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The Fight for the “Right to Repair”

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Re: The Fight for the “Right to Repair”

#141

Post by ekimekim »

twblalock wrote: post #133
wfo wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the market has failed to protect a right that is important, that's exactly when regulation is necessary. Handling the constant failures and disasters created by the market to the detriment of the populace is the purpose of regulations and the entire justification of the mixed economy model every modern society operates under.

What right has not been protected? You do not have a right to require manufacturers to create repairable items. If you think such a right exists, prove it. That's what this "right" to repair really is -- it is forcing manufacturers to make things that they don't currently make, and that most people don't want to buy. (If people wanted to buy them, someone would already be selling them and making money on that segment…

I don't mind manufacturers making design decisions that, as a side effect, impact repairability (phones with removable batteries being the main example here). But it's another thing altogether to add tamper indicators, DRM, etc for the express purpose of preventing people from doing things with items they own.

Re: The Fight for the “Right to Repair”

#142

Post by dwaltrip »

twblalock wrote: post #133
wfo wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the market has failed to protect a right that is important, that's exactly when regulation is necessary. Handling the constant failures and disasters created by the market to the detriment of the populace is the purpose of regulations and the entire justification of the mixed economy model every modern society operates under.

What right has not been protected? You do not have a right to require manufacturers to create repairable items. If you think such a right exists, prove it. That's what this "right" to repair really is -- it is forcing manufacturers to make things that they don't currently make, and that most people don't want to buy. (If people wanted to buy them, someone would already be selling them and making money on that segment…

Why do you think the government regulates food labels? Clearly, no one wants to buy food with standardized labels, the government is just forcing it on us poor citizens, right?

If you are actually arguing that any government policy that requires companies to modify their products in a way that they weren't already doing is bad, you have created a very difficult position for yourself to defend.

Re: The Fight for the “Right to Repair”

#143

Post by jolux »

Karunamon wrote: post #89
saidajigumi wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why on earth should society allow (i.e. license) a randomly-modified software agent to operate a motor vehicle? The idea that any "hacker" has the right to arbitrarily change vehicular self-control software and deploy that on a public roadway is laughable.

Like the steering wheel that's deployed on all public roadways right now? I'm struggling to see the substantial difference between "self driving car with modified software should be disallowed because safety" and "manually driven car should be disallowed because safety". The former is still strictly safer.

I thought the entire point of computer driven cars was to reduce the dangers of driving. What exactly is the point if we give everyone with a self driving car a steering wheel like they have now?

Re: The Fight for the “Right to Repair”

#144

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

foota wrote: post #70
mikeash wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Per hour" is rather ridiculous. I'm talking about per crash . There are a couple million vehicle crashes in the US each year, so if it really is 99.9999%, that's two or three ethical crises per year here. Among a billion vehicles it would be maybe ten per year. And honestly I'd be surprised if it's that many. When have you ever heard of a crash where there was any kind of ethical dilemma in the response? People keep…

I'm actually familiar with a situation like this, the person was on a highway at night and came around a corner to see a deer lying in the road and a crowd right behind the deer. There was a couple of people off to either side. They couldn't brake in time to stop and not harm the people on the other side of the deer.

The people crowded behind the deer ought to have sent a person off in either direction to warn approaching traffic of the obstacle.

I recently attended to an echidna sitting in the middle of the other lane in on a blind corner. I reversed until I could see straight road for 60 meters, stopped with my car at an odd angle on the side of the road with the hazard lights on to give an indication to approaching vehicle something unusual was occurring ahead, namely my partner and I were on the road on a blind corner. Then we listened carefully for approaching vehicles while we got the echidna off the road.

The ethical dilemma lies not with the driver, who is otherwise driving to the conditions, but with the people who have put themselves at risk by performing a task in a dangerous environment without appropriate hazard protection.

Re: The Fight for the “Right to Repair”

#145

Post by schoen »

saidajigumi wrote: post #134
jackhack wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More likely than one might want to think. A car traveling the same direction swerves into your lane, crowding you off the road. Does your self-driving car allow the collision and push the offending car back in order to hold your lane? Or does it avoid the collision and run you off the road? (As a person who drives in the mountains, this could have deadly results. If you live in the plains of Kansas, maybe not so much…

Yes, this situation is in the realm of the plausible, which has little to do with my comment. I'm not arguing against an analysis of the decisions made by a self-driving system. That's essential. I'm arguing against applying ethical models that utilize knowledge outside the realm of the knowledge or "reasoning" capacity of the drive algorithms. To continue your example, I'll pose that any system with unilateral behav…

There's a whole kind of unpleasant but interesting topic about attacks against behavior of self-driving cars. I think I saw an earlier HN thread that suggested that they might put occupants at greater risk of kidnapping because the cars could refuse to take evasive actions that endanger or injure a kidnapper (or just violate a traffic law). This risk might be farfetched, but it may illustrate the concern about people knowing the limits that self-driving cars will respect and then exploiting those limits in some way.

