The right to repair...

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cmartinez

Joined Jan 17, 2007
8,220

"We wouldn't have had an Apple had I not grown up in a very open technology world," Mr Wozniak, its co-founder with Steve Jobs in the 1970s, said. "It's time to recognise the right to repair more fully."

Existing right-to-repair rules in Europe and the US are limited to appliances and vehicles, respectively. And right-to-repair advocates say Apple is one of the fiercest opponents to expanding the legislation to cover consumer electronics.
 

nsaspook

Joined Aug 27, 2009
13,086
https://www.vice.com/en/article/93y...company-just-got-hit-with-a-restraining-order


Why the McFlurry Machine Company Just Got Hit With a Restraining Order


In a victory for right-to-repair, a judge has sided with the company that makes it easier for McDonald’s to fix its ice cream machines.

The ice cream machine maker, Taylor, now has to turn over all its ill-gotten Kytch Solution Devices within 24 hours of the court order. “Defendants must not use, copy, disclose, or otherwise make available in any way information, including formula, pattern, compilation, program, device, method, technique, or process obtained by any of them,” the court document said.
“We are optimistic that the truth will prevail,” Kytch co-founder Melissa Nelson told Motherboard. “It’s disgusting that such lengths were taken to steal our trade secrets, destroy our business, and to stand in the way of modernizing kitchens. Kytch is just a small piece of the broader right-to-repair movement. But our case makes clear that it’s past time to end shady business practices that create hundreds of millions of dollars of unnecessary repair fees from ‘certified’ technicians.”
 

olphart

Joined Sep 22, 2012
114
In 180+ posts Somebody had to have mentioned www.ifixit.com.
A forum for mostly electronic repair requests & answers all by members (me for one).
They have a great poster / mission statement.

I've been a goto for getting stuff built / fixed for 50+ years.
Been primary income the past 30, retired now so I can choose what I do.
Not the case first 25, a lot of lean times in there, but worth it.
 

abrsvc

Joined Jun 16, 2018
138
I too have answered a number of posts in Ifixit. There are many good posts there, but some not so good as well. Unfortunately there is no screening for participants in that forum. I have seen some entries that are just plain wrong and others that were dangerous as well. I hate to put it this way, but you get what you pay for. While Ifixit is overall a good repository for information, take what is written with a cautious view.

Quora.com is another place where there is both good and bad information. At least at Quora, people tend to indicate their experience level. I would question information about an electronic repair from a cook for example, unless there was an explicit reason for this person to know about the problem directly (and provide the evidence to prove it)
 

Tonyr1084

Joined Sep 24, 2015
7,853
Was just talking with the wife about her iPhone 7. Battery is old and not holding much charge lately. She charges it almost every day and every evening it's almost dead OR it's gone dead. And I've gone through all her aps and shut all the unnecessary stuff off, like the mail refresh and other things that self refresh, using battery and bandwidth. May be time to trade in her 7 for a 13. She says I can have the 13 and she'll take my 12. If not for purchasing a drone last year that had camera hookup and a program that lets me view the camera feed, needing an 11 or higher, I'd still be flying my 7 and she'd still be with her Samsung.

I remember the days when you wanted to call someone and you had to go inside the house or grab a pay phone. Stick your finger in a hole and turn the "Dial" all the way to the finger guillotine. Then came the day we got our first Push Button phone. WOW! Big time now. Then came the answering machine, then Caller ID along with *69 to dial the last incoming call. Now your phone can call 911 if you've been in an accident, and I bet can even provide your exact location, provided that feature is turned on.

My friend butt dialed me. When I called him back he said it was a butt dial. I said "Good! Didn't want to talk to your ass anyway."

How times have changed. Self driving cars, refrigerators connected to the internet, door bells that can ring you anywhere in the world. What's next? Doctor programs that can diagnose illness and prescribe meds?
 

MrAl

Joined Jun 17, 2014
11,396
Hi,

Yeah i was reading about that, very interesting.

Also interesting i read that Europe is trying to get all manufacturers to use USB C ports rather than anything else, including Apple's priority connector. So Apple may have to change in the future.
But i also read that someone converted an Apple phone to have a USB C port instead of the priority connector, the Lightning connector as it is called. They sell it too but very expensive.
That is of course if it is all true, but Apple may put up a fight when it comes to converting to USB C.
USB C was chosen because it can handle a lot of different types of connections, and there was too much junk being dumped that were old chargers from this and that and the other thing. When someone bought a phone or other device that required charging they had to get a new charger to go with it and dumped the old charger. So Europe wants to put an end to that with One Connector For All, the USB C port.
I've been using the USB C port for charging and it works pretty well. Much better than USB micro which really really bites. My old phone connector got worn out pretty quick and it was USB micro.
 

SamR

Joined Mar 19, 2019
5,031
It's all market driven. There have been lots of recent news articles telling the woes of recycling and how it is not economical in many cases. We do have one kraft paper (used to make boxes) recycle mill that I know of ~150 miles from here. They use the flattened and cubed paper waste from the big box stores for their feedstock. It wouldn't be there if they couldn't make money from it. For mixed household garbage it apparently is not cost effective to separate it for market even when done before disposal in the home. It used to be shipped to China and others but they won't even take it now. My grandparents did not have the luxury of waste collection. Everything burnable went into the yard waste burn pile, kitchen food waste went into the "compost" pile (or fed to the chickens), then there were piles for cans and a separate pile for bottles. Or they got paper grocery bagged and thrown off the end of the pier down at the river.
 

nsaspook

Joined Aug 27, 2009
13,086

MrAl

Joined Jun 17, 2014
11,396
A very interesting article, relevant to the discussion in this thread.

Hi,

Yeah it's nuts. That looks like a pile i alone got rid of a few years back. Imagine the whole countries waste.

I have also read now about plastic waste. I didnt realize it was that bad. Now i dont wonder why the US is banning single use plastic bags state by state. We are getting the bad effective May 4, 2022. It's a pain, but the problems the waste causes is even more of a pain. It is known now that animals end up eating the bits of plastic from bags as they break up over time. They dont disintegrate, they just break into smaller and smaller pieces eventually reaching what they call "micro plastics". Those bits are eaten by fish and other wild life, and guess what, we eat the fish. We end up eating plastic.
I hate not being able to use styrofoam cups but the environmental problems are just getting too nasty we have to do something no way out now.
 

MrAl

Joined Jun 17, 2014
11,396
Hi there,

Any tear downs on any induction cooker? That would be interesting.

Thanks.
 
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