Many many many years ago I watched an interview with a very high up person from Chevrolet. When asked about the corner garage taking business away, his response was car companies are going to make cars so complex that only dealers and very large shops will remain. They know exactly what they are doing long term. A decent scanner that actually does everything (NOT most things) costs 5G and can go to 30 thou and few hundred $ for updates couple or three times a year. They have also made it that you can't access a new vehicle ECM/TCM/BCM as you have to log into the manufactures mainframe to even talk to it. I bring this up as they even tried to get an EULA but this is where the line was drawn. Futurama did a good episode of this. We need a court to be on the side of the consumer and that just ain't going to happen. I used to wonder hth I could buy something and it not be mine but I just look around at the general state of things and now wonder when it all went bad.
Its not just companies doing these things on their own to prevent repair. There are federal regulations that these companies have. no choice but to comply with. So they take the opportunity the lock down the engine controllers to prevent modifications to emissions systems and the tables/algorithms controlling the engine itself. The more the FEDS mandate stricter fuel economy standards the more complicated these machines must become because the efficiencies are no longer purely mechanical and come from the software as well. Blame the FEDS and the manufacturers but also the people that voted for the legislators that created these laws in the first place....
"They take the opportunity to lock down" is absolutely right, they don't HAVE to lock it down, it's just a great excuse. You can pull your air filter, exhaust, catalytic converter... All things that will affect emissions but there are no locks on any of these items. The only part that's locked is the one that sends you back to the dealership and prevents everyone from fixing things themselves.
@@RECESSIM They do have to lock it down - thanks to environmentalists the govt in many countries has made the companies liable for any after sale mods that consumers do that breach the environmental regulations. If the companies continue to be liable under current laws, why wouldn't they lock it down so they can avoid gigantic environmental fines?
@@matthewnirenberg Wow Did not even think that way surly you should only be liable for the item sold after that is the consumer if you sell a van you not liable for what gets put in the back like dead body asbestos ruble etc
Pay a bunch of environmentalists to block the roads, so people get sick and tired of all "environmental crap". You think anyone cares about the environment ? The more protests, the less people care ? Now everyone agrees fck the environment and start consuming (read: pay in any way shape or form, now you're addicted we raise the price higher and higher).
The lack of repairability is definitely creating more e-waste. Many devices which would normally be perfectly fixable, are being thrashed due to the artificially created unreliability by their manufacturers. Most notably, Apple's touring "we're a green company", which is a bunch of BS. All their iPhone parts are now locked down by serialization making it difficult or crippled in function when replaced outside of their factory. It's disgusting!
@@BillAnt Yes, and "old" Android phones cannot be updated, which renders them useless. Curiously my 2008 built computer running Linux is still perfectly updateable and useful.
@@user255- If you think that a phone is useless just because there's no more updates, you're wrong. Plenty of older phones out there are perfectly usable and secure, just run a good anti-virus. Of course that's what companies would like you to believe.
@@BillAnt If there is kernel level hole that remains unpatched, then anti-virus software wont save your phone. Even in user land, pretty much all anti-virus software do is detect known malware. The time the malware is detected, the damage may have been done. Practical example is my old tablet, which keeps on constant spamming, because there is race between anti-virus and viruses. Only way to really end the race would be blocking the hole. Anti-virus software simply cannot do that. If you really want your old phone to be reliable, then you need to switch the whole operating system. EDIT: Even if your phone would be secure, many applications do not work with old Android.
Years ago I took my kids on a cub scout tour of the US battleship New Jersey. In one of the turruts there was a device where you feed the distance, angle, boat speed, etc using cranks and it figured out the firing solution. I stood there realizing it was a electro mechanical computer.
It is so sad that companies make devices more and more unrepairable. But customers still buys their devices so companies doesn't have any reason (financial reason) not to do so. 10 years ago laptop with removable cpu, ram, disk, wan etc... was something normaln. Now in macbooks you cant update anything, but in most modern brands of laptops at least you can upgrade ssd, ram etc.
upgradeable cpus disappearing is intel and amd's fault, as they just simply stopped offering those around 2015 for their mobile processors, though having said that macs had ditched upgradeable cpus for a number of years beforehand
Great show Hash. I had a ZX-80 which I extended to 4K SRAM. Also installed a heat sink to the on board voltage regulator and modified a portable cassette player to improve its file loading. Back then parts were large enough to see without a magnifier, and you could fix things when they broke. I guess we traded that away without considering the longer term implications. There’s a balance to be struck - you’re pendulum analogy was spot on.
