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Comment by agentultra | Hacker News Reader

This is one reason I believe "right to repair" laws are so important. The environmental damage of producing the device is already done. Make it last as long as possible. Reduce, reuse... then recycle.

Re-using devices helps us also reduce the number of new devices needed... which is what probably scares the corporate oligarchy. If we're not buying new phones every couple of years how will the stock prices keep going up?

Never the less, the devices we make these days can last a long, long time. I've been repairing and maintaining iPhone 5's, 7's, and 8's that are no where near their end of life. The iPhone has a couple of small electrolytic capacitors which should have a useful life of at least 20 years. And can be replaced! The batteries and screens can replaced. These devices can last much longer than we give them credit for.

But tech companies have been struggling to make it illegal or difficult to repair for a long time. I've been seeing photojournalist projects such as this since the late 90s at least (longer perhaps). In North America we had a culture that valued repairing and building things that lasted. It's as good a time as any to push for this to return! Support policy makers that are pushing for right-to-repair and environmental protection!

And pick up a new hobby if you are able. Support your local tech geeks if you can!

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>> Re-using devices helps us also reduce the number of new devices needed.

This isn't just the hardware makers, its also software makers.

A ton of the software gets sunset on older versions of Android. Older OnePlus phones, Sony and Google phones are being repurposed for Ubuntu Touch or Sailfish OS because many apps will only work on a specific Android version and up. Same thing with the Google Play store. If you have an older phone that works fine - that's great, too bad none of the software can run on it because modern apps are bloated, you need 12GB of RAM on your phone now. Oh sure you can technically run it, but it won't rune well.

I have three or four Windows phones that still run, but are completely worthless because the software can't be updated because the only browser that you could use was Explorer. Now that MS upgraded to Edge, these phones are worthless. Same thing with the Windows apps. I was able to use One Note on my Lumia 950 just as a stand alone note taker, but now it won't update because MS says it doesn't support that older version and I can't update it.

I agree 100% hardware makers are one of the reasons, but there's a massive issue with the software makers who do the same thing and essentially stop supporting older versions of their software that run fine on these older devices.

It feels like the whole software ecosystem: operating systems, 1st party app and 3rd party app developers, are all conspiring to keep us on the "buy, buy, buy" treadmill. I've got a perfectly good iPhone 7 and quite a few of the apps are no longer even on the app store, and my existing ones are starting to get "upgrades" that put up full-screen modal dialogs telling me the app no longer works on my phone. They can't even let me keep the old working app installed!

Not to even mention my old O.G. iPad 1 and iPhone 4 which both work as perfectly as the day I bought them, except that none of the software works and the app store is a total ghost town. Software developers are mostly to blame for obsoleting perfectly working hardware.

> Software developers are mostly to blame for obsoleting perfectly working hardware.

Is it the developer, say, of some app for Android or iOS, at fault, or is it that the changing API surface coupled with App Store policies means that an app developer is forced to keep releasing new versions and deprecating older operating systems and hardware? I always had the impression that Google and Apple took a very dim view of apps that were stable and not refreshed.

> Is it the developer, say, of some app for Android or iOS, at fault, or is it that the changing API surface coupled with App Store policies means that an app developer is forced to keep releasing new versions and deprecating older operating systems and hardware?

"Because of the release of GNOME 2.0 and 2.2, and the lack of interest in maintainership of GNOME 1.4, the gnome-core product is being closed. If you feel your bug is still of relevance to GNOME 2, please reopen it and refile it against a more appropriate component. Thanks..."

"Why not be honest and resign yourself to the fact that version 0.8 is followed by version 0.8, which is then followed by version 0.8?

But that's what happens when there is no incentive for people to do the parts of programming that aren't fun. Fixing bugs isn't fun; going through the bug list isn't fun; but rewriting everything from scratch is fun (because "this time it will be done right", ha ha) and so that's what happens, over and over again."

It doesn't cost anything or hurt to keep older versions available to download--versions that work on the older OS/API levels.

>It doesn't cost anything or hurt to keep older versions

First, it affects my app ratings in the application store/shop. Some user with 15-year-old device gives me 1-star rating because of some annoying bug that was already fixed 10 years ago but he can not upgrade because that newer version is using a newer API.

