I've been trying to buy a new coffee maker to replace my ancient busted one. I've been through THREE modern generation units and they are all shit in one way or another. Of course American brand names slapped on inferior Chinese junk.

I've also been through two K-cup units, made in China, and both soon broke down. Water pumping design in one I took apart looks like a toy.

ALL front-load washers now are crap designs. Go read reviews and see. Oh, but you can operate them from your phone from Starbucks, hoorah. The asian products are overdesigned and just awful. A Samsung I used took 3 hours to run the wash-dry cycle. 3 hours! Because they gingerbread this up with eco feature bullshit, purportedly saving water and power.

In my electronics industry experience, it is getting much harder to find new engineers who had actual hands-on building things. Many are software engineer wannabees.

My gut says it's all turning to shit, we have come down from a high point and era of competence.

I've been trying to buy a new coffee maker to replace my ancient busted one. I've been through THREE modern generation units and they are all shit in one way or another. Of course American brand names slapped on inferior Chinese junk.

I've also been through two K-cup units, made in China, and both soon broke down. Water pumping design in one I took apart looks like a toy.

In my electronics industry experience, it is getting much harder to find new engineers who had actual hands-on building things. Many are software engineer wannabees.

My gut says it's all turning to shit, we have come down from a high point and era of competence.