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> Yeah, morally, but we need to start working to make this guaranteed legally. I'm not sure I disagree with you, but the invocation of the word "morally" here

> Yeah, morally, but we need to start working to make this guaranteed legally. I'm not sure I disagree with you, but the invocation of the word "morally" here really reminds me of the software licensing debates from twenty-something years ago. Twenty years later most people seem resigned on the software licensing issue (although I doubt their opinion has changed), and they seemed resigned on limiting their ability to run custom software on hardware they paid for (jailbreaking an Apple phone), but there is still plenty of grumbling for software that limits access to hardware features. Tesla limiting the battery capacity is not really different from Apple limiting which OS's you can install on their hardware. Unless I'm missing something?

jabbany 4y ago
Yeah, there's no logical distinction, only a moral one. Imagine 3 scenarios: Company A rolls out a new mandatory update to a phone that addresses a CPU vulnerability, and to compensate for the reduced performance, overclocks the CPU so now your battery life is 20% shorter. Company B rolls out a new mandatory update to a phone that improves the battery management so phones do not shut down unexpectedly. However, due to lack of hardware battery reporting when the device was built, they could only estimate the capacity based on the phone's age and natural battery degradation. This causes older phones to have 20% shorter battery life, even though some batteries that were not used as hard could have supported longer. Company C rolls out a new mandatory update to a phone that detects the phones age and reserves 20% battery capacity on older phones, forcing them to have 20% shorter battery life so users are incentivized to upgrade. The end result is the same, a phone with worse battery life, but we don't see all of them to be morally the same. The only real difference is the human intent behind it, which is why we probably eventually need regulations that make sure companies should justify that they have a reasonably good intent if challenged. Getting this right is very hard -- you don't want to overburden companies from frivolous cases, but you also want regulations to be effective so they can't just handwave them away.
- datavirtue 4y ago
  Too much pedantry. If it doesn't benefit the consumer unequivocally, don't fucking do it.
  - CamperBob2 4y ago
    Better still, tell me what the update does, then offer me the choice. Obviously that's easier said than done for a complex product, but don't expect sympathy when you screw up. Moving away from monolithic all-or-nothing OS updates would certainly help.
    - extropy 4y ago
      Offering a choice is tricky here. Since failures are significantly affected by the software ability to properly manage the device (and needs to be updated periodically to keep that up to date). So yeah you can choose to keep the old version and loose warranty, cheers! Im not sure what the legal side of warranty conditions is. But outdated software is potentially a very real cost to the manufacturer in therms of extra warranty work.

jabbany 4y ago

Yeah, there's no logical distinction, only a moral one. Imagine 3 scenarios: Company A rolls out a new mandatory update to a phone that addresses a CPU vulnerability, and to compensate for the reduced performance, overclocks the CPU so now your battery life is 20% shorter. Company B rolls out a new mandatory update to a phone that improves the battery management so phones do not shut down unexpectedly. However, due to lack of hardware battery reporting when the device was built, they could only estimate the capacity based on the phone's age and natural battery degradation. This causes older phones to have 20% shorter battery life, even though some batteries that were not used as hard could have supported longer. Company C rolls out a new mandatory update to a phone that detects the phones age and reserves 20% battery capacity on older phones, forcing them to have 20% shorter battery life so users are incentivized to upgrade. The end result is the same, a phone with worse battery life, but we don't see all of them to be morally the same. The only real difference is the human intent behind it, which is why we probably eventually need regulations that make sure companies should justify that they have a reasonably good intent if challenged. Getting this right is very hard -- you don't want to overburden companies from frivolous cases, but you also want regulations to be effective so they can't just handwave them away.

datavirtue 4y ago
Too much pedantry. If it doesn't benefit the consumer unequivocally, don't fucking do it.
- CamperBob2 4y ago
  Better still, tell me what the update does, then offer me the choice. Obviously that's easier said than done for a complex product, but don't expect sympathy when you screw up. Moving away from monolithic all-or-nothing OS updates would certainly help.
  - extropy 4y ago
    Offering a choice is tricky here. Since failures are significantly affected by the software ability to properly manage the device (and needs to be updated periodically to keep that up to date). So yeah you can choose to keep the old version and loose warranty, cheers! Im not sure what the legal side of warranty conditions is. But outdated software is potentially a very real cost to the manufacturer in therms of extra warranty work.