Repair Café • Hacker News Board

Re: Repair Café

#41

Post by briandear » Sun, Oct 21, 2018, 7:27 PM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #19

justifier wrote: post #15

i've fantasised about something like this before my neighbors are consistently throwing away perfectly fine electronics where 90% of the problems are a blown electrolytic capacitor there is a place in our apartment complex where we place electronic rubbish and just two days ago i noticed a tablet with a destroyed screen i popped it open and everything inside looked pristine so i bought a new screen for some ~20$ and…

> there is a place in our apartment complex where we place electronic rubbish and just two days ago i noticed a tablet with a destroyed screen ... i popped it open and everything inside looked pristine so i bought a new screen for some ~20$ and am now waiting on it to arrive Note that taking someone's rubbish without permission is considered theft in the UK (there is precedent). If you sell it it's even worse because…

Squatting in a residential building is also illegal: https://www.gov.uk/squatting-law

Re: Repair Café

#42

Post by briandear » Sun, Oct 21, 2018, 7:29 PM UTC

codezero wrote: post #29

jacquesm wrote: post #23

I have a little hobby: I will fix anything as long as whoever wants it fixed isn't going to push me on a delivery date, is willing to drop it off (or it is easily accessible without moving) and pick it up again when it is done. I only take in a small number of items at the time. It gives me a great excuse to keep tools around. Last two weeks worth of projects: vintage synth, an 'unrepairable' mountain bike, a bed (th…

Do you ever post your before and after projects with maybe some tips? I’d love to see that.

I’d love to see the vintage synth!

Re: Repair Café

#43

Post by bad_alloc » Sun, Oct 21, 2018, 7:31 PM UTC

I live in a small town in Germany and we have five of these in one year, with 20-30 devices coming in each time. We can fix most of them, even with fairly basic tools. Some observations:

* One of the worst things to repair are electric shavers. It feels like horology, but dirty.

* Sewing machines are suprisingly complex. The electrical issues are easy to fix, but the internal mechanical parts are really unfarmiliar.

* Outright hostile designs are rarely found in cheap products. The main problem is usually worn out platic threads or breaking clips.

* People almost never bring in smartphones or computers.

* Many visitors are very interested in what we are doing and often suprised how simple a repair can be.

Re: Repair Café

#44

Post by newnewpdro » Sun, Oct 21, 2018, 7:36 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #35

codezero wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you ever post your before and after projects with maybe some tips? I’d love to see that.

Hm, no, but I could. That's an interesting idea, thank you, I will use that.

You have a youtube channel in the making right there...

Re: Repair Café

#45

Post by Pica_soO » Sun, Oct 21, 2018, 7:38 PM UTC

I think, this is actually a missed business opportunity - companys that remove planned obsolescence from a product.

Take the razors of electrical shaver- imagine if you could order something and put it through a up-value pipe- basically add a re-sharper to the docking station, replace cheap plastic connections to the e-motor.

Re: Repair Café

#46

Post by baddash » Sun, Oct 21, 2018, 7:41 PM UTC

Does anyone have a good idea of the environmental effects of reducing waste that this would cause? Or maybe just more generally the environmental effects?

Re: Repair Café

#47

Post by lavayya » Sun, Oct 21, 2018, 7:54 PM UTC

zhrvoj wrote: post #37

stmw wrote: post #6

There needs to be more of these around! Among other things, it helps for people to keep in touch with how things work.

This bad as it can be. While everybody charges for everything, for thin air, repairs should be free...yeah..and repairman should donate their money they didn't earn to the other people.

I go to the local repair cafe about every other month. Almost everything people bring would othersise be thrown out and replaced by a new item, not repaired by a professiinal repairman. The people "working" there do so because repairing is fun for them, they like the puzzles, and they mostly do it for ecological reasons.

I go with my son, who loves seeing what electronics look like on the inside and how they work. We always bring a large cake as a thank you.

Re: Repair Café

#48

Post by justifier » Sun, Oct 21, 2018, 8:04 PM UTC

baddash wrote: post #46

Does anyone have a good idea of the environmental effects of reducing waste that this would cause? Or maybe just more generally the environmental effects?

a film called manufactured landscapes(o) completely shook me when i saw it in theatres when it was first released

the film addresses ewaste issues like the fact that a lot of electronics rely on toxic elements, but there is also the shear vastness of dumpsites

there is shot of a dump of motor armatures which could be argued to be one of the least likely failure points in consumer goods that use motors like washing machines, blenders, drills, et al

the film was even released in 2006, one year before smartphones become a cultural ubiquity

it is also wild to think that most of what is being documented is a result of manufacture happening only over the previous 50 or so years.. which is only 0.00025% of the hypothesised almost 200k year human history

it is a film 'documenting a photographer's technique' so retains an air of lacking bias but the subject matter is just so affecting that audience bias becomes seemingly inevitable

you could just as easily goog 'ewaste concerns' and find a myriad of issues but i highly recommend this film.. i was in awe from the opening sequence

(o) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufactured_Landscapes

Re: Repair Café

#49

Post by lloydde » Sun, Oct 21, 2018, 8:10 PM UTC

jjeaff wrote: post #24

chrisseaton wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there is a place in our apartment complex where we place electronic rubbish and just two days ago i noticed a tablet with a destroyed screen ... i popped it open and everything inside looked pristine so i bought a new screen for some ~20$ and am now waiting on it to arrive Note that taking someone's rubbish without permission is considered theft in the UK (there is precedent). If you sell it it's even worse because…

In the US, it is legal to take garbage. And there is precedent for that as well. Although there can be trespassing issues if you don't have permission to be there. (like digging through a private dumpster at a business).

Is there an Internet law that says that for every reasonable rule there will be one US jurisdiction where it doesn’t apply?

My understanding is that in almost all jurisdictions in USA possession end when the trash is moved to the curb, put in public space. I remember reading at some point that at least in some part of Texas possession is transferred from the individual to the trash collection agency. This was interesting to me from privacy/search warrant perspective.

Re: Repair Café

#50

Post by aasasd » Sun, Oct 21, 2018, 8:42 PM UTC

justifier wrote: post #15

i've fantasised about something like this before my neighbors are consistently throwing away perfectly fine electronics where 90% of the problems are a blown electrolytic capacitor there is a place in our apartment complex where we place electronic rubbish and just two days ago i noticed a tablet with a destroyed screen i popped it open and everything inside looked pristine so i bought a new screen for some ~20$ and…

Meanwhile, in Russia the repair culture never went away, for obvious reasons. It's inconceivable here that people would just throw away all broken things without attempting to fix them. Repair shops are everywhere―there are even more for phones and laptops now than for other stuff.