The Restart Project Podcast

In part two of our special two-part podcast, we join Steve the Spindoctor again for a day in the life of an appliance repairer. Back in the van, Dave talks to Steve Neil about sausage rolls, Instagram, what he’s found clogging washing machines, and the challenges that small businesses face today. Steve fixes a botched dishwasher installation to the amusement of a very young Restarter. This week, we also hear from people at a Restart Party in Camden for an insight into what people really do when their white goods break. Steve names two types of people: those who throw things away, and those who get their things repaired. But here at Restart, we’d say there are also people that try to fix things themselves. With advice and inspiration from people like Steve, it becomes just that little bit easier to move into that third category. Be sure to catch up on Part 1 if you missed it last week! Looking for a repair person? You can visit Steve’s website or his Instagram account. The post Restart Podcast Ep. 16: Steve the Spindoctor (part 2/2) appeared first on The Restart Project.

In a special 2-part series, Dave talks to Steve Neil in his van about his work ethic, the trials of being self-employed, and why some machines seem to break so often. We even follow Steve on his repair trips to see how this doctor goes about diagnosing his patients. Join us for a fascinating insight into an exciting and dynamic job, for tips on home appliance maintenance, and for a few laughs along the way: Steve’s good humour is infectious! Be sure to tune in next week for part 2. Looking for a repairman? Visit Steve’s website. The post Restart Podcast Ep 15: Steve the Spindoctor (Part 1/2) appeared first on The Restart Project.

With Black Friday coming up this week, we discuss how healthy this mad consumer rush really is for our economy. We’re all familiar with the videos of people pushing each other out of the way to get to the products on the shelf. Huge savings on electrical equipment make this one of the areas of biggest spending. Do consumers really need to buy more, or is it just the next step in the ‘halloweenization of everything’? Polls and surveys of consumer confidence reveal a huge range of results. We take a look at recent studies and question whether they are representative of how financially stable people really feel. Levels of consumption may not be the best measure of our society’s economic health. Black Friday, Cyber Monday and its equivalents, such as the Chinese ‘Singles Day’, generate huge amounts of money, but where does this money really end up? Many of the jobs generated by online sales in particular are poorly paid, and the huge spikes in demand can just aggravate already bleak working conditions in the places where products are manufactured. Perhaps it’s time we paid more attention to other ways to enjoy Friday, such as ‘Buy Nothing Day’. We also talk about how new Apple laptop models have spawned the hashtag #donglelife. And let’s not forget the ‘Apple book’, which might just take the prize for the most overpriced object on the market at the moment. Links to things we discussed: YouGov “UK consumer confidence falls on ‘hard Brexit’ fears“ Deloitte “The Deloitte Consumer Tracker Q2 2016“ PwC “Consumers feeling positive ahead of Christmas following Brexit blip“ Adbusters Buy Nothing Day Stephen Colbert “The New Apple Book Delivers Something Truly Extraordinary“ [Feature Image “Sears Outlet Black Friday 2011 Ad Scan – Page 1” by Flickr user 24218656@N03 is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0] The post Restart Radio: Black Friday and consumer confidence appeared first on The Restart Project.

This week Ugo returns from Brussels where he’s been investigating the policy conversations that are happening around products and their durability. Eva van Velzen from the Netwerk Bewust Verbruiken (or Network for Sustainable Consumption) joins us on the show to talk about the repair cafés popping up all over Flanders. People can bring in anything to be fixed, from electronics to clothes and furniture. The network also held a political repair café in Ghent, where five politicians were invited to learn practical repair skills. We talk about our own Restart event held in parliament last week, where UK MPs were invited to experience hands-on some of the problems with disassembly and repair. In our ‘post-truth society’, there’s a lot of false information flying around. We investigate the (false) UKIP allegation that EU-regulated toasters were not producing proper British toast. Ugo clarifies exactly what categories of appliances come under EU “ecodesign” regulations as part of the Circular Economy Package, and we discuss how we can move towards policy for more durable and repairable household appliances. What tips and policies can we take away from Brussels to help fix Britain’s throwaway economy? Links to things we discussed: Green Alliance new report EU commission regulations ‘Toastergate’ Our Parliamentary event [Feature image “Burnt Toast” by Flickr user Treacy is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0] The post Restart Radio: Policy tips from Brussels appeared first on The Restart Project.

After literally running together from our Parliamentary Restart Party, we had the pleasure of chatting with Marie Lefebvre and Divya Pujara of the Leicester Fixers. Together they have been hosting Restart Parties in their city for a year now. Marie is a researcher at Loughborough University, and she focuses on how and why owners of gadgets repair them – or do not. After studying marketing and then design for sustainability, she became more interested in this less-studied area of the circular economy and started her Phd. With a friend, she decided to host a “Festival of Making and Mending” last year, and was convinced that electronics repair should be a part of it. She sought help from Leicester Hackspace, where she met Divya, an electronics engineer and teacher who had been contemplating hosting a “repair surgery”. Their Restart Parties were born. Their story is really inspirational. Links of stuff we discussed: Loughborough University Department of Design and Technology Leicester Fixers Leicester Hackspace The post Restart Radio: Restarting in Leicester appeared first on The Restart Project.

