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California Becomes 18th State To Consider Right To Repair Legislation (vice.com)
Jason Koebler shares a report from Motherboard: The right to repair battle has come to Silicon Valley's home state: Wednesday, a state assembly member announced that California would become the 18th state in the country to consider legislation that would make it easier to repair your electronics. "The Right to Repair Act will provide consumers with the freedom to have their electronic products and appliances fixed by a repair shop or service provider of their choice, a practice that was taken for granted a generation ago but is now becoming increasingly rare in a world of planned obsolescence," Susan Talamantes Engman, a Democrat from Stockton who introduced the bill, said in a statement. The announcement had been rumored for about a week but became official Wednesday. The bill would require electronics manufacturers to make repair guides and repair parts available to the public and independent repair professionals and would also would make diagnostic software and tools that are available to authorized and first-party repair technicians available to independent companies.
seriously they live in a state that is fucked up beyond belief, try repairing that first imo
Duh, of course all states should have the right to repair broken legislation.
My current phone has a little door I can pull off that gives me access to the lithium battery inside. I have opened it multiple times. I even dropped it once and it popped open on it's own. The battery spilled out that time, but it didn't go off like a grenade.
You have some interesting fantasies about lithium batteries.
Simple -- tax anything that has a built-in non-servicable LiIon battery 50%. A LiIon battery that's user-replaceable by design represents a minimal danger. Built-in batteries are a big scam to make sure that people throw their devices away when they lose capacity.
Most phones don't. Because manufacturers prefer you to throw them away after the LiIon fails. Simple: tax any phone, tablet, or laptop with a non-removable battery severely to discourage their sale.
Nice to have Frank as your friend, when Frank's friends could do this job. And did. And did it well. His father had the same done. Ted, his brother...
Can't have mere users having diagnostic tools... they might find that they can repair the thing without paying a repair technician.
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro" -- HST
Ooh! Another tax! Heavy handed and incredibly stupid. How much is that pissant tax going to cost to support and enforce?
Easier to just allow people to work on what they own.
Companies that don't allow this, don't get the money. No taxes necessary. Market forces will prevail.
Have gnu, will travel.
Your AR-15 doesn't have a full auto mode.
You can modify an AR-15 to be full auto, but it's tricky and probably won't work. The AR-15 tends to jam when fired at full-auto rates.
Also, such modifications are illegal.
What you *can* do is modify a liberal so that they know what they're talking about when it comes to guns.
That's also tricky and probably won't work, but it's not illegal.
Modern electronics is becoming impossible to repair, by its nature
Replacing a BGA chip is not feasible with normal electronic tech tools
You may have heard of Samsung phones.. Where they made the battery compartment too small such that normal thermal expansion wasn't accommodated and eventually the batteries burst out in flames. I believe it was in the news and there may have been some kind of a recall - may have even been a forced software kill switch that was invoked due to the severity of the manufacturer caused issue.. Then there are generic band Chinese hoverboards that burn houses down every other day..
Reality is that poor lithium batteries at best don't hold a charge very well, and at worst go up in flames. Worst is if some ignorant repair person causes a minor cell damage that eventually turns up into a major issue. Might be just a slight misassembly. Until solid state lithium batteries become reality, there's very little reason to let lay people mess with these..
I've replaced a few iphone batteries myself. Few of them worked out fine, seemed to have no problem. Few of them held their charge kind of at first and then soon not really any better than the original worn out battery. All were bought at around same cost from amazon from similar looking retailers.
Point being, its impossible to quality control these. Same with chargers. Impossible to quality control some random third party chargers. You may be willing to risk your property for a few saved bucks, but I would prefer you do it away from me. There's a good chance that nothing happens, but more than a decent chance that something may. Especially if this somehow becomes 'normal' practice mandated by law..
no BS rule need as well.
I have head that We can't give out full restore images as some people may mess and write the image to there hdd and not a SD card. That is from someone who works at (withheld) that makes (withheld) they said also said that it will make the about 1GB or more updates (more like full images packaged in a way that device can read from usb and will work on any (withheld) even the wrong one for your (withheld) as you just need an basic boot to load the right code for your device. They said some time they may post an basic os restore image (still have not) as the full os (for the base line hardware system) + (full device code) is to big. Due to cost cutting the hardware can't not boot from USB (only SD card)
Now one of there competition has full restore iso + small updates out side of the full install image that is needed time to time to say up to date (easy to put on USB) (can boot from USB and SSD) but they usb security dongles.
when you can't buy an OEM part or need to buy from distributor? Or when some stuff is only sold to certificated techs (that may have to pay a lot / follow rules that drive up costs to be on the list)
In past apple sold parts for big $$ with an refund when the old part was sent back.
Having replaced the lithium ion battery in my previous cell phone, I think you're grossly overstating the risk. Most of the risk is in accidentally puncturing the old one while you're removing it. Once you get the old one out, the odds of you doing anything that will cause it to later fail are pretty small unless the battery is defective.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
This is good news indeed, as there's plenty of legislation in need of repair.
Please, please, please make it illegal to manufacture or offer for sale any device into which a battery has been glued.
Single issue vote from me. e-waste ain't no laughin' matter, yo.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
... there is so much legislation that needs to be repaired.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
bom, gerber files with full source code. And the photomask. To be fully serviceable. Also user manuals for any and all custom IC's.
That would be just great!
I'd say if the right to repair your phone is the biggest injustice you can find in your life, you (a collective you, not yhe poster, per se) live in a tower that is gilded, indeed. It's silly that you can't, but I would hardly call it protest or legislation worthy. Speak with your dollars (of which you clearly have plenty of), boycotts work. Oh, but that would mean leaving your comfort zone for a little while. Silly me!
I've probably had thousands of lithium ion batteries pass through my hands over the years.
When I started playing Ingress, battery packs weren't popular and yet, so we carried spare batteries. To play for hours, we had to swap batteries, or be tethered to a car. They were dropped, manhandled, and otherwise abused. Of everyone I know that did it, none died. No explosions. No fires.
The only real thing we found was, repeated charge/discharge cycles daily did eventually degrade the life of the batteries. A typical work day could be 1hr before work, .5 hours on smoke breaks and lunch, and a few hours in the evening. That's just Ingress. Actually using the phone as a phone added hours, but didn't suck up the battery life as much.
We see the same from ecigs and 18650 batteries. I only made one smoke, and that was by physically cutting the battery open. I wanted to see what was inside. :)
The only battery that I've had swell to the point of almost bursting was a Macbook Pro's battery. I stopped using it months before, and only noticed when the battery cover popped off by itself.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Ironically, my phone with the non-exploding lithium battery is a Samsung Galaxy J3.
... but I predict a big wave of campaign contributions, dark money, and revolving-door job offers originating in Cupertino and washing ashore in Sacramento.
Do I support an extensive right to repair? Well, let's put it this way: I've taken apart several of my old ThinkPads to repair dead fans, broken Ethernet jacks, and burned out LCD lights, and I kept my previous smartphone going ten years by buying a new battery every couple/few years -- around $16 bucks a pop for a jumbo-sized one, with a brand-new matching aluminum back -- and swapping it in myself, which took a couple of minutes each time. (And the only reason it took that long was because the new batteries' packaging was tricky to get open.) And when I look at my dad's new X1 Yoga and my new Moto G5S Plus, I realize that if anything at all goes wrong inside (including a prematurely aging battery), we're f*cked. Or at least out the cost of a very expensive repair. So you're damn right I support the right to repair. And I haven't even mentioned e-waste or wars over and slave/child labor for rare-earth-mineral mines...