If I remember correctly, one such example is the lightbulb. Some of the earliest designs were centered around using longer-lasting filaments than their contemporary counterparts, which meant considerably increased lifespan.
Sure, but those kinds of lights are very dim. You can just use a dimmer bulb set to very low if you want that kind of longevity.
Technology connections did a video on it. Basically the lights which lasted forever either; sucked at giving light and/or sucked at sucking power.
Light manufacturers got together and made a standard which was a sweet spot of power efficiency, longevity and light output. Unfortunately, being decent at all three meant no longer sucking at two to boost longevity.
Every time I think I understand a household appliance, Technology Connections has a 20-60 minute explaining why it’s more complicated than I thought.
longevity
Heh.
I don’t get it.
Longevity wasn’t a metric the Phoebus Cartel was actively maximising
Once upon a time, stuff was made to last…
That’s only because that light has been running non-stop, and at very low power. It’s the on/off cycles that kills the filament.
Plus, the whole “they used to make stuff to last” thing is just survivorship bias. They absolutely made garbage products in the past, but those didn’t survive.
Plus, most things like appliances were major purchases. People today don’t want to/can’t drop the equivalent of $400 on a toaster or $3k on a washing machine.
I agree that there is survivorship bias, but I disagree that its “just” that.
Things are made cheaper today, regardless. There are $400 toasters, but I guarantee that one wouldn’t last as long as a 1950s toaster.
Plumbing fixtures are a better example, as essentially you can’t find one that is equivalent of a 50 year old faucet, no matter the price. They just don’t make them like that.
Electronic components are another factor. First off, we stopped using lead in solder which results in weaker, more brittle connections. They just don’t last as long. True, we have advancements that make components run hotter in certain scenarios (so those connections get more stress) but even disregarding that the fact still stands it’s not as good.
Then we added those electronics into everything to make them “better”. Old washing machines were essentially all mechanical so they would run forever, and be easy to maintain or fix. Now they have computers running them that are designed to not be fixed.
Its hard to find a company today that wants to make a good product. They just want to make one that is good enough. Our culture has shifted to that mindset. Things don’t last as long, so we switched to a disposable mindset.
Ah, but that’s just it, lightbulbs were the beginning of enshittification. Once lightbulb manufacturers realized people weren’t coming back to buy more bulbs very often, they started deliberately making them to burn out a bit faster, to make them more of a consumable product.
Do note, there’s a difference between a conspiracy theory and an actual conspiracy. This actually happened yo, and we’re still suffering with this sort of deliberately short lived shit today…
With light bulbs, there is a trade off between longevity and efficiency.
Efficient shorter lasting bulbs are the superior product, they save the consumer money (at the expense of the inconvenience of having to replace them a little more often)
Meanwhile, after they mastered the process of making LEDs, they were quoted to have a half life of around 400 years, meaning that after 400 years continuous use, they’d be expected to emit about half as much light as they did new.
Now what did they go and do? They ramped up the power and made them blindingly bright, yet only last like 5 years or so, if you’re lucky.
And the cycle of enshittification continues…
It’s usually not the LED that fails, but the driver
Producing quality LEDs is a hella process. Producing shit LEDs is cheap.
There are several layers (7?) and a crack of a micron or three will suck the life out of it. Add to that shitty controllers and we get shitty LEDs. But they’re cheap!
I’ve got a couple of red LEDs that were made for the original IBM PC. They still work flawlessly.
There is a trade-off between efficiency and durability on incandescent light bulbs. They did sell bulbs that lasted longer, but those had lower lumen/watt.
For generic bulbs, the cost of electricity was significantly greater than the cost of the bulb. It was cheaper to replace bulbs more frequently than to waste electricity.
They still made them too. 130V bulbs / garage bulbs / heavy duty bulbs all lasted far longer on 120V because the filament was thicker. They basically never went out.
There’s a famous example of one of these bulbs that’s been in operation since 1901
Until some bastard up on Denali shot a football through it, just so humanity would feel loss for the first time in 15,000 years.
They grieved over a bulb cause they hadn’t lost anything else.
Tetris
You’re welcome
You can’t take credit when you’re the 11th attempt.
No no, that’s not 11, that’s one one
So the third attempt? My binary is rusty.
I think it’s 1 of 1.
I remember watching a documentary about it, and I think even tetris was based on one of those physical puzzle games with the same pieces, that you had to fit correctly into a square.
It’s the closest thing to a “perfect” game I can think of. Every new iteration is just fancy bells and whistles on the same perfect core.
Your mom
Splatoon. The design, the music, the art, the gameplay and the idea was executed so well.
