Why We Must Fight for the Right to Repair Our Electronics - <AUTHOR> https://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/conservation/why-we-must-fight-for-the-right-to-repair-our-electronics <comment><USER4> What about the right to _use_ our electronics? Google has been silently pushing their "SafetyNet" APIs into Android, including an "attestation" API[1] that dynamically fetches and runs an opaque binary program[2] served and signed by Google that collects whatever data they deem necessary to verify the "integrity" of a device.

Devices that are rooted will not fail to attest via the API. Devices where the user has chosen to install a custom ROM will fail to attest (even with a locked bootloader and no root). Apps from Google Play can use these APIs to decide whether to work on a user's device.

This is macOS SIP taken to a different level. You can't watch Netflix and whatever other app decides to use these APIs unless Google has complete control over your device, including the ability to remotely collect and transmit opaque and arbitrary data at any time. This is a dishonest attempt to disguise a draconian DRM scheme as pro-user, pro-safety, anti-virus/rootkit. We're at the point where you don't even own your own filesystem anymore on a Linux device. I think this is a step beyond traditional DRM, including traditional hardware content protection.

[1] [https://developer.android.com/training/safetynet/attestation...](https://developer.android.com/training/safetynet/attestation.html) [2] [https://koz.io/inside-safetynet/](https://koz.io/inside-safetynet/)

<comment><USER5> Yet another reason why we shouldn't accept being sold such proprietary garbage. SafetyNet is another attempt at creating a system similar to Treacherous Boot[1] -- similar to what people feared that UEFI's "Secure Boot" would become (luckily we avoided that fate on x86 systems, but all of the Windows RT devices are by definition "Treacherous Boot").

I would personally _love_ if we could get proprietary software to become illegal (or for there to be some sort of disincentive such as taxing proprietary software, or enforcing and extending warranties on proprietary software). But large proprietary software companies hold such sway in politics that hoping for that doesn't really help. It would be a much better idea to simply stop buying their crap, and helping others around you "break the shackles" (as it were). Digital Restrictions Management is something that I always mention when people talk about Netflix or other such streaming services -- because once you explain the issues with those kinds of services I find that most people are at least intrigued by alternatives (which usually have features that the DRM systems don't, because DRM has always been clunky as they're trying to accomplish something that is effectively not possible).

[1]: [http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/drm.html](http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/drm.html)

<comment><USER6> I feel like taxing proprietary software, or making it illegal would be awful. Many companies big to small run businesses off of proprietary software. You have the big players like Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook. Not sure how some of these compare in size, but you also have Github, Shopify, Squarespace, Reddit, Atlassian, Basecamp, robo advisor companies. Then you consider not purely based online companies like banks or retail stores that sell their products online, or give you the ability to trade ETFs. Some of those they could use open stuff instead, as they make money off of trades.

I do agree that making DRM is a losing battle, and they are transferring that cost to legitimate customers. Really though I don't have much other options for streaming. Amazon prime has the same setup, and CraveTV probably does too. Though Crave doesn't have much for content that I'm interested in.

<comment><USER5> > I feel like taxing proprietary software, or making it illegal would be > awful.

Maybe taxing on the _distribution_ of proprietary software would be more palatable? After all, software that is written can only become proprietary if you distribute it to other people under a non-free license. I personally think the warranty idea is much softer on companies (while still giving some more protection for end-users).

I don't think banks should be taxed for having propreitary systems. I do have a problem with SaaS[1] companies, and companies which make money of selling software which is proprietary -- because they are actively creating a monopoly on the expertise in and ability to support their particular software (known more politely as vendor lock-in). Not to mention that proprietary software developers incredibly often mistreat their users through a variety of schemes.

[1]: [https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server- really-s...](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really- serve.en.html)

<comment><USER6> That would then also apply to games. Anything that really runs on a device.

Really I think we just need better regulation around it all. So making sure that you are allowed to hack your own device if you wish. Able to extract your data. SaaS companies being required to give you data exports (unless unsafe to do so).

<comment><USER5> I'm not understanding why it matters what the software is. Modern games are already being used as a glorified way of getting more money out of their users (micro-transactions, "loot boxes", endless DLCs, multiple tiers, etc). It's not as though they'll stop making money (with "gambling simulators" and micro- transactions alone you can make hundreds of dollars out of any given user).

Taxing proprietary software distribution is a form of regulation. The ideas you propose are too piece-meal and won't actually solve the underlying problems -- namely that proprietary software is used as a tool to abuse its users. This is something that is inherent to the power dynamic between a developer and the users of proprietary software, regulation won't help.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here's a related thought: what if the law stated something along the lines of, if DRM/hardware locks/etc prevent you or a 3rd party of your choosing from repairing, then the party who owns the lock should be responsible for the repairs (including costs)

Then a company can decide if they're in the business of licencing or selling, and make their decisions accordingly. it could also help establish a line between ownership of the device vs of the license.

<comment><USER8> DRM has always represented an attempt on the part of content owners to seize more territory than the framers of US copyright law intended. Copyright was supposed to be a bargain between the creators and the commons. In return for the rightsholder's agreement to release the material into the public domain upon expiration, the government would grant a temporary legal monopoly.

Unfortunately the first part of the copyright bargain is implicit, not part of the law. With DRM, rightsholders get to have their cake -- _our_ cake -- and eat it too. Not only is the protection granted by copyright now effectively perpetual, but they've purchased additional legislation such as the DMCA and endless copyright term extensions that punish people who are trying to claim their half of the bargain.

IMHO copyright should not apply to anything with DRM. Rightsholders should be forced to decide whether they want a temporary legal monopoly with no technical protection, or a permanent technical monopoly with no legal protection.

<comment><USER9> Copyright is not, and never was, for creators. It's for publishers.

<comment><USER5> Copyright _was_ for authors a very long time ago[1]. It's been slowly corrupted by the greed of publishers over a very long time, but it is important to remember where copyright actually comes from and to reject emotional arguments about the rights of publishers (in truth, they don't deserve rights over creators' works -- they abuse creators enough as-is).

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne)

<comment><USER10> Uhhhh....

> These restrictions were enforced by the Stationers' Company, a guild of > printers given the exclusive power to print—and the responsibility to > censor—literary works.

<comment><USER5> If you read the full paragraph in context (and the following paragraph), it says:

> _Prior to the statute 's enactment in 1710_, copying restrictions were > authorized by the Licensing of the Press Act 1662. [Your quote about the > Stationers' Company]. The censorship administered under the Licensing Act > led to public protest; as the act had to be renewed at two-year intervals, > authors and others sought to prevent its reauthorisation. _In 1694, > Parliament refused to renew the Licensing Act_ , ending the Stationers' > monopoly and press restrictions. Over the next 10 years the Stationers > repeatedly advocated bills to re-authorize the old licensing system, but > Parliament declined to enact them. _Faced with this failure, the Stationers > decided to emphasise the benefits of licensing to authors rather than > publishers, and the Stationers succeeded in getting Parliament to consider a > new bill._

Which means that your quote is quite out-of-context. The Stationers' Company lost their monopoly over printing rights due to public outcry, and they failed to get a new law passed until they made a change to it that emphasised the protection of authors. _That_ law was called the Statute of Anne.

Even earlier on, copyright "law" was used as a tool of censorship by the Queen of England (who was Mary at the time). Effectively, a publisher would ask the monarch for the exclusive right to publish a particular book, and a guild of printers (the Stationers' Company) was formed later that then enforced their own version of Copyright under these monopolies they were given.

The Statute of Anne was the first time copyright was actually a public law, that anyone could enforce -- and it was the first time that something you could call a "copyright system" was intended to protect _authors_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wish people on hn wouldn't be so opposed to GPL and copy left licensing, because the four freedoms as presented by RMS really saw this coming a long time ago. The same principles apply to hardware.

I think its a salient point that the same companies opposed to or abusing copy left are the same ones locking users out from hardware repairs.

<comment><USER12> > RMS really saw this coming a long time ago

And one of the reasons for GPLv3: the anti-tivoisation clause. You should be allowed to install modified software in your own devices.

People have misconstrued anti-tivoisation that to mean that Apple can't keep malware out of your iPhone by key signatures, but that's not what it means, nor was it the primary reason why Apple wanted to prevent their users from installing unsigned software. It's about giving control to users and giving them both the key and the lock and letting them decide what goes on their own machines. Trying to paternalistically tell users what they can and cannot install has culminated in a method of control for repairs and obsolescence.

<comment><USER13> That isn't what it _means_ but the problem with it is that it has _extra knock on effects_.

There is a reason GPL v2 was incredibly popular and GPLv3 basically killed all momentum and it wasn't because GPLv3 _was better_. At least not from a business point of view.

And that, at its core, is the issue. In a world where the only licence is GPLv3... it works. But in a world where people can choose other licenses - <USER2> won't be the choice of most.

It's a shame because I love the GPLv2 but I'll never use GPLv3 and honestly it's just less hassle to chose MIT for most companies.

<comment><USER14> You should stop looking things only from "a business point of view", often what is best for business is bad for the users - even if they don't understand it themselves to care enough about (at which point what the business is doing is little different from taking advantage of their users' lack of knowledge and should be shamed instead of used as an example for others to mimic).

