Repair cafés waging war on throwaway culture | Hacker News Reader

Repair cafés waging war on throwaway culture

theguardian.com

571 pointswcunning364 comments

As a repair café volunteer, I've found two drawbacks to being a volunteer/having repair cafés:

- A small subset of people buy shitty products (1$ bicycle lamps, lights, cheap-as-shit appliances like clocks, hoovers, …). I have no problem fixing stuff, and showing them how to fix stuff, but I always refuse to try to repair really cheap stuff. It's not even repairing at this point, but more sticking it back together. When this case happens, I explain in good term that they should buy a slightly better quality next time; it'll last them longer

- these cafés attract in general "alternative" people. I've got no problem with that, but I'm a bit fed up with conspirationists, anti-nuclear, really left-wing people.

But in general, it's a really rewarding experience !

I'm surprised that the decline of sturdy individualists in the UK. Perhaps some outreach to local pensioner's groups &c might broaden the range of people. You might recruit a few more volunteers out of their sheds as well.

That's really interesting. I always assumed it was difficult to see a difference in quality.

What parts usually break in the cheap stuff?

Plastic anything. Low quality screws getting stripped. Flimsy wiring. (I'm not the OP, but I'm speaking from my experience.)

Those all seem like things you could fix

sometimes there isn't enough plastic. but for slightly higher quality goods the threaded standoffs will often have enough material to take a wider machine thread, and enough strength to keep them for several cycles.

Yes, but there's a certain futility in spending 30 minutes repairing a $5 widget when the $8 widget wouldn't have broken in the first place.

How can you spot low quality screws? I thought you'd have to stress test them.

What do you mean by flimsy wiring?

I design a lot of consumer electronics. You obviously notice the way they strip obviously, but you can run them against a file to see how hard they are if you’re trying to choose parts/suppliers. There are other things to look for, like how precise the slot is or how smooth the outer edges are, but that’s not as important. IMO stress (shear, stretchy) tests are almost totally irrelevant for consumer products that have plastic or soft metal enclosures which will deform far before a fastener will break.

Let's say you are given a product, which you can disassemble as you like. can you give a reasonable estimate of lifetime this way ? or does it require prolonged stress tests ?

And if estimation is possible, how does one learn how to do it on their own ?

This is more of an experience thing, but it is usually very obvious if something is poor quality. A good thing to look at is typically the plastic parts. Look for signs the mold was in poor condition or cheap such as excess flashing or surface roughness. Another thing to examine is how thin the parts are, and presence or lack of reinforcing ribs. For comparison, take apart something like a Milwaukee cordless tool vs. a cheap no-name equivalent. AvE on YouTube does these kinds of teardowns, and does a decent job of explaining design decisions, but is definitely NSFW.

Stress testing screws would be pointless for what you want to achieve, but like the other commenter said you can look at them too find signs they are poor quality (irregular heads, bad plating, etc).

+1 for AvE[1]. He's NSFW compared to bible school due to cussing and occasionally dirty jokes, but he uses language that pretty much any manual laborer in the country encounters daily. His analysis of how things are designed have taught me all sorts of things about how tools are made.

[1]https://www.youtube.com/user/arduinoversusevil

I would also recommend this guy's youtube channel, he disassembles and examines both normally priced and suspiciously-cheap-from-china consumer electronics:

https://www.youtube.com/user/bigclivedotcom/videos

cheap consumer electronics can be assembled in a method with screws intended to be used once into a plastic cylindrical receiving part (injection molded usually). The screws have a certain sort of spiral to them that you don't see with screws intended to be repeatedly installed and removed. On the cheapest stuff, removing the screw once and then reinstalling it can result in the clamshell assembly of the upper and lower injection molded parts becoming permanently loose... One example would be a "modern" humidifier such as you can buy at Target that is never intended to be repaired or disassembled.

Those are self-tapping screws.

In the old days, items of wood would suffer from the same issue when disassembled, although it was then much easier to fill the hole with putty and redrill.

With plastic, I suppose you could use epoxy to fill the hole.

In the old days the plastic bits were often sturdier and held together by long screws. You had about a 75% chance of getting them all out without stripping them, if you had a long skinny screwdriver.

Thirty more years of practice with injection molding and the addition of better stabilizers means the pieces are thinner.

But sometimes they glue the pieces together. Or they use snaps to simplify the assembly line and reduce the plastic further. They squirt in a bead of silicon to prevent vibration or shorting damage.

And part of me suspect that in The Old Days they used to repair products at the factory. Manufacturing processed have changed substantially starting in the late 70’s to favor more and more detection of problems during the assembly process (see Toyota).

If the defect rate is high you repair things to keep your boss’s boss happy. If defects drop and manual labor prices go up then it’s less of a payoff. Or none at all.

> A small subset of people buy shitty products (1$ bicycle lamps, lights, cheap-as-shit appliances like clocks, hoovers

This is not so surprising if you consider that both the desire to repair and the tendency to buy less expensive things can be driven by the overall drive to spend less, perhaps due to personal financial circumstances.

It's a well understood phenomenon that people bias the financial short term over the long term in quick decisions.

EDIT: In addition, many times, the higher quality option for a given type of product is many times more expensive than the "cheap" option, due to things like market segmentation. Given the lack of higher quality middle-priced option, it's pretty rational for people to choose the cheaper one.

>Sam Vimes is also renowned for his "Boots Theory of socio-economic unfairness", as posited in Men at Arms:

The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness. Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Vimes#Boots_theory_of_soci...

I like this suspicion, but I don't buy into anymore. I think there is a floor to quality. However, even what we call cheap quality shoes nowdays are typically above the quality of what you used to be able to get many places, period.

More, if you want shoes to last a long time, I have found nothing beats having multiple sets and not wearing the same shoes constantly. I have not empirically studies this, though. So, if anyone has, I'd be delighted to see the results. I just know that if I buy an expensive set of shoes for me, they last about 6 months if I constantly wear them. I can, of course, resole them. But they are not magically doing better than the cheaper shoes I can also buy. Rotating shoes so that I wear a different set day to day makes a huge difference in how long they last.

'...cheap quality shoes nowdays are typically above the quality of what you used to be able to get many places, period.'

Cheap quality shoes can be better than premium brand 'quality' shoes these days.

I find that the most cost-effective clothes are usually those that you won’t find at Wal-Mart or K-Mart nor at, for example, Sack’s Off Fifth. $50 dollar Levi’s, $100 Nike running shoes, $10 tee shirts, etc seem to last way longer than the cheapest stuff and the expensive stuff. That said, I recently started learning to sew, and am starting to believe that, for example, a $10 sweatshirt from CVS plus some sewing is much more cost effective than, say, the $50 Adidas option.

Do you have recommended improvements/modifications? Sounds like fun.

I wish, but I still have no idea what I’m doing, so not really. All I’ve repaired so far is a couple pairs of Levi’s that I keep tearing on my desks at school.

I mentioned sweaters from CVS because I bought one for ~$9 and the seams are coming apart after about 8 months, but it seems like it will be easy to fix because it was made in such a simple way.

Well, if you make any posts on the things you try, I'd be interested in reading. Good luck!

Just to save you some trouble, if it comes apart on the seams because of age and not because of shoddy sewing from the maker, it's not worth fixing - it will come apart again at a different place within the next month or so. This is especially true for jeans. At least this is my decade-long experience with fixing everything.

Thanks! That's sorta what the woman said at the shop I bought my needle/thread. The sweater is definitely just poor sewing from whatever factory it came from, the jeans a combination.

Given that you have some experience, do you have any resources you can recommend? Maybe a good book with a bunch of the fundamental skills?

Ah, no, I'm sorry. I basically never learned how to do it apart from looking at a few pictures over 15 years ago and talking about it a little (experiences of when to use a patch and when just thread is fine for example). A friend of mine taught me how to use a machine but I find that for repairs it's far better to do things by hand. Most of the things are really easy to figure out with common sense. I bet youtube can help you though. I for myself would rather put my energy into learning how to work with new material, I'm often annoyed by how often old fabric does not hold up and I'm mostly repairing old stuff anyway where a repair does not need to be pretty or long-lived.

I bought a pair of Frye boots -- ostensibly hand-made and durable, $360 dollar shoes -- which completely disintegrated after a year of walking around New York city and were not actually repairable. My cheapo $60 mall boots, on the other hand, got me through 3 years.

Fair enough, footwear is not the best example nowadays. I went from buying cheap $10 shoes at Walmart to only wearing Marine issue Vibram boots that would cost in excess of $200. Although the special forces boots are silent and more comfortable they only last a couple years. My current pair I've had for 4 years and they look identical to the day I got them. But they're not for everybody. However if we extrapolate away from footwear and think about cars I think the anecdote is more apt. Take for instance something as trivial as an oil change. Regular 5w30 will cost around $30 but it breaks down relatively quickly and needs to be changed if you're lucky every 3k miles. Full synthetic on the other hand will set you back $100 plus and will last at least 7k miles. When you change it you'll find with normal use that the oil hasn't really broken down within that span and you're really just changing it to remove combustion and minor engine particulates. Not to mention the engine with full synthetic will run smoother and more efficient, while the regular oil by nature will run noticeably sluggish when reaching its end of life. All of this is moot when making the choice to go full electric, but how much will that set someone back vs buying a good used car that in the most rare circumstances can hope to get less than a quarter of the life of an electric. An even more relevant example for this community I would think would be the concept of tech debt.

$10 Walmart shoes will ruin your legs though. They are fine if you want to sit in a chair/car all day.

> I just know that if I buy an expensive set of shoes for me, they last about 6 months if I constantly wear them.

Generally speaking that's true, though I wear the crap out of my Birkenstocks and they still seem good.

I finally got Birkenstocks just because they are apparently bullet proof and comfortable, but after something like 18 months of wearing them non-stop (almost every day), they have completely worn through and are not usable.

After that I had a pair of Walmart flip-flops that lasted only half the time under similar use but they were 1/10th the price.

Before that I had a pair of no-name not flip-flop (i.e., velcro strap) sandals that lasted nearly 6 years of fairly continual use.

There is no particular moral or conclusion here, they are just anecdotes. I just think you can't make any general rule about "it's better to buy quality than cheap" or vice-versa: it's all situation specific and depends on the quantitative costs and lifetimes.

There are many examples of "it's expensive to be poor". There also many examples of where it's not, and how people have what would have been considered a very high standard of living in the past on minimal output. Many not poor people are also definitely not doing the boot anecdote thing posits: they aren't buying one set of boots and wearing them their entire lifetime. They aren't buying one set of hardwood furniture they use from their 20s until they die and they aren't buying a quality vehicle and running it for 20 years on synthetic oil.

So you wear out four pairs in two years?

Easily, for some types of shoes. In dry weather, I don't care. Small holes in the shoes don't really matter much. In wet, though, it is baffling how quickly I can go through shoes.

This was back when I walked about two to five miles a day. Just in the office, the same shoes can last much longer.

For that matter, most of the change has been in the wet season. I wouldn't be surprised to find the shoes flat out wear faster in that environment.

I have found nothing beats having multiple sets and not wearing the same shoes constantly.

This, a thousand times over. Shoe trees also do wonders to extend the life of footwear. It's all about letting the shoe completely dry out between wears.

echo "Being able to afford good boots" | s/"good boots"/"good decisions"

Yes, but that's fiction.

This quote gets posted over and over ad nauseum on reddit and HackerNews and always seems to just get accepted as truth, but realistically the entire theory depends on the relative numbers between the two things being compared. The theory makes no sense if good boots cost 5x as much as shitty boots but only last 2x as long.

If the cost of most things depended only on quality then I'd find it more convincing, but especially when we're talking about consumer electronics, things like brand reputation, novelty, and user perception matter a lot.

A rich person can buy the cheap option. A poor person usually cannot buy the expensive option. Of course the rule doesn't apply to everything, but it applies to "enough".

Buying a house is often much better financially than renting (in high cost of living areas, usually by a factor)

Hardwood furniture can last several generations. Plywood stuff...not so much.

Mutual funds have much lower fees if you invest a larger amount of money. Banks and credit unions give you more, cheaper services if you have more money. Borrowing money is cheaper the better off you are.

You can get a better job if you can afford to be on the market for longer.

And so on, and so forth. There are exceptions (my cheap ikea couch has lasted 10-15 years, while a fancy hardwood table we got started falling apart after just a few years), but you just have more options if you can afford more expensive stuff. Some of those options are vastly more cost-effective. Being poor is very expensive.

If the point of the quote is to say that "sometimes the more expensive option is better value" it's accurate, but also is obvious, and doesn't really mean anything.

To be clear, I don't think it's strictly wrong, just that it adds nothing of value to a conversation. It just gives a very specific example of when a rule holds.

