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

New York Senate passes Right to Repair bill

ifixit.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 206 posts

Re: New York Senate passes Right to Repair bill

#181

Post by pembrook »

Karunamon wrote: post #156
pembrook wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You won't hear any here. HN, while libertarian-leaning on many issues, is overwhelmingly in favor of government regulation on this topic. I'll be downvoted, but here's a few real potential downsides (which exist anytime a small group of people with good intentions THINK they understand a complex issue enough to fix it). All regulation has unintended consequences: Ineffective at stopping E-waste - The main reason peop…

This is a bad post. 1. It complains about downvotes, which is one of many reasons your post is grey. 2. The main reason people throw electronics away is not because they break, but because they become obsolete : Big [citation needed] on shorter time scales. For longer time scales it's intuitively true but irrelevant. With Moore's law being toast, most hardware upgrades are extremely incremental. I don't get any more…

> With Moore's law being toast, most hardware upgrades are extremely incremental.

This is news to me. Not sure if you've heard, 1nm has already been achieved in processors, and Apple has been keeping the progress curve alive with SOC architecture: https://siliconangle.com/2021/04/10/new-era-innovation-moore...

>No innovation is being stifled by requiring, say, user-replaceable batteries

This is exactly my point. You have good intentions and are trying to solve the problem.

But by doing so you've just made a dangerous authoritarian decision for the future of all computing. Who knows what form batteries will take in the future, especially as power needs are reduced. Look at how much less power the M1 SOC takes vs. Intel chips and multiply that by 10. Now think of all the new form factors that would be enabled by this, and where your law might be a hinderance in 20+ years (yet impossible politically to repeal).

New tech is fragile. All it takes is one guy in legal to say "too risky, violates X law" and said experimental product is set back a decade or two.

> Shitty chinese clones happen with a quickness even today, yet for some reason people still spend billions on name brand devices. I do not foresee this meaningfully changing.

I don't have the same crystal ball to predict the future, I guess. How can you be so sure? Because America is the best at everything and will always be the best? History is filled with predictions of a future that never came to be.

Overall, I'm sympathetic to the cause, but I think the RTR movement is a little too dogmatic and authoritarian for my tastes. If the market wanted the same things as RTR, companies would already be creating their products this way and minting profits. The market isn't perfectly efficient, but it mostly is.

...and if Apple is wrong, and people actually do care about user-replaceable batteries, you should run out and start a RTR-friendly hardware company tomorrow and win the market!

Re: New York Senate passes Right to Repair bill

#182

Post by Veedrac »

fitchjo wrote: post #59
myfavoritedog wrote: post #52

4. Excludes motor vehicle manufacturers, manufacturer of motor vehicle equipment, or motor vehicle dealers and medical devices or a digital electronic product or embedded software found in medical settings. For all the bravado about standing up to powerful interests, this shows you who the most powerful interests are in that space.

Am I being a bit naive to think that this has more to do with public safety? In theory, there is some increased level of regulation/review of the car and medical device manufacturers that limits the risk these repairs aren’t done to an appropriate standard? You can make a trade-off between standard of repair and price for your iPhone that only impacts the device, but cars and medical devices not properly repaired cou…

This is the wrong place to regulate that. If buildings need to adhere to certain fire safety requirements, you have a law that says people modifying the property need to follow those requirements. You don't make a law that says only the original builder of the house is allowed to repair the house.

Re: New York Senate passes Right to Repair bill

#183

Post by rascul »

timzentu wrote: post #175
bastijn wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By passing a right to repair on medical devices you also open up the aftermarket for repairs. Would you like to be handed a medical device by your insurance company that has been repaired by an untrained person that considers himself to be a handyman? Or be put in a scanner that was repaired by a service engineer from a broker that is cutting corners to win in the competing market. Without clear quality and regulator…

But if the insurance company doesn't want to be liable for it it would require a certified and/or bonded tech. In the US cars don't even require this to be stringent. You don't need any schooling to become ASC Certified mechanic, just take a test, no limiting factors for how often you need to recertify, or if you fail it so many times you need to school/train. At least in Canada you need to go to school, and then be…

> In the US cars don't even require this to be stringent. You don't need any schooling to become ASC Certified mechanic, just take a test, no limiting factors for how often you need to recertify, or if you fail it so many times you need to school/train.

There's no legal requirement in the US federally, or in any state I'm aware of, to have any certifications for general automotive repair. The EPA does require it for working on air conditioning systems, though. [0] However, many employers do require certification and/or will assist in getting the certifications. Some of the smaller shops are more likely to have mechanics without certifications or with expired certifications (I believe ASE certs are five years). ASE does require hands on experience for their certifications in addition to the test, though. [1]

The BLS also describes this, probably better than I do. [2]

[0] https://www.epa.gov/mvac/section-609-technician-training-and...

[1] https://www.ase.com/work-experience

[2] https://www.bls.gov/ooh/installation-maintenance-and-repair/...

