7 ms·

This is basically why I paid 100 EUR to have the 23 years old cheap Whirlpool stove that came with our apartment fixed. It has 4 plates and 4 turning knobs, and

by lqet 4y ago

This is basically why I paid 100 EUR to have the 23 years old cheap Whirlpool stove that came with our apartment fixed. It has 4 plates and 4 turning knobs, and when I turn one of them, the corresponding plate gets hot. Simplicity lasts longer.

walrus01 4y ago
When I was maybe 20 years old and naive as hell, I thought it was funny that the older neighbors were really enthusiastic about their older fully analog, non-computerized Toyota Land Cruiser. They did all their own repairs on it. Now I understand.
paskozdilar 4y ago
> It has 4 plates and 4 turning knobs, and when I turn one of them, the corresponding plate gets hot. The smartest stove of them all - does one thing and does it well.
- systemvoltage 4y ago
  Opposite is true for single use kitchen gadgets: https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/12/alton-brown-is-right-to-scorn-single-use-kitchen-gadgets-and-the-people-who-buy-them.html https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/12/alton-brown-is-righ...
  - dendriti 4y ago
    Single-use gadgets can be blessings for the disabled and differently abled. The author of this article is sneering at the disabled for having different tool needs than herself. My 80-something grandmother uses a garlic press and several sizes of vegetable holders for slicing veggies. I guess she's just so uncool.
    - systemvoltage 4y ago
      Most of these single use things are a product of Teleshopping and other terrible marketing schemes.
    - mcv 4y ago
      I'd say single-use kitchen items are worth it if you use them every week. If you use them only once a year and the function can also be performed by something else, it's just clutter. We've got several knives and several pans, because different versions of the same thing are useful for slightly different purposes. We've got separate pans for pancakes and that works very well for us, because they're lighter and you can actually flip them.
  - jimmaswell 4y ago
    > Instead of tablespoons and teaspoons, it has: a dash, a pinch, a smidgen, and a drop. I wish recipes would stop using these vague terms. Just give me the exact number of grams or whatever and I'll gladly measure it on my food scale.
sschueller 4y ago
Sadly with a fridge or a washing machine the efficiency is quite different. Buying a 20+ old washing machine will cost you a lot in electricity and wasted water.
- dotancohen 4y ago
  How feasible is it to buy a new refrigerator, and connect the nice efficient hardware to a thermostat and motor relay from an old fridge model? Those components are available inexpensively from repair shops.
  - ziftface 4y ago
    Maybe even an open source washer with available parts that runs on an Arduino or similar
    - dotancohen 4y ago
      Soviet-era mechanical devices actually came with the blueprints to manufacture spare parts.
- Gordonjcp 4y ago
  > will cost you a lot in electricity and wasted water. <laughs in Scottish>
- frenchman99 4y ago
  Given how much water is needed to extract metals from the ground to create new appliances, the total amount of wasted water is subject to debate. It may be better overall to just keep using the old thing till it breaks.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    It might even be worth fixing it, depending on the build quality and the actual consumption. Use a kill-a-watt or something similar to figure out what the device actually costs. Be prepared for surprises, both in the positive and the negative direction! Do this before something breaks.
ungamedplayer 4y ago
Careful, or you'll be told that you should start thinking about 'fleet logic'. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31008275#31009009 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31008275#31009009 "" Better oven ergonomics leads to less cooking fatigue, which leads to less accidents and therefore less downtime. Sometimes it actually pays off to have a higher maintenance workload, especially since most of it is planned downtime, or features that don't have fixed urgently. And sometimes this idea of radical simplicity only shifts maintenance workload from one component to another. One example that gets a lot of pushback in US cooking is gas connections. ""
teruakohatu 4y ago
I like the sentiment but in New Zealand you would have paid 250 EUR to get it fixed. We get charged ridiculous amounts for repairs. The repair industry has sort of decided that there should be a high minimum regardless of the problem.
- gjadi 4y ago
  Maybe the issue isn't that repairing costs a lot, but rather than replacing it too cheap.
- unhammer 4y ago
  Both my tumble dryer and dish washer have long outlasted their warranties thanks to Youtube tutorials (and one new part I had to order online).
jl6 4y ago
I’m having a similar debate about a diesel car. A battery-electric replacement would have lower environmental opex but at a huge environmental capex compared to just keeping my already-manufactured diesel.
- arghwhat 4y ago
