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I have a contrarian view on this. I really don’t think governments should be making technical decisions for the product design unless it directly impacts health

I have a contrarian view on this. I really don’t think governments should be making technical decisions for the product design unless it directly impacts health issues. If fixed batteries makes product smaller or better then it’s choice of creator, maker and hacker. Consumer should be voting with their wallets and they should have a choice. This kind of constant interference from EU burocrates without understanding technical details is what led to completely pointless “accept cookie” disaster all over the Internet that has already cost billions of dollars collectively while not benefiting anyone.

nemo44x 5y ago
The cookie disaster is a constant reminder that these government agencies need to be reeled in and limited. It’s also embarrassing that when I browse the web it’s more or less the EU’s single contribution. Good job!
- Shadonototra 5y ago
  cookie popup is not a disaster, it forced companies to tell their users they are tracking them user replaceable battery is important because what's most likely to die 1st in your electronics is the battery, if it is soldered, high chance you'll have to replace your whole thing, producing useless e-waste i had to replace my electric toothbrush recently because the battery died, but the whole thing was still in perfect condition, such a waste
  - slig 5y ago
    >cookie popup is not a disaster, it forced companies to tell their users they are tracking them Now people know that they're being tracked. Great. They are still being tracked and now are being annoyed with the modals everywhere. Those of us that get bothered enough can install some extension to hide them, but the for most people it's just another annoying thing they have to click away in order to continue what they were intended to do.
    - dmitriid 5y ago
      Most of those banners and popups and "consent" dialogs are illegal under GDPR. And the parasites behind the biggest networks of them are slowly but surely getting what they deserve https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/05/iab-europe-tcf-gdpr-breach-belgium/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/05/iab-europe-tcf-gdpr-breach...
      - Karunamon 5y ago
        Even fully compliant dialogs are a pain in the ass. It's why addons like "I don't care about cookies"[1] exist. [1]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/i-dont-care-about-cookies/fihnjjcciajhdojfnbdddfaoknhalnja?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/i-dont-care-about-...
        pbhjpbhj 5y ago
        Arrive on page, click "reject all", done. That's what it's like with fully compliant pages.
        Karunamon 5y ago
        I prefer skipping the second step and not having government-mandated boilerplate interrupting my browsing at all. For something so bloody inconsequential, dismissing the warning is of more import than selecting an option.
        tehjoker 5y ago
        Inconsequential? Without cookies of this nature the surveillance economy would have had a harder time getting off the ground. We're just numbed to it now because we've been continuously assaulted for decades.
        Karunamon 5y ago
        Yes, inconsequential. As in, there are no tangible consequences to me (or likely anyone else) regardless of what option I select.
  - alexklark 5y ago
    all phones and laptops have user replaceable batteries, it just some users too stupid to do it properly. i wonder if, after some tragic incidents including lithium and screwdrivers, the next requirement of the eu bureaucrats will be that companies do test that battery can be replaced by the handicapped body positive 15 years old trans girl with iq no more than 80.
- tuwtuwtuwtuw 5y ago
  > It’s also embarrassing that when I browse the web it’s more or less the EU’s single contribution. This just indicate that you are unaware of the requirements of GDPR.
  - nemo44x 5y ago
    I’m aware the EU companies can’t produce any meaningful web tech so their bureaucracies legislate ridiculous things like GDPR. I get a little reminder every time I go to a website that the EU exists for some reason. They can’t sanction Russia, expect the USA (while constantly harboring anti-Americanism)to “do something” and pollute the web with these pop ups everywhere.
    - tuwtuwtuwtuw 5y ago
      Honestly sounds like you are just being jealous of the benefits we get over here. Not sure that's what you wanted to achieve.
    - tehjoker 5y ago
      US companies curb stomped the rest of the world and ate up all the market share others needed to survive. The only country that has a non-US centric internet ecology is China, because they intentionally blocked western companies.
- simion314 5y ago
  It is embarrassing that probably you are not aware on how ironic and stupid your comment is, since the web was started at CERN https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_World_Wide_Web#CERN https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_World_Wide_Web#... so you might want to update your limited general knowledge or comment only on topics you really know what you are talking about. You see cookies because 1 the website wants to track you 2 the website ad-partners want to track you 3 the web developers are idiots and don't know that non-tracking cookies don't need a NAG popup BTW GDPR is more then cookies, it is applied in real life too. Also it has benefits like forcing websites to implement a delete my account functionality too.
  - maccolgan 5y ago
    Saying the web started at CERN is about as much intelligent as saying the internet was originally a US military communications network.
    - CRConrad 5y ago
      But nobody here denied that the US military has contributed to the Internet we're using for this very discussion. Someone did, however, claim that "GDPR cookies are the EU's only contribution to the WWW!", either ignoring or ignorant of the fact that the Web was invented at the EU-funded (and -founded?) CERN. So your equivalence is invalid.
brap 5y ago
Thank you. The number of comments saying “let’s have the government force people (companies) to do X” is alarming.
- buran77 5y ago
