Right to repair laws are very slowly emerging at state, national, and international (EU) levels -- to a paltry and nearly useless extent, I must say.

The question is, what can be done by regional/local governments who seem to just be passively sitting on this? What should we petition for locally, as the state/national/intl efforts continue to be a shit show? Small local govs would not likely have the power or influence to twist the arms of product makers. But it seems we should be demanding they do something.

My brainstorm so far, captured as a link farm:

• enhance repair cafés
• provide free repair training
• provide access to repair tools
• write a piracy exception into law for service manuals and wiring diagrams
• take a jab at Google’s gatekeeping of repair videos - how?
• make junk yards public access by mandate
• implement a public DB that tracks appliance disposal and sends notifications to repairers
• implement a public DB that tracks instances where manufacturers refuse to disclose docs
• somehow stop the pratice of charging as much to merely look at a broken machine as to replace it

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/21031468

SSDs can only tolerate a certain number of writes to each block. And the number is low. I have a 64gb SSD that went into a permanent read-only mode. 64gb is still today a very useful capacity. Thus the usefulness is cut short by hardware design deficiencies.

Contrast that with magnetic hard drives which often live beyond the usefulness of their capacity. That is, people toss out working 80mb mechanical drives now because they’re too small to justify the physical space they occupy, not because of premature failure ending the device’s useful life.

Nannying

When an SSD crosses a line whereby the manufacturer considers it unreliable, it goes into a read-only mode which (I believe) is passworded with a key that is not disclosed to consumers. The read-only mode is reasonable as it protects users from data loss. But the problem is the nannying that denies “owners” ultimate control over their own property.

When I try to dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/mydrive, dd is lied to and will write zeros all day and report success, but dd’s instructions are merely ignored and have no effect.

The best fix in that scenario would generally be to tell the drive to erase itself using a special ATA command, like this:

$ hdparm --security-erase $'\0' /dev/sdb
      security_password: ""

      /dev/sdb:
       Issuing SECURITY_ERASE command, password="", user=user
      SG_IO: bad/missing sense data, sb[]:  70 00 01 00 00 00 00 0a 00 00 00 00 00 1d 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
      SG_IO: bad/missing sense data, sb[]:  70 00 0b 00 00 00 00 0a 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

Not sure why my null char got converted to a yen symbol, but as you can see the ATA instruction is blocked.

Here is a take from someone who endorses the nannying. The problem is that there is a presumption on how the drive will be used. Give me a special switch like:

$ hdparm --security-erase $'\0' --I-know-what-I-am-doing-please-let-me-shoot-myself-in-the-foot /dev/sdb

and this is what I would do:

$ dd if=KNOPPIX_V8.2-2018-05-10-EN.iso of=/dev/foo
$ hdparm --make-read-only /dev/foo

When the drive crosses whatever arbitrary line of reliability, it’s of course perfectly reasonable to do one last write operation to control what content is used in read-only mode.

5 years later when a different live distro is needed, it would of course be reasonable to repeat the process. One write every ~5 years would at least keep the hardware somewhat useful in the long term.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/31944279

Terumo Cardiovascular, a company that makes six-figure medical equipment used in heart surgeries, is apparently keen on attracting the ire of the “right to repair” movement. But given the Trump administration’s assault on state and federal consumer protection, it’s not clear they’ll face many meaningful repercussions for it.

A subscription anti-theft feature that should be free.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/28468838

The auto industry’s commitment to right to repair is being tested.

Today, we at SFC, along with our OpenWrt member project, announce the production release of the OpenWrt One. This is the first wireless Internet router designed and built with your software freedom and right to repair in mind. The OpenWrt One will never be locked down and is forever unbrickable. This device services your needs as its owner and user. Everyone deserves control of their computing. The OpenWrt One takes a great first step toward bringing software rights to your home: you can control your own network with the software of your choice, and ensure your right to change, modify, and repair it as you like.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/15232893

From the initial assessment to the final clean-up, Dwyer Restoration is committed to delivering efficient and effective restoration services.

Contact Dwyer Restoration today for all your restoration needs and let us help you restore your property to its pre-damaged condition.

I’ve just watched the video. I find it pretty outrageous. The word about it should spread.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/9227800

Polish train manufacturer that lost servicing tender programmed train controller to brick itself after train stays for some time in 6 ISP facilities or in 1 their faculity(for testing?) until undocumented button combination is pressed. Some controller versions brick itself after train is idle for 10 days. After news about this became public, manufacturer removed ability to unlock train by button combination.

Also manufacturer is able to remotely brick train over internet(connected via GSM) at any time.

Mod wanted ONLY article, so enjoy reading in polish.

A judge rejected John Deere’s motion to dismiss a landmark class action lawsuit over the agricultural giant’s repair monopolies, paving the way for a trial that will determine whether the company’s repair practices are illegal At issue are the many tactics Deere has used to make it more difficult and often impossible for farmers to repair their own tractors, from software locks and “parts pairing” that prevent farmers from replacing parts without the authorization of a Deere dealership "Deere—by itself or through its agents—repeatedly made public statements that purchasers could make repairs to their own Tractors but the reality was that they couldn’t,” Johnson wrote.

I feel it is important to support projects and businesses who are working on making it easier to repair and upgrade the things they make. So here's a thread about laptop computers.

Context

Desktop computers were not perfect in terms of being able to be fixed/upgraded, but they were better than laptops. So, where can one go to find laptops that can be repaired or upgraded?

The List

• https://mntre.com/ Open source, modular, ARM-based laptops
  • There's also a smaller model in the works
    • https://www.crowdsupply.com/mnt/pocket-reform
    • https://hackaday.com/2023/04/11/a-miniature-mnt-for-every-pocket/
• https://frame.work/ Faster, intel based modular laptop
  • Components can be reconfigured into a tablet form factor https://www.instructables.com/Framework-Tablet-Assembly-Manual/

Honorable mentions

Some honorable mentions that are no longer available (or never were):

• https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi/novena
• https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-desktop

Multi-pronged approach

I'm not opposed to asking politicians to solve the problem of sustainability, but it typically takes many years, and even then with mixed results. So I thought a thread on some more direct action was in order. I believe there is room for both strategies in our fight to fix our stuff.

A call to action

If you know of other sources that we can shop to get quality gear, while supporting people who are actively giving people the right to repair right here and now (and without being forced to against their will), post 'em in the replies.

Xmas is coming up. If a laptop is something you're considering, please give the vendors in this thread a look. Even if you ultimately go with something else, it's good to consider your options. Besides, it's not a matter of just being altruistic; many of us would argue these are also the better value in the long term!

You'd think it'd be simple-- you should be able to repair things you've bought and paid for!-- but big corporations want to squeeze even more blood out of that stone wallet of yours. Want to fight back? Check out #RightToRepair: https://jimhightower.substack.com/p/friday-signpost-can-you-repair-what
@righttorepair @uspirg