FTC Enforces Right to Repair

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

https://www.wired.com/story/ftc-votes-t ... m=list1_p4

Nice to see some small victory against corporate absurdism in this cyberpunk dystopia of ours.

[Nealithi]

So companies have been exaggerating the fire chance of batteries etc to fight right to repair, among other things?

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Among many other things. Like that "any repair by somebody other than a licensed official voids the warranty" sticker? That's a lie.

And that's without even getting into the sheer mountain of malarky that is Apple products.

[Nealithi]

I assume you mean the John Deere bit where there is this massive tractor that broke. But you can't even know what broke without the software on a laptop for it to tell you?
The John Deere service agent is more than fifty miles from the farms so good luck getting your tractor there in the first place and I think I heard the agents would not visit the farms. So you had to hire a person with a special truck to pull your tractor onto it. Drive it to this place. Set it down. Then it might be something as simple as a tech comes out and plugs in and clears an error message.

And I have warned my family away from Apple products for the proprietary issues as well as the forced upgrades I have heard of.

Though one question. Small victory? Isn't this reasonably big?

[chaos42]

it depends its more that it makes it so they can't make your phone or other hardware brick if you use non approved parts (cheaper ones that last about the same amount of time if not longer). The other thing i want to see is that they force companies to stop sending updates that make your phone worse to try and pressure you to upgrade.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Though one question. Small victory? Isn't this reasonably big?

Maybe? It seems small in the larger scale of dystopian things to worry about, but I admit I'm not great at knowing where to focus on that front. All victories seem small when you're a grim and bitter bastard.