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New York Senate passes Right to Repair bill

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Re: New York Senate passes Right to Repair bill

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Politicians use e-waste as the reason use for these RTR bills, but my concern is simple. I'm tired of my closet of broken devices. I don't like spending money on a new item when I was happy with the old model. I am tired of not seeing all the trouble codes on my car when it breaks down. I don't like spending money on electronics because a company won't let me fix their product, restricts information, or spare parts.…

My work want to force me to update my PERSONAL phone because apple do not support very old Iphone anymore. ( they gave me another phone for work stuff, 2FA and what not... ) this old phone works really well still. I do not conduct any work related activities on it. But they see it as a attack vector I guess?

[deleted]

Re: New York Senate passes Right to Repair bill

#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.

Re: New York Senate passes Right to Repair bill

#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 iPhone and can't run your own unsigned software.

Re: New York Senate passes Right to Repair bill

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

20 years is a bit much IMO...5-10 tho, that sounds at least reasonable.

I disagree, five to ten years is far too short. I have a couple of audio devices that are ~14 years old and working perfectly fine. If either of them broke then I'd want to repair them (unless of course the fault was fabulously catastrophic). Once upon a time even affordably priced equipment lasted way more than 5-10 years. Maybe it's a generational thing, due to my being on the wrong side of 50 :), but stuff used to…

I think past a certain point it's reasonable to expect that your repair operation may also involve some scrounging for the parts— for example, the classic frankenstein procedure where a laptop with a dead motherboard is married to another of the same model where the screen is cracked. I think for most electronics, past 5-10 years is pretty reasonable for this kind of thing. I mean, the GameCube came out in 2001-2002, and many circles now consider that to be a vintage/retro machine at this point. Would we really expect Nintendo to still be supplying repair shops with the full BOM of whatever's in there?

Anyway, the real trick with this of course is forbidding the serial number based lockouts.

Re: New York Senate passes Right to Repair bill

#55

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.

Plus it gives Apple an out as soon as they release a car, which is extremely weird.

Re: New York Senate passes Right to Repair bill

#57

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…

Surely some of that kind of thing would come down to regulatory compliance like emissions? It would be no good if right beside the BMW dealer was a shack with a dude who "unlocks" your new car's performance by turning it into a soot-spewing disaster (yes I know about coal rolling, but at least right now that's mostly done for jackass reasons not performance reasons).

Anyway, it's basically the same thing that's at stake with router radio firmware and RF compliance— yes, you own the device, but the device's hardware has inherent capabilities that if fully unlocked, you would really need additional permits/licensing/oversight to operate in a way that doesn't interfere with other people's devices and wellbeing. Having your device locked down in this regard is a compromise that lets you have it and use it within those parameters while not needing to become a domain expert.

Re: New York Senate passes Right to Repair bill

#58
post #40
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is largely Apple-specific, as most other OEMs use off the shelf chips. Even in that case though, the distribution doesn’t exist for many components to be available to individuals or repair shops, since the component makers only want to deal with their couple dozen big customers directly.

On that note, Rossmann is a curious character. He openly and variously despises Apple’s hardware choices and policies, yet to my memory, that’s his shop works on. Are the economics of repairing Apple products that strong or is the man is a true masochist?

He stopped working on iPhones because of the BS.

Re: New York Senate passes Right to Repair bill

#59

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 could impact a life.

Re: New York Senate passes Right to Repair bill

#60

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.

Plus it gives Apple an out as soon as they release a car, which is extremely weird.

If that metric is true doesn't that already give google, lg, samsung, ... an out ? "manufacturer of motor vehicle equipment" is sufficiently large to include everyone we want that law for.
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