  If governments didn't force people or companies to do anything then they would be allowed to do everything. You're welcome to draw up a table which surgically defines what should be regulated or legislated, and what shouldn't. I'll just drop by later to tell you how alarming your assessment was. After all who's the government to tell companies not to put asbestos in your walls or lead in your water. I'll be honest, every time someone complains governments shouldn't regulate I wonder if they realize they might be alive because of that.
  - naoqj 5y ago
    > If governments didn't force people or companies to do anything then they would be allowed to do everything. And that's okay. If consumers didn't like their products then they would stop buying them. iphones don't have replaceable batteries but people keep buying them because they don't see that as important. There are phones with replaceable batteries that consumers can buy if they want them.
    - npteljes 5y ago
      Why do you think being allowed to do anything is about products and choice? If companies are allowed to do anything, then you get monopolies, wage slavery, then corpocracy. Environmental pollution, human rights violations. We don't even have real choices right now, and we especially wouldn't have if they were let go any further.
      - SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
        I guess I’m not sure why you’re invoking such broad, general issues here. I see it as an issue of choice because I remember when I chose to change from the bulky replaceable battery phone I had at the time to a thinner, more comfortable one.
shafyy 5y ago
GDPR may be one of the best things that has happened to internet privacy. If websites wouldn't track your every move, they also wouldn't need to put up a cookie banner. In fact, the EU is the only power that actually puts up a meaningful fight against Facebook, Google and co's rape of the internet. I think it's extremely arrogant of you to assume that laws like GDPR were just made a bunch of bureaucrats without "understanding technical details".
mola 5y ago
I find the "cookie disaster" a great outcome. This little bit of friction is great at letting everyone know the price for the loss of privacy.
- mft_ 5y ago
  I don’t think it achieves that, though. I strongly doubt that one in a million people clicking on that button think about the privacy implications. However, the cumulative frustration and time wasted by that button is probably quite large, across the world.
- lotu 5y ago
  No it just creates alert blindness. Most people barely understand what a cookie is. I was part of a team implementing cookie banners, and we were looking really hard for the best wording. But it didn’t matter because in user tests 75% of users were unable to tell us what was in the box. Most assumed it was an ad before reflexively closing it.
Bayart 5y ago
Well, it benefits me. I don't want to yield data I don't need to and I will not accept any godforsaken cookie. I'm very happy to be made aware by the sites themselves of their degree of sleeziness.
notjustanymike 5y ago
I worked in ad tech for 6 years, specifically in cross device retargeting. I assure you, the loss of privacy direction we were heading in was far worse. The cookie banners are annoying and broken, but at least they represent a government starting to think about privacy.
JCWasmx86 5y ago
The only fault the EU has for the "accept cookie"-disaster is, that it didn't make tracking illegal and even bigger fines. It is only the fault of the companies that want to track us, not of the EU
- GreenWatermelon 5y ago
  Indeed. The cookie disaster is because the EU is being too nice. Of they actually brought down the hammer we would see a much nicer internet landscape. I'm always all in for government regulation, as long as those regulations are in the benefits of the common man.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- fragmede 5y ago
  And (lacking) a fine multiplier for making the opt-out UI confusing.
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  It is indirectly due to EU's regulation. Average user doesn't care about your nuanced take, people around the world, billions of times have been annoyed by the cookie banner. If anything, the GDP lost due to this annoyance on a daily basis is probably in the millions if not billions of dollars.
martin8412 5y ago
No. The cookie disaster is because companies are making it a disaster. You're not required to ask consent for cookies used for technical purposes, such as managing user session. The consent is only required for tracking cookies used to sell your data. So if you don't track your users, then you don't have to the pop-up. I hope the EU comes down really hard on the companies deliberately making opting out of tracking difficult. A few billion dollar fines and those pop-ups requiring me to manually untick 300 different trackers will be a thing of the past.
- goodluckchuck 5y ago
  Companies have always had to ask for permission to store cookies. The user / user’s browser decides whether to allow them, how long to keep them for, which sites will be allowed to access which cookies. This should have been / should be fixed on the user end.
  - II2II 5y ago
    Fixes were attempted on the user end decades ago. What did companies do? They ensured the end user was flooded with browser initiated cookie requests. Notice a parallel with the current situation? Browsers now use better approaches, but nothing is guaranteed when web developers try to circumvent the protections because they cannot accept that no means no.
    - nerdponx 5y ago
      Malicious compliance in action.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - layer8 5y ago
    Browsers rejecting cookies just leads to the website displaying a popup to please enable cookies or else you’re not allowed to see the content. That’s actually even less user-friendly.
npteljes 5y ago
What governments need to be concerned about are the things where the public good can't be managed by the market forces. People can't be expected to look at minute details of every single thing that's part of their lives. Also if choice is restricted because, for example, every maker does X thing, then people can't really vote with their wallet, because there's no alternative. I recognize that this kind of control is not flawless, but I take it, considering the alternatives we have seen so far in history.
- yayr 5y ago
  That's the key point. Since earth will not start charging directly for any environmental costs occured by its exploitation we need other rules for dealing with this. Market forces alone do not account for the price generations after us will have to pay for it.
