We Need the Right to Repair Our Gadgets - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/we-need-the-right-to-repair-our-gadgets-1441737868 <comment><USER2> A 3rd world country perspective : I've seen an increasing trend of appliances at home that are intentionally designed to make repair difficult. The manufacturer/dealer nexus forces you to depend on paid but poorly trained mechanics that quote ridiculous prices for repairing (essentially using re- furbished parts).

Another case, I've got a water purifier at home that uses a series of filters (sediment, reverse-osmosis, UV radiation, carbon etc.). Due to the quality of water supply, the sediment filter requires manual cleaning every month or two, else everything down the line stands a chance of getting damaged. These filters aren't cheap ($100 every 2 years in a 3rd world country). I find it annoying that the design of these filters is such that it is cumbersome to remove that simple sediment filter. Almost everyone I know ends up paying the service provider for annual maintenance. In reality, a simple design change can make the maintenance super easy.

It's the same story with modern cars, gadgets, washing machines, everything. The money to be made from repair is a whole industry. On the brighter side, the industry is begging to be disrupted.

P.S. I've tried repairing my laptop for broken hinges, displays, heat sink etc. by watching youtube videos & ordering cheap parts from ebay. It's an immensely satisfying feeling when the gadget starts working again. You not only save money & environment, you can justify your engineering degree too :-)

<comment><USER3> Why not insert another sediment filter stage in front that uses easily serviceable cartridges? Then leave the problematic one empty or in place with longer service intervals. Bonus points if you can find a suitable filter media and rebuild your own cartridges.

<comment><USER2> That's exactly what I did last year :-) A stand alone sediment filter where I turn two valves to reverse the flow of water. It's not very aesthetic and it takes more space but it does make my life easy.

Regarding your 2nd point, most of the cartridges use a "Welded Housing" and carry the "Dow Filmtec" brand. However there are sellers on ebay that supply housing that can be opened and you can fill your own filter material. I'm a little skeptical on taking this route without an understanding or testing ability of what effect it would have on drinking water. I wonder if there's an off-the-shelf complete water test kit or a lab that would do that for me.

<comment><USER4> Cool! Would you be willing to share photos or details of your setup? Or point me to a similar one?

I live in Taiwan and currently get drinking water from fill-up stations outside due to heavy minerals in the groundwater here. It's not too inconvenient to do it once a week or so, and the water stations are ubiquitous, but I miss having drinking water from the tap.

I've visited water filter shops 2-3 times with the intent of buying a filtration system but am put off by the cost of replacement filters which I know I will have to buy frequently. I'm being cheap but the engineer in me keeps saying there's a better way.

Also, I was not able to figure out how I can test the water quality without sending it to a lab in the US. Do you test your own water?

<comment><USER2> The extra only saves the trouble of cleaning the main filter too frequently. The cost of filters, especially the RO membrane (the most expensive component) that removes dissolved impurities would still be there. The advantage of my setup would be to prevent RO membrane from getting clogged too early by sediments.

The additional filter would look something like this [1]. It's an inline sediment filter with a separate casing. For the rest of the unit, you might still be able to buy a complete kit off ebay e.g. [2] & assemble it yourself [3].

[1] [http://www.osmiowater.co.uk/media/catalog/product/cache/1/im...](http://www.osmiowater.co.uk/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/i/n/inline_water_filter_15mm_push_fitting_ezfitpro.jpg)

[2] [http://www.ebay.com/itm/RO-Zoi-Xi-Pure-Filter-Kit-incl-UV- Bu...](http://www.ebay.com/itm/RO-Zoi-Xi-Pure-Filter-Kit-incl-UV- Bulb-/111509569265?hash=item19f67cfef1)

[3] [http://www.watergeneral.com/support/pdf/RD102.pdf](http://www.watergeneral.com/support/pdf/RD102.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The title irks me a little: you already have the right to repair, provided you have enough knowledge. What the author demands is documentation.

I would love more documentation, like anyone, but you don't really need any documentation to replace a broken capacitor (a very common failure for most screens, I guess): you need to know how to spot a broken capacitor, find a replacement, and basic soldering skills. There are tons of videos that teach that, but few people really want to research that (generally because they are afraid of electronics, or think they are not smart enough).

On the other end, some issues can't be fixed at all, because repairing is so close to the full price of the device. Some examples that happened to me: inflating smartphone battery that damages the motherboard, damaged screen due to shock (wide vertical band of dead pixels).

Between that, there are probably a lot of small problems that are specific to a particular model. It would be great that those ones are documented, indeed.

Some other basic things, like replacing a smartphone/laptop battery and screens would be very welcome on the manufacturer website, but like capacitors, you should be able to find tutorials for a lot of devices.

The truth is, to repair things, you need mostly knowledge to identify problems and labor time to fix things. Both of which is what makes it expensive.

<comment><USER6> Limited access to parts is mostly about patents so even if you had all the knowledge in the world you are prevent by the state to create what is needed to do the repairs. After the patent is expired we often find that the social contract between inventor and state is violated, and society do not in fact gain the necessary information to replicate the invention by reading the patent. There has been some political discussion to force car manufacturers to provide equal access to parts in order to protect the free market for car repairs and maintenance.

Then we have digital locks (DRM) which the article brings up which artificially prevents customers from repairing. You can have all the knowledge in the world and still not be able to fix a simple issue since the digital signature of the part won't be accepted by the device. There has been political discussion around the world to forbid this kind of technical restrictions in cars or at least force retailers to inform the customer about the limitations.

Both issues impacts customer rights and is entirely political in nature. The problem of having enough knowledge, access to documentation, or skill to perform repairs is all secondary problems once the political _right to repair_ is granted.

<comment><USER5> Thanks, I didn't really consider this part of the problem. I thought, for "gadgets" (pc, smartphones and small electronics), DRM was a limited problem (I heard about coffee machines and cat litterbox DRM, and that's it). But it may well becomes a problem, if manufacturers find that people repairing gadgets reduce their revenue, which pre-suppose a non-negligible part of potential consumers are motivated to repair instead of buying new (I am not sure it's really a lot right now).

For limited access to parts, it depends what "parts" we are talking about. If it is an electronic part (capacitor, microcontroller etc...), most gadgets use off-the-shelf components, that are easy to find, provided you know where to search. If it is a black-box with very specific requirements (screen, battery, whole PCB ..), access to parts may indeed be a problem.

While I like the political right to repair, we have to be careful about what this mean. How does it affect small companies, that may not have the time to produce documentation, or very integrated products that can't really be repaired (which, if there is an exception, becomes a loophole big companies will use, of course).

<comment><USER7> Printers also use DRM resulting in ridiculous ink costs or people that treat printers as disposable items. Even some water filtration systems have started to use DRM.

<comment><USER8> I think this is a slightly different, though related, point. Built-in artificial obsolescence, where an otherwise perfectly usable device is deliberately crippled at some point by some sort of unnecessary software or hardware barrier, is never in the customer's interests.

This one has an easy solution, though: manufacturers and vendors should be compelled to prominently disclose exactly what the nature of any such behaviour will be before the sale is finalised, so customers can vote with their wallets and there is awareness in the market if anyone wants to compete on the basis that they have no (or at least less customer-hostile) artificial limitations. Fail to do so and be on the hook for whatever the normal compensation would be for a device breaking at the time the limitation kicks in, up to and including a partial or full refund of the purchase price or even paying additional compensation for any consequential losses.

<comment><USER9> All you need to do is require 5 years of warranty that is not crippled beyond reason. It would fix most of the problems within a year.

Anything non-consumable broke? Fix it.

It is getting unbearable: washing mashines, fridges, phones, laptops dying within few years.

<comment><USER8> Five years is still an arbitrary interval though, so I'm not sure that really does fix most of the problems.

For some devices, five years might be well into the range where a significant proportion of devices would be expected to fail even without artificial breakage. For example, it might be unreasonable to expect a minimum 5 year warranty on a typical consumer hard drive being hulked around in a laptop. It's possible to build more reliable drives with better components and more robust cases with improved physical protection for those who need better resilience, but it makes the products more expensive, and the market has already provided for this with a range of different product types at different price points.

On the other hand, I have plenty of white goods in the kitchen of my home that have been working just fine for a decade and there's no reason they shouldn't be. Fixing a 5 year warranty period regardless of context might have been an open invitation to the manufacturer of my fridge to build in something that would break after 61 months (which seems a lot closer to what you seem to get with more modern kitchen white goods today).

I still think full disclosure is probably the best way to fight this trend. You can artificially cripple your device if you want, but like the warnings on cigarette packets, you have to use at least 30% of the space on your packaging prominently warning users that your product is deliberately broken and explaining exactly how so they can make an informed decision about whether they still want to buy it. I'm going to guess a lot fewer manufacturers would be so keen on nerfing their products if they also had to come clean about it to their prospective customers _before_ they got their money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Like with automobiles, where the law mandates fair availability of both manuals and spare parts, the electronics industry should be regulated.

