[quatrefoil]

I mean, it's cool to pin it on manufacturers trying to increase margins, or on "planned obsolescence" - but a lot of it is our doing. We're willingly enabling it. There are manufacturers that make simple and serviceable appliances; for example, most Frigidaire fridges don't have cool-looking displays, wifi connectivity, and other bells and whistles. But how many Frigidaire products are sold every year, compared to LG or Samsung? These brands are not only loaded to the brim with "smart" features, but many technicians refuse to work on them due to poor design and poor availability of parts. So when they break after 2-5 years, they are destined for the dump.

This day and age, the knowledge is at our fingertips. But when shopping, we select the appliance with the most futuristic LCD and that plugs into Alexa to notify us that the laundry is done...

[mjevans]

Regulation fixes:

Life cycle ownership: Just like handling hazmat in industrial processes is considered the ownership of the entity using the materials, so too should the waste stream resulting from the end of life of the product. Encourage products that are easy to dis-assemble into mostly parts that can be usefully recycled (used by someone else!)

TCO and Right to Repair assistance. All service manuals and instructions should be public domain. Parts with various cryptographic keys and enclaves must also be serviceable by future end users; physical access (and possibly installed jumpers or other easily replaced parts) to reset and enroll in a new security domain must be part of the design. (I would like to see PCs ship with a 'jumper' connected to a physical key position. Enabling that jumper would E.G. allow BIOS updates, including changing the installed / enabled list of allowed signing authorities, including locally provided options. Empower the end user.)

Firmware blobs for the various chips on a product should also be submitted to the copyright office(s) and ownership of the product constitutes a valid license to obtain a new copy of the blob (for programming / replacement of any chips).

[larsrc]

> I would like to see PCs ship with a 'jumper' connected to a physical key position. Enabling that jumper would E.G. allow BIOS updates, including changing the installed / enabled list of allowed signing authorities, including locally provided options. Empower the end user

This would make most users never update their BIOSes, even for security fixes.

[dryanau]

> This day and age, the knowledge is at our fingertips.

I don't feel this way at all. I don't know how to access information about products that I know to be unbiased. I can certainly find comparison websites and blog posts, some of which I'm sure are unbiased, but it's not clear to be how to reliably ascertain which is which.

[quatrefoil]

Have you honestly tried?

Product reviews were never the right place to look, because they don't get published after 10 years of use. But unlike in the 1970s, 1980s, or 1990s, you are one search away from appliance repairman forums that lay it bare.

I confess to not having done this when I first bought my LG appliances, but that's on me. And then when they broke and I called a number of SF Bay Area appliance repair shops and they all said "we don't touch LG", I had an epiphany.

[larsrc]

I always try to research my appliance purchases, but longevity info is decidedly not at my fingertips. Had not considered appliance repairman forums, that's a nice idea (until it gets commonly known and then abused).

[account42]

I'm also not sure how much the repairment knowledge will help besides information about general brand quality. By the time some appliance makes the repair rounds it is probably no longer for sale because it has been replaced by a newer model that may be better or worse.

[bryanrasmussen]

although my new business spams appliance repairman forums with bogus information to drive up value of crap products sounds like a surefire service to sell Samsung etc. perhaps these forums being mainly old school internet would be better protected against this kind of abuse than say Facebook or other engagement algorithm gameable sites.

[jacknews]

"This day and age, the knowledge is at our fingertips."

I disagree, there's lots of 'information' at your fingertips, but not knowledge. It's really a ton of work to find well designed and built appliances, that can be repaired etc, but that also have modern efficiency and essential features.

You can no longer necessarily even trust the expensive brand names, as many of them seem to be cashing-in on their, um, cachet, and reputation, and churning out similar junk to the rest of them.

[abdullahkhalids]

The companies that compromise on quality while having a slightly lower price, still have more money left over for marketing.

Social coordination problems are solved by coordinated action - 99% of time that is law.

[giantg2]

"but many technicians refuse to work on them due to poor design and poor availability of parts. So when they break after 2-5 years,"

That's the point - only junk fridges would need to be worked on in the first 5 years. I know if a freezer from the 80s and a fridge from the 60s that have never seen a technician in their lives. At this rate, that one from the 60s will probably have a longer lifespan than I will.

[quatrefoil]

Appliance repairmen existed in the 1980s, we probably had more of them per capita than we do now, and they had their hands full. The idea that it's often easier to toss out an appliance than to repair it is a newer trend...

[trashtester]

Actually, from my personal experience, the biggest decline in durabilty for many types of appliances happened during the 1980s, and may have started in the late 70s.

Btw, half of the problem was that repairs really started to require more specialized knowledge and equipment around that time, due to a sharp rise in the use of electronic components to control anything from a hair dryer to a car. To some extent this was the cost of progress, but it's pretty clear that manufacturers saw the benefit in either preventing repairs to force customers to buy new or to profit from "authorized" repairs in various ways.

And as both salaries and income taxes went up quickly in the 80s where I lived, qualified technicians went up in price much more quickly than the machines they repaired.

There was perhaps one thing pulling in the opposite direction during that decade, though, and that was the high interest rates. If you had to borrow money to get something new, repairing the old one (whether it was a TV or a car) still made sense

[distances]

It's a straightforward outcome thanks to dropping prices of household electronics. If a new car was the price of a new dishwasher, that would signal the end of car repair shops too.

[Suppafly]

>It's a straightforward outcome thanks to dropping prices of household electronics. If a new car was the price of a new dishwasher, that would signal the end of car repair shops too.

This, I don't know why so many people fail to recognize this. I suppose part of it is inflation so they forget that basic appliances used to cost 10x what they cost now. My parents had to save up to buy a microwave, I could buy one a week and only be mildly inconvenienced. I just helped a buddy move a fridge that cost ~$1000, that would have been something like $4000 in 1980 dollars.

[lotsofpulp]

> for example, most Frigidaire fridges don't have cool-looking displays, wifi connectivity, and other bells and whistles. But how many Frigidaire products are sold every year, compared to LG or Samsung? These brands are not only loaded to the brim with "smart" features, but many technicians refuse to work on them due to poor design and poor availability of parts. So when they break after 2-5 years, they are destined for the dump.

I quickly searched HomeDepot.com and see at least 10 LG and 10 Samsung refrigerators without “bells and whistles”.