  That argument only holds if you stop driving your diesel altogether, as otherwise it's environmental cost will keep growing with no bounds while an acquired battery-electric would be busy amortizing it's one-time(-ish) cost. What OP said was about repairing stuff to avoid smart appliances. From an environmental perspective using old stuff is often much worse than getting new (fridge, car, ...).
  - theodric 4y ago
    This is only true if the power to run the electric car is environmentally less damaging than the diesel's emissions. With Germany's obsession with using diesel vehicles to mine brown coal to burn for power, I'm not convinced it is.
    - abrugsch 4y ago
      I think this is going to be very country specific. The UK for example has barely used any coal (relatively) for the main grid with a considerable amount of coal-free days in the past couple of years. (currently coal provides 0.0% of the UK's fossil fuel electricity production and nearly 14% is renewable[0] though it was up to nearly 3% in February[1]) So while there is still a majority of the electricity coming from fossil sources (namely gas) it is on the decline and I'd certainly posit that a somewhat modern power station can generate electricity more efficiently than a car's diesel engine can... (happy to be proven wrong on this as I can't find any direct studies) [0]https://grid.iamkate.com/ https://grid.iamkate.com/ [1]https://www.nationalgrideso.com/electricity-explained/electricity-and-me/great-britains-monthly-electricity-stats https://www.nationalgrideso.com/electricity-explained/electr...
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
makeitdouble 4y ago
Current IH stoves aren't much more complicated nor need your wi-fi password, if that was your point. The only significant addition I see in somewhat recent models is auto-turning off, and I'm pretty sure it will help save the house from burning down at some point, so I'm all for it.
- vladvasiliu 4y ago
  > The only significant addition I see in somewhat recent models is auto-turning off, and I'm pretty sure it will help save the house from burning down at some point, so I'm all for it. Many recent stoves (induction or regular) have figured that, when interacting with them, no one will have wet hands nor need to adjust them repeatedly, they could go ahead and save a few pennies by using shared tactile controls. My stove need me to press a button corresponding to the plate I want to change, then press a common +/- button to turn it up or down. If my finger is wet, it will have a hard time registering and reach a timeout, whereupon I have to again select the plate. This is hands down the worst UX for an appliance I've had in my life.
  - makeitdouble 4y ago
    The worst UX I experienced was the gas stove at an appartment where you'd turn the knob all the way to get some sparks, while it blasts gas from the stove, to then turn it down to the level you want. The fun part was when you try to light it up but for whatever reasons it doesn't catch, so you're filling the room with propane and the second it might actually light up you're toast. Then if you turned it down too much it would die out, but you'd have to look below the pan to realize there's no flame anymore. Oh, and the toxicity of course. My IH plate also has common + and - buttons, but compared to the above I'm pretty happy with it. It also has a timer, and I'm ok giving up having 4 knobs for buttons that actually work and can be cleaned in one swoop, and having a single place where I can see the status of all the heating elements.
walrus01 4y ago
https://twitter.com/internetofshit?lang=en https://twitter.com/internetofshit?lang=en
kebman 4y ago
The place I rent has a fancy button microwave installed. It's built-in and all the knobs makes it look really cool and scientific. I never use it though, because I brought my own Samsung microwave. It's got two knobs. One for the amount of time you need to fry things, and one for the power you wanna fry it on. That's it. That's literally all you need. The most difficult thing about it, is that it doesn't have a start button. It just starts automatically a second after you've set the timer. This small "smart" feature is actually a problem for visitors who doesn't know the machine, because they'll try to jam in the two knobs in order to "start" the thing. But otherwise I love it, and I use it all the time over the fancy schmansy pre-installed one. Because when I use the fancy one, I'm afraid that if I push the wrong button I'll start a nuclear war...
- bbarn 4y ago
  Yeah, I've got an old school turn to start timer style microwave. One dial for wattage, and a mechanical dial for the timer. It's also tiny. Why are microwaves so big now? What are people cooking in a half cubic meter of microwave space? It's for melting butter and warming up leftovers.
  - dagw 4y ago
    Every microwave I've owned has also had a convection and grill/crisp function making them far more versitle than a simple microwave oven. That is probably what you are looking at.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
rswail 4y ago
Inefficient though compared to induction isn't it?

