5 ms·

Sure there are things that don’t work, but it’s not nearly comparable. In my life I’ve never had a problem with a refrigerator, had maybe two problems with wash

Sure there are things that don’t work, but it’s not nearly comparable. In my life I’ve never had a problem with a refrigerator, had maybe two problems with washer/dryer, my closet Just Works, books Just Work (with an ink smudge maybe every 50-100 reading hours) etc. I can expect each of those things to last decades. Looking at the goods I’ve bought on Amazon recently, digital electronics/software as a category doesn’t hold a candle to everything else I buy in terms of reliability.

julianlam 6y ago
> In my life I’ve never had a problem with a refrigerator, had maybe two problems with washer/dryer I think blaming software for this is a little naive. Take a look at consumer reports for any modern fridge, stovetop/oven, washer/dryer, etc, and you will see complaints about fridge motors dying, touch panels going on the fritz, etc. -- none of which involve anything more than low level firmware. If you want to put a tinfoil hat on, you can consider that it may be planned obsolescence, but to put the blame squarely on software, I would disagree with.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  > If you want to put a tinfoil hat on, you can consider that it may be planned obsolescence, but to put the blame squarely on software, I would disagree with. You don't need tin foil hat when facing the truth :). Also, while things you mentioned aren't software-related, they're modern tech-related. Like, last 20 years. Fridge motors dry out because they're being made cheaper, with not enough lubricant put into them and no option of opening them up and pouring in the grease. Touch panels are going on the fritz because touch panels suck (that's often very much software), and they shouldn't be put on appliances in the first place. But it's cheaper, so they are. Worth noting that there wasn't some big price reduction happening from solid appliances 20 years ago to crappy ones today. Price remained roughly fixed, but appliances started to suck more and more.
  - selestify 6y ago
    Right, but the move towards cheaper and lower-quality is more the fault of the current economic system and its incentives than it is the fault of software.
    - megameter 6y ago
      It's very instructive to look back to the 70's when electronics running a little bit of software had just come into being. The big deal, at first, was really with memory. Your alarm clock could ring at the same time reliably. If you invested in a VCR, it could record at a programmed time. If you had a synthesizer it could store and recall exact preprogrammed patches. Pinball machines could downsize in weight and keep truly accurate scores instead of relying on tempermental relays and score reels. And so on, with every category of gadgets getting the computerization treatment. Although not everything succeeded there were lots of straightforward cost and quality improvements, with the main downside being that IC designs are less obviously repairable. And then pretty much every year afterward, the push was towards cheaper with more software, with decreasing margins of real improvement, with the "smart" device representing an endpoint where the product is often price discounted because its networking capability lets it collect and sell data. What comes to mind is the Rube Goldberg machines and their expression of a past era of exuberant invention, where physical machines were becoming increasingly intricate in ways not entirely practical. Our software is kind of like that.
      - julianlam 6y ago
        "Kind of" like that? Every other week I read about someone's entirely-too-roundabout way of doing X via an IoT device (requiring packets to probably circumnavigate the globe). Meanwhile I'm sitting here opening my garage door with a physically wired switch like a pleb.
  - Aeolun 6y ago
    Why do we have a touch panel on a fridge in the first place? The only thing we need to be able to specify is desired temperature...
- x0x0 6y ago
  Right, but my $400 bose headphones have a broken integration with my $2400 mbp. Swiping the volume controls on the headphones also moves the balance. Conveniently, because macos is ass, it's nondeterministic whether the balance controls display in Sound Preferences to fix the balance issue. You just have to open and close the settings panel in the hopes that it will display. I'm a software engineer and I don't even know where to begin to debug this idiocy. Duolingo regularly freezes audio in chrome. Once this happens, no audio will play in chrome until you restart or kill "Utility: Audio Service" with the chrome task manager.
  - julianlam 6y ago
    This is the second time in as many weeks I've read a complaint about Bose headphones. The first was that their Bluetooth was so janky the audio itself was delayed multiple seconds and out of sync with video playing on the device. That blew my mind, my $20 Amazon-purchased Bluetooth earphones just work™ with no delay.
cedilla 6y ago
Well, digital services are much more complicated than a fridge, or a book. Not only that, but they also require a machine to run that is also orders of magnitude more complicated than a fridge or a closet.
- _trampeltier 6y ago
  Do you know how hard it is to produce a book from nothing? Make paper, all the same thick, print and so on. Or just a steel tube .. all can be done without computers and software. The process behind is difficult for every step. I work in industrie automation and I can tell you, right now, with this quality in software and "computer everywhere" we are building a super high tower in the softest sand.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
  Part of the complaint is that these things don’t have to be as complicated as they are. The fridge with the touchscreen screen is usually more frustrating than the fridge from thirty years ago. The smart TV is usually more frustrating for its smart features. Things are getting more complicated, like you say, but they frequently aren’t getting enough better to justify the added complexity, especially given all the issues that come along with it.
leetcrew 6y ago
I guess it depends how fussy you are. I've had several fridges/freezers/ovens that don't actually maintain the set temperature. for ovens this is merely annoying, but for fridges and especially freezers, this is a food safety issue. on fridges/freezers that have a dial instead of a digital temperature control, I've found that some just can't maintain a stable temperature, no matter how much I fiddle with them. after setting them "just right" with my own thermometer, I'll come back the next day to find an exploded bottle in my fridge or cold water in my ice tray. books work really well until a pipe bursts in your attic. then you wake up and notice half your collection has been ruined (personal experience).
hrktb 6y ago
> never had a problem with a refrigerator These turn of phrases make me wonder what we are really expecting from software. I can’t imagine you never slapped the door of your fridge and it didn’t properly close. You gave it a nudge when you realized it, and it was fine, but it must have happened. And your whole food supply would be rotten if you didn’t notice in time. Or do we monitor energy consumption close enough to realize it’s eating much more than what should be expected, the same way people complain about chrome eating too much memory ? It can also get pretty noisy but I’d assume most people just think it’s normal. And we put the blame on ourselves for a lot of issues (didn’t put the bottle at the right place, didn’t put the right amount of force to close, didn’t set the right temperature, forget to leave space around the fridge for ventilation etc.). But few users blame themselves for not having understood the software and worked around its weakness, we just call it broken. That benavior is normal, but I’d take a lot of “my applicances just work” with a grain of salt.
- ballenf 6y ago
  > I can’t imagine you never slapped the door of your fridge and it didn’t properly close. You gave it a nudge when you realized it, and it was fine, but it must have happened. And your whole food supply would be rotten if you didn’t notice in time. But if the fridge was software it would randomly turn off and ruin all your food. The light would sometimes stay on, except when you open the door. It would require you to decline an update before you could get the milk out for breakfast. During an update the fridge and freezer components would switch places and then give tips about efficient ways you could manually move everything. If you bought a new fridge, part of it would locked shut until you paid more money, but the one in the store was already unlocked. And god forbid you lose your 2FA device used to setup the fridge -- it will destroy everything inside (including irreplaceable heirloom tomatoes) upon reset. It will then update to a subscription model where custom temperature settings will require a monthly fee or you'll be limited in the number of items you can store in the fridge or number of times you can open the door per day.
  - thewebcount 6y ago
    We saw a failure case like this with a microwave in the workplace kitchen. It somehow got into a mode where it only turned on when the door opened. Needless to say we threw it out shortly after that was discovered. We didn't bother debugging it, but my guess is it was a hardware problem because the interlock should have obviously made it work the opposite of how it was and you'd hope that a software glitch couldn't get it into a mode like that!