artonge 5y ago
1. Replacement battery would help with reparability, which is one step toward the sobriety needed to fight climate change. 2. I feel like the customers do not have much of a choice if no product allows to replace the battery. So there is no way to vote with our wallet. 3. Which cookie disaster? I only see a directive that enforce companies to reveal when they are tracking users.
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  > Replacement battery would help with reparability, which is one step toward the sobriety needed to fight climate change. I have some bad news for you: https://www.transportenvironment.org/discover/shipping-emissions-17-global-co2-making-it-elephant-climate-negotiations-room/ https://www.transportenvironment.org/discover/shipping-emiss... Where is the sense in greenwashing yourself about recycling your lightbulb when it was made 6000 miles away, and added more CO2 emissions than manufacturing it end-to-end?
tgv 5y ago
1. Why do you think they are EU bureaucrats who don't understand technical details? 2. Are you sure the others aren't focussing too much on a few technical details, losing the global perspective?
- SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
  I’m not sure about anything around this story, because in good HN tradition, the original link is to some guy’s 5 second summary of an article in a language I can’t read. But it doesn’t seem implausible to me that government regulators could have overlooked important technical factors while pursuing a politically advantageous agenda.
  - CRConrad 5y ago
    > I’m not sure about anything around this story, because in good HN tradition, the original link is to some guy’s 5 second summary of an article in a language I can’t read. So widen your fucking horizons and learn a few languages. Being uneducated to start with is one thing, but staying uneducated is a choice. (At least in most places; it's mandatory only in very few jurisdictions.) > But it doesn’t seem implausible to me that government regulators could have overlooked important technical factors while pursuing a politically advantageous agenda. Oh, yadda yadda. You had proven your parochialism already.
makeitdouble 5y ago
> I really don’t think governments should be making technical decisions for the product design unless it directly impacts health issues. It directly impacts long term health issues at a global scale, through e-waste and carbon footprint. In your book this should totally be a governing body decisions.
aldebran 5y ago
The disaster is caused by the implementation not the law. This is needed in the US too. I just bought an electric toothbrush to replace a very old one. My old one is 10+ years old. Has easily replaceable batteries. New one? Nope! Manual says if battery doesn’t hold a charge, remove the battery and recycle the device. Removing battery literally destroys the device. There are videos on YouTube that show the battery is literally a Panasonic generic one. Wanna bet if this new brush can be used for 10+ years?
- seanmcdirmid 5y ago
  How would they maintain a water proof seal if they allowed for a user replaceable battery? Wireless charging allows the battery to be charged without allowing for any gaps in the toothbrush, but achieving water proofness disallows letting the user take it apart and still have to considered to be in working condition.
  - pbhjpbhj 5y ago
    It's a shower proof seal for a toothbrush, literally just need an o-ring, you know like the one that keeps the water in the pipes. The parent said the old one had a replaceable battery and worked for 10 years, seems like they had already solved the water ingress issue.
    - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
      Yes, but you never used those old style electric toothbrushes in the shower right? An O-ring would just confer water resistance, not water proofness. You couldn’t really submerge it and expect it to continue working. There is a huge difference between hermetic sealing an an O ring or a gasket.
      - aldebran 5y ago
        I washed my old toothbrush. It gathers toothpaste gunk if not properly washed. It worked just fine for a decade. The motor finally gave up. No way is this new tooth brush going to last me 10 years. And people making excuses - do you know that kids electric tooth brushes have replaceable batteries? Shouldn’t that be a bigger problem? Here’s the kicker - kids electric tooth brushes don’t have replaceable brush heads. Yeah - this is nothing but planned obsolescence.
ClumsyPilot 5y ago
> Consumer should be voting with their wallets and they should have a choice. I think we ran the experiment to know what consumer choice gets us: petrol with lead in it, and associated pollution and brain damage. Do you have an ETA when the magical consumer choice / free market will finally solve issues of single-use plastic pollution, unrecycleability of most products, toxic e-waste poisoning children, slavery in the supply chains, etc, ?
- bagacrap 5y ago
  tbf, gp does explicitly mention "health issues" as the exception where regulation is warranted personally I would add "environmental impact" to the list of things that justify regulation which does cover battery/electronics reuse, but then making something reusable doesn't actually mean most folks will bother
  - svrtknst 5y ago
    I'd argue that environmental impact is a health issue.
  - redleader55 5y ago
    "Environmental impact" is very broad - you can argue it to cover almost anything. I think this the main problem: do you trust a bureaucracy(is. non-technical people working in good faith to make rules for the society) to understand the implications of products or do you trust the manufacturer to do the same. In my opinion the bureaucrat can have good intentions, but lacks technical knowledge, while the manufacturer has the technical knowledge, but has incentives to disregard safety.
    - oceanplexian 5y ago
      In my opinion the manufacturer and the bureaucrat are the same thing. The bureaucrat’s chief priority is to get re-elected, not to make the environment better or cars safer. The manufacturers priority is to make a profit. Sometimes their goals align with the interests of the public but a lot of the time they don’t. Both have incentives to undermine or promote public safety and both have different avenues of accountability.
Bud 5y ago
