[HN Gopher] One man's fight for the right to repair broken MacBooks
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One man's fight for the right to repair broken MacBooks
Author : anandaverma18
Score : 809 points
Date : 2021-05-23 13:00 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (columbianewsservice.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (columbianewsservice.com)
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| >Apple contractually forces recycling partners to shred old
| devices
| bogwog wrote:
| https://www.apple.com/environment
|
| We're all fucked.
| huachimingo wrote:
| Ivan Illich talks about this in his book "Tools of Conviviality".
| That book inspired Lee Felsenstein to make the first PC mod-able.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| I'm all for right to repair, but Rossman rubs me the wrong way.
| He's too much of a Youtube celeb right now for me to still take
| seriously. They always become caricatures of themselves because
| their popularity depends on them doing what people know them for:
| In his case anger at Apple. It makes a balanced discussion
| impossible.
|
| I don't like what Apple do, I think current Macs are very poor in
| terms of hardware (ports/keyboards). And in fact I have stopped
| buying Macs for this reason. But he's a bit too extreme sometimes
| IMO. Like he's looking for things to complain about, just because
| that's what 'his thing' is.
| vladmk wrote:
| We need to fix this problem (pun intended)
| tcoff91 wrote:
| Lex Fridman misrepresents his role at MIT to make himself sound
| more accomplished than he really is, and the way he went about
| putting out his self driving car research directly to the press
| instead of going through peer review is shady. The guy is a
| cringeworthy grifter. He's trying to be viewed as some AI expert
| but he's totally full of shit.
| doopy1 wrote:
| In the last 1-2 years he has diverged greatly from the AI stuff
| to just being a podcaster that brings on interesting guests.
| fossuser wrote:
| I've also had a really hard time understanding why people
| praise him so much, I've tried multiple times to listen to his
| stuff and it's just super disappointing. Worse than most lay
| people in depth. For people interested in AGI there are many
| better sources (MIRI, Yudkowsky), for people interested in
| self-driving: Andrej Karpathy. Max Tegmark also has some great
| public facing physics writing.
|
| There's so much great stuff out there, Friedman seems to get
| disproportionate attention. Personal attacks aside, I find him
| tedious to listen to and he often comes across as if he hasn't
| done even cursory reading of his guest's work. It often feels
| like a sophomore in college waxing about "big ideas" with
| little substance to back them up. Even at 2x speed I found the
| talks low signal.
| josephg wrote:
| The one aspect of Friedman I really enjoy is the quality of
| his guests. I don't know how he does it, but he seems to
| attract a lot of guests who I've never heard of, and yet are
| super interesting to listen to. For example, I loved his
| interviews with Joshua Bach and Jim Keller. I'd never heard
| of either of those guys before they went on Lex Friedman's
| podcast and they're both brilliant.
| teatree wrote:
| A HN reader not knowing Jim Keller is a bit surprising. He
| is a well known name in tech communities.
| macintux wrote:
| It's a big world.
| caymanjim wrote:
| I'm a moderate consumer of DIY engineering/repair/tech
| and science content on YouTube and I haven't heard of
| nearly any of the names in this thread. I don't
| aggressively seek out content. There's a lot out there to
| weed through.
|
| Most of my YouTube comes from mainstream pop science like
| Veritasium and Arvin Ash; science hackers like Nile Red
| and CodysLab; geeky DIY like Ben Eater; repair porn like
| My Mechanics; and whatever YouTube's recommendation
| engine throws my way based on those entry points.
| dang wrote:
| (We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27254865.)
| jjcon wrote:
| I'll second this - I work in ai and have been pretty
| disappointed by many of his interviews. I also hardly think
| that 'humility' comes to mind as OP suggests, he argues (often
| incorrectly) with guests on some of the most trivial facts.
| It's one thing to not be an expert and ask poor questions due
| to lack of knowledge, it's another to pretend to be all
| knowledgeable and still make baffling arguments.
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| Yes, he is not an expert on most of the things he talks about.
| Also you can almost predict what he will be going to ask to the
| guests.
|
| But nonetheless as a podcast, I judge more on the basis of the
| conversation and the guest he had, and in both the metrics he
| is really great. He is really good in making the guests speak
| in easy and intuitive terms and making them speak the idea
| behind the discovery/invention. He sometimes even irritates the
| people in asking question behind the intuition when many guests
| are more accustomed with saying strictly provable statements in
| other places. And that is a part that is really missing in the
| world and that gives the sense of what's going on, instead of
| talking just formally provable sentences and terse description
| of their work.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| This is unfair. He is a podcaster now that spans many
| disciplines. There is no way one can learn and be an expert at
| all of this.
|
| Lex is a humble, open minded podcaster that tries to bring all
| sorts of topics on the table. Even uncomfortable ones like
| Anarchy and Religion. This is exactly what we need in times of
| a massive echo chambers of left and right.
|
| I consider Lex to be one of the best, polite, and cordial
| interviewer that doesn't inject too much of their personal
| agenda into the interviewee's space (like Joe Rogan).
|
| One of the best interviews was with Jim Keller where it gets a
| little confrontational and see how he deals with it.
| soheil wrote:
| Completely agree and very interesting how shallow the bar to
| praiseworthiness has become. Just put the words MIT, AI and
| self-driving car research on your bio line and you can sell
| snake oil to millions on Youtube.
| xyst wrote:
| Apple's fight against right to repair while pushing materials to
| the public that state they are trying to reduce their carbon
| footprint is the absolute peak of hypocrisy. I understand the
| closed off design of their products is a result of the Steve Jobs
| era, but why can't the current leadership make a change?
|
| Why can't Apple make their products easily repairable while
| making them aesthetically pleasing? The typical "private
| companies must satisfy the shareholders" answer is just a
| scapegoat. Truly innovative companies (and companies of Apple's
| size and worth) should be able to solve these problems. Doing
| anything else is just fucking laziness.
| bgorman wrote:
| Some devices like the Magic Mouse become paperweights after the
| battery fails and cannot be repaired at all.
|
| I think one part of the problem is all of the encouragement and
| virtue signaling around recycling. A friend told me "Apple is
| the best tech company for the environment because they recycle
| more than any others".
|
| Reduce > Reuse > Recycle
|
| The fact that Apple peripherals are not user repairable is an
| absolute environmental disaster.
| kewrkewm53 wrote:
| Funnily enough Macbooks were way more repairable when Jobs was
| still alive. Apple seems to be getting only worse each passing
| year.
| nrp wrote:
| Apple's business and design philosophies revolve around
| control. In exchange for locking down everything, they promise
| you a seamless, high-performance, safe experience. That extends
| to designing products in a way that end-user repair is not a
| consideration, to locking down access to the App Store (see the
| Epic trial), and more.
|
| I personally think it's a bad direction to go in, especially
| with the outsized power Apple has over the industry, but they
| have clearly found willing audiences for it.
| worik wrote:
| As a Apple developer it is not a "seamless, high-performance,
| safe experience". Anything but.
| kragen wrote:
| You're not the customer, you're the product.
| cgearhart wrote:
| I used to work as a civil service engineer for the Navy in
| technology development for future weapons. The brass would
| often complain about how expensive fully-integrated solutions
| were. We investigated and found that the main cause was vendor
| lock-in to buy the all up rounds. We couldn't compete for
| lowest cost on the power cards, or signal processing cards,
| rocket motors, etc., because the government didn't have data
| rights to the design in order to hold down development costs.
| (Side note: as a contracting necessity, we'd also put the whole
| purchase on one huge contract to be managed by the so-called
| prime contractor and negotiate a profit fee explicitly in the
| contract itself. The total cost of the prime contract included
| "pass through" funding for subcontracts that the prime
| contractor would handle. In some cases the prime would let a
| subcontract to a vendor who would contract _back_ to a
| subsidiary of the prime, and we'd pay guaranteed profit margin
| explicitly on the prime and the subcontract amounts, so we'd
| pay a profit markup to the prime on the profit they would make
| from their subsidiary. And folks around here gripe about the
| 30% app "tax".)
|
| Anyway, vendor lock-in means we can't compete subcomponents and
| our long term maintenance costs are really high because we
| always have to go back to the vendor for service. (Sounding
| familiar...?) The brass started dreaming up "modular weapons
| systems" where we maybe develop things like universal power
| modules, guidance modules, and other components, then we could
| compete for low cost production and long-term maintenance and
| achieve utopia.
|
| I spent quite a while on this, and what we found is that it
| wouldn't work (at least not for weapons). Universal components
| aren't well-suited to different platforms (3" rocket vs 14"
| missile, etc.), the modular design adds weight, reduces
| efficiency for the electronics systems, increases part count to
| make them all interoperable, and so on. The engineering trades
| that you have to make for modular designs are incompatible with
| optimizing performance as measured by the end user. Ironically
| perhaps, one of the major case studies that helped argue that
| point was based around Apple products.
|
| Which is perhaps a long way to say that most consumers don't
| seem to care about modular computers, and in the worst case
| many of the changes that modularity would require are
| counterproductive to the things consumers _do_ seem to care
| about.
|
| It's one thing to argue that we should use governmental
| regulation to push negative externalities back onto firms so
| that they reconsider the design and engineering constraints
| they prioritize, but it's not like firms are being irrational
| or irresponsible by giving people what they want--some
| combination of smaller, lighter, faster, longer battery life,
| and cheaper devices. There would be some negative impact on
| some (or all) of those characteristics if Apple, Samsung, or
| anyone else switched to fully modular designs--and I think most
| consumers would choose the cheaper, faster, smaller, lighter,
| or longer battery life models than to buy a modular one either
| on principle or because they expect to repair or upgrade it for
| significantly longer than they expect to own them today.
| aasasd wrote:
| Wasn't the Aegis system designed with this very kind of
| modularity, though at a higher level? Want different missiles
| on your ship, no need to build a different ship: just lift
| the module out and put a new one in.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _because the government didn't have data rights to the
| design in order to hold down development costs_
|
| Isn't this the very problem? These kinds of contracts should
| be illegal, not just in the military, but across the whole
| public sector. Not getting full designs along with a custom
| product makes the public agency dependent on a commercial
| vendor. Might as well put a neon sign above should provision
| that says "a loophole for defrauding the public".
| worik wrote:
| Interesting.
|
| The Israeli Iron Dome project did it differently. From the
| references in the Wikipedia article I found this gem:
|
| "As scientists we dream to sit in our offices without
| limitations of time and budget and to develop perfect
| products. But the reality is different, and these constraints
| forced us to think hard. There are parts in the system forty
| times cheaper than the parts we buy normally. I can give you
| even a scoop--it contains the world's only missile components
| from Toys R Us... One day I brought to work my sons toy car.
| We Passed it among us, and we saw that there were actually
| components suitable for us. More than that I can not tell.".
| cgearhart wrote:
| It's very common to use commercial off the shelf (COTS)
| components in military gear. It's actually preferable to
| use COTS than building something new. That doesn't
| necessarily make the overall end item modular or
| serviceable by anyone except the OEM.
| astura wrote:
| A decade ago the Air Force had a supercomputer made up of
| 1,760 Sony PlayStation 3s. They claimed using PS3s saved
| them $2 million.
|
| https://phys.org/news/2010-12-air-
| playstation-3s-supercomput...
|
| They also have been experimenting with using video game
| controllers to control military equipment
|
| https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/military-
| contracto...
| A_non_e-moose wrote:
| That might apply to very complex, high reliability systems
| like those in the military. But a battery is very basic and
| it's a consumable more than a modularize-able component like
| an engine or turbo. I think batteries are easily replaceable
| in most military equipment.
|
| Consumables in the very least should be replaceable for
| consumer products, or the price for its replacement capped,
| otherwise we're throwing away electronics that hasn't reached
| even a third of its lifetime just because the battery's
| lifetime is over, it's like buying a new car everytime the
| tires are worn out. It's an incredible waste of resources.
|
| Same thing for connectors like USB, audio jack, buttons and
| joysticks.
|
| Most egregious is the chip signature-checking and exclusive
| buyer rights on same chip, that should be outlawed, heavily
| fined and easily reported and checked. It's like adding a
| chip with a serial number for each tire and if you install
| one not from your car manufacturer then your car refuses to
| move. It's just a scam.
| userbinator wrote:
| _I think batteries are easily replaceable in most military
| equipment._
|
| The irony is that a lot of military equipment is designed
| to destroy and be destroyed, yet is probably designed with
| serviceability in mind more than consumer electronics.
| cgearhart wrote:
| > I think batteries are easily replaceable in most
| military equipment.
|
| The _actual_ irony here is that batteries are often _not_
| easily replaceable in lots of military equipment, and
| especially not always in weapons. It may require a very
| extensive tear down and replacement of entire sub
| assemblies to replace something as mundane as a coin cell
| battery. And don't even start with thermal batteries...
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| arbirk wrote:
| Apple silicon repair: do you want an new device or just a new
| mobo. Costs the same
| judge2020 wrote:
| my opinion is that device makers should be allowed to make
| things unrepairable in design, but not in post-sale scarcity.
| The new macbook airs probably could have been just a tad
| thicker if they included modular ram and a m.2 ssd, but some
| consumers (and reviewers) really do like to chase thinness and
| will chastise Apple to continue to try to make their products
| as thin as a sheet of paper.
| simion314 wrote:
| >but some consumers (and reviewers) really do like to chase
| thinness
|
| Honestly Apple started the thinness fetish, so IMO the
| reality is like this
|
| Apple pushes thinness fetish -> Reviewers and fanboys are now
| corrupted and will flaunt the size of their camera and
| thinness of the device.
| loa_in_ wrote:
| The right to repair won't in any way affect the thickness of
| new products. This isn't what the fight is for (or against).
| And there's no reason to think something in this matter would
| change after right to repair is passed. It has nothing to do
| with RAM or disk connections.
| kiba wrote:
| Right to repair is not about countering the thinness fetish
| but countering anti-consumer business practices such as using
| security screw instead of normal screws, making deals with
| vendors to hinder ability of shops to buy components for
| repair and so forth.
| webmobdev wrote:
| The "thinness" fad was started by a Motorola phone. Apple
| studies such fads before launching a device and latched on
| it. And it makes sense for phones, to a certain extent,
| because nobody likes a bulky phone in their pocket. For a
| laptop you'd actually be more concerned about the weight than
| its thickness.
| jrockway wrote:
| Out of chip interconnect is always going to be lower
| performance than having everything on the same die. Apple
| could technically use DDR4 and NVMe over PCI-e, but the
| modularity comes at the cost of a performance decrease.
|
| Personally, I've always thought that it's pretty weird that
| my NVMe SSD has a CPU and DRAM that I can't use for my own
| computing purposes -- I have that silicon there and I can't
| use it. It's kind of a waste unless you are doing something
| I/O heavy that the proprietary software running on that CPU
| thinks it can optimize. Imagine if the NAND flash was
| directly connected to your CPU; you could change how garbage
| collection, error correction, and redundancy works, right in
| your OS software. (This isn't really a pipe dream; it's
| common on embedded systems and Linux has lots of code exactly
| for this case. Code you can edit, code that has tests. Your
| off-the-shelf SSD is just a black box. Maybe there's not a
| bug that corrupts all your data under certain circumstances.
| But if there is, there is nothing you can do about it. And,
| that inflexibility and reliability on unauditable proprietary
| software comes at the cost of lower performance. Makes very
| little sense to me.)
|
| I feel like there is a strong push from the right to repair
| movement to have the government mandate obsolete technology,
| because of its ubiquity and interchangeability at a
| particular point in time. (For example, forcing Apple to use
| an NVMe M.2 SSD.) We've seen that in action before; look at
| things like FIPS. FIPS is behind the modern standards, so if
| you are required to use FIPS, your users are less safe. Doing
| the same with hardware means that it's easier to repair, but
| also slower. I'm not sure that's a good tradeoff.
|
| Finally, I'm not even sure that mandating connectors instead
| of soldering is a great idea. Look at things like the
| connectors between WiFi modules and antennas; they are rated
| for a maximum of 30 cycles, with most vendors recommending
| that you use them once. Not that repairable.
| vladmk wrote:
| It sounds like people would love open source devices they can
| build/customize.
|
| This reminds my of the MySpace wall vs Facebook wall problem.
|
| There should be a market for both in hardware.
| teslaberry wrote:
| lex fridman is highly naive and has chosen to wisely pursue the
| money but immitating and co-opting joe rogan's youtube audience
| which was left high and dry.
|
| rossman is not as naive, but he is unable to see the forest for
| the trees when it comes to 'right to repair'. the bigger issue is
| u.s. economic system in general but you gotta give him credit for
| being focussed.
|
| meanwhile, it's time lex fridman has luis rossman on his show.
| howmayiannoyyou wrote:
| Rossmann is seriously a national treasure. Along with Lex Fridman
| the two Youtube personalities irrefutably prove fair mindedness,
| humility & sincerity is valued. My fears that content online
| would eventually consist of nothing but selfies, food pics &
| competitive victimhood are somewhat reduced. I'd like to see
| Rossmann on Fridman's podcast.
| bstar77 wrote:
| I find Rossman insufferable due to his hyperbolic approach to
| shaming Apple and having a bone to pick with just about
| everyone- he's the definition of a narcissist. I agree in
| principle to "right to repair", but Rossman's motives are
| purely financial and self promoting. I've watched over 100
| hours of his content and realized that his audience is
| primarily made up of anti-apple PC Master Race fanatics that
| just want to hear Louis troll apple for an hour.
|
| Rossman always presents himself as the ultimate victim. Apple
| has it out for him, NY has it out for him, people less
| successful than him have it out for him. When you've watched as
| much of his content as I have, you start to see where his head
| is, and it's not a pretty place. Anyway, I have found other
| repair guys that are better than Rossman and don't have so much
| negativity on their channels. I can get a deeper understanding
| of repairing tech without the hyperbolic commentary.
| dghughes wrote:
| > I agree in principle to "right to repair", but Rossman's
| motives are purely financial and self promoting.
|
| Self-promoting maybe but if Apple made better products how
| Rossman would benefit? Isn't it currently the opposite?
| Rossman does well due to Apple refusing to fix the smallest
| of issues with their products. And fighting anyone who does
| whether a customer or repairman.
| bogwog wrote:
| When you can't attack their arguments, resort to personal
| attacks.
|
| The amount of childish personal attacks about Rossman in this
| thread I think is a good indicator of how right he is. Makes
| me feel good about that money I donated to his Gofundme.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| I'm not sure why you would say that. Some critics on this
| thread have given pretty good reasons for why they
| "dislike" Rossman. while it may seem like some (not most)
| of those points are attacking Rossmans character, I don't
| see how some of his character doesn't have a direct impact
| on his arguments. If he always goes for clickbait titles,
| has a tendency to exaggerate, prefers to perpetually
| rant/glorify himself or likes to talk about things that he
| clearly does not know a lot about that can obviously taint
| the core of his message to some.
|
| FWIW, personally I've watched Louis since the very
| beginning and he knows a lot about repairing electronics.
| But I also think the way he kept getting more and more
| attention as he ranted about Apple really changed the
| channel _and_ his character at least on video.
|
| Also, I honestly think it's more childish to use the "if x
| is getting criticized it means it's probably right" trope
| here than it is to criticize the personality of a _public
| figure_.
| bogwog wrote:
| Bob says "2 plus 2 is 4"
|
| > Look, I think Bob is a smart person and knows a lot
| about math, but personally I don't like him. He's
| balding, he collects plastic folding chairs in his
| garage, and he has a Youtube channel with clickbaity
| titles.
|
| Why does that matter? He's right, `2 + 2 == 4`. Why are
| you posting personal attacks instead of debating his
| argument? It's impossible to have a productive discussion
| like that, and it's childish.
|
| > I'm not sure why you would say that. Some critics on
| this thread have given pretty good reasons for why they
| "dislike" Bob. while it may seem like some (not most) of
| those points are attacking Bob's character, I don't see
| how some of his character doesn't have a direct impact on
| his arguments. If he always goes for clickbait titles,
| has a tendency to exaggerate, prefers to perpetually
| rant/glorify himself or likes to talk about things that
| he clearly does not know a lot about that can obviously
| taint the core of his message to some.
|
| > FWIW, personally I've watched Bob since the very
| beginning and he knows a lot about repairing electronics.
| But I also think the way he kept getting more and more
| attention as he ranted about Apple really changed the
| channel and his character at least on video.
|
| > Also, I honestly think it's more childish to use the
| "if x is getting criticized it means it's probably right"
| trope here than it is to criticize the personality of a
| public figure.
| veilrap wrote:
| Reducing a complicated situation to a mathematical fact
| is basically strawman argument. If a an expert is talking
| about a complicated area with a lot of nuance and no
| concrete right answer, then that expert's credibility
| matters.
| judge2020 wrote:
| Even in this situation, a lot of people don't like Bob,
| and want to express that. The main post doesn't dismiss
| right to repair because of rossman's character, they
| simply state " I can get a deeper understanding of
| repairing tech without the hyperbolic commentary".
| They're upset that this guy is who's pushing right to
| repair instead of someone more grounded and polite.
| hellow0rldz wrote:
| It's not paranoia if you are right.
