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this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2025
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I was just thinking about this the other day after removing the fifteenth torx screw from the bottom of my Shark vacuum's roller head. They hid screws under the pipe hatch and the two tiny friction mounted front wheels. Vacuums are triple the price and rollers are no longer removable from the outside.
45 minutes to fix what is essentially a five minute problem. They'd rather you throw it away and buy the whole head unit from the site. They even have bars blocking you from cutting hair from the roller without opening it.
Shit like this is why I still use an iPod 5th gen. No internet. No tracking apps. Just you and your hard copied music on a device that can be opened, repaired, and modded.
My partner just did the SAME operation on our Shork vacuum cleaner due to steadily declining performance. The ultimate diagnosis is the brush head has lost its brushes. They don't sell a replacement, but they do sell an entire power head replacement for $99. Fuck these guys, we'll never buy a Shark again.
Definitely do not buy Shark products. They used to be good, but maintaining any of their stuff now feels like it was intentionally designed to rip you off.
I have their old vacuum cleaner that I’ve repaired five times and I’m never getting rid of it.
Just had my brother in law show me a concept phone where you just put in block modules for the things you want and need in a phone. Want more battery? Take off your camera block module and plug in more battery block modules.
Obviously the concept as presented is near impossible to achieve. I told him That and said we can get close. I showed him framework laptops that are trying to achieve the very thing he wanted (to a certain extent). He said that if they could make that a phone he would switch from his apple ecosystem in a heart beat. The ability to swap for a bigger speaker on the fly for get together's and parties was tantalizing (big music guy).
Just interesting because even non tech people want this when you sell it to them properly. They don't actually want a walled garden ecosystem that is "simple".
Just interesting because even non tech people want this when you sell it to them properly. They don’t actually want a walled garden ecosystem that is “simple”.
Nobody actually wants a walled garden, they just get entrapped in them ("it's just where my friends/music/content creators are")
They then become convinced that they want it, and its reinforced by the walled gardeners (looking at you, iMessage videos and bubbles)
I know a person who built their own PC (Windows, but still) from scratch for the first time as an adult. Had the money and the opportunity to buy a prebuilt rig in two clicks, but instead researched the market, ordered parts and tools, exchanged a part that didn't fit the case, learned how to assemble it all by hand, and exclaimed that it was a great experience and would do it all over again.
And yet at every opportunity still buys an iphone despite the cost because it's "simple" and they "don't want to learn" something new. That's not the actual reason - that's just stockholm syndrome.
No, they really just don't want to learn. I promise people would rather be okay with their current situation (even if its shitty) as long as they don't have to learn. Because a lot of people decided that once they were done with high school/college, that there was no need to learn anymore. And now its hard for them to learn
If they do choose to learn, its because they want to. But if they don't want to learn, they simply wont. It really is simple.
I've just described to you a person that really wanted to learn something, and did it. Put in hours of mental and physical effort. And your response is that nobody wants to learn, and that people only learn what they want to learn? Which is self-evident and vacuous.
Inertia and degradation of curiousity is a real issue but my point is that the creators of the walled gardens intentionally discourage that curiousity.
Most people naturally want to learn. Even into adulthood. But people - like water and electricity - naturally tend toward the path of least resistance. And everywhere they go, walled gardens offer them more and more paths with less and less resistance at every step.
There still lives a generation or two that ripped apart computers, crashed them with amateur code, bricked them with viruses, reformatted the drives and put it all back together again as kids and adults. They did that because it was something they wanted to learn. It wasn't easy, or simple. It was hard, and confusing, and risky. Kids of the generations that followed don't do that nearly as much, even though they could.
Are those kids inherently less curious than their parents were at the same age? No. At least, not by birth. They've just been offered a path of less resistance, and they took it. Does that mean they want that path? No. There's just so many paths in front of them that the path of technological literacy is lost in the weeds.
Yes, people only really learn what they want to learn. But the reason people in general are getting less curious over time is because they are being convinced that they want to learn something else, or worse, more often than not they're being deceived into thinking they're learning at all.
Is this a fairphone?
I'm feverishly imagining smart phones with old school slider keyboards
RIP Phonebloks
I remember when Motorola was working on that concept like 10ish years ago, and then they got bought and sold and the project was nerfed into uselessness.
Am I the only one that finds it weird that Louis Rossman is not even mentioned in those articles about right to repair?
I mean, he said that he didn't care at all if his name was mentioned or not and that he would be happy if the movement got traction "by itself", without him being involved.
