Colorado Enacts Right-to-Repair Law for Electronics (coloradotimesrecorder.com) 62
Colorado Governor Jared Polis has signed the "Consumer Right to Repair Digital Electronic Equipment" bill into law. The legislation grants consumers the right to repair their own electronic devices, including cell phones, gaming systems, computers, and televisions. According to Polis, the bill will provide Coloradans with the necessary information to repair their own equipment or choose their preferred repair provider, potentially leading to lower prices and faster repairs through increased competition.
State Senator Jeff Bridges, the bill's prime sponsor, called for the federal government and other states to follow Colorado's lead, claiming that this bill is the strongest repair legislation in the country. Bridges emphasized that the law addresses issues such as "parts pairing" and repair restrictions that have prevented owners from fixing their devices in the past. The bill expands on Colorado's previous right-to-repair law for agricultural equipment, which Polis cited as a successful precedent for this new legislation.
State Senator Jeff Bridges, the bill's prime sponsor, called for the federal government and other states to follow Colorado's lead, claiming that this bill is the strongest repair legislation in the country. Bridges emphasized that the law addresses issues such as "parts pairing" and repair restrictions that have prevented owners from fixing their devices in the past. The bill expands on Colorado's previous right-to-repair law for agricultural equipment, which Polis cited as a successful precedent for this new legislation.
On the right track. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:On the right track. (Score:4, Insightful)
Better yes. Cheaper, no. Additional costs will be borne by the consumer in the end. And to make products better typically requires more investment.
What will happen is that they will be more affordable through significantly expanding useful life span of the device. Because while it will cost more up front, consumer will be able to maintain device for much longer and for much less money. Most people really don't need a new laptop every time something small in it fails. Nor do they need a new phone because battery no longer lasts entire day. They just need easy and affordable repair and parts supply program for both, that would allow the consumer or a neighborhood IT shop to replace the failed part and give them their device back in working order in a matter of hours or days at worst.
We already have this for a lot for batteries and screens of phones, but prices are nuts because manufacturers want you to buy OEM modules that tack a lot of crap onto the part. With obvious goal being making even the simplest repair so expensive that consumer would just buy a new product instead, even though they really would prefer to just get their old phone in working order instead.
Re:On the right track. (Score:4, Insightful)
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I strongly prefer things be a little bit more expensive but last longer. I'm an environmentalist, and I believe in maintaining repairing things until they can't do the task they're meant for before replacing them.
But giving people wrong impressions on what right to repair/right to ownership does (make things cheaper) will result in people thinking that right to repair people are liars. Because things will get a bit more expensive when made repairable, as additional design features and supply chains aren't f
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* Perceived need by the average consumer
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Re: On the right track. (Score:2)
I buy $200 Moto phones and they do all the phone things. I paid 250 including the insurance for the one I'm using now and have had it for three years with zero sign of degradation.
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They are smart phones with Android that's current when you buy them, they have only a couple of crapware apps which can be uninstalled and not just disabled if you buy a phone which is not carrier locked. If you pay attention to which model you buy you can get one with an unlockable bootloader. The only special sauce they add to Android besides some wallpapers and ringtones is Moto Actions, which is a haptic control for your phone that lets you e.g. start the camera, or toggle the flashlight. They get typic
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I had Moto triplets phones too... V300 V500 V600, RAZR V3 V3i. My current phone is a Moto G Power 2021 (2nd) which they advertised as having a 3 day battery, but I have gone 5 without getting into the single digits several times. My lady has an even cheaper Tracfone made by Moto which has less dots but otherwise accomplishes all the same stuff, she almost never uses her phone except to read on.
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I have never registered with any political party. And shamefully, the last time I voted for someone was 1980 and that
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How on earth did you get a lithium based battery to not degrade at all in three years of use?
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Unplug the battery and use it on external power? :-D
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That's one of the faster ways of killing a lithium battery. Keeping it fully charged at all times, and heated by constant inflow of energy into the phone from the charger.
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No, they don't. Controller and it's related sensor package sits on the battery itself, not the device, for safety reasons. However lithium batteries really hate being fully charged, and phones almost universally fully charge the batteries because of planned obsolescence.
In fact the API to tell controller not to charge to full is blocked from user land on both ios and android devices last I checked. You can root your android phone to get to it.
And even when it's not charging because it's topped up, there's t
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That's one of the faster ways of killing a lithium battery. Keeping it fully charged at all times, and heated by constant inflow of energy into the phone from the charger.
Ostensibly, perhaps, but only if the phone disables some energy saving features when on external power so that the CPU itself consumes more energy.
In practice, you'll find that the heat produced by charging and discharging the battery greatly exceeds the heat from powering that device off of external power. If that were not the case, then the laws of thermodynamics would be violated, because you would have somehow created a battery that is 100% efficient or more.
Besides, nobody said the battery should be c
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Just out of interest, what do you think device does with energy when it's running?
And also almost all phones charge battery to 100% by default for planned obsolescence reasons. And API isn't exposed to user. You can get to it in root on android though.
