Hacker News Reader

Comment by MeteorMarc | Hacker News Reader

There is also the micro plastics issue to solve, before widening the scope of plastic applications.

The world should absolutely solve the micro plastics issue, but the world should absolutely not stop developing new plastics or finding new uses for plastics until that problem is solved.

There should be more research into the impact of micro plastic particles. That doesn't mean we should stop research into new applications. These things can, and should, happen in parallel.

Exactly, plastic is not a material but a very broad category of materials with a wide range of properties. Micro-plastics are a specific problem with some plastics and rubbers in e.g. tires and other materials on cars because they erode away with normal use and the resulting dust is then flushed into sewers, waterways, and eventually the ocean.

Material science is providing a wide range of new and exciting options that go above and beyond what we could do only a few years ago. Dismissing something with essentially no understanding whatsoever is not helpful.

> Dismissing something with essentially no understanding whatsoever is not helpful.

The problem with the plastics industry, the reason so many people are fed up with it, is the 'understanding' you speak of tends to lag their industrial application by many years. So we end up with a whole lot of "X is now known to have bad properties, but we already use too much of it to change now." For instance, virtually every thermoset plastic in use today is impossible to recycle, but there seems to be no going back. Their use continues to proliferate.

On a long time range doesn’t all plastic become micro plastics unless it’s incinerated? Clothes, food packaging, electronics, etc

To add to your point. New R&D for plastics is probably where the solution to microplastics is going to come from.

Some researcher building the next superplastic pauses to say "hey that's funny" and bam we've got a new formula that completely prevents the formation of microplastics.

Artificially constraining development is a great way to either miss an important direction of research that will unknowingly solve our problems OR just kill the industry leaving us with our existing plastics that degrade into microplastics.

Of course new developments should definitely run a microplastics study to make sure we don't make the situation worse. However "no more this until that" is a great way to freeze ourselves into our current less than ideal state for decades longer than we have to be here.

> Some researcher building the next superplastic pauses to say "hey that's funny" and bam we've got a new formula that completely prevents the formation of microplastics.

My understanding is that microplastics are a result of regular wear and tear, and I don't think a material exist that is immune to that. If anything, a new plastic formula may be created that hardens it enough to reduce the shedding to a negligible level.

The solution might be a plastic that naturally decomposes. Of course, that would likely make the material less durable...

so your solution is to make the microplastics smaller?

Struggling to understand how did infer that from my take?

THIS ^^^. My concerns are less and less about preserving my phone and more and more about preserving my planet. Show me a phone that can be completely recycled instead of giving me the illusion that it won't break because of x or y. Eventually it's going to be to sluggish for modern applications (because of its cpu or because of its battery).

I have a growing pile of now useless phones even at my house that I never broke because I take care of my investments.

And while I wouldn't expect a company to search out "right" solutions, I would hope that MIT as an educational institution could see beyond money and at least get in front of where the hockey puck should be, and not where it's tended to go (I'm speaking of sustainable profits on a planet in which we can live vs just amazing profits on an uninhabitable planet).

My last phone was used for 6 years before the battery didn't last a day of light use. My new phone has a replaceable battery. I intend to use it for at least 10 years.

Processors in phones haven't been changing much over the last few years. CPU throttling to deal with battery degradation is where most of the slowdown comes from.

Personally I like the idea of modular phones such that you can swap out only components that are obsolete or damaged.

Although, ultimately, this feels like a market/advertising issue over a technical issue. While I'm not convinced a 100% recycle phone will ever be a likelihood; surely we can get to 90%. Or slow down the trash generation with the aforementioned modular phone.

However it's going to require people to want to spend money on such a thing and also industry to want to produce and advertise such a thing. None of which seems like it's happening anytime soon.

How much does a modular design really extend the life of a computer? Very few people (my father aside) are actively trying to keep computers from the 90’s orearly 2000’s alive. That my 10-year-old MacBook is still kicking is kind of a miracle (and only because I have harvested the guts from two others).

I once set up a computer workshop using PCs discarded by university labs. I assembled about a dozen PCs from about 20 discards. One of them served as a DSL router.

In retrospect, I regret it; I saved those PCs from going to the dump, but:

- They were not power-efficient

- Because the hardware was a decade old, they had poor connectivity options

I used to seek out computers that were maximally upgradeable. But in practice, the only thing I ever upgraded was disk and memory. I still have a box of obsolete memory cards. Stuff gets obsolete very quickly these days.

> Stuff gets obsolete very quickly these days.

What do you mean these days? Computers used to obsolete within months in the 90s as ever-faster CPUs kept coming out.

No longer true, with the death of Moore's Law. Computers from 2010 are still quite usable (I have several, servers & laptop) since speed increases over the last decade are incremental at best.

I've been buying computers since the 80s and now is the golden age of longevity for equipment.

Well longevity in terms of "not much performance increases per generation" but the quality of goods isn't necessarily there. My middle mouse button of my thinkpad just randomly fell a day ago. I don't think I've ever even used the middle button... My laptop is about 3years old and for the first 2years was barely used because I used a different machine... My old pixel 3 phone had a few issues with it too. The USB-C port stopped working perfectly after a software update and wasn't being rma'd at the time. Battery bulge popped off the back.

I wish devices were made to last for at least 10years, only my modular desktop with haswell gen CPU has lasted that long. I downgraded it from daily to something else.

The only reason a 10 year old macbook seems like a miracle is because expectations are low for the Apple brand particularly. For other brands of laptop, 10 years old isn't terribly unusual. And for diy PC builds, I dare say 10 years old is actually typical (albeit usually in a 'Ship of Theseus' sense, but that's the point isn't it?)

Is that really the case for anyone but dedicated hobbyists? I would be honestly shocked to learn that the average life of any laptop brand runs higher than 5-6 years on average before being discarded.

In my experience, the average PC gamer upgrades their PC with a few new parts every few years, and even that isn't certain. Replacing the whole thing every 5 years seems atypical, that's a lot of money to be throwing around (particularly when many PC gamers are in it for the long-term economy.)

The average PC gamer is, of course, not the average computer user which is far more likely to be using a generic laptop or smartphone.

Which is all to say, I understand why we want modularity, but - for most computer users - a much more necessary path forward is a reimagining omaterials recyclability.

I think the average computer user is even more likely to be using old hardware than a gamer. The average Joe browsing facebook could be perfectly content with a 15 year old computer. Gamers at least are pressured to periodically update their hardware by the appeal of games that demand more than their old computer can provide.

>"I have a growing pile of now useless phones even at my house that I never broke because I take care of my investments."

pile of useless phones as an investment is some rather novel idea.

I also have few old ones but they're not useless, each is relegated to controlling particular gadget. Camera, drone, etc.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com