A “right to repair” movement tools up
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A “right to repair” movement tools up
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Re: A “right to repair” movement tools up
#2You can thank Louis Rossmann, in part, for this one.
His livelihood does depend on it (although he has acknowledged that, as electronics get more disposable, he will inevitably end up having to shift into something like software or hardware design), but he has made a really admirable effort of actually going boots-on-the-ground and lobbying at political hearings.
Re: A “right to repair” movement tools up
#3You can thank Louis Rossmann, in part, for this one. His livelihood does depend on it (although he has acknowledged that, as electronics get more disposable, he will inevitably end up having to shift into something like software or hardware design), but he has made a really admirable effort of actually going boots-on-the-ground and lobbying at political hearings.
YES. And what an awesome channel he has. Very captivating and relaxing to watch him repair equipment.
Re: A “right to repair” movement tools up
#4Is there something a consumer electronics company can do allowing people to update or upgrade components or firmware in such a way that we are not basically forced to void the warranty?
Re: A “right to repair” movement tools up
#5Is there something a consumer electronics company can do allowing people to update or upgrade components or firmware in such a way that we are not basically forced to void the warranty?
Provide breakout headers or pogo pads to the relevant chips. Like, if your pebble had its STM32F439's SWDIO and SWCLK pins broken out, you could probably flash it just like an Arduino if it weren't for the copy/write protection stuff that they likely used.
I dunno, what about others? Make several small and removable boards rather than one a single large one? Don't use BGA components whenever possible? Publish your layout schematics, or at least pinouts?
But as a manufacturer, why would you do any of that if you don't have to? It'll just let your competitors easily steal your hard work, and 99.9% of people will never use it. The problem comes when Apple makes that sort of thinking part of the zeitgeist when talking about iPhones, and before you know it fucking tractor companies are decides that 'licensing' a product is much better than selling one.
I tell you what, I'm just waiting for a high-tech lathe that is 'owned' by some manufacturer to accidentally tear someone's arm off. Or worse, a semi-autonomous warehouse/assembly robot goes haywire around people. If the operator was just licensing it, the owner had better have good insurance.
Re: A “right to repair” movement tools up
#6I hope at some point we'll start including recycling/disassembly and replacement externalities into price somehow. I don't know how you would do that in a fair way, but it is frustrating that there aren't a ton of corrective market forces to encourage manufacturers to make highly reusable, repairable, recyclable devices.
All of this electronics churn is environmentally terrible, and it's frustrating that, as with carbon energy products, the entire world is forced to pay for the environmental externalities rather than the actual tech users.
You can make an accelerationist argument about not discouraging tech development and dealing with the problems using more efficient tech in the future, I guess. But I'd honestly rather have electronics cost a bit more and know that manufacturers had a financial interest in maintaining rather than replacing.
Re: A “right to repair” movement tools up
#7A long time ago I read a Science Fiction short story about a society where everything was unrepairable, throwaway and came with expiry dates.
Does not seem too much like Science Fiction nowadays...
EDIT: I wonder if anyone might remember the name of the story: The basic plot is a business man living in a throwaway society manages to convince a dying man to sell him his personally developed car. A car that has been built to last for decades. The business man eventually succeeds by promising to respect the philosophy of the dying man and the manufacturing of machines built to last. As he is driving the magnificent car away he starts thinking of the "improvements" he will make. That loud analogue clock on the dashboard could be replaced by a digital clock and that gear lever knob that could be made from a modern plastic....
Re: A “right to repair” movement tools up
#8The real issue is that consumers are stupid and want to stay stupid which means modular products, being more complicated, are not something they are going to shell out for.
It's a lot easier to say "buy this widget for $x a month for 48 months" (classic US example) than to say "what computer do you have? oh you don't know. why don't we arrange for me to have a look at it another day. uhuh. ok well i've taken a look and if we upgrade the graphics card, hard disk and ram we can probably get that working really nicely for you".
People just don't care. They want a result now, they want it to have a name, they want it to be marketed, they want to show it off and lord it over their proverbial neighbor.
Petty, stupid consumers are the real problem.
Fixing this situation, which has accelerated under the influence of commercial media and dwindling state education budgets in many western countries essentially must begin with education and regulation.
Re: A “right to repair” movement tools up
#9The real issue is that consumers are stupid and want to stay stupid which means modular products, being more complicated, are not something they are going to shell out for. It's a lot easier to say "buy this widget for $x a month for 48 months" (classic US example) than to say "what computer do you have? oh you don't know. why don't we arrange for me to have a look at it another day. uhuh. ok well i've taken a look a…
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Re: A “right to repair” movement tools up
#10The real issue is that consumers are stupid and want to stay stupid which means modular products, being more complicated, are not something they are going to shell out for. It's a lot easier to say "buy this widget for $x a month for 48 months" (classic US example) than to say "what computer do you have? oh you don't know. why don't we arrange for me to have a look at it another day. uhuh. ok well i've taken a look a…
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