Hacking Ventilators With DIY Dongles From Poland:
As COVID-19 surges, hospitals and independent biomedical technicians have turned to a global grey-market for hardware and software to circumvent manufacturer repair locks and keep life-saving ventilators running.
The dongle is handmade, little more than a circuit board encased in plastic with two connectors. One side goes to a ventilator’s patient monitor, another goes to the breath delivery unit. A third cable connects to a computer.
This little dongle—shipped to him by a hacker in Poland—has helped William repair at least 70 broken Puritan Bennett 840 ventilators that he’s bought on eBay and from other secondhand websites. He has sold these refurbished ventilators to hospitals and governments throughout the United States, to help them handle an influx of COVID-19 patients. Motherboard agreed to speak to William anonymously because he was not authorized by his company to talk to the media, but Motherboard verified the specifics of his story with photos and other biomedical technicians.
William is essentially Frankensteining together two broken machines to make one functioning machine. Some of the most common repairs he does on the PB840, made by a company called Medtronic, is replacing broken monitors with new ones. The issue is that, like so many other electronics, medical equipment, including ventilators, increasingly has software that prevents “unauthorized” people from repairing or refurbishing broken devices, and Medtronic will not help him fix them.
[...] Delays in getting equipment running put patients at risk. In the meantime, biomedical technicians will continue to try to make-do with what they can. “If someone has a ventilator and the technology to [update the software], more power to them,” Mackeil said. “Some might say you’re violating copyright, but if you own the machine, who’s to say they couldn’t or they shouldn’t?”
I understand that there is an ongoing debate on the "right to repair". However, many manufacturers increasingly find ways to ensure that "unauthorised" people cannot repair their devices. Where do you stand on this issue? During the ongoing pandemic, do medical device manufacturers have the right to prevent repair by third parties?
Previously (Medtronic):
(2020-04-14) Raspberry Pi to Power Ventilators as Demand for Boards Surges
(2020-03-31) Professional Ventilator Design "Open Sourced" Today by Medtronic
(2019-11-18) US-CERT Warns of Remotely Exploitable Bugs in Medical Devices
(2018-10-17) Medtronic Locks Out Vulnerable Pacemaker Programmer Kit
(2018-08-15) Hack Causes Pacemakers to Deliver Life-Threatening Shocks
(2014-10-28) US Security Agencies Look at Medical Device Security
Previously (right to repair):
(2020-07-06) Fixers Know What "Repairable" Means--Now There's a Standard for It
(2020-04-21) 'Right to Repair' Taken Up by the ACCC in Farmers' Fight to Fix Their Own Tractors
(2020-03-13) Europe Wants a 'Right to Repair' Smartphones and Gadgets
(2020-01-09) Popularity of Older Tractors Boosted by Avoidance of DRM
(2019-06-21) Hackers, Farmers, and Doctors Unite! Support for Right to Repair Laws Slowly Grows
(2019-04-30) Reeducating Legislators on the Right to Repair
(2019-02-22) Right to Repair Legislation Is Officially Being Considered In Canada
(2018-10-13) 45 Out of 50 Electronics Companies Illegally Void Warranties After Independent Repair, Sting Reveals
(2018-09-21) John Deere Just Swindled Farmers Out of Their Right to Repair
(2018-04-17) Apple Sued an Independent iPhone Repair Shop Owner and Lost
(2018-03-08) The Right to Repair Battle Has Come to California
(2018-02-02) Tractor Hacking: The Farmers Breaking Big Tech's Repair Monopoly
(2018-01-28) Washington State Bill Would Make Hard-to-Repair Electronics Illegal
(2017-05-25) Apple, Verizon Join Forces to Lobby Against New York's 'Right to Repair' Law
(2017-03-08) Right to Repair
Related Stories
IEEE Spectrum has a a story on Medical device security, which follows a report from Reuters that The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is investigating possible security flaws in medical devices and hospital equipment.
From Reuters:
The products under review by the agency's Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team, or ICS-CERT, include an infusion pump from Hospira Inc and implantable heart devices from Medtronic Inc and St Jude Medical Inc, according to other people familiar with the cases, who asked not to be identified because the probes are confidential.
According to Spectrum the ICS-CERT team:
wants to help manufacturers fix software bugs and other vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers; agency sources emphasized that the companies did not do anything wrong.
The Spectrum article also references the 2011 case of remotely hacking an insulin pump, demonstrated by Jerome Radcliffe.
Nebraska is one of eight states in the US – including Minnesota, New York, Massachusetts, Illinois, Wyoming, Tennessee and Kansas – seeking to pass "right to repair" legislation. All eyes will be on the Cornhusker state when the bill has its public hearing on 9 March, because its unique "unicameral legislature" (it's the only state to have a single parliamentary chamber) means laws can be enacted swiftly. If this bill, officially named LB67, gets through, it may lead to a domino effect through the rest of the US, as happened with a similar battle over the right to repair cars. These Nebraska farmers are fighting for all of us.
Big agriculture and big tech – including John Deere, Apple and AT&T – are lobbying hard against the bill, and have sent representatives to the Capitol in Lincoln, Nebraska, to spend hours talking to senators, citing safety, security and intellectual property concerns.
John Deere has gone as far as to claim that farmers don't own the tractors they pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for, but instead receive a "license to operate the vehicle". They lock users into license agreements that forbid them from even looking at the software running the tractor or the signals it generates.
Another article on the topic at Techdirt.
Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956
Over the last year, we've noted the surge in so-called "right to repair" laws, which would make it easier for consumers to repair their electronics and find replacement parts and tools. It's a direct response to the rising attempts by companies like John Deere, Apple, Microsoft and Sony to monopolize repair, hamstringing consumer rights over products consumers think they own, while driving up the cost of said product ownership. John Deere's draconian lockdown on its tractor firmware is a large part of the reason these efforts have gained steam over the last few months in states like Nebraska.
In New York, one of the first attempts at such a law (the "Fair Repair Act") has finally been making progress. But according to New York State's Joint Commission on Public Ethics, Apple, Verizon, Toyota, Lexmark, Caterpillar, Asurion, and Medtronic have all been busy lobbying to kill the law for various, but ultimately similar, reasons. And they're out-spending the consumer advocates and repair shops pushing for this legislation by a rather wide margin:
"The records show that companies and organizations lobbying against right to repair legislation spent $366,634 to retain lobbyists in the state between January and April of this year. Thus far, the Digital Right to Repair Coalition—which is generally made up of independent repair shops with several employees—is the only organization publicly lobbying for the legislation. It has spent $5,042 on the effort, according to the records."
