Comment on iFixIt announce FixBot: Your AI Repair Helper
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 1 week ago
To be clear:
EVERYONE should have a cheap set of electronics screwdriver bits (and the ifixit kit is really nice. So are the much cheaper knockoffs from the same factories. Up to you if you care). And having basic soldering skills and knowing when you can get away with heat shrink connectors is a really useful skill. You’ll be repairing the headphones the dog ripped off your desk in no time and save yourself a lot of money.
But when you are listening to people tlak about how this cell phone needs to be repairable or how you NEED to have the DAC be a separate board so it can be removed and replaced? Same with demanding chip diagrams for that SOC in your laptop. Ask yourself: How likely is it that you will EVER do a repair like that? How often do you actually hold onto hardware? And how much do you trust the guy with a shop in the mall to not scam you on this?
I am generally a strong supporter of Right To Repair, even when it is something I, as a consumer, am never going to even consider doing. But it is also worth remembering that a lot of the “this is horrible because it is all computers” is still rooted in racism and xenophobia. And it is always worth looking at what a repair actually will cost versus buying a new one.
For example. Last year my dishwasher failed. I did some diagnostics, did some very deep cleans, and even opened it up. And I mostly narrowed it down to a failure in one of three parts. I looked up the price of those parts and… they were all most of the cost of a dishwasher on their own. And if I paid a professional to replace them, it would be well over the price of a new dishwasher. So… I could try and get lucky and replace the right one, by myself, on the first try… or I could just buy a new dishwasher during a holiday sale. And… damn I love my new dishwasher.
Droechai@piefed.blahaj.zone 1 week ago
What about horrible computers is rooted in xenophobia (and racism which is a form of xenophobia)?
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 1 week ago
Much of it goes back to the 60s-80s when Western factories were largely outdated and realizing that East Asian factories were rapidly outpacing them and able to offer better products for MUCH cheaper. Rather than acknowledge they had become complacent and didn’t want to train their worekrs they instead focused on “made in America” bullshit and insisting that that new vacuum was no longer repairable. And… mostly that boils down to the idea that if you have vacuum tube transistors you can replace them easily whereas you can’t replace a transistor on a single chip.
But, as we have learned in the intervening decades, you can… just replace the board. And many of those evil computers in cars actually drastically increased repairability/maintainability because you can actually tune many aspects with a computer and get VERY useful data out of the sensors.
Because the reality is that you can make an SOC device that is INCREDIBLY repairable by focusing on how you do chip layout and what modules can be repaired. And you can make a multi-board setup that is immensely unrepairable by locking down parts with effectively DRM. And… there are also times where it actually does make sense to lock down/register those parts just like there are times it actually does make sense to glue the fuck out of that assembly.
But that is nuance. And nuance is for women and The Gays™. So buy American and purchase a radio that you can repair until the day you die! And then buy a new radio next year.