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Europe Is Guaranteeing Citizens the Right to Repair

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Re: Europe Is Guaranteeing Citizens the Right to Repair

#271

Post by BurningFrog »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #215
BurningFrog wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very hard to know what people, including yourself, really want. So best we can do is observing "revealed preferences", which is what Economists call "what people actually choose".

Have you tried asking pe — sorry, “market research”? If you can make something that people want to pay for, that goes down a lot better than trying to make them buy what you're selling via an elaborate multi-agent optimisation algorithm.

My job is writing software, so I never have reason to do market research.

My strong impression is it's hard to do. People may say the want kale, but end up buying donuts.

They weren't lying about wanting to be the kind of person who buys kale. But at the moment of truth, they got donuts "just this once".

Re: Europe Is Guaranteeing Citizens the Right to Repair

#272

Post by asddubs »

ako wrote: post #114
mywacaday wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Youtube on my mother in laws Samsung tablet from 2013 has stopped working. It has stopped because it has android 4 and you can't update chrome past V42 and youtube won't load without a later version of chrome. I installed firefox and she has access to youtube through the web for now. The tablet is in immaculate condition physically. if it played youtube in 2013 it should be able to play it now, it cost over €500 at t…

That is not planned obsolence. Nobody said this tablet should stop working by 2021. It's simply the result of limiting cost of software development. If you are creating a new version of android, you cant affort to support all devices. If you create a new version of chrome, you cant affort to support all version of android. If you create a new version of youtube, you cant afford to support all versions of chrome, etc,…

you should at least have a way to install another OS on it then. So IMO driver blobs are a real part of the problem here

Re: Europe Is Guaranteeing Citizens the Right to Repair

#273

Post by corty »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #260
balfirevic wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But in the context of this thread it seems that they do have (long lasting, repairable) Miele appliances available and they choose to buy other ones.

Perhaps they cannot price in reliability? How many people know that Miele offers long lasting and repairable appliances, instead of just expensive ones? I for one "know" this by weighing HN anecdotes I've seen over the years - couple dozen saying that they sell solid stuff, and one or two saying that they used to sell solid stuff, but are now following the trend of replacing metal components with cheap plastics. How…

The abstract problem is that the market is imperfect due to insufficient customer knowledge. I know my last washing machine lasted X years, but how that will compare to the new one from the same manufacturer, I don't know. The manufacturer also won't (really) tell me, just the usual fluff about quality.

So as a consumer, I am unable to decide objectively, just using rumours if there isn't a hard guarantee or a trustworthy evaluation of the quality of all products I could pick. In that situation, I will price in the uncertainty, I will evaluate the rumours and the tendency to produce crappier stuff over time. And when in doubt, buy 4 cheap short-lived washing machines instead of 1 for 4 times the price.

Re: Europe Is Guaranteeing Citizens the Right to Repair

#274

Post by wombatmobile »

lostlogin wrote: post #194
wombatmobile wrote: post #48

I strongly prefer to repair devices and am reluctant to throw any broken manufactured good out, even when I have poor prospects of repairing them. Instead, I just hold on to them. Phones, stereos, vacuum cleaners, clocks, computers. My shelves are full of broken items, and good intentions, frozen in amber. Why do I think like this? I think it is a psychological condition. It isn't a rational choice. If I apply my edu…

> an espresso machine ... performs twice as well as an equivalent device from 50 years ago This is a terrible example. How coffee is made has not changed much, so machines don’t need to change much. New hardware trends towards more plastic, more logic boards and at the worst end of the scale, more proprietary parts, including the actual coffee. I have repaired and built up several 25+ year old espresso machines and g…

50 years ago, there were no cheap home espresso machines, only the US$3K commercial versions you work on.

What changed was not the way coffee is made, but the way coffee is sold and consumer grade machines are manufactured at scale. We now have cheap espresso machines which don't last very long, as you have noted. I bought one last week second hand for $70. The new price for that machine was $300, but the guy sold it to me for $70 because it was dripping water whilst idle. I disassembled the head, cleaned the rubber ball end, stretched the spring, reassembled, and now it works like a new $300 machine.

I'm told the quality of the coffee is determined more by the grinder than the espresso machine, assuming the latter is working. There are no good cheap grinders.

> I have repaired and built up several 25+ year old espresso machines and grinders, and currently run a 37 year old grinder and a 23 year old espresso machine.

Awesome! If I knew someone like you who lived near me, I would be the same.

Re: Europe Is Guaranteeing Citizens the Right to Repair

#275

Post by Someone »

sitharus wrote: post #259
ogre_codes wrote: post #164

I kind of wonder if we're looking at solving this the wrong way. Instead of mandating that manufacturers take specific steps to fix the waste problem, maybe it would be better to tag items at manufacture and charge device makers a percentage based on how long before it enters the waste stream. Manufacturers could solve this by either: - Making their things easy to repair - Creating in house recycling programs - Makin…

I think all products should come with a disposal fee incorporated, based on the reuse/recycling/compostability ability of the product - with items that are fully biodegradable at home and landfill having no fee at all. This would drive producers to use the most degradable packaging possible so they can drive down the cost of their products. It would also help reduce the problem of producers combining two recyclable p…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Waste_Recycling_Fee shows Some states in the USA have something like that.