Source: techdirt.com
A number of states are considering right to repair bills, legislation which if passed would make it easier for individuals and repair shops to replace or repair electronics parts. Repair.org reports that 17 states have already introduced bills this year and while most aim to make repair parts and manuals accessible, Washington's proposed legislation would straight up ban electronics that prevent easy repair. "Original manufacturers of digital electronic products sold on or after January 1, 2019, in Washington state are prohibited from designing or manufacturing digital electronic products in such a way as to prevent reasonable diagnostic or repair functions by an independent repair provider," says the bill. "Preventing reasonable diagnostic or repair functions includes permanently affixing a battery in a manner that makes it difficult or impossible to remove."
[...] Naturally, tech groups have jumped to make their opposition clear. In a letter to Morris, groups such as the Consumer Technology Association, the Telecommunications Industry Association and the Computer Technology Industry Association said the bill was "unwarranted" and added, "With access to technical information, criminals can more easily circumvent security protections, harming not only the product owner but also everyone who shares their network."
Source: Engadget
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8JCh0owT4w
When it comes to repair, farmers have always been self reliant. But the modernization of tractors and other farm equipment over the past few decades has left most farmers in the dust thanks to diagnostic software that large manufacturers hold a monopoly over.
Farmers using Eastern European cracking software for their tractors, and MS, Apple, etc. want to stop them.
Related: Right to Repair
California legislators are considering drafting laws that would make it easier to fix things. It is now the 18th state in the US trying to make it easier to repair or modify things, electronic or not.
Right to repair legislation has considerable momentum this year; 18 states have introduced it, and several states have held hearings about the topic. In each of these states, big tech companies such as Apple, Microsoft, John Deere, and AT&T and trade associations they're associated with have heavily lobbied against it, claiming that allowing people to fix their things would cause safety and security concerns. Thus far, companies have been unwilling to go on the record to explain the specifics about how these bills would be dangerous or would put device and consumer security in jeopardy.
It's particularly notable that the battle has come to California because many of the companies that have fought against it are headquartered there. Apple, for instance, told lawmakers in Nebraska that passing a right to repair bill there would turn the state into a "Mecca for hackers." The Electronic Frontier Foundation—which is notoriously concerned about digital security—has explicitly backed this legislation in California. Kit Walsh, a senior staff attorney for the EFF, said that the bill "helps preserve the right of individual device owners to understand and fix their property."
Yep. Hackers. And note that is what Apple does not want. Like many things this boils down to the issue of who controls the many computers you ostensibly own.
From Motherboard at vice.com: The Right to Repair Battle Has Come to Silicon Valley.
Last year, Apple’s lawyers sent Henrik Huseby, the owner of a small electronics repair shop in Norway, a letter demanding that he immediately stop using aftermarket iPhone screens at his repair business and that he pay the company a settlement.
Norway’s customs officials had seized a shipment of 63 iPhone 6 and 6S replacement screens on their way to Henrik’s shop from Asia and alerted Apple; the company said they were counterfeit.
In order to avoid being sued, Apple asked Huseby for “copies of invoices, product lists, order forms, payment information, prints from the internet and other relevant material regarding the purchase [of screens], including copies of any correspondence with the supplier … we reserve the right to request further documentation at a later date.”
The letter, sent by Frank Jorgensen, an attorney at the Njord law firm on behalf of Apple, included a settlement agreement that also notified him the screens would be destroyed. The settlement agreement said that Huseby agrees “not to manufacture, import, sell, market, or otherwise deal with any products that infringe Apple’s trademarks,” and asked required him to pay 27,700 Norwegian Krone ($3,566) to make the problem go away without a trial.
“Intellectual Property Law is a specialized area of law, and seeking legal advice is in many instances recommended,” Jorgensen wrote in the letter accompanying the settlement agreement. “However, we can inform you that further proceedings and costs can be avoided by settling the case.”
Huseby decided to fight the case.
Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984
Life-saving pacemakers manufactured by Medtronic don't rely on encryption to safeguard firmware updates, a failing that makes it possible for hackers to remotely install malicious wares that threaten patients' lives, security researchers said Thursday.
At the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas, researchers Billy Rios and Jonathan Butts said they first alerted medical device maker Medtronic to the hacking vulnerabilities in January 2017. So far, they said, the proof-of-concept attacks they developed still work. The duo on Thursday demonstrated one hack that compromised a CareLink 2090 programmer, a device doctors use to control pacemakers after they're implanted in patients.
Because updates for the programmer aren't delivered over an encrypted HTTPS connection and firmware isn't digitally signed, the researchers were able to force it to run malicious firmware that would be hard for most doctors to detect. From there, the researchers said, the compromised machine could cause implanted pacemakers to make life-threatening changes in therapies, such as increasing the number of shocks delivered to patients.
Related: A Doctor Trying to Save Medical Devices from Hackers
Security Researcher Hacks Her Own Pacemaker
Updated: University of Michigan Says Flaws That MedSec Reported Aren't That Serious
Fatal Flaws in Ten Pacemakers Make for Denial of Life Attacks
After Lawsuits and Denial, Pacemaker Vendor Finally Admits its Product is Hackable
8,000 Vulnerabilities Found in Software to Manage Cardiac Devices
465,000 US Patients Told That Their Pacemaker Needs a Firmware Upgrade
Abbott Addresses Life-Threatening Flaw in a Half-Million Pacemakers
Wired has published a long article about how the farming equipment manufacturer John Deere has just swindled farmers out of their right to repair their own equipment. Basically the manufacturer was allowed to write the agreement governing access to the firmware embedded in the farming equipment.
Farmers have been some of the strongest allies in the ongoing battle to make it easier for everyone to fix their electronics. This week, though, a powerful organization that's supposed to lobby on behalf of farmers in California has sold them out by reaching a watered-down agreement that will allow companies like John Deere to further cement their repair monopolies.
Farmers around the country have been hacking their way past the software locks that John Deere and other manufacturers put on tractors and other farm equipment, and the Farm Bureau lobbying organization has thus far been one of the most powerful to put its weight behind right to repair legislation, which would require manufacturers to sell repair parts, make diagnostic tools and repair information available to the public, and would require manufacturers to provide a way to get around proprietary software locks that are designed to prevent repair.
Motherboard also covered the topic about how farmer lobbyists sold out their farmers and helped enshrine John Deere's maintenance monopoly.
Earlier on SN:
The Right to Repair Battle Has Come to California (2018)
Apple, Verizon Join Forces to Lobby Against New York's 'Right to Repair' Law (2017)
US Copyright Office Says People Have the Right to Hack their Own Cars' Software (2015)
Jailbreak your Tractor or Make it Run OSS? (2015)
Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984
When you buy a game console, smartphone, dryer, vacuum cleaner, or any number of other complicated electronics, there’s usually a sticker or a piece of paperwork telling you that trying to repair the device yourself will void your warranty. That’s illegal under the federal Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act. Companies offering a warranty on their goods aren’t allowed to void that warranty if the user attempts to repair it themself, but that doesn’t stop the company from scaring customers into thinking it’s true.
