Simblifying the Right to Repair

I, V, M. Yes, hello and welcome. We are here again still there in less because he is doing the maintenance in United States of America and we therefore decided to cover a topic that is actually quite trending in that country. So, but yes, we get to that topic and we have of course we have our other two hosts which is Tony and Chuck and so we are going to cover a topic called right to repair but before we get into that topic, I want to start by asking everyone what are the which is the electronic or electronic device that you have owned for the longest.

Ah, nice. Fridge counts. Yeah, I was using a white hoodly. So, okay, that's a bit of cheating.

Let's still use basically. That's a good question. Even use, okay, that I don't, that my mind gets disqualified but short like whatever flute you would. But I'm going to stick to what you had in mind more and not cheat by saying fridge and microwave and all these things and actually so my previous pair of headphones were a walker of course.

They had somebody had their five years before I bought them and I use them for eight years and now they're with another friend. So, that thing's going on pretty strong. Yeah. For me, yes.

I don't know so it must be a total of fifteen years or something. I mean, that thing's out of production. So, it's, yeah, these things are pretty solid. Excellent.

And the older they get the better they get. How about it? Oh, well, we like to delude ourselves by thinking that way. Excellent.

Yeah. Tony, go ahead. I don't know man. I think it would have been my first Nokia phone which I had for like four or five years.

Nothing, nothing slusted more. I don't think. Excellent. For me, it's also a pair of headphones.

In fact, the first pair of headphones I bought with my own money which were a beautiful pair of St. Heiser, open-order headphones which I had recommended to be at the way back in 2012 and at the time when I was earning $35,000, I spent $5,000 bucks to buy them. So, that would never be any precious. So, yeah, I mean, those headphones are still around actually.

And the work was fine except the phone has fairly rotted away. And so, now that makes it extremely open-order, to way too open-order. So, yeah, that is my oldest electronic. But also, another pair, another, if I was to cheat and say the other electronic item that was there is, there was a micro-wave that my parents had purchased in the Dubai Shopping Festival 1996.

And that was retired only in 2021, not for the fact that it stopped working. But for the fact that I thought you'd all die of radio activity or something. So, I had it forcibly retired, unfortunately. The rest in peace, T.S.

Sanio micro-wave. Yeah, we had a blog pump TV brought from Germany in the 80s. I think that lasted like some 14 years or something till we got the next one for some World Cup or something. So, yeah, very, very old German technology.

You had a fridge to reach out? I didn't have a fridge story. Okay. So, I'm a bit of a white hoods who are part of the conversation.

Are there anything that's any conductors, whether it qualifies or not? This can probably become some old toy or something. Why not? Why not transistors?

Transistors. Okay. So, this is where, I mean, it's actually a good opening segue to the opening of the episode because I mean, when we think about things that have lasted us for a very long time. And obviously, it is a very long time was about 15, 20 years ago, which was the time when smartphones and the technology revolution hadn't fully taken over.

But items used to, I mean, they say the trueism that is there, the items that were made back in the days seem to last a lot longer than I did that are made today. So, I'm going to talk about the future that they know. Exactly. And so, before I get to the right tool pair, the fundamental aspect that has led to the right tool pair, one of those key aspects is a phenomenon that actually hasn't, isn't fair.

Very new. It's actually existed for nearly a century called planned obsolescence. But before you get there, Shri Keht, I have a few observations to make. And so, if I don't know, today we're going to talk about the right tool pair, mostly which is about the right to fix your own gadgets.

Shri Keht, I'm guessing that's broadly right. This is not to be confused with several other terms that you might have heard in fact. So, this is not to be confused with the form that you actually need to physically fill out and claim your warranty. That is called right to repair.

Right. That will be right. This is also not to be confused with the freedom too far, which is the right to rip air. It is also not to be confused.

By that time that you're on the left side of a river, meaning that you have to take right to riparian. It is not to be confused by that age old mallely farming brick of planting abundant amounts of grass to get a second harvest of beans. That is right to re-fire. Oh my God.

Also, it is not to be confused with traditional Republicans trying desperately to salvage their party. That is repair the right. Oh, well, well, well, well, well. Back to the phenomenon.

Sorry, I had to not do the Google Docs. I just had to get that out. Yeah. The episode is truly broken now.

I hope we have the right to repair. But anyway, so in the website. warrantysimplified.co. But anyway, the aspect that actually leads to the right to repair movement, actually having a pass is this phenomenon of plant obsolescence.

