141–150 of 321 posts
You might want to repair something yourself but you are in a minority and the market wants to buy products for cheap and throw them away at end of life.
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Unfortunately, what ends up happening in most cases is that people make products, give them a ridiculous 1y or 2y warranty, then claim that if there're any problems after that time period you'll have to pay to repair or replace.
In our country we have a law that states a product has to live up to it's reasonably expected life time. So while a manufacturer might give it a warranty and the retailer might give it some special warranty, ultimately, the retailer (which in some cases is the manufacturer if you buy directly) is responsible no matter what. That doesn't go for consumables or software, or if you break it yourself obviously, but a phon…
I'd hope this scheme would be good for the consumer as they'd find it easier to budget (spread out regular payments), good for the environment as manufacturers would no longer have any incentive to make things hard to repair (forced upgrade cycles, ecosystem lock-in), and good for the manufacturer as they could focus less on forced upgrade cycles and more on a quality product to keep the consumer subscribed.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In our country we have a law that states a product has to live up to it's reasonably expected life time. So while a manufacturer might give it a warranty and the retailer might give it some special warranty, ultimately, the retailer (which in some cases is the manufacturer if you buy directly) is responsible no matter what. That doesn't go for consumables or software, or if you break it yourself obviously, but a phon…
How is "reasonably expected life time" defined?
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Goods and services are always (and will always be) separate for those at the top of the economic food chain. Why should it be different for those who are less privileged? Looks like a likely avenue for exploiting or at least taking control/power/freedom from other people. Don’t count on service quality laws to make up the disparity caused by losing the right to full ownership of one’s property.
> Goods and services are always (and will always be) separate for those at the top of the economic food chain. Why should it be different for those who are less privileged? Looks like a likely avenue for exploiting or at least taking control/power/freedom from other people. Can you come up with a concrete scenario? > Don’t count on service quality laws to make up the disparity caused by losing the right to full owner…
The current events cited in the article serve as examples.
There aren’t a lot of universal human “rights” that are self-evident in the context of common law, but the few that are ought to be held as absolutely sacred and inalienable. Property ownership is one of them.
I've been thinking recently that there is exists a completely unxplored market in tech. Local shops based around FOSS / open hardware where designers, hardware and software people work together to build custom projects for their clients. I would call this person a "technology artisan", because the closest analogue I can think of is a tailor or a carpinter. So, for example, a family would go to their local technology…
I'd be willing to replace my one-off expensive tech purchases with a subscription model for a specific hardware manufacturer instead. The subscription would get you your device (smartphone, car, fridge etc.) and ongoing support & servicing. You'd be entitled to an upgrade at a predetermined interval. I'd hope this scheme would be good for the consumer as they'd find it easier to budget (spread out regular payments),…
He cracks gear open before he's ever turned it on to look for build quality and/or any janky crap, then reassembles and runs it after. (No, he's not batting 1.000, but he's good.)
Classic teardown here of some sweet gear from the fourth smallest country (area) in Europe (0m37s, 1m06s & 1m21s are +1 moments, btw.)
URL, https://youtu.be/Yt2z6hEnQBs
I'm behind on the comments but I hope someone linked back to the "It Should Last Fifty Years" thread from the past ~12 mo or so: highly relevant to the topic at hand.
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> All of this electronics churn is environmentally terrible, and it's frustrating that, as with carbon energy products, the entire world is forced to pay for the environmental externalities rather than the actual tech users. Well, let’s see what a leading company is saying about that: ”We believe our goal should be a closed-loop supply chain, where products are built using only renewable resources or recycled materia…
It's not just cypherpunks and hardware hackers. We in the occult communities also very much believe in the same ideals. In fact, this saying is what this discussion reminded me of: Nidhogg's Rule: Recycling. There is no such place as Away, so be careful what you throw there. Recycle, give away, don't waste, find a place for it somewhere else. This includes people as well as things. http://www.northernpaganism.org/rok…
(Also, nitpick, but cypherpunk != cyberpunk; the former won't care about repairability of the hardware, unless you put your private key on it.)
You can thank Louis Rossmann, in part, for this one. His livelihood does depend on it (although he has acknowledged that, as electronics get more disposable, he will inevitably end up having to shift into something like software or hardware design), but he has made a really admirable effort of actually going boots-on-the-ground and lobbying at political hearings.
His videos on YouTube when he teaches people how to do board-level Macbook repairs, for free (while advertising his own business of course): https://www.youtube.com/user/rossmanngroup/videos Even though I'm a programmer and not really a hardware guy, I find watching him repairing stuff very interesting and oddly satisfying. He often even does all this on a live stream. PS. For some reason most of his videos get a "do…
Just got that ad... in Polish. Seriously, what's going on with that? Why always this ad?