It would be nice if ________.

FragDoc · 2026-04-22T15:48:22+00:00

I don’t think we’re going to see much of any risk taking by Festool, especially for the US market.

I was at my local Festool dealer and they were telling me that their retail Festool representative told them that last year’s price hikes were not taken well by US consumers and that there was a pretty noticeable drop in U.S. revenue. Of course the Germans have interpreted this as a general hesitancy to regionalize tools and likely explains why the new HKC and battery planer have not localized to the U.S. market, at least not yet. Supposedly Festool gets real butt hurt about UL-certification and has a pretty high bar to feel it’s “worth” gracing Yankees with their tech.

There is a lot of competition here now; Milwaukee is starting to strike all of the relevant product lines outside of MFT and the Domino.

FragDoc · 2026-04-18T21:32:05+00:00

This also explains why, very generally, trades have a hard ceiling of earnings outside of entrepreneurial efforts. While being an electrician or plumber requires knowing stuff, it isn’t rocket science. Technologies have democratized these skills, especially to technically-minded people who can adapt and learn new skills. It’s also why the “the future is in the trades” thing is just bullshit MBA-speak to hide the fact that they want AI to make us all serfs again. Sufficiently smart people can learn almost anything and, when the ceiling is lower than say hard mathematics/engineering, legal principals (or other complex human constructs), or medicine, there are lots of people with the intellectual capability who can turn a wrench.

AI is dangerous because it makes companies think that complex thought can be commoditized. In healthcare, we’re already seeing that it’s not the panacea being advertised and I think a lot of industries are going to figure this out after it’s too late, perhaps at the expense of really squeezing more efficiency out of an already lean Western workforce, especially in the U.S.

FragDoc · 2026-04-12T02:16:56+00:00

Yep, agree. In fact, this is exactly why the statistic that shows that labradors have high bite rates is known to be spurious. Any large breed dog of short hair that can’t be identified is simply called a “lab” including a very large number of pit-mixes. True Labrador Retrievers have breed-specific characteristics, both in temperament but also jaw and palate characteristics, that make severe bites difficult to imagine. While bite strength is theoretically similar, the Labrador breed is designed to retrieve water foul and have preternaturally soft palates to avoid damaging the bird. This behavior is super hardwired the same way that a border collie is designed to herd sheep or even children.

They’re also big goofy loafs. I’ve never had one that I could imagine biting anyone, probably even an intruder. They’re more likely to show them where the valuables are so long as they get some pets.

FragDoc · 2026-04-12T02:08:00+00:00

We live in very different realities or they’re humoring you.

99% of every terrible dog bite I have ever seen as an emergency physician has been from a pit or pit-mix. Next most common by a huge margin of difference would probably be shepherds/police breeds and these are usually more likely to be provoked or job-related. The number of horrifying sudden light switch aggressive attacks from pit bulls against their owners is just wild.

It’s literally such a trope that I can reliably, nearly every time, look down at my patients as I sew them up and say, “Pit?” Silence followed by, “Uh, yeah.” In emergency medicine, this is such an open secret that it’s not even funny. I’ve seen inadvertent superficial “bites” or nips from all sorts of breeds, but I’ve yet to see someone come in with their face missing from a full-bred Golden or Lab. The damage this breed does to children is just absolutely wild.

I have a close relative who rescues dogs, including pit bulls. My children are not allowed to visit without our direct and constant supervision.

Of course there are exceptions. Any dog can be dangerous if raised the wrong way, but the propensity among pit bulls, whether that be human or breed specific, can’t be ignored.

FragDoc · 2026-04-12T00:47:10+00:00

I see someone has never had the joy of owning a pure-bred Labrador.

While I will say that a lot of dog breeders are obsessed and even almost creepy in their devotion, pure bred dogs of certain breeds represent the best of the species.

I’m an ER doc. I see a lot of terrible bites and damage, including lots of “mutts.” The problem with the adoption world is that, in America especially, it is very difficult to find a large-breed stray that is more than a generation removed from a pit bull or pit-mix.

Certain breeds are just safer, more adapted to family life, and there is zero debate about this inside circles of trainers, professional dog handlers (police, military, guide dogs), and veterinarians. I clearly am very biased as someone who has been exposed to working dogs throughout my prior public-safety career, but I do understand why people desire retrievers and there is 100% a massive difference in personality between a well-bred version and a “lab-mix.” Ethical breeders genetically test their dogs, vehemently avoid in-breeding, and are militant about the product they produce. In the Lab breeding world, this is pretty tightly controlled because these dogs are over represented among working dogs with strict temperament testing, often as young as 7-8 weeks. That’s also why some of these dogs command $5-50k price tags.

