The latest United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report lays out a stark timeline for how long we have to reduce our carbon emissions to avoid crossing the threshold of a 1.5 degree Celsius rise in global temperature leading to catastrophic effects for life on Earth. Paraphrasing the report, at present levels of emissions we have until 2030, or 2050 at the very latest. To avoid the worst case scenario, we will need to cut emissions in half by 2030, and cut them entirely by 2050. Given the conservative political and capitalist landscape prevalent today, meeting those targets does not seem likely.
A wedding party crosses a street in 2006 in Oulan-Oudé, Republic of Bouriatia, Siberia, Russia. Photo by Cyrille (Suleiman) Romier.
Since national governmental and business leaders will not take the initiative on this issue because it conflicts with the greed of the status quo, it will be up to local leaders and citizens to address the problem. There will be calls to use technology, such as geoengineering, and wholesale adoption of driverless cars and electric vehicles. Those are attempts at a fix that are best implemented by national organizations on a large scale, and cannot be relied on considering the need for national consensus and funding. Geoengineering may work to a limited degree, though it would certainly be subject to the law of unintended consequences. Tweaking the worldwide car culture would have more limited effects since improving the efficiency of how cars are driven and shifting their emissions from the tailpipe to the smokestack would ultimately amount to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
A scene in the 1969 film Midnight Cowboy, directed by John Schlesinger and starring Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight, depicts New York City’s thriving pedestrian culture. Warning: foul language.
What’s needed is a wholesale change in the approach to daily living, particularly among the citizens of the world’s wealthier countries. Start with walking. Every day, everywhere. Build sidewalks. Get cars, driverless, electric, or otherwise, off the roads entirely. Bring back public transportation for trips that are impractical for walking. People will have to demand improvements in public transportation and pedestrian infrastructure through their votes and their dollars, rather than waiting on public officials and corporate executives to make the necessary changes. As a quote popularly attributed to Mahatma Gandhi has it, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” And as he did, walk if you can, for yourself and for change in the world.
— Techly
Ten or more years ago there was some hope among rural internet users that a service called Broadband over Power Lines (BPL) would come along soon to save the day by bringing them high speed internet at affordable prices. Not any more. American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) has a program in trials in Georgia that is a last grasp at trying to make the technology feasible without all the stumbling blocks encountered by other companies in earlier efforts. If AT&T’s engineers are successful, BPL may at last be rolling out on a large scale in the next five years.
Because internet service is a two way street, downloading data from a provider to a user and uploading data from a user to a provider, getting reliable, high speed internet to people in the countryside has been more complicated than the similar situation of stringing electrical service to those people in the middle of the last century. Satellite internet service is an option in the countryside, but is limited by slow upload speeds since consumers for good reason are not allowed by government regulation to possess enormously powerful transmitters. Satellite service providers also throttle their customers’ usage at certain limits because there is limited bandwidth available on a satellite.
Linear perspective of 230 kV power lines during blue hour in the Castleton part of Virginia Beach, Virginia. Photo by PumpkinSky.
Point to point microwave service has been an option for people living in or near small towns. It has been a rarely used option, however, because state and local laws passed at the behest of large internet providers hinder the ability of local governments to coordinate with small internet providers in setting up microwave service, which is most often undertaken as a public/private partnership. Cable television and landline telephone companies, where they have strung lines for internet service the last country mile, usually charge high rates on account of their monopoly status, with indifferent customer service also reflecting their status as an only option.
The last option left for some country people has been mobile telephone internet service. There are numerous problems associated with reliance on cellular internet service, from the possibility of poor signal to the certainty of data caps and high costs. It’s certainly not the best choice for regularly streaming video or trying to run an internet dependent business. The next generation of wireless data technology, 5G, will be available within the next few years, but it’s questionable whether it will solve the problems mentioned above. When a customer does have a solid connection to 5G service, it will be lightning fast.
The possibility of BPL had always seemed like a Godsend for rural internet users because it would have made connecting to broadband service as easy as plugging a modem into an electrical outlet, and because power lines have high capacity there would have been no need for data caps. The prices would have been relatively low by industry standards because the infrastructure was largely already in place, and because utility companies were more highly regulated than cable and telephone companies. “Would have been” is unfortunately where BPL will have to float in limbo, never to be a real option unless AT&T or some other technology company can resurrect it and make it viable.
