Birbla

Join the discussion

Write your take first — we'll ask for email only when you're ready to publish.

Sign in
  • Hacker News
  • TIL there are people who throw knives away instead of sharpening them.
    by mlukaszek
  • I have been a "repair mentor" at our "repair studio" for 3+ years. It's very rewarding. We did have to set some ground rules: (clean your fan/vac, bring batteries, etc). Collaborated with our local library.
    by washbasin
  • > clean your [item]

    Anecdote: I gave an apprentice a small vacuum to fix, when he opened it up several live bed bugs emerged. That was fun! /s

    by canada_dry
  • Site is broken on my smartphone, won't navigate.
    by decatur
  • Yeah mine too. Swear to God I'm not a bot, folks. I just use Firefox and a bunch of extensions.

    Actually pretty pissed off about that. A site like this should understand their audience is technical.

    by specproc
  • We have a Fixit Clinic join us every other Friday at our maker space open build nights in Berkeley. Next event is 28 August https://eastbaymakersclub.com
    by tagami
  • There's also one I nopa and Mission. Mission event coming up September 13.

    https://repaircafesf.org/ https://www.instagram.com/sfmissionrepaircafe/

    by raybb
  • Would love the idea in Ireland as we are flooded with vape selling and repair shops on every street. Fixed Dyson v11 twice now and I wish there was a place I could come to get someone with experience to help I broke PSP in attempt to fix it and had to rely on repair shop for broken button on steam deck
    by koksik202
  • Have you looked into the different Hackerspaces around the country? TOG in Dublin run Repair Cafe events [https://www.tog.ie/repair/] and I'd be durprised if other spaces don't.

    You can find a list of other Hackerspaces here [https://wiki.hackerspaces.org/Ireland].

    by padraic7a
  • I fixed a lot of stuff over the past couple of years. Recently I put alot of our shellys back to life. They were taking care of our rolling shutters, but died due to a low quality capacitor. I soldered quality ones in it and they now do their job as expected again.
    by jfsebastian
  • Similarly, even the higher-priced Logitech mice often use tact switches that are only rated for a relatively low number of clicks (probably 1 million?), so many of them started failing on me after about two years. Replacing the switches with higher-rated ones (50 million clicks) is trivial on all the mice I have disassembled so far. The switches and replacement glider pads (which need replacing after removing the screws hidden below them) are often just a few bucks but make the mouse last for several more years.
    by TonyTrapp
  • I've been involved for several years. If you don't yet have one in your area, are handy at fixing things and have the inclination - contact them for info on starting one up.
    by canada_dry
  • Love those places! We have a very vibrant one here in town that is open almost every day of the week (with different focuses per day, like textiles, electronics etc.). Sometime ago I've been there to have an old German radio from the 60s repaired and there was actually a guy there who used to work in a radio manufacturing company in the 80s and really knew all about these kinds of devices. I think he was retired and going to these repair cafés just as a pastime and for fun and was super enthusiastic to repair it. I think these places are not only a great way of community-building, but also great for passing on knowledge. And to prevent electronic waste of course. (The repair café actually got some fundings from the federal state government, who were subsidizing these repairing initiatives for a while. Not sure if that's still going on.)
    by shin-ra
  • I love this idea. A lot of repair knowledge is buried in non-English forums or unsearchable Discord servers (grr Discord). We need to localize it and rebuild community expertise.
    by kayson
  • Here is a list of Repair Cafes in Switzerland: https://www.repair-cafe.ch

    Supported by the Switzerland Department for the Environment.

    by sschueller
  • Like others, I love this idea. A related idea I had was a library of 3d models of parts. Like thingiverse, but specifically for repair/replace components and not limited to plastic. My thought was if it's plastic you could 3d print whatever little busted plastic part was going to send your household item to landfill. But also models of things like automotive parts that you could have made by somewhere like xometry. I thought of it as an "international component database."
    by jaredhallen
  • My ex-partner and I used to have "drink it and fix it" on Sunday evenings where she would bring stuff out for me to fix and we'd slowly get pissed! Some things remained fixed, some things, erm, needed re-fixing!
    by filterfish