Nebraska farmers vote overwhelmingly for Right to Repair • Hacker News Board

Re: Nebraska farmers vote overwhelmingly for Right to Repair

#221

Post by sangnoir » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 1:08 AM UTC

jandrese wrote: post #155

sangnoir wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Have I missed anyone? "Security-minded" folk who insist corporates should have full control of their device via signed code from pre-boot, incidentally preventing "non-authorised" replacement parts from working since repair is an attack vector, allegedly.

What's the threat model for a tractor/harvester/etc...? Who wants to send a piece of farm equipment on a very slow rampage via a complex and difficult hack job? One that will be stopped if the manufacturer has any sense at all and has physical kill switch. Maybe sabotage from competing farmers? But that seems far less likely than the owner wanting to maintain his equipment after the manufacturer has abandoned it.

John Deere is not the only opponent to right-to-repair: Apple has consistently opposed any such proposals and I had them in mind (and Google too with how it handles security on Chromebooks; granted, Google provides a temporary "run-your-own-code" escape-hatch at boot time). Whenever Apples antipathy to 3rd party repairs is discussed on HN - there's almost always a contingent that declares security (as imposed by Apple) is a reasonable trade-off to for not being able to do your own repairs

Re: Nebraska farmers vote overwhelmingly for Right to Repair

#222

Post by gowld » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 1:15 AM UTC

sangnoir wrote: post #119

ISL wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case, my phone is a Google product. Google can make available the drivers if it so desires.

Google doesn't make chips and therefore doesn't own the SoC IP - Qualcomm does. Google may not make unilaterally decide to avail those drivers. They could theoretically play hardball with Qualcomm on the licensing, but I doubt the Pixel line brings in enough revenue for Qualcomm to even consider that threat for more than half a second.

The drivers work fine; the problem is Google dropping OS support. If Google doesn't figure something out soon, a lot of people who bought Google's iPhone competitor since 2016 are starting to notice that Pixels have no longevity and no resale value, and wondering why they are paying more to get less than an iPhone.

Re: Nebraska farmers vote overwhelmingly for Right to Repair

#223

Post by andrepd » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 1:15 AM UTC

FactolSarin wrote: post #194

aguyfromnb wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This month, Google shipped the last update for my Pixel phone. The hardware is functional and in great shape, but I don't think there are any truly viable ways for me to keep it secure. The same thing happened recently with the Chromebook I purchased for my significant other. She's a very light computer user, so we thought it was a perfect device. It was great, until one day she received a message saying, essential…

Microsoft products get supported basically forever. But they're not cool/trendy.

Windows 7 is due to stop being updated very soon, all the while the only alternative is to downgrade into Windows 10.j sure don't call that "basically forever".

Re: Nebraska farmers vote overwhelmingly for Right to Repair

#224

Post by gowld » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 1:18 AM UTC

ssivark wrote: post #208

takeda wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue there is that you're missing the app ecosystem. Without it, why not just use a "dumb" phone?

The app ecosystem is just a matter of time, once there exists a solid foundation. We need the breakthrough device that will make it possible to get started. Consider Linux on the desktop. For about a decade after it became popular (late 90s) ie till late 2000s, the user experience was crappy, and the app ecosystem was sparse. But they developed so well over the next ten years that in many ways Linux today is more use…

95% of the market does not find Linux more user-friendly than Windows/MacOS. While Linux was getting its shoelaces tied, ChromeOS showed up and put the lie to the dream that any user-controlled Linux would satisfy the market's needs.

2020 is the Year of Linux on the Desktop.

Re: Nebraska farmers vote overwhelmingly for Right to Repair

#225

Post by aeternum » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 1:20 AM UTC

bduerst wrote: post #125

Balanceinfinity wrote: post #120

An economist would say that when considering buying this machinery the farmer would also consider the cost and availability of repairs and that the competition in the machinery market (the primary market) would police the secondary market for repairs. In reality, this kind of policing is hard to come by because of the time and expense of figuring out which company has the cheapest lifecycle1 costs for the equipment (…

When buying, if there are contractual strings attached to the use of the asset then it's more of a lease purchase than actual asset purchase. As it is now, farmers that are purchasing the asset are saying they want to use the asset as they deem fit, including repairs.

The problem is that almost every new device now includes these hidden contractual strings. Your phone will only run software signed by the developer, same with your smart tv, chromebook, your car, many new refrigerators, etc.

As a consumer, it is very hard to determine the restrictions that this imposes on ability to fix as it varies widely between devices.

I haven't seen any manufacturer label these items as a lease nor be upfront with the support lifetime.

