from the do-printer-ink-manufacturers-hold-the-patents? dept.
Science daily brings us Materials, electronics that dissolve when triggered being developed.
Iowa State University is developing "transient materials" and "transient electronics" that can quickly and completely melt away when a trigger is activated. That could mean that one day you could send out a signal to destroy a lost credit card, or when soldiers are wounded, their electronic devices could be remotely triggered to melt away.
So I'm expecting to see products that not only will fail, but actually dissolve into uselessness when it's corporate master deems fit.
Does anyone have a problem with this?
The paper and abstract can be found here.
Related Stories
Mac Bowley at the Raspberry Pi blog asks about ending hardware upgrades for the sake of upgrades as well as ending planned obsolescence. The softwre for the Raspberry Pi, he notes, still runs on the first models even if the newer models are faster. In fact the old models are still being produced and bought. Fully exploiting the natural life spans of hardware would have a lot of advantages, not the least of which would be reduction of the enviornmental impact.
Some components of your phone cannot be created without rare chemical elements, such as europium and dysprosium. (In fact, there are 83 stable non-radioactive elements in the periodic table, and 70 of them are used in some capacity in your phone.) Upgrade culture means there is high demand for these materials, and deposits are becoming more and more depleted. If you're hoping there are renewable alternatives, you'll be disappointed: a study by researchers working at Yale University found that there are currently no alternative materials that are as effective.
Then there's the issue of how the materials are mined. The market trading these materials is highly competitive, and more often than not manufacturers buy from the companies offer the lowest prices. To maintain their profit margin, these companies have to extract as much material as possible as cheaply as they can. As you can imagine, this leads to mining practices that are less than ethical or environmentally friendly. As many of the mines are located in distant areas of developing countries, these problems may feel remote to you, but they affect a lot of people and are a direct result of the market we are creating by upgrading our devices every two years.
Many of us agree that we need to do what we can to counteract climate change, and that, to achieve anything meaningful, we have to start looking at the way we live our lives. This includes questioning how we use technology. It will be through discussion and opinion gathering that we can start to make more informed decisions — as individuals and as a society.
Previously:
Apple, Samsung Fined for Crippling Devices With Software Updates
Planned Obsolescence Takes a Step Forward (2014)
(Score: 4, Insightful) by BsAtHome on Saturday April 05 2014, @10:52AM
> Does anyone have a problem with this?
Yes, I do.
The tag "what-could-possibly-go-wrong" would be rather fitting.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by mrbluze on Saturday April 05 2014, @11:04AM
Dali was right with his melting clocks.
Do it yourself, 'cause no one else will do it yourself.
(Score: 1) by marcolinux on Monday April 07 2014, @03:22PM
reminded me of the dmca chair. Use it 8 times and it self destructs by melting.
http://venturebeat.com/2013/03/04/drm-chair/ [venturebeat.com]
Voynich script is openSource. Ultrasound, can see u "exercise".
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bucc5062 on Saturday April 05 2014, @11:32AM
Can't wait till the fun begins when the process is hacked or when it randomly goes off or just when you really really really need it to work, it's "time" is up.
"Major, dial up the Gate Right Now"
"I'm sorry sir, the DHD just melted, we'll have to order up a new one"
"From who Carter, the Ancients? They went out of business a *long* time ago"
(The other problem with built in obsolescence, the hubris that you will be in business that long)
The more things change, the more they look the same
(Score: 1) by clone141166 on Saturday April 05 2014, @02:08PM
Did you try just dialing all spaces? I've heard that can work on Micro$oft DHDs...
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Saturday April 05 2014, @09:34PM
It doesn't matter. For most devices, you paid up front and the manufacturer/seller gets no additional money for the life of the device, so if it is programmed to self-destruct a week after the warranty expires, that's great.
If the company is out of business, so what if the device dies or not.
If the company is still in business, they have the chance for more revenue from the consumer buying a new device from them.
Sure, you can't do it if you are the only manufacturer doing it because everybody switches, but now with manufacturing being more concentrated, it becomes easier for more stuff to jump to this, particularly if you are willing to sell the devices for a little less in the short term.