julianlam 6y ago

> In my life I’ve never had a problem with a refrigerator, had maybe two problems with washer/dryer I think blaming software for this is a little naive. Take a look at consumer reports for any modern fridge, stovetop/oven, washer/dryer, etc, and you will see complaints about fridge motors dying, touch panels going on the fritz, etc. -- none of which involve anything more than low level firmware. If you want to put a tinfoil hat on, you can consider that it may be planned obsolescence, but to put the blame squarely on software, I would disagree with.

TeMPOraL 6y ago
> If you want to put a tinfoil hat on, you can consider that it may be planned obsolescence, but to put the blame squarely on software, I would disagree with. You don't need tin foil hat when facing the truth :). Also, while things you mentioned aren't software-related, they're modern tech-related. Like, last 20 years. Fridge motors dry out because they're being made cheaper, with not enough lubricant put into them and no option of opening them up and pouring in the grease. Touch panels are going on the fritz because touch panels suck (that's often very much software), and they shouldn't be put on appliances in the first place. But it's cheaper, so they are. Worth noting that there wasn't some big price reduction happening from solid appliances 20 years ago to crappy ones today. Price remained roughly fixed, but appliances started to suck more and more.
- selestify 6y ago
  Right, but the move towards cheaper and lower-quality is more the fault of the current economic system and its incentives than it is the fault of software.
  - megameter 6y ago
    It's very instructive to look back to the 70's when electronics running a little bit of software had just come into being. The big deal, at first, was really with memory. Your alarm clock could ring at the same time reliably. If you invested in a VCR, it could record at a programmed time. If you had a synthesizer it could store and recall exact preprogrammed patches. Pinball machines could downsize in weight and keep truly accurate scores instead of relying on tempermental relays and score reels. And so on, with every category of gadgets getting the computerization treatment. Although not everything succeeded there were lots of straightforward cost and quality improvements, with the main downside being that IC designs are less obviously repairable. And then pretty much every year afterward, the push was towards cheaper with more software, with decreasing margins of real improvement, with the "smart" device representing an endpoint where the product is often price discounted because its networking capability lets it collect and sell data. What comes to mind is the Rube Goldberg machines and their expression of a past era of exuberant invention, where physical machines were becoming increasingly intricate in ways not entirely practical. Our software is kind of like that.
    - julianlam 6y ago
      "Kind of" like that? Every other week I read about someone's entirely-too-roundabout way of doing X via an IoT device (requiring packets to probably circumnavigate the globe). Meanwhile I'm sitting here opening my garage door with a physically wired switch like a pleb.
- Aeolun 6y ago
  Why do we have a touch panel on a fridge in the first place? The only thing we need to be able to specify is desired temperature...
x0x0 6y ago
Right, but my $400 bose headphones have a broken integration with my $2400 mbp. Swiping the volume controls on the headphones also moves the balance. Conveniently, because macos is ass, it's nondeterministic whether the balance controls display in Sound Preferences to fix the balance issue. You just have to open and close the settings panel in the hopes that it will display. I'm a software engineer and I don't even know where to begin to debug this idiocy. Duolingo regularly freezes audio in chrome. Once this happens, no audio will play in chrome until you restart or kill "Utility: Audio Service" with the chrome task manager.
- julianlam 6y ago
  This is the second time in as many weeks I've read a complaint about Bose headphones. The first was that their Bluetooth was so janky the audio itself was delayed multiple seconds and out of sync with video playing on the device. That blew my mind, my $20 Amazon-purchased Bluetooth earphones just work™ with no delay.

