I don't like that my Bosch e-bike batteries have closed-source schematics, software, and chargers (i mean really, what the fuck am I going to steal Bosch), nor that the software that runs on the bike is utterly locked down to the point where I can't even pay for a copy (it's available only to e-bike dealers and none of them have leaked it as far as I can tell), but unfortunately, I have no trust in my fellow schmuck to not accidentally or negligently build bombs when they rebuild their battery packs, nor would I trust them not to do stupid shit with the e-bike software like remove speed limiters.
I barely even trust myself to rebuild packs, and I kinda-sorta know what I'm doing, which is just enough to get myself into trouble. I still look at the two packs I have rebuilt with a side-eye, months and years on from when I built them.
I’m not going to lie, this is the first thing I would do if I could flash e-bike software.
I'm tired of being treated like an idiot consumer because someone, somewhere, fucked up their Li-ion battery.
Engineers need a union. I'm sure this was a bean counter decision and not something they wanted to do.
Battery packs can be expensive and have huge margin if you make them (mechanically) fit only 1 year of 1 model of 1 brand. Which is exactly what Dyson seems to be doing.
Designing BMS'es so that the batteries (safely) fail as quickly as possible is not hard.
Push forward, push backward, lift up cord and turn to the right
In terms of maintenance and performance the Oreck is a reliable, one-click WordPress install, and the Dyson is a few dozen fickle micro services.
I got the Oreck for like $20 on Craigslist a decade ago because it was listed as "broken." I bought it on a whim to see if I could repair it after one of the famous vacuum guy reddit AMAs. Without exaggeration, it may very well be the best $20 investment I've ever made.
I was amazed how simple it was to disassemble and reassemble. There were surprisingly few components and every single one had an appealing heft and remarkable quality.
As a somewhat funny aside: The woman I bought it from said she had three teenage daughters and it couldn't keep up. The first time I serviced it, I removed enough hair for several wigs.
Ever since, it's worked incredibly and in the rare event performance has started to suffer I've been able to service it myself multiple times over the years, and replacement parts are readily available. It's designed to be maintained. After each service it works literally good as new and I fall in love with it all over again.
Contrast that with my hand-me-down Dyson. It's awkward as all hell to store. Battery is pathetic and charging is a pain. So much delicate plastic. It clogs practically every use; though to be fair my children and animals are all filthmongers. The components feel cheap, and I can't help but feel like it's hostile to the average consumer attempting to repair it. It's deteriorated in performance even though I've used it lightly. If I had spent even a single dollar on it, I'd be so pissed.
My first confrontation with a 'Dyson Airblade Wash+Dry short hand dryer' was after paying 50ct to enter a newly modernised toilet on a Dutch railway station. I got totally splashed with water blown out of the sink, all over my clothes. Quite embarrassing to walk out a toilet like that.
The last time the battery failed we decided to buy an entire Shark cordless vacuum + accessories kit for less than an OEM Dyson battery. That shark vacuum is still going today 5 years later on the original battery.
The cost multiple of a Dyson doesn't even result in incremental performance.
The singular use case for a Dyson cordless is frequent cleaning of an uncarpeted floor in a public space (e.g. coffee shop, gym) as it does have substantially reduced noise while running.
This problem was solved before electric vacuums ever even existed. I can still remember the days of seeing these things being used in hotels and restaurants: (google non-electric electrostatic sweeper)
The suction on the dyson v12 is fantastic at max speed, so it’s great for quick carpet cleaning. I also appreciate the very quiet hardwood floor attachment. I’d recommend it to any apartment dweller that’s not cost conscious. If they are, i’d recommend a cheaper shark vacuum.
Still have that purple and grey beast. Best vacuum by a mile and still going.
And im not judging, i too was a broke college kid at one point. And many people just don’t have the money. But ikea is ANYTHING but fancy. Its super cheap.
I'm curious where people are buying "real" furniture, even even they spend "real" money. I've had the best luck with the Amish and at estate sales, but that's not super repeatable.
All the major furniture stores like Ashley or whatever are similar in quality and construction to IKEA -- I don't really think the "cheap" reputation is deserved just because IKEA has $10 LACK side tables available.