I can totally see places like Walmart, Target, Amazon etc... selling the cheapest stuff that self-destructs, then if you pay a little more, then you get products that don't [which of course completely hoses the poor]. And it won't be mentioned on the package.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Hairyfeet on Saturday April 05 2014, @02:48PM
Sheeit, we already have this thanks to that fucking retarded "lead free solder" garbage! I don't know how many devices I took to the engineer down the hall only to have him open them up and the failure reason was always the same, lead free solder equals failed joints and tin whiskers, all that garbage did was make devices that could easily last a decade croak a month after the warranty went out so all this would do is let them have a 100% failure rate instead of the 70-80% failure rates thanks to shit solder.
I could go on a rant about how many of the "green solutions" do the same "sounds good...until you think about it" but that is for another day. As for TFA? Sounds like a troll or terrorists wet dream, one hack can leave multitudes without any way to get their money, or leave soldiers without their equipment? Yeah what could go wrong?
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 06 2014, @03:00AM
tin whiskers
Yup. I'll grant you that one.
failed joints
I'm not willing to concede that one.
For starters, use enough heat and enough flux.
With infra-red ovens with staging/profiles, all the soldering (reflow, actually) is pre-programmed; get it right once and you have it forever.
With the water-based fluxes we've had for decades, cleanup is easy; you can do it in a kitchen dishwasher.
Some folks are even trying 3-D printers for applying flux, so extreme repeatability is coming for that process as well.
the "green solutions" do the same
I note that you didn't give any examples.
A single example would be a start.
A set that indicates a pattern might be even more convincing.
I remain incredulous.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Sunday April 06 2014, @03:59AM
Hey don't blame ME because they don't use enough heat and flux, which just FYI won't using a lot of heat kill the little ARM chips used for DSPs and I/O and pretty much everything else these days? And as for an example not a problem, how about "Lets replace these incandescent bulbs with CFLs...what do you mean the landfills are filled with mercury now and homes getting contaminated when the bulbs bust?".
Yet again it SOUNDED like a good idea but nobody thought about what happened when the bulbs fail and/or break. There was no recycling solution in place, no education of the users, so now landfills are becoming toxic waste dumps...great job eco-warriors!
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 06 2014, @07:08AM
don't blame ME
That wasn't my intent.
won't using a lot of heat kill the little ARM chips used
The temperatures and durations that components will safely endure are in the spec sheets for those.
There are plenty of competent technologists involved in the manufacturing process who use the SAME parts that the bozos are using, yet those sharp guys manage to get this stuff correct.
If your experience has been different, maybe you should name and shame.
...then again, maybe you're just Joe Btfsplk, always falling on the extremes of the Gaussian distribution. [emeraldinsight.com]
.
...and that's without going into the CO2 differences.
CFLs[...]mercury
Now stop being disingenuous.
Anyone who knows that factoid has also heard the rebuttal that the amount of mercury emitted from a coal-fired power plant over the life of the incandescent will exceed what is inside the CFL and that the airborne mercury is a greater danger than the stuff buried in a clay-lined pit.
This also goes back to your point on lead/ROHS and the *actual* dangers of metallic "pollutants".
I'll agree there that ROHS is a solution is search of a problem.
That reminds me of California's ridiculous Proposition 65. [mysafetysign.com]
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by anubi on Sunday April 06 2014, @08:40AM
Being I am sometimes called into design stuff, I take an interest in failed stuff other people have made.
I have retrieved every discarded CFL I have gotten my hands on to run a post-mortem on.
The major failure mode has been failure of the electrolytic capacitors at the front end. Following that has been failure of the input diodes, usually something like a 1N4007, whose failure appears to be a result of a power surge on their line, likely a result of a hard switch dumping an inductive load ( such as a refrigeration compressor, fan, or washing machine ). I often see solder failure where the 120 lines enter the PCB, or the four lines to the CFL. It did not appear to have failed, per se, but looked like it wasn't done right to begin with.
Surprisingly enough, failure of the switching transistors is quite rare. Capacitor failure is far more common. Very rarely did the bulb fail. In all the bulbs I disassembled, I only have seen three or four of the assemblies survive long enough to wear out the bulb cathodes...
