Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

British right to repair law excludes smartphones and computers

9to5mac.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 377 posts

Re: British right to repair law excludes smartphones and computers

#291

Post by sunshineforever »

jolmg wrote: post #80
bluGill wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are you missing an /s or are you saying that it shouldn't be done because it would enable e.g. use of radio hardware that goes against radio regulation Great question. I'm intentionally not answering it because I am not sure what I think. There are valid points on both sides. In part what I think depends on how evil evil people get.

AFAIK, anything phones can do on a hardware level can be done on more open platforms. What could unlocking phones enable evil people to do? What's one of these valid points of the other side?

Im imagining kids watching "turn youe phone into a jammer prank your friends" videos... I still support full freedom though. The problem can be handled via prosecution of offenders.

Re: British right to repair law excludes smartphones and computers

#292

Post by sunshineforever »

emouryto wrote: post #16

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".

Amen

Re: British right to repair law excludes smartphones and computers

#293

Post by flukus »

MrStonedOne wrote: post #262
spoonjim wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

User-replaceable battery means that entire product categories like wireless earbuds e.g. Airpods cannot exist. A better solution is that the manufacturer must provide battery replacement services at a cost specified at the time of purchase and only allowed to increase at the rate of inflation.

> User-replaceable battery means that entire product categories like wireless earbuds e.g. Airpods cannot exist. Acceptable, why turn an entire device into ewaste for a single component dying, especially one with a known limited service life, like a battery. 10 year warranties minimum on all electronics. Regardless of size and fragility. Any electronic device that can't last 10 years in service is unnecessarily contr…

How long do the batteries in those things last? If it makes it to 2 years then they're doing much better than any of my wired ear buds where the wire's or contacts usually break and are probably responsible for less waste.

Re: British right to repair law excludes smartphones and computers

#294

Post by justshowpost »

thescriptkiddie wrote: post #226
mnouquet wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is actually a pretty good system for the CCP "politburo".

Upwards of 90% of the population of China are CCP members.

Just the same situation as in Orwell's Oceania.

mnouquet talks about the Inner Party

Re: British right to repair law excludes smartphones and computers

#295

Post by mercutio2 »

drivers99 wrote: post #194
nerdawson wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TV manufacturers are responding, often clumsily and based on their self-interest (data collection), to what consumers want. Trying to find a dumb TV is like trying to find a car without a built in radio. You're welcome to leave it switched off. Smart TVs are dumb if they aren't connected to the internet. Some may be slow. Some may have a poor interface. I'd worry about solving for that rather than expecting manufactu…

> You're welcome to leave it switched off. Funny you should say that. My car defaults back to radio on when you start it.

This drives me bonkers. So infuriating.

Mine does this, and also when I disconnect CarPlay, it immediately turns on the radio at full blast.

My "smart" TV does the same thing: whereas on older dumb TVs, when I told it to sleep, it worked 100% of the time, on my newer TV, it works 30% of the time.

Sometimes it decides to switch to Tuner input (even after I've disconnected the antennae! Argh!). Sometimes it just leaves the whole display on, with no input.

Finally, one time in 20, when I try to turn on my TV, it just gets into a reboot loop.

Everything about having Android TV is objectively worse for my use cases than my old dumb TV, which just displayed the most recent input and turned off when I told it to.

Re: British right to repair law excludes smartphones and computers

#296

Post by justshowpost »

mnouquet wrote: post #206
swayvil wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yes. The oligarchs over here look at China and think, "That's a pretty good system".

It is actually a pretty good system for the CCP "politburo".

Looks like there is a need of explanation for that term.

Politburo (= "Political Bureau") of Central Committee of Communist Party of Soviet Russia. Also, a Politburo member becomes The Chairman.

In a nutshell, ringleaders of ringleaders of Bolsheviks. *MUCH* more equal than the others, naturally.

Re: British right to repair law excludes smartphones and computers

#297

Post by cutler »

Tokenism at it's finest. Just when you thought it couldn't get worse after Brexit and the election of Boris Johnson as prime minister. I don't know what the Conservatives managed to slip into people's breakfast cereal but they're riding high in the polls despite food shortages due to exiled lorry drivers and the exposure of deception by the Minister Of Health during the COVID crisis.

Re: British right to repair law excludes smartphones and computers

#298

Post by justshowpost »

_carbyau_ wrote: post #278
thescriptkiddie wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Upwards of 90% of the population of China are CCP members.

"Mr Xi oversees the party and its 92 million members — that might sound huge compared to Australia’s population of 25 million, but it is less than 7 per cent of China’s 1.4 billion people." https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-01/ccp-100-years-chinese... Honestly, that article has some shit "play with your emotions!" bits in it too but there are facts to be gleaned.

Its actually much less innocent than it looks like. Add an additional 100-150M for Communist Youth, a subsidiary organization and 150-250M for Mao Judend, a subsidiary for kids. Its called totalitarianism for a reason.

Re: British right to repair law excludes smartphones and computers

#299

Post by dragonwriter »

thescriptkiddie wrote: post #226
mnouquet wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is actually a pretty good system for the CCP "politburo".

Upwards of 90% of the population of China are CCP members.

> Upwards of 90% of the population of China are CCP members.

Over 90% of the population of China are CPC non-members (membership numbers I can find are consistently under 100 million).

100% are subject to rule by the Communist Party of China, though.

Re: British right to repair law excludes smartphones and computers

#300

Post by rockemsockem »

dan-robertson wrote: post #267
heavyset_go wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unfortunately, the purpose here will be to use the fact that most users use a non-free OS to turn these TPMs against the user in order to make DRM harder to break. Stallman[1] and others[2] have talked about just this issue for over a decade now. [1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/can-you-trust.en.html [2] https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html

Stallman has quite a particular view on security, e.g. [1]. I think it is important to understand where he’s coming from. I think the last 30 years have shown that, in some sense, even competent computer users can’t really be trusted to keep their systems secure. I’m not saying that the only solution is to have a totally locked down system, but I’m also not saying that having an HSM is a bad thing. I understand that…

Really though, if we're talking about "completely secure" computers, or even something approaching that, no one can be trusted to keep any system secure. So why not at least let users have some freedom while taking care of the most obvious exploit routes?
Post reply on HN