I agree. And there are lot of products that I don't WANT to have a crappy three-cent plastic door on, which will inevitably break, just so I can replace a battery that I will never, ever need to replace during the normal lifetime of the product in question.
acrump 5y ago
I believe this is mainly about sustainablity over consumer protection
Findecanor 5y ago
The original article (linked to in German) pointed out that the main problem was that used batteries did not get recycled to an enough extent, and therefore battery manufacturers today depend too much on imports for their raw materials. In other words, the new proposed rules were intended to benefit primarily the industry in the long term, not necessarily the consumer. Product design departments may not think farther than the next product, but their higher-ups should be concerned.
- sytelus 5y ago
  The solution is not replaceable batteries but better way to recycle electronics. How about if we have separate bins for electronic recycle available to everyone? How about people get paid to recycle electronics? The beurocrates are generally not good at solutions or ideas which is why they make up “accept cookies” laws. This also reminds me how people are blamed in 3rd world countries for throwing the trash on street. The solution is to give people garbage bins and have garbage trucks pick them up. No one likes to throw trash on street. But no politician there has managed to thinks of this as solution yet. Burocratic solution is levy taxes, fines and have celebrities clean street for a photo in press.
boudin 5y ago
Those cookie banners at least force companies to show what they were actually doing. What it did is exactly what you suggests, giving consumers the choice. Now, how can a consumer vote with its wallet? Are you able to tell the whole environmental, social and impact on wars of any device you buy? Personally I can't. I also think that making the end user the sole responsible for the impact of the whole chain action is horrible. This is exactly what the ad with the fake native american crying about littering in the us was about. Let's company introduce an insane amount of plastic in the environment with no idea how to re-process it once used, the sole responsibility of the pollution will be the last person in the chain: the consumer. It brings me to the last point, isn't it's the role of a government elected by the people? To represent them and balance the power?
alistairSH 5y ago
I really don’t think governments should be making technical decisions for the product design unless it directly impacts health issues. I’ll agree, with one caveat - governments MUST price in externalities appropriately. In the case of batteries in things like cell phones, that externality is excess waste and more mining of raw materials. There should be taxes applied somewhere in the supply chain to force manufacturers/consumers to manage that waste and reduce mining.
manmal 5y ago
> unless it directly impacts health issues If manufacturers need regulation to correctly protect consumer health, what makes you think they will act in favor of the environment or repairability?
alpaca128 5y ago
Voting with one's wallets is about as helpful as trying to boycott a global corporation. If it was any effective the cookie banners wouldn't exist anymore. > If fixed batteries makes product smaller or better I don't think I've ever used a single product that is better for using fixed batteries. Even the size is arguable; if hearing aids can have replaceable batteries then so can Airpods.
black_puppydog 5y ago
What about the health issues that takes decades to unfold, or those of future generations? The german constitutional court (and IIRC the dutch one?) ruled that any govt action will also have to account for the "right to future" of current and coming generations. Trashing our planed (literally, in this case) doesn't square with that. This kind of "constant interference" from the EU is very welcome on my part and on the part of anyone who has spent a bit of time thinking about sustainability, pollution, and generally the question of "how do we keep a planet worth living on?" Your borderline-religious (borderline because it lacks a moral backing, it seems to mostly do away with morality altogether) dismissal of "interference" is exactly what got us into this mess.
blacklivsmatr 5y ago
You might be right but I have a friend to worked at Apple that would claim Apple could only make their phone smaller by building in the battery. He didn't seem to notice that Samsung built phones with just as many features with a replaceable battery.
jopsen 5y ago
I'll agree it's hard not to have mixed feelings about it. On the flip side, every charged with a mini-USB or USB-C for a reason. And internally, most electronics use standard battery sizes anyways, AA or AAAs.. I'm not a subject matter expert, but looks like they are just packaging high quality rechargable batteries inside a device. For innovators they could simply apply a fee, that would allow companies like Apple to do whatever they want, so long as they (or their customers) pay.
lowwave 5y ago
This will only work in an extremely rich and well education population like Switzerland or Norway. In many places the consumer doesn't have a choice or time to do the research against the advertising and PR of a large corporation.
deleted 5y ago
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mushyhammer 5y ago
> Consumer should be voting with their wallets I bet Americans love picking a $80,000 hospital bill over a $90,000 one. Government decisions, done well, go far beyond what voting with one’s wallet can. Oftentimes the consumer is just squeezed out of the equation and everyone’s price will follow. One company decides to do away with replaceable batteries and you will say "let the consumer vote with their wallets." Then everyone does the same and the user can no longer vote. What we get is instead a mountain of waste that everyone has to pay for, indirectly, forever.
rg111 5y ago
> Consumer should be voting with their wallets and they should have a choice. This only works when there are no monopolies or oligopolies. This is an idealistic view that is not worth anything because most markets have monopolies and oligopolies.
titzer 5y ago
I would have agreed with you 20 years ago. Nowadays, I look at the planned obsolescence and continent of floating plastic garbage in every ocean, washing up on every beach, and choking every river, and I'm think "we fucked this planet up and we can only fix it if we regulate the hell of this stupid for-profit market."