Windows Control Panel. Everything’s there, multiple ways to sort it all, no need to go shake things up
Ah yes. Perfection:
Or maybe:
No? maybe this.
Edit I missed windows XP
No shakeups at all, it’s like a rock.
Perfectly reliable and unchanged from the beginning.
Edit since folks choose to distinguish “Settings” from “Control Panel” as if that doesn’t make the point even stronger. I’ll admit that it’s been pretty consistent since Windows 7. Still very different than the first iteration.
Hot Dog Stand Color Scheme lol
This comment is a time capsule goddamn
Control panel is that drawer of tools, tape, rubber bands, and glue that’s near the kitchen
top right: view by category. switch that to classic and it’s back to the same one of the old days
Well, the last 2 images you linked are Settings and not Control Panel, from versions that decided to not only have that but also the Control Panel, and Control Panel is thematically the same across all versions
That makes it worse! Clearly they did not get it right the first time around, or there wouldn’t be any reason to tweak and replace it all constantly.
there wouldn’t be any reason to tweak and replace it all constantly.
There really wasn’t.
Oh hell no. You don’t remember it coming out and everyone complaining about how convoluted it was. Pepperidge farm remembers.
People complained that a few things were hard to find, but not that the control panel itself was convoluted.
Working analog clock minute hands after the first minute.
Was only a few years ago I realized that the minute hand is entirely superfluous for most applications. You can easily tell what ten minute interval of the day you are in by looking only at the hour hand.
On a large enough clock, the hour hand could have easily visible marks for not just minutes, but also seconds. If I were an architect or whatever I would try to make that the floor of a lobby or something.
You could have posted this as a top-level reply to the question…
My kitchen must have is an analog clock.
Years of training and using it daily, never wore a watch and don’t give a shit what time it is when I am out of the kitchen.
The first twilight zone. All the followups just lacked the stark yet innocent tone of a someone reasoning with an unjust reality.
I’ve been making my way through the original recently, one-by-one and though some of them are hit and miss, even the misses are doing something amazing cinematically.
In this thread: people living in fantasy lands.
Science-fiction comedy
Instant Pot.
Apparently they went bankrupt because they built their units too well. Everyone bought one and never needed to buy a replacement.
Same with Saab cars
Wow I didn’t believe you until I looked it up, 758 million in 2020 to 344 million in 2022, that’s bananas. I love my instant pot
Highlander :P
There should have been only one.
Zing! Love it. <3
Alien. Maybe my only 10 out of 10 movie, and not my favorite!
We’ve all seen it so many times it loses it’s luster. Wife had never seen it so I sat with her in the dark and watched it for the first time in decades. Jesus. She was about to tear through the couch cushion in stress. I knew what was going to happen and couldn’t peel my eyes off the TV.
Pandorum re-awakened that feeling for me. I also that feeling was dead, but nope still Alice and well
Truly one of the best movies ever made.
Diablo 1 and 2 by Blizzard. I guess maybe the 2nd time around was perfection but between those two, nothin further was needed.
Diablo 2 also had an expansion… and balance patches… But I agree.
I bought the whole battle chest back in the early 2000s (well my parents did for me). I consider those to be part of Diablo 2 broadly speaking
If you haven’t played it, path of Diablo is a really fun Diablo 2 mod.
Hadn’t heard of it before. Searched for it, and came across both Path of Diablo, and Project diablo. Some polls suggested preferring the latter 2:1. I haven’t played D2 in a few decades (sheesh). Any thoughts on comparing those mods?
I personally prefer Median XL. If it were a choice between PoD or PD, I’d say PoD.
You dawg; you’re perfect!
First matrix
Are there others?
Unfortunately
Animatrix was a good followup, and some of the comics
TIL there’s matrix comic. Which one you recommend?
The one above is my favorite “There are No Flowers in the Real World” by David Lapham (of The Darkness and Batman fame). Anything written by him, Troy Nixey, Gregory Ruth and Paul Chadwick are worth reading.
- “An Asset to the System” by Troy Nixey
- “Butterfly” by Dave Gibbons
- “Deja Vu” by Paul Chadwick
- “A Path Among Stones” by Gregory Ruth
- “A Sword of a Different Color” by Troy Nixey
- “The Miller’s Tale” by Paul Chadwick
- “Wrong Number” by Vince Evans
- “Broadcast Depth” by Bill Sienkiewicz
- “Saviors” by Spencer Lamm
Skip: “I Kant” and “Run Saga Run” and anything by Peter Bagge. Neil Gaiman also wrote a small story called “Goliath” but it’s not something I clicked with.
Delightful, thanks for taking the time to write it up.
I saw Dark City first, liked it a lot, and didn’t like Matrix.