I'd like to see:

1) in case there is any (F)OSS component in the firmware, the device manufacturer or distributor must provide the source of all (F)OSS components and a working build environment, for every firmware version available, as well as the neccessary tools/keys to upload said firmware to the device.

2) Disassembly and reassembly instruction manuals, as well as spare parts, should be provided nondiscriminately to both the manufacturer and any interested party. In case the device is "repaired" by swapping the defective unit with a working one, the manufacturer is exempt.

3) In case proprietary screws, glues etc. are used, the manufacturer must provide the same tools as used by official service at fair conditions.

4) All requirements above must be kept valid over the expected life time of the device, plus two years.

In case a manufacturer or distributor fails to adhere to these rules, the regulatory body must have the power to ban the product from sale until manufacturer or distributor comply.

<comment><USER8> The trouble is, while it's easy to write that kind of wish list, it may simply not be commercially realistic to grant all your wishes. Imposing burdens on producing detailed technical documentation usable by anyone without the manufacturer's own in-house training could be a huge cost, for example, and totally blocking sales because someone objected to an unintentional omission in such documentation would be wildly disproportionate. That's before you even get to issues of trade secrets and the like.

What you _can_ reasonably legislate/regulate is that manufacturers/suppliers can't _actively impair_ third parties who want to provide alternative services and are able to do so to a sensible standard. Just blocking the kinds of legal shenanigans that these giants use to tie up small/local potential competitors would be a good start.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> If it can happen for cars it could happen for electronics. [http://www.autonews.com/article/20140125/RETAIL05/301279936/...](http://www.autonews.com/article/20140125/RETAIL05/301279936/automakers- agree-to-right-to-repair-deal)

I applaud dell for making their repair manuals available online. All companies should be following in their footsteps. Apple give all sorts of information to techs but not to consumers. No repair manuals and Even the support tools are different.

<comment><USER12> That's a slightly differnet scenario, as the disgnostics don't actaully "fix" anything, although you can use disgnostics software to adjust settings like ride height, injector settings etc. There really was no extra work involved by the manufacturers in the link you provided, they had all the information well documented and just refused to publish it.

There is a downside to diagnostics tools being freely available, you can clear any fault codes before you sell the car to an unsuspecting buyer, this will prevent the dash warning lights appearing until the sensor registers the fault again, which could be under particular driving conditions. Of course, this is little different from the normal 'buying a used car' pitfalls.

ON the other hand, I saved literally thousands of dollars by diagnosing my air-suspension fault myself, and then carrying out the work required based on that fault code. Pretty sure the dealership don't want me doing that, but then maybe they shouldn't charge a high hourly rate for a 5-10 minute process of attaching a cable and looking at the screen?

<comment><USER13> If you had the full documentation on all the systems on a car you could also reset the odometer before selling it to someone else, or turn off the alarm system and unlock the doors.

Before the recent examples of using internet connected entertainment systems to hack cars there was a case where someone found that there was a vehicle bus connector in the wheel arch of certain vehicles, plug into it and you could do anything to the car from outside.

<comment><USER14> These would not be problems if the car software/hardware is properly constructed. The issues with the odometer, alarm and doors could be solved by signing the relevant binaries/data with a digital key. The issue with the bus connector is close to negligence in my non-professional opinion (the fuel cap is locked on my car as is the switch to release the bonnet).

The security by obscurity argument is pretty dead at this time -- it doesn't magically get resurrected just because the object we are securing is a car.

<comment><USER15> Signing? Or just don't let it be changed. Odometers don't need updates.

<comment><USER13> They do need updates if you need to replace the ECU where the odometer reading is stored.

<comment><USER15> Weren't we talking about diagnostic tools and security as it relates to tampering?

 _Replacing the entire odometer_ is a different issue entirely.

And how does support for replacing a circuit board imply that the circuit board needs to support software updates? I don't understand what you're saying at all.

<comment><USER13> A car is basically a LAN of fairly generic microcontrollers, they are fitted to the car then programmed in place to match their required function, the official odometer value will be stored in one of these microcontrollers picked at random for that particular car. The main function of the one that gets chosen could be anything, it could control seat position or electric windows for example. If this controller needs to be replaced then the new one will need to be programmed with the correct software then the old odometer value stored into it.

The diagnostic tools provided to official dealerships handle reading fault codes and reprogramming the microcontrollers fitted to the car. I think that OBD-II is about as good a compromise as you are going to get to allow aftermarket diagnostics.

In hindsight, it could have been better to have treated the car as a WAN, with every controller firewalled off from each other, particularly as the manufacturers have been talking for years about allowing access to the vehicle bus from outside so that cars can be linked together into a train and all changing speed at the same time. I don't think you would choose to do this with CAN though and I don't know of any proposals for newer network standards though it is a few years since I was a member of any of the ISO committees that worked on this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> 22 years ago: new toaster oven as wedding gift. 3 months later: oven died; I planned on fixing it as I assumed it was just a simple component failure. In the meantime, we pulled out an old unopened (ergo, in the box-new) toaster my wife had inherited from her grandparents. 22 years later the chrome encased, thick woven cabled toaster needs an occasional emptying out, but otherwise goes on and on. We'll probably pass it on to one of our kids one day.

<comment><USER17> toaster oven != toaster

<comment><USER18> toaster oven also != oven. That whole story was very confusing.

<comment> at-fates-hands The point of the story is back in the day, things were built to last a lifetime. These days, EVERYTHING you buy is disposable and not expected to last very long.

<comment><USER19> I've read that this is more due to increased complexity and smaller parts. Maybe it's both that as well as companies wanting to make money off repairs/replacements as implied.

<comment><USER16> I am not sure that toasting technology has gotten orders of magnitude "better". Energy in toast out.

I also don't think it was necessarily a conscious decision to make disposable toasters (or cell-phones or effectively computers), just that a market segment opened up and overtook others. We might blame consumers, but we can only blame them in aggregate for incenting a trend to continue by buying into it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Self-repair Manifesto: [http://blogs- images.forbes.com/jerrymichalski/files/2012/12/...](http://blogs- images.forbes.com/jerrymichalski/files/2012/12/Self-Repair-Manifesto.png)

I don't buy Apple products anyhow.

<comment><USER21> > I don't buy Apple products anyhow.

I bought my first apple product six months ago. An iphone 5 32gb model. It had been roughly used, and I got a discount.

I bought this, in part, because I can get cheap parts for an older iphone; this is much less true of any other model of older phone.

Also, I can get updated software for an older iphone... this is also not true of older android phones (as far as I can tell, CyanogenMod drops support just as quickly as the original manufacturers. Yes, I could figure out how to port the security updates to the device-specific package, but I could also write my own phone OS, given enough time and effort. There's no reasonable/practical way to get up to date software for an old android phone.)

A new apple phone isn't as better than a new android as people say... and god damn, itunes is a piece of shit when it comes to managing podcasts. ios might even be worse (no sd card, etc..) But an iphone that is a couple years old and has sustained some damage is way better than an android of a similar vintage, simply because of the software and hardware support.

Note, it is pretty unlikely that I would buy an apple workstation, for all the reasons discussed in this article, and because I find their keyboard unpleasant.... but the point remains that in practical terms, it's way easier to repair an old Iphone than an old android phone, simply because of the wide availability of parts.

(that said, the fork of the fork of the fork of the nokia linux that came with my nokia n900 many years ago is still going, which is really kind of amazing. But the n900 is pretty primitive at this point.)

<comment><USER22> Regarding your last point, sounds like you want [http://neo900.org/](http://neo900.org/)

<comment><USER21> If I had more spare time, perhaps. I've got some n900 parts laying about that could be used, if I could find them. I've already figured out how to use swype, so while I'm not yet as proficient as a teenager, I can text on a capacitive screen better than on the mediocre hardware keyboard the n900 came with at this point.

Even so, spare parts for the iphone are gonna be way more available than spare parts for the n900.

but I am time-poor right now. Perhaps to the point where if my iphone broke I'd give it away to someone with more time to fix such things and buy another.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Our oven broke due to a fault in a circuit board, also a common and well documented fault for the model, and the replacement, while available, was 2/3rds the cost of the oven. New oven, different manufacturer.

<comment><USER23> You'll probably find that it's the same manufacturer, same parts, just a different retail brand and a slightly different case/chassis design.

I just had my hob replaced, turns out the new hob, branded as Neff is exactly the same hob branded by about 10 other electric hob makers you see in your local white goods outlet. All they did was change the knobs.

It's the same with bog standard fridges/freezers. I used to service computer equipment for a company that manufactured floor standing fridges/freezer combos. I was told by staff there that they manufactured them for nearly every conceivable well known brand in the UK - Hotpoint, Electrolux, Indesit. All that really changed between brand were the plastic moulded insides that held the shelves, door handles, and possibly the door facings. The actual refrigeration/control electronics meat and potatoes, chassis, power supply were pretty much the same across all the brands.

