It's your device, you should be able to repair it • Hacker News Board

Re: It's your device, you should be able to repair it

#221

Post by duped » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 6:09 PM UTC

hilbert42 wrote: post #197

duped wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think requiring schematic disclosure and non exclusivity for venders of custom parts is entirely unreasonable with catastrophic first and second order effects. Particularly the latter. We want more contract manufacturing, not less of it. If you take away the ability of companies to negotiate reasonable deals with their venders, they'll just buy them out and vertically integrate.

"If you take away the ability of companies to negotiate reasonable deals with their venders, they'll just buy them out and vertically integrate." Why was that argument irrelevant in the past when the 'right to repair' was was accepted as completely normal† and manufacturers actually encourage it? (See my point to that effect above.) † That is, to the extent that back then no one would have understood what the phrase…

Because JIT manufacturing didn't exist.

It's not coincidence that we make more devices that are more complex, and do it faster today than we did in the olden days and they are simultaneously more difficult to repair with tougher to source components in low volumes. Everything from the design process to the assembly and repair is completely different today than it was 50 years ago.

At the same time, consumers stopped caring about repairs. Why buy something you can repair if it will be obsolete in two years, and you can afford the replacement?

Re: It's your device, you should be able to repair it

#222

Post by CountSessine » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 6:10 PM UTC

OrwellianChild wrote: post #205

CountSessine wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was in a very different era, when manufacturing was difficult and expensive. Having the schematic didn't necessarily get you anywhere. That's no longer the case - now the design is expensive but the manufacturing is cheap.

Can you articulate what that has to do with repairability?

For one thing, I think it's an important point to make when someone else makes the, "look how repairability has regressed since the golden era of getting the Apple II schematics in the box with the computer!". At the time, design was cheap. Why not give it to your customers? It's not like they're going to go out and make one themselves.

The fact that manufacturing is cheap now and schematics are not only the key to repairability but also counterfeit Chinese knock-offs is a problem worth understanding.

Re: It's your device, you should be able to repair it

#223

Post by shoto_io » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 6:10 PM UTC

css wrote: post #2

This article moves the goalposts on what "right to repair" is several times. It generally means that manufacturers should not hide schematics from device users or disallow third party manufacturing of first party parts. However, the author states: > The law doesn't yet cover smartphones and tablets that she says are getting harder to fix. One problem is keeping older devices updated with new software. Now "right to r…

I don’t know why we shouldn’t let the market handle this. If people want everything to be repairable then why isn’t there a phone which solve that issue?

Maybe people don’t care that much after all.

Re: It's your device, you should be able to repair it

#224

Post by filleduchaos » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 6:10 PM UTC

TideAd wrote: post #47

scrose wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think that repairability is better for sustainability in general Sorry, but what? Being able to repair a device means that you can (and usually will) be able to prevent demand spiking for a brand new device that uses as many or more materials than the last. For starters, imagine a world where vehicles were not repairable. I'd argue that any mass-produced thing benefits from repairability.

I suspect that a minority of people would choose to repair their old phones even if they were more repairable. When your phone dies, it's a good opportunity to buy something new and more fun. I don't know for sure but I don't think this would stop that much consumption.

The vast majority of people on the planet cannot afford to "buy something new and more fun" every time something of theirs breaks.

Re: It's your device, you should be able to repair it

#225

Post by emkoemko » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 6:10 PM UTC

usaphp wrote: post #186

alexvoda wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electronics used to come with full schematics as part of the documentation. As an example, this (1) is how the manual looks for a ~1970-1974 stereo record player I have. You have diagrams of the boards and lists of parts as in individual caps, etc. We should strive to move in that direction, not away from it. Permanently locked bootloaders, DRM for componets, etc. are a move in the oposite direction. To move the over…