Re: New York Senate passes Right to Repair bill

#184

Post by andrei_says_ »

dntrkv wrote: post #81
andrei_says_ wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Watch some of his videos. He has a lot of insight about the subpar quality of Apple devices, about the outrageous lies of Apple Genius Bar quoting people thousands of dollars for repairs that take him 5-10 minutes, for apple’s efforts to make the devices non serviceable, withholding schematics, controlling access to replacement parts etc. Here’s a televised CBS report. https://youtu.be/o2_SZ4tfLns He is extremely goo…

I'm not sure that's the best example. In my mind, it makes sense that Apple won't repair a device that has signs of water damage without replacing all potentially affected parts (the bit about humidity is a discussion all on its own). Water damage can surface in a myriad of ways, and the last thing they want to do is charge a customer for a fix, only for them to come back demanding a refund because their device is br…

An additional perspective is that Rossman’s 5-min free repair cost Apple $1000+ in revenue.

Apple can totally scale repair but it won’t be as cheap and profitable.

So what they scale instead is lying to their customers.

The Genius Bar employee presented a lie as a certain fact. They didn’t say that there’s more to be found out, that humidity indicators are sometimes unreliable etc.

They went with the highest grossing lie.

That’s a policy.

Having such policies calls for legislation protecting the customer and giving independent repair some chance.

Re: New York Senate passes Right to Repair bill

#185

Post by t-writescode »

kwiens wrote: post #63
myfavoritedog wrote: post #52

4. Excludes motor vehicle manufacturers, manufacturer of motor vehicle equipment, or motor vehicle dealers and medical devices or a digital electronic product or embedded software found in medical settings. For all the bravado about standing up to powerful interests, this shows you who the most powerful interests are in that space.

We excluded autos because the Massachusetts auto right to repair bill (most recently updated in November) covers this, and there's a nationwide MOU. Tesla is the only manufacturer that has not signed this MOU. There is a lawsuit around that ballot initiative, and iFixit and EFF just filed an Amicus on Monday supporting the law. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/06/eff-files-amicus-brief... Sometimes it's better to f…

What about farm vehicles?

Re: New York Senate passes Right to Repair bill

#186

Post by idownvoted »

ChicagoBoy11 wrote: post #123
pembrook wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You won't hear any here. HN, while libertarian-leaning on many issues, is overwhelmingly in favor of government regulation on this topic. I'll be downvoted, but here's a few real potential downsides (which exist anytime a small group of people with good intentions THINK they understand a complex issue enough to fix it). All regulation has unintended consequences: Ineffective at stopping E-waste - The main reason peop…

Whatever folks' objections to these reasons may be, this does seem like a great accounting of logical and well-reasoned objections to this legislation, which is what I was looking for. Sounds to me like it'd be important to properly consider this issue to at least do some mental gymnastics as to what the possible objections could be. Sorry to see that you were, indeed, downvoted.

Seasoned HN-readers will know on which topics just to scroll down unitl you find the greyed out answers.

The downvotes Pembrook received are proving his point.

Re: New York Senate passes Right to Repair bill

#187

Post by idownvoted »

Daishiman wrote: post #62
MuffinFlavored wrote: post #53

Did you know that if you buy a 2021 BMW M5 and paid $120k for it in cash (no financing), then let the warranty expire (or hypothetically signed an opt-in waiver forgoing your powertrain warranty), you still can't flash your own calibration map to increase power into the engine control units? I'm sure there's a ton of good reasons why liability wise. Just seems crazy to me. I guess it's the same when you buy a $1k iPh…

That sounds... totally reasonable? A badly flashed ECU can trivially wreck your engine. It can make it wear out faster. It can increase emissions. I have no objection with voiding warranty repairs if you reflash an ECU. The important thing is that you should still be able to do it, and still be able to fix the car yourself and get replacement parts.

> you should still be able to do it, and still be able to fix the car yourself and get replacement parts.

So should manufacturers be responsible for providing replacement parts? For all of their products components?

For how long? For ever? If say for only 10 years, on what basis would it be 10 years and not 5 or 15?

Re: New York Senate passes Right to Repair bill

#188

Post by sam345 »

Can someone please explain exactly what regulations are being proposed and what manufactures will be required to do? Are manufacturer going to be, for example, required to manufacture electronic parts for every old model and keep them available for 10 years as was suggested in one comment? I'm sympathetic but there is no way this is going to work. There are literally thousands of different models of phones, for example, made every year. Ask yourself if it is it really practical to require manufacturers to keep generating parts for every old model? And then multiply that problem countlessly for every other electronic product out there.I don't think this is an area for regulation This is a recipe for shutting down the tech hardware industry. This is an area for customer pressure not regulations. This will be a hugely burdensome on manufacturers and will greatly reduce the amount of innovation and new products. And shut many new products out of the marketplace.

Re: New York Senate passes Right to Repair bill

#189

Post by the_pwner224 »

hutzlibu wrote: post #87
andrei_says_ wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about non-removable batteries that are also glued in? With a excessive amount of glue? Making them doubly non-removable?

There is the valid argument, of sealing it in, for water protection. I am still looking for a new phone, which removable battery.

That is incorrect. The Samsung Galaxy S5 had a removable battery and headphone jack and was still waterproof. It was a $550 phone and was a flagship with the latest hardware/performance stuff, so clearly this was practical from a cost/manufacturing standpoint. Waterproofing is not a valid reason against having removable batteries or ports.
Post reply on HN