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New EU-wide product repair rules come into force

rte.ie

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Re: New EU-wide product repair rules come into force

#121

Post by 6510 »

chocolatkey wrote: post #37
6510 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Government could hold the keys. Sufficient weird behavior should also trigger release.

You really want to trust the government with keys to the kingdom? Like what they wanted here? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%E2%80%93FBI_encryption_d... And no, I wouldn’t trust an EU government or coalition any more than the US or any other country

Could have a distributed system so physical access gives you nothing. Could have the vendor pick a time for release. If all nodes agree the time has arrived release the payload. Make it so that nothing can be released silently. Give the vendor some time to sound the alarm if something goes wrong.

I don't know to what extend you could do a key update on illegitimate released. It seems you have bigger problems to worry about at that point.

To do it earlier you could have judges sign for release and require one or more judge keys to decrypt the vendor keys.

Re: New EU-wide product repair rules come into force

#122

Post by bji9jhff »

braiamp wrote: post #113
eimrine wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course you should, pal! You should not buy any proprietary shite to stop investing into even more invasive proprietary antiuseful technologies. But you use to not do that, so we both are going to experience suffering. Thank you for being the bad actor for me.

This comment implies that we have options... we do not have options. Hell, there are places where such options are actually outlawed!

Which options are outlawed and where?

Re: New EU-wide product repair rules come into force

#123

Post by fhn »

m000 wrote: post #92
jhoechtl wrote: post #69

I would like to see small appliances inbuilt batteries (mostly Li-Ion based) be prohibted. It contributes to device obsolescence and is a security risk --> burning waste dumps.

Especially vaping devices. Cigarette butts were at least easier to dispose of than these plastic encased tips and single use vapes.

it's insane to me they designed it to be higher cost(li-ion + usb charging + oled screens!) than just using disposable AA batteries.

Re: New EU-wide product repair rules come into force

#124

Post by pjc50 »

m000 wrote: post #92
jhoechtl wrote: post #69

I would like to see small appliances inbuilt batteries (mostly Li-Ion based) be prohibted. It contributes to device obsolescence and is a security risk --> burning waste dumps.

Especially vaping devices. Cigarette butts were at least easier to dispose of than these plastic encased tips and single use vapes.

I don't think single use vapes were ever compliant with WEEE, it's just that it's not enforced.

Re: New EU-wide product repair rules come into force

#125

Post by ethbr1 »

vv_ wrote: post #111
ethbr1 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This issue extends beyond electronics as well. People often throw away clothes once they "go out of fashion," which these days happens exceptionally quickly. The same applies to furniture, appliances, and other consumer goods This deserves a 'in the first world' caveat. Most waste streams terminate in the not-first world. There's a reason there are so many photos of African and SE Asian markets full of a hodgepodge…

> Which is to say, increasing repairability shouldn't just be measured by how likely the first world is to use it, but also to how useful it would be to downstream consumers. Cars are a good example of this. Historically, people in Western Europe would sell their used vehicles into what was essentially a second-hand market in Eastern Europe. This worked and continues to work to this day. While a car is a good example…

> And I'm not talking about the difficulty of replacing a glued-in battery, but rather the cost and expertise required for component-level repairs on the motherboard, something no regulation is going to magically make disappear

Fair, on the hardware side, but why shouldn't we try to improve things on the firmware/software side, if it can be regulated at negligible cost? (the vendor releasing things instead of simply not)

As the Penny Arcade quip opined about engineered artificial scarcity: 'It's like we were given a universal assembler, and the first thing we chose to make was cancer.'

> There are also cases where manufacturers rely on intellectual property from third-party vendors and simply cannot release or open-source the code

I don't buy the 'but third-party IP' argument. If regulation existed that forced, then third parties that want to sell into the mobile market would license / assign IP under the terms they have to. (Or they'd get out of the market)

The unreleasable stack due to third party IP is a contract/market problem, not a fundamental universal truth.

Re: New EU-wide product repair rules come into force

#126

Post by braiamp »

bji9jhff wrote: post #122
braiamp wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment implies that we have options... we do not have options. Hell, there are places where such options are actually outlawed!

Which options are outlawed and where?

Just look at anything that require certification and prohibit modification, PCI endpoints, FIPS, fuel pumps, aviation, medical software, gambling machines... most of those are outlawed because the law made it prohibitively expensive or cumbersome for someone to make an alternative even if the implementation is known

Re: New EU-wide product repair rules come into force

#127

Post by gandalfian »

An official iphone screen for self repair costs more than my entire android phone. That's why people still steal them even locked and unusable. My miele washing machine will last twenty years, possibly indefinitely but every seven years it needs a repair costing £300 from Miele... Repairable is a start, economically repairable is trickier.

Re: New EU-wide product repair rules come into force

#128

Post by shiandow »

philipallstar wrote: post #118
shiandow wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard to tell, but if you were to replace anything when doing so would be cheaper I think people would be throwing away a lot more. If you want an economic argument there's no way to sell my free time for anywhere near the market rate on such a short notice.

Sorry, I can't quite parse either of those sentences. Are you able to say them another way, or a simpler way?

I can spend an hour repairing my bicycle tire and get it working for a few years or I can buy several new tires by working more hours.

If everyone did that we would need a lot more bicycle tires.

Edit: If you want a more extreme example. I might be able to afford more socks by doing paid work than I can wash in the same amount of time.

Re: New EU-wide product repair rules come into force

#129

Post by ninalanyon »

philipallstar wrote: post #42
shiandow wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You underestimate my willingness to 'under sell' my free time by spending it to fix something I own.

How does that generalise across the population?

Have you seen the size of the DIY market across Europe?

Re: New EU-wide product repair rules come into force

#130

Post by ninalanyon »

idiotsecant wrote: post #91
euroderf wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When did it become socially acceptable to throw things out rather than repair them ? When did it become economically rational ? Helsinki (for one) needs some real repair cafés.

Generally, and for small appliances and electronics especially, you can optimize for cost or repairability. Consumers largely do not consider repairability when purchasing but they hugely consider cost. It's easy to see why the market is disincentivized to create repairable goods. It's because that's what we collectively told them to do.

That's because even people in industry have a hard time determining total lifetime cost and salesmen are paid commission based on shifting the product rather than supporting the customer over the lifetime of the product. This is a problem even in heavy electrical engineering companies where products can be expected to be used for fifty years or more and still be repairable at that age.

Sometimes it makes sense but often we should as a society sacrifice a little upfront convenience and price in service of reducing total lifetime cost. Very often, perhaps always, this will only happen if governments step in and set enforceable targets.

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