Also, what about bugfixes and support? I do not want to have to support (answer emails/calls and deal with bad reviews on all platforms) my ancient version of an app. This would make my app unaffordable for 99% of my users.

> First, it affects my app ratings in the application store/shop

good example of systemic failure - we are destroying a real thing (functionality) to optimise for a fictional thing (rating). There is plenty of old windows software with no support, I have a game that is old enough to drink and it still works and I still sometimes fire it up out of nostalgia.

There is no reason software cannot be like an old motorbike - a 40 year old Honda motorbike can still work, if that’s what the user wants.

> we are destroying a real thing (functionality) to optimise for a fictional thing (rating)

Ratings are quite real. They influence if new people buy your app at all, which influences how viable it is as a business, which influences the app’s future, which influences current customers.

They are constructed reality as opposed to inherent reality. We invented a fake metric then created incentives (adjusting the allocation of real resources) to optimise the fake metric.

It’s not a “fake metric”. It exists, measures something, and it has an effect on the world. It is real. It’s a subpar metric¹, probably even a harmful metric², but that doesn’t make it fake or fictional.

¹ At best it only measures those who rate and it can be gamed (true for every media).

² For the bad incentives you mention.

Semantics/pedantry. I’m sure you’re capable of inferring what the OP means.

> I’m sure you’re capable of inferring what the OP means.

And it’s that I’m disagreeing with. I’m sure you’re capable of understanding that too. Words matter. By being against something and calling it fake or fictional, you’re doing more harm to your cause than by recognising the impact it has on the real world and those who inhabit it.

They're not a fake metric. Sure, ratings can be gamed and are gamed. But ratings and accompanying reviews inherently aren't fake, and are the closest proxy to "word of mouth"

They are artificial. You could have a separate metric for each platform, for older version, you can use different algorithms and to calculate, etc.

What you might be missing in your interpretation is that “fictional,” didn’t mean what you’re saying it does.

The OP meant that the app ratings aren’t a measure of a tangible quality or effect. Like “heat,” or “number of tickets.” The unit of measure and what it means is “fictional,” in the sense that the scale and units are completely made up and arbitrary.

They’re not saying that it’s fictional in the sense that it doesn’t exist or isn’t real.

They’re aptly noting that by forcing developers to optimize for this rating system, app stores are incentivizing developers to support only the most recent OS releases and deprecate support for older devices.

The ratings have real consequences.

Sorry, replying to the wrong comment.

That could easily be fixed by preventing people using old versions to give feedback. I guess no app store currently allows that right ?

Yeah this is an important perspective for coming up with a solution, because it’s a very legitimate reason to not want to support old hardware…

Until you bring the online services side into the picture.

A typical app depends on both OS APIs and remote service APIs.

Keeping the latter stable and supported is harder. Especially when there are third party services and frameworks involved, which there inevitably are.

And whereas no-longer-fixable bugs in an app might be work-aroundable, merely annoying, or outright irrelevant to some use cases, bugs in a service/framework can easily be security stuff that can take down your whole business or land you in regulatory hot water.

even the FOSS world (:

RHEL 9+ (and as a result, its decedents) is built for x86_64-v2 and has increased RAM requirements for certain installation procedures, so now hundreds/thousands of perfectly functional small servers are no longer able to upgrade (to the next EL version, obviously there are other distributions, but then there's the resource/energy requirement to change everything to something new...) (:

the entirety of computing from top to bottom doesn't give a fuck about the environment. The only way to make this "sustainable" is to slow down and fix/maintain things... but of course that's the antithesis of this world we've built.

One project that I keep coming back to again and again is keeping my circa 2011 netbook functional. It was my main computer for most of grad school, and it seems silly that a perfectly functional bit of hardware (for documents, spreadsheets, etc.) like that doesn't work well.

What I've found is mainstream distros seem to have no respect for aging hardware. Especially if they're desktop-focused. I have had some success with Trisquel[0], netBSD, and FreeDOS. I'm confident I could get Gentoo working if I'm picky about ebuild selection and build everything on a more modern computer, but that does sort of feel like it defeats the purpose. Another option would be maybe to install a version of a mainstream distro from 2011, with the caveat that I'd only be able to install software included on the installation media. Debian Squeeze repos are long gone.

I feel like I shouldn't have to stray so far from the beaten path to do something on a computer from 2011 that I could do comfortably on a Packard Bell in 1992.