— Techly
Many folks may remember that as children they were admonished by their elders not to sit too close to the television because they would strain their eyes. If a child was a reader, a parent or other elder would express concern that the reading light wasn’t bright enough. If a child read in bed after lights out, then a concerned elder would issue a warning of punishment for staying up too late, in addition to concern about eye strain. Of course, this scenario is dated because children today may be reading from a backlit screen instead of a paper book. New technology, same worries about eye strain.
View from a street in Toronto, Canada, into a building where a woman looks at her laptop computer and smartphone. Photo by Tim Gouw.
Asthenopia is the medical term for eye strain, and in a chronic case the condition can be a concern worthy of a visit to a doctor. With the prevalence of computer, tablet, and smartphone use now, adults are as apt to have asthenopia as children who don’t heed their parents’ warnings. Few people admit to reading from their smartphone or tablet in bed after dark, but most probably do it, because for one thing it’s an easy way to read without disrupting a partner’s sleep, even if it may disrupt their own sleep habits. Looking for hours at a time into a relatively bright light from a foot or two away, or perhaps mere inches, is a sure path to eye strain.
Other than changing behavior, the solution starts with turning down the brightness on all those screens, including the television. Most devices now come with sensors that detect room brightness and adjust the device brightness accordingly. A darkened room will require less brightness from the device in order for the user to comfortably view the screen. Find that control and use it. Next, devices made specifically for reading at close range, such as smartphones and tablets, may have a “Reader” mode in the display settings. Find that and turn it on. Some internet browsers also come equipped with a “Reader” mode.
Finally, if those native adjustments are insufficient to tone down the blue part of the spectrum, which is the part most responsible for causing eye strain, then seek out a third party application for computers, smartphones, and tablets that will shift the color temperature from blue to red, with many degrees in between. Such applications have timers built in order to shift the color temperature gradually as day moves to night, and vice versa. They take some getting used to, but after a day or two the warmer color temperature will feel natural and less noticeable. Your eyes will sense the difference, though, since they will no longer be asthenopic, a word which is such a strain to pronounce it’s just as well you no longer have to deal with it.
— Techly
The great engineering writer Henry Petroski, who has explored subjects as mundane as pencils and as sweeping as American infrastructure, always brings out the human element in both the design and the use of engineered products, and it is that aspect of his work which makes it fascinating instead of dryly technical. Mr. Petroski reminds us that the products of engineers and designers are wrought by fallible humans for the use of other fallible humans, and since humans have not changed greatly over the past 300 years or 3,000 years, then ultimately engineering and design are always processes of back and forth and of trial and error, even after a university education has instilled thousands of years of experience into its practitioners. Things can and do still go wrong, largely because of human error and human desires.
Take the humble bottle cap, or “crown” as it is known in the trade, and twist it off. Can’t do it? Then it’s a pry off cap, or crown, and requires an implement for dislodging it. Why the different designs? Isn’t there a best practice, and if so why don’t all makers of products put into bottles adhere to it? Specifically, bottlers of beer, some of whom use twist off caps, while others use pry off caps. Isn’t beer beer, no matter how it’s bottled? According to craft beer makers, no. William Painter, an American mechanical engineer, invented the pry off cap in 1892, and it remained the standard means of capping bottled beers and sodas until the 1960s, when twist off caps with good sealing capacity came on the market.
The prop genie bottle, with stopper, from the 1960s television show I Dream of Jeannie. Photo taken in June 2011 by Eva Rinaldi.
Major bottlers soon replaced their pry off caps with twist off, and customers were satisfied since the beers and sodas they bought were not flat due to carbon dioxide leaks going out of the liquid inside the bottles. There may have been slight leaks of oxygen into the bottles, but not enough that the average drinker of major brand American beers would notice. When craft beer makers first came onto the market in a big way in the 1980s and 1990s, many of them decided to eschew twist off caps in favor of pry off caps for several reasons. The machinery for pry off caps was cheaper than for twist off caps, which suited small scale brewers operating on tight margins. Then there was the slight difference in the tightness of the seal between pry off and twist off, which was more of a factor thirty years ago than it remains today after improvements in twist off cap seals. Lastly there was the impression that twist off caps were for cheap, indifferent domestic lagers, while most European imports still came with old fashioned crowns or stoppers, and an impression of higher quality along with their higher prices, an impression which lingers to this day.
