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E-waste will continue to be a problem until companies are forced to make products that are designed to be repaired and upgraded without replacing them.
We have certification for safety and compliance, why not one that guarantees that an electronic product can be fully repaired by the end user using readily available (and affordable!) parts? It can be on a scale from 1 to 10, and the less repairable the item, the more restricted its distribution should be.
Every laptop should be made like a Framework laptop; every phone like a Fairphone. Every electronic product should certified to have long life.
Hardware is not even the biggest issue imho. Software/firmware is even much worse. How is it possible to sell a phone that does not even get updates for 5 years. And why is Fairphone, Google Pixel and iPhone standing out with only 5 ish years.
Luckily the EU is currently working on that.
IMO its fine for vendors to abandon their products but they should be required to release all technical documentation and software used with the device into the public domain so enthusiasts can continue where companies stopped.
Exactly. Right to Repair should include software and whatnot, not just parts and schematics.
I’m shifting my old 2012 Mac Pro to Linux and, while mostly a smooth transition, firmware and drivers are the only real headache.
I’m continually mystified as to why companies don’t want to release the old technical documentation and software. Is it all so bad that they are THAT embarrassed to show it?
The changes for the company in releasing old software is minor, the vast majority of users don’t have the skill to deploy it and people who do have the skill can earn enough money doing a variety of technical work that repairing old phones isn’t going to be an attractive option.
What portion of phones capable of running LineageOS etc end up being used in that way? 1%?
Fair point re: software. Part of manufacturing products that don’t need to be thrown away would entail longer software support, naturally.
But realistically, software was never an issue 15+ years ago, when your toaster and microwave weren’t connected to the internet and your fridge didn’t have a large tablet interface.
I think we would all do better by having a few more “dumb, but immortal” products in our lives.
Exactly.
Why can’t I buy a decent dumb TV? I get that people want smart TVs, but surely there’s a decent market for people who really don’t need those features and would be happier with a simpler product. I’m absolutely part of that market, and I’m sure there are others.
I generally prefer simpler devices, and it was difficult buying a fridge with decent longevity (i.e. limited smart crap, ice maker in the freezer instead of fridge, etc). That’s becoming more and more difficult, and large appliances have shorter and shorter lifespans (I had my compressor die twice in <10 years in my LG fridge… fridges used to last 15+ years).
I generally prefer simpler devices, and it was difficult buying a fridge with decent longevity (i.e. limited smart crap, ice maker in the freezer instead of fridge, etc). That’s becoming more and more difficult, and large appliances have shorter and shorter lifespans (I had my compressor die twice in <10 years in my LG fridge… fridges used to last 15+ years).
I should say that my current fridge is 27 years old and has NEVER had a problem (other than over-stuffed crisper drawers being broken).
I was reading that the average life for a fridge is 10-15 years, and I can’t honestly believe they are being made so poorly these days. They are such simple appliances, and I dread the day when I have to replace this one for a modern version.
But I’d love for my next TV to be a dumb TV. All the features my LG tv has just gets in the way of using it. LOL
Yeah, after some research, LG in general is the worst, especially with their linear compressor. It failed after 2-3 years (under warranty), and failed again after 4-5 more years. We didn’t bother fixing it again, since the repair people said it’d cost $600+ assuming the part is under warranty, and probably wouldn’t last much longer anyway. Samsung is apparently similarly bad, but with different components. I liked this video, which goes over which fridge to get, and other resources say something similar: LG and Samsung are piles of crap (they’re super fancy though), Whirlpool and GE are better if you avoid fancy features, and everything kind of sucks.
We went with Whirlpool this time, but everything I’ve read says the expected lifetime is still just 10-years. I don’t want fancy features, I just want it to keep things cold, and I’d rather pay someone to fix it than replace it…
All the features my LG tv has just gets in the way of using it
Same. I have a Samsung “dumb” TV (~40", 1080p) from ~10 years ago and it’s fine, and I have an LG “smart” TV (~55", 4k) from 5-ish years ago, which can be a pain to use and I’d prefer to just have a “dumb” TV instead. I even use the “smart” features sometimes, but they’re slow and I’d get a much better experience with a small PC hooked up to it instead.