I see a good intention behind it, but it only works only if only honest people and companies exist. It’s not the case in real world. What would prevent a competitor simply copying the whole product and offering a cheaper price because they didn’t have to invest in R&D, and those engineers who spent many years working on a finished schematics will be out of job because the company won’t be able to make a living sellin…

there is a big big difference between a schematic that will aid people in repairs and ones that are used to manufacture the boards...and no one fighting for right to repair is asking for that anyways

system76 talks about this in this interview

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGle6z9KfZQ

Re: It's your device, you should be able to repair it

#226

Post by opencl » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 6:11 PM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #212

alexvoda wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electronics used to come with full schematics as part of the documentation. As an example, this (1) is how the manual looks for a ~1970-1974 stereo record player I have. You have diagrams of the boards and lists of parts as in individual caps, etc. We should strive to move in that direction, not away from it. Permanently locked bootloaders, DRM for componets, etc. are a move in the oposite direction. To move the over…

Be careful. My dad replaced a defective memory chip on his IBM PC XT.. but the computer cost the equivalent of $12k. I’d rather throw away a dozen modern laptops than fix one that costs 10x.

You can replace the memory and storage on just about every desktop computer today that isn't made by Apple, and a decent fraction of laptops.

They do not cost 10x as much as devices with soldered RAM and SSDs.

Re: It's your device, you should be able to repair it

#227

Post by jjtheblunt » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 6:11 PM UTC

A thought: some things have long been accepted to need experts or expensive tooling for their repair.

So you never read something like "It's your ruptured spinal disk, you should be able to repair it.".

I wonder if hardware vendors claim this is analogous.

Re: It's your device, you should be able to repair it

#228

Post by jryan49 » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 6:12 PM UTC

If you want to help support right to repair (in US) consider donating to Louis Rossmann's GoFundMe for right to repair:

https://www.gofundme.com/f/lets-get-right-to-repair-passed?u...

Re: It's your device, you should be able to repair it

#229

Post by dec0dedab0de » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 6:13 PM UTC

maxerickson wrote: post #19

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #5

A bit of a tangent, but I'm really surprised one of the android vendors hasn't focused on the niche of easy to repair phones. Maybe even making them four or five times the thickness of the latest i-sung devices. extra hot swappable batteries and the like. I know the ostensible reasons waterproofing, planned obsolescence, looking cool, and being light weight. Though I suspect the real reason is they're just chasing th…

Is there a market for it? $200 Android devices with a big battery and decent performance and so on are out there, so I wonder how many people are worried enough about a swappable battery. Jitterbug makes the phone to sell their service, so it's not directly comparable (it does demonstrate that the devices aren't that expensive to produce).

I was using a Moto G8 Power for exactly that reason, but I still think 3 days of battery life is just not enough. The phone could have easily been 4 times the size without being too big for me. Then the screen cracked and I made it worse trying to fix it because I dont have the patience to properly melt glue. Now I'm using a CAT phone which has cool features, and is supposedly stronger, but mostly the same problems.

Re: It's your device, you should be able to repair it

#230

Post by 35fbe7d3d5b9 » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 6:13 PM UTC

OrwellianChild wrote: post #207

35fbe7d3d5b9 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We should demand that any device and any component in any device be second source-able Devices aren't built around discrete components anymore. That ship has sailed, we waved goodbye, partied on the dock, and took an Uber home. Now we're nursing the hangover. But hey, our phones are now marginally thinner than last year's phones, so that might be worth something. I don't see how we get back, considering the market…

Your approach will always be a valid choice, for those who want it, and companies will be happy to provide that device-as-a-service model. R2R is just seeking to preserve the practical access to repairability for those who want to service their own devices.

> Your approach will always be a valid choice, for those who want it

This isn't "my approach" – it's the approach that the vast majority of purchasers prefer. And pining for the good ol' days of technical datasheets doesn't help everybody who can't start their cars without the successful interaction of nearly a hundred proprietary microcontrollers running proprietary code speaking over a high-speed data bus.

And here's the annoying thing: I want a car that doesn't have a hundred microcontrollers speaking over a high-speed data bus. I want a car like my old '88 Camry, that I could take apart with my dad and fix almost all of the problems I ran into with the help of a Haynes manual and a trip (or two!) to the junkyard. But the market clearly does not agree with my desires.

So how do you get there from here?