British right to repair law excludes smartphones and computers
9to5mac.com
9to5mac.com
This sounds so logical (why cannot I run, by voiding the warranty, any code I want on my machine, whatever it is?), yet apparently so hard to make openly illegal, since the problem is barely acknowledged in general.
If you're really expressing concern, what do you think of e.g. modem modules for regular computers or SDR hardware?
Great question. I'm intentionally not answering it because I am not sure what I think. There are valid points on both sides. In part what I think depends on how evil evil people get.
Our ubiquitous radio devices only work because the invisible commons that is the radio spectrum noise floor is aggressively and totally managed. Intentional emitters can only be sold after testing to ensure that their output is within regulated power levels and frequencies. It is trivial for an end user with a high-power transmit-capable SDR or amateur radio to unintentionally, unknowingly, and invisibly pollute this resource, denying nearby devices (scaled to your transmit power and depending on the frequency/bandwidth) the ability to communicate. This could be some noise on your neighbor's FM car radio, or it could be the communicators used by emergency services.
Honestly, I think radio spectrum management is one of the greatest success stories of the 20th century - if air or water pollution were as effectively regulated the world would be a very different place! To be clear, I don't think that smartphones with unlockable bootloaders, likely reusing the stock radio binary blob, are actually going to bring about the apocalypse and set us back to the telegraph era.
There was a process where Apple or Samsung or whoever brought that device with their bootloader to an expensive laboratory to get their CE mark, and that process proved that combination of hardware and software to be compliant with regulations. That process may have involved modifying some hardware filters and EMI shields, and almost certainly involved adjusting parameters in radio firmware/software, which are subsequently fixed for the lifetime of the product. If you give end users the ability to modify these parameters, you're inviting them to break the law. While enforcement is currently highly effective by requiring this certification process for OEMs, it wouldn't scale if you give everyone the ability to modify their certified emitters. You at least have to consider the possibility that someone could create a "High Power Radio" app or OS that would make smartphones running it have higher-power, faster access to cell towers and cause nearby devices to lose connection; no one wants that outcome.
Personally, I think the harm caused by preventing this through locked bootloaders and disposable smartphones is a tragedy. However, I don't know what a comparably effective alternative would look like, and the current state of affairs has both inertia and the backing of major institutions with strong conflicts of interest, and will continue to be very hard to advocate against.
I don't know what the current state of affairs is with regards to radio modem firmware, but I would think that if radio-controlling software should be certified (as following regulation), that should be limited to the firmware, and the modem should only accept firmware updates cryptographically signed by the manufacturer (and possibly the regulator). The firmware should provide an interface that only permits legal use through technical means. IOW, regulation should be limited to the hardware module and the software running inside it. It shouldn't be possible for software residing on any other part of the device to run afoul.
If that's impossible for some reason (which I don't think it should be), then I would argue that other alternatives like focusing on prosecuting violations (like the app and OS you mentioned) or modifying the regulations so they can be contained within the firmware while still meeting goals should come before any idea of locking down whole devices for the regulation of a specific module.
Also,
> You at least have to consider the possibility that someone could create a "High Power Radio" app or OS that would ...
If that's possible then, it's possible now. I mean, you don't even have to consider phones. Bootloaders and OSes in regular computers are open source and unlocked. If that's a problem that can arise from unlocked devices, then it already would have been a problem since long ago.
Additionally, the discussion was not whether there should be unlocked devices, which there already are. The discussion was whether locking should be illegal.
If it ever seeped into the public consciousness how easy it is to disrupt RF communications, you can bet your callsign that some group of clowns would start doing it for their own amusement.
The kernel can only talk to the modem trough AT commands, the same commands that you would use with a 4G USB modem that you plug into any computer. The fact that are physically on the same SOC doesn't implicate nothing in terms of security.
In fact there are no security implication on unlocking a bootloader, if there were, well we would be in trouble since it's a relatively easy operation, that in most cases it's a matter of running a command from a CLI tool, and the only drawback is voiding the warranty.
Besides that, some phone will add a unremovble giant red exclamation mark on boot screen to notate the phone being unlocked to warn you `the phone is already unlocked, don't trust it unless it is done by you.`
On the phones I've used (Pixel), there is a warning that unlocking will wipe all data.
Much longer. It took until 2019 for checkra1n to become a thing to unlock Apple A7 to A11 devices. Apple A11 is a 2017 SoC.
A12, A13, A14 remain uncracked today.
In Android lands, bootloaders starting from quite some years ago are quite solid too, with no bypasses except when the device maker provides you the possibility to unlock it.
For Wi-Fi you can tweak the driver, if you want. But you can do the same with a network card that you buy for a couple of dollars so what's the point? Transmitting on the 2.4Ghz is something everyone can do if he wants.
It's nonsense what you said. There nothing evil you can do by unlocking a phone. In Android an unlock triggers a factory reset, that will prevent accessing people personal data (and it's not really necessary if you have disk encryption, that every modern phone has as a default), so the concern of accessing people data doesn't exist.
The concern about: but then a criminal can steal your phone and use it. Yes, there is. We can require to unlock the phone requesting a code from a website of the manufacturer so they can prove that you bought the phone, as some manufacturers do. But in reality, does it make sense? You can nowaday get a phone that is more powerful than the PC that I used 5 years ago for 200$, I mean 8 core CPU, 8Gb of RAM, 256Gb internal flash, in the following years the price will probably go even lower. Should I care? They only thing that I care is that whoever stoles the phone cannot access my personal data, and this is achieved by the disk encryption, everything else to me is useless, I would just buy another phone, but in reality is more probable that I will loose or break my phone that someone steals it.
He's being sarcastic. It's think of the children but with electronics and PII.
Typically you have the modem that has its own microcontroller inside that runs its own firmware, that is encrypted. On Android phones you have a partition for the radio firmware, that you should really never touch (since doing so you can brick your device). Of course there will be a shared memory area between the radio and the main CPU to talk, but that is only for communication, then the radio microcontroller has its own RAM to implements its functions.
If someone actually tried to write their own radio firmware and made a mistake, there very soon would be.
