6 ms·

Tangent, but related: My dad is restoring a 1969 MG Midget. The right turn signal stopped working. Using nothing more than a voltmeter, I found a disconnected

Tangent, but related: My dad is restoring a 1969 MG Midget. The right turn signal stopped working. Using nothing more than a voltmeter, I found a disconnected wire and a short to the frame. I replaced the entire length of wire that was failing with $3 worth of wire, solder, and heat shrink tubing. The lesson here is repairability and simplicity. We’re constantly lectured to be “environmentally aware” by companies that no longer ensure their products will last a lifetime. There is 0 reason a modern phone couldn’t be used for the rest of your life. My Brother printer is nearing 12 years and is still on the same damn print cartridge. My Neato robotics vacuum has had countless parts replaced and is about the same age. If you truly want to be a good steward of the earth, stop demanding/consuming latest and greatest, endless product and UI refreshes, and instead demand 30+ years out of a product (with small repairs).

kazinator 3y ago
> $3 worth of wire, solder, and heat shrink tubing I don't understand how with those three things, you are able to renew the blinker service subscription.
fooker 3y ago
>There is 0 reason a modern phone couldn’t be used for the rest of your life. A phone, yes. A 'modern' phone conforming to our 'modern' expectations, no. It would have to be significantly larger, less performant, and have a worse screen for it to last even ten years. To make it repairable you'd have to make sure individual chips and capacitors are swappable, which costs ~2x power draw compared to a SOC.
- exabrial 3y ago
  >less performant Only because the code we write is crappier
iteratethis 3y ago
My father gifted me 35 year old speakers he had stored in his attic. I installed them on an old Marantz amp, which is also connected to my (new) TV. As he visited me, he couldn't believe the incredible sound coming from his own speakers. My friends are shocked by it too, thinking I'm some audio buff that invested 20K. My dad regretted the gift, went to buy the same amp yet with new speakers. Various sets of it, and failed to come close to the ancient set. I'm not sure what exactly was innovated in 35 years of audio, but my guess would be costs, not quality.
- Turskarama 3y ago
  Something that is frequently underestimated when it comes to the sound of speakers is... the rest of the room. Room acoustics make a huge difference, and if your room isn't set up right then high quality equipment is just a waste of money.
  - iteratethis 3y ago
    True. I'm lucky to have a perfectly symmetrical square living room with great acoustics. Well, I think that's beneficial. I have no idea really, but it does sound good. And I'm quite sensitive to acoustics. In a lot of modern "minimalist" homes I'm upset by the sound bouncing around endlessly, sometimes it's so bad I can barely hear conversations.
- exabrial 3y ago
  I too had a similar experience... My dad had to liquidate his old HiFi set as kids were growing up, but after the nest was empty I gave him the old towers back! We built a set of these: https://projectgallery.parts-express.com/speaker-projects/zdt-3-5 https://projectgallery.parts-express.com/speaker-projects/zd... which are a throwback to the old HiFi sets of the 70s-80s. I _really_ like the reference sound of this set. The only thing they don't really do is the sub-sonic punch that action movies require, but that's probably ok for apartment living with neighbors.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
shreyshnaccount 3y ago
Looking for headphones that'll last me that long. Any recs?
- epicide 3y ago
  Repairability and build simplicity were a big factor for me purchasing the Meze 99 Classics. I can't say how long they'll end up lasting, but you can visibly see almost every screw in them. Even if I can't find Meze-branded replacement parts for the rest of my life, they seem modular and simple enough that I could probably at least limp them along for a LONG time. They aren't cheap, but they are also some of the best headphones I've ever personally used. I don't make any claims of being an "audiophile" or whatever, but they're like the headphone equivalent of using my Kali LP-6 monitors.