| devwastaken wrote:
| If your largest problem is "negativity" and not about wether
| it's _true_ the problem is somewhere between your chair and
| the keyboard. People can have very good reasons to be
| negative.
|
| He makes very valid arguments, how is this "financial and
| self promoting"? Dont lie about someone's intentions just
| because you don't agree with their reasoning.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| I think he just understood how YouTube and social media
| works. New content is more rant and less repair. Anyone can
| enjoy a good rant troubleshooting motherboards and soldering
| components is less accessible.
|
| Makes me think of Thunderf00t. This guy is a massive troll
| with, from time to time, great scientific content. He has a
| lot of followers just here to enjoy the trolling, as
| evidenced by the fact he is never questioned by his fans even
| though it is what his channel is supposed to teach.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I do not understand how or why people prefer spending time
| listening or watching people talk to each other. Is it not
| much quicker to read transcripts? And why would I want all
| the noise that happens in the conversation? Reading a
| summary of the meat and pickles is far more efficient.
|
| "YouTube culture" puzzles me. I love it for instructional
| videos though.
| kiba wrote:
| I am not sure why people are assuming that Rossmann is some
| kind of savy youtuber looking to pump up views.
| dijit wrote:
| It's a shame to see this downvoted because even if it's
| against what many people believe (we all have "hero's" and
| "villains" I suppose, and our hero's do no wrong) it's
| something I also see.
|
| I used to watch a lot of Rossman and glossed over his Apple
| hate because ultimately Apple are putting him and people like
| him out of a job, so it's fair to be salty.
|
| But a large portion of his content (a few years ago at least)
| is just hour long rants which are unsubstantiated opinion, he
| does not see nuance or doesn't want to try steel-manning the
| things he disagrees with. Which is something Linus Sebastian
| is incredibly good at.
|
| It does come off almost narcissistic at times, to me at
| least.
|
| But at the end of the day explaining how computers are
| constructed is great content.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| This is an amazing remark.
|
| _The entire hour is nothing BUT substantiating the
| opinion._
|
| ...in excruciating exhaustive detail that covers every
| possible excuse and addresses every possible disingenuous
| argument, exactly because people will try anything to avoid
| recognizing something they don 't want to think about or
| admit or deal with.
|
| He doesn't say "I don't like Apple because I don't know
| why, I just don't like their face." He says Apple did X,
| and here is the evidence that Ape did X, and here is
| exactly why X is bad. Exactly specifically and explicitly
| so that no one can possibly even try to say that the
| statement is just subjective and open to be disregarded.
|
| And here you are proving how even such exhaustive extremes
| of thoroughness and correctness and see-for-yourselfness
| don't matter. That is incredibly disheartening to see. It
| proves once again that right and wrong don't matter. People
| use the words to suit their own opinions and wants, but
| they don't actaully matter.
|
| You don't have to like his style or personality, but to say
| his statements are unsubstantiated opinion is just
| incredible.
| [deleted]
| COGlory wrote:
| It's funny to see this analysis, because in my mind Rossman
| is simply being a New Yorker and doing things exactly as
| I'd expect a New Yorker to do them. The mentality that city
| forces on people to survive produces a narrow personality
| outcome and Rossman's personality is one of those.
| [deleted]
| bstar77 wrote:
| I don't think being a New Yorker means you are destined
| to be as asshole. I'm from Jersey and generally don't
| care for people that meet the NY/NJ stereotypes. Maybe
| that's why guys like Rossman don't impress me.
| bombcar wrote:
| There's a line between being frank/brash and being an
| asshole - and often what side of the line someone falls
| on depends on how well you know/trust that the person has
| your best interests at heart.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| I don't understand what his being a NYer has to do with
| anything.
|
| Which statement has he made that was either a lie or an
| error?
|
| What else matters than that?
|
| I understand not finding the videoes enjoyable 3 hours of
| entertainment. That's hardly anyone's cup or tea. I mean
| finding his arguments questionable.
|
| Is it somehow NYer of me to demand this explaination that
| if you're going to say someone's wrong, they actually
| have to be wrong?
| bstar77 wrote:
| Well said. I certainly liked him for a while, but
| eventually he just went too far. I understand he has a
| "base" that loves his schtick, but it's not for me.
|
| Some alternatives:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeHILuUwWmHDQqbocxUvVoA
|
| https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfOrKQtC1tDfGf_fFVb8pYw
|
| https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRBWJ9JeJ3Q8ssn_ibii-Cg
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Completely agree. He spews contempt, anger and vile, brings
| out the worst of people and this is what makes him very
| appealing. It's a reality show. Same way how Reddit hooks
| people in to outrage and justice gifs.
|
| With regards to arrogance, it's difficult to see his
| arguments for R2R while he is showing off his desoldering
| skills for a 170 pin BGA.
|
| If you want to promote R2R, look at iFixit and EFFs
| efforts. If HN thinks Rossmann is the hero we should be
| looking upto, I think we've stooped really far down.
| arvinsim wrote:
| Textbook ad hominem attack.
| croutonwagon wrote:
| > I agree in principle to "right to repair", but Rossman's
| motives are purely financial and self promoting.
|
| It's pretty clear he had built a business on repairing
| electronics. But that doesn't invalidate his points. If you
| own something, you should be able to get it repaired to a
| reasonable degree. Apple goes out of their way to frustrate
| even consumables like batteries from being swapped, and I say
| that as someone that still uses apple products.
|
| For him, it makes sense hes more passionate than most, not
| only is it a passion for him to do this type of work
| (repairing electronics, not youtubing) but its also his
| livelyhood, so it makes sense that he would call out
| companies that make design changes that serve little other
| purpose than to frustrate repairs and decrease longevity to
| bolster their sales (and increase e-waste in the process)
|
| > I've watched over 100 hours of his content and realized
| that his audience is primarily made up of anti-apple PC
| Master Race fanatics that just want to hear Louis troll apple
| for an hour.
|
| Gonna disagree. Regardless of the type of people attracted to
| his content. It doesn't invalidate the points he makes there.
| I don't watch his stuff religiously, and probably haven't
| viewed as much as you purport to have, but he has a clear
| schtick (which is basically mandatory for youtubers) but is
| definitely less negative than many I have seen. The good
| seems to outweigh the bad.
|
| The article starts out saying this was a way for him to vent
| in a healthy and cathartic way, as a direct substitute to
| therapy. And it seems to work for him and he has said it
| before and it shows in the stuff he posts. I wont judge him
| solely on that just as I wouldn't judge other others who
| prefer something different, like fishing or hunting and
| escaping people (myself), or hobbies like music (also myself)
| or maintaining a garden or yard to work out frustrations.
| Some even go on the internet to criticize others I guess.
|
| What other YouTube channels are showing people to cleanup or
| swap individual chips, or what part of a board does what?
| [1][2] I haven't seen one that compares. It's pretty neat and
| a display of a skill set definately don't posses. Even though
| I work with tech on a daily basis in my own right.
|
| [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dr13FEBRzjM
| [2]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUWmqucOkZk
| theshrike79 wrote:
| I remember the time I noticed how insufferable he is (to me).
|
| He had a video where he was trashing a new MacBook. The
| largest reason why he liked his current Lenovo over the
| MacBook was the Lenovo's battery bump.
|
| He used the battery bump as a handle when editing videos
| standing up on the subway. Oof.
|
| The sleek MacBook didn't have a convenient handle in the back
| for him to do his stand-up video editing, thus it was a piece
| of shit.
| vultour wrote:
| From the videos I've seen there are very few where he
| doesn't come off as insufferable. My favourite one is when
| he starts trashing the Genius Bar for not being able to
| diagnose an issue with a specific component on the
| motherboard like he does, and instead they recommend
| replacing the whole board. I don't think Dell/HP/Lenovo
| support is going to bother inspecting a mobo with a
| microscope and checking voltage levels either.
| jmpman wrote:
| I've learned more about commercial real estate from Louis
| than I would have from other sources. There are disincentives
| for commercial real estate owners to lower their leasing
| rates, as it can drive a re-evaluation of loan criteria by
| the banks, forcing the owner to immediately increase equity.
| Banks don't want this to happen, as it makes their books look
| bad.
|
| Watching his business struggle through Covid fills me with
| great respect for the small business owner and the difficult
| choices which must be made. Did NY have it out for him? They
| were far from business friendly with their Covid
| restrictions. Recently, his shop was fined for not
| registering used laptops that his customers had abandoned for
| repair. Sure, NYC is attempting to prevent stolen laptops
| from being resold, but the level of bureaucratic idiocy turns
| Rossman's channel into a Shakespearen comedy.
|
| As for his specific gripes about repeated Apple design
| failures, he makes a good argument. Two stand out. First,
| liquid intolerance. Thinkpads from years ago used to tolerate
| coffee spilt on the keyboard. It flowed right through. From
| the number of water damaged MacBooks Louis repairs, it
| appears Apples can't take a drop. If Apple is upset with
| Rossman's criticism, they can easily apply board level
| coating to solve the problem.
|
| Second, he's critical of the connectors being soldered
| directly to the motherboard instead of going into a
| daughterboard and connecting via a flex connector.
|
| And, yes, the above design decisions are made by Apple for a
| number of different, possibly valid reasons. To hit a price
| point, to fit within a form factor, to deliver in a required
| timeframe. But Louis brings up the point that Apple may be
| making these decisions for less than consumer friendly
| reasons. Planned obsolescence? Could Apple change the design
| of their connectors so they won't break? Yes, but maybe they
| didn't because they expect 5.8% of the connectors to fail and
| not be economical to repair in the Apple store, driving 5.8%
| greater revenue.
|
| All that being said, yes, Louis takes the above points, which
| can be read in a minute, and rehashes them 50 different ways.
| BombNullIsland wrote:
| I've had three 12" Macbook main boards, two screens, and
| two keyboards replaced free under Australian Consumer Law
| because of broken components. Connectors that should have
| been replaceable onsite in seconds instead requiring depot
| maintenance and hundreds of dollars in couriers and staff
| interactions. 10c LVDS cables soldered on instead of
| replaceable, unrepairable even to Apple, have sent two high
| quality display panels straight to landfill.
|
| Not a great way to run a business.
| gonesilent wrote:
| This is the number one thing that fails for me I hate
| these ribbon cables. Don't blame him for soldering though
| the connectors can be 5 to $6 a piece ugh hirose...
| jrockway wrote:
| Building things to a certain price is always going to
| yield accusations of doing that to make it more
| breakable. But it's probably one of those cases where you
| can spend thousands of dollars for only 1% more
| reliability. Stuff that you bend open, throw in your
| backpack twice a day, touch for 14 hours a day, eat your
| meals over, etc. is going to break no matter how
| expensive the components are. I used to work on embedded
| systems and was always impressed by the quality of eval
| boards we got. Name brand components all over --
| Coilcraft inductors, Vishay resistors, etc. They still
| flaked out, had bugs, broke, and required manual rework.
| The performance of the $10,000 reference board was the
| same as the $100 production units with decidedly non-
| name-brand components.
|
| We'll never know for sure if Apple is making the right
| trade-offs, because you can't buy any other machines that
| run OS X to compare to, but they probably are. People who
| just spilled coffee on their keyboard really want a
| laptop that weighs 3x as much to have a keyboard drainage
| system. The 99% of users that don't spill coffee on their
| keyboard but do carry their laptop to and from work twice
| a day probably appreciate the weight savings. (You can
| kind of infer whether or not Apple is making the right
| decisions by looking at the PC market. Not a lot of
| laptops with roll cages and keyboard drainage anymore.
| People want specs per dollar, not the ability to run
| their laptop over with a car. When they do run their
| laptop over with a car or drop it into a pool, they're
| sad. But if those parts were standard issue, they
| wouldn't be able to afford a laptop to begin with. Such
| is the way of the market, I suppose.)
|
| Apple probably doesn't have any good reason to make
| repairing their laptops so painful for skilled
| professionals. As far as I can tell, even their own
| repair service is garbage. That is probably a conscious
| decision -- paying someone to write repair guides, train
| technicians, and maintain a fulfillment network for spare
| parts cuts into new computer sales, so it's spending
| money to lose money, which nobody will ever do. Maybe
| government intervention is the right answer, but it's
| probably a cost the market can't bear. PC manufacturers
| compete ruthlessly, and all the laptops are junk too.
| There is probably a maximum amount of money consumers
| will pay for a certain amount of specs, and it isn't
| enough to make a reliable mobile computer. The downside
| is that you'll never have a computer you can spill coffee
| on. The upside is that even someone without a lot of
| money can afford a personal computer. That's the
| tradeoff.
|
| I use a desktop and keep it where I can't spill my coffee
| on it. Works well.
| unishark wrote:
| > Recently, his shop was fined for not registering used
| laptops that his customers had abandoned for repair. Sure,
| NYC is attempting to prevent stolen laptops from being
| resold, but the level of bureaucratic idiocy turns
| Rossman's channel into a Shakespearen comedy.
|
| I saw this complaint and didn't follow what NYC did wrong.
| If one isn't allowed to sell "unregistered" laptops or
| whatever, why would abandoned customer laptops get a pass?
| Did the law state they should? I gather he is still allowed
| to repair them for people, even potentially thieves, just
| never "launder" them.
| 29083011397778 wrote:
| He actually tried calling the city to ask what he should
| do with abandoned laptops. He was transferred multiple
| times, told to call multiple numbers, and tried leaving
| voicemail messages to find an answer. He got nowhere, and
| the closest he got was "That's a good question".
|
| The law explicitly states _purchased_ laptops, which he
| did not. Now we can say "But that's not the purpose of
| the law, just the letter!" But the purpose of the law is
| to make selling stolen laptops non-profitable to thieves
| - and abandoning them does not turn a profit. Meaning
| Louis runs afoul of neither letter nor spirit of the law.
|
| And so I'm legitimately asking, if you think he's in the
| wrong: what is he to do, when he can't properly fill out
| LEADS online without a purchase price? He tried calling
| the city, he tried calling would-be customers to collect
| their things. The former couldn't tell him, and the
| latter told him it wasn't worth their time.
| joana035 wrote:
| So what should he do to computers he spent time and money
| to fix and clients abandoned? Throw them into the bin?
| jrockway wrote:
| I think you make clients pay a deposit, and if they don't
| pick up the laptops, send them to the state's lost
| property department. If that isn't possible, I guess you
| buy the laptop from the customer for some token small
| amount of money, and then sell it back to them when they
| come to pick it up. If they don't show up, it's legally
| your laptop.
| simion314 wrote:
| It is fair that you might not like his personality and
| sometimes he presents things like the Apple engineers are
| idiots to design such fragile stuff(probably the fragility is
| by design) BUT all the facts he presents are true and you can
| confirm by googling things like all the class action lawsuit
| that were required to force Apple to admit mistakes, or how
| Apple "geniuses" are incompetent and will not correctly
| diagnose your issue but instead offer you a new product or
| just replace the entire motherboard etc.
|
| Though I think it would be best to have more people leading
| the right to repair just for this reason of avoiding people
| that hate someone personality then opposing this movement.
| fsociety wrote:
| I agree with your characterization but don't think that it
| makes him insufferable or have questionable motives. He's
| authentic to himself and shows it on YouTube warts and all.
| Have to respect that. Take his videos as 50-75% opinion and
| it's all good.
| blueboo wrote:
| I can't agree with respect to Lex Fridman, who began humbly
| hosting the MIT AI Podcast until he saw a payday by riding AI
| hype to being a techno-Joe Rogan.
|
| Like who you want to like, but "irrefutably...sincer[e]" does
| not apply.
| bserge wrote:
| Why would that happen? There's more great content than ever
| (and a lot of it is completely free). Of course, the amount of
| garbage has also increased, but the ratio seems to be staying
| steady.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| A major problem with Rossmann I have is that he leaned into a
| strong anti-Apple PCMasterRace crowd. For them, listening to
| him rant against Apple gives them a fun confirmation bias that
| they were right to buy PCs. They enjoy listening to that, but
| his very long rants aren't very interesting to newcomers or for
| spreading right to repair to new audiences. Does my mom have
| time for a 45-minute rant full of complex technical details
| about how Apple is bad and we need Right to Repair?
|
| The other problem I have with him is that he always assumes
| Apple is nefarious because Apple is nefarious. He never
| addresses ulterior motives that Apple may have had for a
| decision, nor attempts to consult with engineers about why
| Apple's engineering might have some reason to it. Apple is
| anti-repair because they're a big company and because Apple
| hates noble honest people like him, not because there are any
| other logical explanations.
|
| Finally, my last sticking point with Rossmann as a Right to
| Repair leader is that he is constantly missing the forest for
| the trees. He constantly picks on Apple because that gets
| clicks, but he mostly ignores all the BS that other PC
| manufacturers are doing or experiencing. When's the last time
| you saw him talk about a Surface Laptop 3, a laptop with a
| repair program because the screen was spontaneously cracking?
| Or the Surface Pro 4 with the battery inflating issue? Or a
| Razer Blade that spontaneously died on Linus Tech Tips after
| only a year of use?
| kiba wrote:
| You do realize that apple products is what he work
| on/specialize in, right?
|
| Or do you rather that Rossmann talk about what he doesn't
| know?
| [deleted]
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| What do you mean by that? Rossmann talks about what he
| doesn't know all the time. He's not an engineer, yet he
| thinks he can proclaim that Apple is terrible at
| engineering and runs with it as a foregone conclusion,
| without ever having an actual engineer take a look or play
| Devil's Advocate. This seems irresponsible considering the
| size of his platform, weakens his argument, and is also odd
| considering many engineers would happily do a guest
| appearance.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Also, Rossmann clearly views himself as a Right to Repair
| leader. Fair enough. But if you are going to be a leader of
| a broad movement, you have to be willing to speak about
| issues that plague broader computing, not laser-focus on
| one company when others are doing similar or even worse
| faux pas.
| kaibee wrote:
| Have you been actually paying attention to the actual
| right to repair content? It is still relatively Apple
| heavy, because that's his business, but he's had medical
| device repair people on, and he's talked about the much
| broader scope of the issue basically every single time.
| I'm very confused by this criticism tbh.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Yes, he talks about John Deere, or medical devices, but
| he never talks about HP, Lenovo, Dell, Surface, Acer, or
| any PC manufacturer flaws, many of which have flaws worse
| than Apple's. This is what makes him look dishonest
| because laptop repair is his specialty - he should be
| awesome at detecting or pointing out how they have
| problems too, but he caters to the PC crowd and says
| nothing.
| jamesjguthrie wrote:
| He literally did a video about Asus 4 days ago.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e48eYElm1R8
| Macha wrote:
| Here's how you replace the RAM on Dell's ultraportable
| line: https://www.ifixit.com/Device/Dell_XPS_15_9550
|
| The last Intel Macbook Pro? Get out your soldering iron:
| https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook+Pro+16-Inch+2019+
| Tea...
|
| Similarly, if you want to replace/upgrade/perform data
| recovery for the storage?
| https://www.windowscentral.com/upgrade-ssd-dell-
| xps-15-9570
|
| Apple? Forget about it. Hope you paid the inflated
| storage prices at the time you bought it.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| That's not what I was talking about. I was talking about
| how if your Surface has a problem with screens
| spontaneously cracking, will Rossmann even mention it? He
| won't. He knows his crowd, and he keeps quiet about
| criticizing his crowd's products.
|
| Also, this myth that Apple storage prices are inflated
| needs to die. The SSD speeds are unlike PC SSD speeds on
| all but the most expensive PCs, and Microsoft charges
| more for their SSDs on the Surface line.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| ______- wrote:
| For me I have boiled down my computing to a set of easily
| repeatable steps to get going again if anything ever happens to
| my device. All my most important data is in the cloud, so if a
| device is stolen, I can log back into everything and continue my
| computing. I just buy a new device and log back into everything,
| which takes 30 mins tops. This actually works out cheaper than
| getting it repaired!
| josephcsible wrote:
| And it's terrible for the environment.
| Terretta wrote:
| I genuinely do not want repairability anywhere near the top of
| the list of performance and design trade offs.
|
| Ruggedness, longevity, sure. Avoiding need to repair, definitely.
| Repairability? Other concerns, things that change the day-to-day
| use of the device, should weigh more.
|
| Spent too many years as a full service PC network support small
| business to _ever_ again want to deal with parts that aren't
| actually attached to each other. Connection issues (especially on
| heating and cooling, so intermittent) were essentially _all_ the
| problems except a vanishingly small proportion that were
| components.
|
| The thing is, the repair shops get what's left after the design
| is iterated until other problems are gone. So maybe only these
| component failures are left. Reverting to the old methods of
| replaceable components would likely re-introduce a massive class
| of problems that have by and large been eliminated.
|
| Only the remaining problems have a voice, who is advocating on
| behalf of all the problems that the last 20 years of more solid
| design eliminated?
|
| // Apologies for the HN trope, but see also Chesterson's Fence, a
| tech version of "get off my lawn".
| bogwog wrote:
| Right to repair isn't "obligation to repair devices yourself",
| or "force manufacturers to redesign hardware so repair shops
| jobs are easier".
|
| It's about preventing certain business practices that hinder
| the repair industry. Like when Apple forces their suppliers to
| not sell components to anyone but them.
