Comment by Animats
2 months ago
It's really frustrating. I currently want to buy a mattress and a refrigerator. The results for those are so awful as to be useless.
2 months ago
It's really frustrating. I currently want to buy a mattress and a refrigerator. The results for those are so awful as to be useless.
A lot of classic software essentially worked more like a database. In the last 10-15 years it's all moving to an algorithm.
Here is what I mean. Photos apps used to let you search through your photos using filters.
The same kinds of things are happening on the web which already happened to apps (desktop and mobile).
In the modern world, some marketing company wants to tell YOU which of YOUR photos you wanted, so they can sell you some prints, harvest your data, or something.
I would like any apps that have to do with collections of files, photos, music, etc to be more of a deterministic DATABASE and less of a nondeterministic algorithm.
> A lot of classic software essentially worked more like a database. In the last 10-15 years it's all moving to an algorithm.
You just described what I missed about the older software. Older software gives users control over sorting and show data in a tabular format. Modern software sorts data with an algorithm, with ads mixed in, and shows data in a card format, making it a lot less usable.
Exactly. My related observation: half of the SaaS products I see would be more useful and ergonomic for the user if they were implemented as an Excel sheet.
(I actually worked for one of such "better off as an .xls file" startup in the past, and its main competitor was an incumbent that sold the same stuff as an Excel extension. Trying to replace that with a React app is not a worthwhile use of life.)
Algorithms are fine. I'll happily apply the most advanced ones I can get. The problem is with who applies them to what - as you and GP said, it's about user control - or, currently, lack of.
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> Older software gives users control over sorting and show data in a tabular format
I'm old and tend to agree, but I suspect this is similar to "you used to have a knob on the TV that showed the channel it's on".
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Deterministic software puts the user in control of the product. Nondeterministic algos put the products in control of the user. Naturally companies want the latter and under guises of the ‘now better’ give the user worse and charge them more. A new generation isn’t even aware they’re being fleeced because they don’t have anything to compare with. And the frog boils slowly…
This entire thread reads like multiple people circling around product opportunities. There are users out there who want control and will pay for something no-frills. You might not get big VC money to build this, but you could build this.
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Reminds of Windows and search. I am not anymore even sure if there is some nice dialog where I could put some pattern and folder or list of folder and have it run through it for me...
> nice dialog where I could put some pattern and folder or list of folder and have it run through it for me
Everything from Voidtools is a dialog window, accepts patterns and is really fast.
https://www.voidtools.com/
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It's just enshitification. It's pretty funny when I search for putty and get the help doc, or my email client and get some windows setting option. I switched to powertoys search to get around it but wonder if anyone responsible for maintaining this feature actually uses it.
I got so frustrated trying to find some shelves recently that I ended up building them myself. It used to be that I could use Google to find some furniture stores, but now they all require me to throughly vet them to make sure they aren’t just reselling stuff from China or scam sites. Ikea still works, but that’s about it unless I go to big designer brands where a shelf will cost me a gazillion DKR. Unfortunately Ikea didn’t have any shelves that I liked, which is why I build them out of some wood I purchased in the local hardware store.
It’s so annoying that it’s almost impossible to find a legitimate store. Well maybe that’s not the correct way to word it. It’s so frustrating that it’s almost impossible to know whether or not the top shops you get in your search results are stores you want to use or not.
It's bad enough that manufacturers in China might start complaining about it as the best manufacturers there have a reputation to protect.
There is a mushroom grower in Shanghai, for instance, which grows very inexpensive but tasty beech mushrooms in a giant vertical farm where workers only touch the mushrooms with a forklift (see https://www.finc-sh.com/en/about.aspx#fincvideo)
There are numerous photography equipment vendors in China that make innovative and value-conscious products (like this inexpensive manual focus lens which takes pictures like you've never seen: https://7artisans.store/products/50mm-f1-05) that excel in customer support. They post real manuals to their web sites where you can easily find them, they correspond to you with email and not a ticket system behind a CAPTCHA, they don't have a huge list of unauthorized vendors for whom they won't support your product if you bought from them, etc. I hear back from them in 24 hours most of the time compared to an Italian vendor that makes great tripods but takes more like four days to respond.
If Chinese vendors are working that hard to get my business I very much want to support them.
I borrowed a Laowa 100mm macro lens (Venus Optics) for a little while. The only reason I didn't buy one is it disabled TTL since it lacked the required electronics.
https://www.venuslens.net/product/laowa-100mm-f-2-8-2x-macro...
There are also several Chinese graphics tablet companies that Wacom still doesn't realize it's in competition with.
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I was looking for a product recently. I wanted to buy from a UK business.
I found countless Web stores pretending to be UK businesses complete with founder stories and convincing copy... All turning out to be Chinese fronts.
They know the tide is against them and see starting to employ some shady tactics to get sales.
At the same time the big money in China is buying westernised historic brands to trade through.
I'm not anti-China for goods and services, but I am against the deceptive practices I've been seeing.
