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British right to repair law excludes smartphones and computers

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211–220 of 377 posts

Re: British right to repair law excludes smartphones and computers

#211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fraud - wrongful or criminal deception intended to result in financial or personal gain. It's very much what's going on here.

There's absolutely no way you could convince a judge that this was fraud. You can't just pick some legal term that sounds familiar and say that's what's going on. These terms have very specific meanings based on extensive case law.

Right, so not to put words in varispeed mouth. But their claim is that Right-to-repair that doesn't give you the Right to repair what they want the right to repair is deliberately deceptive and, thus, fraudulent.

The damages would be that the product that they wish to repair are irreparable.

Re: British right to repair law excludes smartphones and computers

#212

Well, smartphones must be updated to include better spyware. And newer computers are also better locked down to allow better surveillance. So, the older ones can't break down fast enough! You don't want a repairable computer so creeps install, like, a Linux distro. You want disposable TPM machines with Windows 11 Home Edition and unstoppable "telemetry".

I feel like there's a large subset of people who don't understand what TPM does, so just assume the worst and hand wave about how it [somehow] causes [random bad thing]. In this case I guess TPM causes telemetry?

Stallman[1] and others[2] wrote about TPMs nearly 15 years ago, and the former revisited the topic in 2015.

Trusted Platform Modules can be used enforce app DRM, ensuring that only "approved" apps are able to run on a system.

That's already the reality for iPhones and iPads. We see desktops converging on this reality with systems like Apple's M1 which won't run unsigned binaries at all, and makes it difficult to nearly impossible to run apps that weren't first approved by Apple through their notarization process.

[1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/can-you-trust.en.html

[2] https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html

Re: British right to repair law excludes smartphones and computers

#213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trying to find a good non smart tv is impossible now, I want dumb tv and dumb fridge

How do you define TV There’s the LCD screen A driver to convert an input (hdmi, vga, ntsc, DVB/ATSC, MPEG, HLS) A speaker (or more), with input (from driver or not) A control plane of some sort to control the other bits (brightness, gamma, input, volume) It seems that people who want dumb TVs want most of that, including different inputs, but just a specific driver and/or control plane A computer monitor will do most…

Monitors have other purposes of TVs, the things that are important on a monitor are not the same on a TV, and a good monitor doesn't necessary mean that it's a good TV or vice versa.

See the same difference in the audio world: there is monitor/studio equipment that has the purpose of reproducing the sound as closely as possible to the original media, and then there is listening equipment that is meant to make the sound more enjoyable for the listener.

Monitors also doesn't include a TV receiver. While that can be an advantage in countries like mine for people that wants only to look at internet content since if you have a TV with a receiver you have to pay a tax, it doesn't work for people that just want's to watch TV, meaning connecting the power and aerial cable to the TV and use it. You need an external decoder, that needs to have a separate remote control, you then need two power outlets, more cables, you then have to install the decoder somewhere, it's not as clean as having it integrate in the TV itself.

I think especially at my grandma, that doesn't have internet, and wants a TV that is as simple as possible, press 1 on the remote and the TV turns on at the channel 1. Press volume up/down and the power button. Nowadays it's difficult to find TV with that requisite, modern remotes have a ton of buttons what will bring up functionalities that then are difficult to exit, especially for an 85 years old woman that never used a computer or a smartphone or anything other than a TV and the landline phone.

Re: British right to repair law excludes smartphones and computers

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's absolutely no way you could convince a judge that this was fraud. You can't just pick some legal term that sounds familiar and say that's what's going on. These terms have very specific meanings based on extensive case law.

Right, so not to put words in varispeed mouth. But their claim is that Right-to-repair that doesn't give you the Right to repair what they want the right to repair is deliberately deceptive and, thus, fraudulent. The damages would be that the product that they wish to repair are irreparable.

I don't know what to tell you apart from that's not what 'fraud' is in practice. Things being not what you want and someone having spent money does not equal fraud. You can't just pick a legal term and interpret it as literal English without any knowledge of the actual precedent around it.

