This stealthy undertaking was not an act of robbery or espionage but rather a crucial operation in what would become an association called UX, for “Urban eXperiment.” UX is sort of like an artist’s collective, but far from being avant-garde—confronting audiences by pushing the boundaries of the new—its only audience is itself. More surprising still, its work is often radically conservative, intemperate in its devotion to the old. Through meticulous infiltration, UX members have carried out shocking acts of cultural preservation and repair, with an ethos of “restoring those invisible parts of our patrimony that the government has abandoned or doesn’t have the means to maintain.” The group claims to have conducted 15 such covert restorations, often in centuries-old spaces, all over Paris. - Wired.com "The New French Hacker-Artist Underground"
posted by The Whelk on Jan 24, 2012 - 20 comments

All Apple is doing is slowing people down and aggravating them.
posted by Chuckles on Jan 21, 2011 - 260 comments

Holey sweater? Fixed! Use a piece of foam, some wool and a felt needle. No knitting skills required.
posted by ouke on Dec 1, 2010 - 63 comments

During the second quarter of fiscal 2009, NVIDIA recorded a $196 million charge against cost of revenue to cover anticipated customer warranty, repair, return, replacement and associated costs arising from a weak die/packaging material set in certain versions of our previous generation MCP and GPU products used in notebook systems. "The plaintiffs are seeking class-action status and want the graphics firm to pay “unspecified damages” as well as replace the faulty chips. Interestingly, those behind the lawsuit all had an HP, Dell, or Apple laptop". Mar 1, 2007 this problem was made known.
posted by sgt.serenity on Nov 23, 2010 - 54 comments

Kyle Wiens of iFixit talks to ArsTechnica about iFixit's history ("my iBook G3...It seemed crazy that I couldn't find any information online on how to get the thing back together"), his goals ("we realized that the world needed free, open source service manuals, and the manufacturers weren't stepping up"), planned obsolescence, the dirty tricks manufacturers pull to make it harder to repair your own stuff ("Torx has a patent...They're using lawyers to prevent people from making their computers last longer than 3-400 battery cycles"), who are the design kings of repair and servicing, who the villains are, and why recycling electronics isn't all you'd probably like it to be.
posted by rodgerd on Sep 11, 2010 - 43 comments

Feeling nostalgic for all that old, broken "junk" you tossed out? "The wizards of obsolete" can help you to not make the same mistake again.
posted by InsertNiftyNameHere on Sep 9, 2010 - 28 comments

Hackspaces are open resources for community, group, or solo work on digital media, electronics, robotics, and art installations. Many allow drop-ins, and are run on a voluntary, non-profit basis - there’s likely one near you. Just want to repair something by yourself? iFixit, previously known for their teardowns of Apple products, have launched an open wiki to create manuals on how to repair everything from vehicles to household appliances.
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul on Sep 3, 2010 - 22 comments

Year: 2025. Mission: Save Moonbase Alpha after critical systems were damaged by a meteor strike. A free Steam-powered 3D-immersive game from NASA. Windows only.
posted by jjray on Jul 8, 2010 - 44 comments

How to Get Rid of Things — a do-it-yourself guide dedicated to helping you prevent, eliminate or remove common annoyances from your life. For example: How to Get Rid of Voles. "Once you have the vole in hand, simply squeeze until you hear the pop." [more inside]
posted by netbros on Jul 20, 2009 - 34 comments

A Real Doll "doctor" gives an interview, describing the art of patching up the dolls and questioning their treatment by their owners.
posted by Grrlscout on Feb 22, 2009 - 158 comments

The Dartmouth College Library hosts a Simple Book Repair Manual, which teaches you how to repair common problems such as torn pages and wet books. For more complicated procedures, the Alaska State Library put together a training manual, with illustrations of repair procedures. (Full PDF here.) There is also a book conservation dictionary hosted by the Stanford conservation department, which explains many of the terms used.
posted by Upton O'Good on Aug 25, 2008 - 18 comments

The Bicycle Tutor is a site with lots of video tutorials designed with a sole purpose; to teach you how to fix your own bicycle. [via mefi projects]
posted by Effigy2000 on Jun 17, 2008 - 29 comments

Using a computer set to auto-screencast, The Consumerist catches a Geek Squad technician copying porn from a client's computer to a thumbdrive, and they've got video and logfiles (CSV) to prove it. Also, the Geek Squad CEO responds, and an anonymous Geek Squad tech confesses that this is not an uncommon practice: "stealing customers' nudie pics was an easter egg hunt." Consumerist users suggest that this practice might not be limited to Geek Squad. Via.
posted by charmston on Jul 6, 2007 - 73 comments

New Orleans City Ordinance #26031 --...those who have not been able to make the necessary repairs to their battered homes by August 29th risk having their property seized and bulldozed by the city.... Bush says today: Katrina Repair Will Take Time, but time's up for many New Orleans residents. (more here from ACORN, who has been trying to help save homes there)
posted by amberglow on Aug 23, 2006 - 62 comments

Bring dead LCD pixels back to life! Did you know you can often fix dead LCD pixels by forcing them to rapidly cycle through red, green, and blue? Neither did I, but the video linked here worked on one of my older screens after a few hours of looped playback. YMMV, but what have you got to lose?
posted by pmbuko on Sep 19, 2005 - 32 comments

Chicago Rat Patrol. No, not this kind of rat patrol; for this crew, rat spotting is just a sideline. What these guys skulk in alleys for, though, is discarded bike parts to kludge, especially in strange and unexpected proportions. Most of them work. As a result of their experiments, they're attuned to the kitbashed contraptions used by (mostly) economically marginal folk. Additionally, or superfluously, they're sort of anarchist anti-corporate critical-mass types. Updated until almost a year ago. Note: Geocities site. Tread lightly. And stay away from the "Rodeo" link, where there's a quicktime video, until tomorrow.
posted by dhartung on Jul 26, 2002 - 4 comments

Toiletology 101. Everything you wanted to know but were too busy to ask.
posted by Spoon on May 11, 2002 - 8 comments

Why does it take so long to mend an escalator? Incisive article which seems to be metaphorically demonstrating the difficulties in repairing society's ills through the voices of mechanical engineering. "The chinks in an escalator's armour are the spaces between step and step, step and wall, and comb plate and step. That is where a shoelace, a scarf, a child's finger or a foot can get caught - which is bad for travellers - and where small hard objects, dragged along and forced between cleats and comb plate, can chew up the aluminium steps, which is punishing for the machine."
posted by feelinglistless on Mar 7, 2002 - 21 comments

Photographers: Consider do-it-yourself lens repair - but remember those safety glasses.
posted by normy on Nov 10, 2001 - 9 comments