The EU has https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_Electrical_and_Electroni.... It doesn’t pay consumers for returning items, but does make it easier. Larger shops _have_ to take in old equipment for free, for example (for smaller electronics even if you aren’t a customer)

In some (¿all?) EU countries, if you have an item (washing machine, television) delivered to your house, the deliverer must take in a similar item, working or not, for free. That makes recycling easier than disposing of the item yourself.

Re: Europe Is Guaranteeing Citizens the Right to Repair

#276

Post by fuzxi »

emteycz wrote: post #173
BossHamster wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even LineageOS can only help so far. I've got a Galaxy S7 Edge, bought it dec. 2016. It's not even supported by Lineage OS any more.

You should switch to the official OS then - it just got an update. As it also did 3, 6 and 12 months ago.

Are you talking about quarterly security patches...?

Re: Europe Is Guaranteeing Citizens the Right to Repair

#277

Post by abiogenesis »

lostlogin wrote: post #182
globile wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. Remember the "2014 Obama Unlocking Law" [1] ? It was supposed to not only not make it ilegal to carrier unlock a phone, but also forced all carriers to adopt a specific code of conduct to assist users with unlocking. Fast forward 6 years, and it is much harder to unlock a phone than it was then. The whole thing backfired for consumers. It was actually easier to unlock a phone in a "non-legal" way before t…

> This mainly applies to US carriers (in the US and Latam), and there certainly are exceptions in Europe where EVERY cell phone is unlocked from day one, regardless of your contractual status. I had no idea this was still a thing, it’s horrible. What mechanism is creating the current situation? Phones are all unlocked here in New Zealand.

> Phones are all unlocked here in New Zealand.

Really? I'm surprised because I'm in AU and there are certainly phones locked to a specific carrier. What about $10 burner phones?

Re: Europe Is Guaranteeing Citizens the Right to Repair

#278

Post by fuzxi »

ganafagol wrote: post #54
stronglikedan wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My old phones are often usable, which is why I only upgrade every three years or so. However, when I do upgrade after waiting so long, it's like I've traveled through time with the improvements. It seems that most people want more than just usable. They may not want to pay more for a device up front, knowing they will be missing out on the latest technology down the road.

Considering 3 years a long time to replace a device is part of the problem.

A large part of that is simply that smartphones entered the market very recently and started out computationally weak compared to existing computers - the first iphone was released less than 14 years ago and had a CPU running at 412MHz!

Smartphones have largely caught up to traditional computers in terms of the time it takes for upgrade-worthy advancements in hardware. I expect we'll see smartphone upgrade cycles continue to lengthen until they mirror desktop/laptop upgrade cycles.

Re: Europe Is Guaranteeing Citizens the Right to Repair

#279

Post by tshaddox »

oauea wrote: post #209
tshaddox wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or go even a step further and directly address the fundamental problem, which is externalities. "Time to entering waste stream" still isn't the fundamental "end result" to optimize. Just require that the cost of plastic and other materials includes the cost of safe disposal or recycling, just like the cost of gasoline ought to include the cost of the externalities of burning it.

It's difficult to predict how much something will cost in the future. If your example was followed then a device that lasts a year and a device that lasts 10 years would have the same added cost. This is not ideal, since it may not be obvious to consumers how long the device will last.

> If your example was followed then a device that lasts a year and a device that lasts 10 years would have the same added cost. This is not ideal, since it may not be obvious to consumers how long the device will last.

That seems entirely orthogonal to me, and market forces would presumably be able to handle consumer preference for longer-lasting products (barring other market failures, like monopolies, but that's also orthogonal to the externalities of using certain materials).

The device that gets thrown away in 10 years still imposes the same externality as the one that gets thrown away after one year [0], and thus I don't see any reason for changing a fee based on that. Note that the person who buys the 1-year devices every year pays 10x the "externality fees" as the person who buys the 10-year device.

[0] Of course, the externalities themselves can change over time, e.g. new better recycling methods, so the externalities would have to be appraised periodically.

Re: Europe Is Guaranteeing Citizens the Right to Repair

#280

Post by amznthrwaway »

tjoff wrote: post #220
ryandrake wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amount of plastic and paper packaging/marketing that you are forced to accept and dispose of when you buy products is getting extreme. I recently bought a micro-sd card, and had to dispose of: 1. the large shipping package, 2. the enormous (in volume and mass) product plastic shell package, 3. the glossy paper marketing insert inside the package, 4. the user’s manual (!), 5. the unwanted microsd-to-sd adapter. Pr…

As a consumer though you could also have bought it in a store or waited until you needed something else as well. I never understood the mindset of buying only a usb-stick or similar online. Yes, the waste is obnoxious, but the consumer isn't always innocent either.

Buying it from a store requires that somebody build, heat, and cool a large low density building to house the inventory within driving distance; it requires that somebody pave land for parking; and it requires that I drive my multi-ton vehicle to the store and back; and the packaging is more likely to involve expensive and environmentally damaging plastics than cardboard.

I never understood the mindset of buying things that are easily purchasable on-line, in-person.

I get brick and mortar shopping for items where you want to touch them, or see the nuances of the product... but for an SD card? you'd have to be literally insane to make a trip to buy that stuff.

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