Messing around with radio transmission is not a game. Make enough noise on the wrong frequency and now you're interfering with communications for emergency services responding to a disaster or air traffic control guiding flights in crowded airspace, with a very real danger of loss of life. And there is no way for anyone to stop you until they've physically tracked down the source of the bad transmission, which can take hours.
I am very much in favour of rights to repair and against almost any restriction on what individuals can do with their own hardware, but giving people who don't know what they're doing unrestricted access to a radio transmitter on that basis is a bit like giving everyone in your city a button that detonates the nuke because you believe in a right to bear arms. At some point, you need to draw a line and say only qualified people past this point, or very bad things start to happen.
I have been witness to the kind of search I mentioned. Usually it happens because of a freak hardware failure, not a malicious act or negligence. Unfortunately the innocence of all involved does not reduce the severity of the potential consequences. As I said, this stuff is not a game.
I can go buy a bunch of passives off of ebay and make a noisy oscillator that will kill everything for a couple blocks but nobody seems to do it.
1. How far off the bell curve do we need to go? Do we trade all rights to do anything for diminishing returns in safety?
2. These modifications are happening right now. Bad instances are usually caught by EMS system tests or by people reporting gaps in cell coverage, etc, and are generally purpose build jammers. There are not many instances of frequency overlap. For most goods, especially consumer telecommunications equipment, other bands are protected by the fact the equipment is given a specific range to operate in anyway.
I've been on HN for more than a decade. You can check my comment history to see that I contribute sensibly. I have no reason to make anything about this up, but I'm obviously not going to doxx myself by providing the kind of proof that would be convincing. You're free to take me at my word or to disbelieve me, but if you aren't interested in substantial discussion in good faith, please consider simply ignoring a comment and moving on to something that interests you more.
The answer to your question is that I once spent some time working with a network operator and on a day when I happened to be around their operations centre there was an active incident like this.
If memory serves, it turned out that the rogue device was a relatively new model that a customer had bought and was trying to use normally but something wasn't reliably operating within spec. That model would have had to pass certification to be permitted on the network but apparently this specific unit had drifted and as a result it was dumping bad data all over a control channel that was in use across a large geographical area, causing severe disruption to connectivity for everyone.
At that time some safety-critical services were using this network for communications in the field so this kind of outage was a very big deal. There were multiple vehicles with detection equipment on the road, systematically trying to narrow down the source of the interference, but of course they had trouble coordinating with the operations centre themselves because of the same disruption. I don't know everything that was going on, but I did learn that in my country there is a legal power to gain access to premises in this kind of situation and it sounded like the required formalities and officials were being arranged just in case.
As I recall, it took most of an afternoon to track down the source of the interference and get it switched off. In the end it was mostly dumb luck that it was found. I didn't quite follow what happened but possibly a detection vehicle that was out of contact with the operations centre had decided to patrol in its area until it could find another way to call in and while it was doing that it drove right past the building where the rogue unit was located and its detection equipment lit up like a Christmas tree.
The customer was entirely innocent and had no idea it was their unit causing all the trouble nor any reason they should have known. I don't know exactly what happened to that model, the manufacturer or the certification process it had managed to pass despite the defect. For sure there were serious repercussions.
This all happened some time ago and the protocols and networks have since changed but the physics hasn't. That's why I have such strong views about regulation and only allowing people who know what they're doing to have full control over transmission equipment. As the above incident shows, things can still go badly wrong even without that. If there had been a major incident requiring coordination between first responders in the field during that downtime it could have been disastrous. Minimising the risk of similar failures due to carelessness by someone who didn't fully understand their equipment and the systems and protocols they were working with just seems like common sense to me.
Maybe you disagree but I think the fact that the cause of the incorrect transmission was a hardware fault in that particular anecdote is relevant only if we don't think a user with the ability to freely modify firmware as we were discussing could cause exactly the same effect either negligently or maliciously. Otherwise, the argument being made is merely that not many people actually modify firmware in dangerous ways, in which case I refer you to the nuclear analogy in my original comment.
Put another way, you're not trying to prevent people who know what they're doing and follow robust processes from developing radio transmitters, even though in extreme cases such as my anecdote that might still not be enough to prevent a system failure. Nor can you realistically stop a sufficiently resourceful adversary from using radio interference as a form of attack. What you can do is stop an enthusiastic newbie who read an article about radio once from accidentally causing people to die because their experiment meant emergency responders at an incident down the street couldn't talk to each other except face to face.
The FCC hasn't cracked down - yet. As other have pointed out that is probably because they don't see a widespread problem and so the politics aren't worth it. I'm sure someone reading this is involved with radio, I hope they take the warning (I believe their response will be a form of we already know)
The kinds of outage that can be caused by rogue transmitters are rare. Often it's a hardware failure that is to blame when they do happen. Hardware failures are also rare but when you might have millions of transmitters within a small city, sometimes you discover that rare is not the same as never!
There is always the possibility of malicious or negligent interference if an operator has the ability to modify their transmitter's behaviour sufficiently though. I would personally be OK with limiting the sale or use of equipment with those capabilities to only people who have shown they are competent, for much the same reasons that I am personally OK with restricting the use of cars to people who have passed a test. It obviously doesn't prevent all failures but it certainly lowers the risk of failures that could endanger many other people.
Who's to say this? What if i'm Apple and my ''partner'' radio chip manufacturer (cough qualcomm cough) doesn't give me access to changing the bootloader? Why wouldn't 'forced unlocked bootloader' also apply to Apple-owned devices?
Still couldn't get game console unlocking through, but at least phones / tablets / other devices that are locked can be unlocked and resold.
https://resource-recycling.com/e-scrap/2018/11/01/digital-de...
[1] - https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2020/06/29/copyright-office-begin...
Right to repair laws are (would be) a whole different beast, it would mean the manufacturer would have to sell the devices unlocked or provide the unlock method themselves.
In other words, DMCA exception removes a legal hurdle for repeatability, but Right to Repair legislation would remove the technical hurdles (and some other legal hurdles).
I have a stack of smartphones I bought for 15$ but cannot legally unlock because I haven't paid simple mobile for a year of service on each. They're still fun and useful but not fully.