Next move in the right to repair battle: "In an effort to increase recycling of old electronics we have decided to stop selling devices to introduce a subscription model."
7:20 Crazy thing is even in how this computer was made dust proof, water proof and robust. How can you make good seal for big package, that will have hardcore heat cycles? Gaskets in pairs will probably do the job, as no dust and liquid can travel through them. Hell no - they used can soldered to be sealed even to gases. With no redundancy, as this is mechanically overkill and will refuse to fail @edit: one minute later you are saying the same thing anyway :v
Reminds me when electronics came with schematics. Or you could find some sam's facts for them. As for tube radios, the perpetual trouble shooter's manual. I doubt very few modern TVs will be around as long, and still working, as my 1920s era tube radio.
Crazy how we basically toss everything in the trash now… I saw some good machining videos from South America where they show restoring electric motors because replacements are hard to come by. Very fun watching a skilled craftsman at work rejuvenating an item.
great video! Im not sure if you have seen the youtube videos from military archives about the fire control computers inside battelships, in the 1940s and 50s they had the same mechanical computers that calculated the inclination and travel of the rounds as they were fired, and ONLY when they had a solution for the range and weather etc is when the guns would fire (you would hold donw the trigger for a couple secs and until the ship rollled over another wave and was in the exact right position would it fire). And thats like integrations and movement over time calculations that were all done with gears and cams and other rotating balls, if you thought the air computer was cool you should check out the mechanincal computers on the battleships! Anywayss keep up the great work, always love when another of your videos comes out! :)
Some time ago, a wireless speaker model entered the market, the manufacturer of which encouraged people to use the "recycling mode". You pressed a combination of keys and the equipment was permanently blocked. After that, you received a promotion to buy another one. I believe that the electric stool is a merciful punishment for its originator.
Also aware of manufacturers that offer trade-in discounts so the existing equipment doesn’t hit the secondary market where it could still be used at a much lower cost. They just destroy it to keep prices high.
Thanks! Editing the next video right now. I’ve done 16 episodes in the same format, was time to try to improve it a bit and take things to the next level. You’ll see that over the next few videos I hope. 🤞🏽
The problem I see with R2R is where to draw the line. Should the software be included? Tooling? Sketches? Sketches for the machine that made the part of it was specialized? Stencils for the IC chips? Source code? Compiler source code? And it places a huge burden on the manufacturer to handle all this. I am not talking about Apple or Sony, but Bobs Toys And Stuff making a toy with chips that might not be manufactured anymore. I know this is a "but sometimes" argument, but I think it is an ignored backside of the R2R movement. I would be more comfortable with a reparability grade on products, like how the CC licence encodes limitations.
I'm sure copyright laws will fall one day. Or at least will be heavily transformed to benefit customers. But for now I suggest just to ignore them wherever possible.
Warren Buffet calls those constructs 'moats'.. he only invests in companies that have 'good' moats. Moats are the mechanic by which a company takes over the control of the supply of a commodity on a market, so that it can maximize profits (revenue - cost = profit) by prohibiting or undermining competition while also creating perpetual demand (planned obsolescence). Please note that a true 'free market' is about supply being able to meet demand freely.. moats prevent that. And here is another one - moats only work if society ENFORCES rules that give a company control over the supply of a product - namely INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY. IP (and its variations like patents, copyrights, licenses, etc.) are all being introduced to prohibit competition on markets, turning free markets into unfree markets. Just look up their history and you will notice the pattern.
I got a 1day job thru a temp agency some years back. Saw loads of paperwork with his company on it. Only 3 people worked in a warehouse selling home goods to different stores in probably 100mi radius. The buyers was coming from holeindawall ass towns. What you wrote explains that place to a T. The head guy said they don't sell to the public when I asked. That place was like a legal 1996 crack house. And he doing hella volume to have $$$ that long for that long. All somebody gotta do is wander into another one of them places of his & the world would collectively WTF. And the part that pissed me off about it all is that paperwork looked like bulk prints that had nothing to do with selling cheap fridges, furniture, and stereos. Scattered all over an office made for at least 20 people. Statues of limitations not up for some things. If some law dude wanted to make a name for themselves, it shouldn't take long to see exactly which of those subsidiaries like the one I went to to get some good shit to make that umbrella rain. Buffet's business style is legal slow grind crack dealer, to me.
