This is why we can't have nice things

8.5 million people watch you, and you planted a seed today in their mind about right to repair. Thank you.

The thing I hate most about planned obsolescence is that it assumes we have endless resources. It's terrible for our planet.

I work for an unnamed software company X. When a new extremely fast solution was found to one of the algorithms, sold to customers, management decided to put sleep() function in some places to throttle the perofmance, so it matches the old algorithm. They said: "we will remove some throttles each quarter release and charge for the speedup we're doing".

A JD tractor my grandfather owned back in the 40’s is to this day running strong. It’s a beast that has outlasted three tractors I have bought since the late 90’s.

A GM engineer once told me, "it's easy to make a car last forever, getting one to break down in 7 years is the trick"

As an electrical engineer, I can assure you... We are literally educated in school about how to design for the desired failure timeframe. It seems criminal

We bought our house in 1999, and it came with an old brown electric stove, built by American Motors Corporation sometime in the 1970's or so. It has outlasted all the other appliances we bought when we moved in.

My parents bought a house in 1963 that was built in 1928 from the original owners. The front entrance had an unusually shaped light bulb. It must have been the original bulb from when the home was built. It was only turned on occasionally. When my Mom sold the house, we unscrewed that bulb and it’s installed in a closet at my sister’s home. It still works. It’s not continuously on of course. But that makes it even more special because turning it on and off weakens the tungsten more than keeping it on! I think the tungsten filament must be quite strong and thick. Yep, they don’t make things like they used to sure applies to this light bulb. 💡

When I was a young boy and my Grandfather complained "They keep making this junk cheaper so you have to keep buying it"... he must have said that a hundred times to me over the years... turns out Grandpa knew what the hell he was talking about.

The saddest example is that of school textbooks, each new edition has the most negligible changes in content.

I went full LED early about 10 years ago, and as you said, didn't expect to ever have to change them. But I have had to change some bulbs out twice already. And some of these were name brands (Philips, CREE), and other cheap brands performed about equally well. I suspect there's some planned obsolescence in LED bulbs, too. Regardless, their low power consumption and cooler temps make them great, but I wish they lasted longer.

My grandparents have a lightbulb in a sealed housing in their shower. They bought the house in 1965 and it was bult in 1946. They have never changed the bulb and it still works. Use it every time they use the shower.

>makes a bulb that lasts forever >sell it to everyone in the world >no one needs any bulb anymore >leaves

My aunt moved into her family home in 1919 at age 14 and had a 1913 Edison light bulb on her second story stair well. She lived in the house untill her death in 2002. She replaced that bulb a year before her death and she gave it to me and I have kept it right up to writing this comment and the other day plugged it in to see if it's still works. Bright as ever! Going on 108 years old.

We're no longer wild animals where every day is a fight to survive, but we sure have made a great attempt at making it as depressing and sinister a reality as possible

As my prof used to say "only an engineer can build a bridge that just barely holds up"

Imagine the trillions of tons of unnecessary garbage planned obsolescence has caused our planet, the poisoning of our rivers and air and soil... It's so backward and disgusting. 😞

I studied Latin in high school, and there is a passage, in the Satyricon, in which Caesar is presented by a material that seems glass, as it is transparent, but when the artisan that presented it throws it on the ground and it does not break, instead he picks it up and works it back in the original shape, like it was plastic. In the story, Caesar asks the guy if someone else knows that secret, when he says no one does, Caesar has the man killed and the object destroyed in fear that gold would lose value. Guess the Man in the White Suit wasn’t the first story like this!

The fact that this video opened up with a Harbor Freight ad is the most beautiful irony available on the planet

As a service technician I can agree with planned obsolescence. Late 1990s and early 2000s vehicles were built with durability in mind where as vehicles from 2005 on up seem to have lesser quality components in them. Iirc I believe I read somewhere that dealerships would expect the average consumer to trade in around 100k miles for a new vehicle.