Apple batteries are typically much smaller than what is in androids, because their chips are less power hungry… same goes for Tesla, their cars are more efficient… so standard battery packs would harm their overall product
Don’t buy a device with a non replaceable battery if you don’t want one… why do you need the government for that?
Zero, zip, nada.
A right to repair law might mandate that any device with a battery also have the battery sold, by the manufacturer, for a reasonable period of time. That gives you a practical right to repair the device by replacing the battery, and it's well-defined.
"User replaceable" is not well defined. Does it mean you need to be able to do this with no tools at all? If not, what tools make it not 'user replaceable'? That no glue is used? Solder?
My watch is literally a cell phone, and I don't welcome law which might make it bulkier or more awkward, to mollify people who want a plastic hinge to pop out their smartphone battery and swap in a new one in the field.
The battery in my smartphone (and watch!) can be replaced by the manufacturer. Right-to-repair is about making sure that the owner of a device can do things themselves or from a third party, without licensing from the manufacturer: so selling consumable parts to all comers, providing some manuals maybe. It is not about whether you have the manual dexterity or special tooling to perform the replacement! If you want to optimize around that part being very easy, buy a product where it is, like the Dragonbox Pyra.
A battery is a consumable and should be user-replaceable. It might be a bit fiddly, with tiny screws and fragile connectors, but shouldn't require heat guns and chemicals to remove adhesives...
(And if we're about to replace billions of vehicles with EVs, perhaps consuming the entire planet's supply of lithium, we should be thinking very carefully about how those batteries will be constructed, replaced, reused, recycled - and ensuring that we don't let capitalism create EVs that after a few years are almost as disposable as few-year-old iPhones...)
A better solution is that the manufacturer must provide battery replacement services at a cost specified at the time of purchase and only allowed to increase at the rate of inflation.
Acceptable, why turn an entire device into ewaste for a single component dying, especially one with a known limited service life, like a battery.
10 year warranties minimum on all electronics. Regardless of size and fragility. Any electronic device that can't last 10 years in service is unnecessarily contributing to ewaste and should not be allowed.
User replaceable batteries to avoid using battery life decay as a means to drive sells of "new" versions, something that causes e-waste.
To be honest, don't stop at batteries. Any component in a device that can not last 10 years while retaining atleast 75% of its "ability" must be user serviceable, no exceptions.
User serviceable is defined as any service a user can perform where the OEM will replace the device at no charge (not even shipping) if the device breaks during or because of the user servicing it during normal warranty.
Replacing a device under warranty resets the 10 year timer. To discourage OEMs halfassing it for 5 years and hoping for low warranty claims.
We can not allow companies to treat the earth like a garbage can.
Probably Airpods thrown away every 2 years for 50 years is less ewaste than a single laptop, and those don't last 50 years.
So does banning Airpod-like devices really make sense as a policy to minimise total ewaste?
They’re easily the longest lasting in ear headphones I’ve used.
If you want to have the ability to purchase ten year warrantied devices, that is a separate issue. And no one, no one, is going to 'reset' your ten year warranty at the time of repair/replacement. Never going to happen.
There is some nuance you are missing here. Mandating some design decisions, such as "user replaceable batteries" limits the products that make be made and sold and unfairly adversely affects users with different priorities (such as water proofness, durability or bulk.)
However, there are design decisions that we should outlaw because they impose an unreasonable burden on repairability. I think it is reasonable to prohibit companies from attempting to detect non-OEM or refurbished components and bricking devices. I think it is also reasonable to prohibit companies from usong IP laws to legally attack refurbished component suppliers and third party repair services.
I think pressure to make devices more repairable could he accomplished by mandatinf inclusion of standardized repairabilitu scores so the consumera have better information available when making purchasinf decisions.
I think these were just typos, but my initial assumption was that a cipher was embedded in this text for a minute.
A lesser extreme is the southbridge/northbridge and how CPUs are becoming SoCs. If that fails, you pretty much have to buy a new CPU, when previously you could technically replace it if you wanted. Would have such a version of the R2R law prevented this?
There is obviously that "loophole" where a company can still deliberately make a product difficult or impossible to repair just by virtue of that product's design. However, if the law is implemented, any covered devices that can be repaired, regardless of how hard it is to repair, will be repairable by third parties without having to deal with legal gray areas just to be able to acquire tools, parts, and information that they will need to do those repairs.
Louis does not want to impede on Apple's ability to make devices smaller or more compact, as that is what the vast majority of customers prefer. Louis, as an independent repairman, has spent 10s of thousands of dollars on the appropriate tools to repair these devices at an incredibly small scale. The problem comes when he needs to buy a replacement part he is physically unable to get the part. Apple, in some cases, will forbid the supplier from selling the part to anyone but Apple.
It's not a question of difficulty. Louis is equipped with every tool and all the time of the world, but Apple is directly impeding his ability to repair customer devices by refusing him access to the parts. That is in large part what his bill aims to change - not to force Apple to go back to 90s style clip on batteries.
The vast majority of apple customers have Stockholm syndrome, or at least don't know what they're missing.
The first gen MacBook pro had a battery that just popped out and could be replaced. It extended the life of the computer, and was practical because you could carry an extra battery for long trips. You could say their customer wanted to lose the battery, but I doubt that's true. More likely, people who dislike the user hostile design stop being customers.
My guess is people just want to be able to take their device to a repair shop and have the battery replaced.
My biggest gripe is that you cannot find OEM batteries from the manufacturer. The batteries I have replaced (through some effort) have been generally a disappointment. Particularly laptop batteries. The replacement market for laptop batteries is a scam.
Of course some vendors didn't like that and put chips on their batteries.
I hope someday for the widespread return of real computers. Goodbye to consumer media/tracking nodes branded as computers.
I absolutely agree with you on bootloader. I wanted to try PostmarketOS and found several Moto G4 play (well supported by pmOS) in the used market but alas Motorola has arbitrarily removed unlock codes for older devices from their website! Since Motorola was giving unlock codes by revoking warranty officially, there were no attempts to unlock it elsewhere and so all older Motorola phones which haven't been unlocked earlier are useless for any aftermarket use.