It's kind of like if the employment statistics come out, and they show improvement, but someone comments that they just got laid off that week. They aren't wrong, but they're also not adding anything to the conversation.

> If the point of the quote is to say that "sometimes the more expensive option is better value" it's accurate, but also is obvious, and doesn't really mean anything.

That is not the point, and the comment you’re replying to gave some very real, serious examples as to why not. Cost of living alone eats an incredible amount of your budget unless you’re very well to do, so there, immediately, you’re out of “sometimes” territory. We’re already in “the majority of most people’s budget” land. Then you have payday loans, any kind of loan in general, late fees, etc: all of these are costs to low liquidity. Unexpected expenses cannot be absorbed if you have no cash nor assets to sell. Being poor is expensive; this is not a random anecdote, it’s a fundamental character flaw in our society that has been consistently identified and documented. Google “the cost of being poor” for more reading material than one could process in a lifetime.

If you’re talking about the specific example in the quote, alone: it’s an illustration, to make a complex and ugly point understandable and palatable and easy to digest. It’s not a random data point: it illustrates the mechanism by which being poor is expensive. That’s not straight forward to intuit, hence this example has merit.

> Cost of living alone eats an incredible amount of your budget unless you’re very well to do,

this has not been true for a long time by now. If it were true there would be no mass market for tourism and no budget for so many people to buy iphones every year or two. By far we all earn way more than what we strictly need to live, even in your first jobs in your twenties.

You've obviously never had to work at somewhere like Walmart

is walmart representative of 75 percent of jobs out there?

It does mean something - there's asymmetry between rich and poor people's ability to buy good and bad items. The rich can buy either but the poor can only buy cheap. So even if only a few things had this boots effect, and everything else worked backward (cheaper item has better value per dollar) that would still skew the fairness in favor of the rich.

That assumes rich people actually participate. They could also just buy cheap things over and over because they can. I like to do that so I'm not too emotionally and financially attached to possessions, which becomes a liability and a worry.

Rich people dOnt always buy premiUm products in every single category of products. This was somewhat of an insight I learned when working in the FMCG industry.

Wait that wasn't obvious for you?

No, it was not obvious to me since I have never been super rich before

If it was so obvious only poor people would shop at wal-mart. That is not the case.

>Buying a house is often much better financially than renting (in high cost of living areas, usually by a factor)

Not any more, especially in the global cities. You are better off investing your money on the stock market.

If I had the choice between no housing whatsoever and stock market, sure. Unfortunately being homeless kind of sucks so the choice is between being and renting. The former is cheaper if only because I don't have to deal with massive rent increases every year. I literally bought my place because I was about to get priced out of the city by my landlord.it took only 2 years for an equivalent unit in an equivalent location to cost me less (including mortage, taxes, maintenance, HOA) than the unit I was renting now goes for.

Sorry, can you clarify what you mean? I don't understand what you mean by "cost me less"?

Not the OP, but mortgage payments will stay fixed over time (assuming interest rates stay the same). Rents increase with demand for housing.

Having also recently bought a house, my repayments are comparable to rent, and double up as an investment.

I literally mean "cost me less" (the numbers below are bogus but the proportions are correct, just so people who know me don't get too much insight into my finances, haha)

When I last rented (in a very high cost of living area), my rent was 2500 and I was faced with a 300/month increase on the renewal of my lease.

I bought a place in an area that is roughly an (almost) as high in demand. Much nicer, 3 times the size. The mortgage was 2000/month. Add taxes and HoA and It's about 3000/month. There is some maintenance and I have to pay for my own repair, so my housing budget is about 3500 a month.

That was several years ago. I can look up the listing for the apartment I used to rent (large building, lots of units on the same floor with the same plan and they have a website). It hovers between 3000 and 3500/month these days.

Except I can deduct about $5000/year in taxes from my mortgage interest and the property taxes (though starting this year I won't be able to do the later anymore because of caps). And on that 3500/month I pay for housing, about $1500ish goes in principal. So effectively, the place costs me about 1500-1600/month. Add that property value is up drastically in the area over the last few years, and I'm living here somewhere between "for free" and "at a profit". That's a heck of a lot cheaper than renting.

There was the matter of the downpayment. I got pretty lucky in some of my stock investments, but the above is hard to beat (and the only reason I have so much money to invest IS because of how much cheaper my housing is now compared to what it would be). Oh, the condo association is letting me stick a solar array on the roof, which is also a fine investment even with the new tariffs. Landlord wouldn't have allowed it. If I ever need to leave or cash in, I can flip the place on the market in a day (well, plus like a month for the closing I guess). I can rent it too for a sweet added profit.

All in all, renting is expensive as hell.

Just a nitpick, but I think you meant particle board instead of plywood. High quality plywood is composed of several thin sheets of hardwood in which the grain of each runs perpendicular to it’s neighbor. This makes is stronger than pure hardwood with far less warping and cupping over time.

Yeah, As you can tell I'm no woodworker :)

Plywood stuff can last. particleboard on the other hand..

You raise a good point, but I'd say the problem is that determining if the more expensive one is _actually_ better is really difficult, there's lots of marketing blurring everything, even going so far as fake reviews, shill comments, etc. You thought you found a quality product but Walmart (or the brand owner, or the brand's new parent company) decided to use cheaper materials to increase margins (possibly even once per year!). The source of trustworthy reviews yesterday somehow "monetized" itself into giving outstanding 5 star reviews quoting phrases like "buy for life", "it's worth spending extra for the quality" when it's literally the same unfit for use garbage you can get unbranded for dirt cheap on a Chinese clone of Amazon. Counterfeit goods on Amazon is already a big problem.

Most likely, the person who can afford the pricier boots and tells you they last longer than yours just needs to use them less, but justifies his decision because it was actually true back in his father's day. Economic inequality is a huge issue right now, sure. But information assymetry is also doing a lot of damage. I can get a spec sheet on 2 motherboards and get about all the information I need from them for a purchasing decision. You can't do that with boots at Walmart in this scenario.

If you don't use something that often then it turns out that buying a fancy one was money wasted. When I buy power tools I usually go for the cheapskate version and figure if it breaks I'll buy a better one next time.

these cafés attract in general "alternative" people. I've got no problem with that, but I'm a bit fed up with conspirationists, anti-nuclear, really left-wing people.

I've had the opposite experience from repair forums and such; most of those into repairing things tend to have agricultural/automotive/trades backgrounds, and seem to be more ring-wing libertarians. Lots of them are anti-EPA too, which is a bit surprising. Perhaps both extremes of the political spectrum oppose the throwaway culture...

Libertarians are the people that can show up with the hard right or the hard left to get their gas guzzler/eco-bike repaired.

Yes, that's exactly it --- one side wants repair because they are concerned about the environment, and the other side wants repair because they want "the good old days" when things were far more repairable.

I have found that many older folks who reminisce about the good old days when everything lasted forever and was repairable, have conveniently forgotten one little detail: cost.

For example, a bog standard plain white washing machine in 1962 would run you about $200. An equivalent no-frills washing machine today will be about $300. So yes, of course things back then lasted longer -- you were paying about ten times more for them. If there were a market for it, a manufacturer today could easily make a $2500 basic washing machine that would last 50 years with relatively little maintenance and make it inexpensive to repair if it does break.

There is a market for that - commercial washing machines intended for multiple-use like in dormatories or laundrymats.

Exactly, I know folks who shell out a lot for a Speed Queen commercial washer and dryer. Like 3x what a consumer model would cost.

Very well built, very repairable.

Actually there is an end-user brand that makes such things. Staber. When we got one, the county appliance-repair guy drought all of his buddies to check it out.

I want evidence for this- meaning, parts where costs are reduced - and the lifetime reduction they create- i want to see the correlating curves without spikes before i swallow that myth. Once we had handwoven goods- and they where expensive, and im sure the very first luddites had lots of tails, how machinery would reduce the quality of non-guild woven material.

I’ve never liked the notion that folks don’t care about the environment unless they agree with one plan to fix it.

Both "sides" are just the residual echoes from mainstream narratives that are used to divide and control people - red (/blue) herrings in this context. Everybody essentially just wants individual autonomy and localied sanity, primarily differing on pain points, focus, and analysis framework.

It's unsurprising that many of the people who have done the work to seek out repair cafes have also traveled far from the mainstream authoritarian narrative, and have half baked "crazy" theories filling the gaps. I don't know that much can be done to help convergence, besides tearing down that mainstream narrative so that it alienates less in the first place.

And yes, it is frustrating listen to ignorant rants. But if the flavor of ignorance substantially matters to you, then you need to examine your own assumptions.

my go-to move is to require them to put in a little effort themselves. guy brought in a crappy little kettle grill that had rusted out, said it was a shame to throw it away.

I gave him a piece of sandpaper and told him that if he sanded off the rust and paint around the holes I would fill the holes with rod and set the legs again.

it turned out not to be such a shame

I think this applies in many parts of life. I have a customer right now who fired off a brief email asking for something that will take quite a lot of my time, I will push some of it back on them.

At our local bike repair cafe the volunteers will not even touch your things, they will just stand next to you and make comments about what to do.

I used to try and avoid the shitty products and "buy it for life". The trouble is it's often difficult to know the quality until you have lived with something for a while, even price doesn't give you a good idea. Sometimes cheap will last a long time or I might buy $1 bike lights because I don't want to worry about them being stolen.

So now I'll start with shitty and if that fails then next time I'll spend a bit more.

By the way I think the word you were looking for is conspiratorialist: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/conspiratoriali...

I've argued with a lot of friends about the "buy it for life" meme. I think it overlooks how quickly people change what they want from their things.

Maybe a more healthy meme could be: "Buy high-quality things, but never buy new". If you believe a product is durable, you should be comfortable with buying it used. If you end up not needing the thing anymore, you should be able to sell it again without any waste or loss of value.

I'd like to see a day when [where it makes sense] products are sold with a "repairability index" which might take into account several axes of repairability [mandated by some regulation]:

1. Ease. Can minor parts which break down due to environmental factors be easily swapped out (things which wear or suffer from breakdown over time)

2. The parts make sense to swap-out (sometimes new items are more efficient and are better than repairing an old inefficient item)

3. Cost. The repair may not be cost-effective.

4. Environmental impact.

(others)

Example, I've had a washing machine break down and all it was either a plastic bit that broke, another time it was one of the switches. Those two things have extended the life over 5 years. Online forums help a great deal in figuring out what might be the issue.

iFixit keeps such an index for most electronics products.

iFixit is the only place that I’m aware of, but “most” might be an exaggeration unfortunately. They have the most popular products certainly, but for less mainstream devices you are entirely out of luck.

I support the idea behind iFixit, so in the future I might prefer to buy from their store. Otherwise, I’m not sure how else to expand range of devices that you can get a repair guide and repair score for.

And I know of absolutely nothing for non-computing devices, ie. washing machines, fridges, TVs. I think such information is really important, but there is no incentive for anyone to provide it.

Ifixit has plenty of repair information for non-computing devices! They host the most complete set of repair manuals for the Mercedes W123 for example.

Here’s washing machines: https://www.ifixit.com/Device/Washing_Machine

Wow, okay, not sure how I never spotted that. Taking a look, currently it seems extremely limited in practice

In software it was Gartner that popularised the TCO marking - and what you are asking here is roughly the same thing.

that we have to fight for food labelling suggests that TCO is still a long way off

Great idea. I'd also like to see a tax based on environmental cost, the way some jurisdictions have "disposal fees" for certain electronics like printers.

The first thing that comes to mind are the throw away toys and gag gifts and dollar store items, but extends to anything that is poorly made or single-use, especially things where the battery is not meant to be replaced.

The burden needs to be put on manufacturer's creating more waste into the world.

I think we pretty much do this already by charging for waste removal. If you throw things away, you pay more. And certain things cost more to throw away like lithium batteries.

So the tax is on the tail end rather than front loaded.

I think it's better to front load it. At the back end people have the option to dispose of things improperly.

Also, I don't think we include enough externalities in the price if things.

Having an index could inform people when making purchasing choices.

It's one thing to charge to move the waste to a landfill, it's another to price in the long term (difficult to quantify) environmental costs (manufacturing pollution, land & water contamination, depletion of resources, etc). I'd be curious to see how much the disposal costs reflect total costs and whether some areas are subsidized.

I never buy expensive stuff, since I assume that all I am paying is marketing.

I have no time to research better, except for things I understand well and I really care about, i.e. a laptop. And even then repairability is not on my list, since laptops have so many options that finding one which satisfies my needs is already a challenge.

The problem is compounded by the fact that my criteria (big horsepower per kg and lightweight) are contrary to repairability.

the "buy it for life" subreddit helps a lot here, for at least narrowing down the search space.

I"ll try that, but I am in the EU, no idea if it applies.

