0:15

What's up friends this week on

0:17

the change I'm going solo and

0:19

I'm talking to Kyle Weans founder

0:21

and CEO at iFixit. We're talking

0:23

about all things right to repair

0:25

on this show. We discussed the

0:27

latest win here in the US

0:29

in Oregon. They passed an electronics

0:31

right to repair law to allow

0:33

owners the right to get their

0:35

stuff fixed anywhere. It also limited

0:37

the anti-repair practices of parts pairing.

0:40

This is something we discussed deeply in

0:42

this show. I had no idea how

0:44

deep down the rabbit hole Kyle has gone

0:46

with this but he went deep and he

0:48

took us there. We discussed the history of

0:51

the DMCA, the challenges posed by section 1201,

0:53

the challenges of

0:55

recycling products with glued in

0:57

batteries aka air pods, the

0:59

need for producer responsibility looking

1:01

to Apple, the future of

1:03

repairability, repair scoring systems that

1:05

will inform consumers and

1:08

here's something that's important to know

1:10

about iFixit and Kyle's work. They

1:12

fund all of his advocacy, all

1:14

of their advocacy via the

1:16

sale of their tools and their

1:18

parts at ifixit.com. That's so cool.

1:21

A massive thank you to our

1:23

friends and our partners at fly.io,

1:25

the home of changelaw.com. That's where

1:28

we live. That is our home,

1:30

fly.io. Launching

1:32

that for free near your users today

1:34

at fly.io. Okay,

1:44

before the show kicks off, I want to

1:46

talk to you about our good friends over

1:48

at Tailscale. As you know, around here we

1:50

love Tailscale. At least I do. I don't

1:53

think Jared uses it. I know Gerhard loves

1:55

it. I love it. So maybe

1:57

you'll love it too. So Tailscale is

1:59

the easiest way to connect

2:01

devices, services, anything to

2:03

each other, wherever they

2:06

are. Runs on Linux,

2:08

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2:10

everywhere. Anything you want

2:12

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2:15

on it and it's too easy to connect

2:17

to it, whether it's a remote desktop environment.

2:19

Here's one thing I did that's pretty cool

2:21

actually. I often will remote desktop into a

2:24

different Mac machine at my home. I come

2:26

to the studio, I'm doing my thing, but

2:28

for some reason I need to go onto

2:30

my iMac Pro back at the house, which

2:32

is my home desktop that I use for

2:35

work. There's things that I

2:37

do there that I need to check on

2:39

and I just open up remote desktop. It's

2:41

an Apple application and because my iMac Pro

2:43

and my laptop that I have at the

2:45

office are both on the same tail net,

2:47

guess what? I can remote desktop right into

2:49

the machine. Too easy. But

2:51

I can also SSH to my Plex

2:53

server. I can also SSH into my

2:55

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my whatever I want to SSH into because

3:00

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3:07

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3:09

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3:12

and three users for free at

3:14

tailscale.com. No credit

3:16

card required. Again, tailscale.com. Well,

3:37

everybody, we're here with Kyle Weans today. I

3:39

fix it CEO and Kyle, I have to

3:41

say I'm a customer and a fan. I

3:44

own some hardware, I

3:46

suppose, some of your tooling, which helps

3:48

me really to know and become aware of your

3:50

brand. I have the ProTech bundle. Could

3:52

not live without it. Use it every day. I

3:55

recently adjusted my kitchen

3:57

aid refrigerator door handle.

3:59

I was like I I mean I just

4:01

happen to have this hex range nearby cuz you know

4:04

I had the different bits I like

4:06

why don't I just use my I fix it

4:08

kit because it's not just computer. It's anything I

4:10

know that's the thing I use my protect way

4:12

more to the home repairs than I do electronics

4:14

Yeah, it's amazing. Which is having a nice set

4:16

of tools around does I love the the lid?

4:19

I love that whole kit. There's a lot you

4:21

can do with it I really needed a pair

4:23

of tweezers cuz my kid put something in his

4:25

his air filter that we

4:27

have in his room It's a fan. It's an air

4:29

filter and it kind of you know you can put

4:31

something in it going down And he did it by

4:34

accident It wasn't on purpose, but I was like gosh

4:36

Where are my tweezers at for like my eyebrows or

4:38

whatever and meanwhile like I got these

4:40

long ones this awesome in set of tweezers That's

4:42

for this in my protect bundle.