KronisLV 3y ago
> There is 0 reason a modern phone couldn’t be used for the rest of your life. Even with replaceable batteries, there's still https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth%27s_law It would be nice if we had mobile and desktop OSes that didn't get increasingly bloated with time, slowed down, were abandoned by the vendors and were messy in plethora of other ways. My Android phone doesn't get security updates by the manufacturer, just a few years after the release, which is horrible in the case of RCEs (like the WebP one). I can't install a newer version or a custom ROM because of a locked down bootloader (without exploits) and even then drivers are a big issue. Some of my older hardware wouldn't even be compatible with desktop OSes like Windows 11 because of the whole TPM debacle. Other than that, digging up my old Android phone with Android 2.1 on it, or maybe my old E8400 CPU from 2008 would yield really bad experience in both cases. Could devices from over a decade ago be viable choices, if the software didn't get exponentially more wasteful? Perhaps, but that's not the reality that we live in, neither for desktop PCs, nor phones.
fsflover 3y ago
> There is 0 reason a modern phone couldn’t be used for the rest of your life. This is the reason I chose GNU/Linux phone Librem 5.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- simonh 3y ago
  It’d better have long term support, some customers had to wait 4 years from ordering to get one.
einpoklum 3y ago
> stop demanding ... and instead demand ... As if large corporations base their business strategy on ethically/environmentally-minded consumer demands. At most they will propagandize or triangulate their engineering approach slightly - just enough for the media cycle to turn to some other issue. Gotta make those quarterly profits stand out! Also - if you haven't changed a printer cartridge in 12 years than you are printing very little (which is fine, but it's not a typical use-case by which to evaluate longevity). Other than that, definitely agree :-)
I_Am_Nous 3y ago
A tangent to add to your tangent >There is 0 reason a modern phone couldn’t be used for the rest of your life. At some point we must reach peak tech. In the Elite: Dangerous universe, there are quite a few ships you can use, but the majority of them are designs that are hundreds of years old. They are modular spaceships, of course, so they have received upgraded technology as time has gone on, but there are some quirky little ships flying around. Compared to phones though, we'd need to get carriers to guarantee their old networks stay functional so old cellular radios will still function. Maybe when tech advances enough we CAN have a modular phone it will be less of a concern.
avalys 3y ago
Your 1969 MG Midget is enormously polluting and a death trap in a crash. The turn signal is small and dim and barely visible to other motorists in bright sunlight. The ride sucks and the reason it’s easy to repair is there’s almost no interior structure or noise or thermal insulation to remove. Over a 200,000 mile design lifetime, a modern car is way more reliable and way less work to repair than your MG Midget (by virtue of not breaking as often in the first place). Yes, today’s cars aren’t designed to be collector items that will sit and rot in a barn not being driven and get easily restored by amateurs in 50 years, but why should they be?
- akira2501 3y ago
