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Europe Is Guaranteeing Citizens the Right to Repair

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Re: Europe Is Guaranteeing Citizens the Right to Repair

#31

Post by readflaggedcomm »

simongray wrote: post #15
readflaggedcomm wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When repair labor costs more than automated production, then it's cheaper to replace whole units than mend parts. This is very much in line when what the Luddites understood. Fixation on "waste" is a by-product of unrelated worries which are fashionable today, but cheap production at a distance is what labor should worry about, instead.

> Fixation on "waste" is a by-product of unrelated worries which are fashionable today We have finite resources on this planet. Policies like this that deal with negative externalities aren't driven by fashion, they are driven by our long term needs. And we do need to recycle more and consume less. This is part of the solution. > cheap production at a distance is what labor should worry about, instead You're simply d…

It's the most fashionable cause, since it can be shoehorned into anything. Yet carping about warming, and unstated assumptions about efficiency differences between levels of consumption and locations of production, don't guide us to fair labor practices.

Re: Europe Is Guaranteeing Citizens the Right to Repair

#32

Post by stronglikedan »

onli wrote: post #12
mc32 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the problem with electronics is often a brand new unit costs less than replacing a faulty part on an old unit due to miniaturization and having everything on chip combined with economics of scale. Still it’s a worthwhile pursuit. At some point pocket PCs/phones will be good enough, just as for many a 2014 laptop is still good enough.

They already are. Phones from 2016 for example feel completely usable today. That goes for the repairable ones at least, like the LG G5, but even the older LG G3 holds up well. If all modern phones were as repairable as those we could eliminate so much garbage!

My old phones are often usable, which is why I only upgrade every three years or so. However, when I do upgrade after waiting so long, it's like I've traveled through time with the improvements.

It seems that most people want more than just usable. They may not want to pay more for a device up front, knowing they will be missing out on the latest technology down the road.

Re: Europe Is Guaranteeing Citizens the Right to Repair

#33

Post by onli »

mc32 wrote: post #21
onli wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They already are. Phones from 2016 for example feel completely usable today. That goes for the repairable ones at least, like the LG G5, but even the older LG G3 holds up well. If all modern phones were as repairable as those we could eliminate so much garbage!

I tend to agree if we consider current use cases. Issue comes when we add new use cases which require more processing power or new components. Also, we’ll have to figure out how to manage with a sort of stagnation. Essentially this entails curbing change. Curbing change means slowing progress (initially in this niche), but if we extend this into other areas it can mean significant stagnation because since things are…

Sometimes it's more a question of software. On older phones badly made sites like the new reddit for example were unuseable in all browsers - until the new Firefox came along.

But sure. Repairability is one thing, it just means that devices can continue the things they were made for. For new workloads they would need upgradeability, which is a completely different beast.

I don't think having repairability will slow things at all. It will simply prune some behaviors corporations engage in that destroy the planet, like glueing in batteries. Stopping such practices will not even make new devices more expensive - we have old designs that did it right. Falling back to them and innovating there could even save money.

Re: Europe Is Guaranteeing Citizens the Right to Repair

#34

Post by mc32 »

alxlaz wrote: post #30
mc32 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the problem with electronics is often a brand new unit costs less than replacing a faulty part on an old unit due to miniaturization and having everything on chip combined with economics of scale. Still it’s a worthwhile pursuit. At some point pocket PCs/phones will be good enough, just as for many a 2014 laptop is still good enough.

> Part of the problem with electronics is often a brand new unit costs less than replacing a faulty part on an old unit due to miniaturization and having everything on chip combined with economics of scale. That's simply because "make it easy to replace" has not been a design constraint in a very long time -- in fact, making things hard to replace or fix has been a design constraint that product management has enforc…

I agree with you; however making things discreet and replaceable will increase costs significantly and slow progress —however, if we consider phones to have reached “good enough” status then that makes sense. Double the price but make it easy to repair or replace components.

Re: Europe Is Guaranteeing Citizens the Right to Repair

#35

Post by martinald »

onli wrote: post #25
syshum wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My phone today is completely usable but the carrier has decided to stop issuing updates to the phone.... This is the worst kind of planned obsolesces

Right. Repairable hardware is just the one side, security updates needs to be available as well. We need mandated open sourcing of device software (including firmware and drivers + unlocking of the bootloader) after the support timerange, or at the very least alternatively the obligation to continue security updates for decades.

