The Restart Project Podcast

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Restart Radio Takeover: Why we repair in the community Feb 22, 2018

Show notes

We're trying something new. Our volunteers are a crucial part of our work at Restart, and frequently appear as guests on our show. This week, and once a month from this week onwards, we hand them the reins. This is a volunteer "takeover". Dave Lukes and Ben Skidmore are two passionate tinkerers and repairers who are equally fascinated by the wider ecological and community benefits of repair. They kick off the show by taking us through two noteworthy items of tech news. First, the reports that electronics retailer Maplin has faced financial troubles and is in talks with buyers, which raises questions about whether any other brick-and-mortar high street business selling electronic components would step in to take its place. Second, the news that Windows 7 and 8 are losing support for two important features: push notifications, and find my phone. Is this a definitive admission from Microsoft that they have lost the smartphone race? Next, Dave and Ben turn to wider considerations about the upgrade cycle, and the role of community repair. They muse on the pace with which technology has exploded into every corner of our lives: as Dave points out, there is now more computing power in his pocket than there was in the entire world when he was born. With a whole range of devices now becoming 'smart', the demand for things like memory chips is skyrocketing, and manufacturers simply can't keep up. This naturally leads to a healthy second-hand market: but is this growth due to the desire not to purchase new, or the desire - quite simply - to purchase? The role of repair in all this is that of a movement towards longer product lifecycles. But it also has benefits for community cohesion that are far more localised and personal than that. Finally, Dave and Ben discuss tinkering for tinkering's sake, and the value of creative hacking of hardware. Sometimes, taking apart a gadget doesn't need to have any evident benefit at all - its enough simply to remind ourselves, occasionally, that we can choose what to do with the devices we own.

Restart Radio: World Radio Day and electronics in the wake of Brexit Feb 14, 2018

Show notes

On International World Radio Day, Ugo is joined by Restart volunteer Ben Skidmore to discuss the future of FM radio, and the future of electronics manufacturing more broadly in a post-Brexit world. The landscape of electronics design and manufacture is always changing, but today we discuss several developments and shifts that are particularly significant. Firstly, our friends at iFixit published a teardown of an Apple 'Homepod', the latest (and most expensive) in a wave of 'smart speakers' now flooding the market (for more on this, catch up on our Voice Controlled Assistants episode of Restart Radio in the links below). iFixit's team concluded that the Homepod quite possibly takes the prize for the least repairable device that Apple has ever made, giving it a repairability rating of 1/10. Is the fact that it is highly durable enough to offset this shortcoming? And how might we see the trade-off between durability and repairability being navigated by manufacturers in the future? Next, we confront some of the unspoken concerns surrounding current Brexit negotiations, particularly with regards to ecodesign. The European Commission Ecodesign Directive spells out a move towards products that are designed to last longer. But if the UK is left to design its own regulations, the risk is that we will not manage to keep up. We discuss a potential future in which the UK becomes a 'dumping ground' for lower quality products that are not acceptable in the EU. Luckily, there is hope to be found in the progress being made by single states to protect consumer rights and promote repair, such as the Swedish legislation that gives tax breaks for repair. Finally, on World Radio Day, we celebrate our love of Radio and the station that makes our show possible: Resonance FM. FM Radio seems to be one of the most resilient of broadcast media, but as the number of people switching to DAB (Digital radio) grows, the possibility of a digital switchover becomes more imminent. There are undoubtedly some benefits to DAB radio, even though we've often found them harder to repair. And we should always remember to ask who, and what, is being left behind in case a technology is rendered obsolete.

Restart Podcast Ep 29: Tracing global flows of electronic ‘discards’ with Josh Lepawsky Feb 07, 2018

