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Decades of HN users finger wagging and suggesting FOSS hardware has progressed society nowhere. 12 months from EU mandatory replaceable batteries and products a
by Gigachad 7mo ago
Decades of HN users finger wagging and suggesting FOSS hardware has progressed society nowhere. 12 months from EU mandatory replaceable batteries and products across the industry are being redesigned with repairability, usb-c, and user friendly designs.
It’s time to accept regulation actually does work when you have a competent government.
- delbronski 7mo agoYes! We tried leaving tech unregulated and it did not work. We got huge monopolies screwing consumers at every turn. Time to try something new.
- RajT88 7mo agoIndeed, government regulation is decried mostly because of all the cases where it got polluted by special interests, instead of following the interests of general consumers. This is how you end up turning a chunk of your food supply into fuel to subsidize crops which aren't all that good at being distilled into fuel in the first place...
- Gigachad 7mo agoThis is mostly because Americans keep electing total morons.
- nine_k 7mo agoNot that most other nations do dramatically better, alas.
- Gigachad 7mo agoThere's actually few that are this bad. Generally we refer to them as developing countries or war torn.
- RajT88 7mo agoI would actually suggest this is symptomatic of the real problem: money in politics. Elected officials (and some appointed, like SCOTUS) keep changing laws and precedents to allow more and more money in politics. They can't quit all that dark money - without a lot of funding, you don't get elected. Usually the best funded candidate wins. There was an anonymous oped from a congressman some years back which bemoaned the reality - that 60% of their time was dedicated to meeting with donors for reelection campaigns instead of working on real problems.
- alsetmusic 7mo agoWhen one party will violate every norm and law to the greatest extent that they can get away with it, it's pretty much impossible to compete with them. I want good things for people. I can't compete with fascists because they will cheat and lie and employ violence. My positive intent is almost impossible to out thwart their dirty deeds if they are willing to break laws / change laws and I won't.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- throwaway85825 7mo agoThere's only one party and it's color is green. Donors know red or blue doesn't matter, so they give to both.
- gcanyon 7mo agoThat's just an unreal characterization that plays into the hands of the "red" team. One side has put up presidents and congressional leadership that worked (mostly, I'm not saying they're perfect) within the traditional framework of the system. The other has put up a president who literally does not understand the meaning of the word "no," expects that everyone will let him do pretty much anything he wants, and a congress that agrees with him. Notably, that side was different in 2000, 1988, 1980, etc. -- not perfect by any stretch, but not this. The difference matters.
- gmerc 7mo ago… and legalized bribes as lobbying.
- varispeed 7mo agoIt is also because corruption is called lobbying in America. Corporate lobbying should be illegal and punished severely (including capital punishment for directors and confiscation of the corporation).
- cromka 7mo agoThis. Came here to say this. People completely forget about this supposed nuance when comparing US and Europe, but this is exactly what leads to fundamentally different outcomes in legislation and, by extension, people's expectations of their governments. That frog is long-time cooked. As an ex-expat to US, I never could stop smh over how Americans are not making it a number 1 issue for themselves. Private prison, private healthcare, gun industry, all types of small industries keep US government in their pockets and the society, as a whole, in a complete gridlock, unable to meet its actual expectations.
- analog8374 7mo agoPeople believe whatever authority tells them. It's one of those bug/feature things.
- autoexec 7mo agoPeople believe whatever they want to be true. If people were just slaves to authority the US would have far fewer covid deaths. Some people really are bootlickers, but even then they tend to choose whose boots they bend over for. It's rarely blind obedience to authority itself.
- raw_anon_1111 7mo agoIt’s not like “privacy first EU” didn’t just try to pass Chat Control
- vrganj 7mo agoThe EU did not pass Chat Control is the key message here. Your framing is strange.
- raw_anon_1111 7mo agoAnd only 40% of people still support Trump. But the analogy is the same. If you have 10 friends and ask them where they want to eat for dinner and six say let’s go to an Italian restaurant and 4 say “let’s kill Bob and eat him”, you still have a shitty group of friends. It only takes one controversy to tip the scales. All governments have a propensity to want more power.
- vrganj 7mo agoThe analogy is not the same. Trump was elected. Chat Control failed its vote.
- swiftcoder 7mo ago> All governments have a propensity to want more power. Some governments have more effective checks-and-balances than others. The EU is a much looser confederation than the US, with significantly more power still invested in the member states (many of whom themselves are also loose confederations of semi-autonomous provinces...)
- raw_anon_1111 7mo agoAnd let terrorism happen to any number of the member states. They would demand Chat Control being passed
- swiftcoder 7mo ago
- BoorishBears 7mo agoThat's a great example of their point, all I got was a mechanically inferior connector (putting the most important piece of the female connector on a floating sliver of plastic was a choice) and the cable hell attached to USB C. If USB C had been so important to me I wouldn't have bought iPhones all those years.
