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One man’s fight for the right to repair broken MacBooks

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Re: One man’s fight for the right to repair broken MacBooks

#221

Post by prvc »

drumhead wrote: post #78
defaultname wrote: post #3

Rossmann is an important voice in the right to repair, however I do feel like he leaned into a certain audience, pandering to them a bit as a reliable target for ad impressions, and it has undermined his credibility. I hear about Rossmann most now when some vicious Apple detractor uses him as an authority on things having nothing to do with repair. For instance Rossmann did a video titled "Apple watching & logging EV…

This feels like one of those x is great but.... posts that you see you in NSA or GCHQ manuals about influencing the narrative in an online discussion. I saw a lot of it during the Israeli/Palestinian conflict last week. This post feels the same.

Or, just a run-of the-mill Apple fan.

Re: One man’s fight for the right to repair broken MacBooks

#222

Post by bstar77 »

COGlory wrote: post #160
dijit wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a shame to see this downvoted because even if it’s against what many people believe (we all have “hero’s” and “villains” I suppose, and our hero’s do no wrong) it’s something I also see. I used to watch a lot of Rossman and glossed over his Apple hate because ultimately Apple are putting him and people like him out of a job, so it’s fair to be salty. But a large portion of his content (a few years ago at least)…

It's funny to see this analysis, because in my mind Rossman is simply being a New Yorker and doing things exactly as I'd expect a New Yorker to do them. The mentality that city forces on people to survive produces a narrow personality outcome and Rossman's personality is one of those.

I don't think being a New Yorker means you are destined to be as asshole. I'm from Jersey and generally don't care for people that meet the NY/NJ stereotypes. Maybe that's why guys like Rossman don't impress me.

Re: One man’s fight for the right to repair broken MacBooks

#223

Post by defaultname »

dahart wrote: post #113
defaultname wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His YouTube channel is estimated to net him $500K+ per year with negligible expenses. His business has an estimated revenue , per the linked article, of 1-2 million per year, with 15 employees or so. In all probability the YT channel is much more lucrative than the business is.

Where are you getting your speculative estimates? I just googled it and see numbers about a tenth of what you’re suggesting for 1.5M subscribers. It doesn’t seem probable at all that his channel is more lucrative. I also don’t understand why you emphasized “revenue” for the repair business, when the YT income is also revenue, or how you know what his YT channel expenses are. Care to elaborate?

There are a number of sources that put him in that league given his number of videos and engagement.

As to why I emphasized revenue, the expense to run a YouTube channel from a little room is a world removed from running a repair business with 15 employees.

Re: One man’s fight for the right to repair broken MacBooks

#224

Post by read_if_gay_ »

helmholtz wrote: post #144
wintermutestwin wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that discovery is broken. This random post on HN led me to more subscribe worthy channels than months of looking at Youtube recommendations has.

Give us your best-of list then lad!

This is a good one:

https://thume.ca/2020/07/19/my-youtube-tier-list/

Re: One man’s fight for the right to repair broken MacBooks

#225

Post by andmichael »

______- wrote: post #140
ravenstine wrote: post #8

Sadly, you and I watch a different YouTube than probably 95% of people. Almost nobody I've talked to has heard of Lex or Louis, or Bret Weinstein, or Sean Carroll, and so forth. Just open youtube.com in a private window and you'll understand. Even if the average person watched some of Louis Rossmann's videos on the right to repair, I just don't think the importance of the issue would compute with them. Almost nobody…

> Just open youtube.com in a private window and you'll understand Eh it doesn't work like that. Youtube is actually very good at reliably determining it's you who's in that private window and Youtube is even known to track you with WebGL fingerprinting tactics to determine it's the same device. Doing things like spoofing your IP and useragent and using private mode browsing doesn't work. (I still get recommendations…

On non-incognito I get a page full of 6 second twitch clips. On incognito I get a page full of 6 second soccer clips and Turkish music videos (I live in a partly Turkish-speaking country, in my whole life I have never clicked on a single Turkish video)

Fingerprinting is used almost exclusively for anti-spam/anti-fraud. If a company wanted to use it for anything else they'd have to deal with a whole bunch of legal and pr trouble for relatively little gain. While you will be able to see WebGL Fingerprinting in the javascript of most every large website, if you scan for it dynamically you will often find it's only ran on a failed login attempt, for example. (Granted, I haven't scanned youtube in a while)

