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me_irl
(thelemmy.club)
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this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2026
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me_irl
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This is a roving banner about consumerism and why its bad. Stop buying sooooo much shit and fix the things you do have. The jones's suck and they can fuck right off into the sunset.
I have a small ~$5 desk fan that I got from AliExpress. First time it broke, it was because the mount points for the micro USB charge port were glued on instead of soldered in place. Then the tiny crappy button which presses a smaller surface mount button inside got bent and no longer clicked the actual internal component. Then the button snapped off completely so I replaced it with a 3D printed one. Then my initial soldering broke loose because I admittedly half-assed it the first time. When it was sitting on my desk, disassembled for the 5th time, I mentioned how many times I'd cracked it open to someone and they bought me a different fan as a gift, essentially freeing me from the curse of repairing the cheap fan again, and giving me permission to just trash it...
I still fixed it and now I have 2 fans. I must've fixed it pretty well this last time because I've dropped it twice pretty hard and it's still holding up. Repairing shit is awesome. It usually doesn't take that many tries though...
I bought a cheap electric heater from Lowe's a few years ago. It surprised me greatly because it would occasionally rewire itself. It had a rotating switch with Off, Fan, Low Heat and High Heat settings, but once in a while these switch settings would change. Like, Low Heat would actually by the Fan setting, Off would actually be the High Heat setting etc. It turns out the rotating switch just travelled over some printed solder lines and occasionally these would melt and re-form into new positions.
How there was not an epidemic of homes burning down because of these things is a mystery. But there's just no way engineers could have ever guessed something like this would happen.
My current headphones are a Frankenstein mix of drivers from a pair that sounded nice but were uncomfortable, a headband and housing from a different pair that fits my weirdly shaped head, cushions from a third pair because they were the perfect size for my ears and soo comfortable and a cable from a fourth pair because it was the perfect length, thickness and has a good plug. They're my favorite headphones now.
How do assemble them? Have a picture of them?
I used screwdrivers, hot glue and soldering to assemble them. They just look like mid-tier Creative Labs headphones with Turtle Beach cushions.
If a first fix doesn't succeed, fix it and fix it and fix it and fix it.... You get the idea.
My small 4in fan I take hammocking with me had the charging port break on me and while I have the soldering station to fix it, I hate soldering tiny pcbs and have just been removing the lipo cell and charging it with my 18650 charger I had made an adapter for awhile back. I basically just stick two ribbon cable pins into the adapter and the other ends go to the appropriate +/- wires on the jst connector to the lipo. Takes about 4x longer than my largest capacity 18650 but it saves me a little annoying soldering.
Also I lost the on button when I was disassembling it so now I just shove my longest nail down into the housing. I COULD print a new one but I'd have to set my printer back up and tune it just for one small piece... I have a piece of paper taped to my printer that I keep writing the things I wasn't to print and once it gets long enough I'll set it up, it's just a lot of work and I don't have much space.
Cassettes degrade over time so they needed to be replaced by CDs or mp3s eventually. But it’s about the device you’re listening to it on and buying a new device.
As it turns out after a few decades, CDs also degrade over time.