Interview with Eric Lundgren about the questions surrounding electronic waste | Hacker News Reader

Interview with Eric Lundgren about the questions surrounding electronic waste

nautil.us

28 pointsdnetesn10 comments

Lot's of awesome nuggets in there

> My first line of attack is to empower consumers to fix their own electronics and expand product lifespan. If products last twice as long, then we net half as much e-waste. And that’s why I’m going to prison, because in helping you fix it, I got in the way of a much larger, very profitable but very disposable industry.

He still infringed on IP but I like the mile high perspective. He's going to jail for reducing waste. What a world!

> I got a bunch of Canadian solar panels that were damaged in storms, cut out the working parts, and assembled enough that they now cover the roof of my 65,000-square-foot building in Los Angeles. We get free power from this fusion reactor we call the sun, and store it in hybrid car battery packs from totaled cars. We use this free power to run a blockchain mining station that creates currency that is exchanged for the U.S. dollars that pay my employees. So, today I can proudly say that every single employee in my company is paid for by the sun through utilizing recycled garbage.

Ugh why did he have to ruin it with the block chain. He probably has enough solar and battery capacity to power all his nearby neighbors every day 24-hours a day

> Ugh why did he have to ruin it with the block chain. He probably has enough solar and battery capacity to power all his nearby neighbors every day 24-hours a day

Technically, it's mining cryptocurrencies. Probably at peak crypto mining profitability (around Dec-Jan) it was making significantly over what he could sell to the neighbors; also implying his neighbors would just switch to his infrastructure, that would be a bit of hassle.

Maybe if he hooked up all those GPUs to a render farm, it would be an alternative.

It's a shame there's no mention of RoHS in this discussion. As an EU resident ROHS and WEEE have done wonders for hazardous materials found in electronics.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restriction_of_Hazardous_Subst...

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_Electrical_and_Electroni...

One thing I am really interested in, and have been unable to properly research is to the extent that ROHS affected electronics sold in non-EU countries such as the USA. I've read everything I can find in academic journals on this subject(next to nothing) and also online(pretty much nothing).

This kind of article that interviews some individual attempting to solve a massive political problem as an individual or a consumer is so typical of the American ethos. It would appear the only opportunity Americans have to resolve such issues is to approach them as consumers, or in this case, criminals. Which ultimately leads to very little positive outcome.

"watched as they intentionally inserted lower-quality capacitors rather than standard ones on the motherboard, because this one is going to last this exact amount of time and not a month more."

This is seriously concerning. I recently bought a new car, and was surprised how much push back there was on buying an extended warranty past the normal warranty. The salesperson argued to sell a multi thousand dollars warranty for the length of the normal warranty that essentially gave me "free" oil changes but was defensive about me spending a few more hundred dollars to extend it for an extra 2 years!

They do it, but the a-priori logic that drives it, is not the overt desire to force obsolescence. The parts are cheaper. If you commission electronics from China, you can stipulate the extact tolerance and compliance and lifetime you want. Its one layer higher than this, which says "gee.. we could do that" . The scientist, the designer, the engineer, is not driving it, the upper specsheet is.

Its actually the same with the washingmachine. They made them from thick steel because manufacturing costs hadn't driven to the quality of build and design which worked with thin sheet steel. Once they got over a million, and developed tighter tolerances, and understood in-field lifetimes, they could use thinner stock because they could stamp a pattern into it which added 3D shape-driven strength, and avoid 3lb of steel cost. I know we like to imagine them rubbing their hands with gleee at the future sale from it rusting out, but they really dont: they are driving down front cost, and if this reduces lifetime at end, thats a cost shifting problem they are not maximising to. If they were told to reduce input cost but preserve maximum lifetime, they might drive 1mm of steel back in, or thicker dip-time or better paint or move to less rust prone mix of metal or any of 100 things.

This is probably the most realistic theory I've heard that explains planned obsolescence.

I'd then argue that there's still some malevolence in there and that would be the maximum lifetime they calculated. Clearly the older stuff lasts longer so they miscalculated how long the new stuff should last and at some point it becomes the new norm. "Oh yeah, washer's aren't supposed to last more than 7 years"

yes the malevolence is there, but it can be contained. in high price whitegoods (odd name, but there you go, the high price ones are now satin finish metal!) there is a huge story about long-life. European fridges have been driven to insanely thick insulation, far exceeding Australian standards, and there is a structural side to this: the units are very rigid, but have remarkably thin metal skins.

If we said that 95% of the product must be demonstrated to be capable of lasting 15 years, and could test it, we'd be driving to airframe resilience engineering: the jumbo jet is designed to work inside the metals fatigue point almost indefinitely, modulo cracking.

Thats not how we make consumer goods.

I'm sure this is very common, but note that there are well-documented cases of gleeful-hand-rubbing[1].

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel

Refrigerators functions haven't changed much, but their prices seem to go up over time, yet their reliability and life expectancy goes down. Also parts are priced such that it's cheaper to buy a new one if you expect a second faulty part within the would be warranty time of a new one.

It's true that with a good amount of knowledge you can go far on just what everybody is throwing away. Maybe dumpster will be the shortest path to science education for people.

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