It’s such a huge problem that US PIRG—a non-profit that uses grassroots methods to advocate for political change—found that 90 percent of manufacturers it contacted claimed that a third party repair would void its warranty [pdf]. PIRG researched the warranty information of 50 companies in the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers (AHAM)—an industry group of notorious for lobbying to protect is repair monopolies [sic]—and found that 45 of them claimed independent repair would void their warranty.
Submitted via IRC for BoyceMagooglyMonkey
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is advising health professionals to keep an eye on some of the equipment they use to monitor pacemakers and other heart implants.
The watchdog's alert this week comes after Irish medical device maker Medtronic said it will lock some of its equipment out[pdf] of its software update service, meaning the hardware can't download and install new code from its servers.
That may seem counterintuitive, however, it turns out security vulnerabilities in its technology that it had previously thought could only be exploited locally could actually be exploited via its software update network. Malicious updates could be pushed to Medtronic devices by hackers intercepting and tampering with the equipment's internet connections – the machines would not verify they were actually downloading legit Medtronic firmware – and so the biz has cut them off.
To get the latest patches, the software will have to be installed by hand via USB by a Medtronic technician. Both the FDA and Medtronic said there is no immediate danger to any patients or doctors.
The security bugs are not present in the implants themselves, but rather in Medtronic "programmers," which doctors and medics connect to patients' implants during and after surgery, allowing them to check battery levels, monitor heart rhythms, and adjust any settings.
[...] As a result, Medtronic said, it has cut both device models' access to the SDN, meaning the only way for hospitals and clinics to get firmware updates will be on-site by Medtronic techs. In the meantime, the FDA said the devices will continue to operate as normal and no immediate action needs to be taken.
In short, nobody's pacemaker is getting hacked any time soon, and doctors and patients have nothing to worry about, but updating the programmers is going to be a bit of a pain.
Source: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/10/12/medtronic_pacemaker_programmer_security/
A legislator in Canada has proposed a bill to ensure that individuals and indpendent shops can repair brand-name devices. If on the off chance that the bill becomes law, major hardware vendors will have to change how they sell their products.
[...] On Thursday, Coteau introduced a private member's bill in provincial parliament that, if passed, would be the first "right to repair" law for electronic devices in North America. More than a dozen US states are currently considering similar bills, but nothing is on the books yet in the US or in Canada.
The legislation proposes that tech companies make diagnostic tools, repair manuals, and official parts available to consumers at their request. The legislation would also require that any new products ship with a repair manual. Documents provided to consumers must be free unless they request paper copies, and parts, tools, and software must be provided at a fair price.
Earlier on SN:
Apple's T2 Security Chip Can Prevent Unauthorized Third-Party Repair of Devices
Yes, Americans, You Can Break Anti-Piracy DRM If You Want to Repair Some of Your Kit – US Govt
45 Out of 50 Electronics Companies Illegally Void Warranties After Independent Repair, Sting Reveals
The Right to Repair Battle Has Come to California
Last year dozens of 'Right to Repair' bills were introduced throughout the US, but defeated. Maybe this time its time has come.
Right to Repair bills, designed to foster competition in the repair industry, require manufacturers to allow repair, and even provide manuals, diagnosic software, and parts. Manufacturers oppose these laws as it can cost them more to address devices repaired by third parties, because repairs are a source of revenue, and because repaired items are less likely to be replaced with new ones.
[O]ne of the most effective anti-repair tactics is to spread FUD about the supposed security risks of independent repairs.
Without a concerted and coordinated effort to counteract this tactic, legislators receive primarily well-heeled opposing views, and vote accordingly.
Submitted via IRC for Bytram
Hackers, farmers, and doctors unite! Support for Right to Repair laws slowly grows
In the US, manufacturers in everything from consumer technology to farming and agriculture have long constructed systems that limit where customers can go for repairs—remember the old "warranty void if broken" stickers found on game consoles or TVs? Today if you have a broken iPhone screen, for instance, Apple runs Genius Bars across the country where users must go for permitted fixes. Other companies parcel work out to a network of authorized vendors. Manufacturers generally argue these constraints are necessary to protect proprietary information that gives theirproduct a leg up in the overall marketplace.
Slowly but surely, though, consumers and third parties outside of vendor-sanctioned circles have been pushing to change this through so-called "right to repair" laws. These pieces of proposed legislation take different forms—19 states introduced some form of right to repair legislation in 2018, up from 12 in 2017—but generally they attempt to require companies, whether they are in the tech sector or not, to make their service manuals, diagnostic tools, and parts available to consumers and repair shops—not just select suppliers.
It's difficult to imagine a more convincing case for the notion that politics make strange bedfellows. Farmers, doctors, hospital administrators, hackers, and cellphone and tablet repair shops are aligned on one side of the right to repair argument, and opposite them are the biggest names in consumer technology, ag equipment and medical equipment. And given its prominence in the consumer technology repair space, IFixit.com has found itself at the forefront of the modern right to repair movement.
"The problem is that there are only two types of transaction in the United States: purchases and licenses," says Gay Gordon-Byrne, the executive director of the Repair Association, a right to repair advocacy group partnering with iFixit to further the movement. "You don't own something if it's covered by an end-user license agreement. All you have is a right to use it according to the manufacturer's terms."
Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1337
US-CERT Warns of Remotely Exploitable Bugs in Medical Devices
Vulnerabilities in key surgical equipment could be remotely exploited by a low-skill attacker.
US-CERT has issued an advisory for vulnerabilities in Medtronic's Valleylab FT10 and Valleylab FX8 Energy Platforms, both key surgical equipment that could be remotely exploited by a low-skill attacker. Vulnerabilities also affect Valleylab Exchange Client, officials report.
The advisory details three vulnerabilities. One is the use of hard-coded credentials (CVE-2019-13543). Affected devices use multiple sets of hard-coded credentials; if discovered, they could be used to read files on the equipment. The flaw has been assigned a CVSS base score of 5.8.
These products also use a reversible one-way hash for OS password hashing. While interactive, network-based logons are disabled. An attacker could use other vulnerabilities disclosed to gain local shell access and obtain these hashes. This flaw (CVE-2019-13539) has a CVSS score of 7.0.
Improper input validation (CVE-2019-3464 and CVE-2019-3463) marks the third type of vulnerability. The affected devices use a vulnerable version of the rssh utility to enable file uploads, which could give an attacker administrative access to files or the ability to execute arbitrary code. This vulnerability has been given a CVSS score of 9.8.
Digital Rights/Restrictions Management (DRM) technologies affecting new tractors are behind the continuing rise in popularity of the models. Particularly in the midwest, farmers are finding that 40-year-old tractors do the job with less trouble and expense.
Tractors manufactured in the late 1970s and 1980s are some of the hottest items in farm auctions across the Midwest these days — and it's not because they're antiques.
