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A “right to repair” movement tools up

economist.com

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Re: A “right to repair” movement tools up

#131

Post by userbinator »

Infernal wrote: post #107
walrus1066 wrote: post #11

It's still doable, and lots of great online guides and videos on how to repair smartphones, laptops etc. I replaced my smartphone earpiece, following an ifixit.com guide. Was initially daunted, given the expense of the handset, but it just took a set of mini screwdrivers and a wedge, 20 minutes, and has been working good as new for the last 3 months. Very satisfying experience.

I had a similar experience, with my iPhone 6 wifi/bluetooth/GPS antenna. Started seeing degraded connectivity and Googled around till I had it narrowed down to that antenna. Was nervous about ripping it apart so first took it to the Apple store with my diagnosis - they said the only choice was to buy a new phone. So, I borrowed my buddy's pentalobe driver set and about an hour later had pulled the logic board out, re…

...and chances are that was simply a solder joint or similar that cracked from the vibration of normal use, since antennae absolutely do not "wear out" from just transmitting or receiving.

Re: A “right to repair” movement tools up

#132

Post by GuiA »

stefco_ wrote: post #6

I 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 car…

> 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.

Well, let’s see what a leading company is saying about that:

”We believe our goal should be a closed-loop supply chain, where products are built using only renewable resources or recycled material”[0]

It’s not quite the cyberpunk dream of being able to repair anything with a soldering iron in 30 minutes, but it’s a very critical step to reach. We’re slowly getting there.

[0]: https://images.apple.com/environment/pdf/Apple_Environmental... (page 16)

Re: A “right to repair” movement tools up

#133

Post by occultist_throw »

GuiA wrote: post #132
stefco_ wrote: post #6

I 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 car…

> 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. Well, let’s see what a leading company is saying about that: ”We believe our goal should be a closed-loop supply chain, where products are built using only renewable resources or recycled materia…

It's not just cypherpunks and hardware hackers. We in the occult communities also very much believe in the same ideals. In fact, this saying is what this discussion reminded me of:

Nidhogg's Rule: Recycling. There is no such place as Away, so be careful what you throw there. Recycle, give away, don't waste, find a place for it somewhere else. This includes people as well as things.

http://www.northernpaganism.org/rokkatru/rokkatru-ethics.htm...

Re: A “right to repair” movement tools up

#134

Post by erikpukinskis »

noam87 wrote: post #99

I've been thinking recently that there is exists a completely unxplored market in tech. Local shops based around FOSS / open hardware where designers, hardware and software people work together to build custom projects for their clients. I would call this person a "technology artisan", because the closest analogue I can think of is a tailor or a carpinter. So, for example, a family would go to their local technology…

Your instincts are correct, you're describing the future. But there's a problem preventing it from working today.

Your idea only really works if you can get a large number of these artisans on board, across many disciplines, and keep their "dance card" stocked.

The issue is that solving any problem in software costs about $1000. And typically if you want to solve one problem you need to solve 2-20 others first.

Your mention of open source is key here. Every pizza place in the world probably has a dozen information problems that would be worth solving, but most of them aren't going to be willing to spend $100,000 to do it, even in 10 installations.

But of those 10 problems, 9 or 10 of them are not core IP for them. So something like 95% of the budget could be split across like 1000 pizza places, driving that cost to $1-20 which is a much more manageable cost.

So you need some sort of bond to finance these projects across 1000 clients.

And second, when you split the design work across 1000 clients all paying in a different moment, you end up with 990 little gigs and 10 big ones and the 990 are too small to be worth the overhead for your artisan. To make those worthwhile you need some infrastructure for turning those contracts into 5 minute non interactive (no customer support) deliveries, and packing them into a stocked queue that can pay the artisan'a rent. I.e. If there's one new pizza joint on a Tuesday afternoon, there are 50 other 5 minute tasks that they can also do so they aren't waiting around for pizza joints and getting nothing done.

And when a pizza joint needs analytics while that artisan is on vacation, you need another artisan who can step in.

So that's a two sided market, which is a notoriously hard startup problem.

And lastly, these information problems are not all code problems. There is design and stats and customer service and other stuff mixed in there. So you need a stable of design artisans, customer service artisans, etc. which means we're talking about an n-sided market.

