3 ms·

Don't buy connected stuff is a lesson people still need to learn

by ekianjo 1y ago

bhhaskin 1y ago
Connected stuff is fine, but who owns the connection matters.
- burnt-resistor 1y ago
  Private equity will buy anything and everything even moderately profitable using LBOs, stick them with the loans, take out more loans to pay themselves, spin them off, and wind them down. Basically no one is going to run a business for the sake of customers or brand goodwill because, in the real world, there are no regulations or motivations to do so because "everything is a scam" is the normalized deviancy. Take even a boring other industry, say single phase motor start and run capacitors. In the US, 3 of the 4 major original manufacturers of said products are owned by private equity and manufacture under under an array of cannibalistic turtles that M&A'ed basically every manufacturer. The net result is increased prices and shorter product life.
  - nbngeorcjhe 1y ago
    > stick them with the loans, take out more loans to pay themselves, spin them off, and wind them down China would probably just imprison the people responsible for things like this
    - anonzzzies 1y ago
      and rightly so
  - anonzzzies 1y ago
    Two of my largest clients are factories in Germany and Italy that make specialist screws. Been running profitable since the 50s by the families. That I like.
  - Onavo 1y ago
    Abloy is the biggest name in locks. This is more like if Apple decides to shut down iCloud one day.
wilg 1y ago
Not really, they shut it down and basically now it's just not a connected thing. "An escalator can never break: it can only become stairs."
- rkomorn 1y ago
  Aw man, I'm gonna be that guy who goes kind of off topic, but videos of runaway escalators definitely dispelled the "it can only become stairs" failure mode of escalators for me. Terrifying stuff. Mitch Hedberg just died too soon after YouTube launched to see it himself.
  - wilg 1y ago
    I also watched that video but we pretend it's not possible for Mitch
    - rkomorn 1y ago
      I used to pretend it wasn't possible. I still do, but I used to too.
  - Polizeiposaune 1y ago
    In the best documented runaway escalator case I'm aware of -- see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Rome_escalator_accident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Rome_escalator_accident -- it was determined to be the result of criminally negligent maintenance practices that included the use of zip ties to keep an emergency brake mechanism from engaging. There was a similar incident this summer at a subway station in Atlanta but there doesn't seem to be a clear root cause published yet. As in Rome, the trigger was too many people on the escalator, but the mechanism is supposed to cope with overload by stopping the escalator.
    - rkomorn 1y ago
      This reminds me of the recent funicular crash in Lisbon where the initial report said the brakes were applied after the cable disconnected but could not slow down the vehicle. I find all these out of control scenarios terrifying (I suppose I am not alone in this).

Don't buy connected stuff is a lesson people still need to learn

bhhaskin 1y ago

Connected stuff is fine, but who owns the connection matters.

burnt-resistor 1y ago
Private equity will buy anything and everything even moderately profitable using LBOs, stick them with the loans, take out more loans to pay themselves, spin them off, and wind them down. Basically no one is going to run a business for the sake of customers or brand goodwill because, in the real world, there are no regulations or motivations to do so because "everything is a scam" is the normalized deviancy. Take even a boring other industry, say single phase motor start and run capacitors. In the US, 3 of the 4 major original manufacturers of said products are owned by private equity and manufacture under under an array of cannibalistic turtles that M&A'ed basically every manufacturer. The net result is increased prices and shorter product life.
- nbngeorcjhe 1y ago
  > stick them with the loans, take out more loans to pay themselves, spin them off, and wind them down China would probably just imprison the people responsible for things like this
  - anonzzzies 1y ago
    and rightly so
- anonzzzies 1y ago
  Two of my largest clients are factories in Germany and Italy that make specialist screws. Been running profitable since the 50s by the families. That I like.
- Onavo 1y ago
  Abloy is the biggest name in locks. This is more like if Apple decides to shut down iCloud one day.

wilg 1y ago

Not really, they shut it down and basically now it's just not a connected thing. "An escalator can never break: it can only become stairs."

rkomorn 1y ago
Aw man, I'm gonna be that guy who goes kind of off topic, but videos of runaway escalators definitely dispelled the "it can only become stairs" failure mode of escalators for me. Terrifying stuff. Mitch Hedberg just died too soon after YouTube launched to see it himself.
- wilg 1y ago
  I also watched that video but we pretend it's not possible for Mitch
  - rkomorn 1y ago
    I used to pretend it wasn't possible. I still do, but I used to too.
- Polizeiposaune 1y ago
  In the best documented runaway escalator case I'm aware of -- see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Rome_escalator_accident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Rome_escalator_accident -- it was determined to be the result of criminally negligent maintenance practices that included the use of zip ties to keep an emergency brake mechanism from engaging. There was a similar incident this summer at a subway station in Atlanta but there doesn't seem to be a clear root cause published yet. As in Rome, the trigger was too many people on the escalator, but the mechanism is supposed to cope with overload by stopping the escalator.
  - rkomorn 1y ago
    This reminds me of the recent funicular crash in Lisbon where the initial report said the brakes were applied after the cable disconnected but could not slow down the vehicle. I find all these out of control scenarios terrifying (I suppose I am not alone in this).