nemo44x 5y ago

The cookie disaster is a constant reminder that these government agencies need to be reeled in and limited. It’s also embarrassing that when I browse the web it’s more or less the EU’s single contribution. Good job!

Shadonototra 5y ago
cookie popup is not a disaster, it forced companies to tell their users they are tracking them user replaceable battery is important because what's most likely to die 1st in your electronics is the battery, if it is soldered, high chance you'll have to replace your whole thing, producing useless e-waste i had to replace my electric toothbrush recently because the battery died, but the whole thing was still in perfect condition, such a waste
- slig 5y ago
  >cookie popup is not a disaster, it forced companies to tell their users they are tracking them Now people know that they're being tracked. Great. They are still being tracked and now are being annoyed with the modals everywhere. Those of us that get bothered enough can install some extension to hide them, but the for most people it's just another annoying thing they have to click away in order to continue what they were intended to do.
  - dmitriid 5y ago
    Most of those banners and popups and "consent" dialogs are illegal under GDPR. And the parasites behind the biggest networks of them are slowly but surely getting what they deserve https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/05/iab-europe-tcf-gdpr-breach-belgium/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/05/iab-europe-tcf-gdpr-breach...
    - Karunamon 5y ago
      Even fully compliant dialogs are a pain in the ass. It's why addons like "I don't care about cookies"[1] exist. [1]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/i-dont-care-about-cookies/fihnjjcciajhdojfnbdddfaoknhalnja?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/i-dont-care-about-...
      - pbhjpbhj 5y ago
        Arrive on page, click "reject all", done. That's what it's like with fully compliant pages.
        Karunamon 5y ago
        I prefer skipping the second step and not having government-mandated boilerplate interrupting my browsing at all. For something so bloody inconsequential, dismissing the warning is of more import than selecting an option.
        tehjoker 5y ago
        Inconsequential? Without cookies of this nature the surveillance economy would have had a harder time getting off the ground. We're just numbed to it now because we've been continuously assaulted for decades.
        Karunamon 5y ago
        Yes, inconsequential. As in, there are no tangible consequences to me (or likely anyone else) regardless of what option I select.
- alexklark 5y ago
  all phones and laptops have user replaceable batteries, it just some users too stupid to do it properly. i wonder if, after some tragic incidents including lithium and screwdrivers, the next requirement of the eu bureaucrats will be that companies do test that battery can be replaced by the handicapped body positive 15 years old trans girl with iq no more than 80.
tuwtuwtuwtuw 5y ago
> It’s also embarrassing that when I browse the web it’s more or less the EU’s single contribution. This just indicate that you are unaware of the requirements of GDPR.
- nemo44x 5y ago
  I’m aware the EU companies can’t produce any meaningful web tech so their bureaucracies legislate ridiculous things like GDPR. I get a little reminder every time I go to a website that the EU exists for some reason. They can’t sanction Russia, expect the USA (while constantly harboring anti-Americanism)to “do something” and pollute the web with these pop ups everywhere.
  - tuwtuwtuwtuw 5y ago
    Honestly sounds like you are just being jealous of the benefits we get over here. Not sure that's what you wanted to achieve.
  - tehjoker 5y ago
    US companies curb stomped the rest of the world and ate up all the market share others needed to survive. The only country that has a non-US centric internet ecology is China, because they intentionally blocked western companies.
simion314 5y ago
It is embarrassing that probably you are not aware on how ironic and stupid your comment is, since the web was started at CERN https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_World_Wide_Web#CERN https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_World_Wide_Web#... so you might want to update your limited general knowledge or comment only on topics you really know what you are talking about. You see cookies because 1 the website wants to track you 2 the website ad-partners want to track you 3 the web developers are idiots and don't know that non-tracking cookies don't need a NAG popup BTW GDPR is more then cookies, it is applied in real life too. Also it has benefits like forcing websites to implement a delete my account functionality too.
- maccolgan 5y ago
  Saying the web started at CERN is about as much intelligent as saying the internet was originally a US military communications network.
  - CRConrad 5y ago
    But nobody here denied that the US military has contributed to the Internet we're using for this very discussion. Someone did, however, claim that "GDPR cookies are the EU's only contribution to the WWW!", either ignoring or ignorant of the fact that the Web was invented at the EU-funded (and -founded?) CERN. So your equivalence is invalid.

brap 5y ago

Thank you. The number of comments saying “let’s have the government force people (companies) to do X” is alarming.