[0] On recommendation from an FSF employee. Hardware that can run free software top-to-bottom tends to skew a little older, so Trisquel needs to run well on older hardware.

> The only way to make this "sustainable" is to slow down and fix/maintain things..

The other way is to design the machines, redesign, from the start so at the end they can be dismantled and their resources reused

I have experienced this exact same scenario. I recently started a new job and want to keep my work stuff completely separate and off my personal phone. I fired up my old iPhone 7 and can't even use the Google authenticator app for 2FA to get into my work accounts!

Apps are rarely self-contained you build on layers all the way down to the OS and BIOS/Firmware, I can fire up an old windows or DOS program only because Microsoft still support ancient API's or the BIOS API's still exist on the PC. The older phone processors are still perfectly fine but Apple and Google are not going to support them as they may be slow with new (bloated) code or may not have some fancy feature they use for one tiny part of their latest OS, same with the frameworks that build on top of them and with everything web these days there are a lot of layers.

It's so upsetting. I keep my Pixel 3 as a spare phone. It's perfectly fine, I just used it for 5 days while my primary was on it's own adventure. Perfectly fine, other than it being completely unsupported by Qualcomm and Google, and thus unusable as a daily-driver since banking apps, wallet, etc no longer work, as I've had to move to LineageOS for any sort of updates.

FWIW, rooted LineageOS works pretty well for banking apps, Netflix, etc. It's what I'm using for my daily driver. It takes it takes some fooling around with magisk, zygisk deny, props config, and universal safety net fix; but after you get things initially set up, you just have to re-do magisk after every update and the rest of the settings get restored.

The worst part is how the LineageOS folks and don't want to have anything to do with rooted devices. They seem to think that LOS is actually usable without rooting, but it just isn't in my experience.

> They seem to think that LOS is actually usable without rooting,

Depends on what software you want to run on your device, I guess. I build LineageOS from source, so I'm perfectly capable of rooting my device, but I don't bother.

I don't use Google Play Services, Google Play, or any apps from Google's store at all. Banking apps are not only unnecessary on my phone, but also unwelcome, mainly because they all demand overreaching permissions. I do my banking in a web browser, on a computer. This way, I have more control over what the banking client can do with the device it runs on, and no worries about what might happen to my accounts if my phone is lost or stolen.

With no need to trick software like that into running on my de-googled OS, I haven't had any need to root it.

Ok, that's fair. But you have to admit that there are some limitations imposed on what you can do with your phone.

For example: my bank doesn't accept check deposits via the website, but they do via the app. But the app only works if you're on an "approved" operating system, or if you root the device to tell the app it is. If I didn't use the app, I'd have to go to a bank branch in person, which means a car trip for me.

Similarly, netflix movies and games are only usable on LOS after rooting it. I don't do all that much of either of these, but it's nice to have if I end up stuck in a lobby somewhere for an hour. Odds are good that I won't have a laptop with me.

My credit union supported check deposits via web browser for years, but sadly, they discontinued that feature. I suppose I could switch to a credit union that still supports it, but it turns out my current one also accepts check deposits through the mail (I had to call them to learn this) so I do that instead. I'll keep the feature in mind next time I have reason to switch credit unions.

Netflix and commercial games just aren't priorities for me. I keep e-books on my phone for lobby reading, and F-Droid games can fill more hours than I think I'll ever have to spend.

FWIW, LendingClub, Schwab, Ameriprise, Fidelity have not requested invasive permissions from me. In the least.

However, I spent too much of my 20s futzing with ROMs. I don't doubt that there is a sequence of things to get SafetyNet on Lineage, but it's a losing game. And I refuse to play games like this nowadays, where "my life/time" are the cost I pay. And my lifestyle demands that I have at least backup access on my mobile.

Similarly, my A51 is only like 3-4 years old and it's already being slowly reduced to a useless brick because it only supports 4G which is being phased out and I keep losing connection entirely in some areas. The 85% charging limit has prevented the battery from degrading much over the years so it's still good for more than a day of use even after all this time. It literally works as good as the day I bought it and I'll have to get rid of it soon.

There should be more of a push for backwards compatibility at this sort of protocol level, if we stop supporting 2.4Ghz wifi a metric shit ton of devices will just become junk overnight even if they still work perfectly.

