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  • Hacker News
  • This kind of reminds me of the “Island” situation on Magic: the Gathering cards. An island is a piece of land, surrounded by water. However, due to 30+ years of needing to draw new versions of islands, Wizards of the Coast has expanded what it means to be an island, ending up with things that are… not that: https://imgur.com/a/xVnyP
    by mcphage
  • most forget, but fan blades need cleaning. any plastic blades, specially the clear one will look like cat vomit.

    Imagine clear blades with each blade displaying cat hairballs spread out on the edges, spinning them above your head. It will harass you, give ammo to your in-laws to harass you, create marital strife (when are you going to clean that?) and then death as you fall off the ladder and break your neck on the coffee table, despite surviving four frontline deployments...

    by WaitWaitWha
  • There's something very 2020s about taking two durable, repairable household objects (a ceiling fan and a light fixture) combining them into one visually complicated object, and then making the LED non-replaceable
    by veunes
  • > a normal fan that for some reason has a border around it

    So, a ducted fan! That would be a sensible and practical design if your ceiling needed extra thrust for takeoff.

    Cheap and stupid goods with threatening auras, indeed. Possibly a step up from the 90s when it was cheap and stupid goods with a Memphis Group primary school aesthetic. Hard to choose.

    by card_zero
  • It’s the same story for basically any part of a home. Faucets, furniture, tubs, windows, doors, floors, lamps, you name it.

    What a testament to the manufacturing advances that have made it profitable to cater to every possible taste, budget, and architectural layout. It’s incredible actually.

    by Gshaheen
  • Technology Connections nerd-snipes ceiling fans in a recent video,

    https://youtu.be/_KWdCqpXB7A

    And of course complains.

    But they are technologically informed complaints.

    by brudgers
  • When I read the headline, I thought the article was about fans (and the attached lights) that mysteriously turn themselves on without the owner doing anything.

    This happened to us, and the people we bought the house from had actually bought (but not installed) a new controller. Turned out the problem wasn't the controller at all. Rather, all the houses on the street had been built at the same time by the same company, and most (maybe all) had ceiling fans that came with a remote. Inside the remote and inside the fan was a DIP-switch consisting of four switches, each switch labeled with a 0 and a 1 depending on which way you pushed it. And all probably came from the factory with a 0000 setting.

    You guessed it: while ordinarily the controller had a limited range, sometimes (windows open? controller pointed in a certain direction? I don't know) one neighbor's controller would activate someone else's fan. The solution was of course simple: set the DIP switch in our fan and controller to some other setting, like 0101. Since I did that, the poltergeist has been unable to operate our ceiling fans.

    by mcswell
  • My wife and I were out recently looking at ceiling fans to replace the one in our dining room, which has committed no crimes, other than having the appearance of being very much from the 1980s.

    I was taken aback by how few of the fans had replaceable lightbulbs! In the entire store there were maybe three or four options with a replaceable bulb!

    Call me crazy, but a nonreplaceable LED is a complete dealbreaker. I go through so many LED bulbs! I don't know if my electricity is like particularly bad or if that's just normal? The first LED bulb I ever bought (Shout out EarthLED) in 2008 for like $30 is still going strong, but every bulb I buy these days lasts like two years tops.

    Anyway, we did not buy a fan.

    by donatj

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