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The Fight for the “Right to Repair”

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: The Fight for the “Right to Repair”

#251

Post by TeMPOraL »

teekert wrote: post #242

I don't really understand this fight. Why not let the market sort it out? I for one stopped buying Macbooks as soon as they were being glued shut. My 2011 MBP can be opened, I put 16 GB of RAM in there and a TB SSD. I know Apple thinks it is ridiculous [0] to use a 5 yr old PC but the thing is blazing fast. I'll never buy a laptop that is unusable in 5 years time when there are also models with up to 3 m.2 slots avai…

Because market cares about majority, and majority makes their choice as a combination of what seems more cost-effective right frikkin' now and what the combined marketing of companies tell people to buy. Things like whether this purchase will turn out to be more expensive over the next year, or whether this purchase is a step in a wrong direction for future of technology, are things that are distant considerations, if they're considered at all.

I think people underestimate the power with which the market steers itself, as opposed to listening to consumers. Ford's (mis)quote about faster horses comes to mind...

Re: The Fight for the “Right to Repair”

#252

Post by Shivetya »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #4

I think this whole open source and right to repair/modify will be very interesting with self-driving cars, because of their interaction with the commons. Here are some issues. There have been some discussions about the ethics of self-driving cars if it should sacrifice the lives of the people in the cars to save more lives. In a right to repair/modify wouldn't a lot of people pay to have the algorithm changed for the…

With regards to cars, the right to have an independent shop perform routine maintenance and repair without violating warranty does need to be preserved. As to modify, well I would think that should vacate any warranty and possibly liability as it is now beyond the manufacturers control. This will mean preventing manufacturers from creating costly interfaces to retrieve status codes from cars and their self driving systems.

The issue with modifying self driving algorithm's is that will be so complex as to be nearly impossible to modification and since they are so tightly linked to the safe operation of the vehicle I can expect we will see legislation to prevent it. However such legislation should not preclude being able to view it.

* disclaimer to right of repair comments, I work for major after market supplier to consumers and business in the automotive sector

Re: The Fight for the “Right to Repair”

#253

Post by TeMPOraL »

ernestbro wrote: post #238

The French have an approach to this problem as well "forcing manufacturers to tell consumers how long their appliances will last. French companies will also have to inform consumers how long spare parts for the product will be available"[1]. IMHO, because it would only apply to French manufacturers, it will drive any manufacturing outside of France. Similar to the 35 hour work week: interesting principle, bad outcome…

This is a great place for EU to shine. You can move your manufacturing out of an European country, but you can't really ignore whole EU as a market.

It's probably why we're successfully "getting away" with things like mandatory 2-year guarantees and ability to return faulty products bought remotely (on-line, phone, door-to-door, etc.) for 14 days, no questions asked.

http://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/guar...

Re: The Fight for the “Right to Repair”

#254

Post by datenwolf »

jackhack wrote: post #93
saidajigumi wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the ethical question is greatly overblown. Agreed. At least at the level these cars are likely to enter the market, the whole concept of what the car "knows" isn't likely to extend to "other people", "my passengers", "inanimate objects" and a probability matrix of injury/death/damage among these categories. Instead of this heavily anthropomorphized view, cars are much more likely to have a highly simplified…

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…

> 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?

Neiter of those. The first and foremost rule in traffic is to act predicatable. And the only predictable reaction to something blocking your way is to BREAK!

Seriously, what is it always with people that makes them think that a change in direction (swerving) was a good collision avoidcance strategy?

Newsflash, it's not! When swerving you don't change your momentum, you just redirect it (apart from friction losses, of course, the the teensy bit of angular momentum transferred to the planet). More importantly, swerving combined with braking may cause loss of control, which is where there are Anti Break-lock Systems. But ABS will increase your stopping distance, so modern ABS will kick only if the steering wheel does not point into the forward direction.

Of all the scenarios thrown at self driving cars ethics, none of them is an issue if basic traffic rules are followed. And the first and foremost one is, that you always keep so much distance in front of you, that you can come to a full stop within that distance by breaking. And the other first and foremost rule is you never drive faster than road conditions, and more important visibility allow. TL;DR: Don't speed and Don't tailgate!

Any suddenly appearing obstacle in a vehicles way poses the same problem for a human or a computer driver. The computer driver may have the shorter reaction time, but physics is physics and the best course of action remains the same: Braking!