So, actually the origin of plant obsolescence isn't new at all. It is in fact, it has ceased its origins in a meeting that happened in 1927 between all the manufacturers of the light bulbs. Right. And there was, and so that particular August meeting of all these light bulb manufacturers discovered that their light bulbs on an average when they launched the initial light bulb were running for about 2000 hours.

Right. And all of them came to an agreement which they put their product designs together across different competitors also collaborated to make sure that the light bulbs only lasted. The filaments would burn out within a thousand hours only. So they halved the light bulb filament life.

So that was, so basically the people who did a lot more of the light bulbs. And that was the first example of plant obsolescence coming into play. Similarly, this plant obsolescence was also something that came into play with four versus general motors. So Henry Ford with his assembly line as well as those very, very efficient processes also had a very clear bottle of actually keeping products that lasted really long.

And also if they broke down, very easily serviceable and the parts were interchangeable. Right. Whereas general photos, what they did was their entire philosophy when they opened with it was to have people change cars every year. Right.

Ideally. And this is way back in the 50s, 60s. So we're not even talking about the iPhone generation yet. So they're still talking about like the 50s and 60s where they wanted to do that.

So while for the significant amount of time, General Ford maintained its supremacy on the industry, the profits that general motors have reeked in because of their plant obsolescence techniques in their cars actually made them the largest and most profitable car all-factors. But why do you know is my GM then? I mean, knowing that it will break on one year versus two. Because again, so that's the other aspect of plant obsolescence.

So there are two features of plant obsolescence. One aspect is called four-stop-stopsolescence, which is where the product actually breaks down physically and actually stops working. But the other aspect, which is often paired with four-stop-stopsolescence, is perceived obsolescence. Oh, okay.

Yes, exactly. And perceived obsolescence is what we see all the time. One plus, one plus, three models of one plus, it's at a year. Right.

And what's the best reason why, first within a year itself within a few months of purchasing your phone, there's a new model out and suddenly your model is old. And suddenly you got this out of your five. Like I purchased a one plus Nord in September of 2020, at which point it was the newest model at that time. And since September of 2020, and we are not even in September of 2022, and I think there have been four or five new models released out of that.

No one knows that one plus one. No, I think that's the correct one. One plus. No, I have the one before this nine.

Oh, wow. Nine pros. Exactly. So I mean, I got the less than my strategy is always get the version that was before.

It'll be 90% as good and 50% as expensive. Yeah, but this is a filament thing, right? It actually reminded me of a couple of, I mean, many tangential marketing examples. I think there was a tongue-stential.

A tongue-stential. Sorry. A chemical engineering. I mean, these were French filaments.

Anyway, I think I'm famous, the marketing one is about, I think it's anecdotal. I don't know if it's real, where cold-gate wanted to increase the sales of its toothpaste, and they basically increased the circumference of the tube itself because everyone goes from end to end of a toothbrush. So if you increase the circumference, more volume will pop out. So people will be like, I've heard other stories like, I mean, the whole brushing every day.

Never have it. Yeah, we all wish to introduce you. Successfully. These are very common-to-state facts.

That were used as crutches and excuses for many things. Yeah, holding out against social tasks. Engineering college hostels, holding out against big advertising. The other fun story was the origin of Michelin Star restaurants, basically, which happened in the early 1900s when Michelin made tires for cars.

In France, there were a total of 3000 cars at that time. So they wanted people to drive more so they could sell more tires. So they started releasing these guides called Michelin guides to explore various places. And that's how Michelin Star restaurants came in.

Basically, one star meant that it was a good restaurant in its category. Two stars meant worth taking a detour and three stars meant having a special ride for itself. So basically trying to get people to use more to wear and tear off the tire, but now Michelin Star restaurants are a thing on its own. But yeah, go back to the right to repair, sorry.

Yeah, I don't know. So in that, the right to repair actually was the much-leader movement. There was a larger evolution. So the auto industry was the first industry that was on an industrial level, kind of land obsolescence.

It also came to aspect where, so there was actually one, but really pretty genius idea that the deliberately genius idea that a champions spark plug company that itself had built its success on copying foreign spark plug designs was sold to Buick. And so what happened is they were actually sued because it was discovered that while they were selling, so they were asking for like, they used to have this thing where the spark plugs needed to be changed every month, year or something like that, where warranty or the repair of the car would be void unless the spark plugs were regularly changed. And what they did was, they would take, but they were charging a lower amount for taking the spark plugs and changing that. So people were obviously giving their old spark plugs over there.