But I still think it's weird that he is not even mentioned when they are giving examples of pro-repair groups/shops etc. Idk...
the fact that this is and has ever even been an issue is wild.
But it wasn’t until 2022 that the right-to-repair battle reached wide public consciousness when consumers questioned why McFlurry machines were always broken at their local McDonald’s. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) made it illegal to bypass certain proprietary systems like the one that Taylor Company, the McFlurry manufacturer, used to fix the equipment.
After a repair startup filed a lawsuit challenging Taylor’s restrictive repair policies, which only allowed its repair people to fix machines, the U.S. Copyright Office announced new exceptions to the copyright law to allow third-party McFlurry repairs. Kit Walsh, a director at the nonprofit rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation, welcomed the change.
Of course it had to be about maccas. America is so weird 😂
It's kind of stranger than you might think. People were galvanized in support for the "little guy" franchise owners being exploited by the big corporation. Still no movement on the minimum wage that some of those little guy franchise owners pay though.
I know this is a little OT, but I repaired a dead Karcher pressure washer this weekend... a little effort and I'm much more likely to purchase / recommend them in the future.
If the manufacturer's grip is too tight, I'm going elsewhere - and I'll be more loyal to them
Kärcher is awsome, all of their products I have are solid and dealing with the company is ridiculously easy. They always have parts on-hand and repairs are usually a handful of steps. Easy recommendation
I think it's insane the rules for anything computer-related or computer-adjacent
"Oh if you make anything using our software, legally it's ours."
Could you imagine if the same logic applied if you removed the "Magic Technology is Magic" aspect?
"Oh you built this house with one of our hammers, so it's ours actually."
The laws around ownership and IP are also ridiculous.
I can lend this DVD to my aunt but if I do the same with the the movie file then I'm a criminal
I'm becoming more and more convinced that their ultimate goal is for everything to be rented, nothing owned.
They are the feudal lords and we the peasants merely get the privilege of leasing shit from them. This phone? Not mine, it can be locked remotely at the whim of my lord Google. What I see on this phone? Also determined by my lord's mercy.
When he saw a child drinking from their hand, he threw away his designer brand single use bottle.
Own nothing and be happy. Reject their bullshit products.
“Oh you built this house with one of our hammers, so it’s ours actually.”
The problem with companies like for example Adobe over let's say DeWalt is that they actually have a pretty strong grip on it's target market.
If there was only one company that made tools to build houses i'm sure eventually they'd try to pull the same crap if they could get away with it.
You can totally see the same kind of walled garden thinking in things like battery platforms for powertools. Most people buy into a brand and never go elsewhere but there's litterally zero technical purpose behind this other then toolmakers going through lengths making their batteries only fit their tools.
Just got a framework laptop and I’m really happy
Me too. It's worth it.
I’m glad. I hate the fact that TV’s are so cheap now that fixing them literally isn’t worth it. Same with a lot of laptops and tablets and stuff. I’d much rather have a chunkier phone than one I won’t ever be able to fix.
I think that the worst part is the ones that make repairable tech are so much smaller than you are paying top end prices for rather middle of the road performance. This is not true of them all of course but it is hard to look at the fairphone 5 and think it is worth it over a cheap secondhand/refurbished flagship from the previous generation.
It all depends on what you value.
If you want the fastest phone for the lowest price, then you're buying into those shady business practices and something akin to slave labor. (Not to sound judgey, I've bought my share of iPhones and galaxies too)
But if you want a phone that won't contribute to a landfill as soon, was made by people paid a fair wage, where any hardware failure doesn't make you start over with a new phone. Then try something like a fairphone. Specs aside, you're paying for a different set of features.
Just to add to this, the price doesn't highlight the Total Cost of Ownership well...
My Fairphone 3+ has been getting updates for years and I also bought a replacement battery (at the same time I bought the phone) to ensure that it lasts for many more years to come.
And I'm SIM-Only, so not paying longterm to a phone company
Cost/Lifetime is probably lower than a mainstream phone (I'll actually do the calculation one day)
In the last few years I've fixed about a dozen TVs, they can definitely suck to fix at times (especially the really new ones) but in general the fixes have been simple. And all of them were snagged out of the dumpster at my apartment complex.
And that's just the TVs I've fixed. I like to fix things.
In terms of phones they're a nightmare though. I'm keeping an eye on HMD phones and Fairphone though as both of them are a LOT easier to fix than other brands.
