• 1 Post
  • 143 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: August 5th, 2023

help-circle












  • It would appear that he didn’t want to buy Twitter and was literally forced to do so. I think for him Twitter is a temper tantrum. He didn’t get what he wanted so he’s destroying everything around him as a result.

    More to the point though, I do wonder why he didn’t just pay the billion dollars to get out of the deal (with his 270 billion net worth - which by the way includes assets not necessarily liquid cash).

    I don’t know that he’s not in it for the money. I think the point is to destroy it so he doesn’t have to pay back what he borrowed to buy it.



  • I focus on that because it is a danger of people doing the work themselves. I didn’t say that companies weren’t capable of the same problems. I said that it’s unlikely that the grandson would face the same kind of legal repercussions that a business or corporation would and that’s problematic.

    If you’ll take a step back and stop assuming that I’m arguing against right to repair and just look at what I actually said you might see that I have a point.

    And while I agree that there is also risk in not repairing the devices in question or being able to have them repaired by the manufacturer which is a significant risk, I still feel like it’s important that it be said that there exists a risk in people making more technical repairs themselves.



  • That depends entirely on who’s safety is on the line. When you repair your brakes wrong (to follow the original example), and it causes a pile up that kills 4.or 8 or 10 people, someone should be held liable for that.

    When you repair the electrical box in your basement wrong and it causes a fire that takes out the houses on either side of you, someone should be held liable for that.

    This is like saying “just because some people who drive drunk kill people doesn’t mean that everyone shouldn’t be able to”. The difference here though is that we know there’s a statistically significant increase in the likelihood of death or serious injury from driving drunk.

    There’s a statistically less likely chance of death or bodily injury when people repair their own devices, but I would wager that has a lot to do with the fact that the pool of people doing it have the knowledge to do so and aren’t completely ignorant of how those devices work, or it takes into account that right to repair also encompasses people getting a third party who is qualified to repair the device to do it, but outside of what the manufacturer allows per user agreement. Once more random laymen start doing it because they are allowed or perceived themselves to be allowed, I would expect that the number of wrongly repaired devices would go up.

    Some states have mandatory car inspections. So for instance, if you repair your brakes wrong and leave a caliper bolt off or don’t grease the slides or any number of other things there’s another qualified person looking over that and noting it. So there’s less possibility that it won’t be fixed properly. We do not have anything like that for medical devices except when they are repaired through the manufacturer.

    I’m not even arguing against the right to repair. I’m just pointing out the hurdles that are going to be there and saying they should be addressed. I’m actually generally for people learning how things work so that they can do simple repairs or even complex repairs if they need to.

    But I still think that some things should be handled by professionals. Or at least with a professional QC’ing the work.

    In the field I work in, work can be done by the owner but only with a qualified and licensed A&P present. Would you suggest that any old person off the street should be able to repair a plane and fly over your house?


  • I read the article. Third party repair not being your grandson who’s replacing the seal on your CPAP mask, because that’s not what I mean not does it mean going to a third party repair place.

    It being less safe for the vast majority doesn’t mean that there aren’t going to be people who get it wrong. People repair their brakes wrong all the time. It’s absolutely caused accidents. But not enough to be statistically important in the grand scheme of 8 billion people. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen or that it can’t.

    There’s a reason a lot of YouTube videos that show you how to repair things are “for educational purposes only”. It’s because they can be held liable if something bad happens because you followed their guide.


  • We probably shouldn’t let people repair their own brake pads but that’s another argument. Not enough people die from randoms repairing their own brake pads. Repair an insulin pump the wrong way and it will absolutely kill you. Oxygen masks, CPAP machines, pace makers. So many medical devices that people rely on for life or death care.

    I’m all for right to repair. But having seen some of the thing people have done to repair safety items I have serious doubts about the efficacy of someone repairing something wrong and killing their grandma. I can appreciate that not everyone feels the same way. I can appreciate that there are absolutely people out there who can and do repair their own devices, cars, machinery etc, and they may do it well. But there are always going to be people out there who don’t know what they’re doing but will try and then we’ll hear about them on the news because they touched a capacitor or something.