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I know how to manage a lithium battery. That wasn't the question. The question was how to manage to use a device with one for three years and:
>with zero sign of degradation.
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No. Lithuim battery degradation is inherent to technology itself.
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Lithium batteries have specific mechanisms that interact with charge state changes and temperature changes that cause permanent changes within physical structures of the battery. You have things like dendrite growth, internal fractures and so on.
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I don't mind things not getting cheaper. I'm even willing to see price rises. There is nothing more expensive than inexpensive things that fail quickly. The cost to replace, the cost to redo your habits and actions (e.g. a cheap phone that breaks means you need to reload it, a cheap car that dies unfixable means you need to search for and buy another etc.) is also a monetary cost. The bitterness of poor quality affects a lot.
This,
If I want to buy a new phone it's £300 or so. If I buy a new car, even just a shed it'll be a minimum of £1000 for the vehicle (likely several times more than that as I'm not buying an old Citroen on it's last legs) and then I've got to pay VED (registration) of £50-750 and insurance which will be several hundred pounds as well. Basically I'm looking at a minimum outlay of £500 to get a new used car on the road. My R171 Mercedes SLK currently has a non functioning 3rd brake l
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Although there's no reason for right-to-repair not to apply universally to all technological products. Combine it with a universal lemon law and a lot of things would get a lot better and cheaper very quickly.
I have trouble with the term "right to repair". You've always had the right to open your gizmo and fiddle about. What might be a better term is "Mandate to supply documentation, tools, and parts" on the part of manufacturers.
I'm all in favor of competition. I'm sure you're right, effective competition between repair outlets ought to reduce prices and improve quality. That said, manufacturers do have a reason for things like parts pairing, namely ensuring quality and compatibility. Apple is famous for this, claiming it's all part of their brand strategy ("it just works"). It's hard to say how much they believe this versus wanting to exclude competition from the parts market.
We underestimate just how brutally inefficient and monopolized high-volume industries have become.
It's funny you would say that, given that we generally find economies of scale. The more you make of a widget, the cheaper the widget is per unit. What does lead to inefficiency is lack of competition, not size per se. Personally, I think phones are way cheaper on a per-feature basis than they've ever been so I think prices are still trending downward.
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Re: On the right track. (Score:1)
Manufacturers will resort to resin casting all electronics into an unservicable monolith 'for your protection' or fill them with an inert gas and use sodium pcb tracks to ensure they die quickly after repair.
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Not just technological. Everything. If you own it, you should be able to repair it and it should be free of artificial crippling to lock in you in to specific parts also. The way Apple tried to act like they were supporting right to repair but still tied everything to their own products and artificially crippled any competitor screens or similar items should be illegal.
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ok well you don't own equipment any more just rent (Score:2)
ok well you don't own equipment any more just rent / lease it.
"Antiquing?" [kaboom] (Score:2)
Right to ownership (Score:5, Interesting)
Proper name for these laws should be "right to ownership". Because fundamentally a device you cannot keep running isn't yours. It's on a lease from one controlling the supply chain for components and software needed to keep device running.
These laws generally mandate responsibility on OEMs to grant 3rd parties including consumers access to repair manuals, spare parts and software needed to main devices for some time after it's sold. Because right now, everyone copied Apple's policy of removing right of ownership and effectively pushing consumers to buying new devices rather than repairing old ones through:
1. Designing devices to fail in a specific way.
2. Signing contracts with parts manufacturers to disallow sales to anyone but the OEM.
3. Not providing any of the important manuals or parts or software needed for maintenance and repairs.
4. Pairing parts to the device (so even if you cannibalize another device of exact same type for parts, they won't work).
5. Design device to be very difficult to take apart for maintenance and repairs.
6. Flashy "warranty void if opened" and similar stickers to scare people from doing maintenance and repairs on their devices.
7. Design devices in such a way that it's almost impossible to replace individual parts like a screen. Instead have only large modular structures that include as many things as possible be reasonably replaceable, for example tack on lots of additional things onto your screen as a part of "screen assembly" to make sure that spare modules are hilariously expensive, even though only one part of said module is broken.
8. Generate a "repair program" of your own that does nothing but the most basic repair and maintenance and heavily advertise that everyone else will do really bad things to you if you let them repair your things, down to stating that repairmen will stalk you and rape you in a dark parking lot (yes, that actually happened in a campaign to prevent right to repair legislation from passing elsewhere) to ensure that 3rd parties will have trouble getting repair business off the ground.
Hard to balance (Score:4, Interesting)
Next your local companies have to compete against companies outside your jurisdiction that don't have right to repair laws. Will consumers chose your easy to repair device or will they go with the cheaper one?
There are also safety concerns. Do we let people repair their 240V, 60amp electric heater to their hot tub?
I'm fine with laws that tell HP to f*#k off with their ink lock in, Samsung blocking third party components, Apple making the use of third party parts difficult or anything John Deer has done in the last 25 years but some of these right to repair laws requiring providing support, components and added costs need to be balanced against allowing companies to make a profit and keeping prices down.