I have personally tried to use those lead free solders and for one thing, the heat required to melt them is quite a bit higher than the lead based solder, and my experience is the solder doesn't "wet" as well. I try to compensate by generous use of flux, but for my prototypes, I still love my old roll of tin-lead 63-37 albeit I will use the 95-5 tin-silver stuff for higher temps.
As far as deliberately designing stuff to decompose, maybe we need a new payment paradigm. Back in Biblical days, we had the Day of Jubilee, where all debts cancelled. Let me see here.. we design something to fail in three years, let's also have the payment reverse automatically as well. I had the use of the good for three years, the business which sold me the good had my money for three years. May we all write our Congressman and "work with" the makers of law to implement the "Millenium Quality Act".
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 06 2014, @09:05PM
failure of the electrolytic capacitors
We can extrapolate that mode across a wide range of devices.
Go back 15 years or so and there was the genius who thought that he had stolen the magic formula for lytic electrolyte.
He made a million batches of that and sold it to dozens of shady component manufacturers who don't vet their sources. [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [atariage.com]
Those crooks, in turn, sold their junk to builders of board-level stuff who, again, don't vet their sources.
Turns out, the stolen formula was incomplete and the temperature stability of the counterfeit juice was crap.
The lytics produced with them tend to swell up, fail, and even explode.
We're still seeing the fallout from that one.
lead free[...]doesn't "wet"
Well, there *are* different manufacturers and different alloys.
Again, there are numerous technologists who have this stuff working as well as ever.
I still love my old roll of tin-lead
8-) Yeah. I remember an old cartoon where the shady-looking guy is saying to the aged nun, "Pssst. Sister, I know where you can find a little Latin mass."
the Day of Jubilee, where all debts [canceled]
...then there's the part of that scripture that says it's sinful to charge interest on loans.
Oh, yeah. I've read about that.
Debts were never supposed last longer than a few years and they definitely were never meant to be inherited by your children and grandchildren.
It's *so* reassuring that all Jewish and Christian bankers are all going to "Hell".
(Anti-theist and recovering Catholic here.)
write our Congressman
Government has rarely been more than a thin veneer over a system of bribery and cronyism.
The series of SCOTUS decisions[1] going back 150 years, which shift more and more power to corporations (again, a veneer for the rich and their wealth), have allowed a plutocracy.
I'm convinced that there's only one one way out: a repeat of 1789. [19thcenturyart-facos.com]
Until the masses get out from in front of their TeeVees/computers, [google.com] however, nothing will change.
With the vast majority of people accepting what spews from corporate TeeVee as useful information, that is going to be a long time coming.
I'm just afraid that we've passed the point of no return. [google.com] and that Neo-Feudalism is here to stay.
[1] ...and anyone who has read the USA Constitution will know that SCOTUS is supposed to be the final appellate court; decisions they make are **supposed** to apply ONLY to the case they are deciding AND NO FURTHER. (SCOTUS is NOT a legislative body.)
-- gewg_
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 05 2014, @03:55PM
Wearable Computing
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday April 05 2014, @06:40PM
Especially for the soldier application: Imagine the enemy cracks the communication and sends the electronics the command to melt away ... and maybe in the process some of the remains runs into a weapon or similar which would have been completely unaffected from even a complete electronics failure, if the remains hadn't entered it ...
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Saturday April 05 2014, @10:17PM
My only problem with it is that it can be triggered so easily, or remotely.
If everything was made cheaply, it stands to reason that this is an environmentalists wet dream.
Sure, I'm not getting a product that will last decades now like some of my grandfather's electrical equipment. It also stands to reason that it would be cheaper.
In order for it to turn into a fluid like that I think the constituent components would be self-assembling. That also implies it might be waterproof and solid state inherently.
I develop a problem in my keyboard. I take it to my basement and throw it in a large vat of chemicals that begin breaking it down. Walk over to my maker machine and order up a brand new wireless keyboard according to interesting design I just found on the Internet. 20 minutes later a timer reminds me and I have my new keyboard.