  > a modern car is way more reliable and way less work to repair than your MG Midget Modern cars are often more work to repair. They're not particularly modular, and to the extent that they are, they often bury one module under several layers of others. It requires you to disconnect and move working parts and assemblies to uncover the broken one. Modern cars also use replaceable assemblies to speed up repairs, but it also means that even for small problems like a damaged wire in a harness, you often have to rip out the entire system it is "inside" of and replace it completely. The manufacturer has tons of ways of requiring you to "over replace" parts like this on a modern vehicle. > but why should they be? That's not an excuse to make them as disposable as they've become. You can't use "the climate" to blindly turn this into a black and white issue.
- User23 3y ago
  Using climate change as justification for enshittification is a good way to feed denialist narratives.
  - tourmalinetaco 3y ago
    Not to mention the irony that they use climate change to support polluting the environment with waste.
- m463 3y ago
  I think a better example might be a similar era john deere tractor. It was designed to replace expensive human labor and was designed to be simple and to be fixed. I also wonder about the original humvee, which I think was designed to be "user" serviced in the field.
WalterBright 3y ago
I used to work as an electronics technician. To do some wiring that'll be bulletproof and last: 1. get wiring rated for under-the-hood heat (the wiring sold at auto parts stores is no good for that) 2. get crimp-on connectors 3. cut the plastic off the crimp-ons 4. put heat shrink tubing on the wire, well away from the end 5. crimp the connector on 6. solder the crimp joint using a thermostat controlled soldering iron 7. move the heat shrink tubing over the joint, and heat it with a bic cigarette lighter to shrink it on 8. voila! P.S. Crimped connections don't last. After about a year, they'll work loose a bit from vibration, and corrosion will creep in, and you'll get a loose connection that is very frustrating to find. Soldering it prevents that from happening.
- winrid 3y ago
  Soldered connections are a no go in automotive. Crimped is way tougher for vibrations. Corrosion shouldn't be getting in with heat shrink or a good connector.
  - WalterBright 3y ago
    I wrote crimp and solder. Not solder. Take a look at these: https://www.amazon.com/Qibaok-Connectors-Insulated-Electrical-Terminals/dp/B0869FSG86 https://www.amazon.com/Qibaok-Connectors-Insulated-Electrica... Crimp a wire in it. Look at it from the connector side. You'll see the bare conductor inside the connector. That's where the moisture gets in. Heat shrink tubing won't shrink enough to cover that. Wicking solder into it will seal it against moisture and corrosion.
    - cactacea 3y ago
      Yup, and those are garbage - for the reasons you've identified. Marine grade or bust. Look I'm no fan of crimps but you're giving terrible advice here.
      - WalterBright 3y ago
        > you're giving terrible advice here Never had trouble with the completed soldered/crimped connections for decades. I use them in my car. With crimp-only, it's only a matter of time till I get erratic connects. It's particularly irritating with the stereo, as the speakers go in and out or suffer the crackling with a loose connection.
Casteil 3y ago
> My dad is restoring a 1969 MG Midget. The right turn signal stopped working. Using nothing more than a voltmeter, I found a disconnected wire and a short to the frame. I replaced the entire length of wire that was failing with $3 worth of wire, solder, and heat shrink tubing. I want to see EVs/plug-in hybrids with similar levels of simplicity wherever possible. Virtually all vehicles in the US nowadays are completely overloaded with unnecessary sensors/electronics that are ripe for failure.
- moberley 3y ago
  After watching the Edison Motors company build a hybrid electric logging truck prototype on YouTube it made me quite disappointed there don't seem to be other classes of vehicle being made in a similar user repairable manner. Of course, passenger vehicles do have some additional regulated safety requirements compared to a heavy vocational truck but perhaps someone will try to figure it out.