As for this law,
Considering repairability is the easiest and most accessible way to address e-waste and that phones, computers are a major contributor, There doesn't seem to be a rational explanation behind their exclusion other than briefcases exchanged courtesy of Trillion dollar fruit company.
And newer computers are also better locked down to allow better surveillance.
So, the older ones can't break down fast enough!
You don't want a repairable computer so creeps install, like, a Linux distro. You want disposable TPM machines with Windows 11 Home Edition and unstoppable "telemetry".
In this case I guess TPM causes telemetry?
Note: I have no idea what TPM even is.
These things are very useful for authentication and have been on business laptops for this very reason forever.
They were controversial because it was originally thought they would be used to lock parts of your computer away from you, being used to do DRM and the like. At the end of the day the chips were hard to use, slow, and flaky enough that it didn't really pan out. A lot of the braindamage came from a secondary feature where you could theoretically create "secure enclaves" where the entire execution chain down to the bare metal was signed to prevent viruses and rootkits from executing. In theory this is neat, but in practice it's basically impossible on PC hardware and caused a lot of problems. This functionality is the reason BitLocker had the reputation for randomly locking you out of your machine, even though it doesn't use the feature directly. The configuration registers were maybe a mistake.
("TPM is an international standard for a secure cryptoprocessor, a dedicated microcontroller designed to secure hardware through integrated cryptographic keys." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_Platform_Module)
And I don't think a fully-secured future for PC's is as impossible as you think. The primary reason this is impossible right now is because TPM's aren't ubiquitous (none of my machines came with one installed). That problem will be solved by Windows 11.
If your computation is quick you might be able to get away with this sometimes, but the potential for problems is almost unlimited. The fact that the TPM itself is pretty slow throws another monkeywrench into the plan.
In order for it to work the whole system needs to be designed from the bottom up to support it, which means you need to touch every layer of the PC stack. It's a lot of work. It is a lot easier on something like a cellphone where you can control the hardware from top to bottom and don't have to consider the case where someone installs additional hardware to suit their needs.
Unless they're willing to allow the end user to override the wishes of the vendor (and without any diminished functionality), TPM is just another way to turn computers into appliances.
That is the argument I suppose OP was making. The secure boot locking is hypothetical, but it is often feared. I get why, because it seems like something Microsoft would love to do.
It doesn't block you from running anything.
I figured the TPM was part of secure-boot validation. But given some extra thought, it is clear that verifying a signature does not require any secrets.
Yet
1. Using something not too dissimilar from blockchain/git repo hashes to attest to the the execution stack (BIOS, bootloader, kernel, userspace). 2. Providing cryptographic primitives that are only unlocked when the stack exactly matches a particular value.
It's a handy tool for avoiding spyware, as any change in the attestation chain gets immediately flagged. It is also, in principle, useful for tying DRM keys to a particular execution stack that's known to be trusted... although it's very worth noting that the TPM's threat model does not include an attacker having physical access to the hardware.
The only check the TPM does when deciding whether to allow the key in one of its registers to be used is whether the stack is in a particular configuration. The TPM doesn't (and in fact can't) directly require passwords (since it has no direct line of communication to the user). However, the BIOS, bootloader, kernel, etc... can all be configured to mix user-provided information like a password into the hash they push into the TPM.
You can in fact put passwords on most TPM internal objects. See this example https://github.com/tpm2-software/tpm2-tools/blob/master/man/...
Trusted Platform Modules can be used enforce app DRM, ensuring that only "approved" apps are able to run on a system.
That's already the reality for iPhones and iPads. We see desktops converging on this reality with systems like Apple's M1 which won't run unsigned binaries at all, and makes it difficult to nearly impossible to run apps that weren't first approved by Apple through their notarization process.
Is an open and flashable TPM something rights holders would be comfortable with? Or would they treat it like SafetyNet treats an Android phone with an unlocked bootloader?
About every time something like this is placed on a consumers product, it is to exploit the consumer some way, so, no it's just bad.
There is the very rare exception of it being a product intended for the owner to lend it to other people, and the very common exception of it being disabled by default, but being cheaper to include on every product than just the business ones. But well, Windows 11 Home edition computers are neither of those.
Unfortunately, the purpose here will be to use the fact that most users use a non-free OS to turn these TPMs against the user in order to make DRM harder to break.
Boot time security sounds kind of useful, but I don't have time or desire to audit and sign everything I run, and Microsoft doesn't either; they have historically signed all sorts of garbage that undermines the system security, and I expect that will continue.
Trusted Platform Module, or TPM, is a unique hardware-based security solution that installs a cryptographic chip on the computer's motherboard, also known as a cryptoprocessor.
This chip protects sensitive data and wards off hacking attempts generated through a computer's hardware. Each TPM holds computer-generated keys for encryption, and most PC's nowadays come with TPM chips pre-soldered onto the motherboards.
Stallman[1] and others[2] have talked about just this issue for over a decade now.
I think the last 30 years have shown that, in some sense, even competent computer users can’t really be trusted to keep their systems secure. I’m not saying that the only solution is to have a totally locked down system, but I’m also not saying that having an HSM is a bad thing.
I understand that the M1 Macs get improved security from the more iPhone-like architecture but that the system is still somewhat hackable (eg there is a possibility of running Linux). So it would appear that one can have one’s cake and eat it. I think hardware security modules are mostly orthogonal to having a hackable system and companies like apple must be persuaded somehow to leave systems openable through other means.
[1] https://ftp.gnu.org/old-gnu/Manuals/coreutils-4.5.4/html_nod...
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectre_(security_vulnerabilit...
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meltdown_(security_vulnerabili...
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Management_Engine#Securi...
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_Platform_Security_Processo...
> In support of the Windows 11 system requirements, we’ve set the bar for previewing in our Windows Insider Program to match the minimum system requirements for Windows 11, with the exception for TPM 2.0 and CPU family/model.
