I read (or re-read) over half of the linked posts. I love this blog, Dan absolutely nerd snipes me every time. Measuring is severely underrated, especially in software engineering.
I definitely feel called out about Wirecutter here. I generally do read the “methodology/how we picked/how we tested” and “the competition” sections to see if they make sense, or if the reviewer’s values align with mine. Several times I have found something in “the competition” that the reviewer says is “better for <thing I care about>, but worse for <thing I don’t care about>, so not our pick.” And I can happily say I never bought the webcam. I use a Fujifilm X-T4 for meetings.
My problem: if not Wirecutter, then what? Googling for “best X” reviews usually spits up complete garbage. And trawling through Amazon reviews of 15 different products looking for red flags isn’t fun either.
My problem: if not Wirecutter, then what? Googling for “best X” reviews usually spits up complete garbage. And trawling through Amazon reviews of 15 different products looking for red flags isn’t fun either.
That’s a tough one since there isn’t a single site that’s comprehensive and solid, AFAICT.
Consumer Reports is really good for cars and also solid for some other things, but not everything. Cooks Illustrated / Americas Test Kitchen seems generally good for kitchen equipment. SmallNetBuilder is good for wifi, but I think the person running it has less time for the site nowadays, so it doesn’t have all of the newest stuff. For cameras, I’d probably just ask in a camera nerd forum like the Fred Miranda forum for links to solid reviews, etc.
I don’t think this is a great situation for consumers since people can’t reasonably be expected to know which sites are good and which aren’t. I might try to curate a list of these, but it will have to be limited to areas where I know enough to evaluate the reviews.
Dan Luu’s empirical approach to topics is inspirational.
Another inspirational empiricist is David Mackay, ex-Physics professor
at Cambridge, who wrote https://withouthotair.com/ on quantifying
sustainable energy: what sustainable energy sources can we plausible
achieve, and how efficient can our energy sinks plausibly be.
I expect we can all improve our fields by careful measurement of
benefits and costs.
I read (or re-read) over half of the linked posts. I love this blog, Dan absolutely nerd snipes me every time. Measuring is severely underrated, especially in software engineering.
I definitely feel called out about Wirecutter here. I generally do read the “methodology/how we picked/how we tested” and “the competition” sections to see if they make sense, or if the reviewer’s values align with mine. Several times I have found something in “the competition” that the reviewer says is “better for <thing I care about>, but worse for <thing I don’t care about>, so not our pick.” And I can happily say I never bought the webcam. I use a Fujifilm X-T4 for meetings.
My problem: if not Wirecutter, then what? Googling for “best X” reviews usually spits up complete garbage. And trawling through Amazon reviews of 15 different products looking for red flags isn’t fun either.
That’s a tough one since there isn’t a single site that’s comprehensive and solid, AFAICT.
Consumer Reports is really good for cars and also solid for some other things, but not everything. Cooks Illustrated / Americas Test Kitchen seems generally good for kitchen equipment. SmallNetBuilder is good for wifi, but I think the person running it has less time for the site nowadays, so it doesn’t have all of the newest stuff. For cameras, I’d probably just ask in a camera nerd forum like the Fred Miranda forum for links to solid reviews, etc.
I don’t think this is a great situation for consumers since people can’t reasonably be expected to know which sites are good and which aren’t. I might try to curate a list of these, but it will have to be limited to areas where I know enough to evaluate the reviews.
Dan Luu’s empirical approach to topics is inspirational.
Another inspirational empiricist is David Mackay, ex-Physics professor at Cambridge, who wrote https://withouthotair.com/ on quantifying sustainable energy: what sustainable energy sources can we plausible achieve, and how efficient can our energy sinks plausibly be.
I expect we can all improve our fields by careful measurement of benefits and costs.