What this right company was doing was, they were actually refurbishing those old spark plugs and selling them as reselling them again. So they were taking the old spark plugs and reselling them to people. So effectively, if you and Tony are using a car, you have a car and so I will take a spark plug from your car. The refurbishment put it on Tony's car, it takes Tony's spark plug and put it on your car and charge you guys both for you.

Wow. So, it's not- I mean, pretty sad that it's not here, but I think in the automotive spare parts industry, if you want to get it repaired at a low-pity. You have something called original, which is the original spare part. There is a duplicate, which is like a cheap made.

And then there is an original duplicate, which is like between both of these things. So like a Goldilocks switch. So you'll have to spend as much on the new part. But I'm guessing it's one of these recycled ones that come about.

Yeah, that's what I really wish to add. It was here as well because I mean, in the manufacturing industry, you would have some really interesting examples. But also what happened is, one other, I mean, later on, what happened was there was this, so the other aspect where Planter, where the spare part sale was restricted or an ability to use spare parts was restricted was when it came to further long. Where it came into a field of printer ink cartridges.

So, so, so, you let back hurts. So, initially what happened is there were, well, printers were being sold to people and everybody, like, you were like, you were like, wait, what was the repeatable aspect of printer purchase was the ink cartridges. Now, what happened was that ink cartridges was the use of the business model that was keeping the printer companies working. But in fact, the business model was, there was ink ended up charging far more than the printer cost altogether.

And then the initial model was created. Now, people also started discovering that you could refill those cartridges yourselves. There was a brief massive dip in sales as far as cartridge was concerned. People discovered they could do that themselves.

What a manufacturer started doing was they started releasing microchips counting the fill levels and usage of cartridges, rendering the refills impossible or at least harder. So, in which case, when, sometimes those microchips would fail and it would actually declare full cartridges to be empty and the printer would stop working altogether. Because they, those microchips were not working properly and this actually cost a whole bunch of printers to like stop working because those chips were refused to accept that of that particular cartridge is full or empty. So, this particular activity, this practice actually of like having microchips stopping usage of a particular product because they perceive that cartridge is empty was found to be illegal.

And therefore, in 2017, they were also, they tried to sue against this practice of reproduction and refilling of cartridges, which was eventually finally a fund to be legal in 2017 by the US Supreme Court. Even though Mr. Butler's soda maker doesn't do this check. They later, they later, they later started using the soda maker.

One of the only household items to be made in Kerala or... Yeah, I know your, the printer story reminds me of these pens like Unibol, right? The one that aren't exactly fountain pens, aren't exactly vault pens, but basically have free ink flowing like the Unibol I and the pilot to be those kind of pens. They are in the rest of the world, they are disposed, they are meant to be disposable.

And I'm sure this is in other developing countries as well, but India is the only place where I've seen where there's a industry, I mean, a very small industry. Of course, where you have stationery shops that will actually remove the ink and they will refilate ink and they will give it back to you. So even those disposable pens have become reusable in some way. But thankfully, unlike your HP printer, it's not like the pen given error missing, it's not like the pen being compatible or something.

Imagine if you go for an exam or something like that, you'll be better. So this is where actually things got interesting. So now, it was limited. So from the auto industry to technology started kind of creating this client obsolescence.

Now, where really was there approaching the turn of the century and which is 2000 and there was still no real, regulation or any real desire for regulation to come in. But as is not with the US, the biggest push when it came for regulation was when it came from the heartland of the US that there was a right to repair requirement, which actually came with the most unlikely product that you could think of. And maybe we can talk about that product on the other side of this big. So see you then.

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So tune into Cyber says on YouTube and all our new streaming platforms. Welcome back. We are talking about the right to repair and before the break, we were talking about the product that actually caused the entire right to repair movement to catalyze and start moving and chuck and tune. This is a product that is as hard-land a product as it can get.

Practice. John Deere Actors. John Deere Actors. Okay, no, no.

We discussed this in the break. Yeah, we don't know. It's sad that that's what we think of Heartland America, but hey, the white still think that we have snakes over here. Almost like I keep saying in a marketing context, we don't call it a stereotype, we call it a marketing insight.

Right. But you guys are perfectly right. It is actually John Deere Actors. So John Deere Actors as evolution of actors also started happening over a period of time.

There's a beautiful white documentary on this entire tractor, the John Deere Actors problem and the evolution of actors. And like, actors started off being these very, very jig-ard implements which were made with a bunch of stuff, put together an engine put together and a bunch of stuff that's constructed around it. And for the entire evolution of the, for the entirety of the 20th century, these tractors were actually effectively built and rebuilt and kind of like constructed and reconstructed by farmers themselves and they were becoming proficient at kind of maintaining their tractors themselves. But as the 21st century approached, the tracker slowly started getting computerized components and to a point where now every single component in the tractor is linked to that the center computer that the tractor has.