> The 85% charging limit has prevented the battery from degrading much over the years

Sorry, what is that? Is this something everyone knows, or some secret lore. I keep meaning to look up the basics of batteries and prolonging their life, and still haven't got their, so this comment triggers me (in a good way).

I think it's called "protect battery" or something like that in recent versions of Android, it just caps the max voltage your phone will charge to if left connected.

The basic deal is this: lithium cells like being at sort of half charge (typically 3.85V) where they don't degrade and this is called storage charge as a result. It's what any battery that's in a box or on a shelf will be at.

Going above 90% and under 15% (voltages depend on the exact chemistry) will do damage especially if left that way more than a few hours. So if you say, leave your phone on your bedstand to charge overnight, it'll do fast charging (which also does damage btw) and get itself to absolute max in like half an hour and then sit there for another 7-8 hours degrading until you unplug it. That's what this mainly prevents in practical day to day use.

So yeah, for best battery longevity charge with up to 1C (e.g. for a 3Ah battery, that's 3A max), charge in large chunks and try to keep it between 25-85% for the most part. Then you're basically guaranteed to get the max number of cycles out of it.

There's also another great feature called "power saving" which reduces power draw significantly (at least on my phone)by reducing background spying and capping CPU speed so it can last for 3-4 days if I don't use it much, which again saves a lot of charge cycles.

Awh that's legendary, thank you so much! Will be looking into all this. Great stuff

The problem with software support is that it costs a lot to keep old versions around, and even to keep drivers for old hardware around. Even if there weren't perverse incentives to brick old phones to sell new hardware, it's very hard to imagine that any company would keep old software working for free like this. Windows, which did aim to keep back compact and support relatively old devices in its day was quite expensive for its time, and upgrades were not free either.

Companies like Apple, Google, and Microsoft effectively have infinite money. It’s not a cost issue for them.

And if it’s a nuisance for them, they could release the specs and source code. The source code is effectively worthless to them. Why bother withholding it when it could be used to maintain old devices?

They also have very large software footprints, and enough bugs in their latest/supported versions that it is difficult to justify taking resources from latest to support to older versions with dwindling user base.

I know the software upgrade cycle is frustrating but if you’ve ever tried to both release new features and maintain legacy versions of software you know how complex that quickly becomes.

It is not simply a matter of releasing legacy source code. Modern software is extraordinarily complex and interwoven. Modern software doesn’t just run in one place, it exists across a multitude of systems and services, each with their own contracts and interfaces that evolved over time. There is a reason these companies have tens of thousands of engineers maintaining their code bases. Not to mention there are very real concerns about proprietary information, as many components of legacy systems are present in derived forms in their successors.

I’m all about right repair - especially for hardware - but it’s a bit naive to think that we’ll find nirvana in opening up legacy source code. I know it’s a tinkerer’s dream to dive through old versions of software you used to run and add your own little personal features, but realistically it would do nothing to move the needle much on actual public use of legacy software. Don’t forget the average user often cannot even troubleshoot why their printer is not working, let alone install, run, and troubleshoot a custom android stack on their 2006 Nokia.

I've been a professional software developer for over twenty years and writing software since I was a kid in the late 80s. I understand why it's hard supporting old platforms.

The source code is worthless. It's just one way a company could extend support for older platforms they've given up on supporting. It's not valuable for them to hold on to the sources.

We could all huddle around the existing Unices and BSDs and try to keep the forks going for older platforms. That's fine too.

But the original sources may have hints about how to support some of the custom hardware for a given platform that would be useful, etc.

It really wouldn't be hard for them to just say, "Okay, here's the source for the last build 12.x.x known to run on hardware revision 1.x.x," and leave it at that. Doesn't cost anyone anything.

Update: What's trickier perhaps is supporting older platforms through emulation and only having binaries. Just open the source, Luke.

Refurbish and repairing viable electronics does not help keep Apple's, Google's or any manufacturer's stock high. Stock spikes high when the news organizations can talk about all the latest hardware and how sales doing well. Why would those companies CEOs want to hurt their golden package before exiting the industry?

One way to start penetrating right-to-repair would be to force device unlocking after ownership, device payed off, and end-of-life classification by the manufacture.

Next step would be for the manufacturers to require publishing open documents for 3rd party support without having to sign a NDA.