<comment><USER13> Thinking like yours gave us GPLv3 and less subsequent adoption of copyleft licenses.

Which means you've got a lovely and ideologically pure hill to die on, but die you will.

 _In the real world_ code is useless without being adopted. The largest adopters? Businesses. They don't want to use GPLv3? Less developers likely to use it (market forces I'm afraid).

So no, I'll keep paying attention to _what works_ and not be beholden to the idealistic notions of the FSF, thanks.

<comment><USER15> What business stay away from GPL3 that were OK with GPL2? The only one I can think of is apple and they're the type of free loaders that don't benefit the wider OSS community anyway. Most companies are still using linux with gnu tools so the version 3 hasn't affected them at all.

<comment><USER16> > is apple and they're the type of free loaders that don't benefit the wider > OSS community anyway.

Forgetting about a little project called clang? Swift is open source, WebKit is open source (with a tarnished history).

I'm not claiming Apple are perfect, but saying they're free loaders who don't benefit is a flat out lie.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So, I work in obsolescence trying to support systems that operate for upwards of 20-30 years. It has been a real learning experience, as I have a much longer product lifecycle to support, and yet, we burn through material for repairs. There is very little actual board repair or similar, more pull out a entire assembly, toss it and put it an entire new assembly. Wasteful, just like Apple or similar saying to just throw out the entire device (or recycle it).

I don't like it, but ultimately I can see our disposable consumer culture really manifested through this situation. Most commercial-off-the-shelf components are not made to last for time to market, material and cost reasons. If they were, the pace of technological development might decrease and cost would probably increase.

Sometimes I wonder if we have progressed "enough" technologically to step back and use the power we have to build some long term support/sustainable technology infrastructure. Yet I fear unless our hand is forced, we will persist in the current trends of using a lot of energy and raw material to produce something that doesn't last long enough, and then sell "recycling" as the solution.

Can the recycling chain really make up for all the energy, and activity consumed and pollution/byproducts produced throughout the process?

Sometimes I wonder if we spent more time on modular, upgradeable designs, long term support components, etc. we might fair better. Easier said than done? Sustainable engineering/manufacturing is a complex, emerging science.

Still, obsolescence is a many headed hydra, whether you do long term support or planned obsolescence. I don't see any easy answers but I'm looking!

</comment><comment><USER18> Interesting article coming from the IEEE, who has historically been very pro- DRM, anti-consumer.

 _Back in 2012, Toshiba told laptop repair tech Tim Hicks that he needed to remove 300 PDFs of Toshiba's official repair manuals from his website, where he was offering the information for free. To avoid being sued, Hicks complied, and now fewer people have the guidance they need to repair Toshiba laptops._

Of course, you can still find the manuals if you know where to look, and even complete schematics --- no doubt leaked by those in the far East who actually have access. There's always been an underground repair movement, sharing manuals and other information and reverse-engineering as necessary[1][2]; but that's getting rarer as things get more "secure", and the sites themselves being DMCA'd or otherwise taken down. Perhaps LibGen/SciHub could start a subsidiary specifically for hosting such leaked/"samizdat" repair information, given how they seem to be staying alive despite copyright...

[1] [https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=446](https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=446)

[2] [https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=1970](https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=1970)

<comment><AUTHOR> > Interesting article coming from the IEEE, who has historically been very > pro-DRM, anti-consumer.

The article was written by Kyle Wiens (from iFixit) and Gay Gordon-Byrne (from Repair.org ). It might not represent the opinions of IEEE Spectrum (the magazine which published the article).

Do you have a link or references to the 'pro DRM' or 'anti-consumer' stance of the IEEE? As an IEEE Member, I would like to know about such things about the organisation.

<comment><USER19> Not specifically about DRM, but just their general attitude towards transparency and implementability. Making standards non-public (as in, for anyone to look at on the web for free) is a pretty anti-consumer thing to do, as is creating standards that include patented technology. The usefulness of standards for the consumer is interoperability. Both of those things actively prevent interoperability.

<comment><AUTHOR> I see. Yes, making standards 'non-public' is an issue. In the past, I had to pay to obtain some standards documents as reference materials for products that I was working on.

It would be much nicer if the standards were freely available, like those released by the IETF.

However, the IEEE isn't the only guilty one including patented technology in their standards. I believe the MPEG-LA also does the same thing (the MP3 and H.264 standards).

<comment><USER19> No, it's shockingly common, actually ... but it's still shocking how an organization of supposedly engineers obviously is incapable of recognizing and addressing an obvious massive structural flaw in their supposed solution to the problem of interoperability.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> We must push for the right of _comprehensible ownership_ , not the right to repair your electronics. We must stop the consumer trend of not really owning things, but instead buying a license to use something.

Consumers don't keep track of every little law or right, and must rely on intuition to guide their sense. Ignorance of the law is a most forgivable excuse to forgetting you have some right or protection in the first place, and a "license to use" breaks a lot of citizens understanding of their legal relationship to the goods they acquired from the market, and the kind of protections their society offers them.

Most citizens don't imagine that they cannot repair or break apart their Ikea furniture. Of course I'm not saying that ordinary people want to break open their phones or laptops, but they may want to take it to a repair shop.

<comment><USER21> > Consumers don't keep track of every little law or right

This came up in a similar form in the discussion about IoT devices and privacy. We hold doctors and civil engineers to standards to protect the public, why shouldn't we do the same for software and hardware that could ruin your life? If you don't think this is a problem, or businesses have a "right" to pursue profits at all costs, you are a part of the problem and need to kindly find another industry to harm.

<comment><USER20> > If you don't think this is a problem, or businesses have a "right" to pursue > profits at all costs, you are a part of the problem and need to kindly find > another industry to harm.

You might have a romantic model of the medical system, but I certainly don't think that any business in any industry should be able to pursue profits without any moral restraint.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> My Surface Pro 4 no longer detects its own internal drive. Is the connection loose? Do I need to replace the drive? I don't know because I can't open it up easily.

This is weird for me because I've always been able to reliably do my own repairs, even on my previous MacBook Pro. To now realize that my Surface is worthless unless I'm still barely within the warranty period is unsettling.

<comment><USER23> Unfortunately, Macbooks and Macbook Pros are like this now too :(

Apple will say it is necessary to make it as thin and efficient as possible. But that has a smell to it. My Dell XPS 15 9550 can be easily serviced : the SDD, Memory, wifi card and battery are all accessible and it doesn't sacrifice (much) thinness or weight to accomplish.

I sometimes wonder if the customer would be OK with Macbooks being 1mm thicker with user replaceable parts. There is only so thin you can go... If Apple wants claim to tell a sustainability story or to be "green" this planned obsolescence stuff needs to go.

<comment><USER24> While it is true that Apple laptops have been getting thinner, the rest of your comment is severely out of step with reality.

MacBooks and MacBook Pros do have repair options. At least until they are obsolete. And since Apple caps the price the consumer pays for parts at a set per-model limit, the repairs can be surprisingly reasonable, especially if several major repairs are done at once. We had a top cover with keyboard, battery, motherboard, and MagSafe charging board all replaced with new ones for a total of under $400, a low price that was then waived because we had AppleCare.

As far as sustainability and being green, Apple takes computers for recycling at its stores. Where I live they also have a dedicated electronics drop off spot separate from the store, but then I am in Silicon Valley. They then have centers which break down the computers into parts, eventually recovering precious metals and reusable components and responsibly dealing with hazardous waste. I have visited this place and seen it happening with my own eyes. Not on some arranged fake tour, but from the back door, catching glimpses of what was going on inside, while dropping stuff off. They are being acclaimed for all this work they are doing. I'm not sure what other option you see, given that we all demand power upgrades with every new system we buy.

There is also the hacking risk which everyone on your side of this discussion loves to overlook. If it's easy to install bugging devices in a household member's laptop, then it will happen all the time. Apple is a big target. Instead of a hugely fragmented hardware ecosystem where makers of rogue, key logging, components don't even know which model to target, Apple presents a unified attack surface, and thus needs to be better defended. It really makes no sense for them to make it easy for me to hack your laptop so that I can destroy your privacy. It makes all the sense in the world for them to protect their user's hardware from unauthorized tampering.

I hate that I can't repair my own device. But there are some good, valid user- centric reasons for it, not just the profit-centric reason the outraged anti- Apple crowd assumes.

<comment><USER25> I think you missed his main point:

> the SDD, Memory, wifi card and battery are all accessible

That means you don't need to bring it in to a certified repair center. I looked up his laptop model, all one needs is a standard Philips-head and a M2 x 3mm Torx screwdriver (I have a Torx kit from eBay that I got for ~8 Euro).

p.s. Apple laptops used to be user-serviceable. In fact, I recently upgraded a several older MacBooks with SSDs and only it took a couple minutes.

<comment><USER23> Yeah - that is sort of what prompted me to comment as well. I was able to do the same thing to an old 2008 Macbook unibody. After replacing the HDD with an SSD (easy to do and huge perf change) its a good box for everyday stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> To me what is frustrating is the planned obsolescence can just as easily be accomplished by just abandoning software support. Many older phones will never have new software because cendors cannot (or will not) allow electronics to upgrade to a new kernel, functionally limiting it to an old one and limiting what it can upgrade to. I would like to see some sort of law where if the electronic is abondoned, the software can be relased to allow consumers to update it.