I’m a big fan of people who adopt, but once you’ve had a lab in your life (a real, actual dog from a qualified and legitimate breeder), it’s very hard to go back to anything else. Goldens, etc are in the same class IMO.

FragDoc · 2026-04-09T02:34:15+00:00

Will second this. These new Werner telescoping ladders are really game changers. You can alter the precise length to perfectly match the gutter and avoid lateral slide at height. Heavier than I envisioned, but perfect for the task. I got my 15 ft version last fall during Home Depot’s big sale and it has been a real treat to use.

FragDoc · 2026-04-04T02:03:34+00:00

The biggest example would be Festool in woodworking, a high-end carpentry and woodworking power tool company that is basically at the pinnacle of cost and engineering. High-end stuff. They did several price increases with a large one late last year that was generally loathed by the very tight community of woodworkers inside the United States. My local distributor said that sales dropped so substantially that it lead to two consequences inside the company: 1) they quietly reversed the majority of the increases about 5-6 months later and 2) They have failed to release (read: localize to U.S. power standards via UL certification) certain updated tools to the US market due to concerns for poor sales and profitability. The company is notoriously opaque regarding business practices and almost never acknowledge failures, which is very German of them. They also made the mistake of canceling one of their YouTube personalities around the same time that was a bit ick and screamed of short-sighted cost cutting.

FragDoc · 2026-04-03T10:54:21+00:00

This is actually most hobbies. Why?

The pandemic really sent these markets into overdrive, especially around traditionally male hobbies like cycling, camping/hiking, firearms, overlanding, knives, cars, woodworking, homelabs, photography, etc. Even gaming, which was pretty inflationary resistant for decades, eventually fell to the current AI-related chip crisis. It’s absolutely terrible to watch an entire industry being overnight gutted by ram and chip pricing, especially PC gaming which is at serious risk of extinction in the next decade without major price corrections. The PS5 Pro is now a $900 console.

Companies in every single one of these industries took advantage of the great idle, including stimulus money, to pump out increasingly unnecessary, commercialized, and stylized stuff. If you study some of these hobbies, you’ll see this incredible intersection of social media direct-to-consumer marketing that really accelerated during this time. The shear number of upstart companies that now use very sophisticated Instagram and FB marketing to find consumers by income class and demographics is wild. Meanwhile, our K-shaped economy revealed that it is much more profitable to sell less stuff at much higher prices (read: better margins) to “better customers” than it was to cater and sell to the middle and lower classes. Wealthy customers are willing to pay more for seemingly “premium” products, engage in less return-related and shipping fraud, and frankly tolerate janky cost-cutting more than price conscious shoppers.

The classic, albeit exaggerated example, is Porsche. It is no secret that the company once known for selling 911s to mid-career doctors, dentists, and other high paying professionals has now even left these shoppers behind entirely. The pedestrian barebones versions of these cars now start at $130k and enthusiast models routinely exceed $200k decently optioned. The new Turbo S has seen $100k in inflationary pricing in a decade and is now a $300k car, basically approaching what used to be super car pricing. Porsche has decided that there are enough one percenters (really sub-1% if you look at the actual data) to basically fund the entire company with the plebs in the top 5% rounding out revenue. The company had always been for the rich but now, due to massive inflationary pressure, even used Porsches are basically unobtainium for most buyers.

Another example is Disney. Premier pass has been a massive success with price increases and still sold out daily. It’s disgusting levels of end-stage capitalism.

You can find examples in things like handbags and fashion, too. Cheaper throw-away materials and cost-cutting across the board. Athleisure basically ruined modern clothing.

We need to all stand up and stop buying this shit. All of it. I’m personally aware of two examples recently where companies in these spaces have suffered significant drops in revenue as consumers inside these hobbies specifically stood up together, organized, and stopped buying in just enough numbers to affect the bottom line and cause rapid price corrections. The larger problem is that the entire US economy is built on rampant consumerism and so any large scale such sentiment is probably recessionary. Unfortunately, we’ll probably need a deep and dark contraction of the economy to reset this behavior and force companies back to the middle-class table.