|
| "Component level repair" is a thing that's done today. It
| involves replacing individual components on a motherboard with
| a microscope and soldering iron, special equipment, and smart
| and well-trained people. That's what Rossman does regularly on
| his Youtube channel.
|
| But even if you have the skills and tools to replace a tiny
| burned out IC on a motherboard, where do you get a replacement?
| Apple doesn't allow suppliers to sell them to anyone.
| 542458 wrote:
| I don't think your first sentence is accurate - there is no
| single standard definition for right to repair, and I have
| absolutely seen people saying that right to repair includes
| an obligation for manufacturers to redesign hardware so
| repairs are easier. I've also seen people say it's only about
| allowing schematic access and nothing else. I've seen people
| say it includes unlocking bootloaders. IMO this is one of the
| biggest problems with the right to repair movement: the goals
| are fairly poorly defined.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Louis Rossmann made a video giving his definition, which is
| that parts are available. However, that is only his
| definition, there is still broader community lack of focus
| on what it means.
|
| Some people think it means that Apple must make their
| products easy to repair. Others think it means Apple must
| every single chip available for independent purchase.
| Others think it means Apple must only make available the
| parts that they would provide their AASPs with (only
| finished boards and displays, not individual chips).
| Seirdy wrote:
| I upvoted you because you presented an alternate view I hadn't
| heard before, but I disagree.
|
| After a few years, a laptop's battery degrades. In well under a
| decade, Wirth's Law kicks in to make devices seem slow.
|
| This attitude unintentionally suggests that people should turn
| their entire computers into e-waste instead of just swapping
| the battery or upgrading the RAM.
| nrp wrote:
| Repairability doesn't make products fragile or unreliable, poor
| design and quality control does. Source: spent the last 18
| months building a highly repairable product and putting it
| through the same reliability tests less repairable products go
| through.
|
| A lot of repairability just comes down to making replacement
| parts readily available too, which is orthogonal to the design.
| 542458 wrote:
| I respectfully disagree. I've worked on products where field
| serviceability is a design goal. It absolutely can add
| complexity and cost - after all, it's another design
| constraint. Rivets and glue are faster, cheaper, smaller, and
| often more reliable than screws. Soldered-on connectors are
| more vibration resistant and smaller than pluggable ones.
| Access panels can introduce structural weakness. Gluing or
| welding cases shut provides environmental protection that's
| difficult to achieve with screws.
|
| Even making parts available can be a pain. I might want to
| spin a new rev on a product where the old parts aren't
| compatible with the new - but now I have to warehouse the old
| in case anybody wants them. I might not actually warehouse
| anything myself (contract manufacturer ships directly to
| retailers), but now I have to find a way of warehousing
| spares of everything. I might not have any good way of
| packing/shipping some of these loose parts.
|
| That's not to say R2R is a bad idea or anything (rather, I
| think it's generally a good idea) - but it is not free, and
| we should be realistic about that.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Nobody's saying that companies should have to make design
| tradeoffs to make things easier to repair (e.g., making devices
| bigger to fit sockets so components can be replaced without
| soldering). We're just saying they should stop going out of
| their way to make things harder to repair (e.g., withholding
| schematics and service manuals that they already did the work
| to write, and forcing suppliers to not sell their parts to
| independent repair shops).
| gravypod wrote:
| > Repairability? Other concerns, things that change the day-to-
| day use of the device, should weigh more.
|
| I don't think repariability is something you need to put effort
| into build into a product, it's something you put effort into
| taking out of a product. Apple's engineers definitely have
| things like what Louis uses for his repairs: board views,
| schematics, diagnostics software. Louis gets these things from
| illegal vendors in other countries who obtain them from Apple
| workers. If Apple just sold these things to him he'd be willing
| to pay but that's not in Apple's best interest.
|
| Also, Apple prevents Louis from buying replacement parts
| because they make their vendors agree to never sell the
| components they use to anyone but apple.
|
| > Other concerns, things that change the day-to-day use of the
| device, should weigh more.
|
| This avoids another massive externality: recycling and the
| environment. Right now Apple's recycling program takes old
| mostly working systems and shreds them. There's a reason we
| should: Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle in that order.
|
| > So maybe only these component failures are left. Reverting to
| the old methods of replaceable components would likely re-
| introduce a massive class of problems that have by and large
| been eliminated.
|
| The macbook repair community was at one point fixing a very
| common issue by replacing a component with a slightly higher
| spec part. The difference was 1/1000 th of a cent to 2/1000 th
| of a cent in cost or something like that. Multiple iterations
| of macbooks came out with this flaw until Apple employed a
| similar fix.
|
| I think another thing that's important to look at is how other
| industries handle similar things. If you found something that
| was:
|
| 1. In a different industry.
|
| 2. Had a similar experience ruining issue.
|
| 3. Said issue was resolved by a consumer.
|
| 4. Rather than ignoring the issue for years they very quickly
| create a patch that takes the feedback from the end user.
|
| We could then conclude that this adversarial relationship
| between repair professionals is: not required to run a
| profitable business, can lead to better products, and can make
| everyone happy.
|
| I happen to have one such example:
|
| - https://nee.lv/2021/02/28/How-I-cut-GTA-Online-loading-
| times...
|
| - https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/03/developers-to-
| update-...
|
| We can conclude then that Apple explicitly does _not_ do this
| out of their own will. Apple doesn 't have a hardware bug
| bounty. Apple does not acknowledge when a community member
| derives a fix for their product that works better then them.
|
| I couldn't begin to imagine why Apple doesn't behave more like
| this. It just seems to make more sense for everyone.
| hourislate wrote:
| Are you also against being able to upgrade a device, like
| adding memory or a larger hard drive? Why can't repairability
| be at the top of the list with performance and design?
|
| Apple doesn't want you to fix its devices, it wants to force
| you to either have them fix it or buy a new one. It's a
| business decision not a technical one.
| ksec wrote:
| I agree I dont care about reparability by third party as long
| as the devices is literally made _indestructible_. But If it
| cant be made that way, why the trade offs?
|
| Why should I loss all my Data on MacBook when its CPU, GPU, or
| logic board has a problem?
|
| Why does repairing a keyboard require replacing the half of the
| laptop.
|
| And why are these repair so expensive.
|
| It is all about balance. And a lot of these balance in Apple
| seems to be disintegrating since Steve Jobs passed away.
| nobodywasishere wrote:
| Rossmann is not advocating for companies to change how they
| design stuff. Primarily, he just wants companies to release
| schematics (that they already have and aren't really
| proprietary) and to stop making deals with manufacturers to
| only sell custom parts to that company (which is what apple is
| doing with one of their charge chips).
| Greek0 wrote:
| The repairability Rossmann is talking about is not user-
| replaceable components. His repairs usually require soldering
| to replace components.
|
| One of his main critique points is that Apple makes it hard to
| repair their products, even for electronics professionals. In
| the past, Apple has also altered designs so that small
| electrical problems suddenly fry the most expensive component
| on the board, the CPU. Either this is an embarrassing, junior-
| level oversight or a deliberate anti-repair-buy-new-hardware
| tactic.
|
| See, for example, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jahtu1_idVU
|
| As such, it seems you are arguing against an idea that no one
| is suggesting.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Maybe it's neither of those things. Maybe the design of the
| board saved a few dollars, maybe it was required by some
| other design constraint the vlogger doesn't perceive.
|
| I don't personally have the time to watch a 20-minute video
| to see what the hell he's talking about, but his overall
| shtick of acting like one random vlogger can readily pinpoint
| what thousands of professional EEs didn't notice in the
| design phase is frankly silly, as is your false dichotomy.
| jart wrote:
| "The Mac Shop" in Wilmington DE thought it had the right to
| repair macbooks too. They also believed they had a right to
| recycle personal data on hard drives that got replaced whereas
| apple would have likely just tossed it in the shredder. Be
| careful about who you trust with valuable things.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Are you arguing that right to repair is a bad thing just
| because one repair shop did something wrong?
| [deleted]
| defaultname wrote:
| Rossmann is an important voice in the right to repair, however I
| do feel like he _leaned into_ a certain audience, pandering to
| them a bit as a reliable target for ad impressions, and it has
| undermined his credibility. I hear about Rossmann most now when
| some vicious Apple detractor uses him as an authority on things
| having nothing to do with repair.
|
| For instance Rossmann did a video titled "Apple watching &
| logging EVERY APP YOU OPEN with new OS." (which is interesting
| given that another of his videos is "Why I don't use Apple
| products", "The horrible truth about Apple's repeated engineering
| failures", "Is Apple using sweatshop labor in the US", etc --
| there are dozens of these things) This is so ridiculously outside
| of his wheelhouse or expertise, but it panders to an audience
| that lines up to get fed that anti-Apple pablum.
|
| When you see someone posting a Rossmann video, 9 times out 10 if
| you look at their history it isn't some guy concerned about
| repairing his iPhone or MacBook. Instead you'll find someone who
| has spent years calling Apple users sheep and boasting about
| their Windows Phone.
|
| The guy is monetizing a certain base. Probably doing pretty well
| out of it.
| drumhead wrote:
| This feels like one of those x is great but.... posts that you
| see you in NSA or GCHQ manuals about influencing the narrative
| in an online discussion. I saw a lot of it during the
| Israeli/Palestinian conflict last week. This post feels the
| same.
| prvc wrote:
| Or, just a run-of the-mill Apple fan.
| VistaBrokeMyPC wrote:
| It's unfortunate that the type of "directed discussion" you
| are referring to works so well. It drives so much engagement
| to the comment it ends up derailing threads on other sites,
| i.e. 1000 comments but only a handful of top level ones. I
| doubt the number of commenters that read like they took a
| page out of the online misinformation manuals are actually on
| a payroll to do so, but damn I sure am seeing this stuff
| often lately.
| lmilcin wrote:
| > Rossmann is an important voice in the right to repair,
| however I do feel like he leaned into a certain audience,
| pandering to them a bit as a reliable target for ad
| impressions, and it has undermined his credibility.
|
| I don't see how pandering to your audience or making money on
| ad impressions is undermining credibility.
|
| Every politician is pandering to their constituents counting on
| their votes.
|
| > When you see someone posting a Rossmann video, 9 times out 10
| if you look at their history it isn't some guy concerned about
| repairing his iPhone or MacBook.
|
| You are barely comprehensible.
|
| Louis literally owns a company that repairs MacBooks. And if
| you cared to watch his channel a little bit over the years as I
| did, he build his user base not on ire for Apple but on his
| expert knowledge on how to repair their products.
|
| The channel is not just for people who want to repair their
| MacBooks. The channels are for people who maybe at some point
| were interested in MacBook repair (I went in for board
| diagnosis) but then stayed because Louis had something more to
| say.
|
| > The guy is monetizing a certain base. Probably doing pretty
| well out of it.
|
| Is this jealousy I am hearing?
|
| Is this a proof he isn't right?
|
| _EVERY_ channel on youtube with large userbase is earning some
| money.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > I don't see how pandering to your audience or making money
| on ad impressions is undermining credibility.
|
| Being beholden to ads absolutely undermines your credibility
| in my mind.
| lmilcin wrote:
| This guy literally owns his own, successful repair shop
| business, outside of youtube channel.
|
| He also shown he is not beholden to his channel by creating
| thousands of hours of niche content on electronics repair
| for electronics guys like me at a time when no other
| electronics channel was too successful (eevblog was just
| starting).
|
| Going your way anybody successful is automatically
| discredited because he is beholden to his business,
| regardless to how he became successful or what he is
| saying.
|
| I don't see people moaning that anything Elon Musk says
| cannot be trusted because he has invested a lot of money
| into SpaceX or Tesla and as such he is beholden to his
| businesses.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I was responding to the comment in general: that having
| advertisers in no way compromises your credibility.
| webmobdev wrote:
| When you see someone posting a Rossmann video, 9 times out 10
| if you look at their history it isn't some guy concerned about
| repairing his iPhone or MacBook.
|
| Oh, please - as if only an Apple fan can have legitimate
| concerns about an iDevice.
|
| I am typing this on an iPad. I am a vocal Apple critic. (Go
| through my post history here). Apple has turned a section of
| their customer base against them because of their unethical
| business tactics. Right to privacy and data protection is
| intrinsically linked to your Right to Repair. Those of us who
| have _invested_ in a product want to _own_ it completely, like
| we do our car or house.
| devwastaken wrote:
| He wasn't wrong in any of those videos.
| eganist wrote:
| Yikes.
|
| Distilled into its abstract, you're saying his primary
| motivation isn't right to repair; it's to extract cash from his
| viewers.
|
| I'm not a fan of hit jobs especially when presented as
| extensive prose to veil the attack. Please reconsider and
| assume the best intentions in people. Unfortunately, I can't
| assume the same of your comment because there was no reason for
| you to author it except a personal distaste for the human
| subject.
| defaultname wrote:
| This tact has been plied by a dozen different replies in a
| dozen different but similar ways (some talking about prose,
| while others claim it's incomprehensible).
|
| Groan.
|
| A large number of the replies I have gotten would normally be
| deleted by mods, for good reason. If you're rewording to
| conjure up flamebait or attacking by conspiracy because you
| don't like a position, better to not post it.
|
| "you're saying his primary motivation isn't right to repair;
| it's to extract cash from his viewers."
|
| Don't add your own pejorative narrative and then strike it
| down. It adds nothing to HN and is flamebait.
|
| Rossmann took his right to repair advocacy and branched out
| into a personality engagement. For YouTube viewers who are
| into that, or people who sympathize with his other positions,
| good for you and good for him, but for the rest of us it's
| just noise. I no longer pay attention to what he says because
| his motives have been perverted.
| eganist wrote:
| > This tact has been plied by a dozen different replies in
| a dozen different but similar ways (some talking about
| prose, while others claim it's incomprehensible).
|
| > Groan.
|
| defaultname, I'm sorry you took offense. I'll see if I can
| present it a bit differently.
|
| The GP comment reads as if its author added fluff to
| distract from the true nature of the comment -- an entirely
| unsolicited rant that acts as flamebait on HN.
| defaultname wrote:
| Every comment on HN is "unsolicited". I certainly didn't
| ask for your observation on this. Further, "rant"? Give
| me a break.
|
| Humorously the top comment to this submission is that
| Rossmann is a "national treasure", along with some
| commentary about some other guy and how they should do a
| podcast together.
|
| Nothing whatsoever to do with the submission. Just
| slathering praise and adulation. Whatever floats
| someone's boat and no skin off my back.
|
| Did you, perchance, berate that comment for being some
| sort of NSA-tactic astroturfing "praise-job" that was an
| unsolicited rant? No? Gosh, I wonder why. Did you
| conspire that it's subterfuge dropped by Google?
|
| Declaring my comment flamebait is telling. It's a
| completely banal observation about a conflict in
| someone's position. The _many_ angry personal attacks
| (such as yours) are not my doing, and reflect on your own
| rather bizarre motivations.
| eganist wrote:
| > Declaring my comment flamebait is telling. It's a
| completely banal observation about a conflict in
| someone's position. The many angry personal attacks (such
| as yours) are not my doing, and reflect on your own
| rather bizarre motivations.
|
| Hm... I applied the label to the original comment I
| replied to, not yours.
|
| But defaultname, I do see you're pretty new. Try not to
| take things personally; even me labeling their comment as
| flamebait is a description of the comment and style of
| discourse rather than an assertion about the person.
|
| The goal in the end is to have quality discussion where
| we can all learn something and grow a bit, and none of
| that happens if we either attack each other _or_ perceive
| each others ' words as attacks.
|
| For what it's worth, I do apologize if my words rubbed
| you the wrong way. Certainly wasn't my intent.
| foldr wrote:
| Defaultname's original comment isn't flamebait. It just
| expresses a fairly mild opinion about the direction that
| Rossman's channel has taken. It's especially ironic that
| you should be so concerned about assuming the best
| intentions. When has Rossman ever done that in the case
| of Apple?!
|
| Like defaultname, I also think that Rossman has done a
| lot of good, but that doesn't mean that everyone has to
| love his YouTube channel or refrain from saying anything
| critical about it.
| addicted wrote:
| And last week he released a video titled "The myth & fallacy
| that one brand is the problem".
|
| 3 days ago "ASUS becomes a meme" with the thumbnail text "ASUS
| ARE YOU KIDDING".
|
| The guy runs a Mac repair store. That's his day business. It
| doesn't sound inauthentic that he would have more complaints
| about Apple products.
|
| Further, as far as right to repair is concerned, it's
| undeniable that Apple is easily the worst of the lot, and has
| used its massive market driving ability to move other companies
| in that direction as well (although you can still find complete
| hardware manuals for a Lenovo, HP, etc, which was never
| possible with Apple).
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| "it's undeniable that Apple is easily the worst of the lot"
|
| Actually, it's quite deniable. You can't find Hardware repair
| manuals for many if not most new PC laptops. Most PC laptops
| have oversights in their design that would make Rossmann
| blush if he took a look at them. My parents had a $500 2018
| HP that the screen broke off of, after only a year of use,
| even though it was always on a desk and it literally broke by
| itself from just opening/closing because the hinges were too
| weak for the 17" display or something.
| fors wrote:
| >> "for many if not most new PC laptops"
|
| Curious how we are going to determine most here but Lenovo
| and Dell make their service manuals easily available with
| the service tag/serial. HP has service manuals available
| with some Google fu (eg.
| http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c06148960.pdf). There
| are a lot of manufacturers who could do better but saying
| "my parents 500$ HP laptop had no repair manual available
| so it's not so bad that a 2000$ Apple machine does not have
| one either" just sounds weird to me. If I have to
| disassemble an Apple laptop I have to check iFixit, I also
| need to own weird screwdrivers and if I had the repair
| schematics (they do exist) I may be violating a copyright
| or at least a ToU.
|
| But this is all fine, it could be worse.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Like I said earlier, one thing that bugs me about Louis
| Rossmann is that he never examines possible ulterior
| motives for Apple's decision making other than that they
| are evil.
|
| For example, a MacBook. Perhaps it's because China clones
| everything and would happily clone a MacBook board and
| sell that to unsuspecting people, so Apple doesn't want
| to share info on where they got parts or the schematics.
| You might disagree, and I do wish Apple would share this
| info, but Louis could at least _examine_ this possible
| argument.
| LegitShady wrote:
| Louis' biggest issue is he can't buy parts because apple
| stops their suppliers from selling parts to other people,
| and apple now designs devices so even authentic
| screens/etc from other devices will cause errors.
|
| The schematics are already out there. The issue is its
| impossible to find parts. You can't take your 2 year old
| apple to him to get its screen replaced, because there
| are no screens available to buy for him to replace it
| with. Apple doesn't let the manufacturers sell them,
| apple doesn't sell them, and there aren't enough 'donor'
| screens from devices broken in other ways to satisfy
| demand.
|
| Louis has done more examining than you give him credit
| for, while you ignore a lot of the real issues at hand.
|
| Locking down car repair to protect car IP and having no
| parts available because your car manufacturer wants you
| to buy a new car or pay for a refurbished car directly...
| fors wrote:
| Ah, so it's about board schematics and your parents HP
| was just a sidenote. Yes, it would be nice if every
| manufacturer would publish board schematics so performing
| component level repairs would be easier.
|
| Louis runs an Apple repair shop, so he complains about
| the availability of Apple schematics. Seems reasonable.
| It's not like the schematics aren't available, it's
| mostly the hoops you/he has to jump through to get them
| and even if he/you has them he might not be legally
| allowed to use them.
|
| And this all ignores the aspect of you complaining about
| not having a service manual for a 500$ machine and Louis
| complaining about not being able to service a 1700$ logic
| board (which, if he can't repair it, might mean you have
| to pay full price to replace a 3000$ laptop).
| roywashere wrote:
| I had that happen on my Dell Vostro laptop just after 25
| months with 2 y warranty. A hinge of the lid broke. I was
| able to contact support and order the new lid for about 35
| euros and replaced it myself. Repairing was not super easy
| because I had to remove so many components & the screen was
| partly glued but it worked. After another year and a half
| the new part broke in exactly the same way.
|
| That was circa 2012. I'm not sure it would be possible with
| 2021 Dells. We had lots more of miniaturization. And maybe
| this actually made laptops also a little stronger!!
| dataflow wrote:
| > Actually, it's quite deniable. You can't find Hardware
| repair manuals for many if not most new PC laptops.
|
| Others are now going in this direction following Apple's
| lead. Did you forget Apple literally goes so far as to make
| the screws nonstandard just _deliberately_ out of spite for
| repair? Did you forget about Error 53? And mind you, Apple
| charges a premium. If Apple was charging $500 he would be
| taking that into account too. It 's quite undeniable Apple
| has stood out like a sore thumb for a long time. He
| literally has hours (days? weeks?) of rants about
| shenanigans unique to Apple going back for years so please
| don't make us rehash them all here.
|
| > Most PC laptops have oversights in their design that
| would make Rossmann blush if he took a look at them. My
| parents had a $500 2018 HP that the screen broke off of,
| after only a year of use, even though it was always on a
| desk and it literally broke by itself from just
| opening/closing because the hinges were too weak for the
| 17" display or something.
|
| I thought the discussion was about hardware manuals. Not
| product quality.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| "Others are now going in this direction following Apple's
| lead. Did you forget Apple literally goes so far as to
| make the screws nonstandard just deliberately out of
| spite for repair?"