<comment><USER27> In the case of iOS, update it to what? By the time Apple drops iOS support for a device, it's already starting to show its age. I have an old working 1st gen iPod Touch that can only handle simple web pages like HN and most apps that require a back end can't connect to the server like Netflix and YouTube.

My old 1st gen iPad fared a little better - you can still download "the last compatible version" of apps and use many of the streaming apps but it's crash prone trying to display complicated web pages.

Sooner or later smart phone advancement will get to the point where computers are now - a 10 year old computer * can run most modern non game software but we aren't there yet.

Neither of my old iOS devices needed "repairs". While I had long since abandoned my iPod Touch, I just replaced my first gen iPad as a PDF/Ebook reader with a 2017 iPad.

* My parents still use my 2006 era Core Duo 1.66 Mac Mini with Windows 7 and my current Plex Server is 2008 Dell Laptop 2.66Ghz Core 2 Duo running Windows 10.

<comment><USER28> _" By the time Apple drops iOS support for a device, it's already starting to show its age"_

Not really. My iPad3 no longer gets updates, but has great battery life, and runs common games and apps fine. It's fast enough for most web browsing, has retina screen and no reason whatsoever to be abandoned.

iOS Safari is not a great browser, it could be improved to run better on a device such as iPad3, but that doesn't suit Apple and their focus on native apps.

Now that Apple has stopped all updates for this device, my only option is to jailbreak and hope I can install an updated web browser. It's pathetic and irresponsible that Apple abandons its own products, no security patches, no nothing. They are like Facebook - they only care about "now" and "tomorrow". If you're a customer from yesterday, you are worthless.

<comment><USER27> _Not really. My iPad3 no longer gets updates, but has great battery life, and runs common games and apps fine. It 's fast enough for most web browsing, has retina screen and no reason whatsoever to be abandoned._

How has it been _abandoned_? My 1st gen iPad is still supported by iTunes (the computer app), all of Apple services (App Store, iCloud, iBooks, etc.) and starting in 2013, you've been able to download the last compatible version.

 _iOS Safari is not a great browser, it could be improved to run better on a device such as iPad3,_

How? Which browser could handle today's web pages with 256MB (my iPad) or 512Mb RAM (the third gen iPad) and no virtual memory _.

_ It's pathetic and irresponsible that Apple abandons its own products, no security patches, no nothing.*

The iPad 3 was introduced in 2012 and received its last update August of 2016. How many apps that you use every day have become unusable? If my iPad 1 can still run Netflix, Hulu, Crackle, Spotify, all of Apple's productivity apps, etc. I'm assuming a 3rd generation iPad running iOS 9.3.5 would be more usable.

 _They are like Facebook - they only care about "now" and "tomorrow". If you're a customer from yesterday, you are worthless._

Apple has the best history of OS support in the industry. iOS 11 supports the iPhone 5S released in 2013. All of Apples services still support your iPad. What can't you do on your iPad that you want to do?

<comment><USER28> Your argument in defence of Apple's strategy is an odd line to take.

The point you've missed is that when Apple stops releasing OS updates, all the built-in apps and programs also suffer the same fate, such as Safari web browser.

Some websites are starting to use ES6 javascript in some circumstances. Certain ES6 methods are not supported in browsers older than 2017. Valve's Steam website is one example, the preview videos and slideshow on each game page do not load because the highlight player now uses ES6 javascript. Newer iPads see the player, "older" iPads do not.

There is absolutely no reason why this needs to be the case.

Browser updates and patches for some built-in programs should be offered even when the OS is no longer updated.

<comment><USER27> _The point you 've missed is that when Apple stops releasing OS updates, all the built-in apps and programs also suffer the same fate, such as Safari web browser._

You are saying Apple's programs --- which programs besides Safari need to be updated to support "modern" standards?

The mail client on my first gen iPad can still connect to any mail server - including Exchange servers. The same for the calendar app.

You can still download the last compatible version of apps from the App Store and download any music, movie, or book from the iTunes, iBook store.

The Podcast app that was a separate download for iOS 5, still syncs playlists as well (badly) as the newest version of iOS.

The iOS Maps app that originally used Google Map data still works. The Maps app still works with my first gen iPod Touch and has more updated satellite data than my brand new iPad using Apple Maps.

Apple even hacked in a way to support two factor authentication in older iOS devices that wouldn't show a separate field for the authentication code - <USER3> enter your password+authentication code.

All of their productivity apps like Pages, Numbers, and Keynotes still work, you can still save documents and open them with the newest version on the newest Macs via iCloud.

You can still Airplay from a 1st gen iPad to a brand new Apple TV.

As far as Safari, if it crashes on complicated sites now and is unusable with iPads with low memory now, don't you think it would be more crash prone trying to render more complicated sites?

I'm using the worse case scenario - having the first generation iPad with the least memory (256Mb of RAM).

I've used my 2017 iPad next to my 2010 iPad. The only real difference in Apple's built in apps as far as usability is that Web pages render a lot faster, Safari doesn't crash and you can keep multiple tabs open without constant reloading -- all due to hardware improvements -- not "patching" the browser.

<comment><USER28> scarface, you're defending the indefensible. Stop trying to justify Apple's scheduled technology obsolescence.

I'm not talking iPad 1st gen, which was always slow. Soon after release it was clear that iPad first gen was underpowered.

I'm talking about iPad 3rd gen, which has 1 GB RAM, a retina display, and does not crash when loading web pages. It has enough RAM to load any web page. "Hardware improvements" are not needed on this device. Software improvements ARE needed including updating the browser to cater for things like ES6 which does NOT require better hardware, only a minor updated browser software.

You don't think Apple should update the software, and instead I should... go to the store and buy a new iPad to get a slightly better web browser? You are part of the "throw away" culture problem, you are not helping.

Let's take a look at Apple's glossy "helping the planet" page...

[https://www.apple.com/environment/](https://www.apple.com/environment/)

"To ask less of the planet we ask more of ourselves."

Nothing about extending product life, it's all fluffy feel-good futuristic gazing pre-packaged catch phrases. Well I'm asking more of Apple too, like software updates for an iPad3. Asking more of ourselves is not enough, we also need to act on those questions, not just copy and paste the slogans on a "helping the planet" page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> "Bowing to public pressure, Apple apologized and fixed the broken phones with a new [software] update. But a precedent had been set. Previously, Apple had made it difficult for people to fix its products by restricting access to parts and service information."

"When you buy such a machine, the hardware becomes yours. But if you ask manufacturers, theyll say that the software inside still belongs to them."

Apple's strategy has been to make repair difficult by restricting information and access to parts.

They can send C&D letters to anyone who publishes information about repair.

But what about users, who are not publishing information about repair?

Apple cannot send C&D letters to users, who are free to use the hardware however they wish.

Apple may have IP covering manufacture and modifications to the hardware, they may have IP covering information about the hardware, but they have no IP on the _use_ of the hardware that they could assert against users.

However because users rely on Apple-controlled software, Apple could manipulate the use of the device via automatic software updates. And that is exactly what they did.

The solution for the user is to select hardware that allows users to install their own choice of open source software instead of giving away control over the hardware to a corporation via corporate-controlled software and "automatic updates".

<comment><USER30> Well that's the point of iFixit — we have hundreds of thousands of people around the world writing their own repair info to fill the void that the manufacturers left. It's working out pretty well so far.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> The pressure from consumers is in the favor of slimmer, sleeker gadgets. This causes manufacturers to use production techniques that make repairing impossible.

So even if companies made every little detail about the internals of the product public, it's gonna be of not much use to repair today's cellphones that are held together essentially by glue.

I understand what the EFF is trying to say, but frankly, consumers have chosen with their wallets on this one.

<comment><USER32> > The pressure from consumers is in the favor of slimmer, sleeker gadgets. > This causes manufacturers to use production techniques that make repairing > impossible.

How does that apply to the John Deere tractors or your next car?

<comment><USER33> It doesn't. People don't crave from slimmer, slicker tractors to the point that you can't have repairable components in them.

<comment><USER33> "for slimmer"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Seems laughably unlikely.

Would be nice is somebody like the EU at least required a user replacable battery. Seems insane to replace a top spec phone made out of aluminum and glass just because a battery has died.

Imagine if cars (starting at only 10-12 times as expensive) were thrown away when they needed an oil change. They would last just about as long as phones do.

<comment><USER35> If you want to buy a phone with a replaceable battery, then do that. Why force everyone to put up with the extra bulk and weight? And at least with apple, replacing the battery does not require replacing the phone.

<comment><USER36> The "bulk and weight" FUD needs to stop. There is no reason that user replaceable batteries need to be heavier and bulkier than soldered batteries.

<comment><USER18> Perfect example:

[http://www.gizchina.com/2013/09/18/exclusive-hands-video- sta...](http://www.gizchina.com/2013/09/18/exclusive-hands-video-stainless- steel-jiayu-g5/)

[http://www.gizchina.com/2013/09/24/jiayu-g5-teardown/](http://www.gizchina.com/2013/09/24/jiayu-g5-teardown/)

Almost identical in dimensions and appearance to an iPhone 5, yet has expandable storage and a 50% more capacity removable battery. If some small Chinese company can make such a phone, so could Apple, but they deliberately chose not to.