It is perhaps the last reason, the purely psychological one, that retains a foundation for using pry off caps, and of course it amounts to pure snobbery. The snobbery over twist off caps is even worse when it comes to consumer perceptions about wine. The craft brewers contradict themselves, too, when they plump for selling their beers in cans instead of bottles. They claim, with good reason, that because of improved linings for aluminum cans there is no longer any reason for consumers to be prejudiced against buying beer in cans. Fair enough, but just as with twist off caps for bottled beer, there remains the perception among consumers that beer in cans is inferior not merely because of possible taint from the container, but because for years beer in cans was the cheap, low quality preference of working class people.
Chubby Checker had a big hit in 1961 with “Let’s Twist Again”, the follow up to his 1960 hit “The Twist”. Some folks may feel the follow up is the better song, but it doesn’t matter much in the end and comes down to personal preference.
Let’s stop pretending then and admit the main reason to crown a beer bottle with a pry off cap is to send a signal to the consumer that what’s inside the bottle is quality stuff. It may well be, but snobbery around rituals should not be the determining factor. That’s as bad as wine snobs who get upset over twist off caps even though vintners and wine aficionados alike claim twist off caps are an improvement to the quality of wines not meant to be aged extensively but drunk within a few years of bottling. And as to craft sodas in bottles with pry off caps, that is merely an excuse to charge a premium for a product of dubious value. At least beer and wine producers can lay claim to some health benefits for their nectars, despite their consumption by mere mortals who allow their preconceived notions to get in the way of enjoying a good drink.
— Techly
Wireless carriers like to offer “unlimited” data plans to customers, and as they currently configure their plans they truly are unlimited, but a wary customer would be wise to check the fine print anyway. The typical wireless data plan for a monthly billing cycle offers a little over 20 GigaBytes (GB) at the fastest speed available, and thereafter throttles the customer down to slower speeds. The customer still has access to wireless data for the remainder of the billing cycle, though at a reduced speed that can sometimes make using the internet frustrating, or practically impossible at the worst. That satisfies the letter of an “unlimited” offering, if not the spirit.
A buffet lunch at a conference in November 2017. Photo by Raysonho.
Characterizing a wireless unlimited data plan as an “all you can eat” buffet misses the mark because most people can and do find ways to use more data as the carriers offer more, while their capacity for gorging on more pasta or Chinese food really does have limits. Wireless data, and broadband service generally, is more like the road system in that with greater capacity comes greater traffic. Build it and they will come, as it were.
The next generation of wireless data will be 5G, available in some areas of the country starting in 2019. The speed and capacity of the 5G network is supposed to be ten to a hundred times greater than the current standard of 4G. Supposedly it will be competitive with wired broadband service. That’s a good thing, and it’s likely that carriers may be able to offer “unlimited” data plans that will be closer to the true meaning of the word, as in “without limits”. There’s reason for skepticism, however, if we recall the highway model for wireless broadband service rather than the buffet model.
In the buffet model, 5G service would expand the size of the restaurant, increasing the seating capacity, and the servers would never allow any of the foods at the buffet to be completely depleted without quickly replenishing them. That doesn’t mean that the average customer will magically be able to eat more in this roomier restaurant with lightning quick service. In the highway model, 5G service will amount to more and wider lanes that will allow traffic to move faster, at least until the improved highway fills up and the increased traffic slows everyone down again because people use the increased capacity to drive more.
Bumper to bumper traffic in Las Vegas, Nevada, in May 2008. Photo by Erum Patel.
Like a city with a highly developed road network, a 5G wireless network will attract manufacturers who will make things for people to use in taking advantage of the excellent new service. For 5G that means expanding use of Internet of Things (IoT) devices and, eventually, self-driving vehicles. Those expanded uses will fill the capacity of the new network, making any carrier’s offer of unlimited data plans to consumers again a proposition that will likely be restrained in the fine print. The carriers like using the word “unlimited” in attracting customers, however, since they know customers can no more resist the fantasy of unlimited data than they can resist an “all you can eat” buffet, regardless of the reality of limited capacity.
— Techly
The current presidential administration trotted out their front man for ostensibly serious projects on Thursday, Vice President Mike Pence, to make the case for entangling the country in a boondoggle called “Space Force”. At first glance, this seems like a waste of national resources in an attempt to appease one special interest, defense contractors. Deeper scrutiny, however, uncovers Space Force as a waste of national resources on behalf of boosting the reelection campaign coffers of the current administration as well titillating the chickenhawks amongst their donors. The presidential administration is monetizing the creation of this unnecessary new branch of the military as if it were a television show.
