+1 on this. I don't think I've read a story about how planned obsolescence is achieved in such a novel and non-plausibly deniable way. By that, I mean they haven't just cheaped out on materials, they've spent extra to make it fail predictably.
I should have written it up. I could still, but I’d need to order one of those thermostats and do the teardown again.
At the time I was just focused on why my buddy was having to replace 200 thermostats in ten years. It turned out you could just cut out the battery with a pair of dikes and jumper the leftover positive post to 3v to get basically unlimited lifespan, so he did that instead of replacing the thermostats with new ones. Afaik most are still working fine.
Helping him out is also how I figured out the defrost timer disintegrating gears thing. When you do things at scale, things that seem random in onesies practically scream at you. It made me appreciate the value gathering data…you can find the patterns at lower scales.
The car air vent thing I figured out on my 94 Toyota 4runner. The air vent crossbars that keep the vanes in alignment with each other all failed over a two year period. A minor annoyance, but it makes you feel like you need a new car lol. I popped them out and found that of all of the plastic parts, only the crossbars were exceptionally brittle. Suspiciously, the bars also had what looked like date codes molded into them. None of the other pieces had numbers at all. I just printed new crossbars.
Oh well. These comments alone are at least a microblog entry. But if you cross something like that again, and have the time and the inclination, I think a HN submission would be super appreciated.
I noticed the promise of LED bulbs lasting forever were engineered to fail. I replaced all the bulbs in my house with and about 1-2 years in, many have failed.
Though interestingly LEDs in various components or even LED strip lighting seem to last for many many years.
The deployment cost is even lower when you don’t need to put a tower on the ground, which is the point of this. They can cover the entire U.S. to eliminate coverage gaps using the starlink satellites.
For remote areas that might still be tens to hundreds of kilometers of poles and fiber just to add coverage to one remote area. Then you move on to the next.
No one wants to do that across all of Alaska or the Australian outback.
Let me add that this change compounds over time. More efficient studying results in more competent people. I believe it's very hard to measure the impact, but there is a very positive long term impact from how much these tools help with learning.
Sorry to pick on this detail, but I don't understand why TFA uses 2008 as year of Google Maps release. My memory (and Wikipedia) say 2005. I think I figured it out : in October 2009 Google maps introduced turn by turn directions.
One of Garmin's big old (probably still made in small numbers though) product lines were stand alone turn by turn GPS units you'd attach to your windshield or dash so when Google Maps introduced turn by turn that's when it became relevant as a major competitor to that product line and a major threat to Garmin.
Sure, I didn't say Garmin had no competitors, just that the Apple Watch is limited to 30% of the smartphone market, while Garmin can address (a part of) the remaining 70% plus some of Apple's 30% as well.