The trade offs there more thank make up for the fact it can't last 30 years. You could recycle anything into almost anything. Even if you did need something special, you could throw that framework or tech into the maker and it would layers the rest of onto that initial frame. A super strong frame could represent equipment needing to go into very harsh environments.
I like the idea of this tech a lot in fact. Tech is fine, it's that we don't trust any overlords out there at all to have our best interests so it can never be triggered without serious effort on part of the owner.
Something else to consider here is that this technology might bring system design down to the end user level. You could start designing your own circuits, or use higher level IDEs to create the device you want. You don't have to wait for somebody to design it, test it, market it, and sell it to you. Have an idea for a better mouse trap? Make it yourself. You have the technology.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 05 2014, @11:06AM
No, the Collective sends another drone to recover the implants. Proving that America is even worse than the Borg.
(Score: 3, Funny) by moo kuh on Saturday April 05 2014, @11:47AM
At least the Borg are honest...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 05 2014, @06:10PM
"when soldiers are wounded, their electronic devices could be remotely triggered to melt away"
Apparently, the military writes off it's soldiers as soon as they are wounded.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Open4D on Saturday April 05 2014, @12:38PM
I certainly do have a problem with planned obsolescence. But as for this particular technology, it's just another invention with the potential for both good and evil.
Manufacturers already give little regard to the longevity of their products.
So I urge everyone to join their local consumers' association [consumersi...tional.org] and then encourage it to focus on:
1) Product longevity
2) Campaigning for better (enforcement of) competition law [wikipedia.org]. (Most monopolies are bad, but even when there are 3 or 4 competitors in a market I still don't think that's enough.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 05 2014, @02:51PM
So.. what happens when someone find inevitably finds a way to hack said function/ability?
Let's see..
Dealership isn't up on percentage for repair profit. No that would never happen..
Airplane.. well I'm sure everyone can figure out how that would/could be a bad thing.
Telephone?... yup.. won't ever happen.
Though I can see a bright side. Just think, politician being questioned.
(grand jury): Did you ever... blah.. blah blah?? .. blah..?? We have video evidence of.. blah.. blah blah..
(politician): Define the word did??
(grand jury): OK.. Have you ever?? blah.. blah
(video recorder): poof.. melts to the floor.
(politician): No I never had sexual relations with...
Now that would really help with governmental "over site"!!
(Score: 4, Interesting) by gallondr00nk on Saturday April 05 2014, @03:14PM
I have difficulty believing that people would put up with products with a guaranteed 100% failure after a certain date. Perhaps if they were a lot cheaper, but even then I doubt it.
Would they put the expiry date on the box? Would they build it to fail safely? That's a monster of a lawsuit right there - a house fire or serious injury caused by manufacturer programmed device failure.
Even if manufacturers did start producing products that failed after say five years, it would only take one to state "we have no planned obsolescence in our widgets" to wipe the floor with the others.
In the past, Sony were rumoured to use below spec components in order to shorten the life of their electronics. I'm sure some of that still goes on, but there's a world between that and deliberately building stuff with a failure date.
(Score: 2, Informative) by tkd-physics on Saturday April 05 2014, @04:31PM
This wasn't mentioned anywhere in the article. If you're going to submit a story, I think you should save the editorializing for the comments.
Sure, this is a technology that *could* be used for such. But it can also be used for a lot of other things, good and bad, just like the rest of our technology. And if a company wanted to build failure dates into their product, they sure as hell don't need *this* technology to do it, they've got plenty of ways to do that already.
[Personally I'm more worried about the environmental consequences -- what the heck is this stuff and what does it do to the water supply? And note from TFA that they're just talking about the substrate -- what actually happens to the silicon electroncs? However, they've got no information on this (at least, not in the publicly available part) and further speculation is pointless.]
So, please leave the editorializing out. It tells us much more about the submitter than it does about the story, and we're not generally interested in the submitter.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by combatserver on Saturday April 05 2014, @06:55PM
Ex-Mechanic:
Ford experimented with this in various ways, but I can remember one instance where it bit them in the ass in a big way.