Show notes

This week we talk to Josh Lepawksy - Associate Professor in Geography at the Memorial University of Newfoundland - about his work in the field of 'Discard Studies', which examines the way in which discards (waste) move through the world at local and global scales. Josh's research is specifically focused on electronic waste — his new book 'Reassembling Rubbish' (MIT Press) contains the insights gained from a five-year investigation into the global trade and traffic of discarded electronics. He explains to us why the word 'discards' is useful in his field of study: the word 'waste' has become too familiar, conjuring up images of garbage bags and wheelie bins. These things to belong to a system that is much bigger, more expansive and more complex than what we generally imagine. Just like our sleek, sealed devices, the system is often a "black box" to us. The large-scale industrial processes by which global discards are are taken apart, destroyed, redistributed or hidden are a far-cry from our experiences of household disposal. Of course, aspects of this bigger picture do occasionally make it into the news, especially those that centre around the 'dumping' of e-waste in 'poorer countries'. But while there is certainly truth in shocking, photographic depictions of dumping and unsafe processing of electronic waste, they prevent us from understanding a more nuanced, global political economy of discards. There is so much more going on, even just out of the frame of these images. Josh unpacks some of the complex rules and conventions governing global trading of e-waste, and emphasises that recycling must be re-framed as a single part of the story, rather than the whole story. With a more holistic picture that incorporates the repair economy and other means of repurposing end-of-life products, we can begin discuss what a much more just and resource sufficient world would look like.

Restart Radio: Medical technology in/on the body Jan 31, 2018

Show notes

Medicine has been revolutionised by technology that goes on - and in - our body. In these cases, questions of durability and reliability can become matters of life and death. From the artificial pancreas to the edible robot, we think about the role that repair and ongoing product support have in the medical technology (med-tech) industry. Today, we hear from Jon about his own 'artificial pancreas' (continuous glucose monitoring device) - a set of devices that help diabetics to more easily monitor their blood sugar levels. Jon talks to Lauren about his experiences of this relatively new technology - both positive and negative - and what it means to be truly dependent on a device. We take a brief look at some of the other new medical devices that are emerging, including a range of 'edible' pills. Experiments in building open-source platforms for these kinds of devices have got us thinking about the trust and transparency elements of medical technologies. Would you be more willing to swallow an electronic pill that you had designed yourself than one that you had bought from a manufacturer?

Restart Radio: How repair informs design with Beeline Jan 24, 2018

Show notes

Today on Restart Radio, Ugo and Neil talk to Charlie Bruce and Tom Putnam from Beeline: a smart compass for cycling. A simple piece of hardware that displays simply an arrow and distance, Beeline removes the hassle of interpreting an entire map while you're on the go. And it costs about the same as an average smartphone screen repair: which is often the price of badly designed smartphone brackets for cyclists. Tom and Charlie hope that their product will encourage more people to cycle. They talk about what it's like to be a small start-up within a competitive hardware ecosystem. One of the things that makes Beeline stand out is their willingness to learn from their customers. All too often, when a product fails, companies simply send out a replacement and ask that the owner recycles the previous unit. While the failure rates on their product are low, the Beeline team takes back all their broken devices, and examine each one to figure out what has gone wrong and why. They repair all faulty devices and reuse them as demo units for promotional purposes. They have learned from these failures over time, for example by redesigning the PCB (printed circuit board) in their second batch of units, to reduce chances that the soldering would get damaged during shipping. Another area of future work they're considering is improving the design to reduce cases of water damage. Another thing that makes Beeline more future-proof than many hardware start-ups is that all firmware (the base-level software that is embedded in the hardware) and the companion app are designed in-house. This means that after you buy a Beeline compass, it can actually continue to improve over time, rather than getting worse or quickly unsupported. This means happier customers and less waste - two things that tend to go hand in hand. Software obsolescence is a growing problem in the world of hardware, but it's not likely to affect Beeline in the near future. The device connects to your smartphone via Bluetooth, a relatively simple functionality, which wouldn't be affected by lack of frequent updates to a phone's operating system. As a result, Beeline is compatible with smartphones running old versions of Android and iOS. We'd like to see more companies, small and large, take a more proactive stance in repairing their devices in-house and learn from their efforts. And we encourage those that are going the extra mile - such as Beeline - to take time to document and be more vocal and open about their approach to repairability and durability. As Tom said, it's good for the environment, for their customers and for business too.