But it’s incredibly hard to find non-smart TVs. There’s a handful of “hospitality” TVs, but they’re usually lower resolution, don’t have nice features like OLED, and size seems to cap out around 40" at the biggest (most are 32"). I don’t want any of the AI fixing crap, apps, etc, just give me a bunch of HDMI ports (ideally DisplayPort as well) and a decent picture.
I remember watching a recent program (one of those investigative consumer news shows), and I remember the LG problem you mentioned. A ton of people had an issue with that compressor, and LG just kept selling the damn things. Knock on wood, our LG washer and drier, and TV have been very reliable.
I’d get a much better experience with a small PC hooked up to it instead
That’s what I do these days. Combined with media I have on my NAS, I don’t need other “apps” or garbage nonsense on my TV. If only they made 60" computer monitors. LOL
LG just kept selling the damn things. Knock on wood, our LG washer and drier, and TV have been very reliable.
Apparently it’s just their refrigerators that suck, just like with Samsung.
We have an LG washing machine and dryer, and other than one repair that I handled myself (logic board failure, so $150-200 repair), it has been solid. I also have an LG TV, and aside from the smart crap, it works pretty well (have had for >7 years now).
Combined with media I have on my NAS
The one feature I like about the smart TV is support for DLNA, which means I can stream video directly to it from my NAS. I have ripped many of our DVDs to the NAS so I don’t need to go fiddle with disks to watch something. My Blu-ray player supports DLNA as well, so I don’t really need the TV to support it, but it is somewhat convenient.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
I liked this video, which goes over which fridge to get
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
You can. Its called a monitor.
Do they make >50" monitors? My wife was hoping for ~70" for our next TV…
Yes. Find a commercial distributor in your area. Businesses buyarge commercial monitors for their offices, not smart TVs
Thanks for the tip, I’ll take a look. I’ve mostly been looking at the typical tech shops (Newegg, Best Buy, etc), and they’re all smart crap.
Edit: I took a look, and it seems prices aren’t generally available online. Is that common, or do you have recommendations for distributors to look for?
Yeah, seriously. Phones work fine hardware-wise for much longer than they get software updates for. If a company has to choose between supporting their existing model or making a new phone in terms of workload, they should support their existing model until at least most of the people who bought the phone when it was new now have physically broken phones.
The new Pixel is 7 years, which really should be the norm.
I’d really rather use a Linux phone, but a mix of closed modems and other non-technical issues are causing headaches. But theoretically, support on those devices could be indefinite because I could patch it myself if needed.
I just want a simple headphone jack that has worked for like the last century instead of relying on flaky Bluetooth that becomes a physical fingerprint, but apparently that’s too much to ask for in phones now
It would also be nice to have a microsd slot like my crappy flip phone had almost 20 years ago, instead of paying out the nose for non-upgradeable storage.
My phone has both, but there is literally only one flagship left on the market with the specs
I worry that it’ll just become a million distros with incompatible apps and dumb shit like that. Bad enough we have to have 5 or 6 guides for each piece of software on Linux.
Im.glad apt, yum and systemd exist.
I think we’ll largely just piggy back off Android, kind of like WINE/Proton does for Windows stuff. There will probably be a few flavors of that, but it’ll all essentially be the same thing.
But who knows, I’d like that to be the problem we have instead of current problem where basic functionality doesn’t work reliabiably (like waking to receive a call/text).
Yeah, I have a bunch of old phones that I rescued and I’d love to set them up as an arm kubernetes cluster to play with.
