Techmoan and VWestLife are good resources for stuff like this. When a technology has already had its heyday, the models that are still produced tend to be cheap and crappy: modern cassette players are a good example of this. I find Techmoan videos especially helpful when trying to find "modern retro" devices like these that aren't just bottom of the barrel trinkets

I would recommend something by Sony

Lee valley is awesome

If you want a vacuum for hard floors then you want something with a soft roller. Dyson makes a soft roller head that works with the V7, it's about $80-90, and there are knockoff ones on Amazon for $30 that will probably get you most of the way there.

If you want one vacuum to do it all, the Shark Duoclean vacuums work really well for hardwood and carpet, and they're fairly easy to maintain

There will always be people around repairing batteries for things that are worth using. Replacement batteries for the major brands will be available for a long time, and there are plenty of electronics nerds who will be fine repairing batteries for more niche products. Heck, you can already get adapters to use any of the major power tool batteries with a Dyson vacuum

I wish that there were commercial applications for cordless vacuums because that's where you really get robust long term support (at a steep cost though)

Many if not most cordless vacuums at this point have removable batteries, the bigger concern would be whether the company is still making the same style of battery when it eventually dies. A lot of power tool companies are now making vacuums that use their existing lineup of batteries pretty much guaranteeing that there will be spare batteries to be had for years. The downside is that power tool companies are typically not as good as vacuum companies at making vacuums, but there are some decent offerings out there.

Overall I think you get a way better value in terms of performance and cost with corded vacuums and especially tools, but for many people (myself included) the convenience of cordless tools makes it way easier to get chores done. My corded leaf blower is a much better tool than my cordless one, but I blow the leaves off my deck much more regularly now because there's no setup time with the cordless

Lupe is almost certainly the most BIFL cordless vacuum, they have an incredible spare parts program. I don't know what spare parts are like on Miele's cordless stuff, but I've heard that their cordless vacuums don't perform that well

I was about to say, it's Android, someone will definitely be making an OS for it for a long time even if it's not the OEM

I did some research and unfortunately no one's really certified their filters for arsenic, but I would go with Pur Plus filters.

Pur Plus and Zerowater seem to outperform Brita with heavy metals, although Lead and Mercury are really the only contaminants that overlap between the three. Zerowater isn't certified for as many heavy metals as Pur, although they say they've tested for arsenic reduction and achieved >99% filtration.

It's also good to know that Pur's faucet mounted filters are certified for a lot more contaminants than their pitcher filters

The best thing we have right now is ANSI standards 42, 53, and 401, NSF will issue certifications for individual contaminants listed in these standards. The issue is there are so many things to filter out of water that it's extremely expensive to test for all of them, so most companies pick several that are common and certify for those. If you know what you need to filter then you can look for filters that are certified for that thing, but if it's something uncommon then you might not find anyone who's tested for it

The industry standard tests are ANSI standards 42, 53, and 401. 42 addresses contaminants that aren't health related (chlorine, particulates, etc), 53 addresses contaminants that affect health (lead, VOCs, asbestos, etc), and 401 addresses "emerging compounds" which are things like prescription drugs, pesticides, and other incidental things whose effects are still being discovered.

Most good filters will be certified for several of the more common contaminants from these standards, Brita Elite and Longlast+ filters are certified for 13 of the contaminants in Standard 53. You can find this on Brita's performance data sheet, and Pur has similar info available

The difficulty is because there are so many different contaminants that testing and certification becomes really expensive and convoluted. Just because a filter has an NSF certification doesn't mean that it's certified to filter the specific contaminant you're looking for.

Then you get into sketchy stuff like Berkey and other rando filters where getting certified for all the containments they claim would cost over a million dollars, so there isn't really a way to verify their performance figures except running an independent test for hundreds of chemicals.

Yeah, Wirecutter had some tests run and found that they outperformed other filters in lead reduction but they weren't able to support any of Berkey's other claims.

It's just such a strange red flag how Berkey is like "we outperform all the NSF and ANSI tests for water filtration" but won't actually get a certification that verifies it.

Cast iron pans heat quite unevenly unless you let them heat soak for a while

I ended up getting the Cambridge Silversmiths Beacon Mirror set, it's 18/0 steel, but I haven't had any issues with durability and they have a 25 year warranty. Macy's sells the 20 piece set for $40.

Another thing I recommend is to just search 18/10 on a restaurant supply or department store website and look for good deals. Cambridge Silversmiths Rachel Mirror set is 18/10 steel and is also $40 for a 20 piece set

Note that while they are built well, they can be kind of a pain, they're over 18 inches tall so they probably won't fit in the fridge or under cabinets unless you get the travel size one. They also aren't ANSI or NSF certified, even though they claim to exceed the relevant ANSI and NSF standards, which just feels like a red flag to me, not to mention that people have had issues reproducing their claimed results. Their website is also pretty sketchy, it feels very prepper/truther-centric

Looks like they've got some 40% off right now too! I would pick some up myself if I didn't already have some slippers

Some folks on the EEVBlog forums found out that it's a rebranded Metex ME-11

I do wonder if RadioShack got in trouble for the color, Sparkfun had some budget multimeters seized at customs for violating Fluke's yellow trademark

Wiss is part of the Crescent family of tools now, which is my least favorite of the big tool conglomerates. Their metal snips are also bad these days

I see these in thrift stores pretty often if you still want to have some. They still make the same style, so I have a mixture of old and new ones that I've found

It's really wild to me that there isn't a big open source project for portable media players. There's Rockbox, but it doesn't seem to be ported to many modern players.

In the radio control hobby there are like 4 major manufacturers of transmitters and they all run the same open source firmware, which gives the community control over the hardware and for the most part makes things run very well.

It would be awesome to see something like that revolutionize the portable audio scene. Someone start a software project and release a good, STM32-based reference design so that the hardware will be reliable and people can implement good features in software that can run on lots of different devices

I think it's been pretty much proven that rice grains don't really do anything to prevent clumping other than helping break up clumps mechanically, so that backs up your experience

I would love one of those, Vic Firth doesn't make them anymore but they sold the factory to Fletcher's Mill, which now makes pepper grinders, rolling pins, and other turned stuff

You might want to look into a Bosch Universal Plus or Ankarsrum mixer, they're a style that's much more common in Europe, but they seem to be very robust. Hobart also makes a 5 quart mixer, the N50-60, but it's $3500 unless you find one used

I don't think you're going to find many supporters of sealed transmissions and lifetime fluids in the buy it for life subreddit, it's not a very long term solution, and it certainly doesn't apply to every manual transmission

And I'm specifying ATF and MTF because I'm used to Hondas, and Honda has a specific Manual Transmission Fluid. I know that it's not the same thing as ATF and that not all manufacturers have a specific manual transmission fluid

There's definitely manual transmission fluid, it's much less specialized than ATF, but MTF certainly exists. Honda recommends changing it every 30-60k miles

Personally, I think that older Whirlpool models are essentially the same as the Hobart models, I've taken both apart and (at least for this style) they are made the same way