Are there any common household items or products that you think are designed incredibly poorly?
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Light bulbs! I thought when we moved away from the traditional incandescent the new stuff was supposed to last forever. Why do they die all the time!?
Can I ask where everyone is from? I'm in the UK, which uses 230v, and even cheap-ass LED bulbs last forever. But a lot of the bulbs are rated for both 230v and 115v so I'm wondering if those same bulbs are being sold in the US. If that's the case, they'll need to pull double the current to manage the same output which is far more stressful on the electronics than higher voltage with lower current.
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Then why bring it up and say someone will correct you if you're wrong?
Old mate didn't provide any fascinating insights into the manufacturing practices of soviet era communism, they just trotted out some meme-level anti-capitalist vibe-based hyperbole.
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Why the hell do i have to know which way to put the batteries in at this point ?
A bridge rectifier circuit for each battery slot would solve the issue and, at the low currents of things like remote controls, would be pretty tiny and introduce inconsequential power overhead bbbuuuuuuuuu-uuuuuu-uuuuutttt it would cost money, precious pennies per device. And it would be tricky to market it, educate users, and so on. Such things are too good for this world.
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Laptops with no intake dust filters.
My laptop doesn't have dust filters, but the fan almost never runs anyway. Like the heatsink is way overbuilt for the CPU it's attached to. It's actually quite nice. I've never seen it hit 70 degrees. I've cleaned it maybe three times since 2016. It really only spins the fan up when I'm watching 60 fps YouTube videos or playing games. And even then, it kicks hard for a very short time and shuts off again.
And again, I bought this thing nine years ago. It's just a little Acer. And it's not even a nice one. I paid like 500 bucks for this thing.
Now, my wife's MacBook that she games on....yeah, I need to figure out how to get the back off so it can get a proper dusting. Fuck you, Apple. Let me work on my stuff, dammit.
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You need to look harder. Source: I went down this road. Find one with a solid stainless steel construction.
I switched to using a microplane (or similar super fine grater) for garlic a few years back, it's far easier to clean and I like it for ginger, nutmeg, hard cheeses etc.
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Garlic crushers. All of them suck.
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That's why you should just drink it straight from the bottle.
That’s why you should just drink it straight from the
bottlebox.FTFY
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For example, I'm incredibly confused about how you're supposedly to measure liquid laundry detergent with the cap. At least the kind that I have sits on it's side, so if you measure it with the cap it just leaks everywhere and makes a mess.
Or at my parents house they have a bag of captain crunch berries that has a new design, where instead of zipping along the top of the bag like normal, it has a zipper in the front slightly beneath the top. That way when you poor it you can't see what you're doing cuz the bag is in the way. Like what the heck who's idea was that?
There are many, but my current bugbear is the wireless Apple mouse. It has a built in rechargeable battery and and a tiny little port for you to plug the recharging cable in. The port is mounted on the bottom of the mouse rendering it useless while it's being charged. I guess it's to make it look nicer but it's so stupid.
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There are many, but my current bugbear is the wireless Apple mouse. It has a built in rechargeable battery and and a tiny little port for you to plug the recharging cable in. The port is mounted on the bottom of the mouse rendering it useless while it's being charged. I guess it's to make it look nicer but it's so stupid.
It's like that to push you to buy two of them.
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Roll the bag. Flip the box upside down. Put it in going up. Hold it in place and flip the box back over. Gravity holds the bag closed. This is a bad idea if anyone else accesses the box and isn't on the same page as you.
I just fold it up and use a clothes peg ha ha
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Garlic crushers. All of them suck.
Buy jarlick. Join us in convenient garlic-in-a-jar nirvana.
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Wine bottles. After thousands of years of drinking you would think humans would develop a bottle design that doesn't dribble down the side after pouring.
We did.
Boxed wine.
However, bottle design is pretty refined, and they are quite reusuable.
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My laptop doesn't have dust filters, but the fan almost never runs anyway. Like the heatsink is way overbuilt for the CPU it's attached to. It's actually quite nice. I've never seen it hit 70 degrees. I've cleaned it maybe three times since 2016. It really only spins the fan up when I'm watching 60 fps YouTube videos or playing games. And even then, it kicks hard for a very short time and shuts off again.
And again, I bought this thing nine years ago. It's just a little Acer. And it's not even a nice one. I paid like 500 bucks for this thing.
Now, my wife's MacBook that she games on....yeah, I need to figure out how to get the back off so it can get a proper dusting. Fuck you, Apple. Let me work on my stuff, dammit.
A twelve year old computer in 2013 would have been utterly useless. Doesn't matter how good is was in 2001 it would die under even a modest 2013 workload. But a decent computer from 2013 is still useful today. Not for triple-A gaming, VR, or 8K video editing, but still a decent productivity and media machine. I just bought my first handheld gaming PC and I made sure it had eGPU support since that's the likely bottleneck in the future (i7 and 32GB RAM, so that should be good for a long while) and I fully intend to get a decade out of it. There's no real appetite to upgrade your machine regularly any more, and the manufacturers hate that.
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I just fold it up and use a clothes peg ha ha
Y'know, I bought a bag of bag clips from Ikea years ago and I'm only now realising that they're less suited to the job than a clothes peg. Smart.
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For example, I'm incredibly confused about how you're supposedly to measure liquid laundry detergent with the cap. At least the kind that I have sits on it's side, so if you measure it with the cap it just leaks everywhere and makes a mess.
Or at my parents house they have a bag of captain crunch berries that has a new design, where instead of zipping along the top of the bag like normal, it has a zipper in the front slightly beneath the top. That way when you poor it you can't see what you're doing cuz the bag is in the way. Like what the heck who's idea was that?
US can openers. In other countries, they cut the sides of the can not the top, so the lid has no chance of falling in while dulling the edges. It also allows them to be much smaller and easier to use.
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There are many, but my current bugbear is the wireless Apple mouse. It has a built in rechargeable battery and and a tiny little port for you to plug the recharging cable in. The port is mounted on the bottom of the mouse rendering it useless while it's being charged. I guess it's to make it look nicer but it's so stupid.
That was a design decision by Steve Jobs to keep people from using them as wired mice.
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Don’t know what you’re using but the tests of the ones available to me all shows very weak washing performance, some on par with washing only with water.
Explanation is, in short, that there is not enough washing detergent in the sheets.
I imagine that can be true, as the sheets are one-size-fits-all rather than measuring based on the size. Usually I run laundry before it's too full to reduce noise in the closet near my office. If I ever notice it's not getting clean when full I'll just throw 2 sheets in given how cheap they are
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US can openers. In other countries, they cut the sides of the can not the top, so the lid has no chance of falling in while dulling the edges. It also allows them to be much smaller and easier to use.
Came here to say can opener too. Not for the same reason as you mentioned just that more often than not a can opener is just plain shoddy. Slips, doesn’t fully cut, hard to grip, etc….
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That was a design decision by Steve Jobs to keep people from using them as wired mice.
If this is true what a dumb reason. Basically decided to make a device that could be used 100% of the time unusable for some fraction of time just because it looks the way he wanted it too.
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Y'know, I bought a bag of bag clips from Ikea years ago and I'm only now realising that they're less suited to the job than a clothes peg. Smart.
How do you hold closed the bag that holds the bag clips?