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Cost to m
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That seems a bit dangeorus. If it bent, I'd just as soon pony up $15 or whatever a new blade cost back in the day.
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I too first started mowing when I was 12. My dad gave me the old mower when he upgraded to a self propelled. This was in the 90's and I was charging $20 a lawn in the subdivision. By the end of the summer I had 8 lawns and a nice chunk of change for winter video games. The next year 6 of those people signed up again. I did that until I was 15.
Now I pay a team of 6 $75 to mow my half acre and they are all adults. I wonder if careers for pre-teens/teens drying up has any ill effects to society?
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Sorry, I said career. I didn't mean it like that. Work that teaches life lessons. That's better.
Paper routes, lawn mowing, snow shoveling, cleaning, babysitting, etc.
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When we used this technique (although the nail wasn't in a tree, it was in a stud on the garage wall!) it was to balance, not straighten, the blade.
When sharpening, esp. when there are nicks, it's easy to grind a different amount off each end which results in imbalance. The goal is to grind the other end down to rebalance the blade.
I never tested if this really mattered - it was presented as "necessary" by my dad and it was easy to do, so I just usually did it. It certainly seemed harmless but I really have
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There is a cost to making things repairable and while most people on slashdot repair things most don't. Think about your neighbours who throw out their lawnmower instead of giving it a tune up, changing the oil and spark plugs and sharpening the blade.
Maybe for a $200 push mower, because you'll spend more taking it to a lawnmower shop to get the tune-up than it costs to replace it, but when you're talking about a riding mower that starts at over $2k, people do *not* just throw out the mower rather than spend a couple hundred dollars to take it to the mower place and get it repaired. Even in the smallest towns, you'll find entire companies that do nothing but small engine repair for lawn mowers, go-karts, ATVs, etc.
And with newer push mowers being all-el
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> most people on slashdot repair things
I'd be curious to see some actual numbers on that. I'm sure there are at least some people here who do routinely repair their own electronics. Hell, I cracked open my own iMac years ago to pull out the DVD drive and replace it with an SSD to roll my own Fusion drive back in the day. That number is definitely non-zero. But slashdot is up to... what... 8-digit UIDs now? The vocal pontificating notwithstanding, I have a hard time believing that more than a minorit
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While it may cost to make things repairable, it also costs to make things intentionally unrepairable as well. Locking in components with DRM is not free, it takes time and effort, maintaining an policing illegal repairers takes time. We are not really talking about a company that doesn't use screws but welds that's still fixable with the right equipment, but goes out of their way to make it so you can't repair, and releases OS updates that break workarounds. This actually costs the company money to develop.
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The only time the manufacturer will do component level repair is when they think they can refurbish it. But otherwise the device is recycled/ground up.
If I bought the device, I should be allowed to fix it, or choose who gets to fix
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You sound wishy washy here. Almost as if you want to ensure that manufacturers can lock down their products as tightly as possible. If your priorities insist that company profits are more important than individual ownership, then keep thinking along the same lines you are now. If you prioritize the end user, then these laws become obvious regardless of any arguments against.
Right to repair isn't enough (Score:2)
Remember you are paying for all this disposable crap in the form of health care costs due to the damage it does. It's called externalizing costs.
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do you whine when you need special tools to fix anything else, or do you expect everything to be manufactured like it was in the 60's?
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Things can be made to have replaceable batteries, modules and boards now, with 21st century tech and without the planned 3 year obsolescence, you ignorant luddite.
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yep and your most likely going to need a tool, whether that is special or not is up to the end user.
20 something years ago I needed to change a battery in my wife's car and didnt own any wrenches to get the strap off of it. It may not be a special tool now but back then it was something I had to go out and buy to do 1 job so then it was a special tool.
just like you are a special tool
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Huh, so $2 and $3 tools from local dollar store or Harbor Freight or etc were too much for you? God damn you are doing something wrong. Hell 35 years ago that stuff started becoming ultra cheap for the occasional users. Not stuff a mechanic should own but for twice a year users, that's the way to fly.
Tools for electronics, pc or actual repairable phones have been dirt cheap for decades. Driver sets, hex wrenches, jewelers screwdrivers, the whole mess could and still can be had for under $20.
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do you whine when you need special tools to fix anything else
It depends. Can you give me any legitimate reason to use something like a pentalobe screw to hold a phone together? No? Then yeah, I'm gonna whine about it.
This is far from perfect (Score:2)
This is definitely a good thing but its far from perfect and contains a number of exemptions (at least going off the text of the bill as I found it)
It contains a specific exclusion for video game consoles as well as medical devices (or anything specifically produced for a medical setting), EV chargers,power tools and some other stuff.
And the parts pairing rules only apply to devices made after 2026.
The Dude abides (Score:2)
I wonder what Louis Rossmann will have to say about this? It's a step in the right direction, but there are always "Gotcha!"s. Everyone in Colorado now owes Cthulhu a kidney or something?