Restart Podcast Ep. 28: Disruptive design and unlocking wonderment with Leyla Acaroglu Jan 16, 2018

Show notes

In our first monthly Restart Podcast of the year, Dave talks to Leyla Acaroglu: self-described designer, systems thinker and sustainability provocateur. Leyla's energy is contagious as she talks us through her methods for designing not just useful and effective products, but also new systems and social conventions. Having grown frustrated with the ways in which traditional education prioritises linear thinking, Leyla founded the Unschool of Disruptive Design. Within this framework, she teaches systems thinking: a way of looking at the world that acknowledges its interconnectedness. This idea has its roots in The Gaia Theory, which sees earth as a synergistic, self-regulating, complex system made up of both living beings and inorganic substances. For Leyla, systems thinking enables a fierce optimism in the face of some of the world's most challenging issues: celebrating the complexity of the societies we have build, she argues that every problem holds its own solution. This means that designers have an important role as change-makers: but only if they learn to think creatively and holistically. She explains how optimism and outrage are not mutually exclusive, reflecting on some of her experiences as a young woman in Australia that drove her to do what she currently does. Leyla is concerned by the normalisation of unethical practises in design, but she sees huge potential for its revival as a force for good, or 'silent social scripter': "We need people pushing at the boundaries of what it means to create things in the world, and what it means to deliver functionality to humans, and what it means to influence desire". Leyla was one of our Keynote speakers at last year's Fixfest: a global gathering for community repair. She talks about the connections between design and repair, and how repairers are often natural system thinkers. We share her confidence that more dialogue between these two closely related industries would lead to a world where people think more deeply about what they are creating, why, and who for.

Kano computer kit — **Restart Radio: Flatpack electronics plus battery and CPU failures** Jan 10, 2018
Show notes

In our first radio show of 2018, we cover a range of topics: from learning about modularity through flatpack electronics, to the recent Apple battery scandal, to the even more recent news concerning Spectre and Meltdown: two recently discovered flaws that mean owners of electronic products everywhere are facing major vulnerabilities.

Ugo and Restarter Panda Méry are joined by Janet to discuss the use of kit-style electronics as educational materials, in schools and in the home. Building on the legacy of LEGO and other building games, the idea of teaching electronic repair and design early on is starting to catch on.

As a complement to the surge in programmes that seek to teach kids how to code, products such as Kano and Pi-top also aim to demonstrate the worth of understanding how hardware works. There are differences in the way we engage with items we have built ourselves, which is evident across a wide range of ages.

Products that come as a kit that must be constructed help us to understand the benefits of modularity, as well as encouraging life-cycle thinking that places each product within a broader social and environmental context. And Kano has shown real attention to this, in providing a reuse project for its “obsolete” first generation.

The sense of ownership and control that we gain from building things ourselves stands in sharp contrast to some of the current models of electronic gadgets, where users feel locked out of the knowledge they need to use their products effectively.

This has been highlighted by the recent scandal concerning Apple’s admission that it has released updates that purposely slow down the iPhone 6 when its battery is wearing down. As Panda explains, the problem is not with the updates themselves, which in fact do extend the usability of phones that might otherwise shut down. Instead, it is a problem of transparency, communication and trust, which points to the need for manufacturers to involve users in the repair and maintenance of their gadgets.

Finally, we touch briefly on Spectre and Meltdown, two major flaws affecting processors (CPUs) that have recently come to light. They affect nearly all computer products and operating systems made in the last 20 years, and as yet, no fully effective fix has been discovered. We suggest that all smartphone and computer users should update their browsers and operating systems as soon as possible to minimise vulnerability.

Links:

Technology Will Save Us

Pi-Top

Kano

Lomography Konstruktor DIY camera

The Repairable Flatpack Toaster (only a concept)

NY Times: Is Apple Slowing Down Old iPhones? Questions and Answers

The Hacker News: How to protect your devices against Spectre and Meltdown Attacks

[Photo “Kano Computer Kit with Raspberry Pi 3” by Adafruit Industries is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0]

The post Restart Radio: Flatpack electronics plus battery and CPU failures appeared first on The Restart Project.