I had an iPad I won from work and Apple successfully turned it into a paperweight. I had to do these convoluted things just to get apps installed, because the app store refused to install them on an old device. Apple and it’s walled garden are very much to blame, Steve Jobs perfected modern day planned obsolescence and the company does everything it can to ensure even small failures require a device replacement.
Just install F-Droid or whatever the equivalent is for Apple
Lol.
I mean we have made steps forward here like forcing Apple to use USB-C, so we dont have to throw away chargwra every time we change phones. I tbubj Brazil fined the fuck out od apple some years ago because they didn’t yet switch to USB-C by the deadline. We need more laws like this to enforce standardized, reusable components
And that is exactly why we need more regulation on this area, because it’s NOT sustainable right now.
This was why the EU made it mandatory to use USB-C, so we only need few chargers for everything in our home. This alone were tons of e-waste reduced each year.
We need this thinking in other areas too.
We need phones that don’t break so easily and we should be able to repair them and replace the battery, at the very least.
we have phones that don’t break easily and we can repair them and replace the battery; with long-term support.
what we need are laws that makes it mandatory for all.
Make laws that give consumers mandatory, irrevocable warranties that include fit-for-purpose clauses, and has phrasing such as “reasonable expected lifetime” for the goods. Make those laws apply to whoever sells you the goods, not the manufacturer.
Laws like that weed out a lot of crap. Shops won’t buy crap in because they have to deal with the warranty on said crap. Manufacturers won’t make (as much) crap because they have to deal with returns.
You won’t be able to buy a $4 air fryer any more, but the one you do buy will last a lot longer.
Edit: I’m Australian, and we have consumer rights over and above warranties offered by manufacturers. Those rights would be a good start.
They start about half way down this page:
https://www.accc.gov.au/consumers/buying-products-and-services/consumer-rights-and-guarantees
an online store could operate from places where such laws don’t apply. most people nowadays mainly do their shopping online anyway and physical stores have largely disappeared unless it doubles as a warehouse. i guess australia and NZ has the advantage of stringent import laws though.
but i suppose this goes for my earlier argument as well.
According to the page linked in the post above, overseas businesses selling in Australia are subject to the same rules. It does say the rules might be hard to enforce on overseas businesses though.
They’re a dying breed, however.
fairphone is doing pretty well. their new one is quite competitive spec-wise too.
And Pandas are doing great, I saw one in the zoo.
I remember a while ago Motorola (before Google acquisition) came out with a phone that had a nearly indestructible screen. in the video they were throwing it off a roof, hitting it with a hammer, crushing it with a car, and all it had was a couple of dings. Haven’t heard a peep since then. What happened to that technology?
What happened to that technology?
They probably realized that profits would decrease.
The insatiable need for thinner and lighter phones means that every new version of gorilla glass allows them to make it thinner. A 1mm piece of gorilla glass holds up way better than the thin shit they use.
I was really excited to see that OnePlus has official parts distributors that sell oem parts. I got a new battery, USB port, seal, screen protector and battery pull tab for $90. Just a pity it costs $300 for a new screen.
yeah, the screen on my Pixel 7A cost more than $200 to get replaced and I can find a brand new 7A for $250… not worth the risk of a bad repair
The most fucked up part is that, if I could, I’d happily take in some of that trash to repair and recirculate it, but corporations make that as difficult as possible so as to not hurt their profits.
And I’d happily keep my current phone if it had security updates, but those ended a few months ago so I’ll be throwing out a perfectly good device.
I’m getting a Pixel for my next phone so I can get 7 years of updates, so I’m trying, but it just sucks that perfectly good hardware gets thrown out just because the manufacturer either blocks repairs or stops supporting it…
Shout-out to framework laptops for repairable, upgradeable, and reusable components.
Anecdotal but in my career in corporate this has been the order of operations
- Employees get any old equipment free if asked
- Employees can pay for any old equipment if asked at a reduced cost
- Employees can’t get any old equipment
The reason was they company wasn’t getting any benefit to give away the equipment. Then it was too much of a hassle to write paperwork for the sales which are then used to write down refreshes. Then they just blanket sold to another company which as an employee you then have to engage but with no discounts.