|
| How do you _know_ that it is to spite repair? Apple
| certainly knows that you can buy those screwdrivers for
| less than $10 from iFixit for the last 6 years. If it was
| to purely spite us, you 'd think they'd make them more
| complicated or change them every year.
|
| Instead, a more likely scenario is that it is to prevent
| people who have no idea what they are doing from
| following a YouTube tutorial, being overconfident in
| their abilities, opening a machine, doing more damage,
| and then having a more expensive repair. Or to prevent my
| curious 10-year-old from opening the machine just because
| he wants to have a look and then breaking something.
| Which is a whole argument entirely as to whether that is
| warranted, but it isn't necessarily spite.
|
| Error 53? Another example where the actions may be
| excessive, but it isn't necessarily spite. Can you
| imagine what a hacked fingerprint sensor could do? If I
| was a scammer, I'd set up my booth in the mall and swap
| all my client's fingerprint scanners with fake ones. Yes,
| Error 53 was an extreme reaction to that risk, but you
| can't say it was sheer spite.
| dataflow wrote:
| > Instead, a more likely scenario is that it is to
| prevent people who have no idea what they are doing from
| opening a machine, doing more damage, and then having a
| more expensive repair.
|
| Oh _no_! So Apple is trying to _save_ people money
| through all this? We 've been so blind to their
| goodwill...
|
| I like how you change the discussion topic so easily. We
| went from discussing whether Apple is the worst R2R
| offender to discussing the quality of their products and
| now the discussion is about my assessment of _precisely
| what percentage_ of what Apple does is out of _spite_
| instead of other lame excuses to prevent people repairing
| their products.
|
| The entire discussion is about bad patterns of behavior
| that have emerged over the years from a particular
| company called Apple. The history of Apple's behavior is
| _long_ and people are _not_ going to waste time rehashing
| it all over again here, especially not when you 're
| already aware of past events and yet only begrudgingly
| acknowledge their existence as isolated events when
| others force you to. That makes having a genuine
| conversation about the topic pretty infeasible.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Yes, Apple has bad behavior. Sorry, the conversation is
| sometimes unclear from my Hacker News reader app and so
| my changing the conversation is probably unintentional as
| I didn't realize I was doing it, I apologize.
|
| Yes, there is long history of behavior, but I think that
| there could be more discussion about _why_ Apple does
| things than just assuming bad behavior. I was trying to
| give alternative explanations than just "apple is being
| bad as usual."
| dataflow wrote:
| The history is absolutely _crucial_ here because the lack
| of people 's interests in "alternative explanations" at
| this point in time _is literally the history_. There was
| room for it in the past, people gave the benefit of the
| doubt, and then _year after year_ Apple kept debunking it
| through more and more _consistent_ bad behavior. The ship
| has sailed already. At _some_ point you gotta realize the
| doubt that you 're so generously trying to give them the
| benefit of has been _vanishing_.
| josephcsible wrote:
| > How do you _know_ that it is to spite repair?
|
| Can you name a single advantage of pentalobe screws over
| pre-existing standard screw heads like Torx? If not, then
| Occam's razor is how I know.
| samatman wrote:
| I can in fact.
|
| Really tiny Torx screws are easy to strip the head on.
| I've done it more than once, to my considerable regret.
|
| Pentalobes are harder to strip, because a pentagon is
| less like a circle than a hexagon is.
|
| Are they the Platonic ideal of a screw head for the exact
| size used in iPhones? No idea, I'm not a mechanical
| engineer. Just a klutz who has stripped a few tiny Torx
| screws with my big ol' meat hands.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Isn't Torx basically a hexagram rather than a hexagon? To
| me, pentalobe looks closer to circular than Torx does.
| Also, how much have you worked with tiny pentalobe screws
| compared to tiny Torx screws? Is it possible you've seen
| the latter strip more just because you've used them more?
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| No other company, as far as I am aware, has 2nd hand parts
| seized as counterfeits. Until another company does that,
| Apple is undeniably the worst
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Interesting. I only stumbled upon one of his repair videos a
| few years back -- was frankly blown away by his meticulous
| identification and cross referencing of specific chips, his
| ability to replace surface-mount components.
|
| It left me with an appreciation for someone who can dedicate
| themselves to this depth of esoterica and make something I
| thought impossible look ... doable by an enthusiast?
|
| But from your comment I wonder about that _audience_ you
| mention: anti-Apple.
|
| Because something that I also took away from his videos was
| this sense that technology, and I'm talking about the day to
| day things in our lives, has gone completely beyond any normal
| person's ability to repair, diagnose, or, really, understand at
| all.
|
| I was careful not to say he made the repairs look _easy_ -- he
| made repair look _doable_ but also underscored just what the
| layman is up against (SMDs, obscure codes on chips that are
| little bigger than fleas, specialized tools to open cases,
| paper-thin ribbon cables, etc.).
|
| I think his audience is broader than just anti-Apple. Perhaps
| they're upset about _all_ of the ways in which we have become
| enslaved to devices we can 't understand.
| webmobdev wrote:
| I'm talking about the day to day things in our lives, has
| gone completely beyond any normal person's ability to repair,
| diagnose, or, really, understand at all.
|
| A "normal" person's inability to understand or repair is
| limited by the lack of the literature, tools and parts - not
| because technology has "advanced". (To a lay person, any
| technology that they doesn't understand is akin to magic to
| them). And this is ignoring the glaring obvious - things are
| today being deliberately designed to be unrepairable because
| that's more profitable for company's like Apple that even
| lobby against any Right to Repair legislation. Remember, if
| they want these companies can design things to be easily
| repairable - e.g. concept
| https://frame.work/blog/introducing-the-framework-laptop
| rdedev wrote:
| He had a couple of videos where he went looking for buying a
| new office space. Those were, in his words, the best
| performing videos of his channel. Real estate stuff. A lot of
| the people who watch his stuff relate to his frustrations on
| a personal level
| fredgrott wrote:
| ahem, get real info jAck.. his main income is not monetizing
| youtube vids.
|
| its...wat for it!
|
| repairing macs!
|
| The way he monetizes vids is via his item store. Which you
| would know if you video just one single vid
| defaultname wrote:
| His YouTube channel is estimated to net him $500K+ per year
| with negligible expenses. His business has an estimated
| _revenue_ , per the linked article, of 1-2 million per year,
| with 15 employees or so.
|
| In all probability the YT channel is much more lucrative than
| the business is.
| dahart wrote:
| Where are you getting your speculative estimates? I just
| googled it and see numbers about a tenth of what you're
| suggesting for 1.5M subscribers. It doesn't seem probable
| at all that his channel is more lucrative. I also don't
| understand why you emphasized "revenue" for the repair
| business, when the YT income is also revenue, or how you
| know what his YT channel expenses are. Care to elaborate?
| defaultname wrote:
| There are a number of sources that put him in that league
| given his number of videos and engagement.
|
| As to why I emphasized revenue, the expense to run a
| YouTube channel from a little room is a world removed
| from running a repair business with 15 employees.
| dahart wrote:
| Please, do share a "number" of sources, that was my
| question: where are you getting the info you're using to
| speculate? From my own sources (Google search), it seems
| like you might be exaggerating.
|
| What is your point is about the YT revenue vs the repair
| revenue? Why do you assume they're separate things? Maybe
| the YT channel is marketing for the repair business, and
| both operate as a single entity? Highly monetized YT
| channels frequently require a staff to maintain, to do
| filming and editing, writing and research, marketing and
| SEO, not to mention the time investment to produce a lot
| of content. How do you know what's involved behind the
| scenes of this particular channel? Why are you certain
| the expenses are negligible and don't involve employees?
| People just baselessly assuming YT vids are easy and
| cheap is one of the reasons so few people make money on
| YT, and so many people share myths about who's getting
| lucky and by how much.
| bogwog wrote:
| Regardless, why would it even matter? "Louis makes 500k
| per year from Youtube ads" is not a valid response to
| "Apple is harming consumers and destroying the
| environment"
| CivBase wrote:
| Apple critics like to watch content produced by someone who
| regularly critisizes Apple. So what? No surprises there.
|
| Yeah, he often talks about things outside his wheelhouse. He
| has an entire series about real estate in NYC. That doesn't
| make his actions and commentary regarding right to repair any
| less legitimate.
| henriquez wrote:
| > "The horrible truth about Apple's repeated engineering
| failures"
|
| This is totally in his wheelhouse and expertise since he does
| circuit board repair for Apple devices. You can thank YouTube's
| algorithm for the inflammatory title.
| foldr wrote:
| It's not really. There's a big gap between knowing how to
| repair circuit boards (which is mostly about part sourcing
| and being good with a hot air station) and understanding the
| design of a modern motherboard, which is highly complex. He
| has loud opinions about laptop design, but it's worth bearing
| in mind that he's never designed even a simple piece of
| electronics in his life.
| Applejinx wrote:
| I've seen very little of him, and didn't know he was 'The
| Right To Repair Guy', but I saw him freak out over an Apple
| laptop because he took the back off and the fan was not
| directly over the chip like in gamer PCs.
|
| This, in a machine that's been designed for generations to
| have a fan pull air aggressively THROUGH a channel, the
| only path the air can go, that goes directly across the CPU
| heatsink. This is not a 'circulating the air' situation: a
| laptop can't do that. It's an overall system with many
| considerations (turbulence, air handling noise) that is no
| longer a system at all if you take the top of the duct off.
| You cannot run that sort of machine with the case taken
| apart, it's part of the ducting.
|
| Either he's dishonest for effect (and clicks), or he's
| considerably dumber than a drummer and college dropout
| (yours truly! derp!) about cooling airflow in a constrained
| duct inside a laptop. At face value, he's dumber. For his
| sake I hope he's dishonest.
| tokamak-teapot wrote:
| I don't think he's 'dumb'. Just not an engineer. He
| unscrews computers and replaces parts and puts them back
| together. I'm disappointed he doesn't concentrate on the
| important topic of right to repair and finds things to
| criticise that seem like they're chosen to play to the
| lowest common denominator.
| wsay wrote:
| Sounds like you misunderstood the criticisms of that
| laptops cooling design (which was abysmal to the point
| where it pretty much had to be deliberate). I would
| suggest refraining from calling people dumber than
| yourself, until you're totally sure how dumb you actually
| are.
| foldr wrote:
| Unfortunately Rossman's critique of the cooling design
| really is as silly as Applejinx suggests. For some reason
| he seems to think that fans need to be next to the things
| that they are cooling.
| bloggie wrote:
| As someone who was a mechanic, and later became an
| engineer, this is the main reason why I find Rossman's
| videos insufferable. He is constantly making assumptions
| about how electronics are designed based on his views as a
| repair man. As a mechanic I made the same assumptions, but
| I was later able to learn that every decision an engineer
| makes is one of compromise, based on hundreds of variables
| that the mechanic does not know about because of the narrow
| view that any technician has concerning the product that
| they are servicing: observing the hard shell of an egg and
| assuming that the contents must be equally hard.
| varispeed wrote:
| You are the "you can't criticise a movie if you are not a
| seasoned director" kind...
| foldr wrote:
| I don't think that's a good analogy. This is like being
| critiqued on your software architecture by someone who's
| never written 'Hello World'.
| AwaAwa wrote:
| Seems more like being critiqued on your software
| architecture by someone who has to debug your code.
| foldr wrote:
| I'd hope that the person debugging my code had written at
| least one program of their own. If not, I wouldn't be
| particularly interested in their opinions on software
| architecture.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| If only everyone on the HN really adhered to the "ne sutor
| supra crepidam" principle, I bet an entry with a dozen
| comments would be considered crowded.
|
| Just saying.
| m55au wrote:
| > the design of a modern motherboard, which is highly
| complex
|
| The design of a modern motherboard is far from complex
| since all the complexity has pretty much been hidden inside
| the black boxes of highly integrated circuits. You as a
| designer do not in general need to concern yourself with
| the implementation details and just need to understand the
| interfaces, similar to, for example, using python's numpy
| as opposed to writing BLAS or LAPACK from scratch.
| foldr wrote:
| What knowledge and experience do you have of designing
| motherboards or other similarly complex PCBs?
|
| Getting GHz frequency circuits to work requires much more
| than just understanding the digital interfaces.
|
| If you think designing and laying out a modern
| motherboard is "easy", then there's a 1% chance that
| you're a highly experienced and capable electronic
| engineer, and a 99% chance that you just have no idea
| about the existence of entire classes of problems that
| need to be solved to make a motherboard work.
| m55au wrote:
| Would not call myself an experienced electronics engineer
| (have only gotten into RF lately, but yes I know about
| signal integrity and EMI problems), but getting GHz
| circuits to work on a modern motherboard is not as big of
| a deal as you might think mainly because it is a "solved
| problem" with best practices and design tools, and there
| are just not really that many things to connect together.
|
| I am not saying it is trivial or that Rossmann could do
| it with his knowledge (no, he could not) or that anyone
| could do it. I just claimed that in the grand scheme of
| things it is not "highly complex" (as opposed to pretty
| much anything analog, or proper RF, or getting the actual
| implementation inside the chips correct).
| foldr wrote:
| It seems that we agree then. Rossman is operating well
| outside his knowledge and expertise when critiquing the
| design of a motherboard. As far as I know the guy has
| never so much as blinked an LED with an Arduino, or
| designed a simple two-sided low frequency PCB. A
| motherboard is way more complex than anything a hobbyist
| electronics enthusiast will ever work on.
|
| If you haven't actually been involved in designing a
| motherboard yourself, I'm also inclined to believe that
| there might well be complexities that you're unaware of.
| Power management is complex. Routing hundreds of length-
| matched high frequency traces is complex. Low power
| circuits are complex. Safely charging LiPo batteries is
| complex. If you can show me something similarly complex
| that you've done yourself, then I'll be willing to
| believe your claim that all of this is not really very
| difficult.
| m55au wrote:
| I think it depends on what he is specifically
| criticizing.
|
| I have not designed a motherboard, but plenty of smaller
| digital IC-based schematics and PCBs and in my experience
| the most problematic part has been either erroneous or
| lack of proper documentation or bugs in ICs which there
| are plenty of.
|
| What I recommend you to do is to compare the schematics
| of, for example, Thinkpad T420 and Keithley 2001 both of
| which should be available with a search. What you will
| find is that the former is a collection of specialized
| chips (including one for battery charging) with mostly
| datasheet reference design based implementations + bunch
| of mosfets for enabling/disabling/routing signals,
| whereas the latter has almost none of that and plenty of
| analog "cleverness" and "raw" digital design, let alone
| the power input, which in my opinion was totally
| overdesigned. Or take any oscilloscope, where you need to
| design not only a computer but also an analog front-end +
| high frequency signal processing, not only routing. And
| I'm not even going into the actual RF board designs which
| you are probably well aware of is more physics than
| electronics.
|
| Again I am not saying that it is easy for any guy on the
| street, but "relatively easy" to understand what is going
| on on the motherboard as opposed to the actual complex
| stuff. So if you see a common fault among many
| motherboards you can probably conclude that that specific
| area of the design was bad and criticize that. Whether
| the criticism is valid might be another question, but I
| would not automatically dismiss it.
|
| Edit: I will put designing a motherboard on my todo list.
| defaultname wrote:
| I referred to the operating system commentary as having
| nothing to do with his wheelhouse. The other videos just give
| a context to his...theme.
|
| Further, blaming YouTube for someone's pandering to the
| basest audience seems dubious.
| simion314 wrote:
| Apple tracking what apps you launch, when you launch them
| and using a plain text protocol is fucking disgusting,
| anyone has the right to feel this disgust and share it ,
| many non technical people will nit have the chance to hear
| the truth about Apple (how many iOS users know about the
| malware issue , about the CPU down-clocking behind your
| back or other true facts about Apple)...
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| "or other true facts about Apple)"
|
| Except everything you just listed is mostly _not_ true or
| unique to Apple.
|
| The apps that you launch? That was the developer
| certificate, not the app, over the same protocol for
| verifying certificates that is used in Windows
| SmartScreen and other systems.
|
| The malware issue? Every statistic shows iOS has less
| malware than Android, so why exactly is that a complaint?
|
| CPU down clocking? iOS warns you your battery is old,
| warns you this may cause slowness, a battery repair is
| like $50 or so, and it does that so that the thing
| doesn't crash and restart randomly just as Android phones
| will also do if their batteries are old.
| simion314 wrote:
| Sure dude, it was not the app name sent in plain text but
| the app certificate, what is the difference ? Either
| Apple does not care about your privacy or they really
| care but are incompetent, chose one or other or both OR
| impress me with some mental gymnastics that makes Apple
| look good.
|
| >(malware...)so why exactly is that a complaint?
|
| Because some good people at Apple prepared emails to sent
| tot he victims but Tim decided that is bad for PR so fuck
| the victims. Aka people need to know that if Apple has to
| chose between PR or the customer PR is on top.
|
| >CPU down clocking? iOS warns you your battery is old,
| warns you this may cause slowness,
|
| You are the problem, Apple only does this after a class
| action lawsuit, you either are very misinformed or you
| are intentionally misinforming people. It is not an
| isolated incident where Apple is doing something fair for
| the user only when forced(similar cases with bad GPUs,
| keyboards,batteries)
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| "Sure dude, it was not the app name sent in plain text
| but the app certificate, what is the difference?"
|
| Every OS on the planet will verify developer certificates
| to ensure that the app you are using is genuine. Windows
| uses SmartScreen, for example. Like I said, it's the same
| protocol (OCSP - Online Certificate Status Protocol)
| Windows and other apps use for certificate verification,
| so Apple is hardly doing anything wrong or being
| incompetent by not reinventing the wheel.
|
| "Because some good people at Apple prepared emails to
| sent tot he victims but Tim decided that is bad for PR so
| fuck the victims. Aka people need to know that if Apple
| has to chose between PR or the customer PR is on top."
|
| Understandable for three reasons: 1. It would cause major
| unwarranted panic that could cause additional attacks.
| I.e. A phishing scam saying "click here to be protected
| from the iPhone attack!" 2. The malware in question did
| not have any known function and didn't actually do
| anything or send anything to anyone. In other words,
| despite being prevalent, it was completely harmless. 3.
| The malware would be automatically removed from the
| device after a restart or software update, which most
| customers were likely enough to do naturally.
|
| "You are the problem, Apple only does this after a class
| action lawsuit,"
|
| Android quickly copied Apple and added warnings because
| Android never notified the user up to that lawsuit
| either. To the end user, even though Android didn't
| typically slow the device down, the Android phone would
| just crash and restart randomly when under too much CPU
| load.
| simion314 wrote:
| >Every OS on the planet will verify developer
| certificates ...
|
| In plain text? I know how this shit works, I digitally
| signed things before, and for this verification there is
| no need for internet. So copy pasted a lot of tech stuff
| there but it is complexly wrong. I could explain it how
| it works and why intenet is not needed but you could use
| google and figure it out, then find out what exactly
| Apple was checking(it was not the developer signiture).
|
| >Understandable for three reasons: 1. It would cause
| major unwarranted panic that could cause additional
| attacks. I.e. A phishing scam saying "click here to be
| protected from the iPhone attack!"
|
| Tim could hire some competent guy to write a clear email
| to prevent this. Also your point insinuates that you can
| cause a lot of damage to an iOS device with just an email
| and a link!! be careful Apple might not like you
| insinuating iOs is such terrible at security.
|
| >2. The malware in question did not have any known
| function and didn't actually do anything or send anything
| to anyone. In other words, despite being prevalent, it
| was completely harmless.
|
| Cure, malware sending data over the intenet behind the
| users back is harmless.
|
| The conclusion is that Apple care more about PR, if
| Facebook would have sent one single bit of the users data
| Apple is putting a big article in the newspaper, if some
| malware is sending the exact same bit of data Apple
| changes it's mind last minute and keeps it hidden from
| the user.
|
| >Android quickly copied Apple a
|
| Ah, OK so Apple and Google shit stinks as bad, nothing
| new... Apple and Google are in the same boat, just one
| has some better PR and a big army of fanboys. Luckily the
| users found out and a judge forced this assholes
| companies to confess, otherwise next time the storage
| would say 500Gb but in reality would be half.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| "In plain text? I know how this shit works, I digitally
| signed things before, and for this verification there is
| no need for internet. So copy pasted a lot of tech stuff
| there but it is complexly wrong. I could explain it how
| it works and why intenet is not needed but you could use
| google and figure it out, then find out what exactly
| Apple was checking(it was not the developer signiture)."
|
| Actually, you do need the internet to ensure that the
| certificate was not revoked. This is partly why Apple put
| in the whole App Notarization thing in Catalina, because
| when you Notarize the app, MacOS can check if the
| Notarization was revoked whereas a simple Developer
| Certificate from a security company is a harder thing to
| revoke on demand or to check the authenticity of.
|
| Notarization gives Apple, for better or worse, to
| immediately revoke a Developer Certificate without the
| need to check in with the Developer and have the
| developer signing certificate revoked from GeoTrust or
| whoever issued it. The Mac then checks in with Apple
| servers if the notarization is valid, and if it is valid,
| the app runs; and if it isn't valid, it knows it's been
| tampered with and revokes the app.