You obvisly haven't compared how high street shoes / boots compare to mid market brands like loake are in terms of comfort and longevity.

Its worth paying £170 for the comfort alone

No I haven't. The prospect of spending 200+€ in shoes, which are going to last forever, but which I am not going to use for long because they will optically deteriorate and I will anyway get tired of, is not alluring.

My criteria for shoes (except for sports) is:

1. I must be able to put them on/off in 3s, without bending. Which implies no laces (or pre-tied knots)

2. reasonably comfortable

3. light

4. cheap

Do you not use shoe Polish?

I still get tired of the shoes, they still smell, fashion keeps on changing and 10 year old shoes are not the same as new shoes, no matter how good they are.

Most shoes last for years, even cheap ones. I still put them in thr cellar after 2-3 years.

Those shoes would be good as my only shoes in a Mad Max world. Mmmm ... not even, I would prefer trekking shoes.

Well just by classic designs that have been around for decades and shoe design doesn't change much for males or females for that matter.

I don't believe it, I know the marketers of these companies want you to believe it but I don't (and I own an expensive pair of walking boots).

Generally I've found avoiding the bottom 10% gives you the most bang for your buck.

That's the problem: you're optimizing for bang-for-buck. Regular shoes/trainers only go up to a few hundred $, they're cheap enough that, as long as they have a median wage in a developed country, the buyer can optimize for something else like comfort without a significant financial impact.

Bang for buck optimizing is only worth it for certain cost/income combos. In other words: the value of money varies for each individual.

I think I'd argue there is no difference other than possibly as some kind of economic signal which I try and avoid.

I was away for a month and took a new pair of Chelsea boots from a bog standard high street shop with me - didn't want to look to scrufy on a v high profile project.

Walking the 1/2 mile up princess street from hotel to the office in them caused so much pain after 2 days I had to go out and buy some trainers.

Never had that with Loakes - I d agree that paying 2k plus for hand fitted shoes like the city boys wear is probably over kill.

Marketing ROI is typically positive, so you're not really paying for marketing.

Price is often adjusted TO make marketing ROI positive..

That's not how pricing works.

Marketing is a volume play, not price.

It's neither, it's usually a consistency play. By heavily marketing, volume increases, and price gets hiked as needed. Profit may remain the same, but now it is more consistent over the quarters.

> Marketing ROI is typically positive

For the seller - yes. Otherwise it wouldn't be worth doing.

You meant "negative"?

>these cafés attract in general "alternative" people. I've got no problem with that, but I'm a bit fed up with conspirationists, anti-nuclear, really left-wing people.

If anybody ever finds a solution to this, every hackerspace in the world would love to know what it is.

Print a poster of a pyramid, an eye and "Annuit coeptis Novus ordo seclorum"

You can tell it’s legit because it’s in Latin!

How do views on nuclear weapons/energy even come up? What are people bringing in?

How do you know if someone is a conspiracy theorist? Don't worry, they'll tell you.

Or a vegan, a cyclist, a crossfitter, an atheist...

The masses have assembled to be enligthend about my lifestyle, for im the chosen prophet of the church of me.

> an atheist

I'd imagine this only applies where atheists are in the minority

It applies to atheists who suddenly stop being a tiny minority. Those who are still in a tiny persecuted minority keep their mouths shut, and those who've been in the majority for a while don't bother talking about it.

(Sources: the bible belt, the bay area, and /r/atheism.)

That sounds about right.

Or a Christian...

They let you know by saying things like "For the love of God don't leave the soldering iron on" or "Jesus Christ you ruined our table".

I'm not sure how strong evidence those phrases are for that conclusion.

Plenty of non-christians raised in a Christianity influenced social background, but not raised by Christians, use phrases like that.

I was thinking about this the other day, and in the U.K. there are a lot of people who would say they are Christian if asked their religion, but really they are non-practicing or more likely atheists, but don’t want to admit it.

I saw a statistic once where they asked people whether it was true or false that one can only be moral if one believes in a higher power, sorted by country. The highest numbers reached more than 90%.

With this in mind, things like your point make a lot of sense.

http://www.pewglobal.org/2014/03/13/worldwide-many-see-belie...

Actually, that is "taking the lord's name in vain" and is quite frowned upon by a lot of Christians. I am not Christian, but I grew up in the Bible Belt and I am aware that is deemed to be a serious form of disrespect. I swear like a sailor, but I try to not take the lord's name in vain in public because I am aware it is deeply offensive to devout Christians, more so than my general tendency to use four letter words.

I'm agnostic, with a heavy lean towards atheism (I figure not enough data to bother thinking about it for the most part), but "Jesus Fucking Christ" is my go-to when exasperated. For what it's worth, like the sibling comment I grew up in the bible belt, so I'm sure that has a major impact on swear preference.

So glad you brought it up! We have a really big week coming up! :-)

...so I've heard. I really am being half serious, because people should be able to talk about things that are important and interesting to them. Just because there are few assholes from pretty much every persuasion that can't sense the tone of a conversation or relationship and keep their veganism, atheism, religion, love of pineapple pizza, or whatever to themselves at appropriate times doesn't mean that everyone else should feel guilty about expressing themselves.

But really, not too recently someone thought it was so important they put it on the money and made school children say it every day. I don't think it occurs to most people just how pervasive declarations of religiosity are in America.

I live in the Northeast and most Christians won't really bring it up unless they know you pretty well (frankly I'm the same because I'm not that interested in having to defend myself or being treated like a hick).

Hey, I'm an atheist, and I never do this!

There should be an "upvote if intended irony" button on HN, where the author has to flag the post as irony beforehand and gets the upvote only if he did it, otherwise it becomes a downvote and vice versa.

BTW, I'm using Arch Linux.

Allow me to generalise a little, but from experience, people with those views (or who are very strongly opinionated), always seem to be able to bring those topics up.

This is exactly my observation as well. You know the 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon thing? It’s like that but can happen in 3 degrees or less, and almost any crazy subject.

How would you know if there were counterexamples? By definition they would not be telling you about it.

Well, there was a time some rando flipped out after overhearing a conversation I was having regarding my tritium key fob.

Frankly, I've found the overall environments in these sorts of cafes/hackerspaces to be frustratingly anti-social. And I am someone who would be considered fairly left-leaning overall. But good lord were my hopes dashed when it came to thinking I would meet other folks that would be fun to talk to, just because not 100% of my views line up with the accepted SV zeitgeist.

It’s unsurprising (and probably inevitable) that counter-cultural social clubs tend to attract nonconformists.

There isn't a culture to be cultured against any more. This isn't 1960 where there is one medium that connects 75%+ of people. What you have now are a lot of different cultures.

>This isn't 1960 where there is one medium that connects 75%+ of people.

Was it ever like that though? Even in 1960?

That's definitely not true. Travel to some country on the other side of the world and you can appreciate for yourself that, subcultures aside, there is a large body of shared cultural beliefs and practices that most of us more or less share.

Including the counter cultures.

I've yet to meet genuine American socialists, even your hard communists sound like Christian Democrats with some odd ideas of race thrown in.

I don't know if I'd say that, but the persistent idea that we're all charting a unique ideological course from first principles is, I think, somewhat characteristic.

It would be worth reviewing all the branding and the marketing plans, if you really wanted to solve this. Is it being positioned in such a way to be attractive to conventional, non-politically engaged?

This is an under-appreciated element in grassroots campaigning. How does it look to potential sympathetic outsiders?

I find that the biotech hackerspaces I've gone to don't have this problem. That's because the biotech equipment is not really amenable to back to the land post apocalyptic use and it takes a while to learn how to use it to be able to do anything productive. A lot of kooks think that they can throw some bits together and make an iron man suit. If they actually found out how much work it is to actually make simple things, I think they'd lose interest.

Maybe have people have to take a class or two on how to use the equipment before they can join?

> Maybe have people have to take a class or two on how to use the equipment before they can join?

That's how Dallas Maker Space does it and seems like a good approach. I did the wood shop orientation and decided not to join because I had to postpone the project I was planning. But I don't know whether that filters out the annoyances mentioned.

Well, one would expect the "no Frankenfoods!"-crowd to avoid places that call themselves biotech hackerspaces.

Every goa party attracts esoteric folks- all i wanted to do is to dance to psy-trance, instead i have to listen to a half hour talk about demeter-tomatos. To be honest, if i get really bored, i start some fantasy tales myself- just to see if there is a point, those people will call me out for rambling nonsense.

One of these days, i guess.

Side note: do you mean actual parties in goa, India? Would love to know about this! I spend time in that area every year.

Side note to your side note: I don't know what the parent was referring to but if I had to guess, I'd guess Goa Parties (which are a thing) as opposed to Parties in Goa.

Goa Parties (in my experience anyway) involve Goa Trance music[0] and are sort of their own subculture but it involves people from all walks, e.g. from Burning Man techie decompressionists to German hippies and beyond. Oh, and drugs, though not mandatory.

But I'm no expert so maybe ask an expert if you're interested in this kind of thing. I bet there are also Goa Parties in Goa.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goa_trance

Just curious - who are 'techie decompressionists'? :)

I think techies who want to decompress.

haha :D

Well today I learnt this ... :)

Yes, there are indeed psytrance (goatrance) parties in Goa :) My friends make a regular trip there for the November full moon party season, like migrating birds.

Wow, these days I see so many people who "know" India on the internet. I'm starting to get to know how the US folk feel, where every other YouTube channel caters to them or when many websites (or at least the ones I visit) assume you're from the US.

For some additional context: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xq5cq6

Just googled Demeter tomatoes, wow what a cool fragrance company! Thank for sharing, is this stuff carcinogenic?

I'm genuinely curious as to what would be left wing conspiracies? I don't doubt they exist but googling "Left wing conspiracy theories" quite literally brings up a list of "Right wing conspiracy theories".

Often times it's the same as right wing theories. The government is using flouride in the water to control the population. Contrails are actually chemical spraying. 9/11 was an inside job, etc. I've heard these from both friends who are both left wing or apolitical.

A favorite moment of mine was telling a flat-earther about the hollow earth theory. The look on his face was priceless.

Concave earth is hands down my favorite conspiracy theory. The completeness of the lie is astonishing. I actually spent months trying to come up with a way to disprove it on a high-school-education only-trust-your-eyes shoestring budget, and couldn't come up with much.

The most visible point I've seen is that the seasonal star constellations you know well (Orion in my case) will be seen as inverted if you change the hemisphere. The moon and sun position also change greatly. I'm not aware of any ideas that incorporate this.

It takes either time or money to see for yourself though.

This is a fun read on wikipeida [1]. I'm curious as to how you could disprove it at all: there's a perfectly valid coordinate transformation that maps our "infinity" to the center of the earth, and the center of the earth to infinity. All the laws of physics become position-dependent, of course, and it's not a convenient space for calculations, but it "proves" that the concave earth is a perfectly valid way of describing the universe.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollow_Earth#Concave_Hollow_Ea...

I don't understand the difference the entry makes between the fact that you can represent the universe in a CHE model using coordinate transformations and "hypotheses". Given that you started from a concave model of the universe and the associated physical laws, you could make reasonable hypotheses and verify them through experimentation.

Anti-corporate ones like anti-vax, or the idea that Big Pharma is keeping us sick for profit. Similar sentiments exist for Big Agri/Food, particularly with GMOs.

Back in the W Bush days there were suggestions being thrown around that homeland security types were using 9/11 as an excuse to push their pre-prepared systems of control on people, that Diebold voting machines were rigged to support Republicans.

> Back in the W Bush days there were suggestions being thrown around that homeland security types were using 9/11 as an excuse to push their pre-prepared systems of control on people,

That's not a conspiracy theory, but a verifiable fact: the systems of control overtly implemented after 9/11 justified by terrorism had largely been proposed (overtly), by many of the same people pushing them after 9/11, with other justifications (often, in the most recent prior attempt, the War on Drugs was the justification.)

There is a related conspiracy theory, though, that 9/11 was engineered (either a false-flag op or simply knowingly allowed to proceed) for the purpose of being used in that way.

The X-Files spin off “The Lone Gunmen” posited that the US government remote controlled an airliner to crash it into WTC and create popular support for wars overseas, comparing it to the (non-fictional) Operation Northwoods.

The real kicker? It aired in March 2001. That 9/11 conspiracy theory is older than the actual attacks!

>Anti-corporate ones like anti-vax, or the idea that Big Pharma is keeping us sick for profit

These are overwhelmingly right-wing conspiracies.

> Similar sentiments exist for Big Agri/Food, particularly with GMOs.

These run across the board.

The 1 percent stealing every resource from the 99% and eating babies for breakfast. I still see this kind of comments often enough.

Well, they really are hoarding as much money as possible, rewriting as many laws as they can to help themselves do it. And with rich people like Peter Thiel making comments about wanting to use blood from young people the eating babies part is getting closer.

