[HN Gopher] A database of broken things to identify common failu...
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A database of broken things to identify common failure modes and
how to fix them
Author : hubraumhugo
Score : 245 points
Date : 2022-02-14 17:53 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.failscout.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.failscout.co)
| rogerbinns wrote:
| I'm a fan of the exit review. Something that is no longer being
| used (for any reason) and there is now perspective. I first saw
| bunnie do it at https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=242 quoting
| the first two paragraphs:
|
| > I think it's time to start a new kind of gadget review: the
| exit review.
|
| > Gadgets always seem to arrive on the scene with a lot of splash
| and hype, but rarely do you find an article telling you how the
| gadget fared in Real Life. The Exit Review is something I'm going
| to try doing every time I retire a major gadget of mine; the idea
| of it is to reflect upon how the gadget performed over its
| duration of service. Of course, reviews like this are all
| hindsight, so they don't drive sales -- which probably explains
| why nobody does them, because there's no money to be made doing
| them. However, as a design engineer I think there are lessons to
| be learned through reflection, and as a consumer I believe that
| apples don't fall to far from the tree -- a good gadget maker
| will get my business again, and a bad one will never see another
| dime from me.
| yewenjie wrote:
| Should also have some way to filter via country/ location.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| It appears that submitted data is not available on some open
| license, right?
| hubraumhugo wrote:
| That's definitely the plan. Since I'm not very familiar with
| licensing, what would you suggest? Creative Commons?
| matkoniecz wrote:
| I would suggest CC0 for both images and database - crediting
| authors of images and so on seems hassle that noone would do
| anyway, would impact just people strongly caring about
| copyright.
|
| If less permissive license is preferred and you want
| attribution requirements etc - then CC-BY-SA on some specific
| version for images? And ODBL for database?
|
| Note that you need explicit agreement from contributors to
| have things on specific license, so it is a good idea to
| resolve licensing quickly.
|
| Warning: I am not a lawyer
| bogwog wrote:
| I don't think attribution is a bad idea here, since it
| would lead people back to the site.
|
| Were it CC0, anyone could just put up a clone of the site
| content under a different license to steal traffic,
| possibly even for nefarious purposes (e.g. maybe a pissed
| off manufacturer wants to take over via SEO shenanigans)
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| Brilliant!
|
| Nit: it's not clear where to put repair procedures if you're
| reporting something you've already fixed.
| obeleh wrote:
| I expected some kind of SRE platform. An image of a shoe was not
| what I expected :P
| laurent92 wrote:
| In fact, it's a good example of how design solves something. An
| upfront photo does a much better job than showing you a
| searchbox (after all, it's a database so it should start with a
| search box, shouldn't it?) and letting you discover that there
| are no stacktraces in this workshop.
| colinprince wrote:
| Those boots are failing in a really crappy way, are they
| counterfeit or something?
| ReleaseCandidat wrote:
| No, that's normal for 'better' soles made of PU:
|
| https://stories.hanwag.com/en/hiking-boots-sole-coming-
| off-w...
| owenfi wrote:
| Recently had an open neutral event that took out or hampered a
| handful of electronics in my home. Surge protectors largely did
| their job, and I learned quite a bit about protection and repair
| in the process. Luckily I was able to find a replacement
| power/fuse box for my on demand water heater pretty cheaply, but
| also fixing it would have been doable (including a temporary
| workaround).
|
| I also recently (finally) refurbished a vintage fender amp (new
| plate resistors, new electrolytic capacitors, updated power
| wiring to be safer and have a standby switch, fixed a factory
| error with swapping a filter resistor position from the schematic
| (not sure how much of an impact this had as I haven't done the
| full circuit analysis). It's sounding great now, and I'm
| ecstatic! Being able to fix things is really gratifying.
|
| I've long been interested in the premise of "lifetime reviews"
| like if I graphed satisfaction/happiness with a particular
| product vs the duration of ownership. Some things start out high,
| and rapidly fall off, others start middle and gradually glow as
| you learn to appreciate their choices or robustness. New fridge
| is great, but then the ice maker makes a puddle in the container
| and it goes rapidly down hill. So along with the other
| suggestions for ongoing updates, something like this where I
| could periodically track various (or a single) metric over the
| life of an object would be helpful. Aggregating by brand and
| years of purchase could help see the reliability trend for given
| appliances/similar.
|
| Incorporating more repair details similar to ifixit seems
| helpful.
|
| I'm not sure I see the business model, so maybe it's open source
| or Patreon-sequence, or you've thought of something I haven't.
| Best of luck!
| Nouser76 wrote:
| I absolutely love this! I've been trying to get more into re-use
| of my existing possessions, and this is helpful for fixing
| whatever breaks.