Both of those require reverse engineering. With camera technology being so complex, this is the feature that limits alternative OS usage with continual security updates after the manufactures give up.

Maybe rephrasing right-to-repair as "consumer protection" could help push it through better with less tech savvy consumers.

Consumers aren't the issue. Consumer support for right to repair is broad. The issue is the government doesn't give a shit what consumers think the vast majority of the time, they're bought and paid for by corporate lobbyists.

Consumer support for right to repair is broad, so long as it comes at no cost to them. People don’t want to pay to fix things, and they don’t want to accept any reduction in performance either.

Why would you pay same price for repairing a shoes when you can get a new one for similar price?

So your environment isn't overflowing with pollution and single use junk? So there are more natural resources for your kids to enjoy? So you don't have to keep breaking in a new pair every other month?

But the consumer mind goes like “whatever, my backyard garden looks fine, my lawn looks green, my kids will be fine, besides whatever I throw away helps some third world poor person make a living, so win win, not my problem…”

Would you prefer to walk without shoes?

Btw, having a garden with growing vegetables and fruits is perfect for reduce resource consumption.

The problem I wanted to make is that, consumer who can afford to generate those e-wastes are very far removed from the consequences of their action. When the consequences of my action are not inflicted on me, I have no incentive to stop doing bad things.

Where there is demand, there is supply.

> Btw, having a garden with growing vegetables and fruits is perfect for reduce resource consumption.

In the modern world, with no animals and insects, but full of invasive species, you will find this endevour quiet difficult.

I'm not sure where you live, but we still have insects and animals.

If resources are shrinking, price of products made from those resources should be higher.

Problem is, when stupid design and bad quality of making product steps in. I would like to buy a pair of shoes or smartphone that last ages and are repairable. Usually those products are thrown away because of one faulty piece that is impossible to change for new one that would fix whole product.

> People don’t want to pay to fix things

This just isn't true, as long as there's repair shops out with a sizable customer base. The issue is companies do everything in their power to make it impossible for that service to exist. It also largely depends on the economy; If the economy is great, people throw their old stuff away and buy new stuff. If money is tight, they repair it, and if there's an economic collapse they let it stay broken. I wonder where we are?

> largely depends on the economy …

Unfortunately, it depends on the mentality. My well off friends often pay good money up front to buy the latest and hold onto a device(smartphone, laptop, sometimes tablets etc.) for 5-7 years.

My less well off or broke friends show the opposite, they often go out of their way to take debt(contracts, installments, pay later etc.) and continue upgrading to latest phone/watch/tablet/fitness tracker every year. It feels like that there is some kind of overcompensation combined with FOMO involved.

I don’t want to generalise this, but I had known probably a sub three figure people from my childhood and have seen this same behavior repeated always.

One of my friend in marketing told me that, people buy dreams, and hope that a new dream will help them forget the nightmares/problems, hence all adverts often include happy smiling beautiful people or conveys some form of freedom, prestige, social status …

Just a thought.

Yeah, when we make generalizations like that we have to assume rational actors in the same earning bracket. I was also describing people outside the US where people are a bit less willing to buy the new thing every year if they can't afford it. Ukraine before the war, for example, had a massive economic crash and no one could afford to repair their computers anymore which put most repair shops out of business.

consumers are 100% the issue. consumers choose what to buy, who to buy from, and how often. Why should government need to step in and what is government going to do? Tell people who to buy from?

100%? Does that apply to other things that needed government intervention, like child labor, company towns, etc?

I don't see a problem with making rules for companies to follow. We have a rules that say companies can't advertise nicotine to children or put lead in gasoline. If the rule is good, it should be around.

I try to make stuff last as long as possible - not because it saves the environment or even saves me money. Making old stuff last a long time (seemingly) gives me an endorphin hit.

That being said, I get an even bigger endorphin hit from knowing that people can (mostly) buy whatever they want, even if stupid, unnecessary and wasteful by my criteria.

You can have a model T in any color you choose as long as it's black, can't you? Well it's your fault if you want a red one, you stupid consumer.

> consumers choose what to buy, who to buy from, and how often.

Sure, but when companies can all collectively decide that they're only going do one thing, you either stop consuming entirely or put up with the abuse.

> Why should government need to step in

Because companies won't do it on their own.

> what is government going to do?