I want the old Windows back, couldn't Microsoft just stop making OS and support Windows 7 forever? The last Windows version that just worked, buy a license and use it, no updates every 6 months, no requirement for secure boot, TPM and stupid stuff, no apps, or whatever other stupid thin they invented.
Yes, if you do not have TPM hardware you will not be able to run Windows 11 when it is released.
> (or if I don't want to enable it for not loosing the possibility to dual boot Linux)?
TPM does not prevent you from installing or running Linux.
Anyway, GP asked if there were fridges running Android, yes there are. Even if they are not being sold by Samsung in the present, it is a safe assumption that not all of these have died in the line of duty.
"Aren't there already fridges that run Android?"
Can be confidently answered in the affirmative.
[Citation Needed]
False. You would need to buy (or just randomly happen to have) a smart TV model that exhibits this characteristic, which would be very difficult to find, as there is a very wide spread of smart TV models and features, and obviously this "feature" wouldn't be advertised. This is neither easy nor free.
You're also clearly moving the goalposts. You first asked for evidence, and then discarded the evidence because "it wasn't good enough".
Nor is this capability either technically difficult to implement, illegal, easily-noticed by the average consumer, or abnormal for companies like Samsung, which already engage in highly-intrusive ad-surveillance activities[1].
If this is a common thing, this should be easy to replicate. If it is one unverified reported incident in the whole world then... I have to be skeptical.
Don't get me wrong though, my innate cynicism expects this or similar via 5G to be coming in the near future. But it doesn't appear to be happening yet.
If the reddit poster had provided model numbers, not just "Samsung TVs" this would become trivial to verify. They however did not. They also didn't provide any proof other than "it deffo happened guys".
> You're also clearly moving the goalposts. You first asked for evidence, and then discarded the evidence because "it wasn't good enough".
Again, as I stated in my reply while I understand your skepticism and distrust of the industry my standard of evidence is somewhat above one random guy on reddit with no verifiable evidence.
Your best bet for a "non smart TV" is either a commercial/industrial one, or just use a monitor instead.
Next year they will switch off DVB to migrate to DVB-T2, and of course I must buy her a new TV (using a decoder it's not an option, too complex having to manage two remotes controls), and it seems that nobody produces dumb TVs anymore...
Takes me a minute to turn on my stupid smart TV and switch it to HDMI in
They are not the high end models either, I have a $630 one from 2016 and a $600 one from 2020.
Meanwhile, my dumb LCD TV from ~2008 only does cold boots and comes up in maybe 2 seconds, no matter what.
Unfortunately, I do not see how some of these smaller players can come close to being competitive with the big players seeing how small the profit margins are on physical devices.
Unless they have a reputation for very high quality, I assume there are lots of compromises being made on the hardware side to be able to compete on price.
I doubt the executives at Sony, Samsung, LG, Vizio, Hisense, etc are sitting there and consciously choosing to keep people away from fast, dumb TVs for the hell of it. It is a cutthroat business with razor thin margins, no one is obviously making much money, so after all these years, I would surmise they are making decisions that allow them to stay in business after all these years.
Personally, I am biased towards Sony, and I am happy with the speed of the two consumer line TVs I have purchased. However, I only use them in conjunction with Apple TV, so I have no idea with changing channels or inputs or any of that is like.
Again, at least part of why this is happening is they can't sell ads and spyware-data with dumb TVs. Features that consumers want may be a factor, but I can guarantee you (as in: I've had some actual insight into the industry) that a big reason is that they can monetize their customers' data and eyeballs with smart TVs, and so undercut any competitors who choose not to do that. Price matters a lot to TV buyers, so this is effective at driving sales (and so, keeping your product on store shelves, and avoiding a product death-spiral).
Apparently not? That's my point, that these large TV manufacturers must have enough insight to know if something simple like that would be economical.
I dunno—this TCL Roku TV's the best-performing smart TV I've used, including some very expensive ones. It's really fast except for cold boots (again: these only happen if the power's actually been interrupted, or, rarely, on updates). Roku's OS helps, since it's way less resource-hungry than, say, Android-derived operating systems. I've done some work with Roku devices so I've used lots of them, and even the very low-end ones have always performed really well. The OS is weird, but you can't say it's not (relatively) resource efficient and responsive.
... I do have a much-worse brand of Roku TV that is badly under-powered. It sucks. It's the brand that replaced TCL at our local Costco—Hisense, it's called. Looks almost the same, costs almost the same, but is terrible. Fine if you treat it as a dumb panel and just use stuff plugged in to it, but terrible if you intend to use the built-in Roku OS for anything other than switching inputs. Frequent (apparent) out-of-memory crashes, many less-well-made (but major) streaming "apps" are laggy, and so on.
Faraday cage or soldering iron, anyone?
I would love to dive into such an example.
At this point, I just assume everything is spying.
(Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to harvest your data, I guess.)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/09/18/you-wat...
I guess keeping it totally off would be better, but then it kinda defeats the point of getting a smart tv
edit: It's a Roku, so probably worse than others.
Trying to find a dumb TV is like trying to find a car without a built in radio. You're welcome to leave it switched off.
Smart TVs are dumb if they aren't connected to the internet. Some may be slow. Some may have a poor interface. I'd worry about solving for that rather than expecting manufacturers to cater to a very niche group.
Unless they find an open WiFi network.
Hardcoding DNS for example which makes Pi-hole ineffective. That is increasingly happening and should quite rightly be criticised.
It's absolutely necessary to try to anticipate the future, because the future always becomes the present. If we don't try to anticipate, we will be stuck with whatever is given to us. Like the introduction of ads on Android TV.
Are you aware of any TVs that are doing that?
Found it: https://old.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/bpr6xs/if_you_choo...
Ugh. Looks like the contents of the post got deleted.
But here's another example of devices getting sold with their own cellular connectivity preinstalled.
https://venturebeat.com/2019/05/01/huawei-reportedly-plans-f...
Fortunately, some thoughtful person saved it in the Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20201003141448/https://old.reddi...