- crimsontech 7mo agoI have tried to explain this so many times to people. You could just scrape out the lint from the lighting port with a tooth pick. The fragile part was the easily replaceable cable. Now the fragile part is in the iPhone itself.
- kalleboo 7mo agoLightning had the contact springs in the phone, USB-C has the contact springs on the cable. This is the part that wears out, and USB-C moving to the cable is an improvement. Throughout its life, Lightning suffered from "black pin plague" where when springs in the port wore out, the power pin would start arcing. Now you have a cable with poor connectivity on the power pin, and you use this cable in another Apple device and it starts arcing on that device as well, causing that device to start transmitting this disease. It was a terrible design and USB-C does not have it. https://ioshacker.com/iphone/why-the-fourth-pin-on-your-lightning-cable-turns-black https://ioshacker.com/iphone/why-the-fourth-pin-on-your-ligh...
- Gigachad 7mo agoApple was on the design committee for USB-C, they also failed to make lightning an industry standard after 10+ years. The EU didn't design the connector, they just required the industry pick a design, and USB-C is what Apple and the rest designed.
- bigyabai 7mo agoIf Lightning is so important to you then you can still use Lightning-based iPhones. Nobody took away the hardware they sold you, they just mandated that the new ones adopt a common standard.
- edhelas 7mo agoGigachad writing there <3
- oneeyedpigeon 7mo agoTheir point is almost the exact opposite to the one a 'gigachad' would make.
- 0dayz 7mo agoAnd yet their name concludes otherwise.
- oneeyedpigeon 7mo agoFair point! I didn't even notice their username, in case that weren't very obvious.
- piekvorst 7mo agoHaving the government regulate the free market is an issue of physical force and should always be discussed as such. Are you willing to deal with men by force beyond retaliation? This issue is moral, not practical. Besides, it’s easy to sell one’s freedom to a competent government, but it’s insanely hard to get it back when it rots. This has been the case of many welfare states. “Let’s force them to do the damn thing” is the very root of all social conflicts, not a magical solution. Being able to withstand it is a commendable exception, not rule.
- cortesoft 7mo agoLook, there is certainly a good argument to be made that regulation of this sort isn't the best way to achieve the goal. However, trying to use an argument that this is 'an issue of physical force' is a ridiculous way to make an argument for that perspective. All laws eventually come down to that, so it is pointless to debate that for every discussion on what the law should be.
- piekvorst 7mo agoLaws protect everyone’s rights, both consumers and producers. When they are targeted to favor a specific collective, it’s fair to bring up the issue of physical force. The 20th century is repleted with examples of one social group fighting the other by seeking special privileges and favors. So I don’t think it’s ridiculous, I think it’s efficient.
- ahf8Aithaex7Nai 7mo agoThe perfect example of cognitive dissonance! The government, which mandates that the can of tomato soup I buy must not contain any glass shards, is immediately equated with physical violence. Although the shopkeeper who requires me to pay for the can before I take it out of the store is far more likely to get in my face if I don’t follow their rules. I don’t understand this worldview. You’re selling your freedom to big corporations. Your life expectancy is declining. Your food is of poor quality. Your cities are full of homeless people. But then again, I am an unfree European blinded by communism.
- hnfong 7mo ago> It’s time to accept regulation actually does work when you have a competent government. Given that it's the EU making those regulations, it looks like the government only has to be semi-competent. Maybe the only requirement is that they're not totally in bed with the big corps making money.
- egeozcan 7mo ago> Given that it's the EU making those regulations, it looks like the government only has to be semi-competent Context: I'm not a EU-native, I've migrated to here. It disturbs me a lot when people keep repeating the "incompetent government" narrative when it comes to the EU, but when you compare it to the dictatorship that I escaped from, they still seem way more competent, surprising when the big advantage of a dictatorship is supposed to be increased efficiency while reducing personal rights. Personally I cannot name a better government (or governing body, given that we are talking about the whole EU) anywhere else on this planet. I feel I'm incredibly lucky to live here even when the economy is getting tougher. The only thing that worries me and makes me consider leaving is the right-extremes, which to this day, thankfully had limited influence. Sorry for the digression, but I just wanted to address this repeating pattern. It's possible that you have very valid reasons to call them semi-competent and that I'm overreacting.
- hnfong 7mo agoNah it was kinda a tongue in cheek snipe at the EU which may or may not be justified. Appreciate the counter-point.
- abc123abc123 7mo agoNope. What the real effect has been is a waste of billions of billions that have gone into changing stuff that never needed changing. Future development has now been slowed down as well in the EU. All it takes to see that government regulation never works, is to look at how far behind the EU is in terms of GDP growth compared with the US and China who both have a significantly lighter touch when it comes to regulation. The EU is f*cked, and will become a little socialist region, with manual and tourist industry jobs, where rich people from the rest of the world go for a few weeks of vacation. I left the EU a long time ago, and I've earned so much money after leaving the socialist madness, that I recommend all young people I meet to do the same.