Blood is a renewable resource so I see no problem in making it a market product, with the proper regulation in place of course.

As for hoarding money you are misunderstanding how things work. Money hoarded are usually reinvested somewhere else and does not sleep in a vault or something. Even your bank is constantly investing the money you save on the market. Thats how you can finance companies and startups in the end.

The rich are keeping that money in their own circles, thus only funding the things they themselves care about. They are big time tax dodgers, because they don't want to accidentally fund something that benefits the poor.

> they don't want to accidentally fund something that benefits the poor.

Welfare policies have been shown at multiple times to actually harm the poor in the long run, not benefit them. There are entire books written on that topic. Check out Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980 from Charles Murray.

Fuck Charles Murray

because he actually looked aT data?

Lies, damn lies and statistics.

Because poor people have it so much worse in the Nordic countries compared to the US, right?

There are also entire books written about Bigfoot and the flat Earth theory.

If you put Charles Murray in the same category as flat earth fools then I dont know what your references are.

The problem is not welfare, the problem is US-style hobbled and deliberately bad welfare systems.

Is it really consciously avoiding benefiting the poor or just that they think they know better?

Gates and Zuckerberg have both given large amounts intending to benefit the poor.

They are definitely outliers.

There have been tests done which show an inverse correlation between the cost of a person's car and how likely they are to stop for pedestrians waiting at marked crossings. Just as an informal example.

It is also extremely telling that the people who litter the most are young and rich.

Rich people overwhelmingly care a lot less about people they consider to be beneath them.

It's a product that's there's already a large, regulated market for, in fact (as blood plasma specifically). It wouldn't much extra effort to only buy it from young desperate people...

Yeah today in "not actually a real problem in the physical world" we deal with the plague of really left wing people and their anti-nuclear rhetoric that is plaguing hackerspaces across the globe. Can't we just fission in peace? These monsters are insatiable.

How can we stop this epidemic before it's too late?

"When this case happens, I explain in good term that they should buy a slightly better quality next time;"

1. I guarantee 99% of the comsumers out there don't know quality, from junk.

That whole, "You get what you pay for just doesn't equate to this last two decades." I'm taking comsumer goods mainly. I could give example, after example, but just too tired.

I'll give a couple examples.

Vechicles--the buyer has no clue, or real way to find out which vechicles are engineered well. And that's the reason we have movie stars still pitching products.

Laptops--I just happened to have a 2000 Dell Laptop brochure on my desk. I was going to recycle it, but grew melancholy when looking at the quality of the laptops. They were built to last. As opposed to what we are offered today.

"these cafés attract in general "alternative" people. I've got no problem with that, but I'm a bit fed up with conspirationists, anti-nuclear, really left-wing people."

Give me an "alternative" mind over a conformist, corporate stooge any day. Those quirkey people bring change. They question the status quo. Again too tired to list examples. Almost every new invention was though of by a "alternative person". The rich boys usually had the resources enough to capitalize on it though.

How many kids ? I often wonder how they would like seeing how stuff work instead of just using them. Also linking with future physics/math education.

>These cafés attract in general "alternative" people. I've got no problem with that, but I'm a bit fed up with conspirationists, anti-nuclear, really left-wing people.

Are these cafes in libraries?

As someone who has gone to them a few times, I have a complaint about the other side. Of all the volunteers, there's always at least one who will start chiding the owners that they are not taking proper care of the appliance/tool/etc - and not in a friendly way. One volunteer started lecturing me saying I'm in this mess because I did not maintain it, etc. I told him I had no idea it required maintenance. "Well you should have read the manual!" Well forgive me for buying it for $10 at a Goodwill without a manual! Annoyed, I let him know there was no way I'd pay the $50-100 a new one would cost me just so that I can get a manual.

(I got several years out of that $10 tool, so I'm still happy).

You could download the manual from the internet, instead of buying cheap junk and the demanding people fix your stuff for free.

>You could download the manual from the internet, instead of buying cheap junk and the demanding people fix your stuff for free.

1. I did not know it came with a manual. You don't expect everything to have one. Does your non-electric toothbrush have one? Just today I bought a tool from Home Depot. No manual. The table lamp I have on my table right now? No manual.

2. I didn't demand anything. If the guy said "Sorry, this is too much of a headache to fix", I'd be fine.

3. It was not "cheap junk". It was in very good condition when I bought it, and fairly pricey brand new. In the shape it was in when I bought it, it was better than buying a cheap one brand new.

4. Buying used stuff from Goodwill is a bad idea? The whole point behind these repair cafes is that one does not waste. Buying used stuff from Goodwill is very much in the spirit of what these people are doing. If someone had said that to me in a repair cafe for this item, I would have said "You're right. Crazy idea I had to try to repair things instead of just buying another one."

5. If he had merely informed me that it had gone bad due to poor maintenance, and suggested I Google how to take care of it, I would have really appreciated it. There's a world of a difference between "I think you should learn how to take care of this tool" and "You are an irresponsible owner who refuses to read the manual. Let me guess, you threw it away as soon as you bought it, right?"

6. I know it's shocking to hear, but yes, I expect that people will not charge me when they advertise their services as being free.

It's amazing how much you can assume based on a small comment. I strongly suggest you not volunteer at such a place - these types of repair people are a disservice to the spirit of these cafes.

He is probably there volunteering because he is passionate about these things. He is most likely the kind of person who takes very good care of his stuff. In addition it can be very frustrating dealing with the general public. Maybe cut the guy a break as he is trying to help. Perhaps if you had handled the situation better instead of feeling attacked it could have been a positive experience all around.

Oh no your anti-corporate organization is being visited by left wing people...

# Solution for issue #1 (shitty product buyers):

I think you should charge (if you're not already) for the repairs. This is just to 1) make sure you get paid for your effort and keep it sustainable or grow, 2) that we're accounting for the value of your time/effort

Why?: This will fix the issues of effort in fixing a bike lamp. However, it is also possible that some widget is cheap and broken but the customer is willing to pay your repair fee (i.e. rational choice) because:

1. Repair parts for this item are no more made or difficult to get

2. the next best alternative is more expensive

  1. the better quality one is way too expensive or beyond their budget at least

  2. this needs to be cheap because you use it roughly (eg:workout earphones) or is likely to get lost (a toy)

3. This was given by a loved one or is a gift

Any which way, it makes sense to use the "invisible hand of the market" here because the preferences of your customer are difficult to find - let them decide.

That's OK, the people who know that there is a general conspiracy of corruption and that there are definitely conspiracies within the political and military power structure have been quite fed up with those who refer to people as "conspirationists".

Just this weekend I was reading and watching about Norman Finkelstein, the son of a Holocaust survivor and author of The Holocaust Industry. He's been kicked out of his job and banned from entering certain illegitimate countries due to his work that simply tells the truth.

People who don't want to look at what's going on in the world around them or have no interest in standing up to prosecute those who do wrong, are the problem in this world.

Also, we should praise companies that actually encourage and support repairing behavior.

Case in point: Baratza coffee grinders. They establish repairing as one of the companies top priorities and part of their mission.[0]

They sell almost every part necessary for fixing their grinders[1]. They deliberately make them easy do disassemble and reassemble and provide lots of instructions on how to fix most problems, both in print and in video.[2] They also have a program of buying used grinders to resell them refurbished. Whenever a model is upgraded they also sell the upgrading kit for owners of old models.

[0] https://www.baratza.com/social-responsibility/

[1] https://www.baratza.com/product-category/parts/

[2] https://www.baratza.com/troubleshooting/

Another company which is similar in coffee space is Technivorm, you can buy / replace all the parts, and I actually bought a 10+ years old machine which works flawless after replacing a few minor parts.

In a slightly similar way, Nudie Jeans [1] have free repairs for life in their many repair shops around the world. They also have some posts on DIY repairs [2]. It's not that their jeans are low-quality either, that they offer this. I've had jeans repaired in Australia, UK, and Norwray.

[1] https://www.nudiejeans.com/ [2] https://www.nudiejeans.com/blog/28-friday-january-25-2013

I've had a Briggs and Riley[0] suitcase for about 10 years.

It came with a "lifetime guarantee" and so on. About 3 years ago it suffered some damage in handling, the normal abuse by Celebi[1] and I would definitely not consider it a manufacturing defect. But the promise was that it could take anything the airlines and their zombie hordes[1] could dish out, so I sent it back for repairs.

They repaired it within a weak and returned it at their cost, and I've been traveling with the same suitcase ever since. Had they not offered the repairs I probably would have bought a new suitcase.

[0]: https://www.briggs-riley.com/

[1]: http://www.celebiaviation.com/en/yazi.php?id=75

That's definitely a great benefit of higher end luggage. Other brands with similar service are Rimowa and Tumi. With Rimowa I had a case where someone cut the into the luggage with a knife all around the zipper and they repaired it.

Sennheiser sells lots of replacement parts for their headphones. In fact, it looks like I could nearly rebuild my entire pair of headphones from their spare parts:

https://spares.sennheiser.co.uk/search?q=hd+280

Beyerdynamic does that too for their studio equipment. Premium products for the professional market are always being treated differently by manufacturers. Except by Apple, but that's another story.

Assos (cycling clothes) are good at repairing too. They not only last long, but they offer repair services.

Had a crash wearing 5 year bibs. Emailed them just in case.. Long story short, I had to pay for shipping one way only. Came back a week later, good as new.

Recently I almost threw away our stove because one of the burners melted. I was about 2 seconds away from submitting an order online for a new stove when my wife asked how we were going to dispose of the current one. Suddenly, I realized how tragic it is to throw something so massive. I got my screw driver out and tinkered behind the stove for 20 minutes, ordered a couple parts, soldered a little here and there, and had the whole thing 100% operational with a total output of about 2 hours. I honestly could hardly believe it myself. I did the same thing with a broken chainsaw too. And it’s so rewarding to actually fix something.

If you’re even remotely handy it’s remarkable how easy it is to fix things that you might otherwise just throw away and replace.

Even if you can't fix it, there is value in tinkering with it. Over the years I've gotten to the point where I understand my limits, when I might be able to stretch those limits, and when to call in the professionals or just chuck it and buy a new one. Even when I can't fix it myself, I have a general idea of what's wrong so I can be much more confident in my decision to replace it; and if I end up calling in a professional, I can be confident I won't be getting ripped off.

The internet has also helped a lot. Specifically, a lot of howto videos show common gotchas, which in the past are the things that have usually caused me to either give up or to turn a $10 repair into a $500 replacement by making things worse...

Youtube is a fantastic resource for any repairs, even if I'm comfortable with doing something I'll often watch a couple of videos first to spot common gotchas.

Lemme second this comment. Everything you say is good.

One thing to keep in mind is that you need to understand when things can be dangerous. Like old tube-based equipment.

I still have a screwdriver that has divots scarred into it from discharging a couple of 500V can capacitors in an old (solid-state) stereo. Now, that's a great lesson... discharge caps if you're not sure about them, and I am glad I learned it.

I'm also quite glad that I did that on purpose with a screwdriver and not on accident with my finger.

I'm even more glad that I did some basic research to know that giant caps ougtta at least be thought about if you're gonna peek around in that kind of stuff.

Completely agree. You need to be careful about capacitors. Generally, a YouTube video will warn you about a part/product you need to look out for. I replaced the run capacitor on my central air unit for $10 and saved hundreds of dollars in repair costs. It's been years and the thing is still running. Just had to watch instructions on how to properly discharge the capacitor.

Having been shocked enough to have a mini PTSD episode when seeing a flyback transformer, did anyone actually die from a normal cap discharge? Unless it's a large subwoofer capacitor, the stored energy is not enough to do deadly damage, even if it's in the thousands of volts, in my experience...

I think that in most cases the electricity run across the finger or the arm and not through the heart.

Apparently the charge in computer power supplies can kill :/

https://www.cnet.com/news/teen-electrocuted-while-working-on...

I agree with this sentiment.

One thing that has been a godsend for me was a scan tool for my car. Not a lot goes wrong with my car, even though it's 10 years old, but being able to ask the car what's wrong when the check engine light comes on is a good way to save some money.

The first time the check engine light came on the car was still under warranty, so I let the dealer take care of it. I didn't own a scan tool at this time.

The second time it happened, many years later, my scan tool told me that it was an oxygen sensor. I know that is beyond my skill level, so off it goes to a mechanic. Since the scan tool told me what was wrong, I knew what to expect and could tell if they were trying to screw me over.