These big businesses make money hands over feet but god forbid they let Joe Employee keep his old laptop for his kid as an unofficial perk of working there.
Parts are expensive and profit margins are thin. What’s stopping us from buying parts on eBay and reselling those phones for profit? You pretty much end up with the cost of the phone to repair the phone.
I feel a law that would go a long way would be to force companies to release code, drivers, and designs of any product they no longer support. That includes Intellectual Property. If you no longer support a product, then you don’t need the IP used on it.
We either get everything we need to use EOL products however we want, or companies support products much longer to protect their IP.
E waste is full of precious metals. You’d think someone would figure out how to recover them.
There are trace amounts of precious metals mixed in with a lot of other crap. It’s possible to recover them, but nobody is going to do that if recovery costs more than the metals are worth.
'Tis the nature of Economics. -If recycling for money were easy and profitable then it’s highly likely that someone would already be doing it really well and competition would be jumping in to reap some of the rewards. -That said, you will always need a ‘Pioneer’ to pave the way.
People are doing this, but it requires some gnarly acids and a lot of material. Think extracting gold from sticks of RAM with aqua regia. Not sure of the exact process but scrappers do this in some capacity. I’d imagine the waste from these processes is particularly nasty.
Less and less, the last good stuff was made well before the millennium. It costs to put it in there, so manufacturing processes have become more plastic, less metal. Same goes for cars and white goods.
Apple: No no no, it’s fine! Keep buying a brand new phone every 2 years! Oh, you don’t want to? Well, we’ll make them irreparable, lock down the software so that you can’t revive it or reuse it in any way, claim it’s for “security”, and make sure that repairing it costs as much as a new phone.
But believe us, we’re the good guys and are doing our best to be sustainable 😉Graphics card manufacturers: listen up, that graphics card you bought just a few months ago is already outdated. Never mind that it could be full speed, but we artificially gimped it in hardware and software to sell more units. Responsibility to handle the trash you say? Lol, that’d cost money! Let your government ship them to a third-world country and dump it in a slum.
Btw, we’re sustainable, and don’t you forget it!appliance manufacturers: Repairability is for chumps. We need those fat stacks! The day your warranty ends, your device breaks 😘 Planned obsolesce baby! Buy a new appliance you bloody consumer.
IoT manufacturers: Who, us? No, we don’t exist. Look over there. Nothing to see here.
And so on and so forth.
- #opensourceAfterDeprecation : you deprecate or stop supporting a device? nice, now release all the source code, designs, and schemata to the public
- #greenTax : a tax is levied for the estimated impact to the environment your device has
- #recycleByDesign : all your devices need to have a planned recycling route and if somebody else has to figure it out, you pay a nice tax
While capitalism is a disease, publicly traded companies are the festering wounds. When the product becomes investor sentiment, the only thing that matters is making more profits at any cost
Don’t look into that recycling either. It’s just arbitrage all the way to the acid vat man.
The laws don’t go far enough to protect usability of both the hardware and software. For example, the new EU law about software, only requires smart TVs to have software updates for only 5 years (my own $2k Sony TV only gave me software updates for its AndroidTV for only 2 years! – these days I don’t connect it to the internet at all due to security problems). Who throws a TV every 5 years? IMO, it should ask for 6 years for full updated phones, plus 3 additional years for security updates, computers should go to 12 years, and TVs to 15 years.
Personally, I’ve been gathering old laptops and towers from friends and family and “upgrade” them with Debian and XFce. As long as they have more than 450 Passmark CPU points, and 2+ GB of RAM, these machines can still serve a purpose. So far, I’ve repurposed 12 such machines and gave them away back to their owner, my mom, my nieces, and two of my cousins. Even on machines with only 2 GB of RAM, it’s enough to run a browser with up to 3 tabs before touching the swap file (Debian/XFce clean-boots to about 800 MBs of RAM). That works just fine for someone like my mom who doesn’t even how to open a new tab, or for a young kid researching for school.
