6 ms·

My main complaint against right-to-repair laws is mostly to the extent that some people push for. I am not against manufacturers being forced to provide things

• LegitShady 5y ago
  > am, however, against the idea of companies being forced to design products around being easily repairable. If a company wants to make a super thin device with basically no easy way to take it apart, that's their prerogative. If a company wants to solder on components to the device like RAM or the storage or the cpu or gpu, that's their prerogative. Totally agree. But they should be publicly labeled as extreme polluters whose devices aren't repairable and who design devices that way intentionally. They should be free to do it, and then free to be denounced for it. >The government doesn't need to be involved in this respect. The environmental aspect of unrepairable devices should probably be regulated like any other industry who makes the decisions to pollute because they want to.
  • enaaem 5y ago
    You get a strange situation where a custom gaming pc will be labeled greener than a thin laptop with integrated components. Although the GPU alone uses more material and electricity than the whole laptops logic board.
    • upbeat_general 5y ago
      1) repairable != “green” 2) You could incorporate total material usage + average power consumption
• pcurve 5y ago
  In spirit, I agree with you. I should be able to choose. My concern is, would average folks know about the trade-offs at the time of purchase?
• wvenable 5y ago
  I agree. I think the market has shown that if not artificially hampered by the lack of schematics, parts, and DRM that even the most unrepairable seeming products can still be repaired. A motherboard with soldered on components like RAM or CPU are still more likely to fail because of a bad capacitor or some liquid damage on the traces.
  • Google234 5y ago
    Amy evidence for that last assertion?
    • CRConrad 5y ago
      I think the GP meant that a motherboard with soldered-on components would be more likely to fail because of a bad capacitor or liquid damage than because of the soldered-on RAM or CPU, not more likely than other motherboards with swappable RAM and CPU. You may have interpreted the statement the latter way. If interpreted as I suggested, surely it's fairly uncontroversial? Capacitors are quite notorious for failing.
• nrp 5y ago
  The repairability index that France rolled out this year is great in that regard. Sellers of certain types of devices including smartphones and laptops are required to post a repairability score for the product prominently next to the price tag. This highlights to consumers which products are designed to be usable for longer through repair and upgrade and which aren’t, even if they otherwise look and function similarly.
  • 908B64B197 5y ago
    That's a good approach. What would be even more interesting is to evaluate how reliable parts are. Spinning hard drives were often the first thing to fail for instance, due to the mechanical stress. Same thing for ports. Soldered-on RAM and flash, while almost impossible to upgrade, is way more reliable. No vibrations means way less mechanical stress.
    • simion314 5y ago
      >Soldered-on RAM and flash, while almost impossible to upgrade, is way more reliable. It depends, software bugs or different workflow cam cause your storage or battery to fail faster, then you need to throw away the entire device because things are impossible or expensive to repair.
      • 908B64B197 5y ago
        Good point.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • ChuckNorris89 5y ago
      Flash doesn't fail due to mechanical stress, it fails due to wear cycles which are limited in every case. In every PC or laptop I can replace the flash storge except in the newer devices of the famous fruity manufacturer. And RAM may be reliable but when it's replaceable it means I can upgrade it and use the device for longer instead of having to buy a new device.
• endemic 5y ago
  How is this different than saying “if a company wants to make bad environmental decisions, that’s their prerogative”? Sometimes the government needs to get involved to prevent short-sighted behavior.
  • verall 5y ago
    Because of the layer of indirection, and potential for missed out innovation. Yes, nonrepairable devices are worse for the environment, but we had early poorly-repairable ultrabooks that helped create a market space for later more-repairable ultrabooks. I think most people just want to ban the worst anti-repair actions, like trying to disable the device in the event of repair attempts or preventing the use of otherwise compatible 3rd-party hardware with key signatures or proprietary authentication mechanisms.
    • socialdemocrat 5y ago
      Lots of innovation is missed out on because of lack of regulation. So this is not a good point. The EV and solar panel revolution was largely created due to regulation. It is a very neoliberal view to think free markets are the only source of innovation and government is just standing in the way. Governments create lots of different incentives to foster innovation. Patents themselves are a government regulation meant to encourage innovation. Ironically companies have corrupt government to such a degree that patents today is often a hindrance to innovation. However well designed patent laws are likely better than no patent laws at all.
  • hervature 5y ago
    It's different because they are recognizing that the issue isn't binary. It' not "bad for the environment" vs "good for the environment". It's recognizing there is a gradient of solutions ranging from "slowly increasing car efficiencies over time to allow for change" and "outright banning fossil fuels starting tomorrow". It's recognizing that "repairability" isn't the only thing to be optimized for.
