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UK 'Right to repair' law to come in this summer

bbc.co.uk

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Re: UK 'Right to repair' law to come in this summer

#61

Post by draklor40 »

hnhg wrote: post #40
draklor40 wrote: post #7

Only a matter of time before they modify the Law to introduce a catch that makes it practically worthless. A - A classification system that makes defines how "easy" it is to repair something, but necessarily doesn't mean that you or I can repair it at home.It will be "easy" IF you have the right 50,000 GBP tool. B - Modify right to repair as good for the environment rule. There will be an escape clause that says that…

Do you have any citations for your claim about EU innovation being bogged down by regulatory capture? In general, I've found that it's more like risk aversion in VC and other local cultural aspects before anything at an EU level comes into play.

Used to work for a small Ad-Tech firm in Germany. GDPR massively dented the business WITH NO BENEFITS to privacy. Advertisers still collect shit tons of data, your website performance is still crappy and the end result was that EU users now have to navigate MBs of Javascript popups, that try to trick me into selling data using dark patterns (blue highlight on accept all instead of Reject all).

All it succeeded was in consolidating the ad-tech space into a few big players and resulted in acquisitions of many small ad-tech firms.

An acquaintance of mine started a medical Tech firm and is now a consultant for dealing with govt. rules on medical stuff. Not sure why he quit , but I believe that consulting for dealing with German/EU bureaucracy maybe far more lucrative than having a medical startup in the EU.

Not to mention, despite the first world status, internet is Germany is Dog-shit. I mean worse than 3rd world crap. I was in Bangalore and I had way better internet 3 years ago.

Re: UK 'Right to repair' law to come in this summer

#62

Post by blub »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #57

Good luck enforcing any of this. As for hundreds other useless regulations that bog us down. For example, compare the warranty process with Apple and with any of the other laptop companies. If regulations worked you wouldn't even consider warranty to be a good selling point. Still I've been burned by warranties services so many times, threatened to report, reported to consumer report and I got nothing out of it. I do…

Apple has been sued multiple times in the EU because of onerous warranty practices and lost. Obviously their working warranty doesn't work so great.

There's at least one website tracking GDPR fines. It's gonna take a while given that everyone is illegitimately collecting data on their visitors/customers.

Re: UK 'Right to repair' law to come in this summer

#63

Post by brnt »

draklor40 wrote: post #61
hnhg wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any citations for your claim about EU innovation being bogged down by regulatory capture? In general, I've found that it's more like risk aversion in VC and other local cultural aspects before anything at an EU level comes into play.

Used to work for a small Ad-Tech firm in Germany. GDPR massively dented the business WITH NO BENEFITS to privacy. Advertisers still collect shit tons of data, your website performance is still crappy and the end result was that EU users now have to navigate MBs of Javascript popups, that try to trick me into selling data using dark patterns (blue highlight on accept all instead of Reject all). All it succeeded was in…

Getting bogged down by the GDPR isn't demonstrating regulatory capture, just that the policy had a real impact (which may be what people actually want, even if that means it's a hassle for business).

If anything, it's a demonstration the EU, on this point, was not captured by vested interests: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/regulatory-capture.asp

Re: UK 'Right to repair' law to come in this summer

#64

Post by scrollaway »

draklor40 wrote: post #61
hnhg wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any citations for your claim about EU innovation being bogged down by regulatory capture? In general, I've found that it's more like risk aversion in VC and other local cultural aspects before anything at an EU level comes into play.

Used to work for a small Ad-Tech firm in Germany. GDPR massively dented the business WITH NO BENEFITS to privacy. Advertisers still collect shit tons of data, your website performance is still crappy and the end result was that EU users now have to navigate MBs of Javascript popups, that try to trick me into selling data using dark patterns (blue highlight on accept all instead of Reject all). All it succeeded was in…

It's a shame there were no claimed benefits to privacy but adtech getting bogged down is very much an intended outcome.

The shitty cookie popups and what not are a symptom of how awful the adtech industry is. The alternative to getting bogged down was probably getting outright destroyed, and i don't think EU businesses are ready for that.

Re: UK 'Right to repair' law to come in this summer

#65

Post by bluGill »

detritus wrote: post #44
retSava wrote: post #2

Hopefully such things bring forced availability of rare spare parts. If cookie cutter capacitors break, that's nothing really since you can just order them on Mouser et al. But if a more special part breaks, say a custom voltage regulator to a game console (just since I saw a video on that fail yesterday), I would like for a repair center to be able to buy one such for a reasonable price and have the 500$ console rep…

The door shelves in our crappy fridge at home have all gradually cracked and split and are held in place by messes of superglue and transparent Gorilla tape. Fed up with this, I priced up replacing them last week. It'll be cheaper to buy a new fridge. They're just crappy moulded plastic

Part of that cost is molded plastic is cheap only while you have the molds. Once the fridge goes out of production they make a few for spares and then recycle the molds.