<comment><USER24> This.

My GE fridge was all Samsung parts.

Which were all made by someone else.

<comment><USER25> My "GE" fridge was all "Samsung" parts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> My MacBook Air 2012 shuts down at ~50% battery, and my iPhone 5S at 15%.

Meanwhile, my ancient Thinkpad T500 I owned before the MBA is alive and kicking, and when its battery gave out after three years, I could just order another battery to replace it with. On my MBA, everything is glued together, so I have to pay a couple of hundreds for a 1st og 3rd party shop to replace it instead - with no guarantee what the end result will be.

The future really sucks this way, especially since it's not a secret that batteries do worse over time - it's in the friggin' manuals for Apple's devices.

Apple's products are a lot more affordable than they used to, when we criticized them for being for the rich, but now they seem to expect us to replace our products far more frequently than we used to.

—

On a lighter note, the remote for my Pioneer remote broke, and I literally can't adjust some of my speaker settings without it, and Pioneer have taken weeks to respond to my query. It'd be ridiculous if I had to get a new sound system, and surely losing a remote isn't some obscure scenario to these people.

<comment><USER27> You can take it into an Apple Store and they will replace the battery and recycle the old one. Cost varies by device but I suspect it'll cost $200 or so. Far less than replacing the device.

This isn't a conspiracy. If you want a thin (and light) device, you have to make compromises. A user replaceable battery on a MacBook will add a slight amount of thickness and weight (same with soldered vs in soldered components). I totally understand if you're not a fan of it, but in that case you probably ought to buy a ThinkPad instead.

<comment><USER28> > Cost varies by device but I suspect it'll cost $200 or so. Far less than > replacing the device.

It's $129 (excluding taxes): [https://support.apple.com/kb/index?page=servicefaq&geo=Unite...](https://support.apple.com/kb/index?page=servicefaq&geo=United_States&product=Macnotebooks)

<comment><USER29> Which isn't that bad, that's the same price as buying a replacement battery for my 2008 MB 5,1. I think I paid around £80 for the last one. At least you're not being charged any extra for servicing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I completely agree that it should be possible to repair things, but this:

> Mr. Wiens is also part of a coalition pushing legislation in Minnesota, > Massachusetts and New York that would require "digital electronic product" > makers to provide owners and independent repair businesses with service > information, security updates and replacement parts. This would, he says, > increase choices and lower prices.

…is asininely stupid. In what possible world would the cost of writing, illustrating and editing service information and maintaining security updates _not_ increase costs, which will end up being passed on to customers as part of the cost of doing business?

I'd _love_ for equipment to be supported, but I'm not so daft as to think that means it'll be cheaper.

Heck, even mandating repairability can have costs: for one thing, it would have prevented the existence of smartphones.

<comment><USER31> Any electronics product from a major manufacturer will have provisions made for repairs. Some repair/refurbishing center will have bid for the repair contract, promising to repair FooPhones at $23/unit or whatever. They will get documentation, parts from the manufacturer, and train a bunch of people in FooPhone repair. Then when Timmy drops his brand new FooPhone, the manufacturer can tell him that for just $79.99, he'll get a factory refurbished one in 2-3 weeks.

Those supposed costs you talk about were already incurred. It's just a requirement that the manufacturer not just limit repairs to "factory authorized" repair centers. There's a very similar debate going on about repairability of automobiles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Wendell Berry's criteria for technical progress:

1\. The new tool should be cheaper than the one it replaces. 2\. It should be at least as small in scale as the one it replaces. 3\. It should do work that is clearly and demonstrably better than the one it replaces. 4\. It should use less energy than the one it replaces. 5\. If possible, it should use some form of solar energy, such as that of the body. 6\. It should be repairable by a person of ordinary intelligence, provided that he or she has the necessary tools. 7\. It should be purchasable and repairable as near to home as possible. 8\. It should come from a small, privately-owned shop or store that will take it back for maintenance and repair. 9\. It should not replace or disrupt anything good that already exists, and this includes family and community relationships.

</comment><comment><USER33> Hardware may become harder and harder to fix. But what about software? If Apple can't be bothered to release security fixes for the iPhone 4, should they be forced to let us flash our own OS on these devices? I'd love to see this happen, but I don't know how realistic it is (unwieldy binary driver blobs come to mind).

</comment><comment> at-fates-hands You can also draw an analogy with cars. When I was in college, I drove several 1970's Chevy Trucks. All big block 350 engines. It broke down several times and all I had to do was to visit the local junkyard, go get a part from a junker truck for under $50, and within a few hours, I was able to fix my truck. These days, no way you could that with a truck bought as far back as 1995.

This is the same issue with smartphones. Back in the day, it was easy to get your phone fixed. I ran both a Verizon and a Nextel service shop. The carriers were more than happy to provide training and access to tools and parts. For a mom and pop shop it took several hundred dollars for tools and a good starting point with parts (antennas, replacement screens, keyboards, flips, and main boards). Then you had a list of what they charged for each repair. Parts and costs and a set price for repairs.

The carriers really don't see this as a revenue driver anymore and dropped their service centers. Now you see other "unathorized" shops springing up that handle repairs these days. the problem is the cost of the parts. A display assembly for an LG2 is somewhere in the neighborhood of $75.00. Add in labor and now you're around $125-$150 to get your screen fixed. Not bad, but most people balk at those prices and simply opt to trash their phone and find something on craigslist or ebay.

Until the carriers get back involved, it's an expensive proposition (on both sides of the equation) to do phone repair.

<comment><USER34> Counter-point: I co-own a repair shop and we do a ton of phone repairs, including the LG G2. Wholesale cost on the screen for a G2 is $53 right now (not $75), so we do the repair for ~$110. Given the small number of G2's still on the market, we do a fair amount of repairs on them.

Sometimes people will opt to replace them, especially since the G4 is out now and the G2 is 2 generations behind. But most people don't have an upgrade available right now, can't afford to live without a phone, and -- perhaps most importantly -- really like the phone they have, and the data that's stored on it.

People also hate buying on craigslist or eBay because of shoddy quality and scammers -- we've seen a ton of people get scammed with iPhones that are iCloud locked that people bought on craigslist not understanding that you can't remove an iCloud lock from a phone and it's only good for parts.

This has been my experience; we do over 100 phone repairs a week on average from a single store.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Olympus cameras are another nightmare to repair. The button broke, but they 1) won't sell the parts to the repair store, 2) want it shipped to the factory and $200 to repair. A button that shouldn't have broken in the first place (I've take thousands and thousands of pictures and never had one fail before.

Its micro four-thirds so my next camera will be panasonic.

<comment><USER36> I had the opposite experience, to be fair. The shutter button broke (I think the spring), and they repaired it, for free.

<comment><USER35> You figure they would just do that for the good will it engenders...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> >Samsung wants people to go to "qualified" technicians. In a statement, a spokesman said, "The technology found in TVs today is more sophisticated than ever before and often requires a level of expertise and technical proficiency to repair most of these high-quality products."

>I've heard this argument echoed elsewhere in the electronics industry. But the view is not unanimous: Dell, for one, makes repair guides and parts widely available on its site. So do H-P and Lenovo. Are we to believe that repairing a TV is so much more complicated than poking at a laptop?

Opening up a laptop and replacing a part available from the Dell online store is an entirely different scenario to fixing a burnt out TV...

Would the author be arguing the same thing if he'd tried to fix something himself and been zapped in the process?

<comment><USER38> Do LCDs have the high voltage death risk that CRT TVs had?

<comment><USER39> It has mains power in it. 230v in my country which is fairly lethal.

But as i see it we already have the right to fix or own stuff. I mean the warranty will be voided... which i my mind seams fair.

<comment><USER12> The author does mention unplugging it before starting a repair. I think the mains voltage isn't the issue unless you are feeling really down about the device breaking, so down in fact that you would leave it plugged in before commencing work. Or do I not understand some fundamental of electronics repair that has high voltage on a unplugged device? (genuine question, not an electronics repair shop employee)

<comment><USER40> You could also accidentally connect a live wire to the metal housing, causing the entire outside of the device to become live when you plug it in after the repair.

<comment><USER41> That should not be an option - the device should (and IIRC is required to) be designed with a grounded housing, so if you do actually accidentally connect a live wire, then it would just blow a fuse by that short circuit.

<comment><USER40> True. So I'd have to make at least two mistakes: let a live wire make contact with the case, and disconnect the ground connection to the case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I had a coffee spill on my MacBook Pro. It's $2K machine, and of course, Apple suggested I get a new one! Apple also said, I need to get a different one, because mine is old. Not that old, but just old enough that I should get a new one. Slick, those guys. Real slick. :)

Turns out, I can order keyboard and top case for $150 from Hong Kong.

Got it, and moved all the parts from the old machine to the new one. And it took a long day. Mine is a 2012 model, and it's reasonable to perform many repairs on it, though I did need to source a few odd screwdrivers. Harbor Freight had them in one of those kits with 20 some odd bits.