    • saurik 5y ago
• ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  I have a proposal: if the company sells some urepairable, unrecycleable and toxic piece of shit, then the customer/landfill/the government will post the e-waste to their head office and they are responsible for storing it untill the end of time. That will get incentives in the right place.
  • vondur 5y ago
    Here in California, these items have a E-waste fee you pay in the initial purchase. It's supposed to cover the disposal of the item once it's broken/discarded. I have no idea how many people actually dispose of them correctly. Where I work, we work with a company who retrieves these items. Once again, I have no idea what happens after they pick up the devices...
  • Glavnokoman 5y ago
    Only if you can force them to properly recycle and not just drop in the ocean.
    • guerrilla 5y ago
      That should already be the law, no?
• taotau 5y ago
  Totally agree with your viewpoint. These sort of laws should focus on the realistic ability to repair an item, not the practical costs of doing it. Many of us here would have been called in to upgrade a family members SATA hard drive, which was black magic to them, but trivial for us. Same applies to soldered on RAM. DRM issues aside, its a trivial job to upgrade for someone who knows what they are doing. As long as the software doesnt refuse to recognize it. And it makes much more sense for governments to legislate around theoretical concepts like DRM, rather than trying to be a technical standards body detailing how you should structure electronics. They are bound to always be behind on technical matters.
• m101 5y ago
  I almost agree with you, except in the instance where a modification might result in dangerous erroneous behaviour of the product - like self-driving cars for instance.
  • Brian_K_White 5y ago
    That argument applies exactly the same to everything which already exists, and we already have liability and lawsuits and insurance for that. I can monkey with a lawnmower and have it kill an unwitting innocent user. There is really nothing magically different about a self-driving car in that regard. It's the same as a regular car. A self-driving car is just another piece of equipment that somebody owns and is responsible for it's actions.
• KorematsuFred 5y ago
  I have never understood the demand for "right to repair" laws any ways. Don't you know the terms of repair before you buy the device ? Simply don't buy an iphone if you want to repair it yourself. If there is enough market for repairable devices someone will make them eventually otherwise you are only imposing a huge compliance cost on everyone else and slow down innovation for many companies.
  • kiba 5y ago
    People want schematics and parts available for purchase, as well prohibition of companies from going out of their way to make devices harder to repair as opposed to having to work with design constraint. It's not that complicated or costly to enforce.
    • KorematsuFred 5y ago
      > It's not that complicated or costly to enforce. Two points. - What is your evidence that it is not complicated or costly ? Remember that lost profits because of repairs is a perfectly valid cost to be considered here. - Someone builds a device, it is their device and they are selling it to you with full advertisement that certain parts can not be repaired. How moral is it to impose additional restriction on such an entity through government coercion ? Seems immoral thing to me. Today it is about repair, tomorrow it will be something else.
  • least 5y ago
    Is there a huge compliance cost for something like providing schematics for your devices? I agree that people should do their due diligence when purchasing their tech products, but I am strongly against a company doing something solely for the purpose of impeding repairability.
    • KorematsuFred 5y ago
      > Is there a huge compliance cost for something like providing schematics for your devices? Yes. How much cost do you think a large company incurs to make few documents publicly available. Note that it is not just a document you share, you are putting your entire company's reputation into that doc, every cut corner and opening yourself to potential lawsuites as well.
• Renaud 5y ago
  Manufacturers are not penalised for their technical choices. Making a thinner system seems like a great innovation but society at large pays for that product being non-repairable. If you want corporations to have free reign on being able to innovate, there has to be some counter-incentive to force them to find innovative solutions around lengthning the life of of the product and its ability to be repaired and recycled. As it stands today, bad press is the only incentive and its effect is easily mitigated by marketing and lobbying. It needs to hurt. Innovation is born out of a need to improve. Making manufacturers responsible for their decisions is a way to balance their incentives.
  • wiseleo 5y ago
    It seems like a tax like the Gas Guzzler tax on "unconventional" vehicles could be an answer and governments don't say no to taxes.
• bigyikes 5y ago
  Honest question: aren’t schematics trade secrets? Won’t public schematics make it easier for others to copy? That seems like a big deal to me. If I were designing a new piece of technology, I wouldn’t necessarily want to publish my schematics. I ask this as somebody who would love to have the schematics of all my devices. I would love to know why this actually isn’t a big deal.
  • Hizonner 5y ago
    1. There's nothing particularly innovative about the electronic design in most of these devices. It's just gluing chips together. 2. Screw trade secrets anyway. They should get zero consideration in any matter of law or public policy.