Re: Nebraska farmers vote overwhelmingly for Right to Repair

#226

Post by uponcoffee » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 1:21 AM UTC

p1necone wrote: post #203

cletus wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So here is an area where Apple is significantly better than Android. The original Pixel is just over 3 years old and is now EOL for official releases. iOS 13 (current version) has minimum hadware of the iPhone 6S, released September 2015. That may only be a year but it will continue to receive iOS 13 updates for probably another year or so at least (rumour has it iOS 14 will be released late 2020 and no one yet knows…

This is still garbage compared to Windows and Linux though. You can take basically any x86 computer from more than a decade ago and install modern Windows or your favourite linux distribution on it and it will work (albeit potentially quite slowly depending on the hardware). Are there any good reasons why Android and iOS are so much worse in this regard?

Tight coupling to binary blobs and proprietary HALs + vendor specific OS changes etc make maintenance a chore - everyone in the chain has to be on board for it to happen.

They are incentized not to, new phones means profit for carriers and new hardware means profit for chip makers.

Maintaining old products costs money, not maintaining products saves money, planned obsolescence prints money

Re: Nebraska farmers vote overwhelmingly for Right to Repair

#227

Post by sangnoir » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 1:21 AM UTC

gowld wrote: post #222

sangnoir wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google doesn't make chips and therefore doesn't own the SoC IP - Qualcomm does. Google may not make unilaterally decide to avail those drivers. They could theoretically play hardball with Qualcomm on the licensing, but I doubt the Pixel line brings in enough revenue for Qualcomm to even consider that threat for more than half a second.

The drivers work fine; the problem is Google dropping OS support. If Google doesn't figure something out soon, a lot of people who bought Google's iPhone competitor since 2016 are starting to notice that Pixels have no longevity and no resale value, and wondering why they are paying more to get less than an iPhone.

The drivers don't work fine when you upgrade the Linux kernel - which is the planned obsolescence that Qualcomm has relied on to push the sales of the latest Snapdragon. I don't know if custom Android ROMs are still a popular, but (SoC & camera) drivers were what forced custom ROMs to stick old kernels.

Project Treble is Google's plan to keep the drivers working - I don't know how well that's going seeing that OEMs were given the option to not support it at the time it was launched.

Re: Nebraska farmers vote overwhelmingly for Right to Repair

#228

Post by dwg » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 1:31 AM UTC

baroffoos wrote: post #188

umvi wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That happened to my Chromebook too, so I just installed GalliumOS on it, and it's been getting updates regularly for over a year now.

The problem is even though we can do this, the average user doesn't. They get the unsupported message and they then throw the laptop in the bin and buy the same thing again. All electronics makers should be required by law to supply security updates and spare parts for devices for at least 10 years after the point of sale (not after the release date). Another thing I think would have a big impact is requiring all con…

Why they should electronic makers be "required" to do supply security updates and spare parts for 10 years? To begin with, 10 years is somewhat arbitrary. Why not 12? 15? 20? These tractors could be serviceable for 50 years or more? So why not 50?

Not every consumer wants or cares about this, but every consumer would be forced to pay for it. How would this even be enforced? Who will be the judge of what updates were important and what were not? What if they provide only cheap replacement parts which regularly fail? What if the company goes out of business a few years later? So many problems...

In my opinion it's one thing to create protections that prevent the stoppage of unauthorized repair, or the development of 3rd party replacement parts. However, it's another thing entirely to force companies to provide these services themselves for an arbitrary length of time.

Re: Nebraska farmers vote overwhelmingly for Right to Repair

#229

Post by mdorazio » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 1:32 AM UTC

andrepd wrote: post #223

FactolSarin wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft products get supported basically forever. But they're not cool/trendy.

Windows 7 is due to stop being updated very soon, all the while the only alternative is to downgrade into Windows 10.j sure don't call that "basically forever".

Windows 7 is a 10 year old operating system and pretty much any hardware that ran it can also run Windows 10. Windows 10 was a free upgrade for Windows 7 users for years as well. This is wholly different from something like a phone or Chromebook that has no upgrade path at all when the OS support ends.

Re: Nebraska farmers vote overwhelmingly for Right to Repair

#230

Post by closetohome » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 1:37 AM UTC

cletus wrote: post #210

What many people may not realize is just how long-lived a lot of farm equipment is. There will be tractors out there still working that are 75 years old and just keep getting repaired. Obviously the manufacturers would like to sell those farmers tractors more often than that or, in the very least, generate a revenue stream from existing hardware and honestly that's what I see a lot of computing in vehicles as being:…

The search for an ongoing revenue stream is one of the most destructive forces in the tech industry. It leads to some very customer-hostile experiences.