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Comment by clinta | Hacker News Reader

Having such a prompt doesn't really alleviate any of the concerns in this article. I still have to worry about that when buying a second hand CPU, except now I'm even less sure, because sure the CPU came out of a Dell, but maybe the owner never fused it.

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If the CPU doesn't perform as advertised you can always return it. The only hope here may be putting enough pressure on Dell and whoever else to make their components worthless on the second hand market.

I've been involved in more than one purchasing decision where the ability to resell the parts was factored into the sticker price.

> If the CPU doesn't perform as advertised you can always return it.

For second-hand CPUs? Not likely.

Nope, very likely. In Kansas at least it is explicitly impossible to disclaim an implied warranty or suitability for a particular purpose. Most other states are actually de facto the same -- how can you sell something without it addressing some need of the purchaser?

If it doesn't fulfill that need, even second hand, you can get your money back.

Ali Express doesn't care about your local laws. Neither does Craigslist, nor eBay. If you're buying a Dell from Dell, then sure, but that's never been the problem anyway.

If someone sells to you they must operate under your state's laws. You can easily bring suit against them in small claims or real court, but you probably won't even need to do that as you can just get a chargeback.

What you are suggesting is absurd. Craigslist, Ebay, Paypal, and the people selling using those platforms are above the law?

I can see how you'd think that if you'd never tried to do any of these things, but in reality there's what the law says and then there's what you can actually get the law to do. Those are sometimes very, very different things. This is one of those times.

It sounds like you might not be familiar with any of the platforms in question. But no, you can't do either of those things to the kinds of people who deliberately sell defective parts on ebay and Craigslist. Or at least, you won't once you figure out what's actually involved.

I would say beside as opposed to above, but it sums to the same thing.

What does that mean for the open source software I release with no implied warranty? Do I need to forbid residents of Kansas from using my software?

Are as-is used car sales illegal in that state?

Well, if the CPU has worked fine for ages but stops working after trying it out in (say) a new Dell server... then the cpu isn't really "returnable" as the Dell server is the one that broke it. :(

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