cedilla 6y ago

Well, digital services are much more complicated than a fridge, or a book. Not only that, but they also require a machine to run that is also orders of magnitude more complicated than a fridge or a closet.

_trampeltier 6y ago
Do you know how hard it is to produce a book from nothing? Make paper, all the same thick, print and so on. Or just a steel tube .. all can be done without computers and software. The process behind is difficult for every step. I work in industrie automation and I can tell you, right now, with this quality in software and "computer everywhere" we are building a super high tower in the softest sand.
6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
Part of the complaint is that these things don’t have to be as complicated as they are. The fridge with the touchscreen screen is usually more frustrating than the fridge from thirty years ago. The smart TV is usually more frustrating for its smart features. Things are getting more complicated, like you say, but they frequently aren’t getting enough better to justify the added complexity, especially given all the issues that come along with it.

leetcrew 6y ago

I guess it depends how fussy you are. I've had several fridges/freezers/ovens that don't actually maintain the set temperature. for ovens this is merely annoying, but for fridges and especially freezers, this is a food safety issue. on fridges/freezers that have a dial instead of a digital temperature control, I've found that some just can't maintain a stable temperature, no matter how much I fiddle with them. after setting them "just right" with my own thermometer, I'll come back the next day to find an exploded bottle in my fridge or cold water in my ice tray. books work really well until a pipe bursts in your attic. then you wake up and notice half your collection has been ruined (personal experience).

hrktb 6y ago

> never had a problem with a refrigerator These turn of phrases make me wonder what we are really expecting from software. I can’t imagine you never slapped the door of your fridge and it didn’t properly close. You gave it a nudge when you realized it, and it was fine, but it must have happened. And your whole food supply would be rotten if you didn’t notice in time. Or do we monitor energy consumption close enough to realize it’s eating much more than what should be expected, the same way people complain about chrome eating too much memory ? It can also get pretty noisy but I’d assume most people just think it’s normal. And we put the blame on ourselves for a lot of issues (didn’t put the bottle at the right place, didn’t put the right amount of force to close, didn’t set the right temperature, forget to leave space around the fridge for ventilation etc.). But few users blame themselves for not having understood the software and worked around its weakness, we just call it broken. That benavior is normal, but I’d take a lot of “my applicances just work” with a grain of salt.

ballenf 6y ago
> I can’t imagine you never slapped the door of your fridge and it didn’t properly close. You gave it a nudge when you realized it, and it was fine, but it must have happened. And your whole food supply would be rotten if you didn’t notice in time. But if the fridge was software it would randomly turn off and ruin all your food. The light would sometimes stay on, except when you open the door. It would require you to decline an update before you could get the milk out for breakfast. During an update the fridge and freezer components would switch places and then give tips about efficient ways you could manually move everything. If you bought a new fridge, part of it would locked shut until you paid more money, but the one in the store was already unlocked. And god forbid you lose your 2FA device used to setup the fridge -- it will destroy everything inside (including irreplaceable heirloom tomatoes) upon reset. It will then update to a subscription model where custom temperature settings will require a monthly fee or you'll be limited in the number of items you can store in the fridge or number of times you can open the door per day.
- thewebcount 6y ago
  We saw a failure case like this with a microwave in the workplace kitchen. It somehow got into a mode where it only turned on when the door opened. Needless to say we threw it out shortly after that was discovered. We didn't bother debugging it, but my guess is it was a hardware problem because the interlock should have obviously made it work the opposite of how it was and you'd hope that a software glitch couldn't get it into a mode like that!