#kyle wiens

[arthropooda]

[meadowslark]

(image from webpage. photo by  SERGIO FLORES/BLOOMBERG/GETTY IMAGES)

JOHN DEERE JUST SWINDLED FARMERS OUT OF THEIR RIGHT TO REPAIR

The California Farm Bureau, purportedly representing the interests of California farmers, “just blithely signed away farmers’ right to access or modify the source code of any farm equipment software. ... gav(ing) up the right to purchase repair parts without going through a dealer. Farmers can’t change engine settings, can’t retrofit old equipment with new features, and can’t modify their tractors to meet new environmental standards on their own. Worse, the lobbyists are calling it a victory.”

Kyle Wiens and Elizabeth Chamberlain explains why this is a loss for farmers in this opinion piece in Wired.

[kim]

“When you fix something — just for a moment — entropy loses its iron grip on the universe,” Kyle Wiens has written. “When you fix something — just for a moment — you're the victor.”

Alex linked this to me a week or two ago, but I didn't realise you were supposed to book for it, even though it's a free talk.

Missed out. Damn.

[unconsumption]

Unconsumption will be taking a few days off thanks to the long Thanksgiving weekend (in the U.S.), so we’ll give thanks right now to all you readers! And if you find yourself with a little free time, here’s a very cool weekend read:

If you’ve tried to open any iDevice—iPad, iPhone, iMac, any of them—within the last four years, you've come face-to-face with Apple’s very small, five-pointed Do Not Enter sign. It's an overt declaration that your phone, or your computer, or your tablet is not really yours to tamper with, a public statement that you are not qualified to fix your own things.

If you’re reading this on your iPhone or have one nearby, look at either side of the charging port and you’ll seem them: two tiny, star-shaped screw heads that, outside of an obscure wheelchair manufacturer, do not otherwise exist in the wild.

There is a solution to this “pentalobe” screw, however. A screwdriver engineered by iFixit, a California startup that has been simultaneously antagonizing Apple and making sure that, as electronics get more and more complicated, the layperson will still be able to learn how to fix them. (Other companies have since begun offering pentalobe screwdrivers.)

I spent a few days with iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens and professional repair experts at the Electronics Reuse Conference in New Orleans earlier this month to learn more about how your right to open, tinker with, and repair devices that you own is under attack from the very companies that make them.

The rest is here: How to Fix Everything | Motherboard

— rw

[tobeborneback-blog]

Life without conflict is a fraud. We all have to fight entropy, and refusing to engage in that battle is to ignore what makes us human.

Kyle Wiens, from "Things Come Apart"

[macdailynews]

iFixit boss: Apple has 'done everything it can to put repair guys out of business'

iFixit boss: Apple has ‘done everything it can to put repair guys out of business’

[cfsp key="adsense_336x280"]“Fixing and upgrading iOS devices can be a rewarding business opportunity, so long as you don’t mind having to fight Apple every step of the way,” Shaun Nichols reports for The Register.

“So says the founder of iFixit, who spoke at the MacWorld Expo in San Francisco on Thursday,” Nichols reports. “The repair outfit’s CEO Kyle Wiens said there is little or no…

View On WordPress

[thebees--knees-blog]

[ilivetowriteandinspire]

Good grammar is credibility, especially on the internet. In blog posts, on Facebook statuses, in e-mails, and on company websites, your words are all you have. They are a projection of you in your physical absence. And, for better or worse, people judge you if you can't tell the difference between their, there, and they're.

Kyle Wiens