And here is where John Deere actually made it completely. Those trackers are hardy implements that are used, but they are controlled by computer. Now, if you had a single component that suddenly stopped functioning, the tracker itself would stop functioning. Now, John Deere said that it was because of safety concerns or whatever, but the farmers are like, here they are sitting there.

So firstly, John Deere initially never had like on-site service or anything like that. So you literally, so the farmer was like, the interview, the farmer literally like, if my tracker is functioning, I need to hire a rig, I need to load the tractor onto that rig and that it's a huge tractor. Let a load the tractor onto the rig, get it carried to the John Deere dealership where they will repair it, which will cost me money and that just getting the tractor to the dealership cost him $1,000. So this guy was like, there is no way I'm going to do that.

So actually, John Deere had its detractors with this point. Pretty much. This is where actually it was the emergence of the least likely category of people that you could imagine were farmer hackers. So a bunch of farmers discovered how to hack into the diagnostics panel of those attackers.

So literally you had these farmers very proper redneck, what is their suspenders and you were carrying a laptop with the USB and we were plugging it into their tractors and hacking it and trying to figure out the diagnostics of the problems and actually fixing them themselves. So they started doing this where they were trying to find out exactly what the problems are. So farmers were doing it themselves. They were people who were former employees of John Deere helping out these farmers trying to hack into this whole thing and obviously as the farmers got together and they kind of went and tried to, they said, okay fine, we need to get this stopped and get this fixed.

So that's why for the first time in 2005, and this is the most incredible thing. So here is where from farming we go to a very common law that you as a music lover will be very familiar with Chuck, the DMCA. It's why the DMCA. So the DMCA.

Again, Tony's act of surprising us once every three episodes with a musical difference we do not expect. I think all of us take turns. I'll pop in some football reference randomly and say, what do you do that? Or I'll drop in a chemical engineering reference.

So that's why I'm not going to do that. Yes. But anyway, so the other point was what that resulted in was actually one of the rare exemptions that was added to the DMCA which made it, because again it started off because of tractors and this is where it finally became legal to jailberry devices. So jailbreaking as such which was removing them from software blocks that prevented you from accessing the diagnostics and the back ends of the phone.

That jailbreaking became legal so phones, speakers, appliances and everything else. Oh, so it was a law that started, that was for tractors but then it got, did it get expanded eventually to everything else? Yes, no, no, no. When they passed that, they had to create it.

So they wanted to create it like Microsoft and the Apple guys actually turned up. So they started in Nebraska, so in the middle of nowhere, there's having these kinds of Microsoft and Apple guys not flying in and fighting along with the John D. Attractor guys, trying to figure out why are there assisted somebody to be jailbroken, but the law was like pained over there. It's like, IAPM lawsuits in Goa-hati or something.

No, the ironic part was they might have passed this only for tractors but once the Microsoft and Apple guys started landing up, the lawmakers must have been like, why are these guys coming up? Okay, all right, we have some talk in this fight. Yeah, these guys were like, I mean, they are the big tech companies and they're effectively fighting against like, like, trahackers. So that was where the jailbreaking thing came in and also it allowed for not just unlocking the back end of the war.

Unlocking the back ends of your devices but also allowing you to install custom software onto your hardware, which was also prevented before that. So actually a lot of John D has still made it quite difficult for people to jailbreak their tractors effectively. So this is where a lot of these Nebraska midwest farmers were actually downloading pirated Russian software for their tractors to use it. Let's just appreciate the beauty of their life.

You had a Nebraska farmer who was downloading illegal firmware from a Russian site for his tractor. It's been doing it for 20 years. It's been giving up to the history promise that it had for us. Is this the origin of the nursery rhyme in the Del?

I don't know what to say. I don't know either. This is so easy. So these digital right to repair acts actually for the first time started getting passed in the Nebraska and South Dakota and places like this where you would really expect that to happen.

And so that's where the first time this right to repair movement got codified and it has like four fundamental requirements. The four fundamental requirements of right to repair acts are that the device should be constructed and designed in a manner that allows repairs to be made easily. Now, with each of these points I will talk about how certain tech companies have actually liked to circumvent this. We are saying constructed and designed in a manner that allows it to be made easily.

Here comes in our genius product, genius company which is the Apple iPhone. And here is where what they did was once these jail breaking was once the jail breaking was allowed once say you would get where custom, if custom repairing is legal, but they try to make it as difficult as possible as where when they released I think the iPhone 10 or 11, there was a new type of screw. Which was this five star pointed screw which literally there is no screw driver implement for it. It is a custom screw that is been implemented so that people who actually access that and open that screw panel unless they build themselves a new driver.