Honestly, I really like this machine. I could get a new one, but I don't like the new ones as much as I like this one. The repair day was totally worth it.

Growing up, I didn't have a lot. Spend to solve a problem generally was not a viable option. Fix to solve was, and I did a lot of fixing, scrounging, combining, etc... growing up, and I'm really noticing how hostile some products are turning out to be.

Doesn't have to go this way. I know a lot of people are making a lot of money, but that's artificial value.

I hate artificial value.

If people are going to make lots of money, let them! Heck, any of us here would gladly join them, or do our own thing to get our share too. The more the merrier.

But let's make damn sure that money is made on real value, not artificial value, or we all will be losing out.

</comment><comment><USER43> The "right to repair" really only means that the government shouldn't be allowed to create laws stopping you from making these repairs. You may not technically have that, but I am also not aware of any laws that prevent you from fixing things you own.

As for the actual repairability, this is something that the consumer actually gets to help decide! Unfortunately checking on the repair documentation before purchase is way way down the list. If it is something expensive and it is important to you then by all means, do the research.

I am strongly against mandating that a manufacturer provides you any information or parts that they don't want to. Let the market decide and vote with your own dollars.

<comment><USER8> _...I am also not aware of any laws that prevent you from fixing things you own._

There are numerous examples where intellectual property laws have been abused for this purpose.

Token encryption on most physical media means that building anything that can play that media without the appropriate licensing arrangements is illegal in many places, for example, and suitable terms may or may not be offered by the IP rightsholders. That led to dumb things like not being able to buy a DVD/Blu-ray player that would skip the pointless junk at the start and just play the movie, because no-one was legally allowed to make such a machine and compete for business with the ones everyone hates.

It also meant that when my PVR failed, the manufacturer wanted the whole box back and couldn't let me swap out the (apparently fine) hard drive with all the programmes I'd recorded (that data being the _entire point of the device_ ) because, they claimed, of some terms in their own agreement that let them manufacturer a device that could play OTA HD content.

Onboard electronic and diagnostic systems in cars is another field where manufacturers are very cosy with their franchised dealerships in a lot of countries and plenty of shady things happen to prevent otherwise perfectly competent local garages from competing for servicing and literal repair business.

Exactly none of these things are in the customer's interests, and exactly none of them have anything to do with whether a third party has the technical capabilities to produce or repair the equipment as required. It's just huge corporations and special interests abusing laws intended for very different purposes to lock up their markets against otherwise normal (and obviously likely to be successful) competition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> "We Need the Right to Repair Our Gadgets"

Holy Space Pope! Isn't that pretty much _exactly_ what started RMS on the Free Source mission!? He wanted to repair [the code in] his printer.

</comment><comment><USER45> Nice to see it's not just me with this frustration. I had the same problem with my Sammy LNT4061. One capacitor and 5 years later, and it's still going strong.

If only my Kobo aura H2O had the same story. One drop on an airport floor and it's an expensive paperweight. Kobo does not repair, nor sanction repair, nor is it even really possible.

</comment><comment><USER46> The author wrote all this and not one word on proprietary software.

<comment><USER47> Yes, this should have been brought up too.

We have gone back to proprietary messaging formats. Home automation, I feel, will always be held back because everyone wants to do their own protocol. The list goes on.

There should be a push for as many open protocols as possible. Differentiate yourselves by what you DO with the open protocols.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> we have UL labels, energy star ratings, and various organic labels. Why not have some form of repairable rating system that people can place on electronic products?</comment>


Show HN: How a Startup Should Pitch to an Influencer - <AUTHOR> http://withoutbullshit.com/blog/finimize-common-sense-financial-writing/ <comment><USER2> Love it, straight to the point, no BS. Saves everyone time and effort.</comment>


Show HN: Universally rendered JavaScript app in one line of bash - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/chambaz/single-line-js-app <comment><USER2> This is v good.

</comment><comment><USER3> very clever.</comment>


Setting Up an Electronics Lab - <AUTHOR> https://jeff.glass/2019/12/01/electronics-lab-tools/ <comment><USER2> Author here - I'll fully admit to not being totally up to date with best- practices for leaded/lead-free/rosin-free solders in a hobbyist environment. But a fume-extractor (and one with a decent fan) is a must, I feel, and they're so cheap these days they're worth the investment.

In the Hackaday comments, the other main thing I missed listing was magnification, either desk-mounted or head-worn. I've put my visor-magnifier in a place of prominence on my workbench now, shaming me with its glassy gaze for leaving it out.

<comment><USER3> Nice article! Glad to see you recommending much of the equipment I have in my own lab. Something I'd highly recommend is the T-962A reflow oven with the modifications from here:

[https://hackaday.com/2014/11/27/improving- the-t-962-reflow-o...](https://hackaday.com/2014/11/27/improving- the-t-962-reflow-oven/)

(especially removing the packing tape and replacing it with Kapton tape to avoid fumes!)

This oven has worked really well for me (as long as you don't overload it and leave plenty of space for airflow).

Also, the Sparkfun 303D hot air rework station is pretty damn good:

[https://www.sparkfun.com/products/14557](https://www.sparkfun.com/products/14557)

On the 3D printer, have you actually used the Original Prusa MINI? I'm in the market for a starter 3D printer and I'm looking for a recommendation from someone who's used one in anger.

<comment><USER4> > I'm in the market for a starter 3D printer and I'm looking for a > recommendation from someone who's used one in anger.

I built the Creality Ender 3 Pro. With a few mods it runs very well, and is super cheap (Under £200). Had it for 6+ months. I'm into model steam engines and use it (and a small chinese lathe) for making small parts. Accurate and works well with OctoPrint.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Literally 5 minutes ago I finished my build of an Elenco XP-720K power supply kit. It has both DC +1.25 to 15V and DC -1.25 to 15V (1A), along with a DC +5V 3A output. And 12.6 VAC, for tubes I guess :-)

$65 and 6 hours of work. No meters, nor current limiting, but hey, it's accurate and cheap. Manual is [https://www.elenco.com/wp- content/uploads/2017/10/XP-720K_RE...](https://www.elenco.com/wp- content/uploads/2017/10/XP-720K_REV-J-2.pdf)

Elenco also makes a pre-assembled version, but what's the fun in that?

</comment><comment><USER6> If anyone is interested in a nice long video talking about what you can use/need for setting up an electronics lab, take a look at the EEVblog video for doing this. Dave keeps everything under a certain dollar limit and explains his choices well.

Not saying this link is bad for some reason, but more information is better.

</comment><comment><USER7> Some of this sounds useful, but the author recommends leaded solder instead of lead free.

Hasn't lead free has been the standard for _years_ , due to safety?

<comment><USER8> Lead in solder is not a safety hazard unless you eat it, it isn't vaporized in normal soldering.

Lead free solder is used for environmental reasons because electronic devices will eventually be disposed of. Since the amount of lead used in one person's projects is minimal, it only matters in mass production or when RoHS is required by customers, regulatory agencies etc.

Leaded solder is so much easier to work with I wouldn't use lead-free it unless I was required to.

<comment><USER9> > Lead in solder is not a safety hazard unless you eat it

I'm not sure this is true. I'm entirely certain that _some_ of the lead manages to get away from the place you're soldering. There's no guarantee that it won't end up on your hands or clothes and eventually in your food.

Granted the risk is probably infinitesimal, but modern lead-free solder is barely any harder to work with than classic leaded solders. If you set your soldering iron a smidge hotter you'll barely notice.

That said I use lead-free solder and _still_ make a point of washing my hands after soldering. Solder has a distinct smell when used so _something_ is getting in the air, let alone on my hands.

<comment><USER7> > Solder has a distinct smell when used so something is getting in the air, > let alone on my hands.

Guessing the smell is from the rosin core burning off?

<comment><USER9> Maybe. Could be anything. I'd rather not be eating rosin either though, so I'll keep washing my hands ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Ts-80/100 for solder, bk-858 for hot air rework, and a mini frying pan on the oven for 'reflow soldering'</comment>


Coronavirus Charts for the Layman - <AUTHOR> https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-26/coronavirus-covid19-global-spread-data-explained/12089028?nw=0&pfmredir=sm <comment><AUTHOR> Very accessible charts showing why flattening the curve is so important. Thought it would be good to share among those who are not the most data savvy.</comment>


Microchip: 7x faster, 30x less power - <AUTHOR> http://www.rice.edu/nationalmedia/news2009-02-08-pcmos.shtml

<comment><AUTHOR> The streaming video example is pretty to understand. But I don't quite follow the encryption one. Don't you need to be precise with the calculation to encrypt/decrypt? Or would the advantage here would be mainly for generating random numbers?