Restart Radio: What does Bitcoin mining mean for the environment? Dec 21, 2017

Show notes

The soaring value of Bitcoin has been all over the media recently. But what is Bitcoin, and especially what is the environmental cost of 'mining' it? Bitcoin is the largest of a series of emerging 'cryptocurrencies' - forms of digital currency that operate by way of decentralized networks. Because users are not identified by their name, but instead by their 'public key', they originally attracted media attention as a means of conducting illegal business. Now, however, the enormous profit made by those who invested at Bitcoin's birth has drawn in more mainstream attention. What makes cryptocurrency distinct from other banking systems is that it uses 'peer to peer' transactions, which are validated by the community, rather than by a central body. The technology behind it is the 'Blockchain' - which is essentially a public ledger of all transactions ever made. Sets of transactions are validated in 'blocks', and then added to the chain. The process of mining new bitcoin is actually the process of validating blocks of transactions, which requires miners - or groups of miners - to compete to solve a complex mathematical problem. When the problem is solved, the winning miner is rewarded with bitcoin, and the block is added to the blockchain. The intensely complicated system by which Bitcoin works has meant that the discussion surrounding it has tended to be dominated by those who understand it: usually, this means investors. But the growing phenomenon of cryptocurrencies is not just relevant to people who have bought bitcoin - it is relevant to all of us. At Restart, we're interested in the environmental impact of technological systems - including those that are all but invisible. The internet, for example, is something that people rarely think of as having any material reality. But as we explored in a previous podcast episode, the data centres that power the internet involve huge amounts of hardware that require large amounts of energy to both manufacture and to power. Bitcoin, far from being an immaterial currency, has a real environmental footprint. This is because huge amounts of energy are required to solve the complex mathematical problems in order for miners to add a block of transactions to the blockchain. It is based on probability, so the larger the number of computers working at it at once, the more chance the miners have of "winning" Bitcoin. As Bitcoins value increases, so does the difficulty of this problem, and so does the energy that is being poured into solving it. The very language used to describe Bitcoin - involving 'blocks' and 'miners' - points to the real material processes that underpin its highly unpredictable operating processes. There are many estimates floating around about the total environmental impact of the entire Bitcoin network - some say that it is as great as the entire country of Denmark, and set to increase. Not to mention other cryptocurrencies, such as Ethereum, which are using similarly ludicrous amounts of power. Like traditional internet data centres, these mines also require huge amounts of energy to cool, and equipment is discarded often in favour of newer models with higher processing power. Estimates about their energy consumption, then, must also be considered in light of their embodied impact: the resources going into manufacturing the hardware itself. Some supporters of Bitcoin praise it as a disruptive technology with the potential to undermine the banking systems that have come increasingly under scrutiny. But we wonder whether its decentralised format is destined to remain that way. The fact that these networks are dependent on such large amounts of power may result in their increased centralization, as more and more mines crop up in areas where electricity is cheap and abundant. Additionally, while some projects aim to address Bitcoin's power consumption by using renewables, lots of mining facilities are powered by energy coming from fossil fuels. Last but not least, we also wonder whether the mathematical problems that need solving for mining bitcoins could be more "useful", by addressing real computing needs. Blockchain technology undoubtedly has many applications beyond cryptocurrencies. Like any technology, it is neither inherently 'good', nor 'bad'. It depends on how we use it. We will continue to examine this topic as it unfolds, remembering that there is no such thing as an immaterial technology, and that everything comes at a cost.