Write right to repair legislature. None of these are difficult problems, you just seem to have a libertarian mindset which inevitably means you just play defense for corporations doing whatever they want.

> One way to start penetrating right-to-repair would be to force device unlocking after ownership, device payed off, and end-of-life classification by the manufacture.

This would really not help much, unless there was some type of PC-like ABI driver standard that could ensure that devices could remain supported in operating systems without having to "support" each device individually. And even then...

> Next step would be for the manufacturers to require publishing open documents for 3rd party support without having to sign a NDA.

I think this is even desirable in the PC world. I do not want AMD publishing drivers for Linux; I want AMD publishing absolutely free and complete specifications, possibly even a reference implementation, and mandated by law.

A large part of the problem is ARM itself and the ecosystem around it. Broadcom, Qualcomm and the rest of the closed source driver/firmware mafia who make it physically impossible for anyone to support their SoCs even if they wanted to.

RISC-V can't catch up soon enough.

> Why would those companies CEOs want to hurt their golden package before exiting the industry?

Due to a sense of decency and humanity and a realisation they have more than they could ever spend and could be happy working to leave the world better than they found it?

Wow, I’m sorry, just got woozy there for a moment, must be all the fumes. Nice dream, though.

https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995

Literally nothing you said there is compatible with capitalism - which is the predominant religion globally.

> Literally nothing you said there is compatible with capitalism

I can’t decide if you either didn’t understand the point of my comment at all…

> which is the predominant religion globally.

Or are adding to the joke.

Repair and reuse would have kept the 30% appstore cut rolling in.

But that's about to change in Europe and USA due to recent rulings.

It's a software problem too. To have the same capabilities my phone did when it was new a few years ago, I have to find 3rd party play store backups to get apps with the right SDK to install. The bootloader isn't unlockable. Samsung won't provide updates. Google is actively hostile to providing apps which work (both not hosting the working versions and abusing things like their power over the signing keys to quickly deprecate old Android SDKs).

> (both not hosting the working versions and abusing things like their power over the signing keys to quickly deprecate old Android SDKs)

Android SDKs aren't getting deprecated. The SDK available on developer.android.com right now can still be used to build an app that runs on devices all the way down to Android 1.5. It's the developers who are dropping older Android versions by raising the minSDK in their apps.

Google Play does allow the developer to keep older app versions available for older Android versions. Again, most developers don't do that.

Google themselves support older Android versions for a very long time. Current versions of GSF and Google Play require Android 4.4, iirc. This came out more than 10 years ago.

yep - my old moto phone was fine, and I didn't add any new apps or desire new functionality, but performance got so bad over time to the point where it was unusable. There's really no attractive business model today in maintaining modest device usage over a long period of time.

One of the nasty impacts comes from the low-tech metal recovery process that washes out heavy metals like cadmium, mercury, lead, arsenic into the sea. Fish from the West coast of Africa are basically lethal to eat.

Did a podcast with a researcher named Gerry McGovern (World Wide Waste) on this a couple of years ago [0].

Something that impedes recycling and repair is status display. I was proud of the old Nokia I kept for 10 years, all stuck together with tape, despite the scowls and snickers from the crowd with their latest iPhone who supposed I must be some freakish homeless person who wandered in - instead of their project leader/CTO. That was back in the days when meetings always started with an animalistic display of getting your tech out on the table to pose with. Somehow that little Nokia really emasculated and pissed them off. These were the same people who could talk about "efficiency" all day long, but the actual reality of doing more with less undermined some more powerful, lower drive.

[0] https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/andy-farnell-perils-of...

Recycling is definitely one area of engineering that is under appreciated and difficult.

The tech involved in recycling solar panels. Sheesh. Specialized equipment and patented processes. All to separate polymers from the metals and minerals. It’s currently more expensive than mining new material. The challenge will be to make it affordable enough that it makes sense.

But general electronic waste? I can’t even imagine. It sucks that instead of answering the challenge the world is collectively shrugging and dumping it in places like Ghana.

Update: Part of the recycling equation is not only designing electronics to be repaired and re-used but also designing them to be easier to recycle. In the solar panel field there are experimental designs that give new panels the same durability and life expectancy without the polymers which would reduce the cost of recycling them at end-of-life quite significantly.

Computing is... going in a different direction. Optimizing density at the component level makes for more power-efficient designs and some efficiency in the supply chain... but it makes recycling and repair waaaaaaaay harder. Not sure it's worth the effort tbh.