Re: The Fight for the “Right to Repair”

#146

Post by wtallis »

jdboyd wrote: post #106
Nullabillity wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even desktop cpu/memory sockets change every few years. Amusingly, AMD seems to manage fine without nearly as many socket changes as Intel...

It may be stretching things to say that AMD is managing fine.

But it's pretty clear their problems are not at all caused by them not retooling the CPU sockets often enough.

Re: The Fight for the “Right to Repair”

#147

Post by jolux »

wil421 wrote: post #18
waterphone wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are all definite issues, but even in the case of simple computer hardware there's a problem when the manufacturer tries to lock the owners out of repairing with special screws, glue, etc., so that they can make money off the repairs themselves. New MacBook Pros have their batteries glued in and they can't really be replaced without replacing the entire top case they're glued to at the same time. They claim this…

MacBooks and MBPs are becoming throw away devices after 3 or 4 years. In 2013 I upgraded my 2011 MBP to have more RAM and a larger SSD. The new ones have the RAM soddared on so I guess I'll need to max it out when I buy and forfeit the possibility of a future upgrade. The custom SSD is expensive and only one maker seems to have decent quality ones.[1] I know laptops aren't increasing in power/abilities like they used…

Except the custom SSD is unbelievably fast and soldered RAM inarguably takes up less space than RAM chips...

Re: The Fight for the “Right to Repair”

#148

Post by aquadrop »

dllthomas wrote: post #138
aquadrop wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those computers probably won't get into situation like this in the first place, being able to stop or react preventive. Anyway, it will be so rare an occasion with no guaranteed outcome (it's all about probabilities), so it's not really matters as much as it's discussed. With same kinda of attention you could ask if making and selling ladders is ethical, because people fall from them and hurt themselves.

> Those computers probably won't get into situation like this in the first place, being able to stop or react preventive. It will always be the case that circumstances can change faster than something with the momentum of a fast moving car could adapt. Somewhere between "you're boned" and "your car saves the day" lies room for a scenario such as this, with potential room for a large amount of thinking. > Anyway, it w…

> It will always be the case that circumstances can change faster than something with the momentum of a fast moving car could adapt. Somewhere between "you're boned" and "your car saves the day" lies room for a scenario such as this, with potential room for a large amount of thinking.

I think it's possible that with improving AI of self driving cars, making overall safety better, there will be ≈0 occasions when car simultaneously 1) doesn't have time to react to some sudden problem and 2) has time to make informed decision (and physically perform it) on how many people to save. Especially if pedestrian airbags become popular.

Re: The Fight for the “Right to Repair”

#149

Post by twblalock »

dwaltrip wrote: post #142
twblalock wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What right has not been protected? You do not have a right to require manufacturers to create repairable items. If you think such a right exists, prove it. That's what this "right" to repair really is -- it is forcing manufacturers to make things that they don't currently make, and that most people don't want to buy. (If people wanted to buy them, someone would already be selling them and making money on that segment…

Why do you think the government regulates food labels? Clearly, no one wants to buy food with standardized labels, the government is just forcing it on us poor citizens, right? If you are actually arguing that any government policy that requires companies to modify their products in a way that they weren't already doing is bad, you have created a very difficult position for yourself to defend.

> If you are actually arguing that any government policy that requires companies to modify their products in a way that they weren't already doing is bad, you have created a very difficult position for yourself to defend.

I don't know why you interpret my argument that way. It's not a blanket statement against government regulation of products, and none of what I wrote can logically necessitate or lead to that position. Government regulations can be good or bad, and it is entirely logical to oppose some and not others.

My argument is that the government should not regulate products on the basis of made-up "rights" that are really proxies for personal preference, e.g. "I like to be able to repair products I buy, therefore the government should force companies to make their products easy for me to repair, because so few consumers share my preference that the companies won't do it on their own volition."

Re: The Fight for the “Right to Repair”

#150

Post by recursive »

stale2002 wrote: post #122
patrickmay wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As long as cars belong to individuals they have the responsibility to favor the interests of those individuals as far as law permits. Well put. I would not buy a car that wasn't designed to protect its occupants first and foremost. My family is more important to me than abstract, unlikely to occur ethical dilemmas. Having that choice programmed in actually makes it easier for self-driving cars to predict the behavi…

Have you even been in a Taxi? Or a bus? Or any situation where someone who is not you is driving the car? You have put your life into their hands when you do this. No matter what algorithm the self driving car is running, it is going to be 100 times safer than you driving the car. Yes, YOU are a worse driver than a self driving car, NO MATTER what "ethics algorithm" it is running, because any of the ones that could b…

> No matter what algorithm the self driving car is running, it is going to be 100 times safer than you driving the car.

That seems very suspect.

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