|
| I think it would be useful for answers/fixes to have a permanent
| vs temporary classification, because there are some problems
| where you can it permanently at a higher input or do a band-aid
| fix you re-apply later but that takes 1/100th the time. For
| example, I had a Razer Deathadder mouse where the scroll wheel
| would double-scroll and continue scrolling after I stopped
| scrolling. I temporarily fixed it by shooting some compressed air
| in the scroll wheel's housing, but this had to be repeated maybe
| 6-10mo later. I could have disassembled my mouse, maybe done
| something to the PCB or switches inside, and permanently fixed it
| but that's a lot more work and more outside materials.
|
| Adding this to my bookmark bar, looking forward to consuming and
| contributing in the future :)
| switch007 wrote:
| I love this!
| themmes wrote:
| Absolutely love this! Added three products that broke on me
| recently (two of which I was able to fix).
|
| Feature request; flag bad/nonsense posts. e.g.
| https://www.failscout.co/details/620aad6e8833e70009e1524f
| drewcoo wrote:
| So sort of a Consumer Reports for social media?
| paxys wrote:
| This is fantastic. Some random suggestions:
|
| - Searching for a product should be the primary action on the
| home page, not hidden behind a "browse" button.
|
| - It's weird that the highlight example front and center of your
| home page isn't even a real listing.
|
| - I'm not sure what the relation between the website and
| subreddit is. If someone posts something on Reddit, you probably
| don't have the right to republish it on your site.
|
| - Probably too late for this feedback, but if the purpose of this
| site is to build a repair catalog then associating it with the
| word "fail" is probably too negative. You are simply inviting
| people to complain about crappy things they bought.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| Front loader washing machines seem to be nearly unrepairable when
| the main bearing goes out.
|
| We were quoted $400 labor plus around $800 for a complete new
| drum assembly when the bearing went out in our 7 year old
| machine. When asked if we could replace just the bearing, they
| said labor would be around $600 and $75 for the bearing, but they
| wouldn't warranty the work unless we replaced the entire
| assembly.
|
| In _theory_ , I could have replaced the bearing on my own, but
| getting help to move it to the garage, spending a day or two
| disassembling the entire machine to replace the bearing and then
| hoping I could get it all put back together was a much bigger
| repair than I was willing to do on my own.
|
| I ended up paying $900 to replace the whole machine with a newer,
| more energy efficient model.
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| I love the idea but the crowdsource quality seems perhaps
| problematic:
|
| > The cables would repeatedly break, and had to be replaced every
| few months. Eventually the headphones stopped working in one ear.
|
| At what point does self-repair get tagged as the culprit?
|
| Anyway, I know this is a bit critical, presenting it in a
| problem-solving way.
| bogwog wrote:
| Are you saying that the headphones broke because the customer
| did a bad soldering job when replacing the cables? Do you know
| for certain that the cables aren't actually replaceable without
| soldering?
| gumby wrote:
| I grew up fixing everything -- darning holes, repairing
| appliances, fixing furniture etc. It was super annoying as a kid
| but it seemed we had no choice. It's not like the neighbours
| could afford to do otherwise either.
|
| As an adult I appreciate it -- often it is easier to fix
| something than to replace it. But yesterday I chucked out a
| laundry sorter because the repair cost was higher than simply
| getting a new one. I found it difficult to do.
|
| Edit: I repaired a sentence with an improper verb tense.
| hubraumhugo wrote:
| Good feedback. I think it's worth considering that most people
| aren't able to properly diagnose or troubleshoot something
| that's broken; especially electronics or mechanical things.
|
| I'll try to add questions that will prompt users to reconsider
| their submission and give readers an idea if this is a legit
| failure.
|
| Questions could include:
|
| - Did the item break during or after the warranty period?
|
| - Have you contacted the manufacturer for help?
|
| - Would this problem prevent you from purchasing something else
| from this brand?
|
| - Have you searched for reports of this issue online? What
| condition was the item in prior to this particular issue?
| gumby wrote:
| > I think it's worth considering that most people aren't able
| to properly diagnose or troubleshoot something that's broken;
| especially electronics or mechanical things.
|
| This is quite sad to consider. For a device like a telephone
| or laptop it's quite understandable: adding the affordance
| for many (though not all) repairs would add cost and decrease
| reliability.
|
| But there's a kind of learned helplessness in not being able
| to dismantle and consider something manufactured. I'm a
| backpacker and the lines between make/modify/improvise/repair
| are often hard to find. And I think it's also a kind of
| stance: the same self confidence and debugging perspective
| are required to fix a tent and figure out who should be
| president.