|
| One benefit of Notarization is that it helps protect
| Apple and MacOS users from developer supply-side attacks
| like XcodeGhost. If the developer was compromised
| resulting in the code's legitimate source being poisoned
| and a hacked update was distributed, Apple could still
| immediately revoke that app because the Mac checks in
| when online.
|
| "Tim could hire some competent guy to write a clear email
| to prevent this. Also your point insinuates that you can
| cause a lot of damage to an iOS device with just an email
| and a link!! be careful Apple might not like you
| insinuating iOs is such terrible at security."
|
| I said Phishing Scam. A scam where you enter your credit
| card info for a fictional security software. Not all
| scams require a software hack.
|
| "Cure, malware sending data over the intenet behind the
| users back is harmless."
|
| Researchers analyzed it and concluded that it sent
| nothing back to the hackers. So it was indeed harmless.
| Apple also knew that their updates have a 90%+ opt-in
| rate, so when the next update went out, most users would
| have it automatically removed, and anyone who didn't
| update would likely restart their iPhone at some point,
| in which case AppleMobileFileIntegrity would detect and
| kill it.
|
| "Ah, OK so Apple and Google shit stinks as bad, nothing
| new... Apple and Google are in the same boat, just one
| has some better PR and a big army of fanboys. Luckily the
| users found out and a judge forced this assholes
| companies to confess, otherwise next time the storage
| would say 500Gb but in reality would be half."
|
| What BS are you spouting?
| simion314 wrote:
| Even if you don't like it Apple already admitted it was a
| bad implementation and they are fixing it. (maybe next
| time they put more competent people and give them what
| they need to implement things right especially when it is
| about privacy, the thing Apple is screening this days)
|
| >What BS are you spouting?
|
| Big companies downgrading your hardware capabilities
| behind your back, then denying it until a judge forces
| them to admit and pay the users. If Apple would not have
| been caught with the CPu downclockingm, storage would be
| next for sure.
| dkdk8283 wrote:
| It isn't dubious. He posts for engagement and money. You
| can absolutely blame youtube for incentivizing bad
| behavior.
| judge2020 wrote:
| > since he does circuit board repair for Apple devices.
|
| And thus, the insight comes from someone who only repairs the
| components, not someone who knows about designing them. I
| wouldn't trust my mechanic to tell me that my car's engine
| was designed badly because chances are that opinion is solely
| based on how easy/cheap it is to repair.
| bsder wrote:
| > I wouldn't trust my mechanic to tell me that my car's
| engine was designed badly
|
| Um, I would. Easiness of repair is a part of a car
| lifecycle.
|
| When buying a new car, my first stop is my mechanic. They
| know all the failure modes of the new cars. They also know
| which cars _don 't have common failure modes_.
|
| There are engines where you have to drop the whole thing to
| do basic things like change spark plugs. There are engines
| where if you lose the timing belt the engine will eat
| itself. etc.
|
| Those are badly designed engines.
| Causality1 wrote:
| If your mechanic tells you not to buy a model of car
| because he keeps seeing them come in with engine failure at
| low mileage you'd be a fool not to listen to him.
| gambiting wrote:
| I get your point, but even your car mechanic would be able
| to tell if a component they worked with previously has
| changed _only_ to make it more difficult to replace. You
| might argue "how do you know that was the only reason" -
| well, Rossman has a video on a USB-C charging controller
| embedded into the macbooks, previously if that burnt
| out(and they do burn out) he could just buy the chip itself
| online for a dollar. But after one iteration of macbooks,
| apple replaced it with identical chip with a changed pin
| layout and model number incremented by one - and they have
| secured exclusive production of this chip, so you can't buy
| this for a dollar any more. There is no hidden design
| reason here - it was clearly changed to stop people like
| him from repairing macbooks, because their specific chip
| revision is not available on the open market.
| mokus wrote:
| I understand about the frustration of not being able to
| source the part, but a change in a single IC or
| connector's pin mapping absolutely can be a performance
| improvement alone.
|
| I'm lobbying at work now for one such case. Sometimes the
| existing pin assignments are just bad, and that can
| destroy signal integrity, increase layout complexity (and
| thus board cost) and negatively affect EMC performance. I
| don't know whether that is the case here but I wouldn't
| automatically trust someone's judgment on it without
| knowing their level of expertise on high speed layout
| design.
| josephcsible wrote:
| But don't forget this part of the post: "and they have
| secured exclusive production of this chip, so you can't
| buy this for a dollar any more". There may have been a
| legitimate reason to change the pinout, but there was no
| reason other than greed to prohibit the vendor from
| selling the new chip to anyone else.
| mokus wrote:
| Absolutely agree, but that's a whole new can of worms and
| outside the point I was making (which was that it is not
| obvious that they made this change for the SOLE purpose
| of preventing repairs). Do we force them to sell the M1
| module as well? Individual chips from that module? I'm
| all for that, personally, but good luck getting that
| passed. And assuming we can't make them do that, what is
| the line between those parts and the less special ones
| like this one?
| bloggie wrote:
| > There is no hidden design reason here - it was clearly
| changed to stop people like him from repairing macbooks,
| because their specific chip revision is not available on
| the open market.
|
| This is an assumption. It's an assumption based on the
| assumption that designers would put time and effort into
| making a simple replacement operation somewhat more
| difficult. I can make an assumption too: that the
| designers wanted a new chip revision to fix some small
| errata, to have a custom pinout to ease routing, or to
| break out an additional pin or two to allow more reliable
| testing. This assumption is based on the assumption that
| Apple wants to make good quality products and puts time
| and money into DFT/DFM.
| webmobdev wrote:
| It's an assumption based on the assumption that designers
| would put time and effort into making a simple
| replacement operation somewhat more difficult.
|
| And it's a very genuine and valid assumption supported by
| an industry practice called _Planned obsolescence_ -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| However, if you take a look, Apple does perhaps the least
| planned obsolescence of any tech company, period. iOS
| updates are now going, like, 6+ years back on phones
| while Android flagships were lucky to get 2 years or any
| at all, for example.
| judge2020 wrote:
| For reference:
|
| https://www.apple.com/ios/ios-14/features/#:~:text=iOS%C2
| %A0...
|
| The iPhone 6s was released September 25, 2015. This is
| mainly still supported because it's a very popular phone
| in India and other low-income countries, but it's there.
| webmobdev wrote:
| They do provide updates, but the devices also become
| slower either by design (batterygate) and / or through
| software bloat. Moreover, it doesn't at all excuse their
| hardwares deliberately designed to be hard to repair.
| gambiting wrote:
| Except they don't make this chip - it's made by an
| external 3rd party. And that third party sells all
| revisions of this chip, except for the one used in
| MacBooks now. Rossman asserts that it's because Apple
| bound them contractually to do so - why would they sell
| every other revision openly to anyone with money,
| _except_ for the one used in MacBooks?
| bloggie wrote:
| This happens a lot, I have done it myself. When you buy
| enough volume you can buy custom packaging, or custom
| chips from these vendors. The license can be exclusive,
| for example if Apple asked for some development that cost
| them some NRE fees, or it can be non-exclusive, and the
| vendor can decide not to sell the custom version due to
| insufficient demand or some other non-technical reason.
| gambiting wrote:
| Fair enough, but the final result of that change is that
| what used to be a 50c + labour repair is now a full
| motherboard replacement because you can't buy the chip
| separately.
| bloggie wrote:
| I agree, but I think it's much more likely that Apple
| simply did not consider this case, rather than actively
| working against having commonly-available replacement
| components on every board. Apple does not replace
| components, they replace motherboards. I think you'll
| find that as volume increases, this kind of practice
| becomes more common, as a way to reduce cost, increase
| yield, reduce board size, etc. And, that this will be
| true for even lower volumes in the future as customized
| silicon becomes more feasible at lower volumes, such as
| 10k or 100k units, as we're seeing with companies like
| SiFive popping up.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Also, something that put me off about him is that he
| always assumes that Apple is doing this because they are
| nefarious, so he sometimes fails to see the bigger
| picture.
|
| If I was a big company for example, protecting the chip I
| may have helped design from being used in other products
| is boilerplate legal agreement. I don't have an evil
| motive or want to stop repair and screw Louis, it's just
| one of the default things I throw in my legal agreements
| so Huawei doesn't make their Matebooks or whatever with
| the same chip I helped improve.
|
| Louis always assumes Apple hates repair and is fighting
| actively against him but doesn't take a look to see some
| of the broader reasons why. He doesn't make a video
| explaining, for example, some of the more logical less-
| diabolical reasons Apple might do something.
|
| This doesn't mean you have to agree with Apple. I just
| think Louis would be far better off if he just gave some
| logical reasons why Apple might have done something and
| tried to rebut those instead of assuming Apple is evil,
| because that's an easy straw-man to fight.
| Nullabillity wrote:
| > If I was a big company for example, protecting the chip
| I may have helped design from being used in other
| products is boilerplate legal agreement. I don't have an
| evil motive or want to stop repair and screw Louis, it's
| just one of the default things I throw in my legal
| agreements so Huawei doesn't make their Matebooks or
| whatever with the same chip I helped improve.
|
| That just means that you wrote evil into your default
| contract.
| dijit wrote:
| For the little it's worth: cars are mostly computer now.
|
| I come from a family of mechanics, my grandfather
| lamented new cars and their electronics because it's
| harder to repair, he doesn't try to understand the reason
| why, just that it's harder now because the manufacturers
| "did it to him" to prevent third party repairs.
|
| You can argue that the electronics are to prevent cheaper
| repairs, but there is another truth there: the ECU is an
| almost required component for decent fuel efficiency.
| II2II wrote:
| Rossman has also made it clear that right to repair is
| concerned with things like access to replacement parts,
| and has stated that it is not about things being more
| difficult to repair due to technological change. An
| example he gave is that he may grumble about having to
| reball a chip, but people can still do that. On the other
| hand, there is very little they can do if they need a
| repacement chip they are denied access to. (Their only
| recourse are doner boards, and even that has limits.)
| BombNullIsland wrote:
| Perhaps. But it was a deliberate design decision to place
| certain sensors and actuators that may need repair in
| inaccessible locations. Pumps, spark plugs and chains
| need to be removable without major disassembly of the
| engine.
|
| Shift solenoids are a nasty problem that I've run into.
| They don't need to be hidden inside the transmission. And
| the transmission doesn't require the entire engine to be
| dropped to remove it. This was done to be consumer
| hostile and to maximize dealer shop hours. Batteries in
| most german cars are also deliberately placed under major
| engine components, whereas my Mazda 3 requires two
| minutes and one socket to replace. Shop hours.
|
| This all needs to be stopped. Major components need to be
| able to be replaced, for all appliances and machines.
| Laws need to be changed to force this.
| clarkb286 wrote:
| > "Batteries in most german cars are also deliberately
| placed under major engine components"
|
| Source? I used to own a 2000 Audi S4 (bought in 2005),
| and the battery was easy to access and didn't take much
| labor to to replace. I now own and drive a 2006 Mercedes-
| Benz C55 AMG that I bought in 2009. One of the very few
| issues that the car has had was a parasitic battery
| drain, which went unnoticed for a long time, until I
| started a new job in which I was able to work from home,
| and, therefore, I didn't drive the car very often during
| that time span of around 4 years. Before I eventually
| determined what the problem was (the passenger power seat
| control module continued to draw current when the car was
| turned off), I had to replace the battery ~7 times (which
| usually didn't cost me anything since the since the
| batteries were still under warranty when they finally
| went dead). The battery in my car is very easy to access
| (it's not located under any major engine components) and
| is also very easy to remove, requiring little more than a
| socket wrench and no more than 15 minutes of labor.
| gambiting wrote:
| For what it's worth - I've had a 2016 GLA45 AMG, and that
| car was a piece of cake to work on. Did majority of
| maintenance by myself and everything was nicely laid out
| and accessible, haven't ran into any issues where
| something felt like it was intentionally placed in an
| awkward place. I'd bet a person who has never worked on
| cars could change the turbo on that engine.
| lttlrck wrote:
| Which German cars hide the battery under major engine
| components?
| jack_h wrote:
| I have a car whose spark plugs are a pain in the ass to
| change. You have to disconnect a number of things^[1],
| unbolt the engine, and lift it to get to them^[2][3]. The
| thing is this is a modding friendly car, most everything
| is easily accessible and user serviceable.
|
| So why are the spark plugs so hard to get to? I doubt it
| had anything to do with hostility towards repairability
| because this car is easily repairable. This came down to
| the design requirements for the car and particularly the
| engine they wanted to use to satisfy those design
| requirements.
|
| Long gone are the days when you could sit in an engine
| bay to work on it because there was that much free room.
| Modern vehicles have to comply with many regulations,
| e.g. emissions and safety, whilst simultaneously meeting
| consumer demands at a price point people will accept.
| Without knowing the exact model of car you have, I'd say
| your shift solenoid problem almost certainly comes down
| to component sourcing - the manufacturer either uses this
| transmission in a number of vehicles or it's procured
| from someone else - and manufacturability/supply chain
| optimization - it's easier to integrate an already
| integrated solution^[4]. There might also be other
| considerations such as space availability, weight
| distribution (since you said you had to pull the engine
| to get to it), environmental, and efficiency. Again I
| don't know your exact vehicle, but engineering is a ton
| of trade-offs and sometimes the trade-offs suck in a
| particular case while overall satisfying the design
| constraints.
|
| By the way I agree that German cars suck to work on, but
| that has largely been the case for every German car I've
| personally worked on going back to the 80s.
|
| I am 100% certain there are decisions made during the
| design of various products which are solely or partially
| predicated on the inability for the end user to repair
| the product. I also know from first hand experience that
| many products never have some Machiavellian product
| manager who dictates designs expressly to be
| unrepairable; rather due to consumer demands, economics,
| regulatory and safety compliance, etc the end result is a
| product that is hostile towards repairability.
|
| I feel this differentiator is rarely brought up in these
| right to repair comments and yet should be a critical
| talking point. Rather, everyone frustrated by a lack of
| repairability immediately assumes corporate shenanigans.
| This seems related to Hanlon's razor but for product
| design.
|
| ^[1] Under trays, battery, strut bars, fuel lines, air
| intake, etc.
|
| ^[2] The engine doesn't need to be fully pulled, it just
| needs to be lifted to where there's room to access the
| spark plugs.
|
| ^[3] People have managed to do this without hoisting the
| engine, hoisting actually seems easier if you have the
| tools.
|
| ^[4] This is the same reason why SiPs, SoMs, and
| microcontrollers with an ever expanding repertoire of
| peripherals exist. It's easier - from a hardware
| perspective - to integrate a single component that 'does
| it all' rather than pulling in multiple components and
| doing the integration yourself.
| rainbowzootsuit wrote:
| To echo your point: Going back decades it's been a real
| PITA to repair dash components on many vehicles, and this
| is primarily a manufacturing artifact that in the factory
| the whole assembly of the dash is brought into the car on
| a specialty arm made for that task.
|
| It's made to go in as a whole component at some point in
| the assembly and streamline that step for first cost
| reasons vs for serviceability of sub components after the
| warranty has expired.
|
| The right to repair complaint would be that if your
| evaporator core fails you have to replace your car
| because that sub component wouldn't be allowed to be sold
| by sake of making the pipe connectors a drm copywriting
| mess, not that it's a pain to get to it.
| userbinator wrote:
| Shift solenoids do need to be inside the transmission,
| although I'm not sure what you mean by "hidden" -- does
| dropping the pan and possibly removing the valve body
| count as "hidden"? I don't think so.
| relix wrote:
| Do you have a link to that video?
|
| What I've noticed from "right of repair" types of
| complaints is that they're often missing any search for
| ulterior motives regarding those decisions beyond "well
| obviously the only reason they did this was because they
| wanted to make it hard to repair". I need to reserve
| judgment until I see what Rossman has to say about the
| specific instance you mention - but is it possible the
| chip is actually not identical, and Apple has made
| customisations that change how it works beyond merely
| making it hard to repair? And Apple would not want
| competitors to be able to purchase these chips because
| they're somehow superior to the standard ones, at least
| for the use case Apple has custom-ordered them for?
|
| In these kind of scenarios I really don't see how a
| trillion dollar company would be worried about squeezing
| a few extra dollars by putting an extra dependency in
| their logistical pipeline by ordering a very specific
| chip whose sole purpose is to put a relatively
| insignificant hurdle for repair shops to repair a device.
| I say relatively insignificant, because I'm guessing the
| impact shouldn't be that much - not many repair shops
| would order all possible chips, find defective ones, and
| solder the chip in/out as a service or do it cost-
| effectively, and of those that do, most will probably
| just salvage those chips from other broken devices,
| meaning the decrease in repaired devices is very small in
| terms of value for Apple, but the extra work it generates
| for them would be immense and, I believe,
| disproportional.
|
| I'm watching this video[0] here where he's complaining
| about 4 charging chips, and if one of them breaks none of
| them work. Rossman mentions it's "completely asinine
| engineering design". He completely fails to think about
| whether there'd be any reason for this behaviour. Maybe
| Apple engineers aren't as dumb as he portrays them to be,
| and actually have made that decision for a very good
| reason. Maybe the failure modes of those chips actually
| involves a possibility of damaging the battery on the
| output side, and the output side is not separated - e.g.
| the output lines of those chips all come together on the
| same bus towards the battery, and thus if one chip is
| broken it could easily put the wrong kind of energy on
| those lines, causing damage to the battery and possibly
| it exploding. For this reason, Apple decided to keep
| things safe and as soon as one part of that system is
| malfunctioning, not to try and work through it in order
| to avoid a 1 in a million "battery explodes" kind of
| situation.
|
| I'm not an electrical engineer and know next to nothing
| about how these systems work internally, but I believe
| there's too little nuance in Rossman's opinions and that
| impacts his credibility to me.
|
| [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7RWdVWv7oU
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| This. He always assumes Apple is evil, Apple is screwing
| repair because they like screwing repair. Most companies
| aren't like that - companies are made of engineers, and
| do they like fighting repair for the sake of fighting
| repair? He never addresses what ulterior motives there
| may be.
|
| This might actually be why he complains he's been in many
| legislatures, testified, and they haven't gone further.
| The lack of willingness to give some perspective from
| Apple's side hurts his credibility.
| indymike wrote:
| > chances are that opinion is solely based on how
| easy/cheap it is to repair.
|
| When your mechanic says don't buy a car with a specific
| motor... You might just want to listen.
| protomyth wrote:
| Or other things. Brought in my dad's car to a local
| mechanic because the driver's side door handle was
| broken. He told me its too damn common on that
| manufacturers cars from a range of years. Came back later
| in the day and he showed me the plastic part that had
| broken. He replaced it with an aluminum part he made.
|
| When you find a good mechanic, listen to them.
| sircastor wrote:
| I think you're not giving him his due credit. He may only
| be fixing there devices, but that gives him a unique
| perspective on how the design behaves in the field.
|
| Having watched quite a lot of his videos, he is, at the
| very least a competent electrical engineer, if not a
| formally trained one. On top of explaining a problem, he
| narrates why the problem is happening, which is indicative
| of solid understanding.
| protomyth wrote:
| You have a low opinion of your mechanic. Operational
| knowledge is very important and designs that look good at
| design time sometimes deal poorly with the world. The
| iPhone 6 and the butterfly keyboard show designs that were
| not good in actual operation. Mechanics worth their salt
| know great engine design beyond easy/cheap to repair.
|
| Please don't take this attitude as a developer towards your
| operations / support staff.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I agree with your comment/sentiment, but to be a little
| more nuanced: I can tell you that butterfly keyboards
| suck but I am not qualified to say how they _should_ have
| been designed.
| bogwog wrote:
| > but I am not qualified to say how they should have been
| designed.
|
| Right to repair isn't about telling companies how they
| should design their products.
| inb4_cancelled wrote:
| It often sounds like that to me.
| bogwog wrote:
| Probably because of comments like the one I responded to,
| which are spreading misinformation.
|
| A good resource is:
|
| https://fighttorepair.org
| judge2020 wrote:
| My point is that some people try to and want right to
| repair to force companies to make their computers more
| modular in order to make them repairable, when that might
| stifle innovation.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| That wasn't my point. I was responding to the notion that
| a mechanic is qualified to tell the engineer his job. ;-)
| [deleted]
| jrsj wrote:
| Mechanics are generally pretty knowledgeable about
| reliability of various vehicles and their components
| generally; many are genuinely interested in these things
| and not just repairability as it relates to their job. I
| would imagine something similar is true here
| bombcar wrote:
| Mechanics can get a slightly biased view on things - for
| example, they're more likely to like less reliable
| vehicle that's dead simple to work on compared to a more
| reliable vehicle that's harder to repair (or they rarely
| see).