by lqet 4y ago

walrus01 4y ago

When I was maybe 20 years old and naive as hell, I thought it was funny that the older neighbors were really enthusiastic about their older fully analog, non-computerized Toyota Land Cruiser. They did all their own repairs on it. Now I understand.

paskozdilar 4y ago

> It has 4 plates and 4 turning knobs, and when I turn one of them, the corresponding plate gets hot. The smartest stove of them all - does one thing and does it well.

systemvoltage 4y ago
Opposite is true for single use kitchen gadgets: https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/12/alton-brown-is-right-to-scorn-single-use-kitchen-gadgets-and-the-people-who-buy-them.html https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/12/alton-brown-is-righ...
- dendriti 4y ago
  Single-use gadgets can be blessings for the disabled and differently abled. The author of this article is sneering at the disabled for having different tool needs than herself. My 80-something grandmother uses a garlic press and several sizes of vegetable holders for slicing veggies. I guess she's just so uncool.
  - systemvoltage 4y ago
    Most of these single use things are a product of Teleshopping and other terrible marketing schemes.
  - mcv 4y ago
    I'd say single-use kitchen items are worth it if you use them every week. If you use them only once a year and the function can also be performed by something else, it's just clutter. We've got several knives and several pans, because different versions of the same thing are useful for slightly different purposes. We've got separate pans for pancakes and that works very well for us, because they're lighter and you can actually flip them.
- jimmaswell 4y ago
  > Instead of tablespoons and teaspoons, it has: a dash, a pinch, a smidgen, and a drop. I wish recipes would stop using these vague terms. Just give me the exact number of grams or whatever and I'll gladly measure it on my food scale.

sschueller 4y ago

Sadly with a fridge or a washing machine the efficiency is quite different. Buying a 20+ old washing machine will cost you a lot in electricity and wasted water.

dotancohen 4y ago
How feasible is it to buy a new refrigerator, and connect the nice efficient hardware to a thermostat and motor relay from an old fridge model? Those components are available inexpensively from repair shops.
- ziftface 4y ago
  Maybe even an open source washer with available parts that runs on an Arduino or similar
  - dotancohen 4y ago
    Soviet-era mechanical devices actually came with the blueprints to manufacture spare parts.
Gordonjcp 4y ago
> will cost you a lot in electricity and wasted water. <laughs in Scottish>
frenchman99 4y ago
Given how much water is needed to extract metals from the ground to create new appliances, the total amount of wasted water is subject to debate. It may be better overall to just keep using the old thing till it breaks.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  It might even be worth fixing it, depending on the build quality and the actual consumption. Use a kill-a-watt or something similar to figure out what the device actually costs. Be prepared for surprises, both in the positive and the negative direction! Do this before something breaks.

ungamedplayer 4y ago

Careful, or you'll be told that you should start thinking about 'fleet logic'. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31008275#31009009 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31008275#31009009 "" Better oven ergonomics leads to less cooking fatigue, which leads to less accidents and therefore less downtime. Sometimes it actually pays off to have a higher maintenance workload, especially since most of it is planned downtime, or features that don't have fixed urgently. And sometimes this idea of radical simplicity only shifts maintenance workload from one component to another. One example that gets a lot of pushback in US cooking is gas connections. ""

teruakohatu 4y ago

I like the sentiment but in New Zealand you would have paid 250 EUR to get it fixed. We get charged ridiculous amounts for repairs. The repair industry has sort of decided that there should be a high minimum regardless of the problem.

gjadi 4y ago
Maybe the issue isn't that repairing costs a lot, but rather than replacing it too cheap.
unhammer 4y ago
Both my tumble dryer and dish washer have long outlasted their warranties thanks to Youtube tutorials (and one new part I had to order online).

jl6 4y ago

I’m having a similar debate about a diesel car. A battery-electric replacement would have lower environmental opex but at a huge environmental capex compared to just keeping my already-manufactured diesel.

