Why the decline is automotive technicians

I’ve taken apart laptops to replace internal parts.

They find time to watch a lot of TV. My comment was that even that low evaluation of my time shows the dis-economy of much DIY. In the real world it’s much more costly. But that makes the point of why we don’t pay for repairs: because it’s more expensive to pay for skilled labor than to replace.

I had a 50” Panasonic DLP TV and the bulbs burned out before one year elapsed. Panasonic replaced the bulbs two times. The 3rd time it was out of warranty for the TV, but the bulb still had warranty time left. I called and nicely asked for a bulb replacement. The person at the other end asked me to hold. The supervisor came on and asked if I’d like a 56” LED as a replacement at no cost to me. That was a good day. Panasonic even paid to have it installed and the old one hauled away.

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Nice customer service experience! I had opposite experience with LG. Expensive new TV, no joke the display developed vertical lines in it just past their warranty period. Wouldn’t do anything to help. Just sent a letter thanking me for being a customer. Not even an acknowledgment of the situation. Guess what? Not anymore. And I was in the process of buying everything new for my new house. Not one LG product and never will be. I’m like an elephant that way…long memory.

It’s not like the old days, you need a bunch of specialized tools and skills to repair laptops these days. Hot air station, the proper stencils, solder paste etc. Changing batteries is one thing but replacing a MOSFET driver or other integrated circuit requires skills, experience and the correct parts…

Wow, you hit the jackpot! That Samsung went through two color wheels out of warranty., in addition to bulbs. Not hard to replace, but still a far cry from the Panasonic plasma flat panel that came after it. Still using it, trouble free, 15+ years later.

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If you’re interviewing candidates remotely over video, here’s something new to be careful of.

There’s a new AI tool called Cluely. It reads your screen, hears your calls, and feeds you real-time answers, all undetectable.

Apparently Cluely listens to the questions being asked, and then immediately provides an answer on a window that is adjacent to the interviewer’s (Zoom) window. The interviewee simply reads the answer that Cluely gave him, while appearing to look directly into the Zoom window.

This happened to several people in our company who were doing a virtual interview with a candidate.

So have I. But some are a lot harder than others.

I wasn’t bragging, I don’t recommend it, I wouldn’t anymore.

I know several people who will do it. You have to be really careful. I won’t anymore. Some things are easy like replacing an SSD. Battery replacement on my old HP took less then 20 seconds.