Are there any common household items or products that you think are designed incredibly poorly?
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We did.
Boxed wine.
However, bottle design is pretty refined, and they are quite reusuable.
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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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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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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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That was a design decision by Steve Jobs to keep people from using them as wired mice.
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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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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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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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How do you hold closed the bag that holds the bag clips?
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You can buy good can openers and bad ones in any country.
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I bought this can opener after watching a Technology Connections video, and I kinda love my can opener.
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Planned obsolescence. When the battery finally dies, you can't use it wired.
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I have a truck where the oil drain plug is directly over the axle. I have to strap an offset funnel under the drain to get it to not splash all over the fuck, and of course, it's not easy to get that stay put so inevitably I have oil everywhere. Same truck has the oil filter tucked up where I need a special oil filter wrench with a ratchet and extensions to remove it, and when you pull the filter out, you have to tip it so it spills the oil inside everywhere.
I had an idea a long time ago of a website where you can crowdfund a private investigator to find engineers that do shit like this, and a crew to go over to their house and beat them halfway to death.
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Or just going outside and ejecting that puppy without touching anything except the other side of your nose. Farmer blow FTW.
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I learned long ago when something like this bothers me that it is irrational to get angry at objects, then I connected I am not angry at the object, I am angry at the dumb ass turd who designed it.
btw, I drill a hole in my oil filter before I remove it to drain it so it doesn't spill all over the front of my engine.
Maybe all engineers should have to sign their work. Like have their license number or something embossed on it. That way we can find them and inform them of their idiocy.
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I get this one but I also don’t mind. It’s mostly done for aerodynamics and fuel efficiency. Tucking the wipers gives a decent bit of drag reduction so it has a real purpose at least.
Then again on some luxury cars they do it just so you don’t see them and that’s boring but those losers probably don’t change their own wipers.
Now, my gripe is: Around here ehen it’s going to ice over in winter we’ll lift wipers off the glass so you can scrape the windshield afterward without hitting frozen down wipers. But some wiper designs you can’t lift the wiper off the glass and it’ll stay off. Those suck.
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We went to an auto parts store a while back to get some wipers and got a plain set but couldn’t get it on somehow. Asked the staff for help, they ended up going through 4 or 5 sets of different brands and price levels just to find us a wiper that could actually fit the car. The only one that fit was the most expensive option, too. They were so frustrated they didn’t even charge us the extra and just sent us on our way. Stupid wipers, great staff.
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Or you could be my house, previously owned by a maniac, with counters in the kitchen at 3 different heights. I wish I could say that was the stupidest thing the previous owner did.
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I used it for years but when I got a replace t computer just never bothered changing keys around and stopped. It was neat and I typed reasonably faster but at the time many programs wouldn’t handle the mapping and I’d have to remap controls in every game and was just kind of annoying.
The single best part was the loom on people’s faces when they used it. They’d go to type, it wouldn’t do what they expect and then they’d look at the keys and then to me like I was an alien. So good.
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Stupid question. With a bag clip bag bag clip, obviously.