arghwhat 4y ago
That argument only holds if you stop driving your diesel altogether, as otherwise it's environmental cost will keep growing with no bounds while an acquired battery-electric would be busy amortizing it's one-time(-ish) cost. What OP said was about repairing stuff to avoid smart appliances. From an environmental perspective using old stuff is often much worse than getting new (fridge, car, ...).
- theodric 4y ago
  This is only true if the power to run the electric car is environmentally less damaging than the diesel's emissions. With Germany's obsession with using diesel vehicles to mine brown coal to burn for power, I'm not convinced it is.
  - abrugsch 4y ago
    I think this is going to be very country specific. The UK for example has barely used any coal (relatively) for the main grid with a considerable amount of coal-free days in the past couple of years. (currently coal provides 0.0% of the UK's fossil fuel electricity production and nearly 14% is renewable[0] though it was up to nearly 3% in February[1]) So while there is still a majority of the electricity coming from fossil sources (namely gas) it is on the decline and I'd certainly posit that a somewhat modern power station can generate electricity more efficiently than a car's diesel engine can... (happy to be proven wrong on this as I can't find any direct studies) [0]https://grid.iamkate.com/ https://grid.iamkate.com/ [1]https://www.nationalgrideso.com/electricity-explained/electricity-and-me/great-britains-monthly-electricity-stats https://www.nationalgrideso.com/electricity-explained/electr...
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]

makeitdouble 4y ago

Current IH stoves aren't much more complicated nor need your wi-fi password, if that was your point. The only significant addition I see in somewhat recent models is auto-turning off, and I'm pretty sure it will help save the house from burning down at some point, so I'm all for it.

vladvasiliu 4y ago
> The only significant addition I see in somewhat recent models is auto-turning off, and I'm pretty sure it will help save the house from burning down at some point, so I'm all for it. Many recent stoves (induction or regular) have figured that, when interacting with them, no one will have wet hands nor need to adjust them repeatedly, they could go ahead and save a few pennies by using shared tactile controls. My stove need me to press a button corresponding to the plate I want to change, then press a common +/- button to turn it up or down. If my finger is wet, it will have a hard time registering and reach a timeout, whereupon I have to again select the plate. This is hands down the worst UX for an appliance I've had in my life.
- makeitdouble 4y ago
  The worst UX I experienced was the gas stove at an appartment where you'd turn the knob all the way to get some sparks, while it blasts gas from the stove, to then turn it down to the level you want. The fun part was when you try to light it up but for whatever reasons it doesn't catch, so you're filling the room with propane and the second it might actually light up you're toast. Then if you turned it down too much it would die out, but you'd have to look below the pan to realize there's no flame anymore. Oh, and the toxicity of course. My IH plate also has common + and - buttons, but compared to the above I'm pretty happy with it. It also has a timer, and I'm ok giving up having 4 knobs for buttons that actually work and can be cleaned in one swoop, and having a single place where I can see the status of all the heating elements.

walrus01 4y ago

https://twitter.com/internetofshit?lang=en https://twitter.com/internetofshit?lang=en

kebman 4y ago

The place I rent has a fancy button microwave installed. It's built-in and all the knobs makes it look really cool and scientific. I never use it though, because I brought my own Samsung microwave. It's got two knobs. One for the amount of time you need to fry things, and one for the power you wanna fry it on. That's it. That's literally all you need. The most difficult thing about it, is that it doesn't have a start button. It just starts automatically a second after you've set the timer. This small "smart" feature is actually a problem for visitors who doesn't know the machine, because they'll try to jam in the two knobs in order to "start" the thing. But otherwise I love it, and I use it all the time over the fancy schmansy pre-installed one. Because when I use the fancy one, I'm afraid that if I push the wrong button I'll start a nuclear war...

bbarn 4y ago
Yeah, I've got an old school turn to start timer style microwave. One dial for wattage, and a mechanical dial for the timer. It's also tiny. Why are microwaves so big now? What are people cooking in a half cubic meter of microwave space? It's for melting butter and warming up leftovers.
- dagw 4y ago
  Every microwave I've owned has also had a convection and grill/crisp function making them far more versitle than a simple microwave oven. That is probably what you are looking at.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

rswail 4y ago

Inefficient though compared to induction isn't it?