: good, built-to-last-decades appliances exist and just cost a lot because that’s what they cost to produce. We can’t really blame appliance manufacturers for either the decline of American purchasing power and/or the change in consumer preferences toward shopping on price and nothing else.
You can buy a tank of a washing machine like a Speed Queen but you also get into it knowing you’re paying three or four times the cost of an equivalent shit box. And here’s the thing, if the shit box goes for 6 years without repair/replacement and the Speed Queen lasts 20, congratulations, the shit box wins on TCO. On top of that, your money can sit in your bank account or be used for something else instead of being paid up front for the appliance.
It’s the same deal with refrigerators like Sub-Zero. I talked to an appliance technician who told me all the luxury brands are less reliable, but I think the more accurate statement is that customers don’t call for repairs and blow money on labor costs for their cheap refrigerators, they just buy a new one. When you look at Sub-Zero and similar offerings, they mostly eschew gimmicks, often not even bothering with a water dispenser and going with a basic ice machine instead.
They’re not universally good, because there are shit brands in that space too (like Viking), but you’ve got a lot more quality options at that price point.
I think one solution to the situation of disposable goods might be a disposal tax that the manufacturer and customer share half and half. Or, improve warranty laws for product categories that should last longer. Nobody’s going to make a shitty fridge if you make a 10 year warranty mandatory.
by WaitWaitWha on 2/3/24, 4:51 PM
Let me add my gripe to over-automation.
Ceiling fans that can only be controlled using a remote. No way to wire at switch.
I am very much into local home automation, that is where no internet connection is required or allowed (HomeAssistant anyone?).
One thing I always watch out for is the automation must allow manual interaction. These fans have no pull chains, or switches when the remote breaks or more likely get lost.
by mosselman on 2/3/24, 8:53 AM
I first felt impressed by the note taking, but the more I read, the more I felt it is not very keeping it simple. Thinking back in some shitty fridges we’ve had, I have a good feeling about which ones were shit and which were good. I don’t need to keep notes on this.
For other parts of life this is great though: keeping track of what is going one with some friends I don’t often see or distant relatives.
Impressive.
by class3shock on 2/4/24, 12:19 AM
If you read this and thought, "I wish I knew where to buy a good xyz" I recommend you check out Ben's Appliances and Junk on youtube and the BIFL (Buy It For Life) subreddit. Both have helped me.
It often seems impossible to buy things that are quality or free of extraneous features no matter what you are willing to pay. It's frustrating.
by issung on 2/3/24, 9:16 AM
He seems to note that the fridge is french-door a hell of a lot, does this actually impact the cooling mechanics, making them more complicated and prone to break? Or is it just a coincidence all of the overly complicated fridges happen to be french door because they look "fancier"? Fridge experts please weigh in.
by RecycledEle on 2/5/24, 2:02 PM
Appliance makers could build the simplest possible appliance, then build a simple monitoring system (like OBD2 in cars) to tell us what is wrong. They could even agree on a standard interface so anyone with a computer or phone can see the live data and diagnose bad sensors. They could make that OBD2-like system relatively secure by having it only sense and report without being able to make adjustments or screw things up. They could make it so you can tell the appliance to ignore a bad sensor, so we do not get OBD2-like problems where bad sensors are more common and more expensive than real problems.
Nobody has done it, yet.
I have hope for the Chinese to figure this out and create a national standard.
by hprotagonist on 2/3/24, 3:12 PM
the more this goes on the more i think i should buy home goods at restaurant suppliers.
https://www.webstaurantstore.com/avantco-a-23r-hc-29-solid-d...
looks great!
by RajT88 on 2/3/24, 2:39 PM
My fridge is not pretty, but it has been running for 20 years straight with the only hiccups being power outages.
I really do not expect that a newer fridge will last as long. I may try and find something in brushed aluminum off Craigslist which has been sitting in someone's garage since 2000 when this one eventually goes.
I have an aunt who has had a fridge running without issues since about 1962. It is all white ceramic over stainless steel and a thing of beauty.
This is the kind of product engineering modern companies seek to avoid.
I seem to recall a Heinlein novel about inter-dimensional travelers who wanted to take over the world by destroying the economy. The first thing they did was found companies which made products which never wore out (razors and cars).
by Dig1t on 2/3/24, 4:05 PM
WRT washers/dryers it makes more sense to buy a refurbished one from Craigslist. There are folks who buy and fix old units as a side hustle and the ones I’ve bought from them are wayyy cheaper and run so much better than any newer unit I’ve owned.
by cfeduke on 2/3/24, 7:28 AM
I had a Sears Admiral refrigerator that was built in the 90s which recently (three months ago) had the compressor go out. I've had the refrigerator since I purchased the house in 2001 and I have performed zero maintenance on it, so it was no surprise that the... uh... solid dust build up finally wore out the compressor fan. Though my wife and I did purchase a new refrigerator I intend to replace the compressor in the Admiral because >25 years is a good run and I expect the resurrected refrigerator [when I get around to resurrecting it] will outlast the new one.