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Right, this is absolutely the case with Rossman. He makes
| no attempt to control for the base rate.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| I would argue that, the harder/more expensive it is to
| repair a consumer car, the worse it is designed. It's not
| the only factor, but it is an important one to a LOT of
| people.
| Zak wrote:
| A mechanic is well-positioned to notice that a particular
| car engine has an unusually high rate of a certain type of
| failure, and very often to identify the root cause of said
| failure. If Subaru head gaskets fail because they're bathed
| in fluids when the engine isn't running, and Ford Tritons
| spit out spark plugs because they only used 3.5 threads in
| an aluminum head, mechanics who work on them will notice.
| Rossmann is in an equivalent position.
|
| Of course there may be good explanations for design
| decisions that negatively impact reliability, but it's
| reasonable for owners to be grumpy about it. It also
| wouldn't _completely_ shock me if there 's a former Ford
| engineer out there somewhere collecting a paycheck from
| Helicoil, a manufacturer of threaded inserts used to repair
| stripped spark plug holes, with no current job duties.
| mokus wrote:
| A mechanic is in a good position to notice that _when_ a
| car fails, it tends to fail in certain ways. Far too
| often, though, they then generalize to claims that the
| car is likely to fail in that way, but that is not
| necessarily the case. It may be that they fail 1% as
| often as competitors and due to a relatively fewer number
| of causes. Without being in a position to see the
| absolute failure rate, a mechanic may incorrectly
| conclude that those parts they see failing are especially
| badly designed even if they are more reliable than the
| industry average.
| manigandham wrote:
| What are those chances? Are you judging their experience
| based on your non-experience? How would you know what bad
| design is and the reasons for it?
| [deleted]
| me_me_me wrote:
| Is this a character assassination post? It really feels like
| it.
|
| Rossmann opensourced his repair manuals and has detailed videos
| of how to repair equipment, you can literally start your own
| repair business of that.
|
| If that is not being for right to repair I don't know what is.
|
| Reading your post again it is a character assassination post.
|
| Shifting goalpost and attacking personal characteristics
| instead of the point.
| have_faith wrote:
| OP seemed quite open that he sees his right to repair work as
| important and is simply commenting on the direction his
| YouTube channel is taking. Not sure what goal posts are being
| shifted exactly and I can't see what "personal
| characteristics" are being attacked in any way in what reads
| as a simple personal opinion.
| moron4hire wrote:
| The line "it has undermined his credibility" changes it
| from just a comment on personal opinion to an attack.
| have_faith wrote:
| That's a pretty low bar.
| bogwog wrote:
| Strange how it's still the top comment in this thread, even
| though it's a personal attack that has nothing to do with the
| actual topic, or make any attempt to discuss his arguments.
|
| Seems like the type of tactic you'd see from those lobbyist
| groups that pay money to release commercials claiming right
| to repair will lead to rape:
| https://youtu.be/EozPi1qmH44?t=59
| bradlys wrote:
| Top comments on HN are usually ones that counter the post
| itself or are self-congratulatory in some
| congratulatory/celebration post. It's pretty obvious as to
| why. For people who want to read something that could have
| any sense of controversy - people who don't like the person
| or some of their content then others will read the comments
| and upvote the comment that aligns with them (which is
| counter to the content). Whereas people who upvoted the
| story (and maybe align with the story) will not upvote all
| the comments supporting the story - they might upvote one
| or two but might spread it out. Dissent isn't universal. It
| takes more effort and isn't relevant to them - also more
| people might just read the content and upvote it and not
| participate in the discussion. Upvotes are basically finite
| resource and tend to be spread out over majority positions,
| whereas minority positions are spread over fewer posts...
| Thus, they get to the top easier even if they're a
| minority.
|
| It's not really surprising at all if you're on here enough.
| It's standard practice. It's not like it takes as many
| upvotes as the story gets to be the top comment on the
| page. Usually 20-40 is enough even for modestly popular
| posts like this. Larger ones will require over 50. A few
| people don't like some of his content or thumbnails and
| there you go - easy to reach the top.
| judge2020 wrote:
| The article is "One Man's Fight for the Right to Repair",
| so it indeed is focusing squarely on Rossman and his
| involvement in R2R. If it were just an article about R2R
| that briefly mentioned Rossman, your comment would be true.
| defaultname wrote:
| Personal attack, character assassination, apparently it's
| astroturfing (something something rape), another guy saying
| it's "NSA tactics". Amazing.
|
| Pretty rabid fanbase. Anything other than adulation must
| have nefarious origins. It certainly can't be organic.
|
| I think it was upvoted (after a lot of downvotes) because a
| lot of people have experienced the same thing. Rossmann
| started as a Mac/Apple repair guy elbowing to try to keep
| his business going, which no one can contest and was
| admirable and sympathetic. He had a credible argument about
| right to repair.
|
| Somewhere along the way -- maybe after Apple had customs
| block some of his imports, or maybe after he started
| getting those fat YouTube checks -- he turned from an Apple
| repair guy to an anti-Apple advocate in virtually every
| dimension. He has a whole plethora of anti-Apple opinions,
| and he seems to be a cult of personality not for repair
| people, but rather for people who still harbor a grudge
| that their Lumia prophecies didn't come true.
|
| So I just said what I thought, and clearly a lot of people
| have the same impression, which was that once I'd see his
| name and think credible repair arguments, and now I see his
| name and just click past because it's going to be some new
| anti-Apple screed appealing to a base. Eh.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Agreed, it's a bit weird to see the replies here. If
| anything I'd have expected that the very... glorifying?
| title of the article would get more comments like yours
| that would put things into perspective. Rossman is good
| at repairing electronics and his channel can be very
| useful, but it's very obvious he also likes the big
| audience that he gets from going full on anti-Apple. I'm
| not sure why people think Rossman would be immune to
| incentives.
|
| And FWIW I've rarely seen outright accusations of
| character assassination on here, even against wildly
| cynical comments, insults or when wild allegations are
| made. So again it's weird that your pretty
| moderate/balanced take on a guy directly relevant to the
| article is getting so many of those.
| me_me_me wrote:
| I have sub his channel years before the R2R stuff.
|
| One thing that can be said about him is that he supports
| R2R fro a selfish reason of being able to keep his
| business afloat.
|
| > Somewhere along the way -- maybe after Apple had
| customs block some of his imports, or maybe after he
| started getting those fat YouTube checks -- he turned
| from an Apple repair guy to an anti-Apple advocate in
| virtually every dimension. (...)
|
| WHO CARES? Who cares? I want my phone to be sum of more
| then 1 parts. I don't care if Rossman kicks puppies for
| fun. I don't give a fuck about that. I don't care if
| someone is supporting R2R because their turtle choked on
| an apple. Its as irrelevant as this example.
|
| What I care about is clear pattern of slow creep of anti-
| consumer practices lately serialisation of parts is
| abhorrent. Before that - parts exclusively sold to the
| makes of the phones, design choices made with intention
| of making repairs harder.
|
| And this is not only scourge of phones, if car
| manufactures could they would be renting you cars. If
| they could the car computers would lock your car till you
| pay them to fix 0x4525828 error.
| judge2020 wrote:
| I think most people are against supporting bad people
| just because they do something good. You can like Right
| to repair and can support it even financially (assuming
| the gofundme funds will be dedicated to the direct ballot
| and not other endeavors), but I and many others don't
| like that Rossman is the one who is harboring this when
| he has moved from well-done repair videos to rants about
| anything that can be ranted about.
| dataflow wrote:
| > I think most people are against supporting bad people
| just because they do something good
|
| > I and many others don't like that Rossman is the one
| who is harboring this when he has moved from well-done
| repair videos to rants about anything that can be ranted
| about.
|
| He rants on random topics that's what his audience likes
| to watch. And mind you, they're often quite educational
| and make you think. Even when he's wrong.
|
| It's _ludicrous_ to say he 's a bad person because he
| rants about something other than R2R in some of his
| videos. It's like you cannot fathom a good person can
| have more than one topic he's interested in?
| CPUstring wrote:
| A character assassination would be something like "He does
| something morally reprehensible (cheating, selling ads to
| three year olds, etc". The above post is more like "He harps
| on multiple things he maybe shouldn't, and has an outraged
| user-base he keeps stoked, so that should be taken into
| account."
|
| If I said, "I find his voice really grating and his outrage
| mostly makes me dislike him" that isn't a character
| assassination- just my opinion he is unlikeable.
| dataflow wrote:
| > If I said, "I find his voice really grating and his
| outrage mostly makes me dislike him" that isn't a character
| assassination- just my opinion he is unlikeable.
|
| Then you're not reading what some folks are writing. To
| some people here he seems to be a "bad person". e.g.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27257657
| me_me_me wrote:
| > If I said, "I find his voice really grating and his
| outrage mostly makes me dislike him" that isn't a character
| assassination- just my opinion he is unlikeable.
|
| If you were in court for an act you didn't commit and the
| prosecutor said:
|
| "I find his voice really grating and his outrage mostly
| makes me dislike him"
|
| What would you said to this?
|
| This commenthas noting to do with anything. Its a pointless
| opinion nothing to do with given case. And its a vague ad-
| hominem attack.
| camehere3saydis wrote:
| A sizable portion of the audience here considers selling
| ads morally reprehensible in itself.
|
| This, on the other hand:
|
| >The guy is monetizing a certain base. Probably doing
| pretty well out of it.
|
| OP does say it as if there's something wrong with it.
| defaultname wrote:
| How does that quote _remotely_ imply there is something
| "wrong" with it (aside from it obviously factoring into
| credibility)? Another person took the exact same quote
| and declared that it betrayed jealousy. This borders on
| parody.
| neya wrote:
| Careful, like another comment pointed out, this sounds like a
| polished way of character assassination/accusation - that he's
| trying to squeeze his userbase for monetary gains.
|
| I would argue that most of his userbase is tech savvy and most
| of them (for example I also watch his videos for references on
| some ICs/upgrades) have ad-blockers in place.
|
| He has immensely contributed so much to the repair community so
| much so that many shops in Asia wouldn't even exist if not for
| his videos. I had one of those keyboard faults on a brand new
| Macbook Pro. The so called "Genius" jokers didn't even know it
| was a known issue on their machines. I had to send them a
| Rossman video just to help them even understand that such a
| thing was going on. So, I think we should be careful here of
| not questioning anyone's character without proof/evidence. I
| mean, we could say the same about Tim Cook too, right? That's
| why I think this is a bad direction for discussion that will
| only lead to flame with little value for readers here.
| TravHatesMe wrote:
| I agree with you but I think that's just part of the youtube
| celebrity playbook. His massive following might give him the
| confidence/ego to put out a lot more edgy type of content that
| appeals to his audience. I noticed he also puts out a lot of
| videos about his personal opinions (eg. NYC real estate,
| personal relationships, etc.). It is his own channel.
|
| Regardless it does not diminish his prominent role for the
| Right to Repair.
| wayneftw wrote:
| Which statement that you quoted was untrue?
| soheil wrote:
| With the amount of publicity Rossmann gets how is he not a multi-
| millionaire already? It's interesting that he is literally still
| fixing Macbooks, one Macbook at a time.
| 34679 wrote:
| I just did my first surface mount repair this morning and it 100%
| happened because of Rossmann's channel. It was so easy that I
| feel like I should have been doing it much sooner. The things
| I've thrown away over the years..
| rockbruno wrote:
| It's absurd how difficult it's to repair a MacBook. I have a 2009
| MacBook that needed to have its keyboard replaced after my mother
| dropped coffee on it. Not only I had to disassemble the ENTIRE
| MacBook to reach the keyboard, the keyboard itself is covered by
| a plastic sheet that is super glued to both the MacBook and the
| keyboard. It took an enormous amount of time to remove the glue,
| and not only the keyboard was completely destroyed in the
| process, the case itself cracked a little bit due to the amount
| of force needed to remove said plastic sheet. And that's without
| even mentioning that there was at least 3 different types of
| security screws before even reaching this point.
| llaolleh wrote:
| Right to repair needs to be preserved if we want to have the next
| generation of hackers and engineers. A good chunk of learning
| happens when you break apart devices and put them back together,
| or fix them yourself. You screw up, and learn during the entire
| process.
|
| It would be God awful if the next Tesla can't buy some chips he
| wants to solder onto his broken Mac because Apple prevents chip
| manufacturers from selling them.
| ravenstine wrote:
| Sadly, you and I watch a different YouTube than probably 95% of
| people. Almost nobody I've talked to has heard of Lex or Louis,
| or Bret Weinstein, or Sean Carroll, and so forth. Just open
| youtube.com in a private window and you'll understand.
|
| Even if the average person watched some of Louis Rossmann's
| videos on the right to repair, I just don't think the importance
| of the issue would compute with them. Almost nobody my age fixes
| any of their own things, whether they're electronics or other
| household items. The concept of repair may be totally antiquated
| in another 20 years.
|
| EDIT: By the way, I sent my Macbook to Louis for repair last
| year. His team did a great job! Easy to communicate with too. I
| got it back in the mail really fast once the repair was complete.
| Tabular-Iceberg wrote:
| It's the same kind of tragedy that happens with free software.
| I once spent an entire year using nothing but free software,
| all the way down to the peripheral firmware. It's still
| important to me, but as I grow older I get more and more
| important things competing for time, money and attention.
| Especially things you do outside, away from technology, with
| other people.
|
| It's all subject to the same FUD too. If every proprietary EULA
| was replaced with the GPL overnight, and if a webshop where you
| could buy all the parts to repair anything was to spring up
| overnight, everybody would still use the same software and
| devices they know and love, and would not be any worse off than
| before. But the opponents of either try to make it about
| protecting the consumers.
| kingTug wrote:
| Those IDW characters have shown themselves to be pretty
| fraudulent. The Weinsteins especially.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| How come? Got a link to any article on this? Because as far
| as "IDW" characters are (and I agree most of them are either
| shady or outright shallow intellectual frauds) Brett seemed
| to be pretty genuine and less full of himself. But it
| wouldn't surprise me considering just how intense and
| widespread political gifting is (across pretty much the
| entire political spectrum though to be honest).
| prezjordan wrote:
| Bret's claim to fame is making a novel discovery about
| telomeres that was supposedly stolen by another author
| after an email exchange. He, of course, has yet to show any
| proof of this claim (a simple email would do).
|
| See also: Eric's Theory of Everything that he won't publish
| for some reason, claiming the entire system of peer review
| is rigged against him.
|
| Very good podcast on this history: https://decoding-the-
| gurus.captivate.fm/episode/eric-and-bre...
| jarenmf wrote:
| I'm surprised when people don't even know more mainstream
| science YouTubers like vsauce or veritasium. I've asked a class
| of ~20 college students whether they know vsauce and I was
| surprised no one knows him.
| judge2020 wrote:
| I think a factor is overestimating just how many people 'get
| into' YouTube culture. Only roughly 74% of American Adults
| use YouTube[0], and the average daily watch time is only 42
| minutes[1], not much time to explore and watch videos outside
| of your own interests. Vsauce's videos are great (including
| the recent ones), but they're mostly a remnant of YouTube
| culture past, and 10-20 million views a video[2] is not a lot
| in the grand scheme of YouTube's 2 billion strong user
| base[3].
|
| 0: https://www.journalism.org/2021/01/12/news-use-across-
| social...
|
| 1: https://www.emarketer.com/content/us-youtube-
| advertising-202...
|
| 2: https://www.youtube.com/c/vsauce1/videos
|
| 3: https://blog.youtube/press/#:~:text=Features-,YouTube%20by
| ,t...
| sodapopcan wrote:
| Ya, I'm a heavy YouTube watcher (a couple of hours a day
| maybe?). I'm aware of vsauce and clearly I retested in tech
| but I don't think I've ever seen a full video. I mostly
| watch conference talks when it comes to tech videos.
| bscphil wrote:
| For me, vsauce exists in the mental zone I have assigned
| to things that are clickbaity popular science. Sort of
| the same place as the "I fucking love science" network.
| Likewise, I've never actually seen a single video, so I
| suppose it's possible that I'm just inferring that it's
| bad on the basis of the fact that it's popular. I don't
| know that I've ever seen a really good Youtube channel
| with more than a few million subscribers: to be that
| popular, you have to paint with too broad a brush. Even
| 3Blue1Brown has fewer than 4 million.
| Akronymus wrote:
| > I mostly watch conference talks when it comes to tech
| videos.
|
| I think I have watched literally >30 hrs of programming
| talks during the last month. Conferences just are more
| entertaining than most other content lately.
| cat199 wrote:
| Exactly.. i watch youtube for "whatever i'm searching for",
| which has never been a science video. Cars, computers,
| music, other random interests sure, but not science.
| ghaff wrote:
| Generally, I'm the same and I'm also probably only on
| YouTube a few days a week and often just to watch one or
| two short things, e.g. to see if there's a review of
| something that would benefit from watching a video.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| To be fair, I think vsauce is one of the 'old guard' (heh,
| being like 5-10 years old as a channel gets you there).
|
| Those channels are loved/hated (or at least known) by most of
| us who were on YouTube in earlier years (2010s), but YouTube
| has grown and grown, and even the most popular channels like
| Mr. Beast and Pewdiepie are unknown to many.
|
| Take my wife; she watches her subset of videos, YouTube
| promotes similar videos, and she'll never hear of any of the
| 'pop' YouTube channels unless she accidentally goes to the
| trending page.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| You're probably massively overestimating how relevant YouTube
| is for most people.
| ehsankia wrote:
| And even then, Youtube has so many sub communities. For
| example, in some parts of the internet, people like Jeffree
| Star, James Charles and the rest are huge, but I'd wager
| most people here don't know them.
|
| Similarly, a lot of people here may be familiar with
| English edutubers, but did you know there are a ton of
| massive creators in other non-English countries? How many
| of these [0] do you know?
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_YouTubers
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| I had literally never heard of James Charles, despite the
| ridiculous view numbers he got and constant placement on
| the Trending page, until the grooming incident.
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| The problem is that discovery is broken. This random post on HN
| led me to more subscribe worthy channels than months of looking
| at Youtube recommendations has.
| newsclues wrote:
| I think discovery is more of a solved problem than
| monetization.
|
| The discovery engine is focused on specific content because
| it's profitable (monetized).
|
| The broken system is that most of the content some people
| (that don't like mainstream drivel) isn't monetized
| (enough?).
| the_other wrote:
| Google doesn't care if you discover useful things. It only
| cares if you discover things it can charge a lot for.
| helmholtz wrote:
| Give us your best-of list then lad!
| ehsankia wrote:
| Steve Mould:
| https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEIwxahdLz7bap-VDs9h35A
|
| Technology Connections:
| https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCy0tKL1T7wFoYcxCe0xjN6Q
|
| Verge Science:
| https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtxJFU9DgUhfr2J2bveCHkQ
|
| Mathologer:
| https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1_uAIS3r8Vu6JjXWvastJg
|
| Sebastian Lague:
| https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmtyQOKKmrMVaKuRXz02jbQ
|
| Captain Disillusion:
| https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEOXxzW2vU0P-0THehuIIeg
|
| Stuff Made Here:
| https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCj1VqrHhDte54oLgPG4xpuQ
|
| Just a few, there's definitely a lot more like CGPGrey, a
| bunch of PBS channels, 3Blue1Brown, Veritasium (the
| production quality on his recent videos!), Mark Rober, Tom
| Scott, Johnny Harris, Legal Eagle, etc
|
| Also, not really HN content but if you like cooking, check
| out Adam Ragusea and Ethan Chlebowski, much better than the
| more popular cooking channels imo.
| kevinak wrote:
| Don't miss this one: Tech Ingredients -
| https://www.youtube.com/user/TechIngredients
| Macha wrote:
| Even Legal Eagle has had a lot of political clickbait of
| late, especially with his shorts. He'll talk about the
| riots, or matt gaetz or whatever, but the format is too
| short to allow any analysis, and his longer videos have a
| lot of "reacts" type content. Leonard French/Lawful
| Masses is the other extreme though, where he tends to
| just go through entire legal documents and splice in the
| relevant background occasionally.
| anticensor wrote:
| Eva Bianka Zubek:
| https://www.youtube.com/c/EvazuBeckOfficial/
|
| Grind Reel: https://www.youtube.com/c/JoshuaFluke1/
| read_if_gay_ wrote:
| This is a good one:
|
| https://thume.ca/2020/07/19/my-youtube-tier-list/
| dang wrote:
| (We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27254865.)
| runlevel1 wrote:
| > Just open youtube.com in a private window and you'll
| understand.
|
| I often don't notice I've been logged out of my Google account
| until I visit YouTube. It's a bit frightening how dumbed down
| and scammy the content they recommend by default is.
| devwastaken wrote:
| Steve Lehto had a video on this - When you explain the law and
| such peoples eyes glaze over, but when you put it into the
| context that this does affect them, then they generally 'get
| it'. In my view if you need to get your dell laptop fixed, you
| can get it fixed by someone else when dell wants to charge you
| for a whole new laptop, or refuses to fix it. That's what right
| to repair is for.
| ______- wrote:
| > Just open youtube.com in a private window and you'll
| understand
|
| Eh it doesn't work like that. Youtube is actually very good at
| reliably determining it's you who's in that private window and
| Youtube is even known to track you with WebGL fingerprinting
| tactics to determine it's the same device. Doing things like
| spoofing your IP and useragent and using private mode browsing
| doesn't work.
|
| (I still get recommendations in incognito windows for videos I
| recently played no matter how much I tweak Firefox and mess
| with the browser to defeat tracking!)
|
| Edit: Since Youtube fingerprints your device with WebGL[0], it
| builds a shadow profile tied to that device, so that even in
| incognito/private sessions, you _will_ get recommended videos
| that you recently watched, despite the anecdotal claims of
| others that they don 't encounter this.