<comment><USER33> How many g5 batteries exploded on their owners with third party batteries, most of which are crappy?

It's easy to make anything if you have lax enough standards.

<comment><USER5> How many Samsung devices exploded on their owners with first-party batteries? This is a ridiculous argument -- what aspect of a "non crappy" battery will result in a replaceable version being more bulky?

<comment><USER33> Obviously the part where non-replaceable batteries are also more expensive designs created to balance maximizing energy while minimizing heat dissipation for a specific model, and studied by the company's own expert teams to specifically fit in the phone they're added in.

Random third party from lowest price manufacturers are usually not.

In fact, as you've shown, even first-party batteries can be dangerous if rushed -- like in the Samsung case you noted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I have been living in rural Kentucky for 4 months and casually asking farmers about the issues with John Deere tractors. They are all familiar with the problem but the ones I have spoken to seem to think it is necessary. I think these are smaller scale farmers, though. The heavy machinery mechanic next door disagrees, and says the company he works for buys a certification for the right to repair. I got the impression they somewhat depend on it. At least, he doesn't seem to put up a fuss. He is a neighbor so I didn't put him on the spot.

<comment><USER38> > the ones I have spoken to seem to think it is necessary

Why do they think it is necessary?

<comment><USER37> 2 of the 3 here said they own equipment that only John Deere can work on and they do not like it. Their impression appears to be that "nowadays" the tractors have computers in them, which necessitates a technician with skills beyond that of a country mechanic. I get the sense they either have bigger problems or that they just feel helpless so would rather not know. In the case of the latter, they are probably right but I don't think I have the heart to tell them. Similar to the neighbor, I see these guys at the local cafe somewhat regularly. I am very much a city folk haha, just visiting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I know a few people who bought Smart TVs from various manufacturers a few years ago and the Smart functions have one by one been withdrawn as the manufacturers no longer supports them. E.G. YouTube, Netflix and other media player apps. Eventually you are left with a TV with a pretty basic, slow and probably insecure web browser. We got nearly 30 years out of Teletext, nowadays expecting a Smart TV app to be supported for five years is being optimistic.

And will the manufactures open up their TV OSes to allow 3rd parties to offer support. Of course not, but they will helpfully let you know how great their new TVs are.

<comment><USER40> > I know a few people who bought Smart TVs from various manufacturers a few > years ago and the Smart functions have one by one been withdrawn as the > manufacturers no longer supports them.

This is the #1 reason I restricted myself to purchasing a Smart TV which uses Android TV rather than something written by the OEM.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I wish I could install whatever I want on my phone without jailbreaking it. Let us have an option hidden in the settings (just like developer options) so we can install anything we want without permission or without the app expiring in a few days.

It's my damn phone!

<comment><USER27> You can install any piece of code you want on your phone. If it's open source, you can download XCode, compile from source and put it on your own device without paying for a developer's license.

I'm not going to install some random piece of closed source software that couldn't make it through Apple's review process. No I'm not treating my phone differently than my computer. I have no random software on my computer from untrusted sources. I even bought my last Dell from the Microsoft store so I wouldn't have random crapware on it.

<comment><USER42> You can install anything you want supposing the developer releases it in the wild as source with no hope of making money off AND no hope of normal users making use of it.

Doesn't sound useful to me.

<comment><USER27> How much money do you really think a developer can make without going through the App Store?

Can you name one successful profitable Android app that isn't sold in the Google Play Store even though Android devices have been able to sideload for years?

<comment><USER15> > How much money do you really think a developer can make without going > through the App Store?

A lot. Your mistake here is in thinking that all software is direct to consumer. Being able to install software without going through a store is very important for a lot of small to medium business that have custom or customized software. You can do it with android, you could do it with windows mobile in the 90's, it's mostly just apple that want to exert so much control over you.

<comment><USER27> It's been available for years....

[https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/ID...](https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/IDEs/Conceptual/AppDistributionGuide/DistributingEnterpriseProgramApps/DistributingEnterpriseProgramApps.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Thanks IEEE. While we're at it, we'd also like it if you opened your standards process, and included the general public and especially security researchers in all your drafts.

<comment><USER30> Fair point! I wrote this long before the KRACK vuln but I've been very uncomfortable with the closed nature of IEEE standards that I've participated in. But I've still contributed, so I reckon I'm still complicit.

For what it's worth, that's why we published essentially the entire oManual spec for free online so you can build compatible products to IEEE 1874 without having to purchase the standard. [http://www.omanual.org/](http://www.omanual.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> It's a shame that none of the policy suggestions for something like this would leave Apple's Activation Lock unscathed.

Activation lock caused something like a sustained 50% drop in phone thefts the year it was implemented. Before that, stealing phones was starting to look like stealing shoes in the 90's. It even had its own slang, "apple picking".

<comment><USER36> >Activation lock caused something like a sustained 50% drop in phone thefts the year it was implemented

I'm _extremely_ skeptical about that. Can you post sources?

And why do you say that these proposals are not compatible with Activation Lock-style schemes?

<comment><USER45> [http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-smartphone- killswitch/s...](http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-smartphone- killswitch/smartphone-theft-drops-in-london-two-u-s-cities-as-anti-theft-kill- switches-installed-idUKKBN0LF09320150211)

<comment><USER46> > Thefts involving smartphones have declined dramatically in three major > cities since manufacturers began implementing "kill switches" that allow the > phones to be turned off remotely if they are stolen, authorities said on > Tuesday.

> Johnson, San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon and New York state > Attorney General Eric Schneiderman were among numerous officials arguing for > new laws mandating the kill switches.

So phone theft decreased in cities considering mandating remote kill switches.

That seems less Activation Lock, and more:

> So far, Apple, Samsung and Google have implemented kill switches on their > smartphones, and Microsoft is expected to release an operating system for > its Windows phones that has one this year

... the fact that everyone is bringing such a technology to market at similar timelines.

\---

As for the claimed 50% drop:

> The number of stolen iPhones dropped by 40 percent in San Francisco and 25 > percent in New York in the 12 months after Apple Inc added a kill switch to > its devices in September 2013. In London, smartphone theft dropped by half, > according to an announcement by officials in the three cities.

That's an average below 40%, but those aren't stats. They're rounded figures. And only in three cities, over the whole world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> If you want to influence lawmakers, you have to bring their attention to the issue when they are running for office.

MAKE IT A CAMPAIGN ISSUE!

</comment><comment><USER48> I have mixed feelings about this.

Somehow people think they have the right to buy the brand they like. But this is not how the market works. You can always choose not to buy it.

Don't like how Apple solders everything to the main board and glues the screen glass to the body? Just don't buy Apple.

But this can be a difficult decision because of things like 'status', vendor lock in, greed, and what not.

The feeling that you can't live without Apple, Facebook, Android, Instagram, and so on, is a strange thing. And it's one of the things I don't like about todays society.

</comment><comment><USER49> I would love to see a company whose business model is making generic and standard consumer electronics parts that are small and powerful, with options to boot. I would love it if I could build & maintain my own mobile computer (AKA smartphone) just as I would build my own PC. Since taking my kindle voyage apart, I realize that this must be very doable. That thing is way less sophisticated than a raspberry pi, it just happens to be a form factor that I like to hold.

<comment><USER50> 1\. small

2\. powerful

3\. with options

4\. easy to work on without special (possibly custom) equipment

choose two

<comment><USER49> I would rather have a larger handheld device than my Nexus 5x if it meant I control the hardware and software on it. 2/3/4 I think can be worked out by the consumer market as long as standards can be crafted for modularity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Why not better educate people about the fact that some devices are easier to repair than others?. If they care about it, they will naturally buy stuff that's repair-friendly, even if it's a niche market.

I care about repairing my stuff, and avoid buying anything that is intentionally designed to being unrepairable. I've specifically not bought any Apple product because of that.

<comment><USER40> > Why not better educate people about the fact that some devices are easier to > repair than others?

People are far more likely to care more about devices that are easy to use than ones that are easy to repair.

My father, for instance, just barely has sufficient skill to make use of his iPhone, but it has considerably improved his life. I don't imagine anyone could convince or train him to use something different solely on the basis of it being easy to repair.

He's going to have to pay someone to repair it for him anyway, so what does it matter if it's Apple or someone else? I imagine he'd happily exchange it for whatever the latest model is if a technician were to imply that an upgrade would fix his hypothetical problem.

One important consideration here is that smartphones are of use to a market which includes people willfully resistant to relearning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> There are so many rights we have to fight for first (saying from a company that builds open source hardware products).

\+ The right to have your data not being used in ways you wouldn't give permission for.

\+ The right to have your data and devices properly protected against malignant actors

\+ The right to be able to use your devices as you want, resell them, use them years after you bought them

\+ The right to expect standards to apply. If you are relying on 110V, it should not be 180V.

By the way, just standardization for power plugs/outlets would already save more money and resources than you can probably imagine. Especially if we enforce same grid voltage and freq everywhere in the world. Electrical engineering is too important to leave to individual nation states.

