> I'm mad with a chip stop working for unknown reasons because it was designed to.
I understand that you're angry about your HP printer not working, I also agree that the 'protection' measures in printers are ridiculous, especially on ink cartridges. I also agree that planned obsolescence is terrible for the environment, as are business models like those for inkjet printers, where the device is given away for nothing just so they can sell you overpriced ink refills.
I was just pointing out that sometimes it makes sense for replacement parts to be really expensive, even more than the original product, and that enforcing a law that would prohibit such practices would be counterproductive, not to mention that it would be very hard to implement in practice.
For one, how do you even calculate the real value? If you'd have a device that is intended to last a long time (as we would all like), say 20 years you can't just take the amount of dollars you paid originally. You'd have to take into account inflation, changing plant and labour costs etc. This would quickly get messy, and, IMO, would not produce much final benefit.
Having said that, I think we're on the same page, I would also love to criminalise making products that are designed to fail after a certain amount of time.
But this is also super hard to legislate. For example, how do you tell malicious intent from bad design? If my car becomes uneconomical to repair after 100,000 miles because the chassis starts to rust, how do you know whether the manufacturer designed it that way to sell me a new one quicker, or because they made a mistake?
It's easy to tell when they specifically program a microcontroller to stop working after a certain date, and I think that such obviously bad practices should be outlawed. But as a design engineer, I can tell you that it's super easy to design things to fail in much subtler ways, so that it looks like it's a simple mistake. Especially since making your design last longer usually involves adding features like strain relievers on cords etc. This costs money, and you can easily pretend that you're "saving costs for the end consumer".
I think that, after the most basic right to repair legislation is in place, "soft" practices, like encouraging people to buy stuff from companies that have real warranty programs, and which advertise their "built to last" business models would be much more effective than trying to legislate away every aspect of repair.
I love how some outdoor equipment companies (Osprey, MSR, Cumulus) handle this. They sell really expensive stuff, but with excellent after-sales support, and openly encourage people to send products in for repair. Of course this would be very hard to implement in a "tech" environment, where the USP is usually "newer, faster, better". Although, as Bunnie Huang said, with the slow-down of Moore's law, we may slowly be reaching the point of a "heirloom" laptop. I'd love to see that one day.
> no one should be allowed to charge more for a part than it charges for the whole
I think that's a dangerous route to follow. I completely agree with right to repair legislation, but I can also imagine a situation where a company makes ten thousand of something and sells it in a year through a retailer, and then keeps replacement parts available for a long time. Warehousing, inventory, service and delivery costs could easily make parts cost more than the original item.
I once went to a lecture given by someone from Boeing. He said that when they use an obscure electronic part in their aircraft, and it reaches End of Life, they buy all the stock they can get hold of, store it in a very secure location, and charge a lot for it. The real value of this part is way larger than the original manufacturing costs would imply. It doesn't cost as much as a plane, but if your plane cannot fly without it, then it's pretty darn close.
"Providing open access to the technical specifications of consumer electronics would enable criminals to “more easily circumvent security protections, harming not only the product owner but also everyone who shares their network,” and
"On the other end, John Deere argues that access to the company’s proprietary software could be used to bypass emissions controls or safety measures"
Of course they're doing it all for our own safety. It makes me mad when people bring up security through obscurity as a reason for locking down devices. It's such a blatant lie.
"For this error to occur, a unique combination of events must take place while the device is processing an atrial-sensed event. If this error occurs, the device will be unable to provide pacing until a ventricular-sensed event (VS) is detected. Once a VS is detected, normal pacing functionality is restored immediately. If a VS is not detected, the device will withhold both atrial and ventricular pacing. In addition, until a VS is detected, the device will be unable to initiate a session with a programmer, initiate a session with a CareLink™ remote monitor, or respond to a magnet. "
Thanks for the reply, I get the load balancing part now, I did not think about that.
I was thinking a lot recently about flying and how we could make it work in the (hopefully) greener future. This is definitely a more sensible way of doing it than electric jets, good luck with your company!
Here's what I don't understand - You're taking CO2 out of the atmosphere using renewable energy sources. Thermodynamically, this will take at least as much energy as it took to burn them. You did not mention how energy efficient your energy storage method is right now (50-60% at maturity sounds really optimistic, when plants are only a few %), but, in the short term, while we're still mostly using carbon-based fuels, you're basically diverting renewable energy capacity from consumers. Instead of getting 1kWh of usable energy from a solar panel, they're getting at best 0.5kWh, albeit in a much denser form that's easier to move around for some transportation uses, such as aviation. But, in the short term, you have a net-negative impact.
In the long term, if things keep going where they are going and we end up having to remove carbon from the atmosphere to reverse some effects of global warming, why would we want to convert it into gasoline instead of e.g. just capturing it and storing?
Or is this just a way to generate jet fuel for planes of the future when we'll electrify all of transportation except for flying?
I'm keeping a close eye on the Golem network (https://golem.network/). However, they mostly concentrate on distributing heavy-weight computing like rendering or ML, not website hosting.
I understand that you're angry about your HP printer not working, I also agree that the 'protection' measures in printers are ridiculous, especially on ink cartridges. I also agree that planned obsolescence is terrible for the environment, as are business models like those for inkjet printers, where the device is given away for nothing just so they can sell you overpriced ink refills.
I was just pointing out that sometimes it makes sense for replacement parts to be really expensive, even more than the original product, and that enforcing a law that would prohibit such practices would be counterproductive, not to mention that it would be very hard to implement in practice.
For one, how do you even calculate the real value? If you'd have a device that is intended to last a long time (as we would all like), say 20 years you can't just take the amount of dollars you paid originally. You'd have to take into account inflation, changing plant and labour costs etc. This would quickly get messy, and, IMO, would not produce much final benefit.
Having said that, I think we're on the same page, I would also love to criminalise making products that are designed to fail after a certain amount of time.
But this is also super hard to legislate. For example, how do you tell malicious intent from bad design? If my car becomes uneconomical to repair after 100,000 miles because the chassis starts to rust, how do you know whether the manufacturer designed it that way to sell me a new one quicker, or because they made a mistake?
It's easy to tell when they specifically program a microcontroller to stop working after a certain date, and I think that such obviously bad practices should be outlawed. But as a design engineer, I can tell you that it's super easy to design things to fail in much subtler ways, so that it looks like it's a simple mistake. Especially since making your design last longer usually involves adding features like strain relievers on cords etc. This costs money, and you can easily pretend that you're "saving costs for the end consumer".
I think that, after the most basic right to repair legislation is in place, "soft" practices, like encouraging people to buy stuff from companies that have real warranty programs, and which advertise their "built to last" business models would be much more effective than trying to legislate away every aspect of repair.
I love how some outdoor equipment companies (Osprey, MSR, Cumulus) handle this. They sell really expensive stuff, but with excellent after-sales support, and openly encourage people to send products in for repair. Of course this would be very hard to implement in a "tech" environment, where the USP is usually "newer, faster, better". Although, as Bunnie Huang said, with the slow-down of Moore's law, we may slowly be reaching the point of a "heirloom" laptop. I'd love to see that one day.