Cost-conscious farmers are looking for bargains, and tractors from that era are well-built and totally functional, and aren't as complicated or expensive to repair as more recent models that run on sophisticated software.
"It's a trend that's been building. It's been interesting in the last couple years, which have been difficult for ag, to see the trend accelerate," said Greg Peterson, the founder of Machinery Pete, a farm equipment data company in Rochester with a website and TV show.
Previously;
Reeducating Legislators on the Right to Repair (2019)
John Deere Just Swindled Farmers Out of Their Right to Repair (2018)
US Copyright Office Says People Have the Right to Hack their Own Cars' Software (2015)
Europe Wants a 'Right to Repair' Smartphones and Gadgets
The European Union is seeking to help consumers fix or upgrade devices, rather than replace them, as part of a 30-year push to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
LONDON — Hoping to replace that two-year-old smartphone in a few months? The European Union wants you to think twice about doing that.
The bloc announced an ambitious plan on Wednesday that would require manufacturers of electronic products, from smartphones to tumble driers, to offer more repairs, upgrades and ways to reuse existing goods, instead of encouraging consumers to buy new ones.
[ . . . ] "The linear growth model of 'take-make-use-discard' has reached its limits," Virginijus Sinkevicius, the union's environment commissioner, told reporters in Brussels as he presented the "Circular Economy Action Plan," which includes the "right to repair" initiative.
"We want to make sure that products placed on E.U. market are designed to last longer, to be easier to repair and upgrade, easier to recycle and easier to reuse," he added.
Hopefully this would put an end to the waste and cost associat... Look! Over there! A new Shiny!
Professional Ventilator Design Open Sourced Today By Medtronic
Medical device company Medtronic released designs for one of their ventilators to open source for use in the COVID-19 pandemic. This is a laudable action, and there is plenty to glean from the specs (notable is that the planned release is incomplete as of this writing, so more info is on the way). Some initial reactions: medical devices are complicated, requirements specifications are enormous, the bill of materials (BOM) is gigantic, and component sourcing, supply chain, assembly, and testing are just as vital as the design itself.
The pessimist in me says that this design was open sourced for two reasons; to capitalize on an opportunity to get some good press, and to flex in front of the DIY community and convince them that the big boys should be the ones solving the ventilator shortage. The likelihood of anyone actually taking these specs and building it as designed are essentially zero for a variety of reasons, but let's assume their intent is to give a good starting point for newer changes. The optimist in me says that after what happened to California over the weekend with 170 ventilators arriving broken, it might be nice to have open designs to aid in repair of existing non-functioning ventilators.
The design details released today are for their PB560 model, which was originally launched in 2010 by a company called Covidien, before it merged with Medtronic, so we're already starting with a device design that's a decade old. But it's also a design that has proven itself through widespread use, and this data dump gives us a great look at what actually goes into one of these machines.
As one might suspect with a medical device, there are documents. Lots of documents! Among those supplied are: "Requirements Documents", "Electrical Schematics", and "Manufacturing Documents" and far more still remain:
Despite it being a dump of 53MB, there's quite a bit missing if you were trying to build this machine. However, Medtronic did mention in their press release that "...software code and other information will follow shortly." so there are more details on the way.
[...] we suspect that the amount of work that would be required to spin up assembly of this particular product is more than could be accomplished in the amount of time available, and the resources that would have to be mobilized are probably the same resources already working on building medical devices for other designs. The documentation around the release says any products released based on this are only to be used for COVID-19, so if anyone does manage to take this and use it to start production in a timely manner it will be both incredibly helpful, and super impressive.
Tom's Hardware is reporting that Raspberry Pi Foundation is increasing production of its $5 Raspberry Pi Zero to meet demand from ventilator manufacturers which are using the board in their designs. The higher end Raspberry Pi boards are also reasonable desktop units for many typical home office uses, so they are being distributed in place of laptops to many working at home for the NHS. The Raspberry Pi is a low wattage single-board computer with convenient input-output hardware suitable for embedded applications but running a full Debian-based GNU/Linux distro, Raspbian.
As the need for ventilators grows, manufacturers are looking for control boards to serve as the brains of their devices. Recently, Intel was reportedly asked to produce 20,000 Broadwell processors to meet demand from medical companies. Because of its production abilities, Raspberry Pi Foundation is able to provide those orders quickly.
"One of the main challenges with rapidly scaling manufacture of products like this is that you may be able to surge production of the air-handling elements, but you still need to provide the control element: often the components you need are on 20-week lead times and (hopefully) we'll be out of the other side of this pandemic by then," said Eben Upton, CEO and Founder of Raspberry Pi. "Raspberry Pi 'builds to stock' rather than 'building to order,' so we generally have products either on-hand or in the pipeline with short lead times."
Even though Raspberry Pi builds to stock, the organization has still experienced a shortage of Raspberry Pi Zero Units, due to demand from consumers as well as the foundation's desire to hold stock for ventilator manufacturers. Upton says that the organization produced 192,000 Zero-line (Pi Zero / Zero W) products in Q1 but plans to increase that number to 250,000 going forward.
The BBC is reporting that Raspberry Pi-based ventilators are currently being tested in several locations. No word yet on how the certification process is going.
Related:
Raspberry Pi will power ventilators for COVID-19 patients
Raspberry Pi's $5 model is powering ventilators to fight coronavirus
Previously:
(2020) Company Prioritizes $15k Ventilators Over Cheaper Model Specified in Contract
(2020) Professional Ventilator Design "Open Sourced" Today by Medtronic
(2019) Interview with Eben Upton on Studies, the Raspberry Pi and IoT
(2019) Raspberry Pi Opens First High Street Store in Cambridge
(2019) Raspberry Pi Foundation Releases Compute Module 3+, the Last 40nm-Based RasPi
(2019) Raspberry Pi Foundation Announces RISC-V Foundation Membership
(2015) Raspberry Pi's Latest Computer Costs Just $5
'Right to repair' taken up by the ACCC in farmers' fight to fix their own tractors:
The 'right to repair' movement has finally bent the ear of Australia's competition and consumer watchdog, the ACCC, in its pleas to be able to fix their own farm equipment.
[...] Farmers have emerged as an unlikely force in the global right to repair movement.
The movement eschews the disposable culture of consumer electronics in favour of letting independent repairers and home tinkerers fix broken smartphones, tablets, and laptops.
Proponents want access to the code that makes modern machines hum, putting them at loggerheads with tech giants including Apple who own the proprietary software.
In the United States, farmers have risked voiding their warranties by hacking their own John Deere tractors with torrented software so they can carry out their own repairs.
[...] In its first deep dive into the modern agricultural machinery market, the ACCC published its discussion paper on the matter in late February and is seeking accounts from those who buy and use farm machinery, or repair it for a living.
"Broadacre croppers with large tractors, harvesters, seeders … and particularly tractors seem to be an area of some contention," Mr Keogh said.
