• 12 Posts
  • 1.28K Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: June 13th, 2023

help-circle





  • In the last decade, I’ve had that sort of issue affect me twice:

    1. I bought an AMD Vega 56 on launch day, and I had to run it with the proprietary driver for a while.
    2. I recently upgraded my three monitors, and was having trouble getting them all to do the 1440p/100Hz they were rated for. After a bunch of fiddling with xrandr etc. and trying to add modelines and whatnot, it turned out the real problem was that I needed to upgrade from HDMI cables to DisplayPort ones.

    Anyway, I guess the gist is that I wouldn’t have expected Windows to do any better in either case.









  • Do you have individual switches for each plug socket / outlet wired next to the door?

    No, the rooms I’ve seen wired with lamp circuits would typically have one switch next to the entrance with several outlets wired together to it in the same circuit, along with another circuit of several unswitched outlets. Flipping that one switch would turn all the lamps on at once.

    (More rarely, there might be two lamp circuits in a room, with two switches controlling two groups of outlets. I think my parents’ formal living room might be like that, but we barely used it and I haven’t lived there for 20 years, so I can’t quite remember.)

    and one of the two entrance doors would have to be chosen. You’d then have to walk to that door every time you wanted to turn something off.

    Nah, that’s what three-way switches are for: you can have a switch at each entrance that controls the same group of outlets.



    1. Ironically, the cheapest machines are less likely to be annoying in the way OP describes because they have less fancy electronics (or might even still be electromechanical if it’s an old design, but probably not because PCBs and microcontrollers are even cheaper nowadays).

    2. Even expensive machines aren’t necessarily higher-quality these days, unless you’re really careful to do your research and buy the right brand. For example, I would not actually expect an expensive Maytag to last longer than a cheap Amana because both brands are owned by Whirlpool and might very well share a bunch of the same internal parts. The Maytag would be fancier and prettier, but probably not actually better-made.



  • Samsung front loader washing machine here.

    Had it for 10 years now, no mechanical or electrical issues.

    Good luck. This is probably in your imminent future:

    That’s called the “spider arm,” and is the only part in the entire machine that’s exposed to water but made of non-corrosion-resistant metal. It is very obviously designed that way for planned obsolescence.

    If your machine starts making a loud thunk and the drum stops turning, that’s the part you need to replace.


  • If you miss this sound, it will lock itself again 10-15 minutes later and rotate your clothes.

    LOL, WTF. That machine is too “helpful” for its own good.


    My previous washing machine, a Samsung front-loader, did not operate in an annoying way but was much more of an asshole by the fact that it was designed with blatant planned obsolescence. Shortly out of warranty, it failed catastrophically and I decided to take it apart to figure out why. Every metal part inside was in pristine condition, including all the ones exposed to water, except one. The “spider arm,” which was what connected the rotating drum to its bearing, was so severely corroded that it literally broke into pieces:

    (Note: not my picture, but mine looked the same.)

    Samsung 100% used a corrosion-prone metal on that part on purpose.

    Unfortunately, I had already replaced the machine at that point and I didn’t take particular care when disassembling, so I wasn’t prepared to replace the spider arm and scrapped it instead. At least I’ve still got the drive motor to use for some project, eventually. I sure as Hell won’t buy a Samsung again, though!

    (In fact, considering the DRM on their phones, ads on their smart TVs, and other enshittification of the rest of their products, I will never buy anything from Samsung ever again in my life, and I recommend that nobody else does either.)


    My current washing machine is a Bosch front-loader that I bought used for very cheap. No idea how old it is in total, but I think I’ve probably had it for longer than the Samsung at this point and it has continued to work without problems.