Yeah, so to be fair to Apple it is easy to repair but as long as you have that screw driver it is actually more built in yourself. Or built in yourself. It is actually a screw driver for like I don't know. I think it's much more profitable to have the devices break down completely.

But so they had the screw that was inaccessible and the other aspect which Apple also started to be was one of the key things that Apple continues to use to make its devices as difficult as possible to be read. It is the glue they use to keep the items together so that glue itself. Now what it does is that glue is something that when it's once the device is opened and then that specific glue is not used to reseal the device that glue is a specific kind of manufactured to the conduct electricity or whatever nobody has really been able to figure it out yet. But that glue when even when it's when one item is just taken out and replaced right as is a functional item is removed at functional component is removed at replace if that glue does not affix properly that part of the product will stop working.

So they have used like stuff like this glue and all that stuff. Steve Jobs was the glue that held that pretty much. I have a waiting for one of these to come up. It definitely took a cook to make a glue.

Wow, well done. So that was one aspect of what they did. Now, second one is end users and independent repair provider should be able to access original spare parts tools software as well as physical tools needed to repair the device at fair market conditions. Now this again was something that Apple fought furiously against.

So one thing was that not only were they preventing people from getting access to the tools and stuff like that, they were also preventing access to spare parts. So but what the repair community actually did was they were getting spare parts from what was called donor devices. So you would like have a device which is great largely. But in those break devices, you would actually just pick up what are the parts that are functional and use them in the door devices.

Apple actually started figuring out that, okay, this is happening and they did one thing. So there is actually a there are plenty of videos where person has purchased brand new out of the box to identical iPhones, opened them up and transferred the one component from one phone to another phone and just interchange components between two brand new iPhones and they have immediately stopped working. So what they did was they actually kind of like until a certain amount of software block or hardware block was overcome which was done inside Apple's center and authorized repair was taking place. If you want to just replace functional components between phones also they would immediately stop working.

That's crazy. This is a hardware thing or software thing. Nobody is really able to figure out. There's some combination of the two.

So one thing that Apple has very, very carefully which is the first thing to break down is the camera function. So if you actually open the phone, the very first thing that's not working is even if the camera is working, Face ID stops working immediately. So Face ID is the first thing to break down and second is that the camera function will start becoming weird and not functioning properly. Camera will not focus and eventually just die completely.

So these are some of the issues that now. Finally, repair should by design be possible and not hindered by software programming which is clearly also something that Apple does not allow. Finally, the variability of the device should be clearly communicated by the manufacturer. Now here is where also Apple has done a really good job of actually they are some of the specs of what has happened is what are called the layouts or I forget what the name was.

Something equivalent to a floor plan of a phone. So what it did was those floor plans of a phone for MacBook Pro were leaked out from the Chinese factories that were there. So the workers that leaked actually the particular blueprints were actually like soon to have an hell high but those blueprints can be easily downloaded and used by all these guys. Because again, there's a right to repair if you have access to data you can use it.

So they were legally downloaded. So now especially for the newer products Apple has gone to a place where they are actually not communicating. It's like the Coke recipe nobody has a full recipe at any point of time. It keeps rotating and some of the other other and that's how they are actually managing different schematics.

So the right to repair also demands that those schematics actually provided to repair people to actually work and how to build their particular products. So that's how this particular right to repair issue has been handled overall. Now what has happened and the reason why this has come to prominence again is that 20 different states. There is 20 different states which is California, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, India, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, South Dakota, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and West Virginia.

All of these states have simultaneously considered a right to repair people with all of these aspects into that particular thing. Now obviously this is- They're already gone to build them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they've actually built everything.

They've already been given at least. But as these particular products were, as these writer-pels were there, obviously they got mired and to congress because a lobby started being the right people and started putting them in trying to model them. So Joe Biden, I think last year, he passed an executive order which was, so he passed this executive order which was a promoting competition in the American economy which was a sweeping area of initiatives across the executive branch. Among them included instructions to the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission, who craft rules to prevent manufacturers from preventing the payers' performance by owners or independent repair shops.

So he passed an executive order. Now you need to know executive order is basically just as good as a malei Karate please. Right? There's no binding liability as far as the Federal Trade Commission is concerned.