There are other non-rights, like usability, look and feel, and prestige that are much more important to everybody than anything w.r.t. fiddling around with your stuff.

</comment><comment><USER53> What about the right to repair our software?

Running a electronics engineering house here and we can easily see 9:1 ratio of software:hardware people-time ratio in bringing a device to the market. Varies heavily from project to project, but solutions in SW tend to scale better.

</comment><comment><USER54> Is it so hard for a company nowadays to produce average phones in a sustainable way and that are consumer-oriented?

I think this is what's missing: a player that simply reads about frustrated users and creates product for them. I am quite sure it won't be as successful as Apple but not as bad as the last failed company.

I read recently that material costs for a Samsung phone increased of 10% in 5 years. Now, why can't a phone be sold for 400 usd _and_ be respectful for consumers? I get it that companies live out ot money, but i can't believe that there is not a single company doing differently!

<comment><USER55> The problem is that such measures aren't important to the 'average' user, which means your market for such libre phones aren't going to recover the capital costs needed to invest to start-up the operation!

<comment><USER54> It would be interesting to have numbers here, because I think that people are becoming more and more aware and tired of buying a 3-400 euro phone every 2 years. What are the improvements these new phones carry along? I have a relatively old phone, but the only features I see with newer phones are the following:

\- better hardware, like more cpu, more ram, better camera \- support for fingerprints \- android updates

There is actually an alternative, I wasn't aware of it: [https://fairphone.com/en/](https://fairphone.com/en/)

But hell, no, 2017 and they still offer Android 6.0! And it seems that they are more related to "fairness" in production, etc. It's the "eco" phone which is probably sponsored by green parties :) That's not actually what I meant in the parent comment, where I was asking for a company that produces simply "average" consumer-oriented phones. If these guys do it, why can't another company do the same?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> I'm curious: when everything electronic is printed in a level 4 clean room and printed together at nanoscale, will this even be relevant?

For instance, computers went from chips on boards (think Apple II) to basically just chips (any cellphone).

What happens when thins are even further integrated? Will this even matter?

I honestly don't know the answer. Maybe we all just hack chips with our local x-ray fab down the block.

The future is getting weirder.

</comment><comment><USER57> The way the situation is evolving is that they are NOT 'our' electronics. We think we are buying them to own them, but in reality what it gets you is the right to use the device only for as long manufacturer wants, and only in a manner deemed appropriate by the manufacturer. It's more than a fight about tinkering or repairing, it's a fight about ownership.

</comment><comment><USER58> Can someone from the American Libertarian cadre on HN chime in on this? I see some examples of people talking about how this might be 'necessary' (see gt_'s comment(s)) but I'm interested in an ideological assessment of this situation.

<comment><USER59> There are many, many varied beliefs in Libertarianism - even within America and within the Libertarian Party. On the political compass, it is opposite authoritarianism. Taken to extremes, it is anarchy. It can have left or right components. It's quite a spectrum.

That said, the commons must be protected. The right to repair would qualify as the commons. At the same time, forcing companies to excessive standards isn't always the best answer. In a perfect world, we'd have perfect information and rational buyers. We don't have that.

As the other poster suggested, getting rid of the DMCA would be a good start. I'd say companies should not be allowed to actively prevent repair or modification, but doing so renders the warranty invalid.

I'm pretty far over in the left side. I'm probably best defined as a libertarian socialist, not too far from the social democrats of Europe.

<comment><USER19> > I'd say companies should not be allowed to actively prevent repair or > modification, but doing so renders the warranty invalid.

I absolutely don't agree. Why should the fact that I use your product in ways that you didn't explicitly allow mean that you are not responsible for defects in your product? A really important aspect of ownership is that I can actually do with what I own whatever I want to do, and not just in the sense that it is legal to do so, but in the sense that it causes no disadvantage for me. Just because I install an additional wall socket in my house, does not mean that you can disclaim responsibility for all defects in the house that I paid you to build, and the same should apply to IT devices. You are obviously not responsible for any defects that I cause by modifying your product, but that's it, you should still be fully responsible for the quality of your product.

<comment><USER59> Too difficult to judge once it has been tampered with. The courts don't have time to judge each case on its merits and there's no reasonable surety that your modification didn't harm the product.

The line has to be drawn somewhere.

<comment><USER19> Who defines what counts as "tampering"? I didn't tamper with anything, I simply used the product the way I wanted to use it. I don't see how it's even remotely reasonable to allow the manufacturer to set rules as to how you may use the product, and if you don't follow those rules they disclaim all responsibility for delivering a non-defective product by claiming that it's "tampering".

And how is the potential problem that some things are difficult to judge for a court a reason to therefore allow one party to dictate the judgement? And why would that party be the manufacturer? Why don't I as the customer get to dictate the outcome?

Is there any reasonable surety that the manufacturer did do their quality control properly?

How could it possibly be reasonable to assume that I am at fault because the manufacturer says so?

How is it possibly a reasonable solution to the supposed problem that courts lack resources to simply declare one party the winner by law?

And no, the line does not have to be drawn anywhere, why would it?

If I am willing and able to prove to any sufficiently competent person in the matter that a defect existed when the product was delivered ... what could possibly be a reason to "draw the line" somewhere and ignore the evidence? How is it not obvious that at the very least, if I can demonstrate that a defect existed when the product was delivered, it should be completely irrelevant whether I also modified the product?

<comment><USER59> We aren't going to fill the courts with that. If there's a manufacturing defect, return it before tampering with it. If it is a common defect, it will be covered by a recall and not a warranty.

Sorry, the line has to be drawn somewhere. You may be competent and I believe you are. However, Joe I Can Solder This With A Lighter is not qualified. We aren't going to tie up the courts determining the difference between you and him.

It's just reality. In principle, I would love to agree with you. However, much like we can't assume perfect information, we're not going to assume perfect repairs. The courts are too valuable to be wasted with frivolity.

<comment><USER19> > We aren't going to fill the courts with that.

Why not?

> If there's a manufacturing defect, return it before tampering with it.

What if I discover the defect only after I have started using it? (Please stop calling using my property "tampering", or explain what you mean by "tampering" if that is not what you mean.)

> Sorry, the line has to be drawn somewhere.

Why? Just repeating this claims does nothing to justify it.

> You may be competent and I believe you are. However, Joe I Can Solder This > With A Lighter is not qualified. We aren't going to tie up the courts > determining the difference between you and him.

So, what are we going to do instead then? Let the manufacturer decide what they want to pay for?

> However, much like we can't assume perfect information, we're not going to > assume perfect repairs.

Who is "assuming perfect repairs"?

> The courts are too valuable to be wasted with frivolity.

How is holding manufacturers responsible for defects in their products frivolity?

<comment><USER59> > Why not?

From your post above...

> whatever I want to do

I think we are done here. That's not how society works. You don't just get to do whatever you want to do and expect the manufacturer to still cover the warranty. They warranty it for an express set of conditions, for express purposes, as is understood by a reasonable person (a legal concept). If you tamper, see a dictionary, with the device then it is not their responsibility to cover it. That's actually pretty much how the law already is. Your house example is kinda silly. It's a house, not an electronic device.

I'd love to agree with you but reality suggests otherwise. If you overclock your CPU, as a rough example, they aren't gonna let you RMA it. I don't blame them. Swapping out user serviceable parts, as a reasonable person might do, is an obvious exception. You might want to try looking at it as a reasonable person (the legal concept) would.

You really seem to have a bit emotionally invested in this so I'm going to respectfully bow out now.

<comment><USER19> > I think we are done here. That's not how society works. You don't just get > to do whatever you want to do and expect the manufacturer to still cover the > warranty.

Well, yes, actually, I do. And not only do I expect it, it's actually the law over here.

> If you tamper, see a dictionary, with the device then it is not their > responsibility to cover it.

Well, OK, let me quote a dictionary:

| a :to interfere so as to weaken or change for the worse —used with with

| b :to try foolish or dangerous experiments —used with with

| c :to render something harmful or dangerous by altering its structure or composition

([https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tamper](https://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/tamper))

So, according to the dictionary definition, competently repairing or modifying the phone certainly would not fall under tampering, do you agree?

> That's actually pretty much how the law already is.

Actually, I doubt that it is, assuming that you are talking about the US.

> Your house example is kinda silly. It's a house, not an electronic device.

I agree that a house is not an electronic device. Why do you think that different rules should apply in the case of electronic devices?

> I'd love to agree with you but reality suggests otherwise.

Why?

> If you overclock your CPU, as a rough example, they aren't gonna let you RMA > it.

Whether they "let me" anything really is not the question. The question is what their legal responsibilities are, i.e., what I can enforce via the judicial system if they do not voluntarily "let me".

> I don't blame them.

I think I got your standpoint. What's still missing is the justification.

> Swapping out user serviceable parts, as a reasonable person might do, is an > obvious exception. You might want to try looking at it as a reasonable > person (the legal concept) would.

You do understand that that is not a meaningful use of the legal term "reasonable person", right? That is about figuring out the intent of a contract if things are not spelled out.

> You really seem to have a bit emotionally invested in this so I'm going to > respectfully bow out now.

Unfortunately, that is not really a justification for your standpoint either.

<comment><USER59> See, now you're just being dishonest. I'm not even sure why?

