191–200 of 353 posts
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And when sellers decide forced deprecation and e-waste are acceptable, consumers aren't really deciding.
Different sellers have different policies, customers can pick which (if any) policy they like better. New supplier can enter the market.
This is called planned obsolescence, and it's not just electronics. Practically every product nowadays are designed with a death date to perpetuate a repeating buying cycle from consumers. It's very real. To learn more here's an interesting short video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5v8D-alAKE
No kidding. It's only mentioned several times in the article.
It's not even just batteries. Every laptop I've ever owned comes with a AC to DC converter. Every laptop I've ever owned has outlived that AC-to-DC converter. Every converter that has failed has failed in exactly the same way: the plug/cord connection at the laptop end becomes unreliable. And every single one of them, across a range of manufacturers, has had the cord not be detachable from the brick. So what could ha…
I have the exact same issue with my current laptop (2014 ASUS ZenBook) and I blame it on ASUS' poor design of the laptop-end plug. I have replaced the charger multiple times so far, about once a year I think. My SO has used a Lenovo for 4 years now and has never had this issue - however, their brick-to-wall cord broke recently, funnily enough.
> But buying gear with batteries sealed inside is kind of like buying a car where you can’t change the tires. We just don’t realize we’re doing it, or how it’s contributing to our climate and sustainability crises. Changing tires is better than throwing away a car whose tires are worn out, but it's not without impact. Tires don't recycle into anything useful; there are only so many bouncy playgrounds you can build fr…
Would be good to get a source on that claim. Or if not a source, then a reason why tires can't be recycled into anything useful.
Planned obsolescence for electronics is a recent development in terms of human history. My parents remember times where hardware was incredibly reliable and could've bought electronics and products that lasted for decades. Nowadays there are deliberate design decisions in every product that cause these things to break down before their time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel There has been planned obsolescence in human economic activity whenever it could be made advantageous to do so. You also discount the increasing capability of electronics, which in many cases involve including more or more complex circuitry, which reduces the lifespan. You can certainly design for reliability, but this generally increases the cost, and consumers almost alw…
Not true. Entire industries can move in lock step without formation of a cartel. Phones, cars and fashion is one example. All of the aforementioned products are designed with planned obsolescence in mind.
It's sort of a behavioral phenomenon, the same way a flock of birds stays synchronized in the sky. Additionally, competing Companies in industries can still deliberately design things that fail earlier without losing profit margins simply because humans are too myopic to judge the difference between a phone that fails in 8 years vs. one that fails in 3.
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This is what I mean: apparently even tech people still don't know the basics of GDPR. If it were common knowledge that cookie walls are not required for any normal website operation or statistics keeping, but only a thing required for invasive tracking, then any website introducing one would face questions and media attention rather than it being the norm. The law requires cookie walls exactly nowhere, it requires to…
Maybe it’s the fault of the EU for making the GDPR so complicated? All a private company - Apple - had to do was create a 5 line rule change and add a setting to iOS and it the entire ad tracking industry including Facebook announced billions in losses.
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I’ve personally found usb-c ports aren’t great longevity wise. They have a similar issue as I had with micro-USB: they stop clamping onto the plug and then you don’t get a reliable connection. I’ve found Lightning ports more reliable (with periodic lint cleaning) but it’s a shame that it’s a proprietary standard.
For micro USB, I have found that this is almost always because some dirt is trapped and packed in the bottom of the socket - preventing the cable from being inserted deep enough. Cleaning with a toothpick or similar has fixed it each time.
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No, it also works when non-optimal designs are very common in the market. (Not helped with the fact that especially in electronics many brands have decreased in (perceived) quality, so even if something performed well people don't necessarily trust that newer versions are too, which makes actually good brands also less sticky)
I don't understand. Bad brands aren't sticky in this situation, are there. (I don't know whether good brands are sticky here.) So there's no extra incentives for planned obsolescence, because the next purchase is more than likely to go to a competitor. Or what do you mean?
This is how the Phoebus Cartel worked for incandescent bulbs. Every brand was in on it, it wasn’t about improving market share for specific brands.
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Extremely relevant article from Hackaday - https://hackaday.com/2021/01/17/leds-from-dubai-the-royal-li...
So when I buy a 600 lumen LED bulb that burns 7 W, I'm not only getting hosed because they're overdriving the LEDs but I'm also using over twice as much electricity as I could be?