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Comment by horsawlarway | Hacker News Reader

> This is for example how CPUs and GPUs are sold

This is not true. They are binned by capability, and sold at different price points.

I don't mind that idea - if it turned out installing heated seats failed in say... 28% of installations, fine - charge me more for a model with functioning heated seats.

Instead - this is introducing a fixed, recurring charge, and undermining the concept of ownership. That heated seat has zero cost for the manufacturer after installation, and that should be reflected in the costs to the consumer.

I find this a pretty un-ethical (appalling - really) attack on ownership, and long term, a way to undermine the used market for these goods (attack on doctrine of first sale).

Frankly - I think this should absolutely be targeted with regulation. This is literally rent-seeking, with no potential upside.

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> This is not true. They are binned by capability, and sold at different price points.

That's only for the very high yield ones which get sold for specific computing purposes. The GPUs you buy at the store are already from the shit pile. Within that shit pile though, they all have exactly the same amount of transistors in there usually across different versions of the same product line, and if you buy the highest end version you get use of all of the transistors, if not you don't - but they are still there.

They may all be there, but they may not work.

At one point, the old Geforce 6800 cards came in three varieties. The cheapest model had two disabled functional units. You could often unlock one successfully (6800XT to 6800), but both (6800XT to 6800GS) was prone to much higher instability and failure. Even if all the transistors worked, the rest of the board (power delivery, heatsinking) was often downgraded on cheap models.

> I don't mind that idea - if it turned out installing heated seats failed in say... 28% of installations, fine - charge me more for a model with functioning heated seats.

I know you just chose this as an example, but clearly it wouldn't be acceptable to anyone to have a failed installation of something like this. On one extreme, it could cause a fire; but otherwise, it's just a button that doesn't work, and damages the quality reputation of the car.

Processor binning only works because it is a black box, indistinguishable from the outside. You can purposely disable components if your yields get high enough, etc. and nobody will ever notice the difference.

For vehicles, automakers will learn from customers that this kind of nickel-and-diming is not appreciated, when people turn to other manufacturers that still "get it", e.g. Mazda.

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