  • wiseleo 5y ago
    Schematics used to be included in user manuals for all consumer electronics. Anyone capable of recreating an electronic device from schematics can easily reverse engineer such device from the board. They are not secret. Reverse engineering them is a little time consuming, but it's not hard. Circuit board design follows established conventions. I can fix boards without schematics.
  • upbeat_general 5y ago
    For most electronics, no. Certainly not the schematics needed to repair them. Especially when there’s possibly thousands or more ‘official’ repair people, whatever information they have is not a trade secret. Furthermore, any other company could pretty easily reverse engineer or at least approximate the schematics (the kind we’re talking about here) making it not a trade secret.
  • dehrmann 5y ago
    Sorta, but unless you want source for the chip, there likely isn't anything that interesting you can learn from looking at traces, even with pins labeled. Competitors probably already do this for every new, interesting device. The biggest risk is probably device security, but you can't really depend on pinouts being secret for that.
• 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
  >I am, however, against the idea of companies being forced to design products around being easily repairable I haven't heard anyone actually push for this. I've just heard people ask for access to information and the ability to buy parts.
  • dwaite 5y ago
    From the article, Microsoft spoke back against legislation in Washington which would have banned integrated batteries
• wiseleo 5y ago
  Ask for the stars and settle for the moon is a common tactic. We are subsidizing company profits at the expense of environment through forced obsolescence. Ewaste shouldn't exist as a concept for functioning products. Earth's resources are not infinite. Glue can be dissolved. Microscopes enable microsoldering. China has an entire industry devoted to tooling for such rework.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• socialdemocrat 5y ago
  There are sensible solutions to this. You don’t need to hold a gun to the head of the manufacturer. However we should encourage repair ability. This could be through labeling, taxing or subsidies. Just leaving everything to the market isn’t tenable. Markets have all sorts of flaws. It is one of the reasons why we have so many environmental problems. In this case it is appropriate for governments to devise regulations to remedy obvious problems.
• szc 5y ago
  In a 100% honest world I agree with everything you say. But, the world isn't 100% honest. Let's say company A asks manufacturer F to make 100,000,000 units of a product. One element of this product costs $10. An enterprising person suggests that if 1% of the material submitted to the mfg line was counterfeit, but could be made to pass "inspection" they could make at least $10,000,000. They could resell the "genuine parts" on the grey market at a 50% markdown, but only pay 1% of the cost for the counterfeits. The product would ship. Company A would ultimately be left to deal with the 1% (but not trivial number) of unhappy customers and perhaps a class action lawsuit due to "not meeting specs". In the post I am responding to, there is no requirement by anyone to validate that a part is within spec. Current contract manufacturing for a lot of products does not involve the originating company being able to independently validate the product before it is shipped to the end user. All validation needs to occur during manufacturing, on-site at the manufacturer. If you aren't validating what goes into manufacturing, how can you make any promises as to what comes out? If company A decides to implement serialization of parts to combat manufacturing "problems". Those advocating "right to repair" are going to be upset because they are now 100% collateral damage. There are other aspects of this, where chip vendors attempt to lock-in customers with the promise of using "custom part numbers" (HP has a fabulous history for this, extending back to the 1980's) or for "custom" programming during fabrication. Many, many. many parts now contain programmable elements and silicon vendors have capitalized on this to gain a business advantage and lock in. In a world of fraud, especially in the "repair" market, how can and do you establish trust when purchasing parts? Let's also look at something entirely different. The "Blue Pill" is a development board, originally based on an ST microelectronics STM32 part. If you wanted to purchase a "Blue Pill" board, you will now >90% of the time (based on price) receive a counterfeit product - the microcontroller will not be an STM32 part and it will not exactly meet the specifications (especially in low power situations). Who is to blame? Who pays for this fraud? Should this be "fixed"? How? By who? Pivoting again. This news "report" is a product, delivered to customers. Are journalists prepared to document the thought processes that went into their product. Will they commit to documenting any changes to the product, including why the changes were made and for what reasons? This is what many of these articles are implicitly asking of hardware manufacturers! I am generally in favor of being able to repair, but it isn't as simple as toilet roll unroll forward or backwards? (a deliberately chosen metaphor as the majority of the worlds population does not use).
• ashneo76 5y ago
  The companies are part of the same planet. They get away with green washing. They have to be responsible for the damage they do but exploiting low cost labour in developing countries and pushing a new IPhone/android and non repairable toasters very year which end up in landfill. Without out projects to revive old phones, which have to struggle to reverse engineer qualcomm modems, we would have so much more stuff in landfill. I use 10 yr old phones and they are just as fast as back then and get the job done. The only reason to upgrade is to push their "addictive" app store as that is the major way of making money