The third time it happened my scan tool told me that the battery voltage was low. That made a lot of sense for a 10 year old car, that had been sitting outside in -27C weather for a while, that still had the factory battery. Fixing that involved a trip to Costco and 15 minutes tinkering in the driveway. I'm sure a mechanic would have marked up the battery and charged an hour of labour, so the scan tool probably paid for itself with this one use.

lovely story! i think there are two factors at play that dont get mentioned enough:

youtube and the internet at large has made diagnosing and fixing lots of problems much simpler and quicker.

amazon, ebay, and 3d printing and other cheap ways of making things have created lots of cheap, decent replacement parts that can arrive at your house in 2 days.

these two factors make repairing things yourself a couple orders of magnitude easier than 20 years ago, say. i cannot believe its only now really coming to the fore

"It's already broken, you can't break it any more" are words to live by.

Not necessarily. Think of someone not familiar with computers having some persisting issue and thinking - well it's already broken - this website just popped up saying I have a virus, so might as well try following their solution.

Or of someone misdiagnosing a trivial problem like a blown fuse and breaking parts while disassembling an appliance which is completely fine.

This staggers me. My entire career can be traced back to fixing computer problems in much the way you describe. Is that not a very common experience? People tinker with things, sometimes those things are destroyed in the process. That's how people learn.

I feel like kid playing with old appliance (or PC) in the garage is a cliche hacker origin story. I know it is mine.

Maybe the lack of easy communication and scams made it easier? You could still install bonsai buddy and stuff, but there wasn't a chance to get ransomware...

Also people didn't depend that much on computers. How much would you really destroy at the time by wiping everything? How much damage would that do on a family computer these days?

I think a lot of people actually depend on the contents of their hard drive a lot less these days than, say, ten years ago, because so much is stored in the cloud - photos in particular.

Some home improvement stores in the US, like Home Depot and Lowe's, will gladly take your old equipment upon delivery of new one, as long as it's of the same type. At least this has been my experience.

In 2001 I was living with a bunch of people in a rundown old house. We did not have a washer and dryer but we did have the hook-ups for them. But we are all poor and coming up with the cash to buy a set wasn't happening. We just used the laundromat. And yes, I know that it is cheaper to use your own. But a few bucks here and there at the laundromat was easier to deal with.

We had a casual relationship with our neighbors and one day they they were having a garage sale. They had a washer and dryer set for sale. They wanted a hundred for the set and I jokingly said I would give them ten. They said if I manned the garage sale for them for a few hours while they got lunch I could have the set. Bingo!

They worked great for about a year and then one of the wheels that holds the tub in the dryer had a bearing blow out. There was about a two inch gap in the bottom of the tub and it was swallowing bras. Apparently this had gone on for a while and nobody noticed. So I pull the back off the dryer to take a look and see what had happened.

I figured I was screwed since the dryer was older than I was. But I called Sears and they had the part. They actually had a repair kit for our dryer. For 25 bucks we got three rollers, belt, and new heating element. It took about a hour to install all the new stuff and I still have the dryer and it works great.

And really, we were so lucky, it had sucked in a lot of clothes. They were piled up around the heating element. Could have easily caught fire.

So that's where all the socks go...

I ride a 48 year old Honda motorcycle. This baffles some people who didn't know a vehicle of that age could still be on the road.

It's not mint or original but it's nice. Everything works fine. The valves need to be adjusted soon. The transmission isn't silky but it shifts, probably a bent shift fork from abusive riding some time in the last 5 decades.

Everything about it is designed to be maintained by the average person. With a little mechanical knowledge and some patience anything on that bike can be fixed. It even comes with a tool kit.

There are a couple of repair shops in town that rent out spaces to work on bikes like this. They keep a mechanic on staff to provide help and even supply tools. I rent a garage from a friend and a few of us keep our old bikes going there.

Not all old things were built like this but this bike is a shining example of how well made things can last lifetimes.

I just got a 20 year old Land Rover and, after having attempted to repair consumer electronics and modern vehicles, I am stunned at how easy they are to repair.

Firstly, it is an entirely mechanical car, which makes everything much simpler. But the truly stunning bit is the documentation and community.

All of the workshop manuals are available online. That is good enough for most tasks, but if something particularly complex needs diagnosing, there are forums with all the information you need.

When you need to get parts, an exploded diagram of the entire car is available online with part numbers. Both the original manufacturer and several third parties still make parts. Somebody has even made a price comparison website.[0]

I wish all the things I owned worked like this. I understand the economics often don’t work out for smaller, cheaper things, and there is no incentive for the original manufacturer to provide these things, but surely there is enough of a community to support common repairs in a similar way.

[0] https://www.landroverworkshop.com

One major hurdle that I face regularly when something is broken is getting the tools I need to fix it. Buying tools that I may not need for another 5 years and won't likely be used anywhere else just does not make any sense to my mind even though replacing the device will be likelier more expensive. Also, there aren't guides to repair all devices/equipment online. If I open it, I am afraid I won't be able to put it back together. I love the idea of Repair cafe and would likely make a few visits if there is one nearby. (Any repair cafes in NYC?)

You also have to store all those tools somewhere. That's the bigger issue for me.

It's about 5 screwdrivers for a laptop/smartphone/TV (of course, that makes it 15 for all three) and around 10 screwdrivers/spanners for home appliances. You can fit all that in a purse :D

That's the thing I don't like about Apple products. I swapped the HDD for a SSD in my father's Mac Mini and had to order a kit with all the right special screwdrivers and special tools just for that.

I agree it’s annoying they are different, but I’m yet to buy an HD or replacement part that didn’t ship with the screw drivers for free or almost free. Now I have loads of them and I can’t bring myself to throw away screw drivers.

Similar thoughts on Apple products here. Looking at the iFixit guide for the current iMacs kills all my wishes for owning one (I considered it, but not after seeing the teardown...). And it's so unnecessary! They could have easily made it much more upgrade- and repairable without compromising the visual design.

Fixing is not their goal, and I'm OK with that. I really dislike Apple for a lot of reasons but their hardware is not one of them.

If you look at some of the breakdowns on ifixit, there might be an area where they needed 4 screws. In another laptop, they would have been identical screws, but in the Apple they are all different sizes. Each one is specific to the area it's holding so they could cram in more components. It may not be as easily repairable but it is good engineering.

A lot of specialised tools can be replaced by elbow grease and ingenuity. In fact, that's half the fun and victory if you manage to fix something. Usually a set of appropriately sized screwdrivers and various pliers is all you need.

> If I open it, I am afraid I won't be able to put it back together.

That happens, but: the thing was broken anyway, and, now it's twice broken and disassembled, so you can throw it away in good conscience, hopefully having figured out how to approach it correctly the next time, so it's not even a waste of time.

> A lot of specialised tools can be replaced by elbow grease and ingenuity.

This. A long time ago I remember making a custom screwdriver head to open a video game cartridge by softening a bic pen cap over a candle, then pressing it over the cap for 10 seconds. Let it cool, and voila.

I've also found the same approach indispensable for doing simple carpentry without all the specialized tools of a wood shop.

I remember using that exact trick to open up a GameCube! Though I read about it online, wasn't clever enough to think of it myself :)

I think I read about it it in a gaming mag, so can't take credit myself

That's true, and there's something to be said for ingenuity. But in many cases, having the right tool turns a 1-hour PITA task into a 5-minute easy task.

Having the right tools for the job is nice. By now I always try to get them somewhere. Luckily the bigger things are usually rented out.

You might be interested in seeing if you have a local Tool Library. They allow their patrons to borrow tools for a membership fee. A quick Google search shows quite a few in NYC.

Personally, I don't find it all that bad. The digitizer on our tablet our tablet crapped out a few months back. I found a YouTube video on how to replace it. The tools cost like $7 off of Amazon and the digitizer was about $20. A few minutes of fooling around and viola working touchscreen again. Overtime basic electronics tools are very cheap.

Tools generally don't depreciate very much. You can resell them years later and still get most of your money back. With inflation as bad as it is you might even sell them for more than you bought them. A garage full of tools is like gold in a vault, except this gold is useful.

There's the Fixer's Collective[0] that meets in Brooklyn and Manhattan on alternating weeks.

[0]: https://www.facebook.com/fixerscollective/

I've fixed 3 out of 4 dead 27" LCD monitors and 2 of 2 dead 47" TVs by opening them up, finding the power board, and replacing all of the large capacitors. No diagnosis or testing at all.

That used to be a good recipe for fixing radios back in the 1960s/70s as well! Used to just unsolder one lead and check the resistance of the capacitor. Quick kick then fall back to infinity good/swing over to low bad

>Quick kick then fall back to infinity good/swing over to low bad

What does all that mean?

Quick kick = apply some voltage?

So with a capacitor you are looking for infinite resistance (no current flow) as a sign that it’s good, or some current flow (low resistance) as a sign it’s bad? Did I get that right?

Not OP but yes that is correct, capacitors work by building potential. A functioning capacitor starts at 0 and moves to ∞.

You apply a multimeter on resistance mode. Generally if the cap grows in resistance it's good, if resistance goes down or stays steady it's bad.

The increasing reliance on ICs seems to put a really big wrench in the system.

Seeing a relative, that loved working on cars, swearing over a broken wiper because the engine is just fine but the IC studded control board clearly is not doing its job, is disheartening.

Seeing a relative, that loved working on cars, swearing over a broken wiper because the engine is just fine but the IC studded control board clearly is not doing its job, is disheartening.

If it's windscreen wipers you're talking about, one solution would be to replace all the excessive electronics with something simple like a switch and relay.

In my experience IC's are really reliable, and the last place I look. As other have said, electrolytic capacitors and connectors are the biggest problem. The other reply is a good one, substitute a switch and a relay if you want!

That's not really reliable, imo. Thankfully, capacitance multimeters are cheap these days.

I bought an as-is* TV card for my PC for about three dollars off eBay years ago. When it arrived, I saw a handful of capacitors had been snapped off. Replaced them, and it worked fine.

*Read: Seller knows it is broken but doesn't want to say it is broken.

I recently had a similar experience with an LG G watch. Bought on craigslist for $5 'as-is' (I wanted it for parts), but turns out that the only thing wrong was the OS had been corrupted on it somehow. I was able to flash Android on it and it works perfectly!

My fridge went out several years ago. It was one that we got when we bought our house from the previous homeowners. We made an agreement when we put in a bid. When it went out I was like man, we are going to have to pay to have this repaired. I called some companies and the estimations were in the $500-600 range. Being in a hard time I decided to just tinker, for the first time in my life. About 4 hours later of research and testing I determined I just needed a fuse. I went to a shop about 30 minutes away and bought a fuse for $5. Put it in and saved the fridge, and thank goodness for the dry ice tip that saved all my food in the freezer.

Tinkering is now my go-to for anything that breaks. I hope that it rubs off on my son as I think I missed out on life not knowing how to tinker as much as I should have. It is really refreshing to fix something that is important to you.

Yeah some repair companies will quote the maximum amount they may actually need to charge (replacing the compressor and regassing, for example), and then actually charge that even if they replaced a simple fuse :/

There is no such thing as 'throwaway culture' instead there is economics. In developed countries it simply is cheaper for the consumer to purchase a new LCD monitor than simply pay for a skilled engineer's labour which would arrive at the same price in addition to the uncertainty and time this takes.

In less economically developed countries, it is exactly the other way around, electronics are rarely being thrown away, in this case the repair engineer's time is significantly lower than the price of most western electronic products.

The economics you are describing create throwaway culture. The problem with this is that economics cannot override ecology.

> economics cannot override ecology

The annoyance is that economics should reflect ecology.

Yes, perhaps, but there is no reason to expect that they will without heavy intervention to make it so.

We have an environmental levy on electronics that supposedly covers the cost of recycling the product. However, I have never seen any reports on whether it truly covers the recycling cost or if it has improved landfill diversion.

"Recycling" electronics means shipping them to Africa where they're first dumped and then burned to recover some of the metals. The results are as disastrous as you would imagine, both for the environment and the people. This is what it looks like: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/gallery/2014/feb/27/...

empirically, no. people are absolutely not efficient about this. its because they dont know that there are tons of things that are 5 minutes on youtube and a screwdriver away from being fixed. that is the culture that you might call "throwaway culture". if our culture changed and everyone knew about how to fix stuff, and how to go about learning how to fix stuff, they would all do it. to me you sound silly because i have dozens of real life counter examples that undermine your claim. im not exaggerating, there are countless "broken" things that you can repair by googling for 2 minutes, buying the replacement part on amazon or ebay, and then using a screwdriver to install in 1 minute.

Maybe some are like that, but doing work like darning socks is really time-consuming and there is little incentive to do so if you can pay ten dollars for a pack of several pairs of socks.

This is more about ecology than economy. But anyway, too many people think "meh, might as well buy a new one" and throw away something that could've been easily fixed for a fraction of the cost.

I don't think it's even about repair, I wouldn't be surprised if most TVs being thrown out in the west are in working order.