A September 1954 promotional photo from the television seriesSpace Patrol. Ed Kemmer as Commander Buzz Corry works the controls of the space ship while Lyn Osborn as Cadet Happy Osborn looks on.
This latest development in the kleptocracy that is the current administration should not be surprising to those who have kept their cynicism up to date. The Space Force hubbub will also serve usefully as a distraction for the next week or two from real problems closing in on the administration, such as the investigation of Independent Counsel Robert Mueller into criminal mischief by the administration’s personnel and, before it, it’s campaign staff. More indictments are coming, and probably a subpoena for Orange Julius himself, who will no doubt waste millions of dollars of the taxpayers’ money fighting to avoid being dragged into court by asserting he is above the law. Meanwhile, in the fantasy land of Space Force, the gravy will be flowing for all the billionaire and millionaire defense contractor executives who profess libertarian ideals while feeding greedily at the government trough filled by their benefactors, Commander Buzz Corry and Cadet Happy Osborn, aka Orange Julius and the Duncy White Knight.
— Techly
Grabbing fistfuls of candy bars will be mere kids’ stuff in the new Space Force marketing.
Battery storage has long presented a conundrum to renewable energy enthusiasts who tout the relatively benign environmental footprints of wind and solar power. The batteries can contain toxic metals and chemicals which cause environmental damage in mining and formulation, and then again when they have exhausted their usefulness and users need to somehow safely recycle or dispose of them.
Partial eclipse of the sun – Montericco, Albinea, Reggio Emilia, Italy – May 1994. Photo by Giorgio Galeotti.
For a time, it seemed the answer for homeowners using a solar array was to sell excess power produced during the day to the power company and then draw on grid power at night and on cloudy days. These grid-tied systems effectively used the power company as storage, mostly dispensing with the need for a bank of batteries at home. Unfortunately for homeowners with grid-tied systems, it appears power companies are backing away from those setups in order to protect their equipment and to maintain tighter control over power generation.
Power companies have been investing in their own renewable energy production as costs go down. Since there is no external backup for the electricity generated by the power company, the power companies need to employ huge amounts of batteries. Batteries have improved in the past generation both in toxicity and length of usable life from the days of lead acid batteries. Improvement does not mean they are exactly environmentally friendly. The problem comes down to relative harm, such as whether it is less harmful to the environment to drive an electric car when the source for its electricity is a coal burning power plant.
An illustration of the relationship of renewable energy to energy storage from the German cartoonist Gerhard Mester (1956-). Panel 1: “More solar energy!!” Panel 2: “More wind energy!” And in the last panel: “More energy storage!” Incidentally, Germany is a world leader in solar energy production despite receiving less sunlight than many other industrialized nations.
Nothing people do technologically has zero impact on the environment, and arguments from the extremes of both sides of the tug of war between those in favor of continued use of fossil fuels and those who want greater reliance on renewable energy are neither accurate nor helpful. Continuing the status quo of burning fossil fuels for most energy production is clearly a path to environmental catastrophe, while renewable energy production does not have quite as low an impact on the environment as some enthusiasts suggest. It is in the batteries especially that renewable energy has an unfavorable impact.
Nevertheless, in countries with higher renewable energy production than the global average the air is cleaner and greenhouse gas emissions are lower. Because the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow, the key to minimizing reliance on batteries, the most toxic element in renewable energy use, is diversification of power sources supplying the grid, from geothermal to hydroelectric. None of these methods of supplying the power necessary for humanity’s modern lifestyle are perfect, but they are all better than the alternative of continuing down the path of polluting the air and warming the planet. The two biggest obstacles to switching the United States to 100 percent renewable energy are the fossil fuel industry interests entrenched in national politics, and battery technology. Of the two, the latter will be more easily overcome by a concerted effort, and with time the new technology will push out the former technology and its moneyed adherents as obsolete and destructive. But will it be soon enough?
— Techly
The Trump Baby balloon that floated over London, England, last Friday was the culmination of efforts on the part of graphic designer Matt Bonner and a team of political activists and balloon fabricators who wanted to make a statement about the petulant and childish temperament of the current American president. As a mocking indictment of his destructive behavior, it is an effective piece of work. The activists plan to have the balloon shadow it’s real-life angry baby model as much as possible wherever he travels around the world.