<comment><USER2> generating random numbers seems right.. maybe they switch chips when accuracy matters, or maybe they don't care if some of the output gets mangled since the human can 'ignore' the mistakes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I wonder if you have to program them any differently...

sometimes_print("Hello World! I guess, at least in this case...");

<comment><USER4> Maybe you could have 3 processors running the same code. You could repeat any steps that resulted in disagreement between processors. If the 30x less power claim is true, you would still be saving ~10x the energy(Less than 10x due to repeated calculations and inter-processor communication).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow this sounds very intriguing but I have no idea where to start learning about this. I tried reading some of the papers and was quickly overwhelmed. Anyone have any suggestions for how to start experimenting with this? Are there any VHDL like kits for doing probabilistic logic?

Is there any hope of there being dev kits made that would allow one to experiment cheaply? I want to try and see if this gives any advantages for monte-carlo algorithms.</comment>


Huawei Indictment [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1248961/download <comment><USER2> Wow, it is amazing how much allegations/evidence they compiled.

Huawei had a subsidiary in Iran called Skycom for which they sold off to another entity and tried to lie about the ownership saying it was a partner.

Another case where they stole a company's source code for which they were sued for and FutureWei attempted to remotely access routers that hosted the source code in order to erase the code to destroy evidence. They then asserted that a third party gave them the source code.

Sounds to me like Meng is going to get extradited.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is astonishing.

Huawei has/had an internal team that encouraged employees to conceal their employment with the company and conduct corporate espionage on competitors. They allegedly awarded bonuses to employees based on the value of the IP they stole.</comment>


Ask HN: Looking for an open-source Grooveshark clone I can host myself. - <AUTHOR>

Does anyone know of a piece of software that I can put on my server, point at a folder of music and then be able to play it from my web browser wherever I am, complete with playlists, etc? If not, would you be interested in this as I'll write such a piece of software myself if it doesn't exist. <comment><USER2> Maybe <http://owncloud.org> ? I don't think it supports playlists, though, but they're pretty open to pull requests (or merge requests, as they're on gitorious). Only downside is that it's written in PHP ;-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hm, that could work. PHP is ok as I, sadly, use it for my day job. I dream of the day when I can leave it behind :-)

Thanks for that anyway, will give it a try. The document features, etc, could be handy too.</comment></comment>


It costs $10k to 'own' a Chick-fil-A franchise - <AUTHOR> https://thehustle.co/why-it-only-costs-10k-to-own-a-chick-fil-a-franchise/ <comment><USER2> I know several CFA owner-operators, and this article is mostly on point.

Some of the comments I've seen are a bit off. 2 of the 3 owner-operators I know have multiple locations, although this is rare. Income estimates are a bit low for typical stores I'd be surprised if any owner operator of a freestanding unit is below $250k. Also, the estimates of worked hours are a bit high. All the owner operators I know have great work-life balance, this is a function of how well they hire and train their general managers.

There are also some significant advantages to non-ownership that are win-win for both the company and operators. CFA provides significant support beyond what other franchisers do: IT, capex for renovation, and training. CFA is incredibly focused on efficiency in their stores. If you've seen a freestanding store recently, you've probably seen it be renovated to allow for double drive through lanes and a walkthrough parlor for pickup. That's not the type of thing many franchisees at other companies have the cash (or willingness) to do.

<comment><USER3> Extremely well put. I completely concur. My first cousin is in the process of getting his "own" store now. While it has been a grind (he often worked the mythical 100+ hour week while in the Leadership Development Program) it will pay off handsomely.

The best part of Chic-Fil-A (in my opinion) is not the food but their total devotion to the customer. The level of service you receive at a Chic-Fil-A freestanding store is unparalleled at virtually all other fast food joints (with the occasional exception of In-N-Out ((maybe the hyphens add to greater service?)) and most restaurants in general.

<comment><USER4> And perhaps apostrophes destroy the service culture? (McDonald's, Wendy's, Arby's)

<comment><USER3> Haha you know, I think you are onto something! But the main thing is that most fast food businesses (and businesses in general) are so focused on revenue that their employees and customers suffer.

I recently used a self-serve machine at Taco Bell (love the dreadful beef chalupa) and had a poor experience. The machine was too low for my height and unadjustable. Poor design really brings out the worst in the fast food experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have myriad issues with the personal ethics of the owners of Chick-fil-A - but their model does make sense to me.

They're clearly not just wanting to sell their brand - they're wanting to own their brand.

The 10k is just a token - It's maybe more than you have in your clearing account, but a figure that most people could likely produce and is just an indicator that "you're serious"

Important part is that they put you through the grinder to make sure you're the person they want to run their store. To be honest just looks like a regular job interview - with the exception that they charge you to join the company, but you get a cut of the profits.

Not even sure if they're in the UK yet, but you can see the converse with Subway that keeps appearing all over the place, despite not having any customers.

<comment><USER6> They closed immediately after they opened in the U.K.

[https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/u-k-s-first-chick- fi...](https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/u-k-s-first-chick-fil-close- following-lgbtq-protests-n1069621)

<comment><USER7> > will close after its six-month lease expires

That's certainly not immediately. Also not by decision of CFA. The local landlord folded and decided not to renew the lease, so after the initial 6 months, that CFA location would have to close.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> From the article. Already knew, but this summarizes the food business so beautifully.

"As a fast-food franchise owner, you're often fighting a war for pennies," says Rose. "Food is the most competitive industry known to man: It has the highest investment level of any industry, the highest failure rate, and the lowest margins."

<comment><USER9> There are exceptions which indicate that may not be the whole story.

[https://www.businessinsider.com/in-n-out-employee- pay-2018-1](https://www.businessinsider.com/in-n-out-employee-pay-2018-1)

* Store managers earn an average yearly salary of more than $160,000, more than what the typical tech worker in Silicon Valley makes for the year.

* High wages for fast-food workers can lead to increased productivity, less employee turnover, and bigger profits in the long run.

<comment><USER10> Tech worker salaries are higher if you look at the total compensation.

<comment><USER11> At top level companies, yes. But the average for all tech companies in SV is likely lower than 160k.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Fun fact, related to the fact that Chick Fil-A handles much more of the operations than a normal fast food chain: they apparently run Kubernetes on the machines in a store ([https://medium.com/@cfatechblog/bare- metal-k8s-clustering-at...](https://medium.com/@cfatechblog/bare- metal-k8s-clustering-at-chick-fil-a-scale-7b0607bd3541)).

</comment><comment><USER13> My biggest takeaway from this is that Wendy's standards are surprisingly high. Why do they require a net worth of $5 million when most seem to top out at $1 million? Is it a way of ensuring a lower closure rate as people with $5 million net worth are less likely to go bankrupt and shut down the restaurant?

<comment><USER14> What's even more weird to me is that they have these high franchise standards, but apparently they don't seem to hold the franchises to high standards (at least not the stores I visit). They're always dirty / unkempt.

<comment><USER15> The Wendy's near me are all pretty high quality

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > At $4.2m per store, Chick-fil-A's average revenue is the highest of any > fast-food chain in America, dwarfing both direct competitors (KFC; $1.2m) > and bigger brands (McDonald's; $2.8m)

Wow, I did not know this. Why is that?

<comment><USER17> They opened up the first one near me in a Portland Oregon suburb. The place was packed whenever they were open with drive-thru cars spilling out into the street. I thought the madness would end after a few days/weeks, but it's been years and they still have a huge draw. I went in there once just to try it. It was good, but not the best thing I've ever had. I wonder if it is nostalgia from people from the SE USA that is driving all the business.

<comment><USER18> Chick-Fil-A's in the SE (or at least NC) are also packed to the brim whenever it is close to a meal time. Although they don't serve the best food in the world the customer service is excellent, the food is pretty good for fast food and it is consistent in matter which location you go to, and you can get your food much faster than other places despite the massive crowds.

<comment><USER19> The one at Park Rd Shopping Center in Charlotte is going to be rebuilt as a drive-thru only location at the (rather firm, supposedly) request of the city because it's such a traffic nightmare.

[https://www.charlotteagenda.com/152719/chick-fil-a- woodlawn-...](https://www.charlotteagenda.com/152719/chick-fil-a-woodlawn- road/)

<comment><USER20> Honestly, the obnoxious lines at this location and others around the city are one of the reasons I really hate the chain. It's typical fast food garbage - lines spilling out into the street for that crap is just so stupid.

<comment><USER18> Odd that you would hate a chain for being successful, especially if they are taking steps like redesigning their stores to help fix the problem. Also I would have to disagree with calling Chick-Fil-A fast food crap. That's more like value menu McDonald's burgers and Chick-Fil-A is a step above that (in both price and quality) IMO

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> When I was a teenager, I was told by a manager that the shake machine at McDonald's cost more than I make in a year _now_. The amount of credit you're operating under as a franchise owner... I don't know how they sleep at night.

<comment><USER22> Teens are often broke, but not as often as a McDonald's shake machine. Funny they cost so much while being out of service so much of the time.