I really, really shouldn't engage you further, but I'll try one more time.

No, the law isn't that 'over there.' The law isn't that anywhere. Nowhere on the planet can you modify your electronic devices 'however you want' and have it covered by warranty. To give a really simplistic example, you can not just start swapping out resistors and replacing them with alternatives and be covered under any legal system on the planet. Go ahead, run 440 volts into your phone and tell 'em you expect it to be covered by warranty. I'll wait for your court case. Provide documentation.

Yes, tampering. I'm now even more certain of my use of the word. The very first definition works just wonderfully. Yes, when you crack open that phone case and think you're a master at reflow with your toaster oven, you're making it worse.

I'm really, really trying to be charitable. At this point, you've been openly dishonest and made outlandish claims. No, no your legal system doesn't allow that. Go ahead, snap a few resistors off, pump 12v AC into your phone, and try for a warranty claim. I'll wait.

Seriously, that's not even a moral arguement to be made. You can't just do 'whatever you want' and expect warranty coverage - anywhere on the planet. Not in my country, not in your country. If you think you can do it in your country, consult a qualified legal professional.

Whatever you want includes things like smashing it open with a hammer and hooking it up to your car's alternator in a crazed PCP frenzy. That ain't legal anywhere.

<comment><USER19> > No, the law isn't that 'over there.' The law isn't that anywhere. Nowhere on > the planet can you modify your electronic devices 'however you want' and > have it covered by warranty.

Well, great that you believe that ... but that does not really change the reality of it.

> To give a really simplistic example, you can not just start swapping out > resistors and replacing them with alternatives and be covered under any > legal system on the planet.

Well ... except, yes, you can.

> Go ahead, run 440 volts into your phone and tell 'em you expect it to be > covered by warranty. I'll wait for your court case. Provide documentation.

Why the heck would I want to do that? Why would I possibly want to apply 440 volts to my phone, in the process most likely damaging it irreparably, before requesting repair of a pre-existing defect under warranty, the repair of which is extremely unlikely to make the phone work again?! I mean, apart from the fact that applying 440 volts to a phone PCB would probably make it impossible to prove that the claimed defect existed beforehand, at least if it's a defect in the electronics. And even in the first six months, when the seller has to prove that the defect wasn't there on delivery to escape liability, the damage from that most likely would be sufficient to shift the burden of proof to me.

But, well, yes, legally I could sort-of enforce that here, if I somehow did manage to prove that the defect existed on delivery. Though chances are it would be completely futile because the court would probably find that the actual damage that I suffered in that situation is non-existent (because the phone is worthless whether they do/pay for the repair or not), so while I would formally win the case, I wouldn't really get anything out of it.

> Yes, tampering. I'm now even more certain of my use of the word. The very > first definition works just wonderfully. Yes, when you crack open that phone > case and think you're a master at reflow with your toaster oven, you're > making it worse.

Speaking of dishonesty: How is it honest to pick a scenario that you consider to be an incompetent repair or modification as an example of a competent repair or modification?

> I'm really, really trying to be charitable. At this point, you've been > openly dishonest and made outlandish claims. No, no your legal system > doesn't allow that. Go ahead, snap a few resistors off, pump 12v AC into > your phone, and try for a warranty claim. I'll wait.

Well see above. But to maybe show a case where that would work out just fine: Let's say I do all that to my new phone, and then I discover that the SIM socket is missing. Then I absolutely could successfully sue for receiving the missing SIM socket. Probably not for getting it soldered in, though, unless I could show that that actually increases the value of the phone.

But why are you constantly going for such intentionally massively destructive scenarios?! Obviously, that's likely to make any claims on pre-existing defects moot, if the destructive action would have destroyed the previously defective component anyway, so there is no legal damage anymore.

> Whatever you want includes things like smashing it open with a hammer and > hooking it up to your car's alternator in a crazed PCP frenzy. That ain't > legal anywhere.

Well, yes, it actually is, that is what the concept of "property" means. As long as it's not harming you, you don't get any say in what I do with my property, and that includes if you are the manufacturer of what is now my property. And not getting any say in it includes that you cannot disclaim responsibility to deliver a non-defective product unless I do with my property what you want me to do with my property.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm happy that IEEE is recognizing this, but there's a reason I'm no longer a member: IEEE supports software patents. Might want to remove that beam from their own eye first . . .

</comment><comment><USER60> The article and some other comments here honestly just made me nostalgic for the first Apple computer I owned, an early generation "unibody" cast aluminum MacBook Pro.

It was, bar none, the easiest modern laptop to open up and service I've ever worked on, and I did that professionally for several years. Simple screws, minimal variation in screw size, solid steel parts, no silly plastic tabs, and nothing that felt like "this didn't _need_ to be taped in, but using tape/glue/whatever sure makes it easy for official warranty support people to tell if you've been tinkering around in there."

Replacing entire logic boards, or doing even trickier work like re-cementing CPU heatsinks, was incredibly easy and intuitive even without a manual (which was fortunate, since the official maintenance/manual documentation was pretty expensive to get access to legally).

Apple gets a lot of crap for the declining serviceability of their laptops, but remember that it wasn't always this way. Things have gotten way worse, and for pretty transparently dumb reasons.

The "tamper-proof" screws were the stick that broke the camel's back for me; I was willing to give Apple the benefit of the doubt regarding hyper-restrictive hardware compatibility checks and proprietary connectors, but when they made the physical tooling itself pointlessly expensive/difficult to get (torx was already a widespread standard; why give pentalobe, already a bastard stepchild, more market share?), I started being a lot more suspicious. Where were the people surreptitiously opening up laptops and stealing RAM? Or installing hardware keyloggers? Instead, "tamperer" turned out to be basically the same as "hobbyist", "non-blessed repairman", or "curious kid who wants to know what the inside of their computer looks like".

And the party line I've heard from colleagues who work for Apple is inane: "it damages the reliability of the brand to let anyone poke around inside; they can break stuff!" Any hobbyist, aspiring geek, or unsanctioned technician knows what they're getting into. Anyone in those groups, or anyone handing their computer over to such a person, isn't going to blame Apple when tinkering/inspection causes issues (if they do, they'll be laughed at by anyone who hears them). Either it was broken and the maintenance/tinkering fixed it, it wasn't broken and it was after being opened up, or it was broken and remained that way.

Sigh. End rant. I miss the good old days, I guess. Snow Leopard and hardware that was elegant, simple, and easy to fix _and_ use.

I'll go back to working on my lawn now, so I can tell kids to get off of it. Monsanto considers it an illegal modification and TOS violation to water the MiracleGrass I planted, so now it's all dead and I have to seed it again.</comment>


Recruiting for a start up when you're not a recruiter - <AUTHOR> http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/inside-braintree/recruiting-for-a-start-up-when-youre-not-a-recruiter

<comment><USER2> I prefer the other story...

 _Sysadmining for a start up when you're not a sysadmin_

<comment><USER3> I've done that! It was a lot of fun.

I enjoy doing many different things, and wearing multiple hats at a startup is a must. It was fun to do the job of 4 different people every day... For a while.

I'm rather happy that I'm doing (usually) just 1 job now, though.</comment></comment>


Bootstrap Magic featuring Boostrap 3 - <AUTHOR> http://pikock.github.io/bootstrap-magic/

<comment><USER2> Some UX feedback from a dumb user: I spent a few minutes thinking there wasn't any preview. Finally I noticed the "Apply" button way down at the bottom --- and the "Auto" checkbox next to it. Maybe the "Auto" checkbox should be enabled by default.

Once I figured that out: Awesome.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, yes it's true. The issue that we are facing with the auto checkbox is that we need to recompile all the time, the whole bootstrap so it 's a kind of slow. We will look for a solution for the next version.

<comment><USER3> One suggestion would be to use timeouts to add a delay to the input event handler, so it would wait until the typing has stopped for a while rather than recompiling on every key press. That's just a line or two of extra js and should make the auto updating vastly more usable.

<comment><AUTHOR> yeh, good suggestion, we just added your advice. There are a lot to parse with Bootstrap ... still thinking about making it lighter

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Digging the idea and I like the Apply feature.

However, I have no idea what your JS is doing but it spiked my browser CPU usage to 100% on a core and made the whole thing fairly unresponsive until I closed that tab.

<comment><USER5> Same here with Firefox unfortunately, making it essentially unusable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Pretty nice. But I think it needs better generality in values – more references to other variables, and color functions. If I make my primary brand color the light yellow #faf332 and the link color a very dark yellow, there are a lot of places on the page that still have unreadable white text on a yellow background, such as @btn-primary-color (which I set to #111) and @pagination-active-color (which I set to @link-color). Those values should use some function of @link-color or another variable as their default value. And colors should use appropriate functions to choose a light or dark color that maximizes contrast against their background.

</comment><comment><USER7> Really cool, but slow. AngularJS Batarang might help profile the hot spots.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeh definetely, we just update a new version. It is faster now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It is indeed faster but I am sorry to say that this is a good example of "How to not develop an angular app".

DOM manipulation in a controller is something you can't do and who says controllers, says services too.

On the other hand, the double ng-repeat could be a hot spot for the bad performance.