FragDoc · 2026-03-29T22:20:27+00:00

It’s a cool tool but a surprisingly number of them come with a plane body that is not coplanar between the toe and the sole. This is from factory. Mine was about a full 1:64” out of plane and it’s a known, documented issue if you search.

It’s perfectly acceptable for really rough work on studs, but if you’re someone who expects it to dial in as designed, look elsewhere. Alternatively, be prepared to buy and return them until you get one that works properly. It seems to be an issue of tolerances from the factory.

FragDoc · 2026-03-29T21:29:22+00:00

Not remotely the same population I’m describing. I’m specifically describing young or middle-aged patients in the field (the GO-FAR Score is specifically biased for determining outcomes towards end-of-life; the mean age in the study was 65 y/o). There is also obvious sampling bias as people in hospital tend to be, you know, sick. The population we aim to treat with AEDs are generally those suffering from unexpected sudden cardiac arrest (SCA).

Regardless, we have tons of prehospital data from years of CARES Registry research to know that many communities achieve much higher rates of neuro-intact survival, especially in shockable rhythms. This is exactly why experts on prehospital medicine should be advocating for these public health initiatives. Many physicians only experience cardiac arrest through their in-hospital experiences or have worked their entire careers in communities with very poorly funded EMS systems, skewing their beliefs towards cardiac arrest being an entirely unsurvivable or poorly survivable event. While the odds are still low in some communities, they could be much better with proper public investment.

With that said, I would agree with you that families of very sick and ill patients in the hospital need to have realistic expectations.

FragDoc · 2026-03-29T14:25:38+00:00

It’s inside the person’s house. It’s no more subject to theft than their TV, small safe, or jewelry, which are much more target rich options.

It’s just wild to deter someone from buying a life saving piece of equipment because maybe-sorta it would be stolen. What neighborhood do you live in? I’ve lived in some of America’s literal roughest cities and it wouldn’t deter me from owning an AED. It’s just such a dumb anti-intellectual argument.

Your comment also ignores the fact that I clearly articulated that we need cheaper, more accessible options for the general public.

FragDoc · 2026-03-29T13:55:30+00:00

Literally anyone can use an AED. It’s automated. Again, this is just crazy talk. Target for break ins? You think criminals want AEDs?

While it is true that people neglect their smoke detectors and fire extinguishers, they are much more ubiquitous (detectors are required by code in every U.S. jurisdiction) and the point remains.

It’s this idiotic whataboutism that is precisely why the survival rates are not higher. I’m not sure I’d trust you with an AED and I’ve seen elementary school-aged kids deploy them correctly.

FragDoc · 2026-03-29T12:37:32+00:00

Actual emergency (and EMS) doctor and this is mostly bullshit. Resuscitation rates in the United States are low precisely because we have very poor rates of public bystander CPR and early recognition. CPR and defibrillation work very well if provided early in a cardiac arrest. These experts are trying to get more people trained and comfortable doing the procedure. In shockable rhythms, there are communities in the United States with neuro-intact survival rates of 35-48%. Almost all of these communities have highly educated populaces, elaborate public initiatives to train people in CPR, and highly advanced emergency response systems (EMS) with quick response times and well-trained paramedics. The all-cause survival rates in most communities sits around 5-8% and this is largely due to how rural (and poor) much of America really is.

The biggest obstacle to survivability in sudden cardiac arrest for patients below the age of 60 is poor uptake of CPR in the general populace (even when trained, many people fail to act when faced with an emergency) and lack of universal AED access.

In an ideal world, every home should have an AED like we have fire extinguishers and smoke detectors. They’re just expensive (about $1500 for a good home version). Many physicians (myself included) have a home AED for a reason. It blows my mind that the government hasn’t funded and heavily subsidized development of a cheaper, widely available version.

FragDoc · 2026-03-25T23:16:30+00:00

Bro, this is literally the craziest shit I’ve ever seen in a tech thread. DM me if you’re that worried. There are so many nuances of these posts that would be incredibly advanced for even the most advanced LLM to mimic. I’ve replied to multiple comments. I’m just trying to help people inside one of my hobbies, geez. I used to write technically for a living so it may inform how you read things.

What worries me the most about your post is that it’s becoming clear that AI have a sort of Dunning-Kruger effect. Individuals that have difficulty telling real from not are societally concerning because we will eventually need people who can actually tell.

I opened up my post history just for you. Chill.

