We should also force all these tech companies to take in any e-waste (batteries, cables, usb drives, hard drives, plastic containers, anything) and dispose of it properly.

Tech is becoming more difficult to repair as well. Had a phone that somehow got its WiFi broken. Did everything I could do software wise, so I concluded it was something with the hardware.

Asked a repair shop what they could do. Well they could replace the entire board with CPU and everything, but that’s going to cost about the same as buying a new phone. The choice was easy.

I then realized we were all fucked.

Buy responsibly:

• https://www.fairphone.com/

• https://frame.work/

I've been toying with an idea that the government should keep track of purchases (voluntarily and anonymously) and they should have minimum guaranteed. So if your freezer only last 10 years then the government can see this, or you can see this on the website and the manufacturer has to repair it or refund it fully. Different products have different guarantees

That would sort out shit products pretty quick.

The issue is holding that capital for insurance, especially for new companies (like seriously this is a potential dealbreaker problem) but it might have the added benefit that shite from China can't get insurance and can't be sold, only local products can, or products from the west.

Secondly the price of recycling should be included in the upfront cost and the government should provide free recycling. Or it is 150% of recycling cost and the consumer gets the 50% back when they recycle rather than throwing it in a river.

But muh "trade secrets" and "security"

And lawmakers don't even know what a bootloader is.

I can guarantee this user is not using an iPhone from 2011 - the iPhone 4s went to shit after the first few years of updates

Have you ever had a Logitech mouse start to act funny with the left click? Maybe it double clicks when you know you've single clicked, or you click and drag and it doesn't? Yeah it's probably the microswitch. I've got a little herd of M570's, after a few years they all start doing that, so I pop them open, it's like 4 or 5 screws hidden under the little rubber feet and one in the battery compartment, desolder the switch, solder on a new one, and it's back to working like new.

I've had a guy arguing with me that that's not worth it.

I had a random orbital sander stop working. So many people these days would say "It's a $99 tool, I'll just throw it away and buy a new one." I took mine apart and cleaned the dust out of it. Running like brand new.

Why are people so afraid of fixing things?

Wish I had your neighbors. Mine almost always smash their stuff before dumping in the bin so no one else can use it.

Although a few things have creeped through. My current desktop is a AMD something or other, 4Ghz, 32GB Ram, 500GB ssd and all I had to do was get an IO shield and replace some fans.

btw with most modern tvs using side mounted hdmi on the pcb directly, it's bad solder joints causing these issues. Resoldering the connectors fixes it like half the time.

If you have Best Buys they have e-waste recycling available year round. It doesn't really solve the problem though, it just ships it off to poorer countries.

I used to live in a county where it was incredibly easy. Just pull into their clean transfer center and they'll take it out of your trunk for you. Not just e-waste, but toxic stuff like paint and motor oil. And it was paid for by a very small tax increase.

But now that I live in a different county I have to drop off my electronics between 9 and 3 on a weekday, and there is no mechanism for me to dispose of toxic household waste.

More like 5 divided by 0 is infinite.

Not sure which one you mean but I have a feeling it's a lot like the resin identification code where it looks like the recycling symbol but isn't. It's to make you think it can be recycled so you don't feel as bad about buying it and throwing it away.

Properly disposing of any product should be baked into the purchase price. If you wanna buy cheap plastic shit then you should pay for society to get rid of it when you're done with it. But that makes way too much sense so it will never happen.

Chuck Linux on it