In my experience, the main draw of repair cafes is not actually repairing things, but the social experience. The fact that things are repaired in the open, with drinks & snacks available creates a small community setting that is attractive for many people regardless of the actual purpose of the gathering.

Same thing with my local "buying vegetables from the producer" group. It's not working locally, short term or long term but it is a really good social playground with like-minded people.

Incidentally both attract the same kind.

What if our intuition is wrong about the relative costs, both economical and environmental of some repairs? In particular, just because a small part of a larger whole is broken, doesn't mean repair is the more economical or environmentally friendly act.

To take a facetious example, suppose I broke 300 random pixels of a 1000x1000 LCD display that cost $100.

On visual rough intuition, it's seems clear that less than 1% of the screen is broken, it intuitively would seem absurd to toss the LCD screen versus fix it. But automated manufacturing technology is so good that it really doesn't cost a lot to make a totally new one.

On the other hand, your time is relatively valuable, as are some replacement parts. Suppose you spend 10 hours ordering parts, soldering wires, debugging, testing, etc to get it to fully functional. Why not spend a fraction of that time at work, and another fraction of time volunteering at park cleanups or buying carbon offsets?

The numbers above may be off in one way or another, and depends on the product, your pay, and belief of environmental impact of things like throwing stuff away vs volunteering / carbon offsets.

But one point seems clear to me -- which is that if I broke what visually seems like 10% of a $100 product, the fully-burdened real economic and environmental cost is a lot more than $10 to repair it. And the lynchpin is the automated production makes new stuff relatively cheap.

You make a fair point. The same is observed in lowering quality of produce; this intuitively reasons that "the throwaway economy is bad". However, cheap produce with considerable lower product lifetime can be better as it may typically endure the intended lifetime, whereas overengineered products may last far longer, the invested energy does not pay itself back (the product may be thrown away much earlier).

The cost for newly produced items is almost always underappreciated in popular economics. That's because many factors such as environmental impact, logistics (and its side-effects), resource-mining are not included. Your LCD panel may cost $100 in store, but the government in the country it is produced may pay decades long to cleanup production sites. The government of the country producing minerals may pay years-long in healthcare for badly treated workers.

People understand opportunity cost: thats why they repair their car and not buy a new one.

The repair obsession is not economical, its moral. People perceive that you protect the environment this way, and thus find any excuse to do it.

I think you're over-estimating the amount of people that consider the environment when choosing to repair or not.

I'm not sure if you crafted such an edge case to dispel the notion that a repair culture is bad or the repair culture doesn't always make sense. Because the latter is true since no one is pushing this out in an absolutist manner.

But you cut out the whole point of the article which is the middle repair man. If someone can offload the fixing to another and after doing cost been fit analysis shows it's worth it, there's plenty of opportunity out there and as such the repair culture is warranted.

This is presumably why I see multiple people using broken phones everyday. How they don’t slice their fingers is beyond me.

As someone with a single crack across his phone, i assure you u do not slice anything.

I bought my kid a smashed phone, if he wants an unsmashed one I've offered to help repair it. Hope he takes the bait.

Screen protectors?

That's because the glass that shatters is (usually) not the top layer of a touchscreen.

Next time you spot someone you know with a shattered phone screen, ask to give it a try and you'll see.

Yes, but if you buy the new display and throw away the old one you have added ($DISPLAY * 1) to the global landfill.

It's not just about the relative value of our time or the relative cheapness of the products.

Clearly some things are not worth repairing, and there is a cost-benefit analysis to be done but there is just a staggering amount of stuff that is easily repairable that gets thrown away. TVs get thrown away that need a few dollars worth of power supply capacitors. Phones get thrown away over a $10 battery. Refrigerators get thrown away over a $20 thermocouple. Graphing calculators get thrown away because TI was too cheap to solder the battery contacts and the spring contacts get loose after a while.

I think these types of cases are far more common than people putting a ton of effort into something that isn't really worth repairing.

If there really is such lost value on this, then maybe a startup could capture it, by re-purchasing things, fixing them and reselling them.

But there is a reason why that is not such an easy business. Take for example startups that buy furniture when you move out and have to re-sell it: furniture is worn but usable, and it is very hard to sell at a profit after handling it.

Many times we can see a market "inefficiency" or lost opportunity value,but its not easy to make it real.

Why must such things be driven by start-ups and not simply culture?

I am going to guess that people secretly like when their gadget breaks because it gives them an excuse to buy something new.

Because billions upon billions is spent on reinforcing the idea that we should throw away something that's "out of fashion" and have a new thing, because new things make you feel great. You want to feel great, right? So throw away that old thing - get a new thing.

Being able to find a part to fix something makes me feel way better about myself than increasing the pile of junk being sent to be re-mined in some Chinese junk-yard.

Totally agree!

If there is value ready to be captured, then u can just build a solution to capture it. iCracked lives off of this for example.

But it doesnt apply easily to the rest of devices.

My thinking was more of instances, many, where ‘there isn't much value to be captured’. A profit-led mechanic hasn't the scope or motivation to foment much useful change.

I picked up a Steelcase Leap v2 for $150 at a store that specializes in liquidating office furniture from companies going out of business. On the one hand that means there isn't much of a market there (almost 90% discount for a few years old chair is pretty steep) but ... there is a market.

There are billions spent on marketing efforts to bias consumers against buying used goods. It's no wonder that selling refurbished items is difficult.

It's also simply expensive to pay for transportation and marketing and the absird sales tax on used goods.

There's a lot of lost value. But profit is gained by it's disposal, if we bury a TV then there's an environmental cost but the company gets to sell a new TV and everyone up the supply chain stays in a job a little longer.

Profit and value can often point in opposite directions.

Consumers have no point in burying the tv. But they cant easily trade a broken thing for money.

You can go to craigslist and see people auctioning off perfectly fine stuff for peanutes. I.e. I bought a working printer at 25 with ink: its new value is about 100.

But I had to look for it online, find the opportunity, pay in cash, go fetch it, bring it back, and I was also subject to the risk of it being broken, etc.

There are plenty of people running phone repair businesses on eBay, but a lot of people can't even be bothered selling their broken phone to a repair shop.

  Phones get thrown away over a $10 battery.

Wouldn't be so bad if a replacement battery didn't cost $80+.

Replacement battery cost is few bucks. But manufacturer prefers to sell new phone instead of battery and free market doesn't always work there because battery are dangerous and consumer might prefer not to risk with cheap chinese battery (even if it's the same as branded one).

I bought a battery for my father's phone recently [Nokia Lumia], came from a German company [1] who - it appears - produce their own batteries. The only other one's were either the original batteries, which are pretty old now; or were one's being sold on Amazon from China that had very dodgy looking review profiles and claimed to be Nokia product but didn't seem kosher.

Batteries are dangerous and finding trusted suppliers is hard.

[1] Found the German company, VHBW, by watching a tear-down where the reviewer was impressed with the safety features in the device.

I tend to agree with the $10 phone battery example, but not necessarily the TV or fridge example. Perhaps I'm biased because I know how to repair the first, but the latter two seems like I need to take time to learn the specialized skill of diagnosing it and repairing it.

Repairability isn't a very visible or salient feature of a product. So manufacturers probably do underoptimize for repairability. They can probably do more to make the most breakable parts user accessible and have self-diagnostics.

In many of the cases where repairing makes sense, the manufacturer often does make it easy. We change the oil filter on the car and don't throw the car away. Yet if a engine bricks on a 20-year-old beater, even experienced auto repairman may recommend scrapping the car over an engine replacement -- despite the engine being a visually small part of the car.

The capacitors in TVs and monitors are easy to fix. Just look for bulging caps, desolder those, then order replacements and solder the new ones back on. I’ve fixed a couple with no real knowledge other than basic soldering skills and some googling. I’ve also fixed a dryer by soldering two contacts together. It’s amazing what a little soldering know-how can accomplish.

Calling the TV repair man when the TV broke used to be the normal thing to do. Today you just buy a new one. Replacing a capacitor is easy and cheap when you know what to do, but even when you have to call a professional it's usually much cheaper than replacing the whole thing. Still, people don't do that anymore.

And you also called the TV repairman as messing with the HT circuits (which can carry a really nasty voltage) was not for amateurs.

>TVs get thrown away that need a few dollars worth of power supply capacitors. //

I mourn every time I go to the tip, it's pathological with me, however ... the few dollar repair costs in the UK a £100 because of labour costs (and it's kinda like the "you only added one character to the code, why's it cost so much" line with programming, you pay for the experience and knowledge too). So, if there's a chance something else might go wrong then it may be cheaper to get a new one.

I daydream occasionally about having a warehouse where old TVs and household goods are repaired or stripped down for parts but the costs of real estate, labour, utilities, etc., make it something one would really need to do as a charity I feel if you want to keep any significant level of electronics out of the dumps [I've not fully costed it].

When Brexit hits things will start to push more to repair being financially viable, and as the balance shifts towards China in the next decade, as I expect it will, then the economy of repairs will become more of a necessity.

I’m not sure your point about the fully burdened real economic and environmental cost being higher than the repair cost makes sense.

First, you’re assuming a world of infinite resources where production and disposal have no burden beyond their direct consumer cost which is simply not the case. Common consumer goods have massive externalized costs that are not reflected in the final price tag.

And second, the idea that I can offset environmentally detrimental choices by volunteering elsewhere also assumes that we live in a world where those original choices don’t compound.

No, I don't think fanzhang's point assumes infinite anything.

To give a more concrete example than GP's repair of an LCD, let's think about repainting a car. Doing this in your back yard like your grandfather might have done it certainly has much higher environmental costs than the original paint job. You'll spill paint-stripper on the grass. You'll buy two tins of paint and throw the leftovers away when you move house. You won't have the factory's precisely monitored spraying, and air filtration.

Of course the point of repairing is that it saves all the other parts (like the engine!) so the balance may well be positive. But we should not assume that any options are zero-cost.

They are assuming that prices reflect the costs of the products. Externalities however are completely mispriced, so comparing the monetary value of buying new vs repairing is very misleading.

Big environmental goals for me:

1) belching less into the air to combat climate change and acid rain.

2) less industrial and agricultural runoff to keep the seas more healthy.

I used to be worked up about making less waste, but as long as we have good landfills that don’t leak much, I’m not too concerned directly with the amount of waste. Recycling is kinda a joke.

People can now go spend their afternoon repairing goods to offset the carbon footprint of their lunch hamburger.

You are using an bad example: First, there is nothing to repair. You either live with dead pixels or you replace the panel, which is essentially the TV. Also, if you spend 10 hours fixing a TV, you don't know what you are doing.

A common and reasonable example: a failed power supply circuit in a television. Could be a few dollars in parts and an hour to repair. The key skill is soldering the parts, which is easy for someone experienced. The value of time is relative, I could have repaired a TV instead of responding to comments on HN.

Now, also consider the carbon of shipping a TV across the ocean, then to the local retailer. The trip to the store is the same as the cafe, so I would consider it the same.

To be fair, I don’t think most people know how to repair things when they need to repair something. For example, I wouldn’t even know where to get started with a TV, so 10 hours in total seems reasonable to me

Those cafes are a great idea! I recently opened a high quality blender (forgot the brand) and found a cog made partially of metal with one small part made of plastic which will break first due to wear and tear. Otherwise this little motor would run forever.

Is it normal these days to put in breaking points to artificially shorten the life of appliances or does this have a purpose?

That little cog might be more like a fuse -- a part of the system that's relatively easily replaced and designed to fail first.

And so the company send a spare one in the box when you buy it, yes? Because they wouldn't be so crass as to make you hunt down a part that cost them a few pennies and disables the machine would they?

Same issue for me with food mixer, mostly metal, key part is plastic and gets stripped, can't be replaced. Same with bread maker, rubber belt decays and company don't make the part available.

Right, that's a fair criticism of the business practice, but from an engineering perspective it might not be a terribly unreasonable design. It's a good idea to design a system to fail predictably. Electrical engineers use fuses, mechanical engineers use shear pins, and so on.

Perhaps it was to protect the user, not the machine. If you drop a spoon in, it might break the fuse before pinging it into your face? Or it might have been a sliding contact that needed better wear performance than metal on metal, or it might have been an odd shape that was expensive to make from metal.

Outboard motors for boats work like this. If you hit a rock with the propellor, a piece of plastic in the drive train breaks. This prevents the propellor or some other part of the motor from serious damage.

The plastic component could also be acting as a mechanical fuse in case of overload. Like a shear pin.

That would make sense, instead of breaking the cog-setup, the little plastic part breaks off and saves the motor. Thank you for the explanation, one conspiracy theory less!

It's called engineered obsolescence.

Or mechanical fuse as someone else pointed out: something cheap and easy to replace that will break before something expensive and hard to replace when over the design load.