Don't get me wrong, the app is awesome, awesome idea but the implementation doesn't respect the angular way so it is really slow.</comment>


What's the real reason Costco employees check receipts at the exit? - <AUTHOR> https://thetakeout.com/why-costco-employees-check-receipts-exit-1830254570 <comment><USER2> Perhaps it's related to the 'membership' marketing aspect. Checking to see if you have your membership card upon entry, and this strange little check when you leave, cements into the customer that there is something special about Costco and only certain people can shop there. Maybe. I wonder how much of the membership aspect is marketing versus revenue?

<comment><USER3> Back in the day, it used to be hard to be a Costco membership (late 80s/early 90s). I recall that only people who worked at certain companies (Boeing comes to mind) could get memberships.

It's not considered an exclusive thing anymore, though, since membership only costs, what, $55?

<comment><USER4> Even 10 years ago parts of it were more exclusive than today: you used to need to pay for the Executive membership to get the monthly coupons and other offers that all members can get now. I'm sure they crunched the numbers and realized they were leaving money on the table by doing that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The linked article bases this on three sources; one former employee answering on Quora, one more answering on the consumerist, and a third answering on a 45 comment reddit thread not specifically on Costco. Take it with a huge grain of salt.

I've actually worked at a Sam's Club and done checking briefly. I feel that this is the stated reason, but you're talking checking hundreds of receipts over a 4 + hour shift, often massive ones due to multiple flatbeds of groceries or goods; the idea its being used to check up on the cashiers is absurd to me. Many times, high-dollar items like meats you'd want to check are already in freezer bags, obscured from view.

I think its mostly to prevent high value items from leaving, or at least to alert management they are. I mean, anyone who his rung up a vending machine route guy and his 100 boxes of candy who kind of scoff at the retiree checkers doing that fine of an job.

<comment> barrow-rider Thank you for taking a look at the sources.

Salt grain status: taken.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's also to mark the receipt, preventing someone going back into the store and putting same items into the cart (slyly walk by self check out) and leaving with the same receipt.

<comment><USER7> According to my friend who was a SVP at Costco, this is, in fact, a primary reason. It's to mark the receipt so it cannot be used again.

<comment><USER8> Can't the cashier do that?

<comment><USER9> The idea is to mark when you're leaving the store, so you need someone actually standing by the exit. If the cashier did it, it wouldn't really prevent the scam. You could still circle back into the store and skip the cashier on the second run.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> They're also there to make sure you got your "pick up later" items, like gift cards and tickets to amusement parks. I've had one send me back after realizing I paid for stamps but never picked them up (although now they just have them in the register).

</comment><comment><USER11> > _actually there to spot cashier errors, not shoplifting_

The Costco's I've been to, when I had a membership, they don't spend enough time on the receipt to possibly catch errors. They just glance at your purchases and the receipt, then tick off the receipt. Even at that level of checking, a line up can form during a busy time.

I suspect they are just marking the receipt so you can't go back with that receipt in your pocket and then steal the same item(s).

There is a time stamp, of course, but a pen mark is faster to grok.

They might be able to spot double scans at a glance (since exact repeats on a receipt are visually distinct) and check that the customer has two of that item, that's about it.

<comment><USER12> Perhaps, but I honestly buy the "catching errors" idea. They don't have to be perfect to catch enough mistakes to identify a bad cashier (scanning an item twice and missing an item are both bad).

I think checking at the door is not good enough to prevent theft, especially at busy times. It's just too easy to hide stuff or blame it on the cashier forgetting to scan it. There are more cashiers than checkers, so it seems the bottleneck would be the checkers if they tried to make it thorough enough to be effective.

So yeah, my guess is that the OP is correct, and that interpretation has always been my assumption.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The stated reason, "to check for overcharges" doesn't really make sense. Those door people know what everything costs in the store?

<comment><USER14> They are checking that items were not rung up multiple times. My guess is something scans once but the cashier doesn't realize or isn't pay attention and scans it again by mistake.

<comment><USER13> Ok that makes slightly more sense, but I don't see how this could be very common. Or at least common enough to require a person to man the door.

<comment><USER15> I would imagine there is a scam where you buy two of a mid-price item and then go back and claim you only bought one and were double charged. Not sure how many times you can get away with that at Costco due to the membership, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's everything mentioned. It just sounds better to tell everyone that you're worrying about over-charging, than that you don't trust your customers and/or employees, and also want to make sure there was no mistakes.

It doesn't matter how these people are trained, or what they are told. They will still prevent theft, even if they think it's not their job. It's even better if they genuinely think they are helping customers (which they in fact do!) because that makes the attitude of everyone involved better.

It doesn't matter that they don't catch many theft attempts. That's the whole point, that if they are effective at prevention, there will be no attempts in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER17> Not a Costco, but at a WalMart I was stopped after buying almost 100$ in groceries and had misplaced the receipt (not really paying attention, it was after a long day...)

The person at the door stopped me and asked for my receipt. I wasn't even sure if I had gotten it so I told them and they insisted they see it.

After checking my pockets quickly I said I didn't have it and they insisted I try and find the cashier and get one.

They really wanted to make sure I hadn't stolen a plastic drawer.

I'm 99% sure this was made up, but the lady claimed that because of its size I needed to produce a receipt (a 20$ plastic drawer you might keep in your pantry...)

Every time I think back I get annoyed with myself for not just walking out on them.

<comment><USER18> I had something similar happen at the Costco in SOMA. The guy at the door insisted that he see my receipt. I'd thrown it in the trash. We got into an argument and he wanted to call security. I told him to piss off and left.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's not a secret -- quite often they will tell you exactly why they're checking your receipt: to make sure "the checker didn't miss anything or overcharge" and "that you got your movie tickets/food/etc".

<comment><USER20> Yes, because the reasons companies tell you they do something is always the truth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Even if they aren't explictly there to prevent theft I'm sure they do. Knowing you'll have to run that gauntlet on top of the other loss prevention techniques would make me want to try a softer Target (pun intended)

</comment><comment><USER22> I don't know if I buy into the fact that that's the only reason why they're there. But I did have this happen to me. I only took one of a thing that could only be charged in pairs of 2. They weren't packaged that way, so I only took 1. The cashier didn't catch it, but the door person did.

</comment><comment><USER23> When I've gone to CostCo, the only thing the people at the exit did was to count the number of items you had and to see if that more or less matched the number of items on the receipt.

That seems like the simplest possible check they could make regarding the checkout process.

</comment><comment><USER24> I wonder if this applies to other stores that check receipts as you leave? I know Fry's does it, for example, and Wal-Mart does it every once in awhile.

</comment><comment><USER25> I have to admit, I just say no and keep on walking.

</comment><comment><USER26> They have detectives (sometimes ex-cops) roaming the store to spot shoplifting, tag swapping, etc.

</comment><comment><USER27> Is that the common practice for big box retailers that have receipt checkers at the exit?

<comment><USER3> Costco's the only place I can think of that does this. Is it common at other stores?

<comment><USER28> Frye's Electronics does as well

<comment><USER29> Best Buy and Sam's Club do. Though the Best Buy guy really seems to be more of a theft deterrent person since he's dressed in vaguely cop-like clothes, and doesn't check receipts. Seems to be more there to be ready to tackle you if the theft alarm goes off as you walk out the door.

<comment><USER30> In Best Buy would be much easier to go pick something up and then try and walk out the front door.

At Costco you'd either have to go past the person checking your membership card (back through the entrance) or go through the cashier section without being caught and then get past the receipt tracker.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> They are there to catch theft, but a different kind of theft. The "I put three items in my shopping cart, and then my buddy, who is manning the cash register, only scanned one" kind of theft.

Insider attacks, essentially.

<comment><USER32> No, that's really not at all what the article, the quotes from former employees, or my own experience says.

<comment><USER33> Those justifications simply aren't believable. _All_ of the problems supposedly being solved have cheaper, more effective solutions than paying someone to stand at the door harassing customers. Employee-assisted theft doesn't.</comment></comment></comment>


Pongmechanik (video) - <AUTHOR> https://archive.org/details/NiklasRoyPongmechanik <comment><USER2> Niklas Roy, the builder of the device shown here has a neat site you should visit: [http://www.niklasroy.com](http://www.niklasroy.com)

</comment><comment><USER3> That's amazing, my jaw dropped when the score changed. Neat to see archive.org video linked here, too.

(Incidentally, does anyone else notice that sometimes IA videos only play on the second tap/click of the play button?)</comment>


Curiosity – Find cool GitHub projects as a feed - <AUTHOR> http://mubaris.com/curiosity <comment><USER2> how many times are you going to submit this?</comment>


Learned Helplessness  - <AUTHOR> http://youarenotsosmart.com/2009/11/11/learned-helplessness/

<comment><USER2> I have never been able to read about that experiment without feeling sick about what Seligman did to those dogs. Ironically, he ended up becoming an esteemed authority on "positive psychology".</comment>


Show HN: Branch Bookkeeper – Here's how we stopped racing to merge on master - <AUTHOR> https://branch-bookkeeper.com <comment><AUTHOR> At work we use rebase to have a super clean, linear history of master. You can merge only if you are aligned with master, otherwise you must rebase first. It worked perfectly for our small team at the time, but then growth came: with tens of developers working on the same repo it rapidly became a nightmare. With several devs ready to merge their work at the same time, races to be the first were the norm. When you lost you had to rebase, handle conflict maybe, and wait for CI again while staring at the GitHub page: a huge productivity killer.