> they aren’t just reselling stuff from China
At this point everything you buy is from China in some way or the other. From iPhones to Nikes, from your electronic batteries to garlic. At this point stuff from China isn’t exactly a bad thing, considering how poorly things made elsewhere are doing. I have had so many issues with American made things that I almost prefer items made elsewhere. From cars to refrigerators.
I don’t mind products from China as long as they live up to EU regulations. If they are resold from places like Temu and similar then they’ve been found to be out right dangerous in some cases and in most they don’t live up to any of our safety standards. This isn’t an issue with “normal” stores which do their due diligence in their supply chain. Yes, it sometimes goes wrong, but it doesn’t happen often and when it does they inform you and recall products.
I can’t tell the authentic stores with legitimate quality control apart from the ones which will shut down and reopen with a new name next month.
Mattresses have been especially bad for a long time. For refrigerators, you can look at consumer reports and wirecutter--and you can reasonably do some evaluation at your local big box appliance store. I wouldn't buy based on a random web search though.
> Mattresses have been especially bad for a long time.
Yes. Refrigerators, at least, are made by a relatively small number of companies with established brands. They have EnergyStar ratings, and there's some objective evaluation.
For mattresses, the whole industry is a scam. Mattresses actually cost about US$50 to US$80 in bulk. Search Alibaba. Almost all consumer-facing companies are resellers. Markups are huge. Essentially all the mattress review sites are paid promotions.
I imagine that the logistics of moving a bunch of stupidly large items is also part of the markup.
Sure, I can buy a mattress from a factory in China, but getting it to my door is a whole other thing.
Last time I bought a mattress, admittedly, an overpriced one. I got to test out a sample at the store, and then a truck with two guys showed up, put on special booties to keep my house clean, carted away the old mattress, placed the new one, etc. I even took advantage of their 90 day guarantee to swap to a slightly less firm mattress, and the whole process was repeated for no cost.
Hiring a truck and two men to deliver a large item, and then haul another large item to the dump, and then pay the dump fee for a mattress (a lot more than standard dump fees), is something that would cost a few hundred dollars otherwise.
I'm sure that they made a profit off of me, but I have my doubts that there are riches to be made in the mattress industry given that there seems to be VERY low barriers to entry.
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> For mattresses, the whole industry is a scam.
Pillows as well. Mike Lindell (the My Pillows guy who sank himself with "election manipulation claims") didn't get his fortune from nothing. The markup is insane there as well... if you want decent pillows go to Ikea.
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Wirecutter's gone downhill after the NYT purchase as well. The Spruce seems somewhat better (but is also part of a huge web site family, so caveat emptor)
Either you do deep research, or you find a trusted friend to advise you. The Internet is largely useless at this point.
I think Wirecutter is still a decent source; they probably won't steer you too far wrong if you're not too picky. But nothing, including your trusted friends, is an all-knowing oracle if only because their tastes and priorities are probably different from yours. Certainly pre-Internet there were few enough reliable sources of recommendations--maybe some specialist magazines but even those were far from perfect.
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> or you find a trusted friend to advise you
I think there's an opportunity here for a review platform that only shows you reviews from individuals that you personally trust. "Find a trusted friend" but for the internet.
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It has always felt to me that Wirecutter focuses on only one end of the Pareto curve ("what is the very best XXXX that money can buy, within reason") and ignores the middle of the curve where most people are actually shopping ("what is the best XXXX that I can get for $XXX"). It also seems to reliably ignore brands from Mainland China (Hisense, Midea, etc). I guess It makes obvious sense to court rich (or at least price-insensitive) readers.
Whether or not it started that way, yes, it makes sense to recommend brands that New York Times subscribers are familiar and comfortable with. I'll buy a GE Profile refrigerator or Bosch dishwasher. Not some Chinese brand I've never heard of and have no idea what the service situation will be with. Makes perfect sense to me and I'm in that demographic. Especially with major appliances and things I can buy at the local big box store seems to make perfect sense to not buy things you have to go to Alibaba to obtain.
It's not about being price insensitive but recommending things that are relatively mainstream and that don't seem risky, especially for major purchases that have to be installed and potentially serviced.
(Did have a service issue on my recent GE Profile refrigerator but it took one phone call and was a no-brainer.)
But you're probably right in general. Wirecutter mostly doesn't recommend unknowns it thinks are potentially bargains. Which I probably wouldn't do in its position either.
Their top pick for an air conditioner is a Midea: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-air-conditio...
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That's not true at all.
They usually have a midrange "top pick", followed by a "budget pick" and an "upgrade pick".
It's not "the best money can buy" at all -- that's what they reserve their "upgrade pick" for. E.g. look at humidifiers:
https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/the-best-humidifi...
Also it's full of Chinese brands. The top two humidifiers are Levoit, from Shenzen. Or if I look at dehumidifiers, Midea is their #1 pick:
https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-dehumidifier...
So I don't think anything you said is true. Maybe for some individual products, but certainly not for the site as a whole.
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Check out Tech Gear Lab. (I have met the owner)
They are a great review site, and normally do categories like "absolute best", "best value", and "best budget".
They are very thorough, and always buy their own stuff, never take sponsorships or freebies.