|
| The only way to defeat that is to use an entirely separate
| device on a separate network that has a different fingerprint.
|
| [0] https://jonatron.github.io/webgl-fingerprinting/
| hhh wrote:
| In incognito, I get nothing similar to what I would actually
| watch. Nothing is even remotely similar. It's _scarily_
| different, and none of it interests me.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Watch a single video that's even remotely related to the
| topics you watched before and your entire suggestion
| history will be back (even those unrelated to the single
| video you watched).
|
| When they see a new profile they are basically testing the
| waters. They suspect it's you, but leave the benefit of the
| doubt in case it's a legitimately new user. But just giving
| them a few "fuzzy" data points like watching a video or two
| will give them enough confidence to fully link your
| previous activity to the new session despite never
| providing any concrete evidence such as logging in with the
| same account.
| Anon1096 wrote:
| This is conspiracy-tier thinking. It's far more likely
| that once you click one video you like, other videos you
| like appear because they are topically similar or the
| target demographics are the same.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| 1) I've noticed this behavior and at the time some of the
| videos I watched on my main profile had nothing to do
| with my normal watching patterns (and were completely
| unrelated topic-wise) and yet after watching a single
| video fitting my regular patterns on a new profile I
| ended up getting suggestions for the "outlier" videos
| despite it being very unlikely that there are enough
| people out there watching both that and the outlier
| videos for it to be suggested "organically".
|
| 2) This is what I would do if I had no morals, and the
| people working for Google are smarter and are paid way
| more money than me, and Google itself has an incentive to
| stalk people across different sessions, so if I can think
| of this and implement it then so can they and you'd be
| foolish to believe they wouldn't do it.
|
| You'd think this is conspiracy-level thinking (and I
| would've agreed with you 10 years ago), but so far, when
| it comes to online tracking, everything that's been
| considered a far-fetched conspiracy in the past ended up
| being true, so better safe than sorry? Given the money at
| stake in adtech and lack of morals and respect for the
| law (Google still ignores the GDPR), if it's technically
| possible, you should assume someone's doing it.
| unicornporn wrote:
| > In incognito, I get nothing similar to what I would
| actually watch. Nothing is even remotely similar. It's
| scarily different, and none of it interests me.
|
| Same here. 100% generic clickbait crap and exactly the same
| stuff that shows in a Ungoogled Chromium incognito window.
| I hardly ever use Chromium.
|
| I use Cookie AutoDelete, uBlock Origin, Decentraleyes and a
| VPN for casual surfing though.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| > Youtube is actually very good at reliably determining it's
| you who's in that private window
|
| Maybe, but it respects the "private" mode far enough to
| create a separate profile for that. Browsing in private
| windows is like starting with a fresh account, and over time
| it'll adapt to the videos there provided you don't switch the
| device/reinstall the OS etc. (the latter is the reason I know
| that...I did a lot of distro-hopping for a while)
| ______- wrote:
| I'm referring to this when I talk about WebGL
| fingerprinting: https://jonatron.github.io/webgl-
| fingerprinting/
|
| Since Youtube fingerprints your device, it builds a shadow
| profile tied to that device, so that even in
| incognito/private sessions, you _will_ get recommended
| videos that you recently watched, despite the anecdotal
| claims of others that they don 't encounter this.
|
| The only way to defeat that is to use an entirely separate
| device on a separate network that has a different
| fingerprint.
| lupire wrote:
| Why do you think this is true?
|
| What would the point of these half-baked personalization
| instead of regular personalization?
|
| Why would YouTube work so hard to personalize content for
| people who are explicitly opting out of personalization?
| Who even benefits?
| andmichael wrote:
| On non-incognito I get a page full of 6 second twitch clips.
| On incognito I get a page full of 6 second soccer clips and
| Turkish music videos (I live in a partly Turkish-speaking
| country, in my whole life I have never clicked on a single
| Turkish video)
|
| Fingerprinting is used almost exclusively for anti-spam/anti-
| fraud. If a company wanted to use it for anything else they'd
| have to deal with a whole bunch of legal and pr trouble for
| relatively little gain. While you will be able to see WebGL
| Fingerprinting in the javascript of most every large website,
| if you scan for it dynamically you will often find it's only
| ran on a failed login attempt, for example. (Granted, I
| haven't scanned youtube in a while)
| ______- wrote:
| Since Youtube fingerprints your device with WebGL[0], it
| builds a shadow profile tied to that device, so that even
| in incognito/private sessions, you _will_ get recommended
| videos that you recently watched, despite the anecdotal
| claims of others that they don 't encounter this.
|
| The only way to defeat that is to use an entirely separate
| device on a separate network that has a different
| fingerprint.
|
| [0] https://jonatron.github.io/webgl-fingerprinting/
| andmichael wrote:
| https://imgur.com/a/07XSabz
|
| An experiment by me, I went into incognito mode and none
| of the recommended was what I usually get. I then fully
| watched a video that was recommended to me on my main
| account, and even after that, youtube failed to recognize
| me, instead, it only proceeded to recommend videos
| specifically in the category of the one video I had
| watched.
| Hnaomyiph wrote:
| I find that strange, I use Firefox as well, along with
| containers, ublock origin, and privacy badger (if those might
| make a difference) but my private browsing YouTube looks
| nothing like my non-private browsing youtube
| ravenstine wrote:
| Same. I've got uBlock and the whole kit and kaboodle and my
| private window YouTube experience is nothing like my signed
| in one in any way. If I knew it was about my add-ons I
| would have rephrased it, but it's too late.
|
| My point still stands. If someone went to YouTube having
| never seen it before and they created an account, what they
| are introduced to is half mainstream drivel and half animal
| videos, reactions, viral videos, etc. Unless you are
| already interested in intellectual content, I doubt that
| most people are ever exposed to content that's... more
| meaningful. I'm not saying average Joe and Jane should be
| watching Lex Fridman, but it they at least knew that these
| kinds of conversations were taking place on social media
| then their perspective of the world might be different.
| emsy wrote:
| At least the US has personalities like this. In Germany we have
| all the YT clickbait BS and very few truly brilliant minds that
| go against the mainstream.
| 34679 wrote:
| German 3D printing channels are the best. Whereas others will
| simply say "let's see if we can put sawdust in a resin print
| to make it stronger", German channels tend to ask "let's see
| if adding sawdust makes resin prints stronger".
| emsy wrote:
| Oh yeah, the niche channels are pretty good, but we don't
| have personalities like Sam Harris, Joe Rogan etc. the
| closest that comes to mind is maiLab but she's not exactly
| polarizing or unconventional.
| Nodraak wrote:
| Hey! Jumping in, because I'm learning German: do you have
| other suggestions appart from MaiLab?
| howmayiannoyyou wrote:
| | I sent my Macbook to Louis for repair last year
|
| Water damage. Sad little Macbook into a happy little Macbook. I
| hope you learned something.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| I associate general consumers who don't repair things and
| instead purchase to replace with the poor. It is a matter of
| the ability to command of labor. Repairing is cheaper. The loss
| of the ability to do so is the loss of the ability to command
| labor. So yes, perhaps in 20 years when manufacturing practices
| are so common as to relinquish control from the purchaser
| everyone will be all the more poor, because the idea that the
| common man be able to flourish is becoming antiquated.
| lupire wrote:
| Huh? Mass production means that replacement is often cheaper
| than repair or one off crafting.
| stephenr wrote:
| > By the way, I sent my Macbook to Louis for repair last year.
| His team did a great job! Easy to communicate with too. I got
| it back in the mail really fast once the repair was complete.
|
| Doesn't this defeat the purpose of what you're claiming to
| want?
|
| Or is the guy you're talking about more interested in this for
| his own reasons: wanting the repair money, not wanting to have
| to actually get certified to do authorised repairs.
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| Right to Repair is not just about repairing things yourself,
| it's about the freedom to choose who you would like to repair
| something for you. I can't repair my own MacBook but I don't
| think I should be forced to pay outlandish prices to Apple
| for the privilege if I don't want to.
| stephenr wrote:
| I don't understand. Is Apple holding a gun to your head if
| you take it to an unauthorised repairer?
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| They are doing their damndest to make it almost
| impossible to find someone that can. They want my only
| options to be a) pay their ridiculous repair fees because
| there is no other option that can do it for less, or b)
| just outright buy another macbook because they want to
| sell more computers.
| 34679 wrote:
| There is another option: Buy a PC and be done with this
| nonsense forever.
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| When your livelihood includes supporting Apple platforms,
| that's not really an option.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > not wanting to have to actually get certified to do
| authorised repairs
|
| There is no such thing as "authorized repair" when it comes
| to Apple. It's authorized "overpriced parts-changing" at
| best. Their "independent repair programme" is a bullshit PR
| tactic that thankfully seems to have failed.
|
| Apple's IRP is absolutely not viable for a repair shop. You
| can't even stock parts in advance (so the minimum turnaround
| time becomes the parts delivery time), have to provide
| customer details to Apple and the prices don't work for
| either your or the customer's favour (in essence, it becomes
| just as expensive as an "authorized" repair at an Apple
| Store).
| stephenr wrote:
| > There is no such thing as "authorized repair" when it
| comes to Apple.
|
| I guess the authorised service centers I've taken Macs to
| since the late 90s were figments of my imagination then?
| Nextgrid wrote:
| My point is, none of it is repair. It's blindly replacing
| parts, the same thing that the Apple Store would do, at
| the exact same prices.
|
| Given that Louis Rossmann appears to have made a
| successful business out of his "unauthorized" repair,
| consumers demand more cost-efficient options, which also
| happens to be better for the planet as it's less
| wasteful.
| stephenr wrote:
| > My point is, none of it is repair.
|
| So your logic is: if a part is replaced, the thing isn't
| actually repaired.
|
| > It's blindly replacing parts
|
| Blindly? Really? Every repair I've had done - even the
| ones where the tech doesn't speak the same fucking
| language as me - have clearly identified what's at fault,
| and told me what's being done. Hardly seems "blind".
|
| > at the exact same prices.
|
| If the genuine parts cost the same, why are you surprised
| the labour costs the same?
|
| > which also happens to be better for the planet as it's
| less wasteful
|
| Based on what? Have you really never heard of
| Repair/Refurbish for sale?
| stale2002 wrote:
| > if a part is replaced, the thing isn't actually
| repaired.
|
| No.... His logic is that he should have the freedom to
| hire someone to fix a device, instead of replace the part
| completely, if he chooses to do so.
|
| > If the genuine parts cost the same
|
| If people were free to do repairs differently, then it
| would be possible to do a repair more cheaply.
|
| I am not sure how you could be misinterpreting what they
| are saying this much.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > So your logic is: if a part is replaced, the thing
| isn't actually repaired.
|
| If you have a flat tire and the garage replaces the
| entire car, both you and I wouldn't call that repair. If
| you have a problem caused by a $0.01 resistor on the
| logic board and they replace the entire board I wouldn't
| call that repair either, and that's exactly what Apple is
| doing.
|
| > have clearly identified what's at fault, and told me
| what's being done
|
| So let me guess, the fault was the logic board, which is
| basically the entire computer, and what would be done is
| to replace it (which again is equivalent to replacing the
| entire computer, and costs about the same)?
|
| This is the main problem with Apple's repair. Outside of
| physical, visible damage to the computer, everything else
| will basically be a logic board fault, regardless of
| whether the entire board is burnt or broken in half (in
| which case a replacement is justified) or a 1c passive
| component being defective (in which case a replacement is
| overkill, but Apple's monopoly allows them to do it and
| extract a generous profit out of it).
|
| > If the genuine parts cost the same, why are you
| surprised the labour costs the same?
|
| 2 problems here:
|
| 1) I have a problem with paying for whole new mainboard
| (=entire computer) when the problem is a single resistor
| or broken trace on the existing board.
|
| 2) The retail price of an Apple computer includes a
| significant margin to account for R&D and software
| development. The actual cost of the hardware is probably
| 30% and the rest is essentially a "license". When
| repairing an existing device, I expect the parts to be
| sold at-cost (as I've already paid the "license" when
| originally buying the machine) instead of costing
| basically the same as buying a new machine.
|
| > Based on what?
|
| Common sense. Between repairing the device on-site by
| replacing a 1c faulty part and returning it to the
| customer immediately, or shipping parts across the globe
| back and forth, what's the most efficient, both in terms
| of time, money and carbon footprint?
| novok wrote:
| That 30 yr old program is not the current program he is
| describing.
| stephenr wrote:
| I've taken a Mac to one such authorised repair centre in
| the last 3 years.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| There are 2 repair programs:
|
| Apple Authorized Service Provider - the existing one,
| which has significant barriers to entry and doesn't seem
| profitable on its own (most of the ones I see around town
| either sell refurbished computers on the side or provide
| IT support), though I believe they can at least stock
| parts as they advertise same-day turnaround on some
| common repairs. This is the one you're talking about.
|
| The Independent Repair Program, for smaller shops to be
| able to obtain genuine parts and perform authorized
| repairs on Apple devices. These don't allow you to stock
| parts and have a lot of ridiculous restrictions (Louis
| did a video on it) and is purely a PR thing when the
| whole "right to repair" idea started taking off and
| regulators were started to look closer.
| gskj wrote:
| I'll bet the following happened, which Louis is actively
| fighting against...
|
| 1) you didn't get your data back if it was a hard drive
| issue
|
| 2) the service center replaced an entire part, not a
| .50cent component, and may have charged you for the full
| part.
|
| 3) it was not really authorized, because the third party
| authorized service center is new within 18months, and you
| can only replace screens and in few cases, batteries.
|
| With today's devices, it's really just about getting your
| data back. If the machine can be repaired enough for even
| 15min with just a simple popped capacitor change, that's
| enough to rescue your latest photos, and that's what
| Louis is fighting for. While publishing schematics would
| be a bonus, the big thing is don't strongarm
| manufacturers with legal constraints so they can't sell
| that 50 cent part to other parties so repair
| shops/individuals can get those 15min.
| slver wrote:
| More accurate title, just in interest of facts:
|
| > One Mac repair shop's fight to repair Macs.
|
| Apple can do a lot to make their hardware more repairable. But
| also I've seen Rossman outright demand their hardware changes
| just so it's easier to repair, without regard to things like
| weight, water resistance, and overall UX.
| bogwog wrote:
| > Apple can do a lot to make their hardware more repairable.
| But also I've seen Rossman outright demand their hardware
| changes just so it's easier to repair, without regard to things
| like weight, water resistance, and overall UX.
|
| Source? He released a video recently where he basically said
| that it doesn't matter if they're easy to repair. As technology
| gets more advanced, so do repair shops.
|
| It'll be harder for the average Joe at home, but that's
| precisely why independent repair shops that can offer
| competitive prices are so important.
|
| Plus, I just want to point out (in case it isn't clear to
| anyone reading your comment) that right to repair has
| absolutely nothing to do with making changes to the hardware,
| or about making repairs "easier".
|
| It's about supply chains; about making it _possible_ to buy
| replacement parts. Currently, Apple tells their suppliers that
| they're not allowed to sell parts to anyone else. A common
| example he cites in his videos is where Apple takes a commodity
| chip they didn't invent, makes a tiny change to it, and then
| place a custom order where the contract states that the
| manufacturer can't sell it to anyone else.
|
| So if that chip breaks, customers can't replace it with the
| common version, and they can't buy it from the only
| manufacturer that makes the "custom" version.
|
| The only alternative is trying to find a clone from China, or
| taking it from a "donor board" (which is not a sustainable or
| cost-effective practice)
| slver wrote:
| > He released a video recently where he basically said that
| it doesn't matter if they're easy to repair. As technology
| gets more advanced, so do repair shops.
|
| > It'll be harder for the average Joe at home, but that's
| precisely why independent repair shops that can offer
| competitive prices are so important.
|
| So you'd really recommend that Joe at home should repair
| their own Windows laptop or Android phone? Sorry but
| "gullible" is the word that comes to mind.
|
| Rossman is fighting for his right to do his own job. He has
| that right, but he also wants to be viral. To be viral, he
| needs to reframe his fight as the fight for the little guy to
| resolder a Wi-Fi modem at home on their MacBook. Which is
| frankly ridiculous.
|
| Technology, especially mobile, is at a stage where repairing
| at home is impossible due to integration and miniaturization.
|
| Maybe you could install your own RAM on a laptop. Well now
| that RAM is in the CPU, because it has to be there. So what
| do we do? Complain until technology goes back a decade or a
| few?
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| > So you'd really recommend that Joe at home should repair
| their own Windows laptop or Android phone?
|
| >> As technology gets more advanced, so do repair shops.
| It'll be harder for the average Joe at home, but that's
| precisely why independent repair shops that can offer
| competitive prices are so important.
| bogwog wrote:
| By "average Joe" I'm not referring to someone like my
| grandma or you, I mean someone who isn't a professional
| repair shop with specialized equipment, but still knows a
| few things about technology.
|
| I've repaired tons of my own devices over the years. The
| most "hardcore" repair I've done was replacing a blown
| capacitor in a Samsung monitor. The monitor was like $200,
| and the new capacitor cost less than a dollar. I'm terrible
| at soldering, and have zero skill in that category. That
| soldering job I did came out really bad, but that monitor
| still works ~8 years later, and it's sitting on my desk
| right now as I'm typing this.
|
| > Technology, especially mobile, is at a stage where
| repairing at home is impossible due to integration and
| miniaturization.
|
| > Maybe you could install your own RAM on a laptop. Well
| now that RAM is in the CPU, because it has to be there. So
| what do we do? Complain until technology goes back a decade
| or a few?
|
| Neither "right to repair" nor my original comment advocate
| for being able to repair your own devices at home. I said
| that, because new devices are impossible to repair at home,
| it's critical that independent repair shops can exist,
| because they have expertise and equipment most people don't
| have to home. Without those independent repair shops,
| customers are forced to pay the manufacturer for repairs.
| Apple charges $300 to "fix" a broken screen (they actually
| just send you a new phone), even though the displays are
| nowhere near that expensive _and Apple can get them at
| cost_ (or close to it).
|
| And right to repair has NOTHING to do with changing
| devices, making them go back "a decade or two", or any
| bullshit FUD like that. Seriously, go to
| https://www.fighttorepair.org/ and educate yourself on it
| so that you see it's 100% in your interests as a consumer.
| slver wrote:
| > I've repaired tons of my own devices over the years.
|
| Many of us have but again, minituarization,
| specialization and integration means this gradually
| becomes impossible.
|
| The age of generic parts is over. Things get built at
| scale, for a specific purpose, highly integrated, and
| tiny.
|
| Unless maybe you can chisel out your own SoC replacement
| from some sand and metal.
| bogwog wrote:
| Is this trolling? Did you read past that sentence you
| quoted?
| slver wrote:
| You replaced a capacitor. Is that supposed to render what
| I said invalid?
| bogwog wrote:
| > Neither "right to repair" nor my original comment
| advocate for being able to repair your own devices at
| home.
|
| Did you read that part?
| slver wrote:
| It's honestly hard to understand what our discussion is
| about at this point. I stated initially Rossman is
| fighting about his ability to buy working parts and doing
| repair. Now turns out you agree with that. So, I guess
| that's all.
| stale2002 wrote:
| Funny. I was in another conversation with the same user,
| and they trolled in the same exact way.
|
| Harp on their point without actually addressing anything
| in the response, or original post. Just completely ignore
| it.
| slver wrote:
| Yes, that's the right approach, if you can't develop your
| argument, just jump to another thread and assassinate my
| character with generalizations.
| [deleted]
| m55au wrote:
| > But also I've seen Rossman outright demand their hardware
| changes just so it's easier to repair, without regard to things
| like weight, water resistance, and overall UX.
|
| This is just a blatant lie and in fact complete opposite of
| what he is saying:
|
| https://youtu.be/RTbrXiIzUt4?t=959
| etewiah wrote:
| I bought the domain applesupportfails.com out of anger at getting
| poor customer service from apple but have so far failed to get it
| off the ground. Perhaps I need to reach out to Rossmann to get
| some support....
| xrd wrote:
| I wrote a book for O'Reilly that did really poorly in sales.
|
| I added content to show the places I made mistakes in my
| assumptions about the process, and put in sections in chapters
| that showed how I troubleshot those errors, and corrected the
| code.
|
| My editors asked me to remove that code. O'Reilly's brand, IMHO,
| is having the smartest people in the room talking to you. They
| don't want content that shows the author making mistakes. I felt
| like there was an audience for people who want a different voice,
| but who was I to argue with O'Reilly's success?
|
| Rossman seems like he is talking to that audience, people who
| aren't experts, and still courageous enough to get something
| fixed on their own.
|
| YouTube permits him to monetize that audience. I still think
| there is a huge gap in talking to people who are not experts and
| intimidated by the experts. There is a massive market for
| publishing there.
| paulgerhardt wrote:
| Living in Shenzhen, it's shocking how easy it is to go out and
| repair stuff. Living in Palo Alto, it's frustrating how hard it
| is.
|
| I'm thinking maybe, just maybe, introducing repairability laws
| won't solve the problem.
