News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:UK 'Right to repair' law to come in this summer by knorker on Wednesday March 10, 2021 @04:53AM (#26409605)
That's fine. I'd rather give an old broken fridge for free to someone who'll actually fix it, than throw it away.

Like with old computer stuff. I go out of my way to find someone else who needs it, because 1) I hate the waste and environmental impact, and 2) in my poorer days I was the recipient of "old garbage computer stuff" as my only computer stuff.

I had an old shitty laptop with no battery, that I found an old motorcycle lead-acid battery I could hook up. With a couple of diodes I could even charge it through the laptop. I could never afford a real laptop, but this was a computer on the go for me.

A friend of mine couldn't afford batteries for his calculator, so he took a scrap power adapter and hooked it up to its battery terminals.

I'm fine with someone getting $50k of tooling and then being able to create a reuse market. Better to not need it, but it's also not realistic to have a law that mandates that all electronics must be repairable with a screwdriver and a pair of plyers.

There are no comments on this comment yet.