<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>crooked-v</author><text>&amp;gt; all of it is garbage compared to appliances from 20 yrs ago&lt;p&gt;There were garbage appliances 20 years ago, too... you just don&amp;#x27;t see them around anymore because they already broke down long ago.</text><parent_chain><item><author>kirse</author><text>The thing is, all of it is garbage compared to appliances from 20 yrs ago before mfgr&amp;#x27;s started designing everything to planned obsolescence and IoT.  American GE at least has an extensive parts network in country, while if your LG&amp;#x2F;Samsung breaks at this point you are basically SOL.  On top of that the COVID-19 supply shock issues have exacerbated this situation.</text></item><item><author>imglorp</author><text>Similar experience with a Miele. Inside it&amp;#x27;s about 4x more complicated than an American model: far more engineering around sensors and actuators and quality, while the American ones are designed with short lifetime and manufacturing costs as goals. Fortunately it came with a circuit diagram which made it easy to find a bad relay which had a generic replacement. Back in business for more years.&lt;p&gt;ps. Just remembered, that Miele also had a diagnostic&amp;#x2F;debug mode to tell you what system was faulting.  Try that with your shitty builder&amp;#x27;s grade Whirlpool.</text></item><item><author>boatsie</author><text>My $1200 7 year old Miele dishwasher stopped working a few months ago, with the “Intake&amp;#x2F;drain” light on red when starting a load. Dishwashers during the pandemic were sort of scare due to massive home remodeling demand, and the professional repair people would have cost $300 just to diagnose, so I went to try to fix it myself.&lt;p&gt;It turns out the water intake valve solenoid was jammed or gummed up somehow, as applying 120V to it directly had no effect. I went to find an OE replacement online only to find that they are $580, sold by only 2 places, and sold out. You need to be a certified Miele technician to buy them.&lt;p&gt;Given I knew the specifications from the model number and the printing on the solenoid itself wrt voltage and flow rate, I bought the cheapest replacement I could find on Amazon, spliced the wires into the existing harness and boom, it worked perfectly.&lt;p&gt;One thing I didn’t understand was why there were so many different inlet valves that all did the same thing. There were 120V AC and 12V DC versions but other than that the only difference was the water connector&amp;#x2F;dongle&amp;#x2F;bracket. It seemed absurd there would be so many but the reality is that actual solenoid is super generic and should only cost $20 and should be made to fit them all. Of course nobody really repairs things these days but I think this is the reason why. Even when the part could easily be standardized and replaced&amp;#x2F;repaired like a light bulb, companies want you to buy a whole new one.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Bob Cassette Rewinder: Hacking Detergent DRM</title><url>https://github.com/dekuNukem/bob_cassette_rewinder</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>reaperducer</author><text>&lt;i&gt;American GE at least has an extensive parts network in country&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Maytag, too. I had no problem finding Maytag parts recently.</text><parent_chain><item><author>kirse</author><text>The thing is, all of it is garbage compared to appliances from 20 yrs ago before mfgr&amp;#x27;s started designing everything to planned obsolescence and IoT.  American GE at least has an extensive parts network in country, while if your LG&amp;#x2F;Samsung breaks at this point you are basically SOL.  On top of that the COVID-19 supply shock issues have exacerbated this situation.</text></item><item><author>imglorp</author><text>Similar experience with a Miele. Inside it&amp;#x27;s about 4x more complicated than an American model: far more engineering around sensors and actuators and quality, while the American ones are designed with short lifetime and manufacturing costs as goals. Fortunately it came with a circuit diagram which made it easy to find a bad relay which had a generic replacement. Back in business for more years.&lt;p&gt;ps. Just remembered, that Miele also had a diagnostic&amp;#x2F;debug mode to tell you what system was faulting.  Try that with your shitty builder&amp;#x27;s grade Whirlpool.</text></item><item><author>boatsie</author><text>My $1200 7 year old Miele dishwasher stopped working a few months ago, with the “Intake&amp;#x2F;drain” light on red when starting a load. Dishwashers during the pandemic were sort of scare due to massive home remodeling demand, and the professional repair people would have cost $300 just to diagnose, so I went to try to fix it myself.&lt;p&gt;It turns out the water intake valve solenoid was jammed or gummed up somehow, as applying 120V to it directly had no effect. I went to find an OE replacement online only to find that they are $580, sold by only 2 places, and sold out. You need to be a certified Miele technician to buy them.&lt;p&gt;Given I knew the specifications from the model number and the printing on the solenoid itself wrt voltage and flow rate, I bought the cheapest replacement I could find on Amazon, spliced the wires into the existing harness and boom, it worked perfectly.&lt;p&gt;One thing I didn’t understand was why there were so many different inlet valves that all did the same thing. There were 120V AC and 12V DC versions but other than that the only difference was the water connector&amp;#x2F;dongle&amp;#x2F;bracket. It seemed absurd there would be so many but the reality is that actual solenoid is super generic and should only cost $20 and should be made to fit them all. Of course nobody really repairs things these days but I think this is the reason why. Even when the part could easily be standardized and replaced&amp;#x2F;repaired like a light bulb, companies want you to buy a whole new one.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Bob Cassette Rewinder: Hacking Detergent DRM</title><url>https://github.com/dekuNukem/bob_cassette_rewinder</url></story>