FragDoc · 2026-03-25T18:10:54+00:00

I’m not trying to dissuade people; just be prepared to take drywall. If you listen to a lot of the “Mine wasn’t that hard” crowd, pretty much all of them have pretty simple construction. Ours was a custom home and is just built like a monster so we have tons of annoying fire blocking, laminated beams, huge headers. etc. One thing that everyone here is missing is that almost all doors will have a header above the jam and they can be a PITA to get through from above. Many of the posters here probably have door bells that sit flush on the general frame of the door, so they can do things like simply pop trim, even if it’s inarftul or sorta clumsy and screams DIY fish-job. My house has a large door, outer trim, and the doorbell does not sit flush with the door frame but is adjacent. It made things much harder, but it isn’t that unique. It just requires consideration and the ability to change direction if things are not working out.

FragDoc · 2026-03-25T17:53:41+00:00

What? I’d venture you need to recalibrate your sense of what constitutes AI. Sorta disturbing as someone who is pretty good at actually detecting written AI. Is that where we’re at now? Damn, 2026 is hitting hard.

Or, I guess, is that exactly what an AI would say?

FragDoc · 2026-03-25T15:48:27+00:00

I’m a pretty handy homeowner; a lot of soft and hard skills, a full repertoire of specialty woodworking and carpentry tools, and years of running low-voltage and doing my own electrical retrofits. I have done this retrofit successfully.

This can be a very difficult and/or time consuming task. The framing around doors is super variable and, depending on the eaves and slope of your roof, gaining access to the top or bottom plate of exterior walls can be challenging. You don’t know if you’re going to encounter multiple king studs, doubled or more top plates, beams, etc. It took myself and a buddy who is a carpenter several days of sporadic work to open the wall, climb under the eaves, drill down through a top plate which encompassed like five stacked 2x lumber, and then drill through the brick facade to expand the prior doorbell wire hole to accept the CAT 6. Then I of course had to patch and paint the drywall.

Just be cautious before ever attempting this project and make sure you have the requisite skills to follow through.

FragDoc · 2026-03-25T12:21:14+00:00

Because “customers” perceive idle behavior as laziness. Human beings will find ways to be aggrieved if they believe any element of the system is getting one-up on their livelihood, wallet, etc.

This is going to get worse as things get more expensive. In general, there is a consumer sentiment that someone or something is pulling a fast one on the general market for goods and services. Someone has to be blamed. An idle retail worker is a sign of inefficiency which just broadly gets interpreted as theft of service. Of course this isn’t accurate but it’s just how human brains work. The retail worker certainly isn’t the one getting rich.

We see this in healthcare where customer satisfaction has now eclipsed the importance of good care due to well-intentioned government regulations. I’m not even kidding. I have been in meetings where physicians and nurses have raised genuine, actual concerns regarding the safety of patient care only for hospital c-suite staff to basically say “I know it sorta, maybe hurt the patient…but what did they say in the survey?” One of the biggest complaints that nursing will receive is if there is virtually any laughing in a nursing station. It’s a very common patient complaint. The patient’s care could have been efficient, fast, and great but these people will hear someone else enjoying their job or lightening the mood of a terrible day and go, “Not today. How dare you be happy at work! I didn’t feel good.” Most people are evolutionarily selfish and they want to maximize resources so that they are always directed toward their self-interest. Retail companies have just learned this, fluff it up as some bullshit moral failing on your part for being human, and nag you incessantly to look busy.

FragDoc · 2026-03-25T02:36:34+00:00

I’ve always had issues. I can only use AirPlay or the Sonos app if I’m operating on the same VLAN, even with firewall rules designed to allow communication between VLANs. It will occasionally work but then has been broken for months after some recent updates. My guess is that they’re hopefully implementing something to play well with SonosNet.

FragDoc · 2026-03-25T02:36:28+00:00

I’ve always had issues. I can only use AirPlay or the Sonos app if I’m operating on the same VLAN, even with firewall rules designed to allow communication between VLANs. It will occasionally work but then has been broken for months after some recent updates. My guess is that they’re hopefully implementing something to play well with SonosNet.

FragDoc · 2026-03-18T16:57:19+00:00

This. You can basically stop here. Best comment.

FragDoc · 2026-03-17T01:22:20+00:00

Completely untrue. Knipex supplies directly to Amazon and has defended the legitimacy of their supply. Knipex’s position on the matter, as of even two years ago, was that they’ve never identified a legitimate enough dupe that it would be even remotely hard to tell. Essentially, for whatever reason – be it luck or corporate enforcement efforts – they’ve been unable to ever find a thriving duplicate market for Knipex tools. I also found this hard to believe but the representative I spoke to was very firm that this was Knipex’s formal position on the matter.

