Ifixit is the new Justice League of America and Kyle Wiens is its Superman

[doctorow]

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[L_Mariachi]

@doctorow

the Electronics Reuse Conference – Burning Man for the service-people who fix your phones, laptops, and other devices

In what way is this anything like Burning Man, beyond both of them being temporary gatherings of people in states with legal casino gambling?

[PhasmaFelis]

Sometime in the past year and a half or so, Cory stopped making sense. No one’s really sure what happened.

[redesigned]

@L_Mariachi

In what way is this anything like Burning Man

They both have to deal with lots of bugs in order to buck “the system”?

[Tribune]

just wait till we hear about the giant effigy they make with the non functional electronics and the huge plume of toxic smoke when it is lit on fire.

[Papasan]

“Wiens is a culture hero of the 21st century, a maker’s maker, and a staunch defender of and evangelist for the right to repair.”

Well said, well written, well done.

[Grey_Devil]

I know car manufacturers are now lobbying to make it so not anyone can work on their cars, taking a page from these farm equipment companies’ playbook. I think it is a basic right having the ability to work on/repair your own things or have anyone else do work on it. There is the question of “do you really own your devices?” and there’s a lot of grey area there, but i think at the end of the day if you need to repair anything you should always be able to have the choice to do so and it should supersede ownership.

[Brainspore]

@L_Mariachi

In what way is this anything like Burning Man, beyond both of them being temporary gatherings of people in states with legal casino gambling?

I’m still stuck on the Superman/Justice League metaphor. If you’re going to compare a maker/tinkerer/electronics expert to a founding member of a super-team then shouldn’t it be Tony Stark?

[WearySky]

The cold war between Apple and iFixit has become more heated lately, however. Apple recently deleted the iFixit app from the App Store for breach-of-contract, because Apple sent iFixit the new Apple TV and iFixit does what it always does, which is tear it to pieces.

It’s not like Apple did this to be spiteful, though. iFixit, for some strange reason, posted their teardown before the product was available for sale, which was indeed a violation of the NDA that they agreed to in order to get a pre-release version. This resulted in the developer account used to obtain the device getting banned, and that also happened to be the account associated with their iOS app. It was very bizarre that they chose to do this, they could have simply posted the teardown the day the device was available for sale. I’m willing to bet that they did it strictly to stick it to Apple and make it seem like Apple was the bad guy, there. By all accounts, it sounded like the iOS app was really outdated any way.