4:44

I'm not by any means suggesting people go out

4:46

and buy it, but it's very Useful

4:49

to me well. I took a splinter

4:51

out of my son's foot with those

4:53

tweezers yesterday, so Percent

4:56

multiple uses I found great actually I am

4:58

I'll endorse it go out and get it

5:00

their protect bundle is amazing And you can

5:02

you can buy it at Best Buy now

5:04

is that right? Yeah, you know I fixed

5:06

calm as well But yeah, we're selling our

5:09

toolkits the ProTech is at Best Buy

5:11

And we've got our screwdriver set and Home

5:13

Depot as well now Yeah, I'm looking

5:15

here in my email cuz I had

5:17

to refresh my memory, but I bought the

5:19

ProTech bundle November 2022

5:22

direct from I fix it calm Yeah,

5:25

okay, so the the ad is

5:27

over for the ProTech bundle. I do like

5:29

it. I do use it Okay,

5:32

the right to repair movement is a big deal

5:34

like we've talked to Cory Doctorow I've been following

5:37

Lewis Rossman on YouTube. I pay

5:39

attention to you know the concerns

5:41

around John Deere I

5:43

pay attention to obviously being a smartphone owner

5:45

any Computer guy myself

5:47

building PCs building primarily Linux

5:50

boxes not so much Windows

5:52

boxes Gaming PCs is

5:54

something. I'm trying to get into here

5:56

soon. You know and everywhere you turn around and technology,

6:01

there's some sort of DRM

6:03

or gatekeeper or something that

6:05

stops you. And here's, I

6:07

fix it, your – I can call

6:10

you a website. You are a website, but this brand,

6:12

who you are, is it a movement? I know you

6:14

sell tooling. I know you have tons of repair guides.

6:16

I've repaired my Mac Mini, gutted

6:18

it from end to end because you have

6:21

amazing repair guides. But here we are in

6:23

this recent bill getting passed. You're

6:25

in the middle of this. You're the

6:27

CEO of this company. What is happening

6:29

around this right to repair movement? What's

6:32

the true epidemic that's happening around this? And

6:34

is this right word to use? I mean, this

6:36

is the war on general purpose computing. This is

6:39

the war on tinkering. Yeah, to

6:41

step back, I fixed its mission is to enable

6:43

all of us to fix all of our stuff.

6:46

We look at all the things in your life,

6:48

anything that might go wrong, and say, well, what

6:50

are the obstacles to you being able to do

6:52

that repair? Maybe if you don't have a screwdriver,

6:54

okay, that's easy. I can solve that. Maybe

6:57

it's a lack of repair information. We started

6:59

because I was trying to fix my iBook,

7:02

and I learned that Apple's lawyers had

7:04

sent DMCA takedowns to everyone that posted

7:06

the service manual online. Really? And

7:09

I said, this is ludicrous. You're actually using

7:11

copyright law to prevent people from knowing how

7:13

to fix their stuff. And

7:15

as a software engineer, as someone who, we

7:18

live off of freedom of information, that just totally

7:20

struck me wrong. So I said, well,

7:23

let's fix that. So I bought another machine.

7:25

We took it apart, took pictures, put them

7:27

online, and that was the first I fix

7:29

it repair guide. Wow. So

7:31

we're looking across the whole ecosystem and saying

7:33

across every product category, what are the things

7:35

that are not fixable now, and how can

7:37

we make them fixable? And so we

7:39

make repair kits. You can get an iPhone screen

7:41

that comes with all the tools that you need

7:43

to repair it, step by step guides. So

7:46

we're solving the parts and the information piece.

7:48

But the other side of this is you

7:50

have to have an ecosystem, a software ecosystem

7:52

that enables repair. And increasingly, you have proprietary

7:55

parts pairing and all kinds of digital locks

7:57

that get in the way. And

8:00

I can't fix those just by making a

8:02

screwdriver. We have to fix those with policy.

8:04

And so that drew me out of

8:07

my happy space sitting in front of

8:09

a terminal, creating a really

8:11

intuitive to use repair website out into

8:13

the public policy sphere to advocate for

8:15

laws that legalize some of the repairs

8:17

that we need to do. Yeah,

8:20

it's funny that it does happen to get

8:23

back into policy. You would think, I

8:26

suppose left of their own devices, companies are going

8:28

to try to protect themselves. I

8:30

can understand that psyche for

8:33

lack of better terms when it comes to a company because

8:35

a company is not a person. It's a person's, but

8:37

very much masquerades as a person

8:39

based upon just simply how corporate

8:42

law works, right? The formation

8:44

of an LLC is a limited

8:46

liability company, a corporation, etc. It

8:48

has its own DNA, but

8:51

it's not a person. It's persons, but

8:53

it's ran by people, and they

8:55

have their own way of thinking. In some cases, they're

8:57

very psychopathic when

8:59

measured against typical psychology and

9:02

human behavior. But it's

9:04

really a shame that it has to go

9:06

to the policy level to sort of make

9:08

these folks not be planned obsolescence focused. And

9:11

then recently, this is just days ago,

9:13

and you're aware of this, so fill

9:16

in the gaps for me, but the state house

9:18

passed the Oregon's Right to Repair Act SB

9:21

1596 by a margin of 42

9:24

to 13. That's a significant margin.