But however, here because again the Democrats had a little bit of the power. The Federal Trade Commission actually just in late 2021 actually to a unanimous vote enforced the right to repair as policy and they looked to take action against companies that limited to the government. That can be done by independent repair shops. Now, while they have passed this regulation and this legislation, there is really very little enforceability at this point.

And especially what's happening is because software is used in ways where, I mean it's come to a point where you don't know where planned obsolescence is being included into the software code. Something as simple as, I mean the thing is planned obsolescence comes in such a nefarious way where they're saying that something as simple as software updates. So software updates, so software updates, and over a period of time as this goes, newer versions, the software update is mandatory. And as soon as the software update happens, your device performance will go down.

Second thing is when you're actually doing these product repairs, if you're trying to do these product repairs, the product actually will open the product. In respect to whoever is opening it, they have constructed them in a certain way that those products actually like break themselves as soon as you open them. So therefore now a whole bunch of independent repair shops also are afraid to open phones because if they try to open it and they break the phone which only has a small problem, then the consumers will then screw them. They're happy.

So they can't screw them over if it's an apple because the screw is in the middle of time. Perfect. But Tim Cook admit as much. He said something like the phones are deliberately slowed down to protect the consumer or some rubbish like that.

He said a couple of years later. Yeah, so the thing is what Apple's party line or even Samsung for that matter, what they are like is that what the reason they are preventing these repairs from happening is because their standard policy or whenever there is a say water damage happens or particular product is brought in for say authorized service is that they replace the entire motherboard of the phone and they provide the phone back. Now the reason that he plays the entire motherboard is to prevent from malfunction happening and they have actually conveniently used the Samsung's catching fire thing and kind of like put the fear out there say that if you repair it wrongly then the product can malfunction in the cash fire and all that stuff. So that's their party line that they use regularly.

That's why I mean that's the reason why Bobby Shadarwal himself will repair any electric that catches fire. Hey you should know you're like a fan of aether stock and a look at it. Don't appreciate it. So let's look at what is the biggest reason for I mean what is the most important reason for the right to repair.

Yes we as consumers should have right for the product that we purchased to have a right to repair for it. But what's the biggest impact of this lack of right to repair is the biggest thing is evased right. So evased is like there's huge amount of 3.5. I think it's 3.5 million tons of evased that's been created every year in products that are actually most more often than not very functional and can actually be used for a significant amount of time beyond that.

So and also the other thing being that what tends to happen I mean evased when it's actually recycled properly can still be reused and it goes back to the existing system. The biggest problem and this is something I'm also guilty of is this is my one plus six and that is unused electronic devices lying around the house right. So a whole bunch of electronics are getting out of the ecosystem up to 95% of the raw materials used to produce electronic devices can be recycled. But if they are not recycled a whole bunch of we all tend to hold and hold at least some electronic devices that are not working in our houses.

It's significantly higher in the place in advanced and other countries where several levels which we don't do. Yeah, so in Italy for example 52% of the population own one or more unused electronic items due to obsolescence or underpaid mechanical damage or electronic failure. So because there's also not enough of even in developed countries of how to effectively recycle electronic waste we tend to hold all these unused electronic devices and what that creates and because of this obsolescence because we continue to hold these electronic devices we are creating and consuming far more devices without recycling the old ones. And so that is actually creating a major scarcity problem.

So in Italy a case that has been sufficiently made against the right to repair to some extent is in the automotive space. So where they have said that this repairing and re-using vehicles beyond a certain point of time causes overall lifetime emissions to go up. So therefore what requires to be done is that average so in Europe of course they calculated what the average age of after which a car needs to be placed is 14.4 years. And those vehicles need to be worked out so they actually developed an entire policy of how cars need to actually be recycled after that time.

Or at least the catalytic converters need to be re-worked again. So there are sort of emission rules. Yeah, the emission rules are beyond 14.4 years. There are certain essential components of the cars that cannot be upgraded or repaired or recycled to certain extent.

So that's when you actually have to junk your car and buy anyone. This is definitely true in the case of Ola Electric again which if you don't repair it you will catch fire and emissions will come out through the smoke on the fire. So it's definitely true in the automotive industry even electric. So that is a bit about the...

I was just checking in parallel like how is it starting in the US and I checked for Europe right to repair. And I think it's still not like they are still deliberating. It's coming but it's not coming yet. I'm very strange that US is getting such a...

The one example that I saw which was ridiculous is that for a MacBook Pro there was a service cost for the MacBook Pro. So the MacBook Pro and the new MacBook Pro which was purchased at $9.99. After immediately after one year if you want to get it repaired the official service charges $7.99. At which point the Apple store genius don't do you and say just buy anyone.