I've never hooked up water lines for ice makers for my refrigerators, including refrigerators at my other properties. Call it a hunch.
by captainkrtek on 2/3/24, 8:05 AM
When I bought my house I also asked to keep the old (circa early 2000) appliances. They are stupid simple, reliable, and have no extra features or wifi. Meanwhile the last place I rented had a brand new fridge that broke twice in 6 months..
by conductr on 2/3/24, 6:35 PM
My first home (~2010) had no fridge so I bought a new Samsung it was about $3k, nothing smart about it, it just looked nice and had a freezer at bottom and an ice dispenser on the door. Within the next 3-5 years I had spent another $3-5k on repairs and eventual replacement with another similar looking/capable fridge by another similar manufacturer. It followed same similar timeline to its end. The ROI and reduced hassle factor of just buying a Subzero made sense for me on the third fridge. I know several people that have 30 year old ones that just don’t fail. So far so good but we’ll see how it lasts.
by berkes on 2/3/24, 9:23 AM
I've never owned a refrigerator with odor removing, ice makers, or double doors. Is all this fancy stuff typical American?
Because over here, northern Europe, only the high end refrigerators have ice makers, for example.
Why would one ever want that?
by Kluggy on 2/3/24, 7:10 AM
We have a fancy Samsung fridge with display. I was livid the first day I woke up and entered the kitchen and there was a full screen ad on the display greeting me pre-coffee.
I vowed to never buy another fancy appliance again and took it off the WiFi network.
by acd on 2/3/24, 8:46 AM
I had the same experiance after a automated home espresso coffee machine broke down.
I compared many machines to that of a mocca spanish/italian espresso maker. Simple design as simple can be.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moka_pot
Advocate US navy KISS design principle.
Are a smart phone smart when it distracts you from close ones?
Smart devices can get hacked Dumb devices much harder. Which is more secure old CRT or new smart tv?
Same goes for IT shiny new complicated thing or simple kiss thing.
by steve-atx-7600 on 2/3/24, 6:16 PM
I am only on my first fridge from 2014. It’s a Samsung French door with freezer on bottom. I’ve replaced the mother board, the ice maker, applied silicone sealant to the ice maker housing, and installed a drain heater in the main coil compartment to augment the defrost heater (saw this on you tube to prevent ice over). After all this, it’s been working fine for a couple years. Hope I don’t have to buy another fridge for a long time.
by BooneJS on 2/3/24, 5:25 PM
Timely read; we’re in the process of replacing our $12k Thermador refrigerator 4 years after we bought it, and 6 months and a dozen trips by the repair guy.
by rglullis on 2/3/24, 8:34 AM
I do not consider myself a Luddite, but the more I hear stories like that the more I feel validated in my "do not rely on anything that I can not fix it myself" principle.
We are past the point where you can not buy a "dumb TV" anymore or to do so you need to pay an absurd premium. The next in line are our home appliances. Your fridge, your vacuum cleaner, your clothes iron... everything will be built in a way that makes you dependent on the vendor.
I know it is easy and tempting to blame "late-stage capitalism" and corporations' endless appetite for growth bringing up Planned Obsolescence, but have we really made ourselves so helpless that we are unable to say "no, I refuse to accept this crap you are offering me"?
by sys_64738 on 2/3/24, 11:54 AM
Widgets like fridges need to be minimalist as the manufacturers are all incompetent. Less tech means less things to break. No French doors and no ice makers. Always problems right there. The only thing you guarantee with a fridge is more hassle as the complexity of its design increases. These things are NOT built for reliability but are designed as the original subscription model: regular repairs.
by riffraff on 2/3/24, 9:03 AM
Are french door fridges "not simple"?
I've had one for ten years and it didn't have any issues, and I didn't buy a premium model either (no ice machine on the top door tho).
But a friend of mine has a new one and it has the issues of the heat exchanger freezing due to bad insulation or something.