It's easy, browse to GE on big box hardware website. Select the model you want. Avoid everything else.
One problem with this kind of strategy is that brands often become enshrined when you aren’t looking. While the last time I was looking for kitchen appliances GE was pretty good, how do I know that in the past few years they haven’t been bought out by a private equity firm and started having their brand slapped on random low quality products?
I might add a couple other brands but, yeah, you probably won't go too wrong.
if there is a trial period better get cheapest and highly reviewed mattress. Even if it's a scam you get to know it within x days and can return it.
I try to buy natural materials like latex or cotton - which cannot and are not mass produced (difficult to roll and transport from across the world)
Saatva mattresses raised the bar. They are amazing.
Try visiting a hotel that uses them, for reference.
If I want to buy something like that I set an alert on slickdeals.net Like everything else it used to be better years ago, but there are still some genuine great deals and lots of insight if you’re willing to sift through the comments.
When I was looking for a fridge a year or so ago I heard that Samsung was trying to fix their bad appliance rep and quality of parts had gone up, but I went with a different brand.
There’s been an issue the last few years of fiberglass escaping through the cover on memory foam mattresses. If I was mattress shopping I’d probably still get foam, but look for one without fiberglass or find some kind of allergy cover to at least contain it.
The only signal I use is warranty. So I tend to go to Costco, and avoid Samsung.
It's not a bad idea to pair that with lawsuits related to such warranties.
Costco and Samsung are big enough that you can achieve reasonable signal.
When your local car dealer offers you a full drivetrain warranty though (assuming it's a full warranty and not one of the other ways people are often fleeced), will they honor it when the lemon they sold you breaks the first time? the 2nd? the 3rd? Will they, instead, note that most people buying that car don't have much money (or, if you used any form of dealer financing, know for a fact you don't have much money) and require you to retain a lawyer and sue them to recover any damages?
Not sure if your car example was meant to be general or specific, but Lemon Laws are extremely common across the states and are very easy to take advantage of without needing to retain a lawyer. For example, in Texas you fill out a form, pay a $35 filing fee, then bring your evidence to mediation.
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Samsung appliances are awful. I'd rather do my own dishes or put my food in a cooler.
I got a mattress last year using Consumer Reports rec for most the mattress with the least synthetic chemicals. I am not going to say its name lest it look like I am shilling for them. I will say, it has been great.
If it's in a verifiable external source (Consumer Report for instance, not some lady's Amazon affiliate links blog), then I would say it's never shilling.
Having bought a mattress recently, it might be worth going to a mattress store. The sales process sucks, but if you want to find a mattress you like, it's hard to beat actually laying down on one.
It also can help you identify the kind you like (coil, latex, etc) and composition you like (layer style and thickness).
Then you just search for those two things online.
That's how I found an amazing natural latex cooling mattress online.
And the best part is that most online mattress retailers have 90 day try out periods. We didn't like our first one, and instead of having us ship it back they told us to donate it and sent us the next to try. So now we have a really nice spare bedroom mattress as well as the perfect mattress in our bedroom.
This is common. Most online retailers don't have the means to recover and remediate used mattresses (if it's even legal). Most are essentially just branded drop-shipping companies hocking products manufactured in Asia (often from the same factories, with minor differences between "models"). If you have the money to purchase the mattress initially, then you can just keep doing 90-day trials until you get one that the seller asks you to dispose of yourself when you try to return it. Bam, free mattress. Manufacturers and retailers can afford to do this because the markup on materials+labor+shipping is insane.
I'm surprised that people haven't caught on yet. Maybe something to do with the nature of the purchase. In a better world, even a "luxury" mattress would cost a couple hundred bucks, at most, but then be extremely difficult to return.
I like how you donated it to the spare bedroom lol
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I want to add in case people think this is strictly a Google thing. DDG is equally terrible at finding this kind of thing. I didn't realize until I read this thread that I was suffering this same kind of issue. Its so painful trying to find on the internet.
Is DDG not just a whitelabel Bing?
Wait, is it? I didn't think it was..
It’s the same for pretty much any product category now. Affiliate marketing and Google using its monopoly to prioritize ads over search results has basically ruined search. It’s in their best interest to lower the quality of results because the ads get more useful comparatively.
Gmail is next I predict. They have a monopoly over consumer email, so it’s revenue growth just waiting to be unlocked when times get tough. A higher percentage of your inbox is going to become paid Gmail ads and there’s nothing you’re going to do about it. Nobody wants to go to the hassle of changing their email address (the amount of boomers still on Yahoo mail is staggering).
sleeplikethedead.com
Fantastic site. There's a Mattress Selector which seems just grand [1] Will definitely be using this next time I'm in the market.
[1] https://www.sleeplikethedead.com/mattress-selector.html
Try naplab.
How do we know you're not an ad?
May I ask why you use search engine for buying something like a mattress or refrigerator? I dont mean to sound that as an insult. I'm genuinely curious. I or anyone I know of will just go to a nearby store and checkout these items to buy. For things like these one would already know who sells these items, even online. So why not directly checkout those stores, either online or physical?