<comment><USER21> I believe I was asking why we hadn't replaced a janky part. I was told the price of the part and expressed incredulity.

Grown up me still doesn't understand why the equipment costs that much, except that it's small production runs and captive audience.

<comment><USER23> There are high demands on reliability: the equipment is expected to run 10-24 hours a day for years, without harming the operator or leaking oil onto customer's food.

<comment> jagged-chisel I read comments like this as anthropomorphizing the machine - it's not like the machine has to remember to not harm the operator or not to leak.

Anyway, I don't find this a compelling argument against allowing mechanical failures. Manufacturers these days understand the trade-offs between cost to manufacture, part reliability, and tolerance of failure.

(That said, mechanical failure might not even be a problem with the machines. It could just be the need to claim their offline so that staff can service other customers better.)

<comment><USER23> > Anyway, I don't find this a compelling argument against allowing mechanical > failures. Manufacturers these days understand the trade-offs between cost to > manufacture, part reliability, and tolerance of failure.

I fully agree - my point was not to anthropomorphize machines. However, as you said, manufacturers understand the trade-offs, and for "industrial-grade" products, they prioritize having longer Mean time to failure compared to consumer goods. MTTF is sometimes baked into the contract/warrantees since any downtime is money lost - McDonald's can't take the fry machine offline and continue serving 95% of their meals

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> >found that 51% of food franchisees earn less than $50k per year and only around 7% take in $250k

Unbelievable, owning a franchise seems pretty stressful just to be taking in 50k/year. I guess once you get it off the ground with good managers you don't have to baby it as much, but still.

</comment><comment><USER25> Fundamentally it is a different employment model. The 10k fee is to inspire commitment and weed out non-serious candidates. After that, the new manager is essentially on commission.

This allows CFA to find people who are ambitious irrespective of current wealth.

</comment><comment><USER26> I have a manager friend at a Chick-fil-A. The waiting list to get a franchise is years.

</comment><comment><USER27> Honestly, until now I always thought that chick-fil-A would do like wraps with chickpeas in from the name. I wonder how little they realise their brand holds weight in the UK. I know I'm only a single datapoint, but a lot of these american fast food names that haven't come to the UK already have quite a hurdle to jump.

<comment><USER28> Their name literally means "Chicken Filet". Why would you think chickpeas?

<comment><USER29> Because in British English, that word is pronounced unlike the letter A.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I was in Vegas a few months ago and saw construction signs for a new Chick fil A at Planet Hollywood on the Strip. Can only imagine how profitable that location would be.

</comment><comment><USER31> I always found franchise initial startup costs to be predatory, as they get paid either way regardless of whether the franchisee actually succeeds. In my opinion they should be abolished and franchisors should only rely on royalties, so that they have an incentive to help the franchisee succeed if they want to make money.

<comment><USER32> I recall subway had "low" startup costs and it resulted in too many locations.

What incentivizes the new location to do due-diligence in picking a good location? If this is placed into the chain owner: What's the difference between a franchise vs single owner?

<comment><USER33> Chick-fil-A corporate determines all new locations. Corporate cares about the success of their locations because they own the lot, own the building, own the equipment, own just about everything and lease it back to the operator. If an operator violates the franchise agreement they get evicted and or lose their equipment and can no longer operate. It's how Chick-fil-a is able to maintain quality and control. Ever wonder why a Chick-fil-a location doesn't buck corporate and open on Sundays? Because they'd lose everything they need to run their business.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> How do chains know where to open new locations? You'd think they'd get it wrong a lot and you'd see a bunch opening and then closing down.

But as far as I know it doesn't seem to happen? Can you really predict what will be profitable that accurately?

</comment><comment><USER35> Are there any viable franchises that are hands off? Like you put in the investment, hire manager(s) and earn revenue as the owner without having to invest a lot of time on the day to day operation?

<comment><USER36> Oh man. That's a loaded question. Short answer no, long answer noooooooo.

With years of work you might get close. Finding good people and aligning incentives so you retain them is not easy.

Most franchisees that try and be hands-off from the start crash and burn. Which makes sense, really. If it were a lucrative passive investment, the franchisor would just throw some money at it and keep all the profits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> With 50% of profits / 15% of gross, they really own the store, and they're charging you $10,000 to apply for a job interview to manage it. It's a "franchise" in name only.

<comment><USER38> Except you get a cut of the profits - how many "managers" get that - seriously?

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> What's avg annual revenue for A chick fil a?

<comment><USER40> This article lists it as $4.2 million.

(vs $1.2 million for KFC and $2.8 million for McDonald's)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> > With a 0.13% acceptance rate, it's harder to become a Chick-fil-A franchisee > than it is to...get a job at Google (0.23%)

I think I'd rather just get a job at Google.

<comment><USER42> I think either of these acceptance rates are computed by casting the widest net possible. Nevertheless I have to believe Chick-Fil-A has a very rigorous process for hiring managers, who in turn know how to hire good workers; I have never once encountered the typical surly fast food worker at any of their restaurants.

<comment><USER43> Same. I ate at a food court that had a Chick Fil A and the Chick Fil A employee refilled everyone's drinks at our table even though they weren't all bought at Chick Fil A. That's just not normal for fast food workers.

<comment><USER44> I have had a similar experience as well, FWIW.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Misleading headline? It costs $10k _only_ compared to hundreds of thousands with other franchises. CFA covers all initial costs and simply takes much more in profit sharing than others.

</comment><comment><USER46> After getting kicked out of their first store in England the owners announced they were ending ties with anti-gay groups.

<comment><USER47> > ending ties with anti-gay groups.

Salvation Army. The Fellowship of Christian Athletes.

Calling those groups "anti-gay" and protesting a fast food restaurant for donating to them is absurd.

<comment><USER48> Could you please elaborate on why those groups aren't "anti-gay"? I've never heard of "Fellowship of Christian Athletes", but the Salvation Army is absolute anti-gay.

<comment><USER49> For me personally, the phrase "anti-gay group" muddies the waters because although Salvation Army (1) does (or did) have some anti-gay policies, and (2) is a "group", its main purpose is to be a food or shelter charity; not to pursue the disenfranchisement of gays through say, political compaigning.

To illustrate, I might refer to an organization under religion X as an "anti- women religious group" because perhaps religion X had some policy on women's activites that I believed were sexist; then for me "anti-women religious group" would be a technically correct phrase in that X is "anti-women" and "a religious group", but the phrasing would probably be objectionable to practitioners of the religion who don't see those particular policies as fundamental to their religion, and perhaps didn't even consider the policies sexist in the first place.

In general, I don't think I often see this loose use of terminology applied to other cases; like I don't think people call Nike a pro-child-labor company, although if that were the topic of discussion I might say Nike uses child labor. To me it's about avoiding ambiguity.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Verizon Private IP on LTE now - <AUTHOR> http://www.verizonbusiness.com/Products/networking/access/wireless/

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a really useful service, either for internal IT or for building products. Basically you can get a behind-the-firewall IP network provisioned over LTE (using MPLS) from Verizon. The price per endpoint can get pretty low in quantity, enough that a 4G chipset can go into devices for periodic out of band use.</comment>


I got a job interview for ThoughtWorks - <AUTHOR>

Hi everyone, I'm a software engineer and I got a job interview for ThoughtWorks. I read after scheduling the interview, that if kind of a really hard application process and now I feel kind of nervous because they work with really smart people and well I'm just trying to get better every day.
Any recommendations? Things I should read?
Thanks! <comment><USER2> You should read Wikipedia, IEEE, ACM and of course hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy.

Or you just keep calm and enjoy the experience…

you got the interview, cause you sounded promising.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hahaha, thanks for the laugh. I think you're right.</comment></comment>


Bzzzt: Opening the door with Websockets and Raspberry Pi - <AUTHOR> http://madebymany.com/blog/bzzzt-opening-the-door-using-websockets-and-a-raspberry-pi <comment><USER2> >For the Raspberry Pi server we decided to write some Python using Tornado and instead of using an HTTP like API - HTTP and APIs built on it using REST etc are in my opinion often used too often when plain old sockets will do the job! - we decided to negotiate a socket using WebSockets and then communicate messages as small as possible over that socket so that the latency was negligible.

Not that it matters much which tool you use for a job like this, but this part doesn't really make sense. A WebSocket handshake is at least as big as this sort of REST request would have been, and if you wanted to keep everyone connected a basic TCP socket would work even better. They write how they had to implement a heartbeat on top of WebSockets, which seems like more work than the message framing on a TCP socket would have been.

Neat project just the same, though.

<comment><USER3> I did a similar project, using Node.js to implement it with REST.

The advantage of that is I can create a CA with OpenSSL and sign a certificate for the server and one for the Raspberry Pi, and that way you can check if the other end is presenting a certificate signed by the same CA.