After our recent “Remote Kill Switch” episode, we have been collecting connected device horror stories. Only a couple of weeks ago, a bunch of CC TV cameras, routers, and video recorders nearly took down the internet. We talked about this “botnet” – and how some really crap, mundane devices were taken over remotely and used in a cyberattack. Other stories, care of the “Internet of Shit” tweet, amused us but were less global in dimension. Including the British geek who spent 11 hours configuring his smart kettle. Eleven hours for a cup of tea! We recalled the hacking of “Hello Barbie” – a connected toy that could be hijacked remotely. And probably the best wrap-up and summary of how we can create our own horrors, was Terence Eden’s talk at Thingmonk called “The (Connected) House of Horrors”. We played back his top tips, which start with: don’t do it! Don’t connect everything! And then, if you must, don’t buy unsupported crap. Links of stuff we discussed: “Breaking Down Mirai: An IoT DDoS Botnet Analysis” What is a DNS server? Motherboard: “Should the FBI Hack Botnet Victims to Save the Internet?” Internet of Shit tweet Guardian: “English man spends 11 hours trying to make cup of tea with Wi-Fi kettle” Terence Eden’s Thingmonk talk “The (Connected) House of Horrors“ The post Restart Radio: Connected device horrors appeared first on The Restart Project.

We started this show with a discussion about one of the most iconic mini consumer devices – the iPod, which turned 15 years old this month. Older iPods can be improved and maintained, and we talk about their staying power. Then we talk about the downside to miniaturised and thin devices, discussing how Samsung locked itself into a disastrous design with the now infamous Note 7. Not only was it very difficult to refurbish, but after the device was discontinued, there is speculation about whether it can be safely recycled at all. We talk about less dramatic, but very important design trade-offs with thin devices – and how we need to be more aware than ever when picking our next device. Links of stuff we discussed: Wired: “Gluing Galaxy Note 7 Batteries Down Made Things Worse for Samsung“ Motherboard: “Samsung Galaxy Note 7 Recall is an Environmental Travesty“ Guardian “Eve-Tech’s crowdsourced computer: the laptop designed by its users“ The “slim” Fairphone 2 [Feature image “Stack” by SlipStreamJC is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0] The post Restart Radio: Have we taken thin too far? appeared first on The Restart Project.

Remember the three Rs? Reduce, reuse, recycle? Why is there so much focus on recycling and so little on the other Rs? Why do perfectly useable products end up in the shredder, when so many people go without in the world? This episode features an interview with Cat Fletcher, one of the UK’s most articulate and passionate reuse activists. She played a key role in the founding of Freegle, a UK version of Freecycle, and has carved out a niche in Brighton by promoting reuse within the heart of her local government. Her work is truly innovative in the UK. Cat’s vision of a people-centred resource efficiency is something many of us can get behind. We all reuse stuff, and we always have. And the internet has opened up new possibilities. The real question is whether government and innovators can help us to divert more from landfill and the shredder, in this twitchy, impatient era. [Feature image from Cat’s Twitter feed] The post Restart Podcast Ep 14: Boosting reuse appeared first on The Restart Project.

Every day we see repair shops and hardware stores closing. For years in London, we’ve watched the vibrant repair economy along Tottenham Court Road decline. So many Restart Party goers come to us because they simply do not know where else to go for help with broken electronics. But we know all is not lost, just that some kinds of repair businesses are getting harder to find. We talked to Hackney Fixer James Diamond about mapping he is doing with us for the East London Waste Authority on repair businesses in east London. Through online and on-the-street research, James has identified over 160 repair businesses which fix battery-powered gadgets and appliances in four boroughs of east London. Half “exist” in some form online, and half survive entirely via word of mouth and passers-by. While some types of repair businesses are fading, like those for small appliances, others, especially for mobiles and tablets are growing. We talked about some of the main attributes that we are searching for in reliable businesses, that increase trust with consumers: transparent pricing structures, some form of warranty, issue receipts, among others. It turns out that only some businesses tick all of our boxes. Links of stuff we discussed: The decline of Tottenham Court Road Hackney Fixers’ map of repair businesses in Hackney Our developing criteria for finding a good professional The Guardian: Sweden to give tax breaks for repairs [Feature image care of Hackney Fixers] The post Restart Radio: Revealing our repair economy appeared first on The Restart Project.

So last week we aired our podcast about updates. While we did definitely address “bad updates” and how they cause anxiety and annoyance, the general gist of the podcast was why updates should be good and why they are so often necessary. We got a comment from a volunteer taking us to task. Toshi wrote “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” [Only if] a security update applies to broke, you should do it. We are not as default anti-upgrade as Toshi. But there is wisdom in his caution. Increasingly everything in our lives is powered by software – much of it designed and owned by manufacturers. From cars to coffee machines. This week a couple of stories came to light that had us considering more deeply the age we live in, and how software can be used to “kill” hardware or enforce obsolescence at scale. This week, with Restarter Dave Lukes we went into a “journey” into a possible age of “the remote kill switch”. If that sounds too sci-fi or too obscure, we started with the examples that came to our attention in recent weeks. Links of stuff we discussed: HP printers stop accepting third party ink en masse and the resulting petition Rumours Samsung was considering “killing” the recalled Note 7 remotely  – it created an update for Korean models reducing their max battery charge to 60% Mr Robot’s “smart home” hack scene Security man Krebs’ website DDoS was powered by hacked Internet of Things botnet  iFixit “John Deere Responds to Copyright Mess It Made“ The post Restart Radio: The age of the remote kill switch appeared first on The Restart Project.