Back in the late-80's, Ford introduced TFI(thick-film ignition) ignition systems--they utilized an ignition module that was mounted right on the side of the distributor housing. It was nearly impossible to remove unless you had a special little wrench, but could be replaced in mere seconds if you had said wrench. This was to prevent shade-tree mechanics from replacing the ignition module themselves--Ford thought they could drive more repairs to dealerships this way. The modules were designed to fail soon after the warranty ran out, but soon realized they fucked that up, as many failed long before the warranty ran out. I remember working on a Ford Bronco with this ignition system--by this time I had already realized that keeping a "known-good" TFI module in the box saved a lot of diagnostic time (just plug new one in without removing the original, if it ran, THEN you made the repair). I put a new module on the Bronco, finished up the paperwork, went to back the vehicle out to return it to the customer that was waiting, only to have the new module fail as I was backing out of the shop. After-market modules were used by independent shops to avoid this problem, and these independent shops often refused to install factory modules (the Bronco was my last install of a factory module).
As a result of this fiasco, Ford entered into their worst crisis since Ford's inception--a complete lack of faith in the reliability of Fords. Their sales plummeted in the late-80's, early-90's.
They also did the same thing with air-leveling systems on certain luxury models (target those with the money!)--no aftermarket manufacturers to contend with, since there were none that wanted to get involved with a complicated system that covered so few vehicles. The result was pretty much everyone that bought one of these cars had to contend with $1000-$3000 repairs on the system, a system that only the dealerships would work on. If you refused to pay, your car had no suspension and was completely non-drivable (the tires literally jammed against the wheel-wells). Mercedes does the same thing with pricey Mass Air-Flow sensors--the check engine light comes on right after the warranty runs out, customer fails a smog-inspection as a result, manufacturer extorts $1000-$2000 from customer for replacement part/"diagnosis"...or the driver cannot even register the car in an emission-controlled state, because the check engine light is an automatic failure state for emissions testing.
This is nothing new.
But, you know what's worse? People accepting planned-obsolesence on a regular basis without ever questioning it. Think styling changes--every year manufacturers sell new designs simply to sell new designs. The car itself really isn't any different other than how it looks, yet people go out and buy them anyway, much like they buy this years fashions simply because the clothing industry changed the fashions.
Do I blame the manufacturer? Yes. Do I blame gullible people that never question advertising? Even more so than the manufacturers.
I hope I can change this later...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 05 2014, @07:45PM
I couldn't agree with you more. What I find worse is that a lot of durable goods these days are designed to not be serviceable by both professionals and DIY-ers alike. A dishwasher that my parents had in their new house failed within ~3 yrs. The spinning washer arms would get clogged with debris and possibly mineral deposits from the water which lead to dirty dishes every time. These heads were non serviceable although they were a 2 piece design the pieces were fused together. The cost of replacement parts was sky high due to having to purchase a service kit of more than the required parts to alleviate the problem for short periods. Their previous house had a total of 3 dishwashers over 30+ yrs and the last one was purchased to match the updated kitchen. Both houses were in the same area and had the same water supply but the older dishwashers were easily serviceable and lasted decades without needing replacement.
I've read similar stories regarding 'black box' style components in fridges and other home appliances that require purchase of an entire assembly rather than replacement of something trivial like a transistor or resistor.
(Score: 2) by etherscythe on Saturday April 05 2014, @08:35PM
I have one of those cars. It's not entirely true that parts are not available, but they're not exactly easy to come by. I ordered replacement parts here [strutmasters.com], but they did call me to push their spring conversion kit before shipping my new part. One thing Ford will not tell you, apparently, is that the safe temperature range of their adjustable air systems is a bit low - once you get past about 90 degrees or so ambient you can get early component failure from material breakdown. It's my weekend/project car so I kept the air system for kicks; so far, only had to replace the air bags once. Fingers crossed.
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 06 2014, @02:41AM
Ford[...]thick-film ignition
Sounds like this guy. [google.com] He's quite competent.
I suspect bean counters and "industrial engineers" and their Muntzing. [googleusercontent.com]
(orig) [wikipedia.org]
-- gewg_