I personally recommend people go to a real furniture store (a large one), where the salesperson is actually knowledgeable and where they offer many brands. Ask for what you want. Specific materials, finishes, price range, etc. Make a note of the brands and manufacturers. Then dig deeper. Often times these brands are featured in a niche catalog or magazine, where you can find similar brands offering similar products.
There are many high quality buy it for life items to be found! But rarely at the convenience of a button click from westelm’s website.
In the Seattle area, the best I could find is Dania, which is a chain that is basically a higher end IKEA that focuses more on furniture (Scandinavian style).
Some brands that you might like if you are looking for buy it for life. Some sell direct, some only sell via wholesale to other furniture stores. This is a list from a note i created 3 years ago when i was shopping for a new dining table.
* MS&Wood. Bosnian company, 100% wood products. https://www.adakezic.com/en/brands/ms-wood
* Ethnicraft - 100% wood (oak, teak, walnut). made in belgium.
* Cattelan Italia. Italian company, very high end and also very high quality. Styles are a mix of gaudy and timeless.
https://www.cattelanitalia.com/en/products/index?c=new
On the lower price range, some good choices might be “Article”, “Blu Dot” and “HAY”.
I will never understand why there are always such comments saying Ikea furniture is bad quality, or in your case not even "real" furniture, come on, it's like you have never even been in an Ikea store.
I think Ikea is wonderful on a budget. But i personally wouldn’t waste my time there, im blessed to have more discretionary income these days. The only product i like from ikea at this time is their PAX closets. I think they are a very good value, despite feeling a bit cheap. I like how customizable it is, and it’s very functional.
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For example the Amish make very high quality wood furniture in the U.S., at a fair price. If that’s not your thing, there are companies that focus strictly on buy it for life high quality wood furniture. My dining room table was made by MS&Wood (based somewhere in bosnia i believe…they sell direct and wholesale to furniture companies).
https://www.adakezic.com/images/Zastupstva/mswood/2018_MS&WO...
People on HN are always saying they'd pay extra for a vacuum cleaner that is repairable. Well, here it is. Put your money where your mouth is.
I've had mine for at least ten years, and when something goes wrong, I'm able to order parts, and fix it myself. The whole thing is extensively designed to be repaired, complete with little icons on most of the parts to guide to taking them apart and putting them together.
I suspect that 90% of the people on HN who complain about Dyson (and most other consumer products) have never owned one, and are just aping things they've read online just to have something at all to say.
Seems OK to me. I have an articulated, motorized brush head on the way. ~$51, including shipping. Pretty good considering recent inflation, tariffs, etc…
Not defending Dyson, there’s a lot of valid criticism here, but at some size pieces are too big to vacuum, and if that size is Cheerios, maybe that’s not much of a problem?
I’d rather have a vacuum that does well at the small stuff I can’t reasonably pick up.
Same suspicion for me. I've owned two Dyson vacuums, and the only reason I had to buy the second was because someone stole the first one when they broke into my apartment over a decade ago. My current vacuum is more than 8 years old and has been repaired a few times doing it myself, and is still fully functional and comparable or better than most new vacuums.
Dyson makes very good products that are also beautiful. Yes, they're plastic, yes they're expensive, no they're not necessarily on paper the /best/ at their thing, but they're good, they're repairable, and they pass the wife acceptance factor.
9/10 would trash pick again. I don't think I would ever buy one new though.
It was announced a month ago and seems to handle the design criticism in this blog entry. If it works as well as demonstrated will put it in a new class of vac.
Isn't that the whole point of them? Instead of imparting enough heat energy to evaporate all of the water on your hands, they just push it off which is much faster and more energy efficient. How would they work better than regular dryers without doing that?
There might be more to the task though. What affect does it have on the user? Getting splashed with water, usually at crotch height, is a nuisance and is somewhat embarassing. The loudness of these dryers is also a nuisance, and can be downright painful depending on how many are going at the same time in a large public bathroom. Long enough for permanent damage? Probably not for the average hand-washer, but for the people who have to clean those restrooms all day, perhaps an occupational hazard.
