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Manufacturers: Best I can do is planned obsolescence.
this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2023
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quick reminder that muji uses slave labor from xinjiang
Ah fuck
There's no good company. Some are only a bit less worse.
In this case, Muji is a bit more worse
This is the philosophy that they use when building spacecraft. Most sensors and instruments on the Voyager craft have been turned off to conserve power, but they continue to function enough to still communicate with Earth.
The Internet was originally designed to fail gracefully. As routes and servers fail, the Internet was designed to work without them (to a point). Sadly the proliferation of giants like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft has put most of the Internet in the hands of a few companies.
You can technically use the Internet with every Google service blocked and all AWS / Microsoft IP ranges null routed, but it's going to be very different and most major sites simply will not work.
That is a great concept, mostly if the user is also notified that something is degraded so they can use it, but repair it when they have the opportunity.
This does not apply to this flashlight. Working on multiple battery types is not graceful degredation as batteries do not degrade into less batteries and a AA does not degrade into a AAA. Cell packs can become slightly unbalanced or by user error you can put 2 dead batteries with 2 good batteries, but then they will discharge into each other anyway and really cut the lifespan.
Pretty cool feature and handy if you run out of batteries during an emergency, but I don't think it fits the definition lol
Cell packs can become slightly unbalanced or by user error you can put 2 dead batteries with 2 good batteries, but then they will discharge into each other anyway and really cut the lifespan
One interpretation could be that each battery powers a separate LED, and thus they aren't connected and if a battery goes dead that LED just goes unpowered.
So aside from the mechanism, it also potentially means redundancy and higher cost (more parts). I'd say maybe the LEDs ran by AAA might last longer (same LED configured to run lower so the battery lasts longer), but LEDs themselves probably aren't the thing burning out in most cases.
As a bonus it'd mean that it'd be easier to know when your batteries are low (especially if high-and-low placements meant batteries go dead one-by-one rather than all-at-once), a problem for me as I keep using my flashlight until it's super dim (somewhat because it's fine, somewhat because I don't notice). Though I guess that could be an issue too, I know the battery charger I have charges batteries in pairs.
That last part said, it might be better to use the AAA batteries as backup (or maybe extra light in a high-power mode) instead.
This is also a philosophy for building web apps - flexibility to still work if client features are unavailable rather than breaking or refusing to work at all. Someone having JavaScript turned off, for instance - some sites will show you no content with a “JavaScript is required” notice, while others are made to at least display the basic page.
I wouldn't really call this graceful degradation, more "convenient/good design." Since changing batteries is sort of a regular occurrence for a flashlight. But the sentiment is appreciated regardless.