Restart Radio: Voice-controlled Assistants and “Smart Speakers” Dec 13, 2017

Show notes

In the lead up to Christmas, commuters around London are being bombarded with advertisements for voice-controlled home assistants - in particular the Amazon Echo. Today, we talk about the business model behind the device, our concerns about the rate of its sales, and the questions that the Echo raises about who benefits in the future of machine learning. The Amazon Echo bears many similarities to its main competitor, the Google Home. Both respond to a 'wake' word - which in the case of the Echo, is set by default to 'Alexa', a female-voiced assistant who acts as a search engine, can purchase items for you, add items to your calendar, and send commands to other 'smart' or connected devices. Having been a popular item in the US for a couple of years, Amazon brought the Echo (and the newer, smaller Dot) to the UK market last year, but it's now pushing it with season-specific advertising. With the voice-controlled speaker system recently made available for purchase in over 80 new countries around the world including in India, the number of Echos in homes is set to increase. Amazon has built an open platform for developers: anyone can create a 'skill' for Alexa to be distributed via Amazon. The result of this is that Alexa now has over 15,000 'skills' (which can range from turning on your central heating system to finding the 'perfect christmas playlist'). Unlike Apple products, where the software platform is inextricably tied to the hardware, hardware developers can harness the power of Amazon's platform. As just a vessel for Amazon's software, the hardware itself loses apparent value, and we wonder how many of these speakers will be soon discarded in favour of a new model. Like the Amazon Kindle, the Amazon voice-controlled assistants are suspiciously cheap. This rings alarm bells for several reasons, and not just because it tends to demotivate repair. We've learned that as a rule of thumb on the internet, when you're not paying (much) for the product, you are the product. Consumers of voice controlled assistants are paying, in part, with their voices. In order for voice recognition to work with different intonations and accents, manufacturers need a huge database of voices and to employ 'deep learning' techniques. These are expensive and time-consuming. But with Echos distributed all over the world, Amazon doesn't have to collect voices - Alexa does it for them. Another more troubling implication of this business model is that Amazon - and Google, with its personal assistants both on mobile and the home - are collecting vast amounts of data from consumers. While you can configure these devices to some degree, for them to be effective, personal assistants are always listening. What will this data be used for? Personal assistants grow 'smarter' as they collect information about their users - but it's actually the companies that own the platforms that have the most to learn. While we may feel like we are in a position of control when we give commands such as 'Alexa, add mince pies to my shopping list', are we in fact relinquishing control with every tidbit of data on our interests, habits and personal lives that is sent up into the cloud? Beyond personal data, what will be the consequence of a handful of large companies possessing so much more data and using AI to learn about behaviour of people, predicting wants and desires? We discuss some open source alternatives - including Mycroft and Mozilla's Common Voice - with greater transparency and data protection. We'll be closely following this topic as it develops: voice-controlled assistants are undoubtedly useful for many things, but we need to make sure that we are active participants in shaping the kind of future that we want to live in.

Restart Radio: Exploring personal data at the Glass Room Dec 06, 2017

Show notes

You can tell a lot about a person from their data: from the places they go, to the length of their work-out, to their preferred breakfast cereal. And with this amount of private information stored inside an iPhone or a computer, it isn't surprising that people are unwilling to hand them over to a recycler once they're no longer in-use. But is this a valid concern, considering that we hand this information over willfully, all the time, to large corporations for whom it is a valuable currency? A study by REPIC, the UK's biggest producer compliance scheme for e-waste, showed that 65% of users of electronic items have concerns about their data being breached. Of these, more than a quarter didn't know how to delete their data, while a third didn't think they had to. Evidently, education surrounding personal data and how to manage it hasn't caught up to the large role it plays in the lives of most people. This isn't just problematic for its implications to e-waste. It also raises the question of whether we really are willing participants in the Big Data economy. Today, Ugo and Neil talk about the ethics of personal data collection with reference to The Glass Room: a pop-up interactive exhibition that we visited lat month in London. The Glass Room aims to educate people about how their data is being monitored through location services, search histories, health information from synced products like Fitbit trackers, likes, messages, and even the exact amount of time in which your attention span is held by a certain article. With google now advertising services such as '23andme', which offers full DNA profiling of users, it seems that privacy is becoming increasingly unattainable. But why should you care? Even if you are not concerned with ways in which your data (or the profit generated by it) is used by corporations such as Alphabet - the multinational conglomerate that claims Google as one of its subsidiaries - then the thought of how it might be used illegally by those who successfully breach these enormous stores of data is a terrifying enough thought on its own. There are ways to take back some control over the information you hand out. Experts at the Glass Room 'Ingenious bar' handed out Data Detox Kits, which spell out an 8-day plan to help users seek to understand and reclaim the online portrait built up of them from their data. Ugo and Neil brainstorm some of their own techniques. Duck Duck Go is a search engine which does not track users, and a new version of Firefox Mozilla called Firefox Focus, designed specifically for mobile phones, makes it incredibly easy to delete traces of what you have searched. If you do need to continue using services such as Google and Facebook, check out your privacy settings so you know what information is being shared. With the rise of the Internet of Things, the environmental and social cost of Big Data is only going to grow. If we are to have a truly democratic society founded on trust and openness, the circumstances surrounding collection and usage of personal data need to be made far more transparent.

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