buran77 5y ago
If governments didn't force people or companies to do anything then they would be allowed to do everything. You're welcome to draw up a table which surgically defines what should be regulated or legislated, and what shouldn't. I'll just drop by later to tell you how alarming your assessment was. After all who's the government to tell companies not to put asbestos in your walls or lead in your water. I'll be honest, every time someone complains governments shouldn't regulate I wonder if they realize they might be alive because of that.
- naoqj 5y ago
  > If governments didn't force people or companies to do anything then they would be allowed to do everything. And that's okay. If consumers didn't like their products then they would stop buying them. iphones don't have replaceable batteries but people keep buying them because they don't see that as important. There are phones with replaceable batteries that consumers can buy if they want them.
  - npteljes 5y ago
    Why do you think being allowed to do anything is about products and choice? If companies are allowed to do anything, then you get monopolies, wage slavery, then corpocracy. Environmental pollution, human rights violations. We don't even have real choices right now, and we especially wouldn't have if they were let go any further.
    - SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
      I guess I’m not sure why you’re invoking such broad, general issues here. I see it as an issue of choice because I remember when I chose to change from the bulky replaceable battery phone I had at the time to a thinner, more comfortable one.

shafyy 5y ago

GDPR may be one of the best things that has happened to internet privacy. If websites wouldn't track your every move, they also wouldn't need to put up a cookie banner. In fact, the EU is the only power that actually puts up a meaningful fight against Facebook, Google and co's rape of the internet. I think it's extremely arrogant of you to assume that laws like GDPR were just made a bunch of bureaucrats without "understanding technical details".

mola 5y ago

I find the "cookie disaster" a great outcome. This little bit of friction is great at letting everyone know the price for the loss of privacy.

mft_ 5y ago
I don’t think it achieves that, though. I strongly doubt that one in a million people clicking on that button think about the privacy implications. However, the cumulative frustration and time wasted by that button is probably quite large, across the world.
lotu 5y ago
No it just creates alert blindness. Most people barely understand what a cookie is. I was part of a team implementing cookie banners, and we were looking really hard for the best wording. But it didn’t matter because in user tests 75% of users were unable to tell us what was in the box. Most assumed it was an ad before reflexively closing it.

Bayart 5y ago

Well, it benefits me. I don't want to yield data I don't need to and I will not accept any godforsaken cookie. I'm very happy to be made aware by the sites themselves of their degree of sleeziness.

notjustanymike 5y ago

I worked in ad tech for 6 years, specifically in cross device retargeting. I assure you, the loss of privacy direction we were heading in was far worse. The cookie banners are annoying and broken, but at least they represent a government starting to think about privacy.

JCWasmx86 5y ago

The only fault the EU has for the "accept cookie"-disaster is, that it didn't make tracking illegal and even bigger fines. It is only the fault of the companies that want to track us, not of the EU

GreenWatermelon 5y ago
Indeed. The cookie disaster is because the EU is being too nice. Of they actually brought down the hammer we would see a much nicer internet landscape. I'm always all in for government regulation, as long as those regulations are in the benefits of the common man.
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fragmede 5y ago
And (lacking) a fine multiplier for making the opt-out UI confusing.
systemvoltage 5y ago
It is indirectly due to EU's regulation. Average user doesn't care about your nuanced take, people around the world, billions of times have been annoyed by the cookie banner. If anything, the GDP lost due to this annoyance on a daily basis is probably in the millions if not billions of dollars.

martin8412 5y ago

No. The cookie disaster is because companies are making it a disaster. You're not required to ask consent for cookies used for technical purposes, such as managing user session. The consent is only required for tracking cookies used to sell your data. So if you don't track your users, then you don't have to the pop-up. I hope the EU comes down really hard on the companies deliberately making opting out of tracking difficult. A few billion dollar fines and those pop-ups requiring me to manually untick 300 different trackers will be a thing of the past.

goodluckchuck 5y ago
Companies have always had to ask for permission to store cookies. The user / user’s browser decides whether to allow them, how long to keep them for, which sites will be allowed to access which cookies. This should have been / should be fixed on the user end.
- II2II 5y ago
  Fixes were attempted on the user end decades ago. What did companies do? They ensured the end user was flooded with browser initiated cookie requests. Notice a parallel with the current situation? Browsers now use better approaches, but nothing is guaranteed when web developers try to circumvent the protections because they cannot accept that no means no.
  - nerdponx 5y ago
    Malicious compliance in action.
- deleted 5y ago
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- layer8 5y ago
  Browsers rejecting cookies just leads to the website displaying a popup to please enable cookies or else you’re not allowed to see the content. That’s actually even less user-friendly.

npteljes 5y ago

What governments need to be concerned about are the things where the public good can't be managed by the market forces. People can't be expected to look at minute details of every single thing that's part of their lives. Also if choice is restricted because, for example, every maker does X thing, then people can't really vote with their wallet, because there's no alternative. I recognize that this kind of control is not flawless, but I take it, considering the alternatives we have seen so far in history.

yayr 5y ago
That's the key point. Since earth will not start charging directly for any environmental costs occured by its exploitation we need other rules for dealing with this. Market forces alone do not account for the price generations after us will have to pay for it.

artonge 5y ago

1. Replacement battery would help with reparability, which is one step toward the sobriety needed to fight climate change. 2. I feel like the customers do not have much of a choice if no product allows to replace the battery. So there is no way to vote with our wallet. 3. Which cookie disaster? I only see a directive that enforce companies to reveal when they are tracking users.