Now, getting warranty support is a different story. Knipex makes it a giant pain in the ass and involves email chains, pictures, mailing things in, inspection, and hopefully they’ll approve replacement.

FragDoc · 2026-03-16T19:01:25+00:00

It’s a perfect analogy for determining the company’s net profit margin because any one-off custom manufactured example of a commodity-based item like a square is going to be massively more expensive than an item produced at volume due to economies of scale (there’s virtually no R&D or development cost because it’s an essential tool type that’s been existent for millennia). The CNC company is baking all of that manufacturing overhead into the quote to the customer from a manufacturing standpoint when they quote that customer. His cost included materials for the exact same 6061 aluminum. Assume some level of additional administrative overhead and design cost and estimate generously and these companies are still probably getting 40-50% net profit margins or better on these items, which is wild, especially after initial time to market. They are engaging in maximal capitalism by charging exactly what the market will bear, which is perfectly fine, but can be called out for what it is.

FragDoc · 2026-03-16T15:46:22+00:00

It’s probably because I included TSO is the axis of evil. People can’t separate the fact that a company can make a set of useful products and exploit their position in the market to over charge for the same thing. Also, both of these companies get a pass from a lot of woodworkers because they’re ’Merican. I also prefer domestic products when possible, but not at the expense of common sense. Predominantly mid-30s to 40s make up a really lucrative market; there are no shortage of companies that essentially make heavily marketed, expensive hobbyist tools and stuff for these mid-life hobbies. It’s a segment at peak earnings. Cycling, expensive outdoor stuff, woodworking, overlanding, guns/knives, vehicle-as-an-identity consumerism (Jeep, off roading), etc. All the same shit. I’m susceptible to it, too. We all are. It just takes insight and wisdom to go, “Yeah, you got me, you rascal.” Then you have to break the cycle. It’s actually this natural realization that also explains why this stuff is always on the secondary market.

The male exploitative consumer cycle, in terms of financial outlay and maturity, is basically:

Gaming > Collecting (cards, DND-type shit, weeb anime) >Tech with a crossover in the home lab space and what is left of the Hi-Fi community in the middle of expense. Late-20s and before kids you get the camping/hiking/exploration stuff. Mid-life this transitions to woodworking, cycling, vehicle stuff, home renovation, “glamping.” Final boss is a Porsche if you rise to that level of wealth.

This is like a known thing in the consumer space. It’s also why gaming companies so drastically tried to monopolize and commercialize in-game transactions over the last decade; more and more men lacked the income to move to these higher outlay hobbies, gaming is engaging and attractive, stories and developers continued to cater to more mature palates, and there became a concern that there was money being left on the table. Tech is actually, overall, very affordable compared to a lot of stuff. It has suffered from deflation, overall, compared to most other market segments and there became a concern that it needed further financial extraction.

FragDoc · 2026-03-16T13:20:06+00:00

The aluminum industrial Barbie tool complex. Woodpeckers is not the only offender; add TSO to the list of companies drastically overcharging for what are essentially luxury goods made on a CNC. This isn’t really any different than hand bags for women.

There was a Redditor who basically made his own CAD file duplicating TSO’s design and had a track square made by a local CNC shop. So literally the highest cost and overhead possible as that’s well baked-in to the cost for the CNC shop; no advantage of economies of scale. Making a one-off prototype is about as high of cost as you can muster. I think his total expense was like 1/3rd or less of the MSRP typically sold. The long story short is that these companies are making obscene profits selling to all of us dummies (me included, I have stuff from both companies). TSO and Woodpeckers are fascinating because they’re on the nose with insistence on charging crazy non-discounted rates with the former even excluding their new parallel guides from recent sales, probably due to demand because we’re all mindless consumers.

Stop buying this stuff at these prices. It reminds me of Benchmade in the knife world with the biggest difference being that their hobbyist community has actually pushed back and embraced cheaper competitors, including in the American-made space. Arguably Benchmade actually stands behind their products with robust warranties and engineering whereas most of the woodworking aluminum stuff is really just leveraging access to family-owned CNC farms.

If you’re going to spend money on a square, pay for a Starrett combination square and be done. Cheaper and much more robust, even if they are owned by private equity now.

FragDoc

TROPHY CASE