The Fight for the “Right to Repair” • Hacker News Board

Re: The Fight for the “Right to Repair”

#281

Post by mikeash » Thu, Jul 14, 2016, 2:04 PM UTC

doriangray1 wrote: post #231

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 respectfully disagree. Car crashes killed 38000 people in 2015, and injured around 8 million in the US alone. Designing any vehicle involves ethical choices about safety and the US has developed traffic laws over time to try to protect the safety of drivers. Autonomous vehicles will surely save lives compared to thier manual counterparts, but we shouldn't discount the ethical questions involved. Everyone has the Ri…

I totally agree that there are plenty of ethical choices in general for self-driving cars. I'm only addressing the idea that self-driving cars will need to make ethical choices about who to kill in a crash. That specific ethical conundrum is constantly brought up in discussions about autonomous vehicles, and I really don't see it happening with any frequency.

Re: The Fight for the “Right to Repair”

#282

Post by mikeash » Thu, Jul 14, 2016, 2:11 PM UTC

crispyambulance wrote: post #247

mikeash wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are about 30,000 traffic fatalities per year in the US. If ethical problems come up 0.0001% of the time, then that's one ethically questionable fatality every 33 years. I think the industry can withstand this. Especially when self-driving cars drop the annual fatality rate from 30,000 to 3,000, or whatever it ends up being.

I (and the person I was responding to) was being loose with the 99.9999 % figure. That number was pulled out of thin air. The point is there are "a lot" of cars and "many" accidents "some" of which will present an ethical challenge to self-driving cars. It does not take many accidents for these concerns to become a big problem for auto-makers given the litigious proclivities of places like the USA. Admittedly, if it…

Of course it's loose and pulled out of thin air. My point is that I think the "some" crashes which present an ethical challenge will be extremely rare. One in a million is pulled from my ass, but I think it's in the right ballpark.

It's true that it's not proven that self-driving cars will lower fatality rates, but I'm perfectly comfortable with assuming they will. For one thing, nobody is going to put them in service until they're at least as safe as humans, so it's pretty much a tautology that they'll be safer; the relevant question is actually whether they'll ever be put in service. And considering how bad human drivers are, and how easily preventible many traffic fatalities are (about a third of traffic deaths in the US involve alcohol, another 10% or so involve distractions, and many others are due to something ridiculous like driving on the wrong side of the road), the bar is not really all that high. As long as self-driving cars don't get drunk, don't take their eyes off the road to text, and can reliably follow basic rules of the road, they'll already have a huge leg up.

Re: The Fight for the “Right to Repair”

#283

Post by darpa_escapee » Thu, Jul 14, 2016, 2:17 PM UTC

DavidWanjiru wrote: post #257

imtringued wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

Manslaughter is a likely situation that needs to be addressed in the next Tesla OTA update.

Re: The Fight for the “Right to Repair”

#284

Post by rsync » Thu, Jul 14, 2016, 2:22 PM UTC

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…

"In a right to repair/modify wouldn't a lot of people pay to have the algorithm changed for their car to always favor the people in the car no matter what?"

... which would return us to the "software" that we're all already running.

Re: The Fight for the “Right to Repair”

#285

Post by tripzilch » Thu, Jul 14, 2016, 3:22 PM UTC

blastrat wrote: post #166

foota wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're pretty much one and the same, how can you allow someone to repair something without allowing them to modify it as well? What if they repair it badly?

how can you allow people to own guns without allowing them to shoot people? how can you allow mechanics to fix brakes without allowing them to break brakes? I dunno... laws maybe? Like, the same laws that can require manufacturers to allow aftermarket competition.

> how can you allow people to own guns without allowing them to shoot people?

even more, correct me if I'm wrong here, but you can repair a gun, but it's illegal to make certain modifications to it, right?

Re: The Fight for the “Right to Repair”

#286

Post by intrasight » Thu, Jul 14, 2016, 3:35 PM UTC

javajosh wrote: post #228

intrasight wrote: post #199

As someone who came of tinkering age in the early 70s and spend lots of time taking apart and repairing old machines, I wish to express another concern. How do we expect to hook the next generation of engineers if there is no opportunity to tinker as a child? For me that spark (excuse the pun) definitely came from those early "break it/fix it" sessions. Is tinkering going to be relegated to playing with the public AP…

This is a very important point. Children can't learn from magical slabs that can't be opened. That said, my personal view is that you should never buy toys . You should build them. There are two important reasons for this: first, as you say kids need to learn how to disassemble and reassemble things. Home-made toys are going to fit that bill nicely. Second, kids need to not learn consumerist habits at a young age. To…

Yes to building and breadboarding. At least discrete components will never have proprietary APIs ;)

Re: The Fight for the “Right to Repair”

#287

Post by randomdata » Thu, Jul 14, 2016, 3:52 PM UTC

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…

> let them lock them down and after a few years, someone who genuinely values openness will come in as a competitor.

I once read somewhere that it takes 13 years to bring a new combine to market, which I can believe. They are complex machines that can only be tested in real world conditions during the relatively short window of harvest. So, in reality, it might be more than a few years before a competitor can arise (assuming none of the existing players are willing to be that competitor) even with sufficient investment.

Re: The Fight for the “Right to Repair”

#288

Post by CaptSpify » Thu, Jul 14, 2016, 3:52 PM UTC

CaptSpify wrote: post #206

lotu wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would also have to imagine that is is extremely difficult to fix an MRI such it produce incorrect scan results with being obviously broken.

Right. The tests they have are pretty "by the book". Readings and diagnostics have to be pretty tight.

As I can't edit the above post: Listen to wyldfire over me. My impression was that they were by the book, but I'm not an actual repair-tech

Re: The Fight for the “Right to Repair”

#289

Post by Grishnakh » Thu, Jul 14, 2016, 4:12 PM UTC

kbart wrote: post #223

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.

Is it even legal in USA? In EU, that would make your card road illegal instantly.

No, it's not legal, but AFAICT it's usually activated with a switch, not always-on, so the cops would have to actually catch them in the act. Also, this kind of thing is surely almost always done in areas where there's no emissions testing (such as the South), so it's just not that easy to catch violators.

Re: The Fight for the “Right to Repair”

#290

Post by randomdata » Thu, Jul 14, 2016, 4:13 PM UTC

wfo wrote: post #207

twblalock wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are very good at missing the point. Those examples demonstrate that ownership does not automatically give one the right to do whatever they want with the things they own. Therefore, one cannot assume that any right, including one to repair the things you own, is in the category of rights automatically granted by ownership. After all, not even making copies is in that category. Why would repair be?

Shooting someone is not "doing whatever you want with the things you own". Neither is copying a book. Both require that you commit an unrelated crime -- one by creating an entirely new object which violates the law, the other by committing assault with this object as you could with any other.

Isn't that the parent's point? If copying a book you own can be a crime, so can repairing an item you own. Both restrictions are equally arbitrary. While only one of those may be illegal today, there is no reason they couldn't both be illegal tomorrow. There is nothing inherit to ownership that prevents the latter from becoming a crime at some point.