"We have heard from dealers who say that they have no issues with providing service, yet we hear from independent service providers that they can't get access to the [software] diagnostic tools they need.
"In some cases they can't get access to the [manufacturers'] parts they need.
Fixers Know What 'Repairable' Means—Now There's A Standard For It - Ifixit:
[Earlier this year], three years of arguing with industry finally paid off, as the European standard EN45554 was published. This official document with an unexciting name details "general methods for the assessment of the ability to repair, reuse and upgrade energy-related products." In plain English, it's a standard for measuring how easy it is to repair stuff. It's also a huge milestone for the fight for fair repair.
We want to repair the stuff we own, so we can use it for longer. This is not only important because we want our money's worth out of the things we paid for, but because manufacturing new products is a huge and underestimated driver of climate change. So if we want to avoid cooking our planet, we need to stop churning out disposable electronics and start repairing more. Like, right now.
The problem is, industry won't do this by itself. Managers get ahead by showing quarterly sales growth, not increased product lifespans. Hence we need the government to step in, banning unrepairable products and helping consumers—that's you!—to identify the most durable products out there, so as to empower them to make better purchasing decisions. And in the EU, our political leaders are getting ready to do so.
But here's the rub: those leaders don't know what a repairable product is. If you ask manufacturers, they will all tell you their products are repairable. If you ask us, some devices clearly are more repairable than others, and some are frankly just not repairable at all.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Jiro on Saturday July 11 2020, @01:44AM (29 children)
If you make an unauthorized repair to a medical device and someone dies, do you have liability insurance which insurance companies are willing to sell to random people off the street who repair medical devices?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday July 11 2020, @01:55AM (14 children)
Taking exception to the context you set your point.
1. who pays for the accidental death is irrelevant
2. Note how the title narrow it to "Why Repair Techs are Hacking..."? Clearly, not quite the "random people off the street".
Otherwise, the problem of a botched repair that causes death is valid.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Saturday July 11 2020, @02:15AM (8 children)
the problem of a botched repair that causes death is valid.
Sure is. The manufacturers have to at least make the effort to lock them down for liability reasons.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Saturday July 11 2020, @02:33AM (6 children)
At the same time the manufacturers should make the effort to lock them down for liability reasons.
Unfortunately, TFA spells the situation clear:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Saturday July 11 2020, @02:59AM (4 children)
The government has power of eminent domain over patents. I guess we have to make more noise than the lobbyists to get them to use it.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 11 2020, @03:09AM
I think when when politicians bellies be full o'th Redrum they cause, it might be enough to give even them pause. But twill they sing another tune? How would I know, simply the court loon...
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday July 11 2020, @03:15AM (2 children)
It's not about the patents, you silly, what I quoted above works well (for manufacturers) even without them.
Actually, it work even better in the "undisclosed methods, trade secret" approach.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 5, Insightful) by deimtee on Saturday July 11 2020, @04:37AM (1 child)
I have a strong disagreement with even the concept of protected trade secrets. The deal is you disclose it in a patent, you get 20 years of protection from competition and then the knowledge is free to everyone.
If you think you can keep it secret, fine go for it, but you don't get the force of law to back it up. The entire concept of patents is that you trade secrecy for legal protection, and having legal protection for "trade secrets" breaks that deal.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 1, Troll) by c0lo on Saturday July 11 2020, @04:52AM
Me too, but unfortunately that's not the reality that we're living.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday July 11 2020, @05:26AM
Oh, Gosh, should have been:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by driverless on Sunday July 12 2020, @12:58PM
Unless you're in a country where there's proper protection legislation, and the response to any problem isn't to sue everything in sight.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday July 11 2020, @03:20AM (4 children)
So, yeah, there's a real problem when you take a design controlled ventilator that has been through "best practices" processes from concept through production and maintenance and then hack a quick fix onto it. Not saying that these 840 ventilators don't have the potential to save lives, they do, and if I were dying of anything and needed a vent, I'd rather use one of these than no vent at all - but, these aren't the circumstances that those ventilators (and so many other medical devices) were designed for.
One element of risk management is called "reasonably foreseeable misuse" - and this includes hacky fixes that customers will use to do things like: reuse single use disposables, band-aid field fixes to devices instead of returning them for proper service and repair, etc. Believe it or not, most medical device "lock out" design elements are put there for patient safety, profit is an incidental concern in this area - generally speaking, you don't want to piss off the customers and being a jerk about lockout (like printer ink cartridge refills do) blatant lockout is a good way to drive your customers to competitors who don't do those things.
Offtopic: All in all, I still think I'd prefer to die before I ever need a ventilator, but I suppose I'm not going to say "DNR if a vent is needed," not yet at least, maybe when I'm 70 and/or can't walk anymore.
Ontopic: if there's truly a crisis, hackavator is better than no vent at all, but there's a lot of knowledge and experience that gets folded into a modern "advanced" ventilator design, and when you switch to a simple, cheaper hackavator - you're running lots of risks that have been managed in the more advanced designs. When the alternative is certain death, those risks are clearly preferable in most cases, but... in ordinary circumstances you would prefer not to take the additional risks associated with hackavator designs / patches, etc.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by c0lo on Saturday July 11 2020, @03:51AM (3 children)
Not such a clear cut, unfortunately.
E.g. slightly higher pressure of delivered oxygen may make the prognostic worse but rupturing the alveolae already weakened by covid
This can happen in various circumstances:
- an improperly restored "hackavator"
- an overused ventilator which just happen to have a dying pressure sensor - a pity the ventilators shortage in time of crisis doesn't allow for the recommended periodic calibration time for the equipment. Maybe if those ventilators wouldn't be so expensive, the hospitals could afford to stock more to mitigate occasional shortages?
- a perfectly tuned ventilator which a dumb (or just overworked) medical personnel maladjusted for the conditions of the patient.
This being said, I'll let you ponder on the "simple, clear solution to complex problems"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday July 11 2020, @12:31PM (2 children)
As you imply, there is no simple clear solution to complex problems - if there were, they wouldn't be complex problems would they?
I strongly believe in the principle of "first do no harm" and people using hackavators should understand the risks before using them - otherwise you get the 737 MAX effect of reasonably competent pilots being misled by their equipment and people being injured or dying basically due to a lack of training on the equipment in use. As demonstrated by the aircraft, this is a very real risk with very real consequences (the risk of operators not understanding the risks - compounded by the devices not undergoing proper risk identification/management and operator training...)
As for: if those ventilators weren't so expensive... thank your capitalists and their "free market" for that one. I've worked in medical device development for 30 years now, I've seen a number of innovative ideas that could have been saving lives for decades already - not developed because the resources required could be applied to making more money in other endeavors. If you want to be nice about it you can say that "making more money is saving more lives, or at least benefiting more people" but, the correlation is imperfect at best. Why doesn't the "free market" make cheaper ventilators? Very simply, because there is more money to be made in making expensive ventilators. Changing that simple fact is... a complex problem.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday July 11 2020, @12:47PM (1 child)
It's more than that. It's confusing a mean (market/economy) with and end.
