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I feel a law that would go a long way would be to force companies to release code, drivers, and designs of any product they no longer support. That includes Intellectual Property. If you no longer support a product, then you don't need the IP used on it.
We either get everything we need to use EOL products however we want, or companies support products much longer to protect their IP.
The laws don't go far enough to protect usability of both the hardware and software. For example, the new EU law about software, only requires smart TVs to have software updates for only 5 years (my own $2k Sony TV only gave me software updates for its AndroidTV for only 2 years! -- these days I don't connect it to the internet at all due to security problems). Who throws a TV every 5 years? IMO, it should ask for 6 years for full updated phones, plus 3 additional years for security updates, computers should go to 12 years, and TVs to 15 years.
Personally, I've been gathering old laptops and towers from friends and family and "upgrade" them with Debian and XFce. As long as they have more than 450 Passmark CPU points, and 2+ GB of RAM, these machines can still serve a purpose. So far, I've repurposed 12 such machines and gave them away back to their owner, my mom, my nieces, and two of my cousins. Even on machines with only 2 GB of RAM, it's enough to run a browser with up to 3 tabs before touching the swap file (Debian/XFce clean-boots to about 800 MBs of RAM). That works just fine for someone like my mom who doesn't even how to open a new tab, or for a young kid researching for school.
I would do the same with old phones too, but most of the models bought here in Greece are cheap Chinese Xiaomi/Huawei/realme phones, so LineageOS doesn't support them. That's the biggest travesty these days, since very few people buy computers now. Think if Google could ask as part of android license that all phones have usb-out for monitors, and all these phones can then be transformed like Samsung's desktop DEX OS. I mean, most phones today have 4+ GB of RAM and 128 GB internal memory, just like an old laptop would. It should be able to transform itself into a desktop OS on demand and extend its life and its purpose.
It would be good if the EU could make USB-C docking functionality a requirement for all phones the way they made USB-C power a requirement. I doubt that Google could do it even if they wanted to.
As an aside Google REALLY doesn't want companies to follow the example of Huawei with HarmonyOS. If any big player said "we will license HarmonyOS or develop our own thing if Google makes us do something we don't like" then Google would give in.
Phones for desktop use is something I'm working on now. Not for old devices but for ultra portable work. I just paid $215AU for a Note9 with 8G of RAM. Until a couple of months ago my main laptop had 8G of RAM, that's enough to do most non-server things you want to do with a computer.
I had this exact idea but for old Consoles: every PS4 could be a perfectly capable x86 Computer, 8GB of Ram and a AMD CPU, enough Power for Office and Web for a long Time. Only Problem the Software.
@ordellrb @eugenia The other place the motherboards of old phones could be repurposed is in embedded processors.
Most home appliances feature embedded processors and motherboards these days. Many commercial and industrial buildings and structures feature a range of embedded sensors.
In many cases, a repurposed three-year-old or even six-year-old iPhone or Samsung Galaxy motherboard is overkill in terms of being capable for these kinds of applications.
Especially if they're reflashed with an embedded device-focussed operating system, such as QNX.
Instead of making new motherboards for embedded devices, why not repurpose old consumer tech instead?
@ajsadauskas @ordellrb @eugenia Quite a few of us have done that through the last two decades or more. Why not?! If it's still useful, use it. I used a few older computers as print servers for businesses even back in the 1990's.
The issue is the price of new hardware vs the hourly wages of people who are capable of reprogramming old stuff. If you are going to pay $100/h to get old stuff working and buying new stuff costs $20 then it's cheaper to throw it out and buy new stuff.
@etbe @ajsadauskas so it's on quantity. If you reprogram one device for 500 dollars and then reflash with that firmware other 1000 devices it will be much cheaper than new devices.
@mcSlibinas @etbe Really good point.
The development time and cost is an overhead. That's divided between the number of units you produce.
If the programming costs are $100k and you produce one unit, then that unit costs $100k.
But if you flash the same software on to 1 million units, then it's just 10 cents per unit.
Worth remembering that millions of people junking their two-year-old iPhones and Samsung Galaxies at roughly the same time.
I think the broader underlying issue is that our economy is optimised for labour productivity, rather than making the most out of finite environmental resources.
It really should be the other way around.
Reprogramming the 1000 other devices won't be as hard as the first one but it won't be trivial as they may be all on different versions of the software and there may be hardware variations too.
Just to triage the devices and determine which ones are good enough is going to be non trivial.
@etbe definitely. That's why ve have internet - to connect many users of given devices. Like entuziasts of retro gaming consoles: some dudes spend time of reprogramming others help with sharing - fixing - adapting.
@mcSlibinas @etbe Worth noting that in the six months after Apple releases the thinnest, best iPhone ever each year, it would receive several million two-year-old iPhones as trade-ins.
So you could theoretically reflash several million units of nearly identical hardware with embedded Linux (or QNX), remove the batteries (and screens?).
You would then have several million near-identical motherboards ready for second life embedded in appliances or sensors.
I feel like the answer is recycling deposits somehow. I've seen attempts at them here and there, but I guess we haven't quite figured out the details yet. I guess electronics are a bit trickier to set up a deposit system for than pop cans. Even the places that do have electronics deposits, often you have to drive to a special recycling centre out past the airport that's open 3 hours in the middle of the day, only for them to tell you that everything's glued together so they can't really separate out the parts they need and most of it will probably end up just going to the landfill anyway.
But theoretically, if we could get a serious deposit system that allowed for recycling to be profitable and gave manufacturers and incentive for making their stuff easier to take apart and recycling (and hence easier to repair), that would be pretty sweet.
A lot of the stuff you recycle doesn't actually get recycled, at least in the US. I just got a new fridge and they carried old one away for me, but I'm pretty sure they just take it to the dump and the thing that's recycled is the refrigerant.
I'm a huge fan of recycling, but I don't think we actually process most of the recycling we have, so we should be focusing more on things lasting longer. Phones have kind of plateaued, so they should have longer support cycles, better repairability, and smoother resale.
Oh cool another crisis, throw it on the big pile over there
I'll just put it over here with the rest of the crises.
People living in high-income countries own, on average, 109 EEE devices per capita
What the fuck?!?
I'm guessing childless adults are significantly less than that. Just thinking about my kids and all of their book readers, barking animal toys, light-up fairy wands, I have a bad feeling they may be bringing up that average.
Though the nice thing about kids' electronics is they never get obsoleted. A light-up fairy wand is just as fun in 2074 as it is in 2024. So they just get cycled through the 2nd hand mommy communities until they break. It was $40 new, you buy it "mostly undamaged" for $20, hope your kid doesn't scratch it too badly so you can sell it a couple years down the line for $10 or so.
The bad thing about kids' electronics is it's that for new stuff, it's really impossible to tell how long it's going to last. Could be 20 years, could be 20 minutes.