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Nebraska farmers vote overwhelmingly for Right to Repair

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Re: Nebraska farmers vote overwhelmingly for Right to Repair

#401

Post by supernova87a »

So, in looking at this from not just the "this year" problem point of view, but a "how do we set up society" point of view:

What is the failing here that our current system doesn't address and we need to correct it with these one-off bills?

Why is it that the farmers can't make the right choices or put pressure on the manufacturers (by not buying their stuff if they don't agree with it) to make the equipment easily maintainable?

If farmers are choosing with full information to value the cost more than maintainability, why is it a problem that rises to having to put in a right-to-repair bill? Haven't they made their choice clear? If the farmers wanted to start an equipment company that served their needs as this bill seeks to do, they are free to do that in this environment.

I'm not sure why people's clear choice needs to be counteracted with a patch on the consequences of their choice.

Re: Nebraska farmers vote overwhelmingly for Right to Repair

#402

Post by b3b0p »

cletus wrote: post #201
ISL wrote: post #14

Right to repair is increasingly hitting people outside of agrarian/industrial contexts. 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. I have a tablet that long-ago met the same fate. This is in the same world where I can 'apt-get update' my seven-year old desktop and work with ap…

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…

4-5 years doesn't sound significant to me.

I still have an iPhone 6, bought new nearly the day it was released. It plays music, it does podcasts. I can text, answer calls.

It's no longer supported by Apple.

I was planning on upgrading to the iPhone 11 Pro this year, but my current phone still does what it needs to do and does it well enough. It's a little slow though.

Re: Nebraska farmers vote overwhelmingly for Right to Repair

#403

Post by arminiusreturns »

The right to repair in a computer age requires the right to root. This is the biggest sticking point for me, and why I still think open source is the future, and in particular copyleft open source that doesn't allow itself to be tivoized, which is why I have spent years making the vast majority of my stacks gpl or gpl compat.

Re: Nebraska farmers vote overwhelmingly for Right to Repair

#404

Post by bregma »

logfromblammo wrote: post #393
bregma wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to introduce you to some songwriter friends of mine.

Before computing divorced the idea of the file from the physicality of the storage medium, music was sold as live performance, printed paper, plastic discs, or magnetic tape. Those all have a non-trivial cost of reproduction. Now that music is just files, the marginal cost of sending a file down the network wire is proportional to its compressed file size, which is insignificant in relation to the cost of the human l…

Long before the invention of paper, plastic, magnetic tape, piano rolls, or metal drums with pins, songs and stories and other kinds of "intellectual property" could be conveyed from mind to mind verbally. Such ideas were expensive and difficult to create the original copy (ever write a song or derive Pythagoras' theorem from first principles?), but the marginal cost of each reproduction was minimal and close enough to zero. It it weren't, whoever wrote those earworms I get would be fabulously rich by now.

Centuries, nay millennia, ago there were starving artists who created great works, only to have the economics of zero marginal cost of production take the food from their mouths. The appearance of and democratization of high-bandwidth telecommunication (enabled by computers, but not a property of computers) did not create that situation, it's only multiplied the zero marginal cost by a large constant. An if you've been paying attention, zero multiplied by anything is still zero.

Re: Nebraska farmers vote overwhelmingly for Right to Repair

#405

Post by MikeTheGreat »

kls wrote: post #387
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:…

I grew up on a citrus farm and I can tell you CAT equipment makes Apple look like an open hardware platform. Parts where unavailable to non dealers they used patents to stop aftermarket and where hostile to hardware hackers that fixed flaws in their design. This was all while they where mechanical. I cannot imagine what it is like owning a CAT machine now that they are computerized. I know my grandfather tended to st…

  > On seed stock it get's even worse, if you are next to a GM 
  > farm and get cross pollinated then your stock is tainted and 
  > you have to reseed again with clean seeds that 
  > will just get tainted in the next spawn.
Genuine question: If your neighbor's seeds spread into your farm why do you have to reseed? Are you trying to avoid the cross pollination or are you required to do this by something/someone else?

Re: Nebraska farmers vote overwhelmingly for Right to Repair

#406

Post by closetohome »

crc32 wrote: post #349
OldManAndTheCpp wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now you've shipped your thing that lasts forever. If it's a mechanical object, maybe you can get continuing revenue from spare parts, but those will bring in less than the original purchase. Worst case, someone brings up a factory copying your part design (without doing any engineering work on them, just copies them exactly), and undercuts you. If you sell software, do you let the old stuff atrophy and become insecur…

> Now you've shipped your thing that lasts forever. If it's a mechanical object, maybe you can get continuing revenue from spare parts, but those will bring in less than the original purchase. This might be bad for a tractor manufacturer; but an everlasting tractor would be great for society, right? The incentive now is to innovate in order to create a better more efficient product. E.g.; a more fuel efficient tracto…

Exactly - it's a perverse incentive against the interests of society.

Re: Nebraska farmers vote overwhelmingly for Right to Repair

#407

Post by dec0dedab0de »

MikeTheGreat wrote: post #405
kls wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up on a citrus farm and I can tell you CAT equipment makes Apple look like an open hardware platform. Parts where unavailable to non dealers they used patents to stop aftermarket and where hostile to hardware hackers that fixed flaws in their design. This was all while they where mechanical. I cannot imagine what it is like owning a CAT machine now that they are computerized. I know my grandfather tended to st…

> On seed stock it get's even worse, if you are next to a GM > farm and get cross pollinated then your stock is tainted and > you have to reseed again with clean seeds that > will just get tainted in the next spawn. Genuine question: If your neighbor's seeds spread into your farm why do you have to reseed? Are you trying to avoid the cross pollination or are you required to do this by something/someone else?

Not a farmer or a Lawyer, but if you collect seeds from the tainted plants then the new plant is too close to the Patented plant, and therefore illegal for you to grow on your own.

Re: Nebraska farmers vote overwhelmingly for Right to Repair

#408

Post by dec0dedab0de »

magduf wrote: post #400
kls wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up on a citrus farm and I can tell you CAT equipment makes Apple look like an open hardware platform. Parts where unavailable to non dealers they used patents to stop aftermarket and where hostile to hardware hackers that fixed flaws in their design. This was all while they where mechanical. I cannot imagine what it is like owning a CAT machine now that they are computerized. I know my grandfather tended to st…

>On seed stock it get's even worse, if you are next to a GM farm and get cross pollinated then your stock is tainted and you have to reseed again with clean seeds that will just get tainted in the next spawn. I see a simple solution here when some farmer gets stung by this: some company needs to make some really cheap GM seeds which exist only for the purpose of "accidentally" tainting the GM field next door, so that…

The GM Field wouldn't be collecting the seeds anyway.

Re: Nebraska farmers vote overwhelmingly for Right to Repair

#409

Post by closetohome »

lbotos wrote: post #270
closetohome wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My fave is "subscription headphones": https://www.nuraphone.com/products/nuranow

For anyone wondering, these are also sold outright (though not on their site I guess?) for $400. They are essentially a generic pair of bluetooth headphones that don't even have ANC, and use some kind of proprietary charging cable.

Re: Nebraska farmers vote overwhelmingly for Right to Repair

#410

Post by ClumsyPilot »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #312
dwg wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Security updates should absolutely be a legal obligation. Their absence enables theft, criminal activity, botnets, etc. For the same reason we have laws on fire safety, food safety, carcinogens and asbestos. Average consumer may not know or care about their existence. But if we get rid if them all, organised society will collapse.

At the very least the manufacturer should tell me in a legally binding statement, for how long a product will be supported.
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