Comment on Report: Consumer Hardware Still Often Impossible To Repair Despite New State ‘Right To Repair’ Laws
snooggums@midwest.social 1 month agoWhereas jacking it up, popping off a wheel, and reaching in for the thing you might touch once in the lifetime of a car is pretty trivial.
Unless the car has LED lights, those headlights are going to be replaced a half dozen times at least. As a necessary safety feature, headlights should be easily accessed so a new bulb can be installed inmediately.
If the story is true, that is terrible design.
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
I mean, basically any car in the past decade or so has LED headlights? And older bulbs would generally be rated for between 500 and 3000 hours of use, depending on the model. Considering people often try to avoid driving at night (… in part because of those LED headlights), once or twice over the decade or so lifespan of a car is pretty reasonable.
Also: Popping a wheel off is not really that hard and is something people should know how to do anyway in the event they get a flat on the side of the road. Finding a place you can do work on your car is a real problem with apartment life but setting the jack, jacking it up, and taking off the wheel is maybe 20 minutes of effort if you aren’t experienced with it. Then reach under, swap out the bulbs, and you are done.
Like, this really feels like the usual kind of discourse around this. People want to be able to repair stuff but don’t understand what that actually entails. If jacking up your car is not something you are comfortable with, don’t do it. Pay someone to do it for you. Same with all the people who think they are going to re-solder every single connection on a tiny chip.
snooggums@midwest.social 1 month ago
Shouldn’t need to pay someone to install a headlight bulb.
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
Then learn how to prop up your car and work on it yourself?
Like, that is the reality of it. Headlight bulbs aren’t going to change themselves if you wish really hard. Same with a flat tire. So you either learn how to do it (preferably before you are in the mud on the side of i-95 in the rain) or you pay someone.
The reason why Right to Repair laws are so good in concept (if not execution) is that it means you aren’t paying Toyota to come change your tire for you. You are paying a local mechanic who is theoretically not ripping you off.
snooggums@midwest.social 1 month ago
There are tons of cars that have been designed to be easy to work on. I have worked on my own cars for over three decades. Every vehicle I have owned allowed the headlight bulbs to be reached by opening the hood. Well, I might need to check my new one because I haven’t needed to yet since it has LEDs.
There is no reason to excuse poor maintenance design as some kind of unavoidable necessity.
conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
lol I finally hacked my original switch to eventually dual boot android and was considering doing it on my OLED, too.
Then I watched the guides. Fuck that.
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
No no no. Don’t you see, Right To Repair means that it is a legal requirement for every single company to provide a button that will fix and do anything you want at zero cost to you!
You know, as opposed to minimizing unnecessarily coupled parts and part signing to prevent third party companies who do have the fancy oven to desolder a chip from charging you to do it. And… some of that is definitely people like Rossman who will gladly switch between talking to consumers and other repair companies as it suits his argument.
Also: While I firmly do not expect a switch to last anywhere near long enough to make it worth doing, it is also totally worth doing a soldering project or two. It is a good skill to have and gives you a lot more insight into what is being talked about when these topics come up.
conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
I’m not anti soldering. I’ve done some wires or whatever.
But they’re scraping away covering on traces and it looked like cutting into stuff on top of the package. It’s for sure beyond my skill level, and while the OLED was worth the money as an original switch owner for the bigger screen (I play almost all handheld), the difference in effort to hack it? Not so much.