Whereas when it was taken to with the schematics when it was available when it was taken to an independent repair shop. That repair was done within $100. The same thing happened with my big ass LG TV that I have at home. 56 inch which I bought for some 60k like three years ago or something.

It is like when blank and I obviously called the official sort of LG repair person. He came professionally unscrewed unplugged some two things, plugged it back, put it back, bald mounted it. Then he's like a near TV. I'm like what?

So then I ended up paying him some $500 just for him to tell me that. Then I got a local repair guy. He's fixed it for like $12,000. So basically both of them are suggesting that TVs are not built to last nowadays in three years.

It will go anywhere. So when you buy something planned accordingly. Wow, that's really a good differentiation. I remember this may be the one thing we say about Apple.

They actually have a fairly large recycling facility somewhere in Texas. I think they made a bit of PR about it a few years ago. And that was fairly sophisticated. Well, in short, they had a program where they asked people to send in their iPhones.

I think even offering them a rebate on subsequent phones or Apple products that they buy. And they showed all these like how the screen is taken apart, how you have different settings or different kinds of phones. So it will detect which phone it is. And then the star screw will come accordingly and all that.

And slip away all the valuable elements like gold put that separately and all that. And to me, what was interesting about that was even Apple with such a program like this and with the investment in front that they have, even they find it difficult to recycle phones. So I know we are moving a little away from right to repair as such over here. But it just seems like there is a huge problem.

I mean, it's not as simple as, okay, I'll take this phone, give it to Evast and everything is sorted. Seems sort of problem in plastic recycling, I guess. Absolutely. Yeah.

So, yeah, I mean, that's just another point altogether. No, it's actually points to a larger trend of, I mean, this entire and also couple this with the semiconductor shortage that's happening. But this huge boom that we have, there's an underlying assumption that electronics will solve the problem. And you can find an electronic for everything that you need, electronic component or electronic item for whatever you need.

And like that, there is an assumption of plenty or unlimitedness when it comes to these things. The one thing is that firstly, like with the semiconductor shortage, you can't really all these bank funds finding the right products. And if that semiconductor shortage, you could recur again and if it ever got worse, then it would be, then your, your, that steady supply of the blood stream would cut out. And the second thing is we have only been through maybe what two and a half decades of mass large scales, semiconductor usage.

Yeah. And hardly a decade of smartphones. A decade of smartphones where like every single person has it. So the problem of evast is only like effectively in its infancy right now.

Yeah. And the problem of recycling and reusing these components and a lot of these, a lot of components, like for example, I don't, I wouldn't say exactly evast, but when you talk about automobiles, right, I was reading about the catalytic converters and a lot of those catalytic converters, the key component of those catalytic converters is palladium, right? And palladium is extremely extremely rare, right? And so it's said that if those, unless the catalytic converters like 100% of the catalytic converters are regularly recycled, where the palladium is extracted from them and we used in future ones that, like we could run out of a lead in the world.

And so similarly, there are some very extremely, like some, some extremely rare components that are used, elements that are used inside semiconductor creation or in the process of creating semiconductors. And right now they just take it under the assumption that, yeah, we have it and it'll last forever, but it cannot be taken for granted. And so, and, and putting all of humanity's success and future hopes on semiconductors is a bit of a challenge then. Yeah.

I, I, I, I, I, I, I wonder if, if you think there is scope for a manufacturer to come out and actually say, hey, here's the phone that's actually going to last 10 years where you showed durability as a USB. Like I've been seeing, because now there is this anti fast fashion trend, right? At least among people who can afford it. Like I've seen like really expensive pair of jeans, like I'm talking about $1,500 jeans or $800 jeans or something.

Now these are not like Gucci and all that rubbish. This is built for durability. These are like, these might be expensive right now, but they're, they're going to last you for 25 years. You think there's scope for like a phone like that, like a phone that says, hey, by this and the next phone you have to buy is in 10 years.

So actually there is a phone like that and I did, I did really do my research on it, but I did see the name, which is something called the number one. That is the Gucci. But actually there is a phone that's been, that was actually founded nine years ago. It's got the fair phone.

It's company manufacturers, smartphones with the goal of having lower environmental footprint and better social impact. So for example, it allows, so it firstly has like this minimizes the use of conflict minerals in its devices, conflict minerals. So, so conflict minerals are minerals like Colton, Casa, Casiterite, Goldor and Gold from it. Right?

These are conflict minerals that are used for conflict regions. They maintain fair labor conditions and they allow the users to maintain their own devices. And here is also where something that we discussed previously was the modular smartphone. So this fair phone is also a modular smartphone where it supports, so in September 2021, they announced a modular smartphone that supports 5G connectivity, has like dual 40 megapixel cameras and all that stuff.