Contents:
So I just had a rather annoying experience. I own two Samsung Smart TVs, which honestly gave me the heebie jeebies to purchase. With that said, at the end of the day I decided that as long as I didn't hook it up to the net, I'd be good to go. I've been using them for a few years, and have felt pretty comfortable with the situation, so imagine my surprise when I sit down to watch something on the living room tv (which I don't use all that often) and my show is interrupted by a notification that "SmartHub" had updated.
After digging around in settings for a moment, I realized that one of my next door neighbors had installed an open router with internet, and my tv had silently automatically connected to it and began doing its normal internet stuff. I have no idea how long it was connected like that.
After looking though the settings and a few Google searches later, I realized there was no actual way to disabled the wireless connection on that TV. It expected an internet connection, and intended to get one. Ultimately, I managed to get it to stop what it was doing by letting it connect to my router and then blocking it via access control. I then followed up by going into "IP Settings" and setting that to manual, while leaving all the values at 0. It complained, but allowed me to keep the setting.
Anyhow, figured I'd share, since I imagine quite a few people here are also not keen on a smart tv connecting to the net, given some of the history surrounding them.
Now, if we're talking about the danger of devices incorporating their own wireless communications and phoning home on a network of their manufacturer's own choosing without the knowledge or consent of the owner, that is a serious risk, and one that IMHO should be mitigated by regulating it out of existence before it has any chance to become established practice.
It is sad that wanting a simple, modular display that we can upgrade peripherals around is niche these days. In a way, car makers took a step in the right direction with more radios adopting CarPlay & Android Auto, acknowledging that their own radios can't outsmart an evolving mobile ecosystem.
I can't clock it, but our current TV seems to take longer to, well, turn on, than the tube tellys of yore.
This is also why it's really, really hard to build a Roku competitor starting from 0, without a lot of starting capital. You won't be able to match them on price, and also won't yet have the scale to subsidize your own devices with ad sales, so you'll need to sell at a loss (remember: you also need to get onto shelves in stores to compete, and they'll have harsh price requirements, calibrated by what your ad- and spyware-subsidized competitors are selling for, if you want shelf-space with an unknown brand) for quite a while.
No, they're not. They're collaborating to eliminate choice. The vast majority of the market being taken by smart TVs is a theoretical result of the market. The fact that no manufacturers slip in to clean up the 5% of the market who are willing to pay a slight premium not to have a smart TV is evidence of tacit collusion.
I think you may be over-estimating how typical you are.
What people are is utterly powerless, and living in a kleptocracy that allows markets to be funneled in particular directions by eliminating all alternative choices.
The expensive LG TV I bought ~5 years ago was snappy and fast when I got it, but today it's extremely slow and unresponsive. That's my fault for being a bad consumer and not buying the latest model every year.
On a serious note, I wonder if there's a jailbreak scene for smart TVs? It'd be awesome to be able to replace their spyware garbage with a basic OS that only lets me change inputs, or maybe something like Kodi if I'm feeling fancy.
I wonder if part 2 ever came out.
E: Ah ha!
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25934286
Unfortunately, the TV proved to be quite secure it seems.
Until manufacturers start selling TV's that don't work at all if they're not connected.
Or, as is the case with my Samsung TV, they could just be arbitrarily annoying until you do connect - pepper the user with requests to connect and put up modals everywhere until they finally relent.
Funny you should say that. My car defaults back to radio on when you start it.
Mine does this, and also when I disconnect CarPlay, it immediately turns on the radio at full blast.
My "smart" TV does the same thing: whereas on older dumb TVs, when I told it to sleep, it worked 100% of the time, on my newer TV, it works 30% of the time.
Sometimes it decides to switch to Tuner input (even after I've disconnected the antennae! Argh!). Sometimes it just leaves the whole display on, with no input.
Finally, one time in 20, when I try to turn on my TV, it just gets into a reboot loop.
Everything about having Android TV is objectively worse for my use cases than my old dumb TV, which just displayed the most recent input and turned off when I told it to.
Me too. Subaru?
Really, I find modern smart TV too lagging, it's like you press a button on the remote and the TV responds even 1 seconds after, it gives you the impression that the remote is not working properly, but it's not there the problem.
A TV has to do one thing, and do it well, let me watch some TV programs, from external sources or from the aerial, with a good image and sound quality (but the last one it's impossible to find on any TV these day and you need always an external sound system). I don't need Netflix or other video streaming services, if I need that I just plug a media center PC in the HDMI port, why complicating the TV with stuff that still doesn't work well and it's slow as hell?
Speaking about car radios... car radios these days are horrible. They present you DAB radio as the primary choice, that has an terrible sound quality. FM reception is still bad. The quality of the speakers either as bad. And I'm taking about the car radio of a Mercedes car that costs 40k euros. The stock car radio of my 2010 Volkswagen Golf is far better, better sound quality, better radio reception, better responsiveness of the radio (physical knobs and buttons that I can operate without looking at them VS unresponsive touch screen interfaces that are dangerous to use when you drive).
And the worse thing? You cannot update the radio in every modern car. They destroyed the market of aftermarket car stereos, how can you replace the radio if it's not only a radio but it's the interface that you use to control all the car functions?
I just have mine hooked up to my pc with a long hdmi cable so my use case might be unusual, though.
There’s the LCD screen
A driver to convert an input (hdmi, vga, ntsc, DVB/ATSC, MPEG, HLS)
A speaker (or more), with input (from driver or not)
A control plane of some sort to control the other bits (brightness, gamma, input, volume)
It seems that people who want dumb TVs want most of that, including different inputs, but just a specific driver and/or control plane
A computer monitor will do most of this just fine, especially if matched with a separate speaker.
By the presence of a built-in TV receiver (DVB, ISDB, etc). If it doesn't have such a built-in receiver, it's a monitor.
See the same difference in the audio world: there is monitor/studio equipment that has the purpose of reproducing the sound as closely as possible to the original media, and then there is listening equipment that is meant to make the sound more enjoyable for the listener.
Monitors also doesn't include a TV receiver. While that can be an advantage in countries like mine for people that wants only to look at internet content since if you have a TV with a receiver you have to pay a tax, it doesn't work for people that just want's to watch TV, meaning connecting the power and aerial cable to the TV and use it. You need an external decoder, that needs to have a separate remote control, you then need two power outlets, more cables, you then have to install the decoder somewhere, it's not as clean as having it integrate in the TV itself.