Further aggravated by the picking poor metrics to use in the measure the economy - money (I know no other science that is trying to express the realities it supposedly describes using just two units - money and time - hell of a reductionist vision of this world).
Even more complicated by the fact that there's no a clear/accepted image of what that end (for the market mean) should be.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday July 11 2020, @01:02PM
If you want to take a simple, humanist, view of it - it's a 7.8 billion dimensional problem, but in reality it's more complex as people's opinions and actual needs morph over time.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by sjames on Saturday July 11 2020, @05:10AM (8 children)
You say that like it's uncommon for medical devices to fail. They do fail, all the time, and then they get swapped out and the patient is fine. The key is to make sure they fail noisy.
But in the current situation, is it really better for several patients to die for lack of equipment than for one to die of a malfunction? The numbers say no! Less death is better.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Saturday July 11 2020, @08:00AM (7 children)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday July 11 2020, @08:14AM (2 children)
Medical field is a bit apart from your typical trolley.
Blame those crates of hippos [wikipedia.org] for the ethical oath they need to follow (and/or be glad they don't break it while you are in their hands)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 11 2020, @02:27PM (1 child)
Let's hope they take it a bit more seriously than pretty much any other group takes their oaths...
Most people work for money, not because they feel strongly about what they're doing.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Saturday July 11 2020, @10:19PM
"Most" isn't the right word to use across the board - there are professional clusters where the reverse is true.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday July 11 2020, @10:49AM (2 children)
This is a bit different from the trolley problem. In this case you see an empty trolley careening towards someone tied to the tracks. If you throw the switch, it has a 50% chance of switching the trolley to a spur harmlessly. The other 50%, the handle breaks and it kills the poor guy anyway. Or you do nothing and his death is certain.
That version isn't very popular in ethics since the answer is free of dilemma. The worst case for action is identical to the only case for inaction.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Sunday July 12 2020, @08:43AM (1 child)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday July 12 2020, @09:09AM
All of them offering some variant on an ethical dilemma between passively allowing people to die or taking an active role in choosing who dies (or actively choosing to place people at great risk of death). None match this situation. The only choice is certain death or possible death for the very same person.
Put directly, someone you care about will surely die without a ventilator. The only ventilator available anywhere has a 50% chance of failing. Do you choose the sure death because the ventilator is out of spec or try it and hope it's close enough?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 11 2020, @03:06PM
no, many chose to do nothing rather that beeing assholes and push random people in front of moving machines in the name of a greater good that only they understand
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Opportunist on Saturday July 11 2020, @08:58AM (3 children)
There's a simple solution for this. Here's a form. You can sign it to agree that if you die from this machine being faulty, you won't sue. The alternative is that we don't hook you up to this machine and you die.
You have the free choice.
(Score: 4, Touché) by maxwell demon on Saturday July 11 2020, @12:26PM
If you die from whatever cause, you'll not be able to sue anyway. I doubt that anything you sign can be binding for your relatives.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 11 2020, @09:16PM (1 child)
That is not a free decision. Just sayin.
It's a real life decision of the sort people take every day, but it's not a free choice. Fairly heavy coercive pressure there.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Sunday July 12 2020, @08:12PM
Oh c'mon, millions of people are facing a very similar choice every day. They can either work under unspeakable conditions or starve to death and we call that bullshit a"free market".
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Saturday July 11 2020, @03:40PM
Civil liability? - No, it's worse than that, (most, and definitely ventilators) medical devices are regulated devices in most places.
If you "repair" one without correct authorisation, or knowingly use one "repaired" in that way, you may be committing a criminal offence.
This applies to both corporates, directors / officers thereof, and employees at every level.
Licensed professionals (e.g. doctors, nurses) will also be at risk of being struck off by their professional bodies.
Whether the medical regulatory environment is too bureaucratic, slow-moving, restrictive or expensive is another discussion entirely, fact is, it is there, it has been put there for good reason, and it has to be complied with.
There are exceptions / defenses for e.g. emergencies, and pandemic situation may qualify. Doctors routinely use unlicensed drugs to treat some conditions, often because all licensed drugs have failed for a particular case, or because there are none (nothing is/was licensed for Covid, new unknown disease). Same applies to jury-rigging ventilator tubing to serve multiple patients or making CPAPs out of scuba equipment - ok to save lives in an emergency, but if you want to mass produce and sell it you'd better be getting regulatory approval.
Regulations often cut both ways - users may not have the "right to repair" medical devices any way they want, but the relevant authorities may have the power to authorise third parties to service devices if the manufacturer will not (this is the case in the UK), so if the manufacturer won't repair your ventilator you can go to the authorities and they can even disclose manufacturers proprietary information to a third party authorised to do the repair.
What you can't do is go to a "hacker from Poland" just because you don't want to pay the manufacturers service contract, or the official repair fees, which are almost certainly way more expensive - not necessarily because you are being screwed, but because they include the costs of complying with the regulatory regime, which the "hacker from Poland" will not.
(Score: 1, Troll) by c0lo on Saturday July 11 2020, @01:49AM (14 children)
On one side, a properly repaired ventilator will save lives just as a new one.
On the other side, an improperly repaired one can kill by malfunctioning.
For sure, the ventilators are not like iPhones (that one can survive without) or as a tractor (which, improperly repaired, will only bring damage to the farmer that repaired it).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 11 2020, @03:09AM (9 children)
It is easy to come up with scenarios to support any argument you want.
Per Google, an average sized hospital has 20 ventilators. If two of them are broken, and patient 19 needs a ventilator to survive, and cannot be transferred in time to another facility-- that patient dies. If the two ventilators that otherwise were out of commission were repaired by unauthorized techs, and one fails while being used for that 19th patient, the hospital moves the patient to the other repaired unit. The patients odds are *much* better, as the alternative was certain death.
Now, look at poor countries, or countries with punishing sanctions against their populations like Iran, and unauthorized repair of ventilators is the only choice. Iran even has to re-use the disposable tubes and such between patients because of the inhumane sanctions. The Iranian health minister said that one Iranian is dying every 10 minutes due to covid [+ sanctions].
The United States and the UK together *caused* the mess that is the Iranian government that they are now sanctioning. The US and UK overthrew Iran's democratic government in 1953 and installed a right-wing murderous dictator. The population finally overthrew the dictator in 1979, but religious zealots were able to seize power. Now the US wants to punish the Iranian people for the US and the UK destroying Iranian democracy so they could steal Iranian oil to enrich their elites.