kazinator 3y ago

> $3 worth of wire, solder, and heat shrink tubing I don't understand how with those three things, you are able to renew the blinker service subscription.

fooker 3y ago

>There is 0 reason a modern phone couldn’t be used for the rest of your life. A phone, yes. A 'modern' phone conforming to our 'modern' expectations, no. It would have to be significantly larger, less performant, and have a worse screen for it to last even ten years. To make it repairable you'd have to make sure individual chips and capacitors are swappable, which costs ~2x power draw compared to a SOC.

exabrial 3y ago
>less performant Only because the code we write is crappier

iteratethis 3y ago

My father gifted me 35 year old speakers he had stored in his attic. I installed them on an old Marantz amp, which is also connected to my (new) TV. As he visited me, he couldn't believe the incredible sound coming from his own speakers. My friends are shocked by it too, thinking I'm some audio buff that invested 20K. My dad regretted the gift, went to buy the same amp yet with new speakers. Various sets of it, and failed to come close to the ancient set. I'm not sure what exactly was innovated in 35 years of audio, but my guess would be costs, not quality.

Turskarama 3y ago
Something that is frequently underestimated when it comes to the sound of speakers is... the rest of the room. Room acoustics make a huge difference, and if your room isn't set up right then high quality equipment is just a waste of money.
- iteratethis 3y ago
  True. I'm lucky to have a perfectly symmetrical square living room with great acoustics. Well, I think that's beneficial. I have no idea really, but it does sound good. And I'm quite sensitive to acoustics. In a lot of modern "minimalist" homes I'm upset by the sound bouncing around endlessly, sometimes it's so bad I can barely hear conversations.
exabrial 3y ago
I too had a similar experience... My dad had to liquidate his old HiFi set as kids were growing up, but after the nest was empty I gave him the old towers back! We built a set of these: https://projectgallery.parts-express.com/speaker-projects/zdt-3-5 https://projectgallery.parts-express.com/speaker-projects/zd... which are a throwback to the old HiFi sets of the 70s-80s. I _really_ like the reference sound of this set. The only thing they don't really do is the sub-sonic punch that action movies require, but that's probably ok for apartment living with neighbors.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

shreyshnaccount 3y ago

Looking for headphones that'll last me that long. Any recs?

epicide 3y ago
Repairability and build simplicity were a big factor for me purchasing the Meze 99 Classics. I can't say how long they'll end up lasting, but you can visibly see almost every screw in them. Even if I can't find Meze-branded replacement parts for the rest of my life, they seem modular and simple enough that I could probably at least limp them along for a LONG time. They aren't cheap, but they are also some of the best headphones I've ever personally used. I don't make any claims of being an "audiophile" or whatever, but they're like the headphone equivalent of using my Kali LP-6 monitors.

KronisLV 3y ago

> There is 0 reason a modern phone couldn’t be used for the rest of your life. Even with replaceable batteries, there's still https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth%27s_law It would be nice if we had mobile and desktop OSes that didn't get increasingly bloated with time, slowed down, were abandoned by the vendors and were messy in plethora of other ways. My Android phone doesn't get security updates by the manufacturer, just a few years after the release, which is horrible in the case of RCEs (like the WebP one). I can't install a newer version or a custom ROM because of a locked down bootloader (without exploits) and even then drivers are a big issue. Some of my older hardware wouldn't even be compatible with desktop OSes like Windows 11 because of the whole TPM debacle. Other than that, digging up my old Android phone with Android 2.1 on it, or maybe my old E8400 CPU from 2008 would yield really bad experience in both cases. Could devices from over a decade ago be viable choices, if the software didn't get exponentially more wasteful? Perhaps, but that's not the reality that we live in, neither for desktop PCs, nor phones.

fsflover 3y ago

> There is 0 reason a modern phone couldn’t be used for the rest of your life. This is the reason I chose GNU/Linux phone Librem 5.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
simonh 3y ago
It’d better have long term support, some customers had to wait 4 years from ordering to get one.

einpoklum 3y ago

> stop demanding ... and instead demand ... As if large corporations base their business strategy on ethically/environmentally-minded consumer demands. At most they will propagandize or triangulate their engineering approach slightly - just enough for the media cycle to turn to some other issue. Gotta make those quarterly profits stand out! Also - if you haven't changed a printer cartridge in 12 years than you are printing very little (which is fine, but it's not a typical use-case by which to evaluate longevity). Other than that, definitely agree :-)

I_Am_Nous 3y ago

A tangent to add to your tangent >There is 0 reason a modern phone couldn’t be used for the rest of your life. At some point we must reach peak tech. In the Elite: Dangerous universe, there are quite a few ships you can use, but the majority of them are designs that are hundreds of years old. They are modular spaceships, of course, so they have received upgraded technology as time has gone on, but there are some quirky little ships flying around. Compared to phones though, we'd need to get carriers to guarantee their old networks stay functional so old cellular radios will still function. Maybe when tech advances enough we CAN have a modular phone it will be less of a concern.

avalys 3y ago

Your 1969 MG Midget is enormously polluting and a death trap in a crash. The turn signal is small and dim and barely visible to other motorists in bright sunlight. The ride sucks and the reason it’s easy to repair is there’s almost no interior structure or noise or thermal insulation to remove. Over a 200,000 mile design lifetime, a modern car is way more reliable and way less work to repair than your MG Midget (by virtue of not breaking as often in the first place). Yes, today’s cars aren’t designed to be collector items that will sit and rot in a barn not being driven and get easily restored by amateurs in 50 years, but why should they be?