systemvoltage 5y ago
> Replacement battery would help with reparability, which is one step toward the sobriety needed to fight climate change. I have some bad news for you: https://www.transportenvironment.org/discover/shipping-emissions-17-global-co2-making-it-elephant-climate-negotiations-room/ https://www.transportenvironment.org/discover/shipping-emiss... Where is the sense in greenwashing yourself about recycling your lightbulb when it was made 6000 miles away, and added more CO2 emissions than manufacturing it end-to-end?

tgv 5y ago

1. Why do you think they are EU bureaucrats who don't understand technical details? 2. Are you sure the others aren't focussing too much on a few technical details, losing the global perspective?

SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
I’m not sure about anything around this story, because in good HN tradition, the original link is to some guy’s 5 second summary of an article in a language I can’t read. But it doesn’t seem implausible to me that government regulators could have overlooked important technical factors while pursuing a politically advantageous agenda.
- CRConrad 5y ago
  > I’m not sure about anything around this story, because in good HN tradition, the original link is to some guy’s 5 second summary of an article in a language I can’t read. So widen your fucking horizons and learn a few languages. Being uneducated to start with is one thing, but staying uneducated is a choice. (At least in most places; it's mandatory only in very few jurisdictions.) > But it doesn’t seem implausible to me that government regulators could have overlooked important technical factors while pursuing a politically advantageous agenda. Oh, yadda yadda. You had proven your parochialism already.

makeitdouble 5y ago

> I really don’t think governments should be making technical decisions for the product design unless it directly impacts health issues. It directly impacts long term health issues at a global scale, through e-waste and carbon footprint. In your book this should totally be a governing body decisions.

aldebran 5y ago

The disaster is caused by the implementation not the law. This is needed in the US too. I just bought an electric toothbrush to replace a very old one. My old one is 10+ years old. Has easily replaceable batteries. New one? Nope! Manual says if battery doesn’t hold a charge, remove the battery and recycle the device. Removing battery literally destroys the device. There are videos on YouTube that show the battery is literally a Panasonic generic one. Wanna bet if this new brush can be used for 10+ years?

seanmcdirmid 5y ago
How would they maintain a water proof seal if they allowed for a user replaceable battery? Wireless charging allows the battery to be charged without allowing for any gaps in the toothbrush, but achieving water proofness disallows letting the user take it apart and still have to considered to be in working condition.
- pbhjpbhj 5y ago
  It's a shower proof seal for a toothbrush, literally just need an o-ring, you know like the one that keeps the water in the pipes. The parent said the old one had a replaceable battery and worked for 10 years, seems like they had already solved the water ingress issue.
  - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
    Yes, but you never used those old style electric toothbrushes in the shower right? An O-ring would just confer water resistance, not water proofness. You couldn’t really submerge it and expect it to continue working. There is a huge difference between hermetic sealing an an O ring or a gasket.
    - aldebran 5y ago
      I washed my old toothbrush. It gathers toothpaste gunk if not properly washed. It worked just fine for a decade. The motor finally gave up. No way is this new tooth brush going to last me 10 years. And people making excuses - do you know that kids electric tooth brushes have replaceable batteries? Shouldn’t that be a bigger problem? Here’s the kicker - kids electric tooth brushes don’t have replaceable brush heads. Yeah - this is nothing but planned obsolescence.

ClumsyPilot 5y ago

> Consumer should be voting with their wallets and they should have a choice. I think we ran the experiment to know what consumer choice gets us: petrol with lead in it, and associated pollution and brain damage. Do you have an ETA when the magical consumer choice / free market will finally solve issues of single-use plastic pollution, unrecycleability of most products, toxic e-waste poisoning children, slavery in the supply chains, etc, ?

bagacrap 5y ago
tbf, gp does explicitly mention "health issues" as the exception where regulation is warranted personally I would add "environmental impact" to the list of things that justify regulation which does cover battery/electronics reuse, but then making something reusable doesn't actually mean most folks will bother
- svrtknst 5y ago
  I'd argue that environmental impact is a health issue.
- redleader55 5y ago
  "Environmental impact" is very broad - you can argue it to cover almost anything. I think this the main problem: do you trust a bureaucracy(is. non-technical people working in good faith to make rules for the society) to understand the implications of products or do you trust the manufacturer to do the same. In my opinion the bureaucrat can have good intentions, but lacks technical knowledge, while the manufacturer has the technical knowledge, but has incentives to disregard safety.
  - oceanplexian 5y ago
    In my opinion the manufacturer and the bureaucrat are the same thing. The bureaucrat’s chief priority is to get re-elected, not to make the environment better or cars safer. The manufacturers priority is to make a profit. Sometimes their goals align with the interests of the public but a lot of the time they don’t. Both have incentives to undermine or promote public safety and both have different avenues of accountability.