The Trump Baby balloon rises over London’s Parliament Square. Photo by Michael Reeve.
Large balloon caricatures came about with the work of Tony Sarg on the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade in the 1920s. Mr. Sarg was a German-American puppeteer who took the concept of marionettes and simply turned them upward and inflated them, though the comparison ends there because the guide ropes for a balloon caricature do no more than tether and control them, as opposed to the thin wires that puppeteers use to manipulate the movements of small marionettes.
The technology for creating large balloons with discretely modeled characteristics like arms and legs has changed over the years, of course, with the biggest difference coming in the planning stage when designers can now model the character with 3D animation on a computer, eliminating some of the trial and error involved in the design and fabricating of earlier balloons. Experienced engineers at the fabricating plant can then examine those computer designs and make or suggest alterations that will improve the balloon’s stability when floating overhead and streamline its manufacturing, all without greatly changing if possible the designer’s intent.
The statue of Winston Churchill in London’s Parliament Square. Photo by Braveheart.
These protest balloon caricatures appear to be gaining popularity, and it’s easy to see why since they fit the criteria of making an impact over a wider area than a hand-held placard and they can show up around the world as needed with a relatively small support team. An excellent graphic design can also generate revenue for the protest movement through merchandising. The main difficulty in deploying the balloons is in securing permission from government officials, which ought not be that much different from acquiring the usual permits for a protest other than stipulating a maximum height for the balloon when it is in the air.
Since the balloons are not intended to float higher than about 50 feet, conflicts with aviation should be minimal. The main obstacles aloft to safe deployment, besides high winds, are things arising from the ground such as power and light poles and electrical and communications cables. Let’s hope these symbols of protest continue floating freely wherever there’s enough helium a need for them, as a reminder to everyone that many powerful public figures need to have the air let out of them, not necessarily for their benefit since it can be all but impossible to deflate their often massive egos, but for ours as citizens in a still relatively free society.
— Techly
This summer, archaeologists from The Public Archaeology Facility of Binghamton University in New York State are digging up the site of the 1969 Woodstock Music and Art Fair near Bethel, New York. They hope to uncover an accurate and comprehensive scheme of the place as it was originally laid out for that enormous event nearly 50 years ago, and then turn over their findings to the museum on the site in time for the 50th anniversary in August 2019. Besides broken glass and other relics from the event, the archaeologists dug up numerous pop tops from aluminum beverage cans.
Unlike the stay-tab which replaced it in the late 1970s, the pop top tabs from the late 1960s and early 1970s were meant to be pulled entirely off the top of the can by the consumer. The consumer then had a piece of waste in addition to the waste the can itself would become after emptying, and many consumers simply dropped the pop tops on the ground, where they not only littered the environment but on account of their sharp edges became a safety hazard for anyone in bare or lightly shod feet, as Jimmy Buffett noted in his song “Margaritaville”. Some people dropped the pop tops into the can either while they were drinking from it or afterward, and then some of those people were unfortunate enough to swallow the pop top or otherwise injure themselves when it resurfaced during their drinking.
A litter trap on the Yarra River in the vicinity of Melbourne, Australia. Photo by Biatch3.
When a Reynolds Metals engineer named Daniel F. Cudzik invented the stay-on-tab, or Sta-Tab, in 1975, he solved the littering and safety problems of pop tops. Some inconsiderate people still tossed the cans wherever they liked when they were done with them, and unfortunately it appears a certain percentage of people like that will always be among us, but the problems originating from improperly disposed cans have lessened since the 1960s with the adoption of better designs and recycling programs. Since then, and particularly after bottled water took off in popularity in the 1990s, plastic beverage containers have taken over from aluminum cans as a major littering and safety problem.
Engineers and designers have created biodegradable water bottles in the past several years, but so far the bottled water industry has not embraced their inventions, and may never do so without consumers pushing themselves and the industry in that direction. Part of the reason for delay is the relatively abstract nature of the problem for many consumers. Yes, empty plastic water bottles may litter roadsides, where they are unsightly, but they don’t really pose a physical danger to people, unlike aluminum pop tops and cans with their sometimes sharp edges. The physical danger from plastics all seems to happen to animals, many of them far away and out of sight, such as the ones who live in the oceans, where all that plastic garbage ends up and lingers for decades. It was only recently that scientists discovered we, like our animal cousins, are also ingesting plastics, though in our cases we are more dainty in our discernment in that we choose only to take in micro-plastics, meaning those we cannot see. What goes around, comes around, and there’s no escaping it.
