Does my country being destroyed because of other dipshits freaking out about them count as impacting my life?

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.

This you?

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.

Much better!

The key is that describing a Free Software repository as a “store” is a bad idea because not being a store is what makes it categorically superior to all stores.

Absolutely not, because the concept itself doesn’t make any damn sense. A service that aggregates a bunch of Free Software in one place is called a “repository,” not a “store!”

The framing of issues is important, and to cede control of that framing to proprietary software publishers by adopting their terminology would be a mistake.

Peloton is overpriced to the point of being predatory, but at least the concept of an exercise bike in your house makes reasonable sense. Or at least, it’s no worse than mounting your real bike to a stationary trainer.

What really boggles my mind is things like “spin classes” and exercise bikes at gyms, where you waste time/money/pollution/road capacity driving a car to a place, pay to ride a fake bike there, and then drive home again. If you’d just ridden a real bike instead, you’d get the same benefit with both less money and less time.

Peloton. An expensive exercise bike that doesn’t work without an expensive subscription, and which has now even resorted to trying to discourage resale of used machines by extorting an activation fee from second-hand buyers.

I think what OP is asking about is less about loss-leaders and more about vendor lock-in.

Admittedly, I don’t know a whole lot about what instruction set features the ESP32 actually has, but isn’t an embedded processor that small by nature lacking in things like, say, a memory management unit? Don’t take this the wrong way, but the notion of making a general-purpose OS that relies on cooperative multitasking seems a bit sketchy at a time when you could just spend an extra buck to move up to something like a Raspberry Pi Zero that can run a proper memory-safe and preemptive OS.

I would go with linoleum but i don’t think i can convince my husband that it’s not the same as vinyl.

“Vinyl is bad because it’s made of petroleum, whereas real linoleum is made of plants and is therefore more eco-friendly” isn’t sufficient?

(I have to admit, the other advantages of linoleum over vinyl are… not much.)

Sealed concrete and terrazzo are good choices too, but IMO aren’t the best because the slightly softer surfaces of linoleum and cork might save you from dropped dishes or cookware shattering or denting, if you’re lucky.

IMO the best flooring for kitchens is cork or real linoleum (not vinyl).

My secret sexist opinion is: Fill your DBA team with women, lead by a woman, and then just stand back and turn them loose. I absolutely love all female DBA teams because they kick fucking ass always. [edit I’m a cis wm 50s for context]

Every woman developer or QA person I’ve ever worked with has been an absolute rockstar.

My theory is that this is because the industry is sexist enough that all the women who aren’t like that don’t find it worth their while to persist at it and find other careers. : (

I’m sad that I missed my opportunity to take a PE exam in software engineering.

What is this, an I Love Lucy/Green Acres crossover episode?

Ah, right.

I’m an emacs user, so that’s why I didn’t remember the vi bindings accurately.

They should spin off an independent organization hosted somewhere overseas with different laws (or on the dark web) to archive stuff like this.