I made the argument and specifically talked with Louis Rossmann on the issue of companies figuring out how to twist right to repair legislation in their favor as you mentioned; It fell on deaf ears and he couldn't fathom the idea that companies would be able to subvert or collude with law/government. I've always thought it should be a concept that is voluntarily supported by companies like Framework or Fairphone for example, that isn't mandated by law, and is done willingly rather than as a means to comply with government regulations.
Government is easy to collude with. Come up with a narrative they can put their name on and then liberally apply party contributions to support their causes. Government is like the Mob and protection money. If you don't pay them, they come at you with monopoly lawsuits (Google/Microsoft/etc) or they start enacting legislation to attract your attention. Then the company hires some people who explain the "racket" to them, and they all of a sudden play nice and start contributing a portion of their profits. They might not have to pay tax, but they damn sure are going to pay the politicians!
And where do these companies get the money from to pay the politicians off? You and me. Higher product prices. Same goes when they tax companies or sell spectrum. It's essentially a hidden tax
@ glynnetolar4423 Which is why representative democracy / constitutional republics are inherently unsustainable. Reluctant philosophers simply are not as competitive as more selfish philosophers and thus the latter will occupy positions of power and introduce rules that disable competition, turning free markets into unfree markets (providing even more resources to the few who will use them to influence the rules in their favor - a positive feedback loop that takes a couple decades). Note that free there stands for supply being free to adjust to demand, not a market free from rules, there are no markets without rules. Why individuals do that is clear, and even how it works (the political system does it as societies need a monopolized rule enforcing entity for it to work), but most people do NOT grasp this. Our mistake is letting a few make and decide on the rules that govern over all of us. Plato was wrong - and didn't recognize that not the mob killed Socrates, but a mob gaslighted by a few conservatives who wanted to hold onto the status quo, as it benefited them and a guy asking all sorts of uneasy questions that teaches others in this is a problem for them).
on a certain 🏴☠🌊 site because where they are located the only stuff that gets taken down is malware, fakes and images so illegal that apple got in the middle of a privacy controversy while they was trying to combat it. copyrights are not included in the takedown. maybe you could try posting the software fixes there.
Of course companies wants it to non repairable, there's more profit selling you new device then chip that costs 2€ and can be swapped my skilled person in under a 15 minutes. And this is why we need strong environmental laws also to force companies take environmental issues seriously. Companies do anything for more profit, dump waste cheap, etc...
i have a question. next door they are building a house and my electric bill has gone up a lot. just now i noticed the side light was on next door but it then looking at meter, there is no meter installed. is that possible ??
Perhaps they have been plugging into an outlet on your property for power? Without a meter they shouldn’t have power, but they could have just jumped the connection inside the box to get power until service is setup at the house.
Construction sites quite commonly have what’s called a “temp pole” or temporary power pole. It’s a place that the power company has connected their elec service to for the use of the workers power tools, etc. The power poles are provided by the electricians for each job site in the very early stages of the project. Those power poles are removable temporary version of the outdoor breaker box with a bunch of “quads” (4 receptacle power outlets housed in a metal box) attached and wired up to it. No different wiring-wise that’s attached to almost every house in the world. So the lights that you saw that were on was more than likely due to temporary power service and not from power theft. It would be pretty easy to see if they were stealing power anyway as the lawn area between the 2 breaker boxes or power service entrances would possibly have looked heavily disturbed or chopped up. It would be extremely risky for someone to pull off a stunt like tapping into your meter can (metal box the meter is mounted into) or the outdoor main breaker panel to your house. With the way shit is today where people shoot first and ask questions later over (I’m a firm believer of the second amendment BTW) less offensive actions like a stolen parking space at a StarBucks, messing with/ stealing power from a neighbors electric service is the last thing I would do. The green wire is a code requirement to have a positively bonded (connected) ground bar to the earth connection (ground rods) that are directly under the outdoor breaker box. It would take more than one wire (and a lot thicker that what you saw) to provide any useable power to the new house project next door. You sharp rise in power bill payment was more than likely a rate hike or increase. My power bill went up sometime soon after the smart meter was installed a year or 2 ago and it just now recently doubled after a recent rate hike. My utility has a tiered pricing plan that if you go over a certain amount of KWh of total use they slap you with an “asshole fee” that consists of higher rates on just the overage amount and a fee for advancing up to that level. I’m sure most power companies are like this too. I’m going to be developing an install project at my house to make it virtually free to run my AC/ Heat Pump system. That way the power company can go victimize someone else and leave me be.