And like it allows for the phone to be repairable customisable by the user and then CO2 emissions are lower by 20% than the average phone. So this is the fair phone and they've started the entire movement. It still seems a pretty niche like European kind of movement. Yeah, I mean the fact that we haven't heard about it and we consider this recently, the PXavi.

And any difference between obviously a G7 center 4 is that the G7 doesn't need to do anything different to the answer. No, right? The 4, right? Yeah, that's right.

But I guess that's where the modularity aspect comes in. But yeah, absolutely. There are challenges to it. By the way, we've spoken almost on a right to repair and all that without mentioning IFixit, which I think Warren's a mention over here.

IFixit is a website slash movement slash whatever things I slash online store, which has evangelised fixing phones. You know, basically they've been evangelising the right to repair for years now. And I'm very sure they've been filing cases and been active, lobby for all this. So basically on their store, you can buy your own repair kits and all this.

I'm guessing that 5, let's start screwdriver. And interestingly, they also have these ratings. The iPhone 13 is, what is the IFixit score of that? And I think this fair phone is the only one that has a 10 on 10 rating.

Yeah, yeah. And so what also obviously has happened is I think to some extent where iPhone is doing these star screws and all that stuff, they're basically painting a huge target on their back. So to do this, you're basically inviting the world's hackers and speakers to come and kind of hack my phone and figure out the way they get to it. So far, I mean, there have been certain components.

I mean, there isn't enough information in the research that I did overall where I didn't have all the data points. How deeply they've gotten into the repair ecosystem of iPhone. But clearly there are every single model that's been released that, who a great extent is repairable. There are people out there who can repair it.

There are certain aspects that are not too vulnerable. But it just takes a matter of time before there's a leak from somewhere and they get the semantics and they're able to repair it. So, I mean, if there is something that's made and it's given to you and it is, you have the right to open it yourself, it probably can be there. So, by the way, the application of electronics is not human, so please don't have to open up your brain.

How is hurting? In India, there is a sort of informal network of repair that happens. I mean, you can definitely exchange your old phone or something. Even if Amazon doesn't take it, your local stuff.

Yeah, I mean, I know this is a really wonder. I mean, see, that's a second part. What happens after that? Yeah, I can't get any wonder about the second market.

So, this is like, cashify. They accept fully-bricked dead old phones. And so, clearly, they have a very robust, exactly network where they have the fancy Apple factory. They have probably got one in the end of the day, they open up these phones and keep with them.

But I noticed because I was looking up, I found my old 1 plus 3 line somewhere and it's dead. All of that, fully not turned on for several years. And I was looking on cashify and they were actually offering me 600 bucks for that phone. Oh, they will give you money also for it.

Yeah, 600 bucks for that direct phone. I was like, damn, if I'm getting 600 bucks, they're clearly getting at least double the value out of it. Yeah, wow. Yeah, so, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, like, you have a car, right? I mean, if they're stolen, basically, they're sort of repurposed into parts and then, you know, it's not like, they drive the car. And that's what the Dooner Car Network is extremely robust in India as well. Like, you suddenly, like, yeah, these are the phones that are, like, that are dead for some people who expect to become Dooner phones.

So, Dooner Car Network is, like, in India, especially, like, I know for a fact that in Bombay, when there are, there are, there are, there are, there are, or used to be these car thieves who are, like, within, like, within a couple of hours of your car having been stolen, it would actually no longer be a car anymore. The parts would have gone in many different places and suddenly the cars cease to exist. So, they're doing the sustainability activity for it. And, and, and, bringing this episode to a nice circular close by going back to Henry Ford and...

Yeah, he's, he's, he's a semi-legendian and against. Yeah, yeah. So, that's for the right to repair. And, I really, I truly wish her that it was there for this episode.

I would love to hear this point if you wanted to hear this. Maybe we can have a concert. Yeah, we can have a part two where we discuss how the, maybe he's part of the entering that's pulling apart cars and stuff. Oh, oh.

Okay. So, that was such a scandalous claim that for the first time, this year I've actually seen Tony's ice. Like... Anyway, we don't have any time to thank you sign us off.

Yeah, I mean, stay safe, stay repaired. Right. I mean, there were only two of them. Stay, stay modular.

Stay repaired. Stay repaired. That's your objective, you're all looking for answers to your universe. See you next week guys.

Do not attempt to take a part of this episode if so, our lawyers will be in touch. Thank you.