A dated correction to a page that has no dates
This site is a reference. It says which house owns the reference design, where it sits, and how to reach it. What it cannot say is when. A rule that bites on a date, a contact that worked last spring, a patent count from a filing year nobody printed — a static page states all three in the present tense and goes on stating them long after they stop being true.
Change Notice is the part that carries the date. Every issue names what moved since the last one, which of the forty-three categories it lands on, and who pays for it. Where the site was wrong, this is where it says so, with the page named and the length of time the error stood.
An engineering change notice is the document a factory issues when something you already signed off has moved. It is the one piece of paper nobody files unread. That is the intention here.
It is written from Berlin by the person who wrote the site, out of work already being done: quotes that came in this month, factories visited this month, addresses that bounced this month. Nothing here is researched specially for the newsletter, which is the only reason it can keep going.
Six sections, always in this order
Learn the numbers and you can skip to what you need. Between 1,300 and 1,800 words, which is about six minutes.
- 01
The countdown倒计时
A standing table of dated obligations — the battery rule, the machinery regulation, the F‑gas phase‑down — each with its status and the categories it hits. The rows that did not move are stated as not having moved. This is the section with a cost attached to not reading it.
200–300 words
- 02
House watch动态
Six to ten one‑line moves at the 183 profiled houses. Listings, capacity, acquisitions, a sales address that has gone dead, a figure on the site that has aged. Each links to the page it amends.
250–350 words
- 03
The number数字
One figure, with its method and the date it was quoted. Tooling cost by cavity count. Certification cost and turnaround for one directive. Cable‑assembly labour. The same field returns each year, so the archive becomes a series rather than scattered anecdotes.
150–250 words
- 04
From the floor现场
The long slot, and one of exactly four things: a field note from somewhere specific, a failure post‑mortem with what containment cost, one house in more depth than a card allows, or a procedure you can run tomorrow morning. Never a link roundup.
300–450 words
- 05
The question该问什么
One diligence question in the words you would use in the room, the two answers you will get, and what each one tells you. One question. Never a question with no wrong answer.
100–150 words
- 06
Corrections勘误
What was wrong, what changed, and what arrived. Including the embarrassing ones. A correction that changes a buying decision does not wait for section 06 — it goes in the first forty words.
100–200 words
One Unit 一台
Roughly every third issue carries a field note from an operator with exactly one machine. Consumer hardware is reviewed almost entirely on the week it arrives, by people who never use it again. One Unit reports at thirty days, ninety days, and six months, on a single unit, in the place it actually gets used.
It is written by Peter, who is eleven and runs a market stand in Berlin. An adult edits it for accuracy, safety and privacy, and for nothing else. No observation in it was added by anyone but him.
That is not a novelty slot. A reader deciding between two machines has no way to find out what one of them is like after ninety days of being carried, dropped, and run by a person who is not being paid to like it. This column is the layer beneath a launch review.
The standing rules
- Hardware is bought wherever possible. A supplied sample buys testing, never coverage.
- Consumables are always bought at retail. Running cost is the thing under test.
- Publication is decided after testing. Refusing to publish is always available, and is logged either way.
- No supplier sees a draft, a date, or a question list in advance.
- Every claim carries its method: what was done, how many times, under what conditions.
- Every instalment names at least one thing that failed, annoyed or disappointed him.
- No affiliate links, no discount codes, and no advertising from a supplier in an issue reviewing that supplier.
- Every sample ever accepted is listed publicly, including the ones never written about.
- Where hardware was supplied free, that is printed at the top of the piece, not in a footer.
- It is a use report from one operator with one unit. It is never this publication’s verdict on a supplier.
Once a month, first Tuesday
Free. One email a month, plus a rare short interrupt when a date actually moves. Reply to any of them and it reaches a person.
Change Notice has not sent its first issue yet. Ask to be on the list and you will get issue 01 and nothing before it.
The archive
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