Yuo are wrong about Apple gating ability to fix a sensor. This is an encoder. Encoders need to be calibrated per device, if you swap one, you need to recalibrate. I do not agree with Apple's vision for the world order, but this one is strictly driven by the hardware choises they made. And this time it is related to a more sophisticated encoder calibration, which is usualy done in house and is complicated to do it outside of the factory. I am happy, that somewhone have made a tool, that calibrates the encoders, that's good. Apple won't provide such thing, because they would have to mass produce such devices. There are also other things in macbooks that needs special fix/calibration tools, that are not viable for mass production. Production of such, to them, is not worth the cost.
And the more you do it, the better the protection solutions get. The source code is the important part of software and the thing that makes or breaks companies. As an independent software developer I spend a lot on R&D and creating my software, I subsequently spend almost as much preventing the reverse engineering of my software because if the source ever got out, my competitors would have all their work done for them at no cost and I'd be broke. This conundrum is the main reason why many have issue with both "right to repair" and reverse engineering.
@@RECESSIM Good thing to research. I'm a German, but have lived most of my adult life in DK. In fact in my career I was part of a project where we reverse engineered software for a import system on society level (real time gross settlements for interbank monetary flows). The team discovered that the software vendors security not fully matched the requirements and their promises, so we told them, what and how too improve and be a little bit more honest next time, as this software was one of the most financially important systems not only for one but multiple countries.
@@matthewnirenberg I fully understand your position. One can obfuscate software a long way (I did many years ago), but in the end one can not fully obfuscate the behaviour (on macro or micro level). Theft of obfuscated GPLed software often get caught by behaviourial analysis, and from behaviour intelligent people can infere the secret 'algorithm' that makes the software special. Personally I believe what makes or brakes software companies is not the competitor's replications, but the companies lack to maintain their brainware / staff and documentation and to focus on strategic innovation and marketing in the product. Having a gold egg laying goose. What should one do? Slaughter it, keep it laying eggs until it dies, or take some eggs and let them develop and see if the new babies also lay golden eggs.
YEAH !!! !!!!!! woohoo! Reverse all things, make all hard things soft, all soft things hard! microcode vm, i3c, pam-4, signal, signal signal! Bannana! 🍌
Here's the problem with right to repair - it actively enables the theft of IP and the illegal cloning of products that took a heap of R&D and a heap of money to create. Just a schematic can reduce the time to create a cheap clone by 90% as the software side of things is very easy. As an independent hardware and software developer, how am I supposed to recover even my R&D costs and make some profit if I have to release the key information? Its literally not possible. If I release the schematics and/or source code then I've just thrown away what is usually years worth of R&D worth a lot of money as it will 100% be cloned and sold at the cost of manufacture. Once source code is released there goes work that can't be further developed. I've written software that works faster, that's smaller and more secure than its competitors - if the source was released those competitors would have all their work done for them and my work would be for nothing. What the solution could be is if schematics were released once a product and its close evolutions are all fully discontinued and patents expired. The other issue is that even if this occurred, the source wouldn't be released as source is significantly commonly reused, adapted and optimised and thus would still be in use in other products. Without the source, most modern hardware is useless as 95% of the "magic" happens in the source, not in hardware. I've been on both side of the issue and I feel that those who demand "right to repair" fail to understand what its like to be on the other side - it reminds me of the extreme end of the opensource community who believe that everything should be open and free and that people will magically "donate" to the developers even though in reality this rarely happens and never covers the R&D costs plus some profit. If things are free, no one ever pays because why would they - it'd be stupid to do so. At the end of the day, costs need to be recovered, profits need to be made as a result of having done the hard work creating, and, food needs to be kept on the table. Giving everything away doesn't do any of this yet life and stuff all costs money.