akira2501 3y ago
> a modern car is way more reliable and way less work to repair than your MG Midget Modern cars are often more work to repair. They're not particularly modular, and to the extent that they are, they often bury one module under several layers of others. It requires you to disconnect and move working parts and assemblies to uncover the broken one. Modern cars also use replaceable assemblies to speed up repairs, but it also means that even for small problems like a damaged wire in a harness, you often have to rip out the entire system it is "inside" of and replace it completely. The manufacturer has tons of ways of requiring you to "over replace" parts like this on a modern vehicle. > but why should they be? That's not an excuse to make them as disposable as they've become. You can't use "the climate" to blindly turn this into a black and white issue.
User23 3y ago
Using climate change as justification for enshittification is a good way to feed denialist narratives.
- tourmalinetaco 3y ago
  Not to mention the irony that they use climate change to support polluting the environment with waste.
m463 3y ago
I think a better example might be a similar era john deere tractor. It was designed to replace expensive human labor and was designed to be simple and to be fixed. I also wonder about the original humvee, which I think was designed to be "user" serviced in the field.

WalterBright 3y ago

I used to work as an electronics technician. To do some wiring that'll be bulletproof and last: 1. get wiring rated for under-the-hood heat (the wiring sold at auto parts stores is no good for that) 2. get crimp-on connectors 3. cut the plastic off the crimp-ons 4. put heat shrink tubing on the wire, well away from the end 5. crimp the connector on 6. solder the crimp joint using a thermostat controlled soldering iron 7. move the heat shrink tubing over the joint, and heat it with a bic cigarette lighter to shrink it on 8. voila! P.S. Crimped connections don't last. After about a year, they'll work loose a bit from vibration, and corrosion will creep in, and you'll get a loose connection that is very frustrating to find. Soldering it prevents that from happening.

winrid 3y ago
Soldered connections are a no go in automotive. Crimped is way tougher for vibrations. Corrosion shouldn't be getting in with heat shrink or a good connector.
- WalterBright 3y ago
  I wrote crimp and solder. Not solder. Take a look at these: https://www.amazon.com/Qibaok-Connectors-Insulated-Electrical-Terminals/dp/B0869FSG86 https://www.amazon.com/Qibaok-Connectors-Insulated-Electrica... Crimp a wire in it. Look at it from the connector side. You'll see the bare conductor inside the connector. That's where the moisture gets in. Heat shrink tubing won't shrink enough to cover that. Wicking solder into it will seal it against moisture and corrosion.
  - cactacea 3y ago
    Yup, and those are garbage - for the reasons you've identified. Marine grade or bust. Look I'm no fan of crimps but you're giving terrible advice here.
    - WalterBright 3y ago
      > you're giving terrible advice here Never had trouble with the completed soldered/crimped connections for decades. I use them in my car. With crimp-only, it's only a matter of time till I get erratic connects. It's particularly irritating with the stereo, as the speakers go in and out or suffer the crackling with a loose connection.

Casteil 3y ago

> My dad is restoring a 1969 MG Midget. The right turn signal stopped working. Using nothing more than a voltmeter, I found a disconnected wire and a short to the frame. I replaced the entire length of wire that was failing with $3 worth of wire, solder, and heat shrink tubing. I want to see EVs/plug-in hybrids with similar levels of simplicity wherever possible. Virtually all vehicles in the US nowadays are completely overloaded with unnecessary sensors/electronics that are ripe for failure.

moberley 3y ago
After watching the Edison Motors company build a hybrid electric logging truck prototype on YouTube it made me quite disappointed there don't seem to be other classes of vehicle being made in a similar user repairable manner. Of course, passenger vehicles do have some additional regulated safety requirements compared to a heavy vocational truck but perhaps someone will try to figure it out.