I think especially at my grandma, that doesn't have internet, and wants a TV that is as simple as possible, press 1 on the remote and the TV turns on at the channel 1. Press volume up/down and the power button. Nowadays it's difficult to find TV with that requisite, modern remotes have a ton of buttons what will bring up functionalities that then are difficult to exit, especially for an 85 years old woman that never used a computer or a smartphone or anything other than a TV and the landline phone.
I use a monitor as a TV but it doesn't have optical out just a horrid horrid headphone jack so I had to buy a HDMI switch and universal remote just to mimic what a TV does.
But if you pick a good (quick, without annoying UI, allows USB upgrade and offline configuration and so on) smart TV and just don’t connect it, I think that’s probably a better idea than getting a commercial monitor for example.
When Apple came out with their new Apple TV, I bought one, connected that to my TV, and disconnected my TV from the internet. Now life is good since the Apple TV is buttery smooth and does not have ads.
I mean I don’t actually use any of the “smart” stuff. No Apps or anything. Not sure why anyone would want to? I watch my TV channels on the built in receiver (90% or more of what I watch is regular scheduled TV, I love my old fashioned TV channels!), and I cast stuff to it when I want to stream Netflix or sports.
I don't subscribe to TV/cable/satellite. I only have Youtube Premium (ad free Youtube videos; not Youtube TV), Netflix, Amazon Prime TV, Nebula, and a local Plex server.
That way you don’t need to see any of the poor guis, ads etc.
Currently I just have my tv at stock settings with no network connection but it keeps annoyingly asking for a network connection.
What would be my dream is the apple TV + xbox utalising hdmi-cec to auto turn on and auto switch to the correct source then turn off when done so I didn't even need the tv remote
It's a hospital TV Check for more on their website.
My late 30s Frigidaire has no electronics at all...
I don't see whether the law addresses the problem of overpriced spares. For example, I don't see why an original Miele heating element for a washing machine costs 100€, while an unbranded compatible part costs less than 20€.
Why not expect something similar from a much simpler and less dangerous $1-10k appliance?
This doesn't sound very exciting to me. From experience spare parts from the manufacturer cost a fortune.
The legislation needs to stipulate what a "component" or "part" is, i.e. not the entire motherboard.
This is even more hilarious: they sell you a "spare part" which is the logic board, for nearly the price of the laptop.
But they (1) do provide spare parts and (2) sell them at a ""reasonable price""
I’d say while the primary role may be journalist at most of these types of orgs, there is definitely a role for people who focus on the research side of things, and if you’re actively running experiments and benchmarks, you are definitely moving out of the realm of simple observation. I certainly would like to benefit from the data of which phone is cheapest to repair. iFixit already does the research to grade repairability of devices.
But from the perspective of the compound problem of getting repairability on track, this is an element within that compound that is lacking the drive of customer attention.
Of course it's also bad for society that we have so little effective competition in tech markets now that users think substandard products and user-hostile behaviours are normal. The race to the bottom is bad for everyone, and everyone being sold those products is being abused in the name of profit, whether or not any given individual is aware of how much it is happening to them or understands that better alternatives exist.
Or to use a crude analogy: just because babies don't care about having their nappy (ie diaper) changed doesn't mean it doesn't help them.
That's why when people's computers break they take them to get repaired in the first place. Otherwise, consumers would just be tossing their broken devices and buying a new one.
If you're fairly well-heeled you certainly have the privilege of forgoing repairs and just buying new ones. Lots of tech enthusiasts who cycle through devices every year probably aren't bothered. But normal people who don't get excited at the prospect of purchasing a new 3 or 4 figure device appreciate being able to get their machine back in working order for a few hundred max.
Another problem solved!
I've usually found logic boards to be ~1/3-1/2 of the price of the machine, which considering they have the RAM/SSD soldered on, feels like ~1/3-1/2 of the value of the machine to me. Similarly, screens are often in the same sort of ballpark and I'd say that matches my expectations.
If you start from "how much does a motherboard cost" or "how much does a screen cost", that's going to miss a lot of the legit costs of additional components, higher quality components, or laptop form factor costing more.
No user protection is effective unless it comes with some sort of price cap. This is why GPL requires the source code to be made available "for a price no more than your reasonable cost of physically performing this conveying of source". Otherwise, a company could use GPL'd code in their product and say they are more than happy to give you a copy of the source code for 100 billion dollars.
Want direct data devices locked down and proprietary (TPM and apple T2).
Want devices directly tied to the user. Want to prevent “hacks” that detect snooping or other low level background “proprietary” services that may be running.
My two cents. We are rushing to emulate china.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-01/ccp-100-years-chinese...
Honestly, that article has some shit "play with your emotions!" bits in it too but there are facts to be gleaned.
mnouquet talks about the Inner Party
Over 90% of the population of China are CPC non-members (membership numbers I can find are consistently under 100 million).
100% are subject to rule by the Communist Party of China, though.
Politburo (= "Political Bureau") of Central Committee of Communist Party of Soviet Russia. Also, a Politburo member becomes The Chairman.
In a nutshell, ringleaders of ringleaders of Bolsheviks. *MUCH* more equal than the others, naturally.
Vampires are immortal and sexy. Everybody wants to be a vampire. But if everybody becomes a vampire then it doesn't work anymore.
https://theintercept.com/2021/05/25/oracle-social-media-surv...
I'm starting to think we are the odd ones from the bunch for questioning total state/corporate control over our communications/computation.
I am honestly worried.
Generally most of them just shift the problem around; i.e. for Samsung devices you can sometimes have good access to OEM replacement parts, but support and lifecycle in general is so short that it doesn't really matter in the long run. Or sometimes you get both but the performance is bad. Or you get both and good performance but the price is bad. Or everything is 'just right' about the product, but then the platform is lacking and there is no buy-in from the larger community or consumer market.
Sometimes it seems there is no 'total' solution, except in a few niche markets.