> Not sure it's worth the effort tbh.

It is for the gold. So much that in the UK we had our Royal Mint start a proper industrial pipeline for e-waste [0].

What I found heartbreaking from the stories from India, China and Africa is that mainly kids of about 8 - 16 yo work on illegal recycling.

They smash up the e-waste by hand, so they're breathing in dust clouds of plastic and metal particles, PFAS, glass fragments, PCB... Then they wash out the recoverables using a light aqua-regia (mix of nitric and hydrochloric acid). The industrial health effects are unimaginable.

EDIT: Just saw your update and concur that design-for-RRR is the way forward.

[0] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230904-how-the-royal-mi...

This is also why general purpose computers should not be crippled by the manufacturer. Or at least there should be a way to uncripple them.

So many devices are general purpose computers that are treated like a specialized device.

eg: modern games consoles. A Nintendo 3DS is an ARM11 board. You can run Linux on it. Most people don’t because it doesn’t look like a “computer.” And because they wouldn’t know how as it takes a very specific skill set to make it work.

They do get reused a lot because gamers of that era tend to value them… but a device like that could have tons of useful applications to extend its life.

A fold-up computer with built in wifi that runs on battery? Nice. With enough around you could run a low-power mesh network in an emergency to keep communication open between folks that are separated.

But such repurposing is far outside of most people’s reach. Especially when we’re trained to think of these things as products.

Phones are another one. An iPhone 5 could easily be repurposed into a firewall or other application to extend its usefulness and lifetime. It’s a general purpose computer crippled into being a product though.

> With enough around you could run a low-power mesh network in an emergency to keep communication open between folks that are separated.

And it plays videogames. Sounds like a win-win to me.

We need a law that requires manufacturers to, in the very least, provide the documentation and keys to install an open source OS on their devices when they drop support for the things.

> Re-using devices helps us also reduce the number of new devices needed...

You buy a device with a rechargeable battery, the device has an expected lifetime of 15 years but the battery is dead after 5. I try to open the device, but it’s clearly not designed to be opened. After prying with knives, etc I get it open and see that it’s not a standard cell, like 18650, but a custom pack. I emailed the manufacturer and they reply with ‘we don’t make it any more’

So I am on to my 3rd beard trimmer. And I buy the most expensive model available, it’s not like I am cheating out.

Same issue with wireless mice, keyboards, everything

Chinesium devices are far more riendly in that respect, usually use standard cells.

Ye, I think a lot of deal Chinese in gets is unfair

They optimise for different criteria. Westerners need a $thing$ to work for 5 years and never break. If it breaks, just getting a repairmen to get off his arse and come to your house is like £150. So it’s better to get an expensive $thing$ that never breaks

But in China, getting a repair guy is easy, so it’s better to get a cheaper $thing$ that’s easy to repair

I tend to go to my local town's e-waste collection at the end of every month in search of interesting gems to take home and repair. I find that the majority of e-waste that I see is 10+ year old tvs, 15+ year old Desktop pcs from the P4/core 2 era, and broken LCDs (as in the screen is cracked). Maybe my town is just really frugal but it seems like home users really do hold onto their devices for quite a while.

One thing I do see more often is really low end stuff: generic Chromebooks, all those Chinese knockoffs of popular items (tablets, picture frames etc.). No name electronics (ie Speakers, mp3 players, other consumer electronic junk.) Anything moderately mid tier or higher is used until the 10+ year mark. I suspect that all these items never really saw much use to begin with and with the low spec nature of many of these items, even if they were fully open what could people really do with most of them?

I still totally agree with your stance but I am not sure how much of the bulk it would reduce.

Too true. Elsewhere in the comments we've been discussing the third R(ecycling) when it comes to general electronics. A tough problem... one that has so far been tackled by making it someone else's problem. Usually people who don't have the logistics and technology to handle it.

hardware that you don't "own" is also a big problem,

support ended? too bad.

company is bankrupt? too bad.

Fisher ocean owners are finding this out the hard way.

There are actually reasons that phones specifically can't last 20 years: We keep changing wireless standards. When it was mandated that all phones in the US must support VoLTE, I had two phones that were instantly turned into e-waste: An aging Xperia XA2 (that I miss dearly) and an ASUS ROG Phone 2 (good riddance) that was only 6 months old. Until we can come up with an energy-efficient and tamper-resistant SDR for phones, this will be the hard limiting factor for useful phone age.