- actionfromafar 7mo ago”Rrgulation never works”, is a very shallow take. It could mean anything. China is an autocratic system. Is that working? The US is going in that direction. On top of that, Europe isn’t a country. To have less regulation, you need more of it. Unifying regulations, or else you have dozens of completely different jurisdictions. To a large extent, you still do, even with the EU. You can’t sell to the general public in English. There are so many more things holding Europe back than ”need deregulation”.
- abc123abc123 7mo ago"To have less regulation, you need more of it." Can you actually see the words you are typing? War is peace?
- actionfromafar 7mo agoSometimes you in fact need yet another standard to obsolete the previous 27 ones, yes. xkcd://927 notwithstanding.
- ywvcbk 7mo agoIt's not self evident this is caused by regulation. And regulation generally certainly works when it come to regulating and splitting up monopolies and oligopolies, workers right and etc. (US has plenty of both even if its occasionally idiosyncratic)
- vintagedave 7mo ago> regulation actually does work when you have a competent government This is the free market. Free as in, regulated to allow and encourage market entry and competition (as with replacement keyboards), not free as in unregulated. When you look back at when 'free market' was first strongly mentioned as a term, this is what it meant.
- corndoge 7mo agoBoth you and GP are correct!
- e_i_pi_2 7mo agoWe've also seen this within the US - California generally makes the first move and then companies just follow that law because they know others might change and it's easier than doing it by state. One relatively small law can have a big impact, we also follow GDPR in the US because a lot of companies operate in europe too
- hilliardfarmer 7mo agoPeople need to stop buying apple products. Anyone dumb enough to have already done so deserves what they get.
- rogerrogerr 7mo agoI guess I'm happy being dumb if it means I deserve a laptop with a battery that lasts all day, a trackpad that doesn't feel like it's covered in dry syrup, a case that doesn't make noises when I pick it up, and a processor that feels like alien tech.
- ezst 7mo agoI haven't used a laptop in the last decade that wouldn't last a whole day on battery, or would hold any of those qualifiers for that matter, from Apple or other manufacturers. Not that Apple are bad devices, but they are flawed like the rest of them (often less, and sometimes more in areas that may matter less to you, the software being a major and increasingly one to me). Also good to remember that Apple is a company of good devices and tremendous marketing, not a company of tremendous devices per se. That entails a lot of subjectivity and awkward tribalism.
- jen20 7mo agoOK, so what have you used? Makes, models and years would be ideal.
- ezst 7mo agoAny mid- to high-end pro-line laptop from the usual manufacturers (dell latitude series, lenovo T series, hp pro/elitebook series) gives you that, really (rigidly built body using magnesium/aluminum alloys, good input devices and IO, high-end config, …) and some practical perks (hot swappable batteries, repairable/expandable, on-site warranty, …)
- 0xffff2 7mo agoWhat $900 laptop with a similar form factor and build quality to a Macbook Air am I supposed to buy instead? I did quite a bit of research on this a couple of months ago, with a strong preference for a Linux compatible device (I've never been a MacOS user, and I'm done with Windows after 10 dies all the way). After weeks of research, I came to the conclusion that my best bet was to buy a Macbook Air and hope that Asahi support for M4 chips comes sooner rather than later.
- kevin_thibedeau 7mo agoChat control is not something that indicates competence. They're throwing darts and sometimes hit the board.
- throw0101a 7mo ago> usb-c Don't forget about the time micro-USB has mandated. Was that "competent government"?
- 1718627440 7mo agoThat government has a limited jurisdiction over the offenders. They were still effective to the point, that there was only a single company not having microUSB. Granted that wasn't a small part of the market, but also not the largest.
- Levitating 7mo agoWe can't rely on the government to step on any time consumers are getting abused. We need to teach consumers to do better.
- Trannosaur 7mo agoAlso, they're ignoring the true cost of unrepairable hardware which is e-waste. Perhaps if they're looking for a lighter hand, they'd suggest that less repairable hardware has to have a tax that pays for its PROPER recycling.
- raw_anon_1111 7mo agoAnd making them more repairable as someone else said has tradeoffs. It’s not like Apple is the low cost leader. Choose another vendor
- fuzzfactor 7mo agoEngineering failures relating to repairability defects are some of the most annoying. OTOH they can be a major pillar in a well-orchestrated anti-reuse, anti-recycling, anti-environmental money machine for some manufacturers. >Choose another vendor Good advice, I already did once Woz left ;)
- raw_anon_1111 7mo agoOr just pay $70 a year for Apple Care like I did for my M2 MacBook Air and not worry about it…
- mannyv 7mo agoHave you heard the good news about regulatory capture? Probably not if you're one of the public. Imagine how the world would look if the EU mandated rs-232c ports on all devices. Or 3.5" headphone jacks. Or the use of D batteries for all electronics. How about ms-dos compatibility?
- entrox 7mo agoAre these examples supposed to be bad? I think the world would be in a better place.