Planned Obsolescence

My 12 year old Whirlpool front loading washing machine died last week.  It stopped working with error code E 28 (which means "communication failure").  According to online sources, this could be as simple as a loose connection, but was more likely to require one or two circuit boards, the central controller and the motor controller board.

This washing machine, which I may have even praised earlier in this blog, had never had any issues before.  

Some friends bought a larger model Whirlpool front loader and had many problems, finally giving up after the first expensive repair didn't last very long.  They used the machine for a total of less than 5 years if I remember correctly.  They then bought the cheapest Amana top loader to replace it.  I figured mine was better, possibly, because it was made in Germany (likely the former East Germany where Whirlpool bought a factory).

Well now it doesn't appear that any consumer Whirlpool washers are made in Germany any more.  And Consumer Reports rates Whirlpool 3/5 in reliability, while rating Samsung 4/5 and LG 5/5.  So it appears that LG are now the machines to get, so that's what I'm buying to replace my Whirlpool.

I was also more than a bit miffed that after waiting one week for service from the Whirlpool authorized service in San Antonio, they cancelled my appointment with one day's notice because they hadn't received the "likely" replacement part(s) from Whirlpool.  They suggested I make another appointment another week out, but I suspect there was no guarantee they'd even have the part then.

Finally it bugs me that a washing machine should die from a circuit board problem.  My nearly top-of-the-line washer had many special features including fan, sensing, steam, and sterilize.  It must be chock full of electromechanical parts whose long term performance probably cannot be assured.  But the factors involved in circuit board design are fairly straight forward.  Most electronic components have predictable lifespan of 20-100 years, which is also probably thermally derated.  Just about any circuit can be made to last about 20 years before the most failure prone parts--electrolytic capacitors--would be likely to fail.  UNLESS the thermal properties are not fully accounted for.

So any decent electronic engineer could design a circuit board that would last 20 years, whereas electromechanical parts are not as predictable.  In my mind there's just no excuse for a circuit board failing a complex and expensive system in just 12 years.  (And even less excuse for failing in 5 years.)

Furthermore of course a circuit board will be entirely proprietary (which computer chips and programming nowadays too) and so it will only be obtainable from the factory and as long as the factory chooses to support it.

Now it also seems that the more complex a machine, the more likely it is to fail earlier.   But it often seems that the failures found on the complicated top-of-the-line models are the same as the failures which found on the cheap models.  For example, say you have a fancy car with power door locks, power windows and automatic climate control.  You might think that would lead to reliability problems.  But the power windows and the automation part of the climate control rarely fail on fancy cars.  Instead, it's the usual stuff that fails on all models regardless of how fancy.

When and if we ever create a Sustainable Society, planned obsolescence will not be acceptable.  Stuff should be designed to be easily repairable with generic parts.

Here's an interesting article about washing machine reliability.  Their top recommendation for longevity is the Speed Queen toploader, and they talk a lot about Speed Queen and how top loaders will last longer.  But they also recommend the exact same LG model I have decided to buy as their top front loader recommendation, the WM4000HWA.  The Speed Queen frontloader costs over twice as much and actually seems to have slightly higher service calls, though it might be repairable for longer.  Like me they are infuriated that washing machines should have so many computer module failures when well designed computer modules should last decades.

Unhelpful Rejections

Earlier this year I tried to make my second submission of a music album to Routenote, which has a unique and useful "free" streaming submission service.   I worried that my first submission might not meet their standards but it sailed right through, encouraging me to do a second album and possibly meet my longstanding goal of 5 album submissions before the year end.

I had previously released 3 out of 4 of the songs on this otherwise new album on an earlier album I had released on Tunecore ten years ago.  That earlier album had used on my first and last names as artist name.  I have recently decided to include my middle name for uniqueness, so I did that for this new album and every song on it.

I figured I could get away with this change for several reasons.  For one, it's the same name really just with a middle name added.  For another I had only "streamed" the previous album for a few years, from 2006-2009 or so.  It had not been played very much.  I had not paid for distribution since 2009, 13 years ago.  Nobody would remember it now, I figured.

But then after uploading this second album, I discovered that Shazam could identify 2 out of 3 of the tracks from the earlier album.  At this point I suspected the release would probably fail because of the apparent (but not real) copyright violation, since two different artist names were being used (really just my same name but with middle name added).

I waited ever more nervously for 10 days for the official notice from Routenote.  Somehow I missed it and started working on finalizing a third album for the year.  I was almost there when I discovered that Routenote had in fact fairly quickly issued a rejection 3 days after submission.

The rejection gave a long list of potential problems with the release.  The very first on the list was Copyright Violation.  But then it also listed a number of technical and aesthetic issues.

The rejection notice only said the release could have been flagged for any of the following reasons.  But it did not actually say which one(s) were involved.  I emailed Routenote support and they told me they could not give me any more information.  (I suspect much of the process is automated, and the automated system might use AI which is incapable of determining which actual issue(s) were involved.  Well that's what you get for using a free or even low cost service.)

Well this threw a spanner into the works.  There are blog entries on how to deal with artist name changes, but it doesn't look trivial.  I was not in the mood to try to figure out how to deal with the issue.  And in fact I still am not.  Maybe next year.

But what was worse was that the negative feeling this gave me put a stop to my finishing my "third" album, which was almost ready to go.  I simply couldn't work on it anymore, knowing that any one of the long list of technical and aesthetic criteria listed could lead to it being rejected too, just like the second album.  Really the third album was no worse than the first one on technical and artistic grounds, which had sailed right through, so I figured I probably wouldn't have a problem.  But probably wasn't good enough.  I felt hurt and just didn't want to continue any work on it (and still haven't).

So this was a case of being buried under an ambiguous rejection.  Because I don't really know what caused my second album to be rejected (though I think I have a pretty good theory) I'm finding it hard to go on with something else.

For all I know, this is a hidden benefit of the system.  Perhaps I'm not bothering anyone else with hearing how bad my music is, and perhaps that's a benefit to all.  But what about with someone more musical than me?

Now today I've been faced with a different kind of unhelpful rejection.   I tried to post a short and I thought helpful (and not at all abusive) comment to Gilbert Doctorow's blog.  After some work, I submitted it, and got the simple report that my comment was rejected.  "Sorry" was the only explanation.

It could have been (and likely was) that the post in question was already closed for comments.  If so, it would have been more helpful not to allow me to write one.  Or perhaps it took too long to finish the comment (I was doing other things like feeding cats before finally submitting it).

But it means, once again, I don't feel much like posting more comments to Doctorow.  Perhaps, once again, that's actually a benefit for all.