> I've been repairing and maintaining iPhone 5's, 7's, and 8's that are no where near their end of life.

There's an iPhone 6 I've come into possession of because someone I know was throwing theirs away, so I asked could I have it to play with. I notice you conspicuously said 5, 7 and 8. What software do you run on them to keep them going? As far as I understand it, there's no alternative app stores or ROMs to flash on iPhones. And is there anything about the 6 I should know?

Great comment anyway, I'm in full agreement - making devices last longer is essential, empowering and fun.

You can find jailbreaks for that generation of iPhone that are fairly reliable.

The problem with jailbreaks is that you’re in untrusted code territory. Treat them accordingly.

Project Sandcastle may have better support for 6 these days but you’d have to check. Last I checked the 7’s had the best support.

Good luck and have fun!

Brilliant, I had seen Project Sandcastle but it hadn't popped into my head since acquiring this little old machine. I'll absolutely look into if it can be done on the 6, cheers!

Conterpoint: Phone are small and replace so much more stuff: radio, flashlight, camera, video recorder, landlines, computers, etc.

Grind them up and recycle the metals in them.

in 20 years the tech will be so far more advanced and will lead to even more dematerialisation.

The real waste is the waste of human potential by social media that is destroying the yought for profit.

Repairing my old iphone does not give me a fancy new AI camera though. My followers would be mad about that

Agree! The push for "right to repair" isn't just about individual choice

> Re-using devices helps us also reduce the number of new devices needed... which is what probably scares the corporate oligarchy

I agree with you. Reusing and repairing appliances flies in the face of current capitalism. We don't need new models of phones, laptops or cars every year. Sadly I'm not optimistic that we will be able to dial back greed any time soon.

We need to reinvent capitalism.

(Why does my phone need to be upgraded every year, while capitalism is kept at version 0.1beta?)

YOU CHOSE to upgrade your phone every year. I don't see a gun to your head.

Even if they had a gun to their head, would doing so not still be a "choice" by your apparent definition?

Did someone invent capitalism?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism#Definition

It's a loose concept, a bag of things including basic human behaviour/self interest, mutually beneficial transactions between willing participants and the rules provided by governments.

> while capitalism is kept at version 0.1beta?)

The process of developing capitalism has taken millennia and in the last few centuries has had far more intellectual horsepower put into it than developing phones. Lots of iterations have been tried, it can't be compared to a beta product at all. The major problem we have on that front is people keep trying to regress backwards to models of organisation that have already been tried and are well understood not to work effectively - because almost nobody votes based on historical learnings.

Once we have >100 years experience in building phones there probably won't be annual upgrades any more either, it'll be like-for-like replacements.

What do you count as iterations? There's never been a violent throwing out of capitalism to be tried with a different version of capitalism. The throwing out of capitalism has been to replace it with something else, not more capitalism. And has the horsepower been put into developing capitalism, or has it been put into making more money for the people wielding it, rather than developing the best system there could be?

Why does it have to be violent? Every election heralds a slightly different version of capitalism based on the regulatory and tax priorities of who is now in charge.

Edit: Think of it in software terms. Version 1.1 or even 2.0 is normally not a complete rewrite of version 1.0, instead it's an iterative set of changes. Rewrites are often considered to be a bad idea.

Capitalism concentrates power to the top; those powerful people are the ones who have had the power to reinvent it so far. E.g. in 2008 when the Fed began QE Infinity, which never ended.

Capitalism has actually been reinvented many times - basically every time there's a significant change in how the Federal Reserve operates, this is a reinvention of capitalism. It occurred memorably in 2008 and recently in 2024. This new 2024 version hasn't had time to reach a stable state yet. It was preceded by cryptocurrency bubble capitalism since 2020.

Every single thread has someone complaining about capitalism. It's childish, and more importantly, not interesting. We get it, capitalism bad, but communists produce even more e-waste.

Capitalism is the system we are in which is the system that creates the actual problems of this system. We are talking about the actual problems in real life and not the theoretical problems that may exist in a parallel universe.

No, it's just vague whining about the idea of capitalism itself. Updating capitalism is not talking about any specific problems.

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