Bud 5y ago

I agree. And there are lot of products that I don't WANT to have a crappy three-cent plastic door on, which will inevitably break, just so I can replace a battery that I will never, ever need to replace during the normal lifetime of the product in question.

acrump 5y ago

I believe this is mainly about sustainablity over consumer protection

Findecanor 5y ago

The original article (linked to in German) pointed out that the main problem was that used batteries did not get recycled to an enough extent, and therefore battery manufacturers today depend too much on imports for their raw materials. In other words, the new proposed rules were intended to benefit primarily the industry in the long term, not necessarily the consumer. Product design departments may not think farther than the next product, but their higher-ups should be concerned.

sytelus 5y ago
The solution is not replaceable batteries but better way to recycle electronics. How about if we have separate bins for electronic recycle available to everyone? How about people get paid to recycle electronics? The beurocrates are generally not good at solutions or ideas which is why they make up “accept cookies” laws. This also reminds me how people are blamed in 3rd world countries for throwing the trash on street. The solution is to give people garbage bins and have garbage trucks pick them up. No one likes to throw trash on street. But no politician there has managed to thinks of this as solution yet. Burocratic solution is levy taxes, fines and have celebrities clean street for a photo in press.

boudin 5y ago

Those cookie banners at least force companies to show what they were actually doing. What it did is exactly what you suggests, giving consumers the choice. Now, how can a consumer vote with its wallet? Are you able to tell the whole environmental, social and impact on wars of any device you buy? Personally I can't. I also think that making the end user the sole responsible for the impact of the whole chain action is horrible. This is exactly what the ad with the fake native american crying about littering in the us was about. Let's company introduce an insane amount of plastic in the environment with no idea how to re-process it once used, the sole responsibility of the pollution will be the last person in the chain: the consumer. It brings me to the last point, isn't it's the role of a government elected by the people? To represent them and balance the power?

alistairSH 5y ago

I really don’t think governments should be making technical decisions for the product design unless it directly impacts health issues. I’ll agree, with one caveat - governments MUST price in externalities appropriately. In the case of batteries in things like cell phones, that externality is excess waste and more mining of raw materials. There should be taxes applied somewhere in the supply chain to force manufacturers/consumers to manage that waste and reduce mining.

manmal 5y ago

> unless it directly impacts health issues If manufacturers need regulation to correctly protect consumer health, what makes you think they will act in favor of the environment or repairability?

alpaca128 5y ago

Voting with one's wallets is about as helpful as trying to boycott a global corporation. If it was any effective the cookie banners wouldn't exist anymore. > If fixed batteries makes product smaller or better I don't think I've ever used a single product that is better for using fixed batteries. Even the size is arguable; if hearing aids can have replaceable batteries then so can Airpods.

black_puppydog 5y ago

What about the health issues that takes decades to unfold, or those of future generations? The german constitutional court (and IIRC the dutch one?) ruled that any govt action will also have to account for the "right to future" of current and coming generations. Trashing our planed (literally, in this case) doesn't square with that. This kind of "constant interference" from the EU is very welcome on my part and on the part of anyone who has spent a bit of time thinking about sustainability, pollution, and generally the question of "how do we keep a planet worth living on?" Your borderline-religious (borderline because it lacks a moral backing, it seems to mostly do away with morality altogether) dismissal of "interference" is exactly what got us into this mess.

blacklivsmatr 5y ago

You might be right but I have a friend to worked at Apple that would claim Apple could only make their phone smaller by building in the battery. He didn't seem to notice that Samsung built phones with just as many features with a replaceable battery.

jopsen 5y ago

I'll agree it's hard not to have mixed feelings about it. On the flip side, every charged with a mini-USB or USB-C for a reason. And internally, most electronics use standard battery sizes anyways, AA or AAAs.. I'm not a subject matter expert, but looks like they are just packaging high quality rechargable batteries inside a device. For innovators they could simply apply a fee, that would allow companies like Apple to do whatever they want, so long as they (or their customers) pay.

lowwave 5y ago

This will only work in an extremely rich and well education population like Switzerland or Norway. In many places the consumer doesn't have a choice or time to do the research against the advertising and PR of a large corporation.

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mushyhammer 5y ago

> Consumer should be voting with their wallets I bet Americans love picking a $80,000 hospital bill over a $90,000 one. Government decisions, done well, go far beyond what voting with one’s wallet can. Oftentimes the consumer is just squeezed out of the equation and everyone’s price will follow. One company decides to do away with replaceable batteries and you will say "let the consumer vote with their wallets." Then everyone does the same and the user can no longer vote. What we get is instead a mountain of waste that everyone has to pay for, indirectly, forever.

rg111 5y ago

> Consumer should be voting with their wallets and they should have a choice. This only works when there are no monopolies or oligopolies. This is an idealistic view that is not worth anything because most markets have monopolies and oligopolies.

titzer 5y ago

I would have agreed with you 20 years ago. Nowadays, I look at the planned obsolescence and continent of floating plastic garbage in every ocean, washing up on every beach, and choking every river, and I'm think "we fucked this planet up and we can only fix it if we regulate the hell of this stupid for-profit market."