The Clinton sanctions against the Iraqi people killed half a million children under the age of 14 according to the United Nations Childrens Fund (UNICEF). The death toll in Iran will likely be much worse. Just so political ideologues can score points with certain constituencies.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 11 2020, @03:17AM
Jimmy Carter ended up backing both sides of that regime while president, and his brother who at the time had become an 'influencer' in DC chose to work with the Iranians until he was discovered and labelled a Foreign Agent barring him from those circles for life. As it turned out, the side they chose which appeared the least bad, turned out to have fooled everyone and actually been a religious extremist who used it as an opportunity to finally purge the myriad of political rivals he had, not unlike Indonesia a few years earlier.
Go look it up It's quite a read!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Saturday July 11 2020, @03:20AM (6 children)
Someone modded parent post as "off topic". I don't believe it is off topic at all. There is a health crisis, common to all of mankind, wherever he or she may live. We should all care about each other's survival, right? Many here have taken me to task for refusing to wear a face mask. We care about each other, right?
Parent observes that Iran is taking a worse beating than necessary, because of historical as well as current meddling in Iran's affairs by the US/UK.
I think we should ship a couple thousand working ventilators to Tehran, along with all possible support for those ventilators. It would sure buy a lot of good will - even among the hard core America haters.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday July 11 2020, @03:27AM (5 children)
What does this and the parent post have to do with the "right to repair" and "need hackers from Poland to get parts for the ventilators"?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday July 11 2020, @03:33AM (1 child)
Not much - except Polacks must be pretty damned smart if we need them to do our hacking. Amirite?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday July 11 2020, @03:57AM
Right.
With the note that the relative positioning on the smartness scale of Americans and Polacks can be read the other way 'round to express the same ordering (grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 11 2020, @04:07AM (1 child)
From my reading of it,
1. Thanks to sanctions, Iran has to mod/repair their hospital equipment to attempt to keep things going.
2. Staff used to Item X in fully operational condition might assume, especially under stress, that a modded/repaired Item X functions the same way..
3. Even with doing this to equipment as a stopgap to keep them running, with the rate and numbers of infections, and lack of drugs, people in Iran are dying at a horrible rate.
Point 2 is the one that should concern us, as I'd assume these modded ventilators will most likely be deployed when the next peak/wave hits, and the staff operating them will be under maximum stress..minus the politics, look at it as a cautionary tale.
As to the Poles...the ability to 'Frankenstein' equipment into a useable state was cultivated in a number of the old Soviet Bloc countries, thanks to equipment being run into the ground and lack of spares, similar to the current situation in Iran.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday July 11 2020, @05:15AM
I'd put in the more general context of "There's no such a thing as the American dream for you".
That worked and works as a constant drive to build yourself into a better you (as individual), diversify to survive, because it's unlikely you are going to find something already built for what you need to make do.
Another example in the prresent: here are some guys that "invented" the technology for their business that's just good enough for what they do [youtube.com] (Russian with approximate English CC) - supersonic sand blasting using beach sand, compressed air and diesel fuel; galvanisation in jet - God, is that end surface rough or what? But I will trust that galv protection to do better than "the minimal thickness to make sure we get a repeat business at the end of the warranty").
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 11 2020, @04:41PM
Iran would not have hardly any functioning ventilators without unauthorized repair.
Right to repair should not just be framed as a first world problem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 11 2020, @03:25AM
Everybody must be a master of debate in your parallel universe.
A pity the arguments you brought don't seem to have a point they are meant to support.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Saturday July 11 2020, @09:00AM (3 children)
I'm fairly sure these ventilators won't be used instead but on top of the "high quality" ones they have. In other words, they will be used in cases where the alternative is not to hook the patient up to a "certified" ventilator but to hook him up to no ventilator and let him die.
Look up "heroic measure". That's basically what this is.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday July 11 2020, @10:03AM (2 children)
This is the difference that the "Primum non nocere" induces into the problem.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Saturday July 11 2020, @10:19AM (1 child)
So, I take it that you're against amputating gangrenous limbs?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday July 11 2020, @10:23AM
Did I say anything about my choice?
Thanks God I don't need to make one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 11 2020, @01:57AM (1 child)
Freedom is your savior, and RMS is the last prophet.
Those who rag on RMS, are doomed to repeat the fuck-up.
Fuck-up, you do, that be thy name, cuz, like, yous are fucking morans.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 11 2020, @03:17AM
Those who defend RMS, are doomed to be shunned as outcasts and pedos. Can I interest you in some toe jam?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by SomeGuy on Saturday July 11 2020, @02:24AM (13 children)
There is no debate about it. Anyone who attempts to restrict the right for someone to repair something they own is an evil piece of shit and needs to die.
I could only hope that, in this case, whatever rich asshole in charge of locking these things down gets covid-19 or similar but the ventilator they are stuck with breaks and can't be repaired.
(Score: 1, Troll) by c0lo on Saturday July 11 2020, @03:11AM (11 children)
Oh, but there is: the Shareholders vs. Stakeholders Debate [mit.edu]. Why do you hate capitalism [wikipedia.org]?
Listen, I'm not saying you are wrong. I'm saying that in, the current culture of the society, the conflict will be resolved in the interest of shareholders, US has a legal precedent for that [litigationandtrial.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday July 11 2020, @03:25AM (10 children)
That may change in the near future. When the lack of a right to repair was only screwing over some farmers, and some tech-geeks, it was no big deal. When that same infringement on a person's natural right to repair his own property begins costing lives in hospitals? Public sentiment may bit those shareholders in the ass. I'm a fan of torches and pitchforks. I say "Bring them on!" Burn a few mansions, hang a few shareholders, put a few of the filthy rich into gibbets, and set some examples. Then, write some sensible laws which all the surviving shareholders will readily agree to.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by c0lo on Saturday July 11 2020, @04:01AM (7 children)
Careful, you may end of committing suicide if you have retirement money managed by a pension fund (grin. Only serious: don't hate the players, hate the game)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 11 2020, @07:29AM (1 child)
Idiot mods who don't realize that they themselves may be shareholders in public companies (which they don't approve of) if they have funds in a pension fund [wikipedia.org].
May not even know that pension investment funds are very common [wikipedia.org], especially in countries that are not US.
Hey, idiot, if you what a flamebait example, here's one: maybe you don't even realize there are countries other than US.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 11 2020, @09:25PM
Maybe we should start an Ethics Fund which shorts the most egregiously moral violating companies. It can be like buying carbon credits - it offsets any bad effects you feel by owning said companies in your 401k pension fund.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Saturday July 11 2020, @09:11AM (4 children)
I hate the ones playing with my money. Or rather, playing with some money and expect me to bail them out when they lost in the casino. Screw them. Preferable with a donkey dildo.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday July 11 2020, @09:40AM (2 children)
If you receive your salary in a bank account you already allow others to play with your money [wikipedia.org]. And they do play a losing-game-guaranteed for you.