[https://jacklew.is/raspberry-pi-redux/](https://jacklew.is/raspberry-pi- redux/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I built a door system intended for a small office with a Pi, some sparkfun components, and Go. My code is here: [https://github.com/GauntletWizard/vnw](https://github.com/GauntletWizard/vnw) ; If anyone wants a more detailed explaination, I'll try to write one up.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'll bite: what happen when the wifi goes out and there's no-one inside the building?

<comment><USER6> The door functions as normal becuase this is just an add on! The keypad etc outside works fine.</comment></comment>


Jellyfish Genome Hints That Complexity Isn't Genetically Complex - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/blog/jellyfish-genome-hints-that-complexity-isnt-genetically-complex <comment><USER2> An interesting book was published by Brian Goodwin about 20 yesrs ago now - How the Leopard Changed it spots.

Some people thought of it as an attack on natural selection, but it really wasn't. It was a fascinating look at how the inherent properties of matter could lead to patterns (such as spiral arrangement of leaves or zebra stripes) without intervention from natural selection

[https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Leopard-Changed-Its- Spots/dp/07...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Leopard-Changed-Its- Spots/dp/075380171X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1547720455)

<comment><USER3> Absolutely fascinating. Thanks for sharing

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> >You might expect that as bodies became more complex, genomes did as well.

I bring this up in threads about diet/nutrition (and always get down voted).

But the idea is humans have about 20,000 protein coding genes and something as simple as wheat has estimated 150,000 to 334,000.

Where I get downvotes is the concept/hypothesis (not mine) that the explaination rests with the microbiome (which we have and something like wheat doesn't).

I'd be interested in learning if _complex_ creatures like jellyfish with _simple_ genomes have a complex microbiome.

<comment><USER5> hint: complaining about downvotes usually just gets more downvotes

just add what insight you have and then the crowd decides if they care, like or dislike

<comment><USER4> I'm not complaining, just acknowledging for the sake of preempting the attacks of comments about microbiome.

Almost any comment in a discussion about diet/nutrition is bound to get downvoted (at least on HN). People are probably bound to downvote anything about the microbiome for the same reasons. Yet we know the microbiome is responsible for turning (at least some) genes on/off, and otherwise our study of the microbiome is in its infancy.

I'd rather have someone reply about the jelly fish microbiome, if any, than explaination of HN social norms. The cool thing about HN is you might get some expert, in this case a marine biologist lurking, not the social norms.

<comment><USER6> If you haven't already, you might be interested to read some of Lynn Margulis' work. She was a big proponent of the idea that symbiosis is an overlooked source of speciation. In a book of hers I read recently she emphasized how complex organisms like humans depend on a huge foundation of other simpler organisms. You might find some interesting fuel for your ideas in her books.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Reading this, I was reminded of Herb Simon's "Sciences of the Artifical," which makes the point that often complexity is the result of interaction with the environment. His example is of an ant walking through sand. The ant follows a complex path, even though its behavior is governed by simple rules. This seems like the same lesson, at another level.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is a great discovery and opens up a good research area for experimentation. Coming from a math/computer background this result doesn't seem so surprising. Sometimes we can get complex results with very simple rules like cellular automata. It's the opposite result to having many genes change randomly with little resulting change in behaviour. Both can happen. We have yet to know if this was just by chance or if their was a more efficient mechanism in play.

<comment><USER9> It's not a surprise that the number of genes does not determine complexity of an organism.

The humble C. elegans (roundworm) has ~20000 genes, similar to humans.

The complexity comes with the regulation of these genes, which are in the noncoding regions of DNA.

<comment><USER10> The question is: how organism evolve complexity if no new genes are added?

You can regulate the genes to "disable" the complexity, but those genes need to be there in the first place....

<comment> 0-_-0 Check out Saplosky's lectures on Youtube, he deals with this question. Particularly this one: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dRXA1_e30o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dRXA1_e30o)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Here's the obligatory link to Conways Game of Life. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life)

>Scholars in various fields, such as computer science, physics, biology, biochemistry, economics, mathematics, philosophy, and generative sciences have made use of the way that complex patterns can emerge from the implementation of the game's simple rules

</comment><comment> d--b Humans developing intelligence is a better example of complexity that arose from small differences in genome.

Jellyfish aren't that fancy, right? From what I understood they're like a stomach and some kind of "muscle" that make them go up or down. They've got some poisonous chemicals and other things, but plants do have this too. Jellyfish remind me of the 2-neuron "neural network" that can play flappy bird :-)</comment>


Can modern software be snappy? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.micropledge.com/2008/06/snappy-software/

<comment><USER2> The fastest computing experience I had was somewhere around 2001-02 or so, I had PIII 1Gz with 256MB of RAM and 3MBit DSL connection.

Everything was screaming: every piece of software I ran, every site I visited. I forgot how "Please wait..." popups looked like.

After that, it's been declining ever since: my software has gotten slower and slower, and web sites started to bring back dial-up memories from mid-90s.

After switching to Linux I got back most of what I lost, but the web still feels much slower, even Gmail is giving me "Still working..." strip at the top on a daily basis and randomly 1-2 squares on google maps remain gray after initial page load: hard to bitch about free stuff though.

<comment><USER3> I personally have found a lot of software to be I/O bound instead of CPU bound. Specifically hard drives. Try loading up something. Does it wait forever because the CPU is at 100%? Or is the hard drive light blinking like nuts?

Our quest for never-ending data seems to slow things down. In the age of terrabyte hard drives, the only real limitation on program size is the average broadband connection on most freely downloadable apps. (And it's even worse for programs that come on a disc!)

There recently was an article about how spellcheck worked with limited resources. Word might be loading a smallish, compressed English dictionary back then, but loading uncompressed, unabridged English dictionary today since there's no real hard drive space constraint.

Never blame a poor, bloated algorithm when the problem is just as likely our unfettered need for more data.

<comment><USER2> I personally have found that most software is idiocy-bound, like creating a search thread for every key typed in "Quicksearch" box (Vista, with indexing disabled). Or loading an _entire_ page via 12 AJAX-requests, instead of serving it all at once, circa 1998. _(and THEN doing a round-trip to the server only to report back that I shouldn't be putting dashes in my phone number)_

As for I/O... it's is nothing, I've got plenty of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think some of the meta-point might be a bit strained here. It's true that there's a _lot_ of bloated software out there. And the example at the top, Acobat Reader, is one of the worst. It's a dog, and really easy to improve on. I've never heard of the "Foxit" product, but the poppler-based Evince reader on my Ubuntu box is similarly "snappy", even on huge documents (scanned-in D&D sourcebooks, for example -- yes, I'm a geek) where Adobe really crawls.

That said, there's a ton of common GUI software out there that really does deliver a pretty quick UI experience. Firefox 3 comes to mind as a good example here (especially given how hard it is to make some web content "snappy"). Likewise many of the smaller utilities on a modern Linux desktop are nice and quick.

Basically, the problem is real, but not as widespread as the article posits. A quick and clean desktop experience on modern hardware is both possible and available if you're willing to look for it.

But yeah, Acrobat is awful.

</comment><comment><USER5> BeOS felt _really_ fast, on a 200 mhz computer, several years ago. While the article's example is of Assembly optimized for performance over readability/maintainability (and I know people have written entire GUI OSs in Assembly, e.g. <http://www.menuetos.net/>), I know a clean, maintainable, responsive OS in a higher-level language is also possible. While I don't really know the details, I think BeOS had an asynchronous scheduling / interprocess communication model that was ahead of its time. (I'm not sure if parallels to Erlang apply.)

And, I second that Acrobat is an unusually bad case, though a pretty commonly known example. (Few of you probably use the same HR software we do, for example... Not naming names.)

<comment><USER6> From what I remember it was very async in its GUI programming model. You wrote little event handlers and it took care of the rest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> linux+fluxbox and you are ok. I recommend Fluxbuntu as a good example it beats xubuntu and its really beautiful(xubuntu is ugly in comparison). Its a very slim OS i really like it, but i use Kubuntu on my machine, its powerful enough to handle KDE and i love KDE, but on my other pc i have a fluxbuntu installation.

</comment><comment><USER6> "The more memory something hogs, the slower it'll run."

Well it used to be a compromise. You could blow your memory budget to get a bit of a speedup. But now memory bloat seems to be a cause of sluggishness.

</comment><comment><USER8> Well, my "specialty" if you could call it that, is QA automation, writing automated test scripts for the system under test. So I would not consider myself a "super hacker" by any extent. My current job is writing in 4-Test, the language of Borland Silk. Before that, I did mainly unit testing development, some JUnit and XMLUnit, but primarily CPPUnit, the c++ port of JUnit. In unit testing especially one is cogniscent of what objects are in play at any given point, since one is writing a class or a method to test a certain set of objects in the system under test. So I think one becomes very aware of memory-related issues. I found the hard way writing in CPPUnit that it is easy to "trash memory" if one isn't careful. That said, I think I prefer CPPUnit, and C++ generally, for the very reason of the "tough love" it has by not having an in-built garbage collector like java has. It requires a bit more of one's attention, but frankly at the end of the day it executed swimmingly. So, with admittedly my limited perspective from the test automation world, I would personally have to vote for programming languages and approaches that force memory, and thereby performance, attention and efficiency. It is something like linux. Before I learned linux commands by playing around with cygwin, I much prefered DOS since it was more familiar. But once I learned to love talking to my computer via the cygwin shell, I never went back! Thus with writing de-constructors, once you get into the habit of it, you can't ever go back to not doing it! :-)</comment>


Into the Tar Pit - <AUTHOR> https://einarwh.wordpress.com/2020/05/19/into-the-tar-pit/ <comment><USER2> Best tidbits from the article:

> Software developers should provide expertise [...], but also in the > externalization of mental models to facilitate communication and enable > collaborative modelling.

