Technology products come to mind immediately. Products are becoming more and more deeply integrated with less serviceability. Phones are obvious, but more insidious are things like soldered on storage and ram in computers, the inability to replace failed storage in game consoles, known defective designs not being addressed, or taking a long time to be addressed (joycon drift, butterfly switches).

There's also software related things, like not being able to get the software or firmware to program a replacement part, even if you have access to it. Putting modules in parts that don't require them, just to flag them as "unauthorized repairs" (ask a farmer about John Deere) that are all put in place to use the digital millennium copyright act to circumvent the magnuson moss warranty act.

Even little things, like integrating the controllers for HVAC and lighting relays into the radio of a car, so that replacing it is more difficult or impossible stand out.

You also end up with fashion companies in the mix too, wanting these same laws to cover knock-offs of their products.

You also see this in the latest wave of appliances as well. A lot of proprietary parts, that do the same job as a generic part that has been standard in machines from the 60's to the mid 2000's. The lifespan of a refrigerator has shortened drastically as well.

I wouldn't say it's a conspiracy, so much as a mass market move. A device that has a long lifespan and is serviceable isn't profitable like a new machine, so make the machines less durable. As old machines are phased out for machines that are drastically better in efficiency and other metrics, those new machines won't last as long.

You've got me there, but with a lot of safety equipment regular inspection and repair is necessary anyway.

The helmet should still come apart, so that it can be properly recycled.

This doesn't apply to the vast majority of things we use ether.

I think that's irrelevant. Your industry sets those standards, and safety is a really stupid thing to complain about.

Although, I will say that all that is again caused by unrealistic expectations of growth. Liability is a force that has to be overcome, but it is every time.

Define "working"

Think of every sneaky slimy way that could be misused.

Your car's head gasket is mixing coolant and oil like a toxic vinaigrette, but the radio still plays music and the brake is holding the car firmly.

Also, your 200 feet past your oil change, so your contract is void.

The problem isn't products... It's money.

These corporations are legally required by their stockholders to show exponential growth forever. Think about that for a minute, exponential growth... forever.

There's not enough matter in the universe to make enough iPhones to meet the demand on Apple to sell exponentially more iPhones. There's only so many iPhones you can realistically use or buy.

On their end, this is a band-aid solution. Make the devices irreparable, and you can sell more of them. It's not going to keep working for many many reasons.

A lot of our world economy is based on the idea that exponential growth is attainable and forever. This is why we're in the situations we're in with housing (making smaller affordable houses aren't profitable), Cars (making a '95 commuter car with '23 safety wouldn't be profitable), and it's why the pool of available wealth is shrinking every day.

The solution is to legislate sustainable financial policy... but our politicians are playing the game, so that won't happen.

So, this will be the status quo until the world economy collapses, which will probably be soon.

Yes, for three reasons.

One, is that "unlikely" is still a greater than zero chance. It also doesn't allow for unexpected failure modes, like lightning strikes or solar flares.

Two, is upgradability. Imagine if you had your first car today, would you be happy with the radio it had in 2023? I don't know your age or level of affluence, but that could be anything from an 8-track player, to Bluetooth 1 (which modern phones will not connect to)

Three, is disposal. There's a finite amount of raw materials on this planet, and we just happen to be lucky enough to be able to extract it from the earth. There's a potential of tens of thousands of generations that could come after us, and they will want to make our old crap into new crap. One lifetime isn't really that long, when all matter is as old as the universe.

Mastodon is replacing Twitter pretty rapidly, and being organized more like email servers... It feels a little bit like that. I'm using the tool, it's not using me. No anger headaches.

Your palm pilot didn't need to communicate with EAs servers to validate your DRM before starting Tetris...

Your tip calculator didn need to send a report to crashalitics every time it opened successfully.

I got a Knox based firewall, and holy crap does a lot of shit reach out to a server for useless unneeded reasons.

We really need to make a middleware platform for this software. The runtime handles translation between adapters and such, and the software just has to handle doing its job to control whatever hardware.

This is what UNIX was made for on the software side. A UNIX program from the 70's can usually be compiled on a POSIX OS like Linux or MacOS fairly easily.

Problem is that Windows isn't one of those POSIX platforms, and you can't compile what you don't have the source for anyway. That also doesn't change how the software interfaces with the hardware.

The hardware and the proprietary software are the big issue. 3ven if we find a fix, it's a fix for future machines and not present ones.

It was built into LG phones and tablets, so I don't know if you'll have the same experience.

Ah, the comp-sci lab at my university just got one of these things.

Quantum computation is quite a feat, there's a lot we can learn from entanglement. Like why magic faded 400 years after the oblivion crisis, if there are parallel universes, cracking the codes holding the elder scrolls deep underground, quantum communication.

We haven't had it long though, the tech scholars are still figuring it out. I have heard that the got it to successfully play Doom.

Whoa, no need for the casual racism... Like I said, that was long long ago. We can't hold the ignorant actions of our ancestors in modern contexts. It's not like the elves knew about DNA ether at this time, and if ether did things would have likely been different. The past is a foreign country as they say, and I think many of our struggles are quite intersectional and can be overcome together.

I am glad to hear that you keep strong family bonds, stupport systems are incredibly important.

Try not to hate your human half, humans have their strengths as we all do. It is something special that you may have gifts unique to you because of your dual parentage.

Not to lean into stereotypes, but if you have an elf's eye and a human curiosity, that could make for a very passionate astrophysicist!

Humans... Always getting cause and effect backwards. Might wanna look into orc history and culture if you wanna join the clan. 😂

Don't feel bad though, my elvish in-law was just as caught off guard. Once you realize what's going on, you'll probably cherish this time with your orc side of the family.

You see, you're being prepared for fatherhood...

If one of your in-laws is having a child soon, the patriarch or matriarch has chosen you to be the godfather. This is lucky for you, because the majority of the attention will be on your brother in-law.

If your in-laws already have kids, it could be that something is happening that is being kept quiet. Cancer for example, and you are being chosen to be the godfather in lieu of whoever was chosen at the child's birth. Essentially, you're thought of as a better choice. Your wife's parents must absolutely adore you if that's the case.

There's also the possibility that... They just want grandchildren 🤣. Preparing you for fatherhood before anything is essentially the orc version of your parents asking "when are you gonna have me some grandchildren!?" Which is beyond acceptance, they want halflings to spoil.

It's important to remember, in the distant past only the patriarch would be allowed to sire children. This is because orc children are pretty strong from the getgo, and it was thought that only the strongest male could handle the task.

Thing is, we found herbs and more recently science along with the industrial food supply which makes getting enough protein easy.

At some point, your father in law may ask you to drink a concoction that contains his blood as well as many herbs. Do not turn this down! It will imbew you with orc strength and change the very biological function of your musculature. It's considered necessary to become a dad to orcs, and it's very difficult to source.

After my brother in-law took it, he got way way bigger than any elf I've ever seen!

If you're an asshole for anything, it's not talking to your wife about this. I'm sure she'll explain this to you, she probably hadn't even thought about you not understanding what's happening.

My biggest tip for you though, is to hit the gym until your dog tired every day. You're an orc in the hearts of your clan, show them you take it seriously and they will love you for it.

The car: a Kia Soul