In the event of my current phone breaking I'd love to get either one of those brands.
Btw, is it still a thing that sensitive electrolyt condensators are placed too close to the power supply? The old plasma of my parents still runs, i once placed a piece of cardboard inbetween (i'm aware of the issue with the altered airflow of cooling).
What’s the typical fixable issue you are finding?
For TVs it's usually really simple, like internal fuses or blown caps. And a few with bad backlights or mainboards that are dead.
For 2 of them it's been shorts in the LCD itself which meant I had to block the clock pin from the TCON board for the specific part of the screen with the short. Basically killing a line of pixels to get the TV working again. In general if the TV is 4k and smaller than like 45 inches you'll never see it unless you look for it.
That's a super involved fix (involving A LOT of trial and error to find the right pin) but it keeps it out of a landfill.
In general fixing a TV is always cost effective unless the actual LCD has physical damage.
hey, I'm getting into this kind of repair. I have good soldering skills and am great at taking things apart, but do you have any tips on how to find the fault? even it's just a blow capacitor, what am I looking for?
Blown capacitors are nice and obvious.
Most capacitors you'll find are cylindrical, with a flat side of the cylinder pointed up. They'll usually have a big X cut into that top side, allowing it to flex a bit. But if that top side is bulging a lot, that's a warning sign, if it bulged so much that it opened up and it either looks burned on top, or some kind of paste is actually seeping out, then that thing is way past done.
With capacitors a visual inspection is really all you need. You'd actually need more expensive specialized equipment than a standard multimeter to actually test their capacitance. But if you look at it, and your description might include words like "exploded" or "popped", or "wtf is this mess?", then it's bad.
got it, thank you!!
NGL I usually only do component level repairs on the power boards (or in the case of appliances most of the components are easy to find docs for and are much larger) but I usually find stuff by poking around with my multimeter or looking for obviously blown things. But my experience is more from the realm of appliance repair (and all from experimenting).
Testing capacitors can be done (and if they're big enough) something I'll do as well. I ain't gonna test capacitors that are smaller that a grain of rice.
There are times though that it's easier to just buy a new board rather than do component level repair.
Good news is that when it comes to TVs those boards are usually really cheap.
that makes sense. appreciate it!!
Any tips on finding someone who does component level repair? I have an old-ish laptop (7 years?) and the only issue is the USB C charger seems to be losing connection. If I flip the charger it works fine, so I think the solder just needs to be reflowed.
I think it would take an experienced person <30 min to fix. It's almost not worth it though since it's so old, but I'd be willing to pay $50-100 if it makes charging work better.
Usually if it's a charging port, it's pretty common that there's like dirt in there or something.
But soldering a type C connector is pretty tough due to the size. Especially for my (lack of) experience level.
It could be a learning opportunity for you though.
Yeah, unfortunately I don't think that's the case. It has been dropped, tugged on, etc, so I'm pretty sure the solder joints are weak. I can feel the connector is loose as well.
If I get desperate, I'll pick up a heat gun, some flux, maybe a better soldering iron (I have some cheap Chinese crap) and try it out. But I'm more likely to break it than fix it. I'll try it once I'm ready to replace it anyway.
I second this comment. It can be extremely tricky to solder something so small with so many contacts so close together.
But... if you get some sharp tweezers, I wouldn't be surprised if you could pull some lint out of that USB port. And more often than not, that'll make all the difference and it'll charge normally again.
Probably bad caps in the power circuit
Reminds me that I have to fix mine. Just shows the LG logo and does nothing
Probably not much more I can do besides replace caps
NGL when it comes to that kind of fault I usually just replace the mainboard, they're usually dirt cheap and it's a hell of a lot easier to swap that whole board than it is to poke and prod for an hour just to find out it's some 40 pin monster with micro-soldiered pins.
The power board is usually what I do component level replacements on. The t-con board and the main board I usually just swap.
This is one of the handful of things me (a leftist) and my rural Trump supporting family both heavily agree upon. It's nice to find some common ground in such a divided America.
Trump/Musk (especially Musk) could totally come out against this if it gains traction.
I guarantee, your family's tune would change
I think we got lucky on it that John Deere and Car companies have been trying to ruin repairability long before it was cool.
And "right to repair" is a nice simple slogan, even the most rural person in America can hear that and will probably go "Fuck yeah I should have the right to repair my car!"
Local & state level is where a lot of the progress will live on in the near future. Call your local legislators & vote in every local election - they are way more frequent across the country than you may realize