Yes. As others said, it could be a mechanical fuse. However, engineered obsolescence is a real possibility. A friend of mine had a product manufactured in China. He said the factory he partnered with asked him straight-up "Where do you want the weak part? When do you want it to break?" So, I guess it is pretty standard practice to do this (admitted anecdote here, but still)

There is a great feeling from being able to fix your own stuff. I encourage everyone to learn. I have spent half of my life not being able to afford to buy new and as a result I learned to fix things.

One of my favorite fixes is the LCD TV in front of me. It came to me with a wide black bar down the screen. I skim read something about this on other TV's, opened the back up, looked for the board that had a ribbon cable to the screen as the bit that would need replacement. The board looked fine visually (no dry joints, burning or exploded caps). I wiggled the ribbon cable and the black bar disappeared! This was on Black Friday two years ago, so while everyone else bought new TV's I got one for free.

The numbers on e-waste per region but adjusted for population (very rough, with rounding errors):

    Region       %    Pop   Adj
    ---------------------------
    Oceania    0.7  0.038  18.4
    Europe    12.3  0.741  16.6
    Americas  11.3  1.001  11.3
    Asia      18.2  4.436   4.1
    Africa     2.2  1.216   1.8

Would have been more interesting with the Americas split too.

East and West Europe too.

There's more detailed per-country E waste statistics in the "Global E-waste monitor 2017" report, see Annex 3 at the end [1].

Here's per-capita E-waste metrics for a subset of countries that might be interesting (because they produce high levels of per-capita E-waste, or have large populations, or both). I've added a median per-capita income column for reference, from Gallup [2].

    Country    E-waste   Median income
               kg/inhab. kUSD/inhab.
    ----------------------------------
    Norway       28.5    19.3
    UK           24.9    12.4
    Denmark      24.8    18.3
    Netherlands  23.9    14.5
    Australia    23.6    15.0
    Germany      22.8    14.1
    France       21.3    12.4
    Belgium      21.2    10.2
    Austria      20.9    12.3
    Spain        20.1     7.3
    Canada       20.0    15.2
    US           19.4    15.5
    Japan        16.9    10.8
    S. Korea     13.1    11.4
    Russia        9.7     4.1
    Argentina     8.4     4.1
    Mexico        8.2     2.9
    Turkey        7.9     2.5
    Brazil        7.4     2.2
    Thailand      7.4     1.8
    S. Africa     5.7     1.2
    China         5.2     1.8
    Indonesia     4.9     0.5
    Philippines   2.8     0.5
    Pakistan      1.6     0.5
    India         1.5     0.6
    Vietnam       1.5     1.1
    Bangladesh    0.9     0.6

[1] - https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Climate-Change/Documents/GEM%20...

[2] - http://news.gallup.com/poll/166211/worldwide-median-househol...

Edit: as per the global E waste monitor report, there is a large amount of variability between countries in terms of the rate that e-waste is "collected" versus being disposed of by other methods e.g. in landfill. For example, Norway is at the top of the list in terms of mass of raw e-waste produced per inhabitant, but also has a high e-waste collection rate of 74% . In comparison, Australia only has an e-waste collection rate of 7.5% with the remainder going to landfill.

It'd be interesting to know how effective "collection" of waste is after it is produced versus prevention of that waste in the first place.

There's a bunch of interesting EU e-waste data here [3].

We can see in [4] that Norway's "recycling rate of e-waste", defined as the "collection rate" multiplied by the "reuse and recycling rate" is 50% . From the above table we know that Norway's collection rate is 74% so the "reuse and recycling rate" must be about 2/3 . But, the "reuse and recyling rate" is "calculated by dividing the weight of the WEEE that enters the recycling/preparing for re-use facility by the weight of total treatment of WEEE" -- i.e. it doesn't appear to measure how efficient the recycling and re-use itself is, in terms of output, it appears to just measures how much loss there is before we get to the recycling / reuse stage.

[3] - http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/waste/key-waste-streams/wee...

[4] - http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/tgm/table.do?tab=table&plugin=1...

Re: efficiency of recycling, there's an interesting paper focusing on the efficiency of precious metals recovery during e-waste recycling:

Assessment of Precious Metal Flows During Preprocessing of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment -- Chancerel, Meskers, Hagelüken, Rotter [1].

Here's my summary of the categorisation by mass of 1000 kg of input e-waste (ignoring the uncertainty quantification in the paper):

    Category             Mass (kg)
    ------------------------------
    Aluminium                 22.0
    Copper-rich              122.3
    Ferrous metals           331.7
    Non-Ferrous metals         4.3
    Other *                  146.4
    PCBs                      31.6
    Plastics                 264.8
    Precious-metals-rich      52.8
    Rubbish, filter dust      24.0
    Total                    999.9

(*) "Other" includes wood, hazardous materials, etc.

This paper focuses on the efficiency of the process in recovering precious metals, which would be of interest from an economic perspective to anyone operating the recycling and recover process:

> From the point of view of the process operators, the results of the test can be qualified as “disappointing” because only about a quarter of the gold and palladium and a tenth of the silver are sent to output fractions from which precious metals will be directly recovered. Compared with the recovery rates of major elements such as iron, aluminum, and copper, the recovery rates for precious metals are very low. Most of the precious metals go to the most mass‐relevant fractions (plastics and ferrous metals). These fractions have relatively low concentrations of precious metals (24 g/t of gold and 8 g/t of palladium in the plastics, 24 g/t of gold and 5 g/t of palladium in the ferrous metals; [...] but the considerable mass of the outputs makes the flows of precious metals very relevant.

There are of course other ways to measure the efficiency of a recycling process -- you could focus on energy efficiency, resource efficiency, pollution, etc.

[1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1530-9290...

This is slightly off-topic, but I suspect the title attracts the right people and nobody else has been able to answer:

I came across an old PS/2 keyboard I'd really like to get working. I can best describe its symptoms as "it appears to be stuck in a boot loop." The LEDs go on for what could be the time it takes to run the self-test, then briefly go dark before it repeats. It does this indefinitely, as far as I can tell.

At first I thought it was an old capacitor across the power lines ( I assume as a low pass filter for unstable PS/2 power supplies) that had started leaking, causing it to brown out after some duration. However, replacing the cap did not appears to have changed nothing. I don't know what to do next and I have very little equipment to play with. Anyone have any ideas on where to turn to?

Old keyboards may use a lot more power than newer PC's motherboards are able to supply.

geekhack.org has a forum full of keyboard enthusiasts that might know better.

The "mechanicalkeyboards" subreddit might be able to help too: https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/

the cap across the power lines also provides a reservoir of power closer to the little microcontroller and other bits inside of the keyboard. an old keyboard might actually expect to be able to draw more power than a modern ps/2 port cares to provide, which would cause the microcontroller to reset at some point during its initialization process.

you could try to check that by putting a fast voltmeter across the power lines at the keyboard end and checking for drops.

you could also just try to fix it by replacing the cap with a higher capacitance one. maybe double or triple whatever capacitance is already in there. (can't go too high or the motherboard might think you've shorted the power line.)

might also check the resistance between power and ground in the keyboard (when it is disconnected, of course) and make sure that it hasn't developed any shorts or otherwise inappropriately low resistance between the power rails.

seeing how it behaves on different motherboards or some usb<->ps/2 converters might be informative, too.

in the unlikely event you're in the vicinity of boulder colorado, i'd be happy to look at it.

This seems somewhat likely and very interesting. No internal shorts, I have tested that thoroughly.

> you could also just try to fix it by replacing the cap with a higher capacitance one. maybe double or triple whatever capacitance is already in there.

Would, for testing purposes, two or three of the same capacitance in series do? I think the next step up I have on hand is like ten times the capacitance...

I'll see if I can find another motherboard with a PS/2 port. Unfortunately I'm located in Stockholm, Sweden, so no luck with Boulder. :(

Caps in series lower the overall capacitance (like resistors in parallel) , but raise the energy stored. Try putting 3 or 4 of the 10x caps in series (for 3.3x and 2.5x capacitance respectively).

> Would, for testing purposes, two or three of the same capacitance in series do?

nope; put two of three of what you've got in there already in, in parallel, that's how you sum capacitance. (internally they're huge plates held apart from each just the tiniest little bit, with capacitance =~ surface area. more caps in parallel makes more surface area, so more capacitance).

if we were using ideal capacitors, nicwilson's suggestion would be be fine. non-ideal caps have ESR, though, which will burn up some of the power we want to feed into the microcontroller if/when it tries to draw too much. paralleling caps lowers the effective ESR of the lump of capacitors capacitor.

> I'll see if I can find another motherboard with a PS/2 port.

there are also actual ps/2 to usb converters available as well. (not the little dongles that came with keyboards; those were just for keyboards that knew both protocols and needed physical conversion.)

something like https://www.amazon.com/TRENDnet-Converter-Universal-10-4-10-... is probably just smart enough to perform the conversion, but not smart enough to limit the power going to the keyboard, so i bet you can pull 500mA through it, a fair bit more than the 275mA guaranteed to ps/2 keyboards.

I absolutely do enjoy repair cafes, they "pop-up" in my town sometimes using a borrowed facility and folks just show up with tools and/or stuff they want fixed.

It is amazing, sometimes, how simple the repairs are. More often, however, repairs certainly are possible but parts, tools or information just isn't available during the very short time-span of the repair clinc. People end up getting turned away with a diagnosis of what's wrong but there's no practical way to repair it on the spot. I see these more as an affective exercise that shows people that, yes, it is possible to take stuff apart, figure out what's wrong and probably fix it.

For these things to be practical, they would have to be more permanent or regular and take-on additional services such as a tool-library (like a regular library except you check out power-tools instead of books).

But actually, if you look for it, there certainly is some serious repair-culture going on in SOME neighborhoods in the USA and in many other places in the world. Once you get away from big box stores, many independent hardware, appliance and electronics stores have people that regularly fix things. In the USA it might be frowned upon as ghetto or scammy (and sometimes they are), but many of you would be surprised what folks are able to do with basic equipment, a little knowledge, and some willpower.

I get longer life out of things than most people. My Subaru is 18 years old and still going just fine. Unfortunately, its gas tank -- residing above both the power train and parts of the suspension, is otherwise intact but starting to leak at its horizontal seam. An open-ended, expensive job to replace -- you have to drop everything below it and its unclear how many of those suspension parts would have to be replaced due to age and deterioration.

I'd like to spray a fuel-tolerant liner into it. If I can find the product and someone -- or the tools -- to do it.

Anyway, the point I wanted to make: We are making so damned much of this stuff. And I also think we may become "energy rich" as solar and other "next generation" power come online. In my opinion, as much of this stuff as possible should be made to be as fully recycle-able as possible. If it can be made a matter of just having enough energy, then melt it down wholesale and separate, ensuring that ensuing volatiles are stripped of their metals and then heated into component atoms or molecules we can collect or tolerate the release of.

We can't do it, yet. And certainly not at scale. But, especially with control of the inputs, maybe we are closer than we think.

Closed loop use would also mean less mining and destruction of the environment from production (as opposed to disposal).

Meantime, DRM and the like that artificially limits recycling? A pox. Counterbalanced against real needs for security, e.g. those replacement iPhone and Android screens that have spyware written into their firmware.

P.S. And are the last two concerns really in opposition to each other, or the same? If it's open and we can confirm what it is, then we can assess its security.

>I'd like to spray a fuel-tolerant liner into it. If I can find the product and someone -- or the tools -- to do it.

For a liner to work, you'd need to drop the tank anyway, as you need to thoroughly clean and strip the inside, then roll the tank around to evenly distribute the liquid liner. At that point, for cars, anyway, you're better off just replacing it. FWIW.

For smaller projects, like motorcycles, I have used Red Kote for years, with excellent success. It's the only single-part lining I've tried that holds up.

http://damonq.com/red-kote.html

[edit] This is me cleaning out a rusty motorcycle tank with some chain, solvent, and an old Jeep: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNEwIxWUJjU

The lining I installed afterwards is still holding up, 5 years later.

Thank you!

That Red Kote recommendation looks great for anyone with a smaller and/or more accessible (and/or new?) tank. Hopefully, some other HN readers will get use from it.

Note that they have both an internal liner coating and an external one with plastic fibre reinforcement.

I wonder whether, if one is installing a new tank, one or both linings are advisable -- stop future problems before they occur. Or whether the lifespans of the liners indicate not applying until they are needed.

It won't solve my particular situation, I guess -- that's more a matter of how much I might end up having to replace, in addition to the tank, due to corrosion of the undercarriage. The cost of the tank, I was ready for. But in talking to my mechanic (good guy I've known a long time), he's come to the realization that once he goes after the tank, it's hard to predict how many additional parts would have to be replaced because they'd prove impossible to reinstall in their current condition. The job can be done, but it might exceed what's worth putting into the car versus towards a replacement vehicle.