|
| I am perfectly happy upgrading the memory on my MacBook Air with
| a reflow air station rather than swapping out some dims if it
| means my laptop is half as thick and twice as rugged. I'm also
| just as happy dropping my phone off at a corner shop to replace
| the glass (while preserving the same electronics) using an
| industrial laminating machine.
|
| My problem today is not that repairability laws impede my
| progress here (they certainly don't exist in China either).
|
| My problem is I can only get the chips and schematics I need to
| effect the repair on the Chinese Internet (WeChat/Taobao) or find
| someone to do the repair for me for $40 on the Chinese street
| markets (Huaqiangnan in Shenzhen). When I go to a corner store in
| the US the "solution" to swap the whole sub-assembly
| (glass+electronics) not just glass in case of a screen repair for
| $100+
| LegitShady wrote:
| >My problem today is not that repairability laws impede my
| progress here (they certainly don't exist in China either).
|
| They do - they just do it upstream of you. The people you want
| to swap the parts can't get them, or if they do the parts are
| expensive, or don't pass the security checks of your device and
| now there's reduced functionality.
|
| The lack of repairability laws affects you but its up stream of
| you directly.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| I've watched my fair share of Strange Parts [1].
|
| The reason why you can get any device fixed is the availability
| of parts, yes. But also all of the highly specialized tools
| available combined with the skill of people in there.
|
| Even if someone in the US could get the exact same parts, they
| wouldn't be as able to fix the devices due to the lack of
| devices and necessary skills. This is also the reason why most
| electronics are made there, it's a staggering concentration of
| skilled electronics workers.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCO8DQrSp5yEP937qNqTooOw
| Nextgrid wrote:
| The reason it can be done in China is because those shops
| illegally obtain the parts (whether counterfeit or stolen,
| since Apple won't intentionally sell them to anyone) and
| resources (schematics, software, etc) to be able to do so.
|
| This situation is both good and bad. Stolen parts are good, in
| the sense that this grey market at least allows consumers to
| repair devices cost-effectively. It's also bad, because besides
| it essentially being theft, the grey market opens the door to
| bad actors who pass off used/defective/rejected/counterfeit
| parts as the real thing.
|
| Repairability laws would actually help here. You would get the
| same repair shops in the US if Apple was forced to provide
| schematics & parts at a reasonable cost, with no risk of
| counterfeits or bad parts.
|
| This is a big deal, and the reason there's so much opposition
| to right to repair, even beyond Apple. If R2R was a stupid,
| niche, geeky idea that doesn't bother anyone it would quietly
| get passed and that would be it, but the reason people _are_
| bothered by it and oppose it is because device manufacturers
| (whether computers or cars or farm equipment) actually make a
| lot of money off the status-quo.
| walrus01 wrote:
| > those shops illegally obtain the parts (whether counterfeit
| or stolen, since Apple won't intentionally sell them to
| anyone) and resources (schematics, software, etc) to be able
| to do so. This situation is both good and bad. Stolen parts
| are good
|
| I really doubt that many of those genuine repair parts for
| iphones and macbooks are _stolen_ , in the sense that
| somebody loaded up a pallet and took it from its manufacturer
| without paying. Apple doesn't manufacture most of these
| things, particularly the ICs and screens, and relies on a
| whole ecosystem of vendors and subcontractors.
|
| If a third party is paying a reasonably agreed upon market
| price to a factory to buy extra factory run of stock
| (example: DRAM ICs, or touchscreens), that's not theft.
|
| You would think that those factories would engage Chinese law
| enforcement if a significant percentage of their output was
| literally being stolen without payment, since that sort of
| thing affects their bottom line and is clearly a crime in
| their mainland china location.
|
| For people interested in this general topic (parent poster
| here mentioned living in Shenzhen), go read through all the
| historical content of Bunnie Huang's blog...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Huang_(hacker)
| nwallin wrote:
| What kind of theft, and from whom?
|
| My understanding is that a person with decision making
| power at these factories are negotiating with third party
| repair shops, agreeing on a price, and selling authentic
| Apple badged components or Apple schematics to them. In
| that sense, it is not theft.
|
| My understanding is that this is in absolute violation of
| Apple's license agreements and contracts with these
| factories. Those factories do not have a de jure legal
| right to sell those parts. In that sense, it is
| intellectual property theft.
|
| If and when these factories put those components on a
| palette, put that palette into a container, and put that
| container onto a ship, and that ship sails to a Western
| country with intellectual property protections, Apple has
| reported the shipments to customs authorities and gotten
| them seized as counterfeit parts, despite the fact that
| they were manufactured as part of the same batches as parts
| that became devices that were sold in Apple stores. Apple's
| problem is that China doesn't give a shit about any
| objections Apple might have to two CCP sanctioned Chinese
| businesses doing (illegal) business with each other.
|
| It _shouldn 't_ be intellectual property theft- Apple ought
| to be obliged to make these components and schematics
| available at fair prices to shops like Rossman's. But
| that's the way it _ought_ to be- in the mean time, it _is_
| theft, and those parts are stolen. Hopefully we 'll be able
| to get the laws fixed someday.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| It's not theft. But still it's most likely a contract
| violation of the contract between the production company
| and Apple. Apple would never in a million years allow any
| of their suppliers to sell Apple specific parts to the
| aftermarket.
| dataflow wrote:
| > It's not theft. But still it's most likely a contract
| violation of the contract between the production company
| and Apple. Apple would never in a million years allow any
| of their suppliers to sell Apple specific parts to the
| aftermarket.
|
| Then it only concerns those parties and it's _literally_
| not our business to worry about.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| It is our business to worry about. Such gross violation
| would be stamped out hard in the US and EU. This is one
| of the reasons it's hard/expensive to finds parts if you
| are not in Shenzhen. There should be laws that disallow
| exclusivity of parts.
| dataflow wrote:
| I think you missed my point. I was saying the _violation_
| isn 't our business and by its nature it is in no way
| comparable to theft or other crimes. i.e. private parties
| have a dispute that they need to settle privately. It's
| not on us to police whether they stick to their
| contracts.
|
| Whether that type of contract is allowed by the
| government/law in the first place is an entirely
| different discussion about commerce and regulation; I
| wasn't opining on that.
| loceng wrote:
| It's a signal when humans will do something against the law -
| and generally it seems to be a fair response to excessive
| control or at minimum a counterweight to the actions of a
| selfish for-profit or industry. Piracy comes to mind as well:
| if content becomes too expensive, requiring monthly
| subscriptions to too many places or then unreasonable cost to
| buy a specific film or series - then more people will pirate,
| and more reasonable people willing to pay will start to
| pirate - the more friction and unfairness in the balance of
| everything, the more piracy. The ability to pirate or repair
| by third-party both I believe are necessary to keep
| organizations in check.
|
| Edit to add: makes me think of Bitcoin too, people certainly
| have reason to be unhappy with local-global financial systems
| which have heavy-matured regulatory capture and overall
| corruption whether it's printing excessive money or being
| deceptive to foreign players so it's an uneven playing field.
| WalterBright wrote:
| You're right. When there's massive non-compliance with the
| law, there's something wrong with the law.
|
| For example, Prohibition, the war on drugs, gambling
| prohibitions, etc.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I can think of societies with massive tax evasion, from
| all economic classes of people and where bribes are
| normal. Is there something wrong with laws requiring tax
| payments and banning bribes?
| zabzonk wrote:
| Yes, because the law (and the systems supporting the law)
| can easily be evaded - there is something massively
| wrong.
| loceng wrote:
| Sure, when people aren't getting reasonable ROI from that
| tax money - e.g. it's invested poorly and not invested in
| a way that's improving enough of their own community.
|
| Imagine if paying tax was voluntary - how relatively
| quickly communities of people who valued and understood
| the value of that pooling and who voted in competent
| politicians to manage their community would thrive/grow
| vs. the free-for-all and deterioration of infrastructure
| in areas where people opted not to pay; mind you private
| businesses may provide better services and people using
| them is them voting for their existence (voluntary
| payment) - though arguably initially before enough wealth
| was generated it would have been impossible to borrow the
| $100s of billions needed to start massive infrastructure
| projects; from my understanding there's a bit of this,
| along with more or less corrupting, in Democratic vs.
| Republican leaning states.
|
| Re: bribes - I'd argue that amount of people wouldn't fit
| within the definition of following the spirit of the
| mechanism - you need a foundation with integrity to start
| for it to be an honest signal; or it's the reverse, the
| anti, bribery a sign of a lack of integrity and
| accountability in the system.
| HPsquared wrote:
| That depends on where the tax money would end up, I
| suppose. If it's somewhere even more corrupt than the tax
| evaders, the morality becomes debatable. There is always
| the free-rider problem to deal with, though.
| einpoklum wrote:
| > It's also bad, because besides it essentially being theft
|
| Nobody stole parts from Apple's warehouses.
|
| So "essentially", it is not theft. Unless "essentially" means
| "by some outlandish, ridiculous, anti-popular and pro-
| corporate international legal fiction".
| robocat wrote:
| I presume he is talking about phones stolen from consumers
| that have been parted out.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Nope I mean theft from the official factory. Given the
| working conditions, I wouldn't be surprised if the
| workers were smuggling out parts or were doing a whole
| "night run" for the secondary market (at higher prices
| than what Apple pays) in addition to the normal run.
| monocasa wrote:
| Ghost shifts are getting rarer and rarer in the days of
| 24/7, nonstop manufacturing lines.
| paulgerhardt wrote:
| By volume, the chips on the open market aren't stolen and
| most aren't counterfeit. Most are legitimate and a fair
| amount of the suspiciously cheap parts are binned or older
| revisions. The scale of the chip marketplace is more akin to
| sum of the agricultural output of California's Central Valley
| - not your weekend farmers market. No one is messing around
| with stolen parts in these kind of quantities.
|
| The reason companies are kicking and screaming about right to
| repair is because reverse logistics (how you deal
| broken/returned goods) is already a huge cost center and the
| legislation as proposed would make it more so. No one is
| making massive profit off repair parts - they're offsetting
| massive losses.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| I don't mean chips per-se, I mean complete assemblies like
| iPhone displays. As far as I know, there's no "legitimate"
| source for those, it's all either outright stolen,
| counterfeit or bad/rejected parts.
|
| > because reverse logistics (how you deal broken/returned
| goods) is already a huge cost center and the legislation as
| proposed would make it more so
|
| How would right to repair affect that? And if it wasn't
| profit-motivated how do you explain the extreme efforts
| some manufacturers do to prevent people from repairing
| their own devices (like iPhone cameras being associated
| with the logic board and not being usable in any other
| phone of the same model)?
| userbinator wrote:
| They could also be recycled from units with other damaged
| parts, which is also "legitimate", whatever that means
| (although I'm sure Apple et.al. don't want that.)
|
| In much the same way that salvage yards are a source of
| car parts, yet companies like Tesla are trying to stop
| that.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Not sure if it's the case for Apple, but for other
| phones, there's definitely plenty of parts recycling
| happening.
|
| I replaced my broken Galaxy S4 screen when in Shenzhen in
| 2015, and bought a replacement screen for Galaxy S3 for
| my wife (to have a spare I could use to perform the
| repair myself back home). My repair was dirt-cheap - I
| paid something like $10 to get a whole new screen
| assembly _and_ a new back camera (I broke mine), the
| whole repair done in front of me in under 5 minutes. The
| extra screen for my wife was much more expensive - ~$50,
| IIRC. The difference is, with my phone, they kept the
| broken parts. They presumably replaced the broken glass
| in it at their own pace, and put it back on the market.
|
| I also saw plenty of work being done on phone components,
| as well as people unloading and sorting through big bags
| of broken phones. There's _lots_ of e-waste recycling
| going on there.
| dingusthemingus wrote:
| My buddy buys broken Iphones/screens and sells them to
| China where all the underlying parts are stripped and
| used for repairing Iphones. This is legitamite not shady
| at all.
|
| Ships hundreds at a time. A lof of the parts used for
| repair in China are coming from US/EU broken phones.
| walrus01 wrote:
| > it's all either outright stolen, counterfeit or
| bad/rejected parts
|
| The other very common possibility is that it's what's
| called a "ghost shift" where the factory runs a whole
| production run on a possibly overnight work shift,
| creates a batch of product for sale to third parties, and
| then resumes their legit-for-transfer-to-apple production
| run the next morning. Happens with all sorts of
| electronics manufacturing in mainland china.
|
| This does not necessarily mean that the ghost shift
| products go through _absolutely_ the same level of QC
| that the main production run gets, but I wouldn 't call
| them counterfeit.
| ThrustVectoring wrote:
| "ghost shift" production _with_ the trademarks is
| counterfeit, but isn 't _without_ the trademarks.
| Regardless of marking it 's still likely unauthorized use
| of intellectual property.
| walrus01 wrote:
| I mentally make a distinction between "counterfeit"
| products which are actually authentic and good quality,
| unlikely to hurt the consumer, but arguably cause some
| harm to apple's IP, and "counterfeit" products which are
| actually poor quality clones made by inferior production
| lines. It's unfortunate that the same term is used for
| both.
| Foxfox12 wrote:
| There is nothing wrong with this. In fact, it should be a
| legal requirement that all OEMs allow 3rd parties to
| manufacture these parts to provide as replacements.
|
| Saving the planet is far more important than protecting
| the profits for replacement parts. Of course they
| shouldn't be allowed to sell complete phones but selling
| screens is good.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > I mean complete assemblies like iPhone displays. As far
| as I know, there's no "legitimate" source for those
|
| So how are legitimate high street shops in the west doing
| it? You can't convince me every town in the UK has a
| criminal operation working in the open doing screen
| replacements?
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| >the grey market opens the door to bad actors who pass off
| used/defective/rejected/counterfeit parts as the real thing.
|
| The real thing is already broken if you're at the point of
| buying these parts. The entire object is already e-waste
| until you add new parts.
|
| E-waste turned into functional object is a good thing even if
| it's achieved with used/rejected/counterfeit parts.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Well the worry is that you spend _more_ money on a part
| that turns out to be unusable, so you end up with no device
| _and_ less money.
| wmf wrote:
| That seems like a basic consumer protection issue that's
| mostly already solved in the developed world. When I get
| my car serviced, it's understood that I will hold the
| mechanic responsible for everything so they don't even
| bother trying to put sketchy parts in my car.
| Foxfox12 wrote:
| The only bad part is some of these parts are stolen from
| users. Because the main board on an iPhone is account
| locked, crime groups will strip the phone down for parts
| and sell these on eBay to people looking to fix their
| phones.
|
| This is why I think Apple should account lock all parts on
| the iPhone and tell the user this but if the original owner
| unlinks the phone, the parts will work again.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| I remember in the 80s, devices would all _come_ with the
| complete schematics right there in the box. I remember poring
| over them after buying something, I thought it was fascinating.
| Like my TV, computer etc. Everything.
|
| This should really be brought back, even though component-level
| fixing is not nearly as easy as it was back then.
| kccqzy wrote:
| I recently bought a cheap Chinese electric cooker just for
| fun. The instruction "manual" was a flimsy piece of paper.
| Yet it still contained schematics, as simple as it was.
| ksec wrote:
| The repair cost isn't dominated by the cost of parts, but
| operation cost such as labour and rent.
|
| If your concern are the $100+ for repair, then it will be the
| same regardless Apple provide the parts or not. Not to mention
| knowing Apple, they will definitely sell you an iPhone battery
| for $20+. Earning the same Gross Margin as their product.
| White_Wolf wrote:
| I don't know what to say about that. HP wanted to charge me
| the price of a new laptop motherboard for a forgotten BIOS
| password(around PS650). A guy, in the phone repair shop on
| the high street replaced the BIOS chips for PS112 and my
| laptop runs like a champ. It's a pretty big difference for a
| laptop worth around PS1500.
| Scene_Cast2 wrote:
| Part of that could be the ratio of part cost to labor cost.
|
| I do agree that there's no culture of appreciating schematics
| around Palo Alto.
| bronson wrote:
| Not since Jim Williams died. :(
| _dps wrote:
| I worry that believing the jobs are not coming back is a self-
| fulfilling prophecy - one with dangerous consequences of
| locking its believers into perpetual dependence on supply from
| places that act essentially as sin externalization depots.
|
| If $2/hr vs $10/hr is indeed the thing preventing repair being
| economical , that seems like it can be fixed with a mixture of
| incentives, apprenticeship contracts, and elevating the social
| status of "vocational education" (the name exists IMO only to
| serve as status-lowering). Or if not one of those, then some
| other untried thing.
|
| Edit: as sibling comments mention, if in fact the main
| limitation is not labor prices but exclusive-supply agreements
| for certain consumable parts, then this seems easily within the
| scope of Antitrust to address.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > If $2/hr vs $10/hr is indeed the thing preventing repair
| being economical , that seems like it can be fixed with a
| mixture of incentives, apprenticeship contracts, and
| elevating the social status of "vocational education" (the
| name exists IMO only to serve as status-lowering).
|
| That incentive is the $x per hour. And the low $x per hour
| relative to quality of life is what causes the status
| lowering. Status is not lowered by a couple words. A doctor
| spends a ton of time in "vocational education".
| walrus01 wrote:
| > I am perfectly happy upgrading the memory on my MacBook Air
| with a reflow air station
|
| Probably 0.01% of Apple product owners in North America also
| own a hot air reflow station and have the skills/practice to
| use it safely on a very densely populated laptop or phone
| motherboard.
|
| I would also wager that if you were to look at the pay scale
| for skilled electronics repair people capable of safely doing
| so with little risk of killing the board, the market rate for a
| person running a hot air reflow station to do that work, in a
| big city in north america (chicago, SF, seattle, NY, etc) might
| be $200/hour. By the time you were to pay for the repair
| service and the parts it might not be economical.
|
| One of the things that seems to be much more common in mainland
| China is that random small phone/laptop repair shops have the
| technical capability in house to do this sort of work. In the
| USA the same shops' technical abilities are limited to what can
| be done with some tweezers, a set of precision screwdrivers,
| prying tools/spudgers, etc.
|
| Note that I am not excusing apple's terrible repair parts
| availability or pricing, or other practices which make it
| difficult for a trained third party to acquire and install
| legit parts.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > By the time you were to pay for the repair service and the
| parts it might not be economical.
|
| Louis Rossmann proves that such a business does work and is
| profitable while remaining significantly cheaper for
| customers (otherwise he wouldn't get any business).
| walrus01 wrote:
| I think this works by volume of customers in the NYC metro,
| but might not be viable for a repair shop in a smaller
| city. I would be very interested to see if a similar
| specialist could financially support the salaries of a few
| full time techs in a much smaller metro on the scale of,
| for example, Spokane WA.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| But in this case the market would balance itself; this
| isn't an argument against the right to repair. If there's
| indeed no market for this then nothing will change, but
| it doesn't mean parts/schematics shouldn't be available
| in case people do want to repair devices.
| webmobdev wrote:
| My problem is I can only get the chips and schematics I need to
| effect the repair on the Chinese Internet
|
| Exactly. And we need legislation to make it happen. In India, I
| remember someone started a multi-brand service centre for cars.
| The automobile industry ganged up on him and refused to supply
| original parts to him. He had to go to the courts, and the
| courts ruled for him and in favour of consumer rights and made
| it very clear that the automobile industry had to supply parts
| to any mechanic shop that asked for it.
|
| We now need a similar legislation for every other industry too.
| spamizbad wrote:
| Right to Repair isn't demanding manufacturers make all memory
| socketed: but if a RAM chip goes bad they are asking that a new
| one can be purchased legally and soldered in place. Right now,
| there are many 40-cent components in laptops a repair shop
| cannot purchase from component manufacturers because Apple, or
| Asus or whenever told them not to sell it to 3rd parties. Or
| proprietary firmware flashing tools, or what have you. None of
| this impacts the physical form factor of a machine.
| SMAAART wrote:
| What an interesting guy. So, YouTubing for therapy? Good one!
| ShiftPrintBlog wrote:
| France is pushing a law targeting a similar issue with Apple
| phones and laptops
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/26/22302664/apple-france-rep...
| aasasd wrote:
| Tip: if you're curious enough to watch a video of Rossmann's, do
| that in the incognito mode. Otherwise you'll be pestered with
| recommendations of the other two thousand of his videos, until
| the end of your days. Perhaps you'll even be able to follow the
| epic of his fight by the titles of new videos.
| Fizzer wrote:
| Anytime you want to mute a channel, just click the three dots
| to the lower right of a video and select "Don't recommend
| channel"
| aasasd wrote:
| Sorta loath to do that, because I don't want YT to stop
| suggesting stuff _related_ to that channel and its general
| topics. I just don 't need more Louis Rossmann in my life,
| the rants don't do me any good--possibly aside from keeping
| my heart strong from pumping against the pressure, I guess.
| But the stress snacks will kill me. I'd like the algo to take
| a gentle hint already, it was like a year since the last
| watching.
|
| I did some digging in the innards of a Macbook Pro, years
| earlier, and have a couple leftover screws as a result. I
| think I'll leave the next endeavor to people with better
| hands, especially since putting in an extra hard drive isn't
| an option anymore.
| technofiend wrote:
| You can remove your history of viewed videos in whole or in
| part. I've found that the most effective way to stop
| YouTube's manic obsession for any topic I've viewed once.
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