I said it in other comment: don't hate the player, hate the game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Saturday July 11 2020, @10:52AM (1 child)
It's easier to kill the player than the game, and if nobody is playing anymore, the game leaves as well.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 11 2020, @11:21AM
Quite a jump you're making from hate to kill.
Besides, some billion people are players in the game, like anyone receiving their wages in bank account; do you intend to kill them all?
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Sunday July 12 2020, @06:18PM
You realize, or course, that money is a fiction that works only because enough people believe in it?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by legont on Saturday July 11 2020, @04:07AM (1 child)
Yes, indeed. Two other examples include:
- intentionally limiting the life expectancy of the device by inserting a predictably weak part such as a plastic one with known disintegration time
- locking down features in hope to sell them later
Both are wasting the resources and as such killing the life on the planet.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 11 2020, @09:28PM
I've heard it said of medical devices that you don't buy the device, you buy an upgrade path.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday July 11 2020, @12:33PM
As you know all too well, rich assholes are much less subject to this fate than poor assholes.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Saturday July 11 2020, @03:13AM (22 children)
There is no legitimate debate. The buyer has every "right" to do anything he wishes to do with the item. He may set it afire for lolz. He may race it as fast as possible, until it blows up, for more lolz. He may put it into storage, and never use it. He may put it to it's intended use if he so desires. It is his, to break, to use, to abuse - and that includes repair.
Any other position is an abuse, and an abomination of, intellectual property laws. It is perfectly alright for EvilCorp to refuse to "support" unauthorized repairs. Which is fine. If I modify the hardware and/or the software on ANYTHING, then I am responsible for it, not the manufacturer. They need not support it. Just stop pretending that I am violating some farcical intellectual property rights by repairing my equipment!
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday July 11 2020, @03:45AM (9 children)
Agreed, but unfortunately it goes even further. The thing you own has a manufacturer's self-bricking algorithm in it. You try to repair it, and it's smart enough to know you did something and it wipes and bricks. Is that allowable? Hidden and secret- wasn't disclosed when you bought it.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday July 11 2020, @03:55AM (8 children)
Seems simple to me: Manufacturer deprives me of the item I paid for - he owes me a new one. If a thief stole it from me, a court would say that the thief owes me restitution. If the manufacturer happens to be the thief, then the manufacturer owes restitution.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday July 11 2020, @04:59AM (7 children)
Again, I agree, but if you recall, our courts have to uphold the laws that are written by our corporate-owned and lobbyist obeying congress. You and I only exist to keep them going.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday July 11 2020, @05:39AM (6 children)
But of course we do. They are the "job creators" and they are the most important entities in the Universe.
The very purpose of life evolving on Earth is to provide individuals that can fill the jobs created by them. Don't you see? There's no meaningful life outside a job. If you don't believe me, try living unemployed for a while
(very large grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday July 11 2020, @05:43AM (5 children)
Better watch out- I can out-cynic you every day of the week! We're all controller by the Illuminati, rats running in our maze of mazes, on the wheels. Darn it, now I'm hungry for some cheese... I'll check in later... squeak squeak.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday July 11 2020, @06:01AM (4 children)
I'm not trying to be the MostCynical [soylentnews.org]
Just doing my best to grin as large and as often that I can.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday July 11 2020, @03:51PM (3 children)
Admitted, we're just apprentices, but we have that great teacher you referenced.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 11 2020, @09:34PM (2 children)
Look out for this AC guy when you two are done slobbing on eachother. He's real jerk.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday July 11 2020, @09:43PM
I can rip him 3 new orifices, I just don't like being pushed to that point. I'm really growing weary of ACs anyway.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday July 11 2020, @09:45PM
BTW, we'd had some misunderstandings, harsh words traded, but got it figured out so we're just overcompensating. It'll wane.
(Score: 2) by legont on Saturday July 11 2020, @04:10AM
Even more, a different company that makes it's living by providing repair and best practice use information should be protected from intellectual property claims once and for good.
One should be able to share repair knowledge and make money from it.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday July 11 2020, @05:34AM (7 children)
Unfortunately, that's not the direction the "civilization" evolved - may be good, may be bad... hard to say.
For instance, nobody will punish Runaway if he'll infect others because he's refusing to wear a mask - so, no personal repercussions, no responsibility to carry on the shoulders.
On the other side, if Runaway manages to not infect others even without wearing a mask, why should he be punished if he doesn't wear one?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday July 11 2020, @05:58AM (1 child)
Actually someone in my area got arrested for not wearing a mask. He got into some kind of dust-up with other store patrons who called the cops and the guy was charged with disorderly conduct and harassment.
But you make a good point- why someone not infected should wear a mask? Well, in some people's cases, it helps beautify the environment. :)
But seriously for a moment- since it turns out people can be infected, have no symptoms, test negative, but infect others, everyone should wear masks when close to others. The US officials came up with 6 feet (2 meters) as a good rough "social distancing", but that depends on many factors including enclosed spaces, winds, people who are weakened / susceptible to COVID, etc. If everyone wears masks, we can get fairly close safely.
However, the mask may also protect the wearer, like Runaway, from becoming infected and passing it along. Some masks are much better at protecting the wearer, like N95- fairly common particle mask, or much better is N100 if you're not self-conscious.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday July 11 2020, @06:10AM
To screw up the face recognition those damn'd Silicon Valley elites are pushing everywhere (thanks for the opportunity [soylentnews.org]very large grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday July 11 2020, @01:11PM (4 children)
If I take a gun and randomly fire into the crowd, but by chance happen to not actually hit anyone, should I go unpunished?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday July 11 2020, @01:21PM (2 children)
Somehow, I can't equate "manages" with "by chance".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday July 11 2020, @01:31PM (1 child)
That must be your personal blind spot.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday July 11 2020, @01:46PM
Somehow, I should not be surprised by this reply coming from an entity working on particles with a statistical distribution (grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 11 2020, @09:36PM
Maybe but why risk it? Get an AR-15.
(Score: 3, Informative) by inertnet on Saturday July 11 2020, @08:08AM (2 children)
You're right, and I'd like to add an environmental argument that's often overlooked. If repair is made impossible or too expensive, items become worthless and end up in a landfill prematurely.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday July 11 2020, @03:48PM (1 child)
You or someone made that comment in the right to repair discussion and someone very unfairly slammed you in a ridiculous way that broken stuff would destroy the planet. Sheesh.
Repairing and reusing is the best way to minimize environmental impact. Okay, some would argue it's better to recycle a petrol car in favor of an electric one and I'll agree with that, if money allows.
But remember, most things can be recycled. Although I've seen enough investigative news showing that in fact, much e-waste does NOT get recycled, but ends up in huge piles in India, Africa, China- it just shows the poor are being exploited everywhere on earth.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 11 2020, @09:39PM
Exploited? I'm creating jobs for those fuckers. Nom nom nom.