I feel it's not that these things are very complicated, as much as the fact that it's a market for lemons.
by bell-cot on 2/3/24, 3:48 PM
Radical Idea: "Landfill" taxes on appliances. Manufacturers of basic, last-forever stuff pay ~0%. Manufacturers of breakdown-o-matic junk can end up paying 100%. And the ability to pay has to be backed by tightly-regulated insurance policies - so CrapCo can't just vanish into corporate shell games or bankruptcy when the tax man comes knocking.
by ltbarcly3 on 2/3/24, 5:20 PM
Buy appliances at costco, max out the extended warranty. You get 5 or 6 years of warranty. Some devices will last 20 years, others will fail multiple times under warranty, and eventually be replaced as a lemon, under warranty. It gets you out of the bathtub curve and you don't have to have a part time job repairing appliances.
by daeaeae on 2/3/24, 7:57 AM
I have only bought small things like a kettle since the "smartening" of household items started, and every time it feels like navigating a mine field of planned obscolescence. But I guess it is good motivation to give my current old and trusty appliances more TLC.
by tussa on 2/3/24, 9:54 AM
Ah good old planned obsolescence.
Some people argue it's just incompetence, not PO. But if you've been in the business of making the same type of hardware/appliances for more than a few years then it's definitely planned obsolescence.
by zvmaz on 2/3/24, 9:41 AM
Whenever I have to buy a microwave oven, I always choose the ones with the simplest user interface possible: Two knobs, one for the timer, one for the intensity. They have served my parents and myself well.
by bpye on 2/3/24, 5:03 PM
I am also a proponent of this idea. I bought a Sharp R21LCF microwave last year - it’s a commercial microwave and the single control is a dial to set the time. It’s great!
by NullPrefix on 2/3/24, 8:55 AM
Tried reading the article, but couldn't figure out what's the difference between side by side and french style. Tried looking online but it didn't help me either
by gmerc on 2/3/24, 8:14 AM
Companies creating quality are stupid. Making devices that break sells much better and consumers outside of Japan are stupid/overwhelmed/feature dazzled enough they don't really care. Also, everyone (outside japan) does it, so they don't have a choice.
Capitalism in action
by chrsw on 2/3/24, 10:03 PM
Engineers are under more pressure to cut costs than make things long lasting. Imagine if businesses were in control of evolution.
by zubairq on 2/3/24, 9:58 AM
Good article on devices that are simple to use. I definitely think twice when I see appliances that need Wi-Fi or an app to work
by fredsmith219 on 2/3/24, 3:40 PM
We had similar problems with a Samsung fridge and the same solution. And I won’t buy an another Samsung product again.
by Aryth on 2/3/24, 8:49 AM
I wonder where the "French door" moniker came from. Lived in France my whole life and never encountered one.
by Aryth on 2/3/24, 8:50 AM
I wonder where the "French door" moniker comes from. Lived in France my whole life and never saw one there.
by syntaxing on 2/3/24, 4:01 PM
I don't quite understand why the author didn't stick with with Maytag since his washer is still going strong? My family owned a couple of Maytags growing up and I thought it was a budget brand. But recently, I used the Maytag "commercial" washer, dryer, and dishwasher. I was really impressed and follows the KISS mentality closely. No frills, just works.
by killthebuddha on 2/3/24, 6:00 PM
Related, thinking out loud:
Why is the following timeline counterfactual (as far as I know) for basically all household appliances:
```
  1. it was invented
  2. it was commercialized
  3. some decades of varying modes of specialization, advancement, innovation
  4. reach technological maturity/saturation
  5. open source designs with idiot-proof manuals emerge
  6. everyone uses the open source versions
  7. maybe a freelancer market emerges
  8. it's no longer commercially viable
  9. it becomes a near-zero-cost improvement on the baseline human condition
  10. focus on new technology
```
The hopeful view (IMO) is that we're just at a point historically where things like washing machines and refrigerators are still at step 4 and people like me are starting to wonder why we're not further down the road? In 10-20 years maybe we'll be at 6 or 7?
The cynical view (IMO) is that the capitalist system operates by pulling a bait and switch on the average consumer. As technology becomes commercially viable, we use the slack it creates to pump everyone full of skittles and pretty little liars and then sell refrigerator-television-vending-machine appliances until the Decadent Society collapses under its own weight.
Maybe a more moderate view (IMO) is that it's naive to think that everyone could possibly have the time or desire to maintain their own refrigerators? FWIW My take on this particular view is that we should be trying to develop a society where it's not naive, where the average human stands on top of centuries of innovation rather than cocooned inside of it.
/idk
by nickt on 2/3/24, 2:45 PM
It could be worse. At least the spares aren’t VIN-locked (yet).
by mgaunard on 2/3/24, 12:07 PM
The only appliances I ever had that failed on me are those that I inherited from a previous owner or tenant.
Having a good reliable appliance is just a matter of buying good stuff and caring for it properly.
by coldtea on 2/3/24, 10:55 AM
The title should have Kiss capitalized as KISS
by pfdietz on 2/3/24, 2:16 PM
The Internet of Things I Won't Buy.
by revscat on 2/3/24, 2:32 PM
Enshitification of all the things, thanks to growth-driven product decisions. There are self-destructive aspects of capitalism that are endemic to it.