Comment by throwaway2037 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwaway2037 | Hacker News Reader

I think cases like this should be brought before a small claims court. It seems unfair. The company (Framework Computer) provided the software, but the software is faulty and broke ("bricked") the laptop. Can you imagine if a GPU driver caused the card to get bricked? Even if out of warranty, surely the manuf would be legally liable in many jurisdictions for this faulty driver.

The author's LinkedIn profile[1] tells me that this person lives/works in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. While the issue is already fixed, for others affected with the same issue, I would suggest the small claims route. Make sure to talk with an LLM to follow the correct steps to gather and prepare evidence for your claim. If you are lucky enough to win, then you should "go nuclear" on social media (and their own forums) to share the win and the exact details about how you did it. Framework Computer will surely (1) cave and provide replacements or (2) be flooded with small claims about this issue.

[1] https://www.linkedin.com/in/guanzhong-chen/

"talk with an LLM to follow the correct steps"

Or, if you need legal advice, go to a lawyer, not an LLM.

In Canada , there are cases where people self represent in court because they think a LLM replaces an expensive lawyer.

The last one that tried that was fined 5,000$ for wasting the court’s time.

Author here. I am not even sure how much damage I can actually claim given that I spent $20 on tools to fix the laptop. If I bought a new board, I might be able to claim that, but filing small claims over $20 is likely not worth anyone's time.

The important thing here is awareness and helping anyone affected, not trying to get Framework fined for a tiny sum.

You're right, for you, since you had the ability to do the repair yourself (although Framework shouldn't have made you invest the time and effort it took to repair this on your own). The legal route would still be a good way to go for others who were forced to buy a new board though. Hopefully your site helps people avoid the time and trouble of going to court or the costs of a replacement.

People doing what you've done, documenting the problem you had and the steps you took to fix it, are what make the internet great. You also get bonus points for having that information well formatted/presented and accessible. Even without JS the page displays nicely, images included. Thank you for that! I may never need the information for myself, but I'm grateful that you took the time to put it out there.

Consulting a lawyer would most likely be more expensive than whatever small claims compensation one would potentially be entitled to.

So you don't get your money back then. Using a hallucinating robot to guide you legally is a great way to be caught with your pants down.

Small claims court is specifically oriented towards self-representation and not requiring hiring an attorney.

Yes, but there are free resources available that guide you on how to go through the process without consulting a hallucination machine.

Judges don't like their time being wasted, and they doubly don't like plaintiffs and defendants who don't even go to the effort of trying to follow decorum.

And, I'm just throwing this one out here; contempt of court is one of the vanishingly few civil offenses you can be held in custody for.

And consulting an LLM is a great way to find guides and get basic information on feasibility and effort of bringing a claim. LLMs are not a replacement for critical thinking, and they never have been.

Basic hallucinated information...

Just ask for citations by forcing the LLM to provide a verbatim quote from a linked source. If the LLM is incapable of doing so without hallucinating (cough, Gemini, cough) use a better one.

I don't get the LLM hate on this site sometimes. Just because it is easy to use an LLM irresponsibly doesn't mean all LLM usage has to be irresponsible.

I think the problem is that the original recommendation here was "just use an LLM" not "use an LLM [in this responsible manner]".

As an anecdote: I know people currently preparing to file suit against a former roommate who decided to leave mid lease and stop paying because they had an LLM convince them that they could just do that (they definitely can't, it's not even close under local tenancy laws).

Which fits with my general impression that LLMs are extremely inclined to validate that you can do whatever you want to even when that's not how the law works and my expectation that using them naively for legal matters is a really bad idea.

And applied to this specific case I can easily imagine an LLM picking up on the commenters outrage and supporting them that they're right, when I tend to agree with the actual author's comment that it doesn't seem like they have any actual damages since they fixed it for $20 (not that I'm a lawyer).

    > I don't get the LLM hate on this site sometimes.

I feel the same as you. Internally, I call this "LLM allergy".

Not requiring a lawyer and not doing your due diligence aren't mutually exclusive.

Just because you don't need a lawyer doesn't mean it's not in your best interest to get one.

A lawyer isn't going to hallucinate case law that doesn't exist. And if THEIR AI does? THEY'RE on the hook, not you.

Then... double-check it yourself? The whole issue with hiring a lawyer in the first place is that defeats the point for the minuscule amount of claims being made.

So it's not worth it to file the claim then!! What's so hard to understand about that?

You need legal advice? You need a lawyer.

The lawyer costs more than what you've lost? Sorry, you're SOL then unless you want to piss off a judge and definitely not get the verdict you want.

Again, small claims court's entire reason for existence is that you do not need a lawyer so that you can pursue small claims like this easily.

Yeah, I don't know about the whole "THEY'RE on the hook". When it gets to the point where you discover that your lawyer didn't do what they're supposed to do, you're deep in the hole.

A recent experience for me was a lawyer I hired just forwarding whatever their LLM service said. Granted it was for a commercial contract so doesn't require that much legal muscle, I imagine, but I had to go through multiple rounds of feedback just to point out problems in their amendments. And the response was something along the lines of "yeah that could be a problem, let me review it". It was quite a bit of money too but the experience left me without much confidence that having a lawyer review the contract was any better than just running it through any capable model myself.

You beat me to it! That is exactly my point: An LLM can guide you to find the forms, fill them, and gather your evidence. Even the cheapest lawyer will far exceed the 500 USD repair fee that is the basis of your small claims lawsuit!

Another thing (this is me guessing here): The standard for evidence and "legal excellence" must be far lower for small claims court, compared to regular district court. The whole point is to provide a very low cost way for average citizens to sue other citizens or companies for recourse. As I understand, most small claims courts don't need or require a lawyer.

Related anecdote: This year, there was a story of a single Japanese mother using an LLM to file a lawsuit against the father to establish paternity[1]. (Note: This was family court, which, again, will have many people attending that cannot afford a lawyer, but the judge will show care that they receive fairness, given their limited knowledge of the law.)

[1] https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20260325/p2a/00m/0na/02...

The $500 for one person's motherboard would not be the point.

Read the court's forms and instructions then. LLMs are notoriously inaccurate regarding the law and conflating every legal system. Going in blind is better than going in misled by an "AI".

Thank you. The commenter had me onboard right up until that point.

Lawyers cost hundreds of dollars per hour...

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