Am I missing something?

“I thought our fridge was going bad, I replaced a part and it seems to have worked”

Is this worthy of a blog entry and hackernews? I think many adults end up doing this every couples months.

No. But yes, in my opinion.

Encouraging each other to become independent is a good thing, even if it's boring for some of us.

In the United States, I would guess the percentage of adults who have repaired a household appliance is 10-25%. Most people just replace appliances when they break. I believe that most people could accomplish a repair like the one in the post, but most don't have the tools or the confidence.

Exactly.

Reaching for a repairman (or worse, replacing the thing) is in many backgrounds and countries still a modern luxury. Instilling the idea that things like this are left to "true" professionals is the goal of decades-long commercial conditioning of now generations of humans. So yes, no wonder that someone sees this as amazing - I see this as simply what one does; fixing things.

My mum knew how to do a quick fan belt or radiator fix in the middle of nowhere when the car broke down, and I wouldn't call her a hacker for that, and it really was nothing special, in the context of how widely people fixed things like that.

And then people don't know how to sew on a proverbial button, so, yeah.

I thought it was a reference to internet-connected freezers destroying frozen goods around Europe.

Except kind of... "I think there is a joke here somewhere... Im just not sure how to complete it."