I would do the same with old phones too, but most of the models bought here in Greece are cheap Chinese Xiaomi/Huawei/realme phones, so LineageOS doesn’t support them. That’s the biggest travesty these days, since very few people buy computers now. Think if Google could ask as part of android license that all phones have usb-out for monitors, and all these phones can then be transformed like Samsung’s desktop DEX OS. I mean, most phones today have 4+ GB of RAM and 128 GB internal memory, just like an old laptop would. It should be able to transform itself into a desktop OS on demand and extend its life and its purpose.
I had this exact idea but for old Consoles: every PS4 could be a perfectly capable x86 Computer, 8GB of Ram and a AMD CPU, enough Power for Office and Web for a long Time. Only Problem the Software.
@ordellrb @eugenia The other place the motherboards of old phones could be repurposed is in embedded processors.
Most home appliances feature embedded processors and motherboards these days. Many commercial and industrial buildings and structures feature a range of embedded sensors.
In many cases, a repurposed three-year-old or even six-year-old iPhone or Samsung Galaxy motherboard is overkill in terms of being capable for these kinds of applications.
Especially if they’re reflashed with an embedded device-focussed operating system, such as QNX.
Instead of making new motherboards for embedded devices, why not repurpose old consumer tech instead?
@ajsadauskas @ordellrb @eugenia Quite a few of us have done that through the last two decades or more. Why not?! If it’s still useful, use it. I used a few older computers as print servers for businesses even back in the 1990’s.
The issue is the price of new hardware vs the hourly wages of people who are capable of reprogramming old stuff. If you are going to pay $100/h to get old stuff working and buying new stuff costs $20 then it’s cheaper to throw it out and buy new stuff.
@etbe @ajsadauskas True.
@etbe @ajsadauskas so it’s on quantity. If you reprogram one device for 500 dollars and then reflash with that firmware other 1000 devices it will be much cheaper than new devices.
@mcSlibinas @etbe Really good point.
The development time and cost is an overhead. That’s divided between the number of units you produce.
If the programming costs are $100k and you produce one unit, then that unit costs $100k.
But if you flash the same software on to 1 million units, then it’s just 10 cents per unit.
Worth remembering that millions of people junking their two-year-old iPhones and Samsung Galaxies at roughly the same time.
I think the broader underlying issue is that our economy is optimised for labour productivity, rather than making the most out of finite environmental resources.
It really should be the other way around.
Reprogramming the 1000 other devices won’t be as hard as the first one but it won’t be trivial as they may be all on different versions of the software and there may be hardware variations too.
Just to triage the devices and determine which ones are good enough is going to be non trivial.
@etbe definitely. That’s why ve have internet - to connect many users of given devices. Like entuziasts of retro gaming consoles: some dudes spend time of reprogramming others help with sharing - fixing - adapting.
@mcSlibinas @etbe Worth noting that in the six months after Apple releases the thinnest, best iPhone ever each year, it would receive several million two-year-old iPhones as trade-ins.
So you could theoretically reflash several million units of nearly identical hardware with embedded Linux (or QNX), remove the batteries (and screens?).
You would then have several million near-identical motherboards ready for second life embedded in appliances or sensors.
It would be good if the EU could make USB-C docking functionality a requirement for all phones the way they made USB-C power a requirement. I doubt that Google could do it even if they wanted to.
As an aside Google REALLY doesn’t want companies to follow the example of Huawei with HarmonyOS. If any big player said “we will license HarmonyOS or develop our own thing if Google makes us do something we don’t like” then Google would give in.