> Software development is largely a communication problem. [...] We should > contribute to better concepts and a richer language to describe the domain.

A while back I understood my work as a web developer as a translation from "business speak" into the language of some web framework. An activity not so different from translating a novel from it's original language into some other.

The key point being that one needs to fully understand the "business speak" side of things before one can write it out as computer code.

> We should lead in this effort, not wait for someone else to do it for us.

But neither can we, software developers, do this on our own.

I guess something I had been missing before is the feedback aspect (i.e. the externalization of mental models). However, in my experience most people in the 'business side' aren't interested in understanding the software side, so they are not receptive of what the software engineers have to say about the problem domain (i.e. the business side of things).

<comment><USER3> Definitely this. I'd had it hammered into me that I need to understand the business to be a good dev, and it's _true_. That domain knowledge is essential to do a decent job, or even do the job at all.

Rhe reciprocity, though, is mostly missing. An attempt to understand the IT side is essential for managers but most often they can't be bothered (or bothered to understand the principles of user interfaces, for that matter, anything that falls outside their domain). The few bosses I have had that did try were very good to work for indeed, but such are rare.

<comment><USER4> The problem is that a developer doesn't really understand the business complexities and nuances - he studied computers, not business.

I feel there is a gap to be crossed, and settling into a common language and common communication practices are ways to bridge it, but I could never say I understand the business.

I get some basics. We have lots of areas, we need workflows, we design parts, then make them, then sell them. But I certainly don't have enough knowledge to really understand it.

<comment><USER5> Translation needs to involve at least one person who is native-level in each language, and you're lucky if it's possible for both of those to be the same person.

An effective team needs people who understand the computers and people who understand the business. Though it can sometimes end up a little like [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfSnaY1Wp_U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfSnaY1Wp_U) .

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> j-pb The author miss-understands the paper for some call to formalise everything and then continues to ramble on how complex the world is and how futile formalisation is.

This is not what "Out of the Tarpit" is about. Out of the tarpit is about a clear separation between the currently complected aspects of "what" do we want our software to do, and "how" do we make it do that with the best possible performance. There is no arguing against that if you currently want to describe a website you'll have to learn some model of how the browser renders stuff, how react or vue or whatever performs update calls, and redraws, and state management and and and.

Out of the tarpit simply argues that these things are relevant but accidental to the problem that we want to solve, and proposes a functional logic- programming hybrid approach which focuses on declarative programming, separation of concerns, and immutable state management.

All of the above are pretty well known best practices by now, even though they're not implemented verbatim as the paper proposes there are still ideas that have found it into mainstream programming.

React is a functional reactive and mostly declarative library that takes care of a lot of state management for you.

Clojure is a functional programming language with heavy emphasis on simplicity, state management and functional programming, with logic extensions.

Differential Dataflow is declaratively describing computation and reactively executing it across clusters.

People rediscover the virtue of relational programming and write more SQL than ever, with ORMS becoming out of style.

If the author had argued that the proposals made in the paper are necessary but not sufficient, fine. But arguing that it's "wrong", because they perceive that the sources of complexity focused on by the paper, are not as important as the ones they choose, is just silly.

He even makes the point for them, by quoting:

> There is no point in using exact methods where there is no clarity in the > concepts and issues to which they are to be applied.

This is exactly what the paper is about.

"In order to program something, I should not have to formalise it to the degree that I have to formalise it currently. I should not be forced to choose data-structures, and algorithms that I care about tangentially.

Those should be specified as an afterthought, when the need arises, and when performance, reliability, resource consumption become a concern."

This whole Post reminds me a bit of Tim Minchins 'Storm':

"Programming is full of complexities, yeah But there are answers out there And they won't be found By people sitting around Looking serious And saying 'Isn't code mysterious?' Let's sit here and hope Let's call up the fucking Pope Let's go watch Oprah Interview Deepak Chopra</comment>


Ask HN: Should you really give your best to your (corporate)day job? - <AUTHOR>

Since
a) You can easily get away with not giving your best.
b) They dont really care about design anyways.All these middle level managers really want is something that works so that they can show it their bosses who also probably have no clue how software is written.
But then
a) You will miss out the opportunity to learn the flaws in the design that you think is "best" unless you implement it again and again.
b) Although very unlikely,maybe some "higher level" technical architect who actually understands design will read your code and probably promote you to "Senior" engineer.I know its a bullshit position invented by management but then the extra money could help. <comment><USER2> if you ever plan to start a start-up, remember this:

      A. Bad habits stick around and hard to get rid of.
      B. Think of your daily as the preparation curse to
         your start-up. Do things the right way, will help
         you being a better at your profession.
      C. You shall do your best at your work place since this is
         what you get paid for, being a loyal employee, means being
         a reliable person. Investors will smell a reliable/ non
         reliable from miles away.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the advice!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If you're not going to give your best, why bother? Move on and do something you love.

</comment><comment><USER4> Give your best at whatever you decide to do. If you have a hard time giving your best at your day job, make changes.

</comment><comment><USER5> Give your best or let yourself down, not the Company.</comment>


Facebook stock down -4.75% at 27$ - <AUTHOR> http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/fb

<comment><USER2> It's the market - the potential demise of the Euro (or at least the almost inevitable departure of Greece from the currency) is really roiling the markets.

Take a look at t-bill rates [1] - which has in inverse relationship with the market as well as interest rates.

[1] <http://www.google.com/finance?q=INDEXNYSEGIS:AXTHR>

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm can't help but wonder if this a continuing corrective downtrend or some kind of 'death by a thousand cuts' scenario. I guess that's always the question to ponder when you're looking to get in, right?

<comment><USER4> A traditional "price rocketing up" IPO looks impressive, but it also means that the company left money on the table. If the company itself didn't really need the money anyway, its owners might not mind this since they can just wait until after the price pop to start selling their shares.

On the other hand, the price slowly sliding down like it has for the Facebook IPO suggests that the company managed to earn a bunch of free cash by selling its shares at more than they were worth.

So this price slide could actually be very good news, from Facebook's perspective. As long as the purpose of the IPO was to boost the company's balance sheet. If it was a pure ego-boosting exercise and the money didn't really matter, though, then yeah this is bad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The time to buy for many people may arrive soon.</comment>


Show HN: CoinTray – Bitcoin / Altcoin Exchange Balance Tracker for Mac - <AUTHOR> Hello HN,
today I released my CoinTray app which is a lightweight Bitcoin / Altcoin Balance tracker for Mac. It's a status bar app that displays your accumulated USD balance of your crypto coin portfolios on Kraken, Bitfinex, Bittrex, Poloniex, Coinbase and GDAX.
In future updates, CoinTray will also be able to display the balance in your local currency as well as fetch balances from individual wallets instead of exchanges.
Please check it out and give some feedback:
https://cointrayapp.com/
If you're interested in the premium features, enter coupon code HELLOWORLD for a 30% discount until Monday.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> I use bitbar for this and it's free. [https://getbitbar.com/plugins/Cryptocurrency](https://getbitbar.com/plugins/Cryptocurrency)

<comment><AUTHOR> I know bitbar, but with all the plugins installed, it's pretty bloated. I wanted a tool that unites all exchanges and wallets in a lightweight interface.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Great little app! I noticed that my balance is different from the one listed in the exchange I use. I'm assuming it is because it is using coinmarketcap.com instead of the wallets right?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Yeah that's true, it fetches the crypto balance from your exchange and calculates the USD balance using coinmarketcap.com. In a future update I'll add the option to use the USD balance from the exchange, if present. Thank you for your feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> WARNING, Bitdefender tells me that this application contains Application.BitCoinMiner.SX

<comment><AUTHOR> This is definitely not true! Bitdefender probably detects this because the application contains multiple references to crypto coin exchanges etc.

<comment><USER4> Kind of makes sense, it probably recognizes it because multiple relevant APIs are hit. Unfortunately, for me personally this makes it impossible to trust the application.

<comment><USER3> I have Little Snitch running and the only two connections the application attempted to make were for coinmarketcap.com that is setup as the "exchange" to get the current market price and the exchange I currently use when I added my wallet.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup, also it shouldn't use a lot of CPU resources like a miner would.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>