| ollifi wrote:
| I fix some stuff even if it's more expensive than buying new
| one. It's nice to keep old things going, not to produce waste
| and often times the new thing is cheap because it's not 'made
| the way they used to make them'
| [deleted]
| scotty79 wrote:
| If electronics doesn't work just swap out electrolytic
| capacitors. I fixed few things (monitors) without knowing what's
| wrong just by doing that.
| hubraumhugo wrote:
| We never hear about broken and worn-out products. Pretty much all
| gear nowadays is baseline ok, it's the negatives that really set
| things apart.
|
| For once, let's turn it all upside down:
|
| We should build a collection about how things break - review
| broken and worn-out products to teach how to identify cheap
| products. That's why I built failscout.co
|
| It's simple: You upload your broken products and quickly describe
| how long you owned them, how often you used them, and where they
| failed.
|
| Everything breaks eventually, but when it does, can you easily
| repair/fix it? That's why users can suggest a fix to a
| broken/inconvenienced product.
|
| What could we do with all this data?
|
| - Identifying the common failure modes of product
|
| - Collect fixes for common product failures
|
| - See if a product's quality has changed or gone down at some
| point
|
| - Add a simple JSON API so other sites and projects can leverage
| our data.
| WalterGR wrote:
| What a great idea!
| wsinks wrote:
| Absolutely love this! Looking forward to using it.
| sydbarrett74 wrote:
| Throwing in my kudos. This is such a needed kind of site. What
| is your business model? If you can't spill the beans due to
| seeking funding, I understand completely.
| lachenmayer wrote:
| Love this idea. I could imagine this being a great way to alert
| people to product recalls, or even start class action lawsuits
| in extremely serious cases.
| karmanyaahm wrote:
| > - Identifying the common failure modes of product - Collect
| fixes for common product failures
|
| Are these features basically like iFixit for non-electronics?
| DrBoring wrote:
| Thank you for building failscout.
|
| I had a similar web-app-idea after my the computer on my
| Kenmore dishwasher broke after 13 months of use.
|
| My goal was to identify products that have a catastrophic
| failure after an unreasonably short amount of time / pressure
| the manufacturers into improving quality control.
|
| Tangent:
|
| I also had an idea for people to log instances of items stolen
| from their luggage with the goal of identifying airports where
| this is frequent.
|
| I had this idea after flying into Paris and finding my
| Leatherman multi-tool gone. After some research, I suspect that
| it wasn't actually stolen, but legally confiscated because it
| had a knife and France has laws against folding knives.
| anonu wrote:
| > We never hear about broken and worn-out products.
|
| I disagree. When I read reviews (mostly on Amazon) I click on
| the 1 stars and read those first. Those will mostly all be
| about how crappy the products are.
| PeterisP wrote:
| That's a different aspect - people write reviews about
| products that are crappy immediately; however, this is about
| products which are fine initially, but get broken or worn out
| later, possibly years later.
| ephbit wrote:
| Awesome .. I had pretty much the same idea a few years ago .. the
| name I came up with was .. brokeipedia ;-)
| boatsie wrote:
| I have an alternate way of figuring out whether or not products
| are of good quality and long lasting---buying used. You can
| generally tell what is high quality and long lasting because
| older products that still work are both listed there and priced
| relatively expensively.
| rinron wrote:
| i love the idea of the site but i would like to see one change.
| Instead of adding a product when it breaks, let someone add it
| when they buy it then send a yearly reminder of the products they
| have added and if they want to update their status. this would
| have the benefit of: -tracking % of product failures -finding out
| if they function longer then they are needed. -finding out which
| products outlast others before they get to the point failure
| -potentially notify/warn users of potential issues that come up
| to before theirs breaks
|
| I think a lot of people dont care enough to upload info just to
| help product designers, some will do it to help out other
| consumers, but if you can provide more value to the person with
| the product you want info on that should get you the most
| engagement.
| hubraumhugo wrote:
| I'll definitely add such a feature soon. Even if things don't
| break - waiting a minimum of 6+ months or 50--100 minimum uses
| really makes a review relevant. Recurring reviews could be a
| good way to track the whole lifecycle of a product.
|
| After every year, the reviewer will receive an automatic
| reminder like "hey there, did anything break or deteriorate?"
|
| Letting the user set the frequency of reminders could make
| sense since it will vary between product categories. In
| addition, if the user has nothing to add, a simple click on a
| button "Condition unchanged" should be enough.
| anonu wrote:
| So theres an entry in here that says "Windows: used for 20 years,
| daily and everything is broken with it".
|
| This is very much a 90s and aughts trope that's long been dead. I
| dont think I've had a BSOD in 6+ years now...
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(page generated 2022-02-14 23:00 UTC)