Phones for desktop use is something I’m working on now. Not for old devices but for ultra portable work. I just paid $215AU for a Note9 with 8G of RAM. Until a couple of months ago my main laptop had 8G of RAM, that’s enough to do most non-server things you want to do with a computer.
Wireless earbuds are trash and part of the problem, like wireless mouses. Stop putting irremovable batteries in things that don’t need batteries, its basically just planned obselecence on shinier more expensive goods. The last thing I want is to spend money on is good quality audio equipment that has a necessary end of life date due to charge cycles. These days you can scarcely find good headphones that arent wireless.
Ok no but a wireless mouse is so much better, rechargeable batteries are the way
Even rechargable batteries have a limit, if you cant swap the battery as a user it’s part of the ewaste problem. It’s also a lot more power consumption for somthing that stays in a stationary space reletive to the computer or laptop.
Here’s a better idea, batteries that you can unscrew from the earbud.
You convince anyone to take away my wireless earbuds and I’ll hunt you down.
Can we just roll it all up in a big ball and shoot it into space on a rocket? That worked great in Futurama… 😉
Super expensive. Better to just burn it in low income communities. /s
Too many rare earth metals we’ve abused and killed people and destroyed the environment for.
People living in high-income countries own, on average, 109 EEE devices per capita
What the fuck?!?
I’m guessing childless adults are significantly less than that. Just thinking about my kids and all of their book readers, barking animal toys, light-up fairy wands, I have a bad feeling they may be bringing up that average.
Though the nice thing about kids’ electronics is they never get obsoleted. A light-up fairy wand is just as fun in 2074 as it is in 2024. So they just get cycled through the 2nd hand mommy communities until they break. It was $40 new, you buy it “mostly undamaged” for $20, hope your kid doesn’t scratch it too badly so you can sell it a couple years down the line for $10 or so.
The bad thing about kids’ electronics is it’s that for new stuff, it’s really impossible to tell how long it’s going to last. Could be 20 years, could be 20 minutes.
Anyone got a non paywalled version of this?
thanks. someone need to make a bot that auto-post archive links for paywalled sites though
I the mean time, mods should just make a rule that says archive links need to be added to the post body if there is a paywall.
And that said, I don’t get the Wired paywall at all and I’m not subscribed. I wonder if it’s an AB test.
And that said, I don’t get the Wired paywall at all and I’m not subscribed. I wonder if it’s an AB test.
I dont get it either besides that obnoxious banner that you can minimize… might be because of ublock origin addon
This is what I see. No banners, just a header and an article.
This is what you see when you run out of free articles:
Weird. I don’t even get a free article countdown.
and this is the banner that I was talking about:
Ironically the same stuck up bitches who are always virtue-posting about how green they are, (make damn sure the waiter knows they don’t want a straw in their drink, etc.) are the same people who insist on yearly Apple flagship refreshes so they get social affirmation.
I feel like the answer is recycling deposits somehow. I’ve seen attempts at them here and there, but I guess we haven’t quite figured out the details yet. I guess electronics are a bit trickier to set up a deposit system for than pop cans. Even the places that do have electronics deposits, often you have to drive to a special recycling centre out past the airport that’s open 3 hours in the middle of the day, only for them to tell you that everything’s glued together so they can’t really separate out the parts they need and most of it will probably end up just going to the landfill anyway.
But theoretically, if we could get a serious deposit system that allowed for recycling to be profitable and gave manufacturers and incentive for making their stuff easier to take apart and recycling (and hence easier to repair), that would be pretty sweet.
A lot of the stuff you recycle doesn’t actually get recycled, at least in the US. I just got a new fridge and they carried old one away for me, but I’m pretty sure they just take it to the dump and the thing that’s recycled is the refrigerant.
I’m a huge fan of recycling, but I don’t think we actually process most of the recycling we have, so we should be focusing more on things lasting longer. Phones have kind of plateaued, so they should have longer support cycles, better repairability, and smoother resale.