That's why we built Branch Bookkeeper: a simple queue management system to handle merge order. What started as a user script in our browsers is now a full fledged GitHub app, we used it internally for years already.

Today, we are opening it to everyone!

What about you? Did you experience similar problem? How did you solve it? Let us know</comment>


Ask HN: How do you capture and analyse usage patterns on your RIA? - <AUTHOR>

Hello everyone,
I want to answer the question: "What is the user activity most likely to lead to the user upgrading?"
What are the best practices for capturing potentially large amounts of usage data (e.g., perhaps, capturing every click on every button?), storing it cost-effectively without swamping your main app db, and then running reports/analysis on that data?
Is it best to log this stuff to text and then run a parser to load it into a separate db? To use external services (which ones work best? why?) To store it in your main db? Is it best to capture ALL the data and then figure out what you want to extract out of it later? Is that practical/realistic? Is it better to just focus on specific hypotheses and just record those specific data points?
I'm particularly interested in these questions in the context of a Rich Internet Application - i.e. something that looks more like a desktop app than like a website. Website analytics are fairly well documented, with plenty of articles tools, etc, but I haven't found much on the topic of doing this kind of tracking for complex RIAs that don't have simple and/or obvious conversion funnels.
For example, if you built an application like Huddle, how would you record data to figure out interesting usage patterns and which ones are more likely to lead to a purchase?
Thanks for any input/insight! <comment><USER2> I'm kind of a metrics junkie.

One thing I've learned over the years: tracking data is easy. You can generate a virtual firehose of noise just by snapping your fingers. Tracking data which actually drives decisions meaningful for the business is a bit trickier.

I use a mix of Mixpanel, the DB, and key/value stores. I have log files, too, but log files are where data goes to die.

In general my core activity loop is generating a hypothesis, asking what I need to answer the hypothesis, either building just what I need to capture that data or a more generalized system (particularly when I keep asking the same kind of questions -- this is how I ended up writing my own A/B testing framework), then analyzing the data and trying a few things in response to it. The hardest part about drowning in data is understanding, in your bones, that if it doesn't drive a decision at the end of the day, you're just wasting your time. Even though the graph is pretty.

I generally get more bang for my buck out of simple hypotheses than complex ones. Simple ones are easy to describe, easy to instrument, easy to test, easy to improve, and likely to apply to a large portion of my users/business/etc. Complex ones are, well, the exact opposite. For example, while it is within my capabilities to target behavior at Mac-owning Firefox users who are interested in Catholicism... I'm probably going to spend time working on buttons seen by substantially everyone.

I generally do the first cut of analysis by playing around in my Rails console. When I find something interesting in playing around, I often promote it to a graph somewhere on the backend.

I think if you count all the data points I've got filed away somewhere you'd come up with a number in the low tens of millions, so my chief bottleneck is less technical/scaling (3 million entries in a key/value store? Oh well, iterate over all of them.) and more that the time, creativity, and attention to ask the right questions are very limited.

</comment><comment><USER3> I record everything to Google App Engine data store, then have a script to export the data into a simple text file on my machine that runs from cron. Then I can run Python scripts on my own computer to just go through the text. I get about 60MB of events / day. Soon I will have to start deleting old events from App Engine, because I have to pay Google for data store entities stored.

At first I was planning on doing some clever incremental thing to get all the stats on App Engine, but it's a lot simpler if you can just have everything locally and rerun any analytics quickly when I make mistakes. It only takes a few minutes to load a week's worth of data and go through it, so doesn't make sense to spend days trying to be really clever about doing it on App Engine.

My favorite thing to extract is kind of a life story of users. When a user joins, what do they do on average in the first 24 hours? How about the next day? This is a pretty different point of view than Google Analytics, because it is from the user point of view and not historical of the whole app.

So does this point of view give you some new insight? At least in our case. For example we are now testing which of two profile box designs is better on our MySpace app. Just a simple stat would reveal that the new design has a better clickthrough rate. BUT, when I look at the whole story, it seems that users are more likely to remove the app when they have this new design, so end results may be worse.

Additionally I use Google Analytics events tracking, but I end up looking more at the life story than those events, because it is difficult to pull out how many events happen per visit, or how many events happen per visit in first 24 hours since user joined etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Would love more detail about how you do this... how exactly do you "record everything to GAE data store"? Did you create a GAE REST app? Why GAE? What do you record? Can you post an example of a few events that you record?

<comment><USER3> The app server is already in App Engine, so it was easy to just add an Event model and create an Event entity every time the user does anything that I might want to track. This is what it looks like to browse the events in App Engine admin panel: <http://i.imgur.com/yJTeZ.png>

The model is just 10 lines of code, and storing things there is even easier. For events that happen on client side I have to do a silent ajax request to the server to let it know what happened, similar to what Google Analytics does, but mostly everything that happens in the app already is known by the server.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm using jquery and google analytics to track this. Tie the interface actions into different analytic tags and use google to store and display the activity.

[http://www.thewhyandthehow.com/tracking-events-with- google-a...](http://www.thewhyandthehow.com/tracking-events-with-google- analytics/)

<comment><USER5> Agreed. Basically, even when there are no page loads, GA allows you to register events, actions, etc. to be tracked. You can have dynamic names that you send to Google analytics using javascript, and everything will be visible when you check your stats in addition to the normal metrics like page views, etc...

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> <http://mixpanel.com> (YC '09)

Basically, when something interesting happens, you make an AJAX call to a logging service. Mixpanel then graphs events and conversions over time and provides user profiling similar to Google Analytics.

You can also create virtual page views in Google Analytics by calling pageTracker._trackPageview.

<comment><AUTHOR> The problem with this is, what if you don't know what your funnels are? What if you don't know what your key events are?

Recording _everything_ into Mixpanel would get very expensive very quickly.

<comment><USER6> Hmm, what is the order of magnitude of your action volume? Worst case, you might write them sequentially to log files via a trivial web service and deal with them later, a la "tin" [ <https://nosqleast.com/2009/#speaker/anglade> ]

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why not try Google Analytics for Flash's event tracking? I've used that in the past and it's been interesting

<comment><USER3> It seems great in theory, but I've had difficulties getting out the info I need. I'd like to know how many of certain events / visit users do. For example, I have a feature in my app that users can steal points from other users, I can see the aggregate stats for a certain time period just fine for the whole event category: <http://i.imgur.com/22kxL.png>

But if I click on a certain event, "steal" in this case, I get this: <http://i.imgur.com/mXUtQ.png> It says total events: zero, even though the graph shows something very nonzero. And there doesn't seem to be a way to see how many times users used the "steal" function per visit. How about how many % of users use the "steal" function during their first month of using the app? Maybe it's possible, but I haven't quite figured out how to get these answers from GA.

<comment><AUTHOR> My concern is the same.. there are a lot of questions I can ask my current relatively rudimentary system, that I couldn't ask of GA.</comment></comment></comment>


First serotonin neurons made from human stem cells (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://news.wisc.edu/first-serotonin-neurons-made-from-human-stem-cells/ <comment><USER2> > Because the neurons can be generated from induced pluripotent stem cells, > which can be produced from a patient's skin cells, "these could be useful > for finding treatments for psychiatric disorders like depression, where we > often see quite variable responses to drugs," says Lu. "By identifying > individual differences, this could be a step toward personalized medicine.

Do we really need that much personalized medicine? My first thought is that it's going to drive prices up A LOT.

<comment><USER3> (Your downvote seemed unfair, so I upvoted you)

Depression can be a fatal illness. In the UK suicide is the leading cause of death in men aged between 15 and 49; it's a significant cause of death for all adults. Not all those people have a diagnosis from a doctor, but it's likely that many of them have depression.

There are wide variations in responses to SSRI medications. At the moment it's hard to know whether someone is going to respond to eg mirtazipine unless we actually give it to them.

SSRIs take a few weeks to start working; the have a range of side effects that tend to be worst in those first few weeks; they take a while to "wash out" when you stop taking them; they have discontinuation effects that can be really unpleasant for some people; and there's increased risk of death by suicide during these tapers up and down.

Personalised medicine would make some difference here in finding medication that's more likely to be effective.

(For clarity, I believe that most people with mild to moderate depression need a talking therapy and help to change lifestyle, with meds on top if needed).

<comment><USER4> It blows my mind that accepted treatment for depression actually can make people more suicidal. But we can't give them anything that might make them feel good oh no, we can't have that

<comment><USER5> Are you implying that there's a conspiracy not to help people feel better?

Also, DanBC's point is accurate - for people with mild/moderate depression, talk therapy is as effective as pharmaceutical therapy. Thus, we already do have treatments that do not increase suicidal ideation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How can these neurons be placed at the location where they are needed?

</comment><comment><USER7> How do this guys connect produced neurons to the cardiovascular system? =)</comment>


MLbase: A User-friendly System for Distributed Machine Learning - <AUTHOR> https://news.ycombinator.com/submit

<comment><USER2> Link is busted: <http://mlbase.org></comment>