Which the startup world has, as far as I'm aware, no known examples of.

It'll happen. It's just messy.

Re: A “right to repair” movement tools up

#135

Post by leggomylibro »

userbinator wrote: post #130
leggomylibro wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look into Clevo/Sager resellers. Places like System76. They can be hit-or-miss - I've had one excellent machine that lasted 6 years, but also one terrible experience with a borked GPU that put me off of them more or less permanently. Getting any sort of support or repairs for parts that you can't replace yourself is difficult. Still, they tend to have highly modular, easy-to-swap-out parts. Hard drives, wireless card…

Those also tend to be very large, gaming-oriented, desktop replacement "laptops", so not ideal for everyone looking for something they can actually keep on their lap for any length of time. They're so modular because they're designed like a desktop, with lots of full-size parts and little emphasis on thinness. If by "borked GPU" you're referring to the nVidia BGA failures, those weren't the fault of the laptop manufa…

It's been a little while since I looked, but they did used to make smaller and more portable models even though their lines definitely skew towards hulking powerhouses.

I remember the 11" W110ER fondly; it was tiny, but it still had a discrete GPU. Those were the days...as much as I love the small ARM Chromebooks, they do lack power for most sorts of realtime rendering applications.

I'm not sure what the exact issue was, but I got a new machine with a card that hung under reproducible conditions (as well as seemingly random ones) over several operating systems and use cases. I thought that BGA issues mostly came after a little while of thermal stressing on the boards and the footprint. But you never know; shit happens.

Re: A “right to repair” movement tools up

#136

Post by davidzweig »

takeda wrote: post #60
sethj wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a Thinkpad T-430 and the thing's great. I can strip it down to just the motherboard and display in less than 5 minutes.

I don't know if suggesting a laptop from a company that uses DRM to lock out 3rd party batteries is something suitable in this thread.

You can 'fix' that at least: https://github.com/hamishcoleman/thinkpad-ec

Re: A “right to repair” movement tools up

#137

Post by convolvatron »

hydrogen18 wrote: post #123
snuxoll wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, you think this is bad - look at enterprise networking gear. Cisco and Juniper try to convince people it's illegal to use "grey market" (resold) equipment because the software license is "non-transferrable", so even if you "own" the hardware you don't have a license for the software attached to it. Of course, this flies in the face of the first-sale doctrine and established case law, but they don't care. Just wai…

So MegaCorp A buys a huge amount of Cisco gear to modern their internal networks in all their infrastructure. Two years later OmniCorp B enters into a deal to add them to their portfolio for whatever price they agreed upon. OmniCorp B now owns the physical Cisco gear but doesn't have a license to use it?

how big of a customer is OmniCorp?

Re: A “right to repair” movement tools up

#138

Post by throwaway613834 »

gruturo wrote: post #122
throwaway613834 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point of the security of TouchID hardware is to prevent someone else from authenticating as you by messing with the hardware. But that becomes a non-issue when your data is encrypted, since a thief wouldn't have the password to decrypt it anyway.

Your fingerprints are given in clear, from your fingertips to the sensor surface. You can add all the security in the world after the sensor, but you need to be able to trust it, because it has access to the raw data. Same for face ID - the very first piece of hardware capturing the data has to be trustworthy or the whole chain cannot be trusted.

What I'm trying to say is that you should be using software security rather than hardware security.

Re: A “right to repair” movement tools up

#139

Post by ToFundorNot »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #124
toomuchtodo wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are battery recycling programs near you not feasible? Our local Home Depot and Best Buy stores will take back rechargeable batteries for recycling for free.

Do they recycle all of a lithium ion battery?

Very little of the physical (the lithium). However all of the precious materials (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battery_recycling#Lithium_ion_...).

It's not worth it to extract the lithium, monetarily speaking.

Re: A “right to repair” movement tools up

#140

Post by Teever »

amichal wrote: post #73
Teever wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, does Amazon ship the junk back to China too and then China disassembles it and ships the elements back to their respective holes in the ground? It seems like a better idea would be to just have Amazon give you a voucher for the recycling fees in your local community.

Most "Recycled" electronics are sent back to china at least in part Edit: summary at https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_waste_in_China

Sure but it seems a little inefficient to send them individually is my point.
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