Also, the trough shaped ones are disgusting.
When used correctly I find they don’t spray too much water around and dry my hands almost immediately.
* The industrial design of Dyson products is generally great. I don't think they poke you or anything like that. They even have nice affordances like all the things you can use being red. Contrast that with my terrible Shark where everything is black. Took me a good few seconds to find the bin release button. It also has an atrocious UX - a slow on/off button instead of a trigger, and an amazingly useless "smart power" feature that just varies the power almost completely randomly as you vacuum.
When I worked there all the vacuum guys were worried about Shark because their pickup is apparently better. They needn't have worried because their UX is so abysmal. Although I guess in fairness Which doesn't know UX exists.
* Some of the criticisms of the tech are valid, e.g. the hand dryers spraying water everywhere (they easily erode painted walls and now they generally install them only on tiles). But those are just flaws of the tech, they don't negate the fact that the hand dryers are much better than the standard cheap ones. He quotes the claimed hand drying time for a cheapo dryer as being close to an air blade but anyone that has ever used one knows how much of a lie that is. The washing machines did damage clothes but apparently the main reason they stopped making them was a manufacturing issue with the drum.
* I don't think anyone really believes that James Dyson is personally inventing all Dyson products now. That doesn't mean he has no influence. When I worked there (about 10 years ago tbf) he still had huge influence over the designs, especially the ones he cared about.
The one thing that is true is that Dyson won't make anything that isn't patentable because James Dyson dislikes his products being cloned so much. So even though though could make really good versions of normal products, they don't.
Also they are way too expensive. Though in fairness my shitty Shark was expensive too.
Don't buy a Shark.
No sense charging top dollar and using less than state of the art batteries.
What is "Which" in this context? As used here it appears like a proper noun.
Contrast that with the Dyson v15 which has a trigger I have to hold continuously while I twist and turn the vacuum so I can't change the grip without it turning on and off as my finger slips off the trigger or inevitably gets tired. Or the amazingly useless "smart power" feature that just varies the power almost completely randomly as I vacuum an otherwise perfectly smooth hard floor.
Or the peak of uselessness, a display to tell me how many particles of dust it thinks it vacuumed, and their estimated sizes. Because I needed to be told I vacuumed 20 million dust particles of one size but only 1 million of another size. Counted twice just to make sure.
sort of like the humdinger, which I think I wasted my money on trying to replace a dc34
I think of a Dyson as more of a status symbol, like the latest Mac Book, a watch collection, or a Porsche. Dyson owners like telling people they have a Dyson. Most people just need things to work well for their use case, be reliable and affordable.
The saying goes... "Fast, reliable or cheap. Pick two."
Everything will be worker and independently owned (bootstrapped and no VCs), no patents (we don't care about clones)
Just make great product that is open has free software.
If there would be significant interest Dyson could have a direct competitor just like many other open source companies like System72 and Red Hat
Still some of the criticism holds, such as the terrible wall charger.
I think their brand isn't just about tech itself, but the utility exploring novel tech can drive.
The humdinger should be a more modern replacement, but it sucks. No trigger, no fun.
Dyson's brand is to be technologically forward. It is supposed to look like the future, which is why the angular mix of colors works for the brand.
Bosch, I have no idea what their brand aesthetic is, or what they are trying to say.
This doesn't mean that the Dyson is better than Bosch, or any other competitors, just that brand does come into the equation as well.
2earth•7h ago
detourdog•4h ago
echelon•2h ago
In the future we're going to regret breathing bad air. It's the accelerant for so many health problems.
eddythompson80•1h ago
A non-oxygen dependent energy system for the human cell is the only option moving forward. We need to utilize a clean energy source like sunlight and dump that oxygen dependency once and for all. Cyanobacteria was a crutch dependency that helped bootstrap that whole life thing pretty quickly for the demo. We have a proven concept now that we know work. Can we leave the idea to use oxygen back in the GOE era where it belongs now? Building all this complexity on top of a fundamentally flawed bases like oxygen reactivity was the main mistake.