ASK HN: Why has technology become so unreliable?

Posted by prmph 1 day ago

Even though I'm a software engineer with long experience with serious projects, I'm become so disillusioned with the whole thing nowadays.

Forget the ridiculous AI hype, forget about the lack of ethics and a moral compass; What's getting to me right now is the unreliability of it all. It seems like everything is held together with duct tape, and the tape is falling off.

Just in the last few months, all these have happened:

- My Macbook Air M1 has been acting up, refusing to charge in a stable manner. The audio jack is dead because apparently it is linked to the charging circuit. The screen sometimes shows a tint on a whim. Now it is dead and not charging at all. Granted, it has otherwise been a fine machine so far, and I've knocked it over a few times, but still. Even my old trusty 2014 Macbook Pro is still going strong, and I've abused that one much more.

- I also can't use my old Macbook Pro well, because the replacement Transcend 256GB SSD I put in it around 2020 is now failing, causing the machine to unpredictably become very slow. Also, the HP business keyboard I bought some years ago is suddenly now emitting spurious key signals, which MacOS (curse its over-reliance on weird key combinations and gestures) is interpreting to do wild things, like repeatedly showing the desktop while I'm working, or zooming in and out repeatedly.

- I thought I could use my old iPad in the meantime, but it can't connect to the WiFi hotspot on my iPhone, only a normal WiFi. I thought WiFi was just WiFi?

- The Dell travel hub I bought a few years ago seems to not work on a whim when I try to use it to make an HDMI connection between my Macbook and my Samsung monitor. About 50% of the time, it simply does not work, no matter what I do. I tried using my Roku ox to cast my screen, but the Roku remote suddenly does not work. I also tried my old Apple TV; its remote was also not working properly. After somehow getting to work to connect to WiFi, the Apple TV also does not work, giving some cryptic error messages.

- A few days ago, my iPhone 12 mini simply refused to charge from my USB-C to lightning cable, no matter what I did, for hours. I borrowed a similar cable from a friend, it also did not work. So my phone died when I needed it. When I got home, I was able to charge with a USB-A to lightning cable.

- Whenever I plug in the external Crucial SSD I bought a few years ago and partitioned, it does not show up in Finder on macOS. I almost always have to go in the Disk Utility to mount the partitions.

- My Sony Bravia TV died suddenly after like 7 years. I took it to some repairers; they said the entire screen is kaput.

All these have happened in the last three months. At this point I'm ready to give up; I plan to be very minimalist with my tech purchases (including Apple stuff), only getting the minimal stuff I need mostly for work, and keeping in mind that most of what I buy is throwaway, likely to stop working in a few years at most, and when you least expect that.

Comments

Comment by drweevil 1 day ago

> Forget the ridiculous AI hype, forget about the lack of ethics and a moral compass;

I’m afraid these things are related. Time-to-market and short-term profitability are paramount, trumping good customer relations.

My sister has an old Macbook Pro. I asked her to save it for me when she’s done with it, it’s such a solid machine. I still don’t have it. So, do you build something excellent that your customers love, that lasts a decade or more? Or do you build something that breaks in 3 years and allows you to sell a replacement? This is where the ethics and moral compass come in.

Comment by adrianwaj 1 day ago

Perhaps you're being targeted? That's why I like open-source and open standards. Wait, surely no one would put self-destruct modes into IT? Who could reliably confirm that?

Don't throw away. Keep for forensic analysis. It sounds paranoid, but those problems shouldn't really occur either.

Cynicism has its place too!

Any other things going wrong? Who are your "competitors" ?

"Managing Negative Anomalies" will be a (hypothetical) book for the ages - if it ever gets published. Also "Gangstalking 101 in the AI age" / "Winning Asymmetric Warfare" / "Leveraging Cowardice" / "Lie, Cheat, Steal and Gangstalk"

Comment by timpera 1 day ago

Poorly-built tech is obviously an issue, but unfortunately I think you might just be unlucky.

Comment by max-ramas 1 day ago

Problems usually happen all at once—that's Murphy's Law. But WiFi connection issues are definitely easier to fix than replacing equipment.

Comment by carlosjobim 10 hours ago

Do you live close to the beach? Humidity is an electronics killer.

Comment by eimrine 1 day ago

man Stoicism. Your proprietary shite has not "become" unreliable, it has been (effectively) intentionally created to be so.

Comment by prmph 1 day ago

This is what I'm starting to believe. Also, its maybe partly a systems issue: create a product with 1% tolerance for failures; if it has to interface and work with 5 other products with a similar failure rate, suddenly you have maybe 5% chance of failure.

In particular its crazy how connections and cables of all sorts are unreliable now, especially stuff that has to be plugged in and unplugged: USB, Bluetooth, etc.

Comment by eimrine 13 hours ago

USB-type A is close to unbreakable, maybe a little con is that what breaks is not the wire but the socket.

MicroUSB is my favorite standard but its wire breaks once per few months if to use it every day indoor and outdoor without care.

Second-best connection standard is those we have seen in Nokia S60 and in SE of pre-Android era. I hated those when I used it back in the time because it needed a regular cleening. But now I can see that both the socket and the wire are absolutely immortal, just the contact group hates any dirt.

Bluetooth is great because it works everywhere and consumes very little of energy, but sometimes it just refuses to work. Also proprietary nature gives me a hard time when I replaced the radio board in PC without reinstalling OS, all my devices just stop worked because the software stores somewhere the information about old connection which involved the previous radio board.

But the point of Stoicism is another one. Just live without as much as you can. Even a stainless steel shovel can break. Be OK with that, complains will not fix your hardware.

Comment by dkowalski 1 day ago

Shit breaks man. But i've been there too: worn down by the hype and it all seems related to you or somewhat more relevant because it happened in close succession. I am waiting for my Dell R-whatever 1U server to kick it any day now.

Minimalist is good, reducing footprint, doing more with less is good optimization. look for a different angle because it's really the thing you can do. Reply back if you want to chat more.

Comment by prmph 1 day ago

I hear you, but sometimes it is hard to understand why things just stop working for no apparent reason.

One more example: Whenever I navigate to the Hacker News login page in the mobile browsers on my old iPad, I see: “Sorry”, just that, no other explanation. So I am unable to login, but all other HM pages seem to display fine.

Comment by esperent 1 day ago

All except for one of those things are Apple products or things not working with Apple products. So maybe the problem is Apple?

As for a modern TV not working after 7 years, since the era of flat screen TVs started with plasmas, I think 7-10 years is the standard lifespan. Vacuum tubes lasted longer but that's a different technology.

Comment by lonelondonpanda 1 day ago

That honestly looks like you've been unlucky recently, but also the "Enshittification" of everything is real, and it's also a nice book by Cory Doctorow

Comment by Studui81Labs 5 hours ago

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Comment by Vahzryn 1 day ago

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