I don't know if you think the entire legislation is the words 'right to repair'? It obviously isn't - it's far more nuanced than that.

Re: British right to repair law excludes smartphones and computers

#215
post #103
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TPM used for secure boot, (hypothetically) used to block installing non-windows OS, means the owner is forced to using an OS that has telemetry. That is the argument I suppose OP was making. The secure boot locking is hypothetical, but it is often feared. I get why, because it seems like something Microsoft would love to do.

TPM is used for measured boot, to not release a secret/operate on a key if measurements do not match. It doesn't block you from running anything.

>It doesn't block you from running anything.

Yet

Re: British right to repair law excludes smartphones and computers

#216
post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sometimes they will seek out nearby open WiFi networks to join [Citation Needed]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27701977 which links to https://old.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/bpr6xs/if_you_choo... which is archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20201003141448/https://old.reddi...

So one Reddit post with zero evidence that has since been deleted? While I understand the distrust I'll take some repeatable evidence (which would be excedingly easy to do) over a random, now deleted Reddit post.

Re: British right to repair law excludes smartphones and computers

#217
post #32
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't own a smart TV, so this question is probably a bit naive - but what happens if you don't connect your smart TV to the internet?

It will work but it will have junk it really doesn't need complaining now and then, and be generally slow. Your best bet for a "non smart TV" is either a commercial/industrial one, or just use a monitor instead.

Not something I would install to my grandma. Really, she doesn't of course have internet, just the old analog landline phones, doesn't know how to use a computer or a smartphone or anything like that, I want a TV that is simple, just press a button and it powers up on the specified channel.

Next year they will switch off DVB to migrate to DVB-T2, and of course I must buy her a new TV (using a decoder it's not an option, too complex having to manage two remotes controls), and it seems that nobody produces dumb TVs anymore...

Re: British right to repair law excludes smartphones and computers

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me that it is a purely propaganda that these things are mutually exclusive. Like how all smartphone manufacturers had phones that were fine with removable batteries, but then suddenly that was gone from literally every brand in the world because it is so powerful for planned obsolescence

People want thin phones. A non-removable battery allows for thinness you simply cannot get otherwise. And while you can argue about whether thin laptops are necessary, for people who carry their phones in their pants pockets, an extra couple millimeters gone is genuinely a meaningful difference. There's no propaganda there.

Yes, they made thinner phones but they made more huge and heavy. Nowadays it's nearly impossible to find a phone that has a screen smaller than 6". I mean, to me it's too much, it can even fit in some of my pockets!

Give me back the old phones, removable battery, more thick, but more compact in the end, and more easy to carry around. The bigger screen it's in the end useless to me.

Re: British right to repair law excludes smartphones and computers

#219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>A non-removable battery allows for thinness you simply cannot get otherwise. I doubted this so I looked up dimensions. Samsung Galaxy S6 from 2015 is 6.8mm thick, with removable battery. S10 from 2019 is 7.8mm thick. So your theory doesn't seem to match reality.

Wikipedia says the S6 did not have a user-replaceable battery: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Galaxy_S6#Battery In any case, it's apples-to-oranges and doesn't mean anything. Cell phones can have functionality added that takes up the difference in thickness -- e.g. keeping the phone the same thickness instead of it getting even thicker . But main point is, they're thinner basically by definition. There are nec…

Oh yeah seems I saw an incorrect site, S5 was the last one with removable battery.

Of course there are some tradeoffs but it just doesn't seem so significant that EVERY brand refuses to offer even one model with a removable battery. There are definitely some people that want it despite the tradeoffs. As other commenters said, people have huge phones now and use cases. So I think manufacturers have a special interest in maintaining the situation for planned obsolescence.

Re: British right to repair law excludes smartphones and computers

#220
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is part of the problem: a lot of people just don't care.

That's exactly my point. If customers don't care then who's this regulation serving?

Look up tragedy of the commons. It is for the end-user, they just don't know it yet, believing that it is 'not their problem'.
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