IP is a societal construct to undermine/prohibit competition on markets, creating unfree markets on which supply is unable to meet demand freely.. this creates monopolies. Anybody supporting IP supports monopolies and is anti-capitalistic, it's really that simple. PS: IP does not exist in nature as there is no law enforcement there that prevents others from copying what you are doing. Societies are about the peaceful exchange of resources and thus enforce do-not-kill rules and similar.. but enforcing you-shall-not-copy-rules is creating a winner takes all environment and destroys society.
Parents are 25 years I believe. That's a long time tech wise. And the accused of ip law should be addressed too. The problems and solutions aren't simple.
@ glynnetolar4423 It is simple, if you go back to the basics. I entered this field via currencies (another monopoly that comes to life under conditions most developed countries met since the 80's). The core of the problem is that (a lot of) individuals optimize for their own benefit (at the cost of others), while nature has come up with societies (social organism) that makes work sharing / specialization more efficient compared to the alternative - wilderness. The catch-22 is that societies violently enforce necessary social beneficiary rules with the power of ALL of society, while either by accident or willfully individuals can introduce rules that benefit a few at the cost of the rest, which then are being enforced by that very same mechanic. IP (patents, copyright, licenses, tariffs, etc.) are all such constructs (look up their history!) that benefit a few at the cost of the rest..
@@glynnetolar4423 Patents are 40yrs in the world outside of the USA. It is simple - until developers get appropriate financial remuneration for their work and until they are no longer adapting or reusing the code, then the public should have zero right to it. 25yrs isn't that long - about 50% of the code I've written since I first learnt to code, can be followed back close to 25yrs - RAD (Rapid Application Development) and reusable code gave code longevity and made things easier for software developers. The problems and solutions are simple - its people demanding things who don't understand that the world doesn't revolve around them that's the problem. If govts demand everything has to be made public then say goodbye to products and software that isn't already opensource.
Which is it? does "Just a schematic can reduce the time to create a cheap clone by 90% as the software side of things is very easy", or "Without the source, most modern hardware is useless as 95% of the "magic" happens in the source, not in hardware." Those 2 statements are mutually exclusive, It can't be both. It's not like schematics are some mystical secret. Not providing a schematic is just anti-repair. Anyone with eyeballs and a meter can reproduce a schematic from the original board, and can easily be done by some company whos goal is to make a clone. Keeping the schematics hidden only serves to add another hurdle to the repair process in hopes that the consumer will throw away the damaged product, and buy another one instead of attempting a repair.
I mean we're all having an anti-capitalist discussion now a days, we just don't want to say it out loud Monopolies are natural in capitalism cause whats the outcome of competition?
I think it’s similar to sports or racing, you need guidelines so they don’t go RAW Capitalist. It’s tilted too far in their direction now and it’s the consumer that bears the burden. I’m fine with capitalism, just need to swing that pendulum back our way a bit for a while 😀
@@RECESSIM Thanks for the reply, cool content. That's the popular sentiment on the matter, but the cynic in me knows that a bunch of forward thinking people cant stop the potential of trillions of dollars in profits. They got the power to lobby, corrupt, defend and simply enact what they want. We, unorganized, have nothing. That's a hard lesson the right to repair movement must accept. The odds are not in our favor and we can't ask politicians, their caretakers, to pretty please help us. And like all pro worker regulations, they get shut down in a few years cause corporations have the power. This pattern repeats itself every few years. Regulate and repeal, but we're not making the strides.
Capitalism is defined as voluntary exchange of resources and earning the fruit of your labor. Monopolies are being created and enforced by the political system (representative democracy/constitutional republic) that gives a few control over the supply, with the goal of undermining/prohibiting competition (disabling capitalism). But it is NOT capitalism (an economic ideology) that is responsible for this - it is the political ideology that does this (and ultimately our nature - survival of the fittest and all that). Just look up the history of patents or copyright and you will see that the political system enforced those anti-capitalist rules, which ultimately create monopolies. And those are just the tip of the iceberg.
@@joansparky4439 Thats a good theory but its only locally true. What would you do if you wanted to squash competition? Buy out a few politicians. Use "freedom" to monopolize; its my property and my right. Thats what theyve done up to this point. Capitalism is not synonymous with evolution, capitalism isnt a pure idea. This is capitalism. The capitalism you speak of is a myth. In real life capitalism is exploitation and monopolies. Mom and pop aint got nothing on our overlords, mom and pop are just workers too.