Who is actually going to update this even if it is open source though? There are so many drivers and firmware in a smartphone, nevermind the tens of thousands of models of smartphones out there. It would require an army of people to patch, test and distribute everything. That's even if you can figure out all this code.

Re: Europe Is Guaranteeing Citizens the Right to Repair

#36

Post by rasz »

beyondcompute wrote: post #27

> Fix it. Where? I’d wanted to repair the most popular electric kick scooter in one of the Northern European countries for couple of years and I couldn’t find any place to do it (I asked all the sellers, sent lots of emails to different web shops, etc.). The economy in prosperous countries appears to be such that repair (especially of less fancy products) is so costly that it makes no sense often or is not possible a…

Hacker space is a good place to start.

Re: Europe Is Guaranteeing Citizens the Right to Repair

#37

Post by mrweasel »

franczesko wrote: post #22

As a person who is living in EU, I didn't know that there's even a discussion about whether you can or can't repair the things you own. Sounds pretty weird. Repairing things is a common practice since I can't remember when. Did I miss anything?

There really isn’t much debate about “right to repair”, compared to the US. I think most just assume it’s not worth the hassel and cost. I would guess that the cost of repairing the average TV be at least 25 to 50% of the cost of a new TV. Highend stuff have always been repairable.

The focus needs to be on making things repairable by the consumer, and easy to recycle. Both mean that you need to be able to take the item apart, and that will require redesigning almost electronics.

Re: Europe Is Guaranteeing Citizens the Right to Repair

#38

Post by macspoofing »

If you follow the laptop/smart-phone repair community [1], the problems they run into is lack of access to technical manuals, diagnostic tools and in cases, being prevented from buying replacement parts by suppliers under the direction of Apple (for example). To me, it seems that this is where government or industry regulation would be helpful and provide most value with minimal impact on innovation and market disruption.

On the other hand, I am uneasy with regulators mandating specific designs (e.g. all phones must have replaceable batteries), or specific standards (e.g. all phones need to use USB-C) or doing things like forcing Apple to include a charge cable or headphones with their devices.

[1] I'm thinking of Jessa Jones and Louis Rossmann specifically.

Re: Europe Is Guaranteeing Citizens the Right to Repair

#39

Post by onli »

stronglikedan wrote: post #32
onli wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They already are. Phones from 2016 for example feel completely usable today. That goes for the repairable ones at least, like the LG G5, but even the older LG G3 holds up well. If all modern phones were as repairable as those we could eliminate so much garbage!

My old phones are often usable, which is why I only upgrade every three years or so. However, when I do upgrade after waiting so long, it's like I've traveled through time with the improvements. It seems that most people want more than just usable. They may not want to pay more for a device up front, knowing they will be missing out on the latest technology down the road.

They do not need to pay more. The equation that repairable means more expensive for the customer is propaganda. It assumes that every cent companies save by making devices worse lowers the price. That's trickle down economics and has never been true.

People can still buy new stuff earlier if they want. But their old stuff can be reused by those that do not need, want or can afford the new devices. There are many categories of devices where that's a good option for many, not only phones. Besides, it's always good to have the option to repair that thing you have when it breaks even if initially you did not think you would need that. You might have grown to like it.

Re: Europe Is Guaranteeing Citizens the Right to Repair

#40

Post by zug_zug »

readflaggedcomm wrote: post #7
haakonhr wrote: post #4

This is great, although it somehow seems to me to be starting in the wrong end. The underlying problem is that it is more profitable/cheaper to just give you a new product (if something breaks while under warrantee) and then just throw away the old instead of repairing it. I don't know if it is because the externalities of waste are not taxed properly or if it is because manufacturing products that are hard to repair…

When repair labor costs more than automated production, then it's cheaper to replace whole units than mend parts. This is very much in line when what the Luddites understood. Fixation on "waste" is a by-product of unrelated worries which are fashionable today, but cheap production at a distance is what labor should worry about, instead.

>> When repair labor costs more than automated production..

When companies deliberately build products in unrepairable ways then repair labor costs more than automated production.

Imagine if mac butterfly keyboards were replaceable. Or for example I recently fixed my dad's washing machine, but it took a couple hours of labor to replace the pump because you had to remove about 4 other things to get to it (when they could have just made a door on the side/bottom.

It's sort of like if you had to spend an hour disassembling your case to swap the ram in your machine.

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