As I researched deeper without finding a satisfactory explanation, I was tempted to think that these were just glaring, negligent design errors. But I hesitated to come to such a strong conclusion.
A huge amount of noise in internet comments (especially HN) is driven by people who give in to that temptation, and jump to self-aggrandizing criticism.
I love this tweet about a math professor who wrote a letter to Carnation, a canned cat food manufacturing company. He wrote to explain how they could optimize their can geometry for lower costs – it’s a classic calculus problem to find the optimal cylinder dimensions to minimize surface area-to-volume ratio. The company wrote back, but not to praise his insight. They kindly explained 5 other, obscure factors for the can’s design that he hadn't considered. Unlike calculus class, in the real world there are very few one-dimensional optimization problems.
IMHO, when you have an opinion, it's more fruitful to think about the factors you missed in your analysis.
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A huge amount of noise in internet comments (especially HN) is driven by people who give in to that temptation, and jump to self-aggrandizing criticism.
IMHO, when you have an opinion, it's more fruitful to think about the factors you missed in your analysis.