this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2024
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Right to Repair

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Whether it be electronics, automobiles or medical equipment, the manufacturers should not be able to horde “oem” parts, render your stuff useless if you repair it with aftermarket parts, or hide schematics of their products.

I Fix It Repair Manifesto

Summary article from I Fix It

Summary video by Marques Brownlee

Great channel covering and advocating right to repair, Lewis Rossman

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Thankfully Jonathan was able to take it to an independent repair shop for a $75 CAD adhesive fix (and battery replacement?) despite Apple's restrictions against them.

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[–] [email protected] 85 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Boycott Apple. Like they got you, they've tricked you into using whatever hardware of theirs you own....but that doesn't mean you have to buy Apple next time.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 8 months ago (8 children)

I’ve been using Apple for seven-eight years. I left android because of poor update support from the major manufacturers. I don’t want to go back to android because Google has moved to being primarily an advertising company. Any suggestions for an alternative?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 8 months ago

lol google has always been primarily an advertising company

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago

GrapheneOS is really solid. You can use a Google Pixel with absolutely no Google spy shit on it and still have a great experience just by slapping GrapheneOS on it.

I went from shoulder-deep in Apple's walled rectum to 100% Apple free and GrapheneOS on a Pixel 5 was the first step I took. Haven't lpoked back at all.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I love the idea of being able to disconnect enough for dumb phones to be an option. Unfortunately, I need to have access to email/chat and a specific mfa app for work

[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago

Android isn't all Google. You can degoogle by installing different versions of Android just like there are different versions of Linux. Grab a pixel 6 or 7 and install graphene. There are alternatives to play store like fdroid, your mfa app should still work.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

New Samsung phones (at least the flagships) are getting 7 years of updates.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

If you don't mind doing some tinkering, look at LineageOS. They support a large variety of phones and even provide updates beyond the original manufacturer. For example, I use the OnePlus 7T, which officially only supports up to Android 12, but LineageOS supports Android 14 now. The flashing process is well documented, and you should be able to get through it with only the knowledge of running commands in a terminal.

They do support Google apps by default, but if you're feeling extra, you can install Lineage for MicroG instead, which replaces the core Google services with an open source one that mimics the original with much better privacy. Most apps do work with it, although sometimes it can break things, such as embedded maps and paid apps that check for licensing. I find that most of my apps can be replaced with open source alternative on F-Droid (an open source exclusive app store) that either are compatible with or don't require MicroG.

I'll also mention GrapheneOS. It's another privacy Android OS with some distinct features. It only works on Google Pixel phones, but it is much easier to install (it uses a Web GUI and automates a lot of the process). It's killer feature is the ability to run Google services in a sandbox, meaning that Google doesn't have superuser permissions on your entire phone, just in that sandbox. So put all your Google-required apps in there, and Google can't touch anything outside of it. I haven't actually used GrapheneOS, so please correct me if I am wrong about any of this.

End of article. I hope this wasn't too overwhelming.

Edit: One more OS I should mention is /e/OS (yes, the name sucks). It tries to be like Apple, both in interface and provided services, although it doesn't force you to use their services like Apple. It's based on LineageOS, although they do more work than them to remove Google stuff, including using MicroG. This is the one I use, but I am considering switching because it's been kinda buggy for my device specifically. They provide a GUI installer.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

Oneplus, they have pretty good hardware. They support their devices for a pretty good amount of time, and the development Community for those phones is extremely strong. Even if one plus abandons you for some reason you can just get lineage OS almost guaranteed.

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[–] [email protected] 48 points 8 months ago (2 children)

my dad is 64.

last week when i spoke to him, he told me he broke the screen on his iPhone. he told me that he called a fixit place and they wanted $100 for the repair

man that he is, he went on eBay and bought a screen repair kit and did it himself

[–] [email protected] 15 points 8 months ago (1 children)

That's a Swanson move right there. My ovaries can't take this amount of manhood!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

You don't know this yet but you're pregnant with his child.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago
[–] [email protected] 17 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Honestly. At this point trying to save the environment is too late, but it would be nice now that some politics are finally heading in that direction, if this anti-repair bullshit would be legislated out of existence.

Add a cost on carbon emissions, and fine companies that manufacture things that aren’t designed to be repaired.

If I buy something, I ought own it and have the final say with who does what with my property. I don’t care if Samapplesoftabet decides that they don’t like it, if they want so much control over my thing they should buy it back from me.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 8 months ago (6 children)

It's not too late to save the environment. This is a defeatist attitude that has no place I'm the fight. If you don't try, then you can't save shit. We are by no means past the point of no return.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 8 months ago (4 children)

Exactly! Stages of climate change denial:

1 it doesn't exist

2 we aren't causing it

3 it isn't that bad

4 we can't solve it

5 it's too late now (so might as well go on consuming oil)

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2013/sep/16/climate-change-contrarians-5-stages-denial

[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago

If you haven't noticed, these posts that steer the discussion in another direction are always attempt to defuse the blame. If you've ever been on reddit, you'll notice people trying really hard to shift blame, change goal posts, point fingers. And they're always highly upvoted.

It's social media PR management 101. You just need a bot farm and you can bet every marketing company does this for anyone that pays.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

We don't actually know if this is the case or not.

The recent IPCC Sixth Assessment Report states that there's high confidence that the equilibrium climate sensitivity (how much the temperature will rise long-term if a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide occurs) lies between 2.5-4C, with a best estimate being 3C. Several models predict a higher sensitivity than that, 4+, and have been disregarded for being too extreme and not aligning with historical data.

The major difference between these hotter models compared to the older ones is in the way they model cloud processes and their effect on the overall climate system. So, recent claims have been made that historical climate data is compatible with the hotter models (specifically an ECS of 4.8 ± 1.2C) when taking these new cloud models into account.

Which basically means that all our worst-case scenarios for climate change might actually be too optimistic, and we should be doing significantly more than we actively are right now.

The thing is, the things we need to do are costly, diminish quality of life, and won't be directly beneficial to the economy. We're going to have to sow proverbial trees whose shade we'll never sit under. Going by historical data, that won't happen. We've known that carbon dioxide affects the climate since the 1800s. We've known that humanity's extreme carbon emissions have an effect on the climate since the early-mid 1900s. We've done fuck all about it.

We might only have a couple of decades before the area around the equator becomes more or less uninhabitable. What do you think will happen when billions of climate refugees travel north in search of succor?

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I used to work at a place that sold Fruit shit. I remember at the time how they all had raging boners about the environment, but everytime I needed to restock something like Earpods, they were individually wrapped in their own plastic bag so that dust may not besmirch the holy Fruit product. At the end of the day our rubbish bins were full of tiny little plastic bags.

Fucking hypocrites.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

Ya but fooling you into thinking they are green makes them more money, so in the end they don’t care about being hypocrites since they got your money already

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

Yes! Or atleast if I buy a license to a product and you stop supporting it, remove it from my library, etc. Then you must return my money or provide the same product alternatively.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (11 children)

Everyone who still buys apple products just wants to be bent over at this point....

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago (5 children)

Oh my god shut up. Every major company does this.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

The watch is made in a highly automated environment with super cheap labor. The repair is done by somebody earning a multitude of that labor. Not condoning this in the slightest, but I can understand the economics behind it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

The economics behind it is that if they can make you buy a new one, they make more money than if you repair it.

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