The solution to this is to address how spare parts must be handled. This is not easy, either you figure expected lifetime of the shelves vs rest of the fridge, and then order enough - but if you get it wrong you are still out. Or you keep the molds, which also implies equipment to use the molds - but that wears out over time as well and the new model might not use the old molds.

Re: UK 'Right to repair' law to come in this summer

#66

Post by maxerickson »

bluGill wrote: post #65
detritus wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The door shelves in our crappy fridge at home have all gradually cracked and split and are held in place by messes of superglue and transparent Gorilla tape. Fed up with this, I priced up replacing them last week. It'll be cheaper to buy a new fridge. They're just crappy moulded plastic

Part of that cost is molded plastic is cheap only while you have the molds. Once the fridge goes out of production they make a few for spares and then recycle the molds. The solution to this is to address how spare parts must be handled. This is not easy, either you figure expected lifetime of the shelves vs rest of the fridge, and then order enough - but if you get it wrong you are still out. Or you keep the molds,…

I would think producing spares after end of production would be expensive even if you kept the molds around.

Re: UK 'Right to repair' law to come in this summer

#67

Post by detritus »

bluGill wrote: post #65
detritus wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The door shelves in our crappy fridge at home have all gradually cracked and split and are held in place by messes of superglue and transparent Gorilla tape. Fed up with this, I priced up replacing them last week. It'll be cheaper to buy a new fridge. They're just crappy moulded plastic

Part of that cost is molded plastic is cheap only while you have the molds. Once the fridge goes out of production they make a few for spares and then recycle the molds. The solution to this is to address how spare parts must be handled. This is not easy, either you figure expected lifetime of the shelves vs rest of the fridge, and then order enough - but if you get it wrong you are still out. Or you keep the molds,…

I appreciate some of the rationale for the cost, however the fridge itself is less than five years old.

The solution here would be standardised fridge door shelf types, or better yet - sturdier designs that don't gradually crack when the door is shut 'a little jovially', billiarding glass jars around... .

Re: UK 'Right to repair' law to come in this summer

#68

Post by jhrozek »

gpderetta wrote: post #52
jhrozek wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your reply shows that you are already very skilled. Other comments mentioned replacing a diode -- I know what a diode is conceptually, but I have no idea how does it look in the appliance, where would I buy a new one or how to replace it. Being as clueless as I am, my only option is to call a proffessional. Sometimes it is worth it -- I had a fan on my MacBook replaced for ~700 SEK which is a fraction of the…

If products can be repaired easily, even if it is not worth paying to repair it or one is not skilled enough to repair it, there might still be a market for broken down items as people with skills might buy them, fix them and use or resell them. It beats throwing stuff in the trash.

Yeah, that's a really good point and I would actually love for my old stuff to be reused by /anyone/.

Re: UK 'Right to repair' law to come in this summer

#69

Post by bluesign »

draklor40 wrote: post #7

Only a matter of time before they modify the Law to introduce a catch that makes it practically worthless. A - A classification system that makes defines how "easy" it is to repair something, but necessarily doesn't mean that you or I can repair it at home.It will be "easy" IF you have the right 50,000 GBP tool. B - Modify right to repair as good for the environment rule. There will be an escape clause that says that…

Spare parts will be the biggest problem (especially pricing).

Re: UK 'Right to repair' law to come in this summer

#70

Post by Shivetya »

aboringusername wrote: post #13

I think any right to repair needs to solve 2 problems: 1: Fixing bad hardware (schematics and such) 2: Fixing old/buggy/broken software that renders said hardware useless. Without open kernels, drivers, frameworks your "right to repair" is meaningless. When you install a new camera to iPhone and it complains it's not genuine because the software says so, the right to repair becomes less useful as now Apple holds all…

Totally disagree with your software claim.

The manufacturers should simply be held accountable in that they provide a means to have approved replacement hardware providers. Having software modification available could lead to cases where safety is jeopardized; any claim it cannot be is laughable; let alone who is liable if modified software causes the issue. The manufacturer would possibly be stuck proving it.

Plus people vastly underestimate how much replacement components will cost along with which components are reasonably designated as replaceable.

When you get to appliance level items TVs are an interesting case because its highly unlikely panels will be as cheap as new televisions and creating a case where they have to be less than the television will simply pass that cost onto anyone buying that television. The controller cards, power supply, and such, likely will be more readily available but of them the power supply is the only true part which would be more universal across items.

Which brings me to, the best way to have an easier to repair world is to eliminate non standard plugs along with customized power supplies or chargers within the same product type.

edit: another concern with software, the expectation that camera code be open does not protect the manufacturer intellectual property in regards to new and interesting methods to provide better picture quality.

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