Re: The Fight for the “Right to Repair”

#255

Post by TeMPOraL »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #200
mmanfrin wrote: post #12

John Deere is attempting to make sales of their tractors 'leases' to enforce their ban on self repair: http://www.wired.com/2015/04/dmca-ownership-john-deere/

I am super hardcore stallman-esque pro openness, but I also have somewhat libertarian views on how people should be allowed to operate. My thinking is: let them lock them down and after a few years, someone who genuinely values openness will come in as a competitor. If you pass a law requiring some kind of openness, companies against openness will just hang out at the edge of what is legally permissible. I am curious…

I think it is tricky. One outcome would be, like you said, a competitor showing up, offering more open goods. Another is no competitor showing up at all. People won't suddenly stop buying tractors or phones just because they're in fact being leased. They'll adapt, and in few years people will honestly say there's no demand on the market for owning products. People choose only from what's available.

Re: The Fight for the “Right to Repair”

#256

Post by DoubleGlazing »

mmanfrin wrote: post #12

John Deere is attempting to make sales of their tractors 'leases' to enforce their ban on self repair: http://www.wired.com/2015/04/dmca-ownership-john-deere/

I know a John Deere dealer in Northern Ireland who is considering moving to another brand because of this.

As he puts it the people he deals with "would burn him alive" if they couldn't fiddle around with their own equipment. Farmers with livelihoods on the line tend to get rather angry when their equipment plays up.

Re: The Fight for the “Right to Repair”

#257

Post by DavidWanjiru »

imtringued wrote: post #215
schoen wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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 What alternative would a human take? Would they kill the kidnappers by driving over them?

I think a human would drive over a kidnapper. Say your car is bullet proof. A man in a ski mask wielding a machine gun jumps in front of the road and orders you to stop. You refuse, he starts shooting at your car as you get near him (this is why I made your car bullet proof, to keep you alive but unequivocally demonstrate clear and present danger to you). In such a scenario, if your only escape route is over the dead body of the man in a ski mask, I bet a human will take that option.

Re: The Fight for the “Right to Repair”

#258

Post by Ralfp »

venomsnake wrote: post #217
whyenot wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right or wrong, if consumers have the choice between a thinner, lighter laptop with better battery life and a more clunky laptop that is easier to repair, most appear to be choosing the former over the latter.

The two are not mutually exclusive. I don't think gluing everything together is purely engineering decision.

Glue allows them to attach battery to the body. Macbook's battery is not single piece, rather is few batteries connected with each other shaped in a ways that allow them to fill all empty space within the body.

Re: The Fight for the “Right to Repair”

#259

Post by tripzilch »

saidajigumi wrote: post #69
mikeash wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the ethical question is greatly overblown. The odds of being in a situation where there's any sort of ethical choice to make are so remote as to not really be worth considering. 99.9999% of the time, the correct choice when faced with an impending crash will be to brake as hard as the driving surface allows and steer to avoid obstacles as much as possible. In any case, tinkering and commons already intersect…

> I think the ethical question is greatly overblown. Agreed. At least at the level these cars are likely to enter the market, the whole concept of what the car "knows" isn't likely to extend to "other people", "my passengers", "inanimate objects" and a probability matrix of injury/death/damage among these categories. Instead of this heavily anthropomorphized view, cars are much more likely to have a highly simplified…

> Instead of this heavily anthropomorphized view, cars are much more likely to have a highly simplified, "bug-like" level of information to work from.

Not even close to "bug-like". At the top of modern AI, we've got deep-learning and reinforcement learning.

You probably underestimate the very complex brain that even a bug still has. Maybe also overestimate what today's AI is capable of. You can't build a house with two lego-bricks, just as you can't build a (real time) bug's brain with current-day AI.

It's a humbling process, AI research, finding that even quite "simple" organisms are still miles ahead of our technological state of the art.

Re: The Fight for the “Right to Repair”

#260

Post by Thlom »

ams6110 wrote: post #173
eru wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, I just looked up "rolling coal". I can maybe get the political protest aspect---even if I disagree, but blowing the smoke at pedestrians, cyclist or even just other cars seems like one of the most dickish things ever.

I've seen it happen firsthand a couple of times. In both cases it was done after the cyclists stayed two abreast instead of singling up to let traffic pass.

Cyclists, especially in a group should stay two or three abreast as it significantly reduces the passing length for overtaking cars. The only reason people complain about cyclists two abreast is that they want to overtake when it's not really safe to do so.
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