I was hoping to get another year or two out of it, at least, but I had no expectation of making it last forever. (I.e. this is not a restoration or similar.)

My problem seems to be just the seam. If I felt I could get a good enough application just right at the seam, I'd pursue that. But that looks to be an ill-advised approach.

That's a nice trick, in the YouTube video. I guess it proves, too, there's a way to work duck tape into any repair! ;-)

Happy to help!

There is no advantage to internally lining a new tank- you would eventually have to strip and reapply even the best liquid liner long before actual internal wear would have been an issue.

With so many gas blends using alcohol nowadays, internal rust (in vehicles that are regularly driven) isn't nearly the issue it used to be. Back when gas was just gas, water would collect and pool along the bottom of the tank, leading to rustouts. Nowadays, the alcohols in the fuels will suck up any stray moisture every time you refill.

That being said, alcohol/gas blend fuels don't store well, and alcohols will separate out over time, so you can't rely on this effect when thinking about vehicle storage. But for daily drivers, internal rust just isn't an issue any more.

The best thing you could do to promote longevity of a car gas tank is to give the exterior a thicker treatment (like the OverKote you mentioned) before installation.

Speaking of your particular use case, if you really just want to hack it for one or two more seasons, wire brush the worst of the rust off around the seam, then apply some permatex spray sealer.

https://www.permatex.com/products/adhesives-sealants/permate...

You will need several coats. It works much better if you do multiple thin ones that you let mostly dry between than if you glob on one or two thick ones. YMMV and all that, but if the seams are only weeping, and not so bad as to actively drip, this would probably do the trick for another year or so. Don't bother with RTV, even ones labeled as fuel/solvent resistant. Silicones in general just don't get along with gas very well, and the sealing properties would fail pretty quickly.

I'm glad you enjoyed that video. I was more proud of it that I really should be, and making actual use of duct tape was a part of it. :D

Thanks again!

I'll have the mechanic hoist it again and have a good look. For liability if nothing else, I'll probably have to find a lift I can borrow and do the job myself, but first I'll make sure the entire exterior of the seam is accessible while the tank is in place.

I never saw a drop (re drips) until just a month or two ago -- when I parked for a day over some fresh snow. So, it may be too late, now, but it's worth a shot. I also can put 8 gallons into an empty tank without the problem manifesting. If I can somewhat seal and protect the seam from the exterior, per your suggestion, I can also stick to partially filling the tank, most of the time.

The car only has about 135K on it, and the interior is pretty much spotless while the exterior has had only a couple of nascent rust spots that I've actively kept under control. Until this winter; I had to switch detailers and the new one seemed to create paint chips rather than mitigating them. I used to do most of this work myself, but health has had me seeking help.

Anyway, it really seems worth getting the extra year or two out of it, if I can.

As for the alcohol blend fuels, I was aware that they help significantly in keeping the tank "dry". It's been my understanding that they may also contribute to the lower instances of "vapor lock" that we see, these days. At least, at my mild altitude and (mostly) non-extreme environment.

Applying an exterior coat does sound like an interesting idea. One concern I would have, is whether if and as it deteriorated, it might trap moisture and corrosives next to the tank, turning from protectant to trap and accelerant.

I used to rinse my undercarriage extensively each spring, after the last of the salt was washed off the roads by rain. The last some years -- again, health -- I've gotten... well, I guess I could be self-deprecating and call it lazy. That may have made things worse, but 18 years of Chicagoland winters doubtless bear the bulk of the responsibility, regardless of such mitigation efforts. And I didn't have this car for the first 10 or so years of its life; the damage was already well underway.

>Applying an exterior coat does sound like an interesting idea. One concern I would have, is whether if and as it deteriorated, it might trap moisture and corrosives next to the tank, turning from protectant to trap and accelerant.

This is a real concern, and one of the big problems with conformal coatings. The short of it is that when coating ferrous materials, you need to make sure as much rust as possible is removed before coating. (As rust forms, it takes up a greater volume that the iron is forms from. This results in pressure that will lift coatings, and allow water to seep underneath, accelerating wear.)

Just to repeat, in your case, wire brush + the spray will probably net you another year or two, which is about what you could hope for with a tank that has already had seeping issues anyway. So I agree with your assessment of borrowing some rack time and giving it a shot. It is an inexpensive way to eek out a little more use of what you've got.

>As for the alcohol blend fuels, I was aware that they help significantly in keeping the tank "dry". It's been my understanding that they may also contribute to the lower instances of "vapor lock" that we see, these days. At least, at my mild altitude and (mostly) non-extreme environment.

Vapor lock used to be an issue when fuel pumps were located in the engine bay, powered off a rotating cam that ran a diaphragm pump from the gas tank to the carburetor. The pump would be pulling from the tank to the front of the car, then pushing from the pump a few feet up to the carb. Sometimes, in hot environments, the suction of the pump + heat of the engine bay would result in the fuel boiling inside the feed line before it reached the fuel pump itself, rendering it unable to pump any fuel at all until the system had cooled enough for the fuel to condense back to a liquid. Thus the term 'vapor lock'.

Nowadays, everything uses fuel injection and high pressure lines, with the pump located in the gas tank itself. There isn't any low-pressure part of the system that would allow vapor lock to happen any more, so it ceased to be an issue. :)

We have some repair cafe events about every one or two months in Silicon Valley.

Here’s one such organization that holds them on a quarterly basis, for anyone interested:

http://www.repaircafe-paloalto.org

Buy less stuff but nicer stuff. And fixing them instead of throwing them away if they’re broken. If you can’t fix it you never owned it.

> If you can’t fix it you never owned it.

That's what I am going to tell the people I'll be keeping stuff from next time I fix something at my local repair café.

Exclusions apply. Garage door opening mechanisisms, pull chords for starting petrol powered tools, window blind slats, really old plumbing that is cast iron or lead. I’m sure there are more but I won’t be touching those things again.

Garage doors in general are a pain. I have installed and repaired a few and that is one thing that I pay someone else to do now.

I don’t find it fun to tinker with a garage door at all.

The nicer stuff companies sold their brand name to junk companies.

Although straightforward, I'm still proud of how I replaced the "un-replaceable" battery of my 4-year old Nexus 5 (still in mint condition). /me even made an opening pry "tool" by cutting an eraser holder into two[+], which worked perfectly well. (Still have to install Lineage OS, though, as Google stopped security updates.)

[+] https://kashyapc.fedorapeople.org/Eraser-holder-turned-openi...

I'd love to see more products that reduce e-waste by:

1. being upgradable without needing to replace. I hate it whenever new generation of Intel CPUs are introduced, because it usually means I have to upgrade the motherboard when I upgrade the CPU. I'm willing to sacrifice a little bit of performance for upgradability and for being future-proof (for at least 5 years).

2. using standardized parts instead of proprietary parts - for example, ATX power supplies are pretty much standard, so one can easily exchange one for another (as long as one meets the power requirements)

3. Reducing the usage of plastics. I've even made a PC case out of cardboard box many years ago when I didn't have a lot of money. I remember seeing few cardboard-based PC cases that were sold commercially but they were more of a novelty.

4. making computers that are easily repairable - laptops like IBM Thinkpad make it easy to replace parts like RAM, HDD, as well as internal parts like screen, keyboard, etc...

5. Choosing quality over quantity (i.e. lower price or cheaply made products).

6. Mandating a longer hardware manufacturer's warranty. Typically it's usually 1 year but I'd love to see 3 to 5 year warranty. I wouldn't mind it, even if it were to increase the price of PC components a little higher. But the long term benefit is that manufacturer will also try to create higher quality products.

7. Using and creating software that works well with older hardware. This is one of my biggest frustration, especially on the phone. Software is often slow and bloated. On Windows, Windows 2000 was the best OS, at least in consideration of performance. I also miss Snow Leopard on Mac.

On this topic, today (3/17) is a world create day via hackaday https://hackaday.com/2018/03/15/get-together-and-hack-this-s...

Not exactly, the same thing, but definitely brings together like minded people

While I imagine most people won't care enough to repair their objects, maybe there could be room for a business that would offer money for objects one would otherwise throw away, and then re-sell them to those who don't mind second-hand items? Maybe it's just me, but I think more people would be more incentivized with cold, hard cash.

Thrift stores, junk stores, surpluses, record shops, used book stores, many video game stores and (to an extent) pawn shops work on that model.

Not to mention eBay and the various other online markets.

While this is true, I think eBay is very labor-intensive both on the side of listing goods and having to continuously bid on them, and I'm unsure of the size of people who buy electronics in need of repair and then resell; it would involve at least two shipping periods for a relatively small gain, not to mention the time investment and being unsure if the item is repairable, having not seen it in person.

While this is true, do any of those buy electronics / mechanical goods and repair them for resale? It seems like it would be a different space than most of what you listed, though admittedly I'm not familiar with junk stores or surpluses.

That adds transaction costs that make it unprofitable

The amount of things people/companies just throw away in the UK (and I reckon the rest of the world) is insane. Working for a e-waste company, I've seen everything from (perfectly working) curved 3D TVs, to hundreds of normal LED TVs, hundreds of ex-corporate laptops (mint condition, can't resell, must scrap) and of course, thousands of smartphones, tablets and home appliances, most of which were still in perfect working condition. That's all in a month's time across the poorer half of the UK! I will never understand this insane consumerism.

There is merit in having the mindset to be able to repair things. It encourages one to at least attempt at fixing something that is broken before throwing it away. Also, if done by enough people, manufacturers will see the benefit of making their products repairable.

Sometime in the future, we will look back at how it was impossible to repair things, and wonder what made manufacturers think that throwing away was the right choice.

Bad charging ports drive me bananas!! Ports should be designed to outlast all other components! It seems like the most fragile part of half of electronics.

I have had micro USB ports crap out on me on several different products. The low tech solution - high purity rubbing alcohol to clean and and tweezers to remove debris and move the prongs back in place did the trick all but once.

I'm reminded of Matthew Crawford's Shop Class as Soulcraft. We have lost the ability, and sometimes the right when it comes to John Deere or Mercedes, to tinker on our own things. This is exciting news and maybe the next generation won't be so willing to just throw away a piece of crap and buy a new piece of crap.

Laptops and batteries are the mind blowing settings nowdays. A laptop is virtually unusable in about 5 years because the battery is effectively worthless. Buying a new one is expensive, ish. But way cheaper than a new laptop. And typically gets my laptop back to full operations quickly enough.

Swapping in a new battery and replacing the CD drive with an SSD gave my laptop a new lease on life.

I don't know how to explain this to everyone. It is funny, because it is similar to cars. Folks take the first major expense necessary to maintain something, compare it to a payment for a new thing, and somehow think that justifies a new purchase.

Cubans were forced to become acquainted with DIY repair due to embargos. This video shows some interesting perspectives on that: https://youtu.be/v-XS4aueDUg?t=3m49s

I think DIY repair is always a good skill to have.

Repair cafés seem like a wonderful idea. However, does anyone of places where one could learn some basic stuff to repair electronics etc? I dont want to hurt myself or blow the fuse in my apartment

My anecdotal story is a smartphone that I poured beer over and volume/onoff buttons stopped working. Replacement buttons costed me $7 on eBay including shipping.

I'd love the right or even ability to to repair my Western Digital hard drives when they fail just days outside of warranty.

Imagine a marketplace where manufacturers had a duty to fairly disclose their longevity specs to the end user.

Don't all products have the MTBF published as part of it's spec sheet (not to be confused with the marketing specs)?

edit: never mind, I couldn't find the MTBF for my watch after some search.

Would you please not glorify war in this way? This isn't war, it is work - pushing against cultural norms and entropy.

that is awesome, now can you fix my laptop & old storage stuff .... i have so many files that need to be recovered on them...

Rmoving your notebook HDD and retrieving the files with a SATA-USB adapter connect to a 2nd device should be fairly straightforward for most models. Not a fix though.

i have a laptop, toshiba working... but my other laptop is broke & wouldnt turn on. I also have old storage devices that have files on it & it will not give me anything. most of the op sys were orginal windows to xp. this laptop has win10

look up the model on youtube, there is a huge chance you will have a video tutorial on how to repair it.

where do you live??? haha, can you come over & fix it??? lol (kidding)

Hello, again ;) I figure out what you were telling me to do on the data recovery on laptop or desk top drives. I am now needing some advise on how to unformat old storage (seagate) devices? I also have a iomega small storage device that locks up when i try to extract files i put on it, the power & usb cord for it doesnt seem to work.

ok, ill utube...

i looked on youtube, there are lots of ways & applications to use to un-format external storage devices... please can i get a free app that will help me out, as i don't know which one to use. thanks much

I downloaded EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard app but they wanted me to pay, it wasnt free. do you know of an app that is totally free? the 185gig were found then I could get them to recover

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