In Mike Nichols’s 1967 film The Graduate, Mr. McGuire, played by Walter Brooke, has some advice for Ben Braddock, played by Dustin Hoffman. In a later scene, Hoffman’s character floats on a raft in the pool at his house and sips a beverage from a can which has two v shaped openings in its top, the marks of having been opened with a can opener, or church key, the most common way to open such a can before pop tops became widely available on beverage cans in the mid 1960s.
Most people can be coached to some degree to change their behavior, and once they are understand viscerally that a problem exists because of their past behavior, many of them can become open to change. They have to feel the problem personally, though, because an abstraction doesn’t always get through to them. A minority of others are hardheads, and little can be done to persuade them to change their ways beyond legal sanctions and public shaming. The mounting problem of plastic litter shares this model of personal and public behavior with the looming dangers of a warming climate. For too many people the problems remain abstractions because the effects can be distant, indirect, or slow moving. The rest of us can’t wait for those people to come around, because they may only do so when they are up to their necks in seawater while standing in their front yards, fighting off all the plastic junk bobbing in the water, and obstinately refusing to reconcile their beliefs with what they see and feel around them.
— Techly
Attempting a do it yourself (DIY) repair of something around the house or of a vehicle is mostly regarded by onlookers as well as by the eager amateur repair person as virtuous, valiant, and frugal, though after much frustration the do it yourselfer may not mind foregoing the admiration of family and friends in exchange for a functional repair. People get in over their heads and underestimate the value of technical skills honed from years of experience that the professional possesses, as well as often expensive specialty tools. Too many times the amateur tackles a problem using a limited arsenal of tools, and perhaps more critically, limited knowledge and zero experience.
DIY Toilet in Nature. Photo by Formerchemistuow. Sometimes the right tool is a telephone for calling on the help of a professional.
What is the problem? It’s a simple enough question, but one which an amateur will often follow circuitously through trial and error, while the professional, having likely seen the problem before, will cut right to the core of the issue. One of the best tools an amateur can employ when confronted with a difficult repair is the judgment to know his or her limitations and when the time has come to call in a professional. Sometimes that judgment is taken away from the do it yourselfer by manufacturers, particularly of electronics. The demise of Radio Shack, once a resource for electronics hobbyists and people buying parts for repairing their equipment themselves, is as much a testament to the connivance of manufacturers in shutting out amateur repair efforts on their devices as it is to the incompetence of Radio Shack management. Consumers have also acquiesced in the past generation to the accelerated obsolescence of electronic devices, and are far more inclined than they were forty or more years ago to replace malfunctioning equipment rather than repair it, either by themselves or by hiring a professional.
A montage from The Andy Griffith Show 1964 episode “Bargain Day”, in which Sheriff Andy Taylor, played by Andy Griffith, continually exhorts Aunt Bee, played by Frances Bavier, to call the repair man to fix their broken freezer. Aunt Bee, in a penny wise and dollar foolish way, fusses and drags her feet about calling the repair man because of the expense, meanwhile risking the loss of an entire side of beef she had hoped to store in the freezer.
For do it yourselfers, quick diagnosis of the problem needing repair is key, because otherwise they are prone to waste time, energy, and expense in labor and materials casting about blindly in hopes of isolating the problem. The professional will likely save that trouble and expense. Not always, but most of the time. Where a sophisticated diagnosis is required, such as it can be with electronics, the professional is likely to possess the proper equipment. Not all amateurs have the wherewithal to run out and buy expensive diagnostic equipment for what may only be a one time use. More and more of the devices we bring into our houses require special knowledge and tools to fix, if indeed a fix is possible or economical, and unless the defects they develop can be recognized by us quickly we are probably better off leaving the repair to a professional. The alternative is to limit ourselves to mechanical and electronic devices that were available one hundred years ago, when a person with a standard set of household tools could still effect many needed repairs without undue aggravation. In the twenty-first century, the end of Radio Shack ought to signify for most of us where we stand in our willingness and ability to repair things ourselves.
— Techly