Re: One man’s fight for the right to repair broken MacBooks

#226

Post by spamizbad »

paulgerhardt wrote: post #208

Living in Shenzhen, it’s shocking how easy it is to go out and repair stuff. Living in Palo Alto, it’s frustrating how hard it is. I’m thinking maybe, just maybe, introducing repairability laws won’t solve the problem. I am perfectly happy upgrading the memory on my MacBook Air with a reflow air station rather than swapping out some dims if it means my laptop is half as thick and twice as rugged. I’m also just as hap…

Right to Repair isn’t demanding manufacturers make all memory socketed: but if a RAM chip goes bad they are asking that a new one can be purchased legally and soldered in place. Right now, there are many 40-cent components in laptops a repair shop cannot purchase from component manufacturers because Apple, or Asus or whenever told them not to sell it to 3rd parties. Or proprietary firmware flashing tools, or what have you. None of this impacts the physical form factor of a machine.

Re: One man’s fight for the right to repair broken MacBooks

#227

Post by [deleted] »

kiba wrote: post #219
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A major problem with Rossmann I have is that he leaned into a strong anti-Apple PCMasterRace crowd. For them, listening to him rant against Apple gives them a fun confirmation bias that they were right to buy PCs. They enjoy listening to that, but his very long rants aren't very interesting to newcomers or for spreading right to repair to new audiences. Does my mom have time for a 45-minute rant full of complex techn…

You do realize that apple products is what he work on/specialize in, right? Or do you rather that Rossmann talk about what he doesn't know?

[deleted]

Re: One man’s fight for the right to repair broken MacBooks

#228

Post by Brian_K_White »

COGlory wrote: post #160
dijit wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a shame to see this downvoted because even if it’s against what many people believe (we all have “hero’s” and “villains” I suppose, and our hero’s do no wrong) it’s something I also see. I used to watch a lot of Rossman and glossed over his Apple hate because ultimately Apple are putting him and people like him out of a job, so it’s fair to be salty. But a large portion of his content (a few years ago at least)…

It's funny to see this analysis, because in my mind Rossman is simply being a New Yorker and doing things exactly as I'd expect a New Yorker to do them. The mentality that city forces on people to survive produces a narrow personality outcome and Rossman's personality is one of those.

I don't understand what his being a NYer has to do with anything.

Which statement has he made that was either a lie or an error?

What else matters than that?

I understand not finding the videoes enjoyable 3 hours of entertainment. That's hardly anyone's cup or tea. I mean finding his arguments questionable.

Is it somehow NYer of me to demand this explaination that if you're going to say someone's wrong, they actually have to be wrong?

Re: One man’s fight for the right to repair broken MacBooks

#229

Post by rockbruno »

It's absurd how difficult it's to repair a MacBook. I have a 2009 MacBook that needed to have its keyboard replaced after my mother dropped coffee on it. Not only I had to disassemble the ENTIRE MacBook to reach the keyboard, the keyboard itself is covered by a plastic sheet that is super glued to both the MacBook and the keyboard. It took an enormous amount of time to remove the glue, and not only the keyboard was completely destroyed in the process, the case itself cracked a little bit due to the amount of force needed to remove said plastic sheet. And that's without even mentioning that there was at least 3 different types of security screws before even reaching this point.

Re: One man’s fight for the right to repair broken MacBooks

#230

Post by ______- »

andmichael wrote: post #225
______- wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just open youtube.com in a private window and you'll understand Eh it doesn't work like that. Youtube is actually very good at reliably determining it's you who's in that private window and Youtube is even known to track you with WebGL fingerprinting tactics to determine it's the same device. Doing things like spoofing your IP and useragent and using private mode browsing doesn't work. (I still get recommendations…

On non-incognito I get a page full of 6 second twitch clips. On incognito I get a page full of 6 second soccer clips and Turkish music videos (I live in a partly Turkish-speaking country, in my whole life I have never clicked on a single Turkish video) Fingerprinting is used almost exclusively for anti-spam/anti-fraud. If a company wanted to use it for anything else they'd have to deal with a whole bunch of legal and…

Since Youtube fingerprints your device with WebGL[0], it builds a shadow profile tied to that device, so that even in incognito/private sessions, you will get recommended videos that you recently watched, despite the anecdotal claims of others that they don't encounter this.

The only way to defeat that is to use an entirely separate device on a separate network that has a different fingerprint.

[0] https://jonatron.github.io/webgl-fingerprinting/

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