This is as toothless/pointless as passing a law that says you have the right to a discrimination-free workplace, except that racism and sexism are ok. These exclusions make the law useless for most people.
Whoah. Can you imagine trying to make sure your iphone 4 still worked today?
I'm all for right to repair, but that seems a bit excessive, no?
No. We need to be able to repair devices so that they continue to function for longer without throwing them away.
They spent money on drafting this legislation and this is not fit for purpose.
But by the looks of it, big money must be behind it so it ticks the box, but does not actually change anything.
Because it's not fraud.
Fraud requires obtaining a valuable security by deception. That's not what's going on here. So it's not fraud.
It's very much what's going on here.
The damages would be that the product that they wish to repair are irreparable.
I don't know if you think the entire legislation is the words 'right to repair'? It obviously isn't - it's far more nuanced than that.
That's exactly what you are doing. You responded to somebody typing literal English with an spurious debate about a legal term no one asked about and is different depending on what jurisdiction you live in.
People say stuff like "he's a fraud" all the time without meaning that in a precise legal sense.
Because those who write these laws are the same signing the journalists' paycheck.
Computers are everywhere and in everything, often whether they seem to be needed or not.
Rather a lot of the right to repair fight in the US comes down to ECUs and data formats and readers for things like OBD ports on vehicles, or firmware for your farm equipment, or lots of other things that certainly have computers in them.
Anyway, the list is very short and exclusive (for now?): "For now, the right to repair laws only cover: Dishwashers; Washing machines and washer-dryers; Refrigeration appliances; Televisions and other electronic displays"
Have they addressed a problem that is largely absent?
It's hard to choose to repair when a secondhand replacement is as cheap though. Replaced a plastic pipe, and a hose on my dishwasher, delivered cost ~£50; same as a newer secondhand dishwasher. But at least I've kept it out of the waste stream for a couple more years.
Source: fixed all the white goods in my house several times over. I don't have anything recent though, so more recent products might be worse. There is a lot of part reuse, which is good.
I would repair it, but having watched a YouTube video on how it's done, the cost in tools, parts and effort (it's a full disassembly) to make the relatively simple repair I cannot justify over buying a better model of my choosing.
Unfortunately, although the parts to repair the washing machine are inexpensive, the design means a sizeable labor effort (and thus cost) to get at the problem part, so repairing it isn't practical, even for a repair shop, because it's hours of work.
The fact that several of my neighbors had the same machine fail at the same time suggest it's designed to fail early.
Between that and being designed to make a simple bearing change several hours of work, is was designed to be thrown away, not repaired, by anyone.
Unless your problems can be solved by shouting “Vaccines! Vaccines” Boris Johnson literally has nothing to offer you (unless you’re a tory donor or his mistress of course).
Typing from a 4 year old non-repairable phone (Samsung S8).
If you want a repairable phone, good, but don't take away my choice of slim water resistant phones.
Get off my lawn HNers keep on complaining about big screens, non removable batteries, and lack of headphone ports, but nobody cares because people actually want those things.
Also I've had my S8 fixed twice (motherboard change).
Oneplus will repair it for £200 for the part PLUS tax PLUS shipping PLUS labour and I'll have to ship it out of the country somewhere and wait a number of weeks they won't disclose to have my phone back. Heck, they won't even tell me how much the labour cost _might_ be.
If they'd sell the parts and allow one of the many phone repair shops in the UK to fix it, I could have it within an hour or two for little more than the cost of the screen itself.
This isn't about making your devices shitty, fat and not-waterproof, it's about enabling people with the wills and the skills to buy the tools and the parts to do the job.
Heck, under a good right-to-repair, I could buy the screen myself and fit it if I wanted.
So many people miss the point of right-to-repair. It's not about making things less this or less that, it's simply about giving you the RIGHT to buy the parts you need and the tools you need to repair the thing you own.
Even if you decide not to fight this one, please consider informing one of the major consumer rights organisations so if there is a design flaw and others are experiencing the same problem the manufacturer can't bury their head in the sand and try to avoid responsibility. Other big tech firms have allegedly done this in the past and bad publicity is often what brings them round in the end.
I had a case on the phone which I removed just an hour earlier because it was dirty underneath, and wit lockdown and working from home I wasn't leaving the house, I saw no need to put it back on, felt like Karma.
Yes I believe the design contributed significantly to it breaking, it just wasn't the time for me to add more stress trying to fight it.
I'm a strange way, it was a good thing, I'm a perfectionist, and having a broken screen put me off wanting to use my phone, that's a good thing in a weird way.
Hint: it's not the non-replacable battery why people upgrade phones.
And while you can argue about whether thin laptops are necessary, for people who carry their phones in their pants pockets, an extra couple millimeters gone is genuinely a meaningful difference.
There's no propaganda there.
I doubted this so I looked up dimensions. Samsung Galaxy S6 from 2015 is 6.8mm thick, with removable battery. S10 from 2019 is 7.8mm thick. So your theory doesn't seem to match reality.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Galaxy_S6#Battery
In any case, it's apples-to-oranges and doesn't mean anything. Cell phones can have functionality added that takes up the difference in thickness -- e.g. keeping the phone the same thickness instead of it getting even thicker.
But main point is, they're thinner basically by definition. There are necessarily more layers of materials.
Of course there are some tradeoffs but it just doesn't seem so significant that EVERY brand refuses to offer even one model with a removable battery. There are definitely some people that want it despite the tradeoffs. As other commenters said, people have huge phones now and use cases. So I think manufacturers have a special interest in maintaining the situation for planned obsolescence.
I've had an iPhone battery replaced 3 times now. It's not a big deal to have the store do it for me, nor is it that expensive.
The bigger use case for swappable batteries is to have a spare, but these days people just carry an external battery pack with them that's the capacity they need, which is far more flexible (hold 10 full charges if you need, not just 1!) as well as not tied to any particular model.
So I just don't see any special interest -- it's just giving people the thinness they want.
[Citation needed]
My "thin" phone double in volume with the require case, so "thinness" is really a joke...
Give me back the old phones, removable battery, more thick, but more compact in the end, and more easy to carry around. The bigger screen it's in the end useless to me.