9:27

We worked hard for that. Thankfully, we have the right kind of

9:29

people at the policy level making

9:31

these choices that are being not just voted

9:33

in, but also kind of following what the

9:35

people want. What is your role in this?

9:37

You said you worked hard to get there.

9:40

What is this bill? What happened with this

9:42

Right to Repair Act? What is this act,

9:44

and what was your role in it? This

9:46

is the fourth major state that's passed consumer

9:48

electronics, Right to Repair. We've passed some other

9:50

bills for farm equipment and cars. I

9:53

was intimately involved with this. This

9:55

is based on reference legislation that

9:57

our coalition wrote. It's published on

9:59

Repair. you can go and download the

10:01

reference bill. And specifically,

10:03

the thing that we got into the

10:05

Oregon bill that was negotiated out of

10:07

the previous bills in California and elsewhere

10:09

was a ban on parts pairing, which

10:12

is Apple's new

10:14

invention. Parts pairing is

10:16

not something you encounter unless you're trying to

10:18

fix an iPhone, really. It's a new idea

10:21

that is, hey, we have software in all

10:23

the individual parts. So there's not just software

10:25

on the main board, there's software in the

10:27

camera, there's software in the display. And

10:30

so why not have a serial number in the display

10:32

and that serial number can be hard coded into the

10:34

main board and the main board will only work with

10:37

that display or it'll degrade functionality if it's not the

10:39

serial number that it's expecting. And in the software world,

10:41

you look at this like, if I was to ask

10:43

you, hey, build me a lock that does this, you're

10:45

like, okay, sure, it'll be done tomorrow. Like this is

10:48

not a hard lock to build, but

10:50

it's really nefarious because once you have these

10:52

parts all paired to each other, now

10:54

it totally impedes what you can do. It

10:56

doesn't just limit the repairs that you can do

10:58

yourself. What happens if you donate your phone

11:00

to Goodwill and Goodwill, they've got two broken iPhones

11:03

and they wanna take the pieces and combine

11:05

it and make one that works and sell it.

11:07

That's the business model that all PC recycling

11:10

and computers for schools, charities have operated under for

11:12

the last couple of decades. And Apple just shot

11:14

it in the head. They said, no, you can't

11:16

do that anymore. You have to have permission from

11:18

us in order to swap parts on the device.

11:22

So that parts pairing approach has been,

11:24

Apple has been turning the temperature up on

11:27

that slowly. We published a chart which shows

11:29

parts pairing really starting with the fingerprint sensor

11:31

in the iPhone 6S and then every model,

11:33

they've added it to more and more parts.

11:35

With the iPhone 15, they added it to

11:38

the LiDAR sensors. So you can't swap the

11:40

LiDARs between devices. And so we

11:42

published this chart, it was a huge issue. We

11:45

detailed the parts pairing progression. New York Times

11:47

actually thought it was so interesting that they

11:49

ran it in their like Sunday print issue

11:51

right around the time the new iPhone came

11:53

out when we analyzed the 15 in the fall.

11:56

And that set the stage for the legislative

11:58

fight, which is always at the beginning. beginning

12:00

of the year, that's when the state legislators get together

12:02

and figure out what laws they're going to pass for

12:04

the year. And we have a number

12:06

of states they're looking at bans on parts pairing.

12:08

The Oregon bill is the first one to get

12:10

over the finish line. And Apple does

12:12

not like this law at all. They were

12:15

in behind the scenes and actually they kind

12:17

of finally popped out in front and testified

12:19

against it. They threw everything they could at

12:21

stopping this and we were able to overcome

12:23

them. So feel very good about it. But

12:26

what a nefarious strategy. Why would you do that?

12:28

Yeah. So what's interesting about

12:30

Apple is they're a

12:32

beloved brand, right? It's a

12:34

very beloved brand back from even

12:36

the Steve Jobs days. It's been a

12:38

brand that a lot of folks have loved and

12:40

they are really well known for innovation and

12:42

pushing the boundary for technology. So kudos

12:45

to them for all the innovation, right?

12:47

Yeah. But then they also are very

12:49

privacy focused. And so they have these

12:51

different levers in the public

12:54

site guide space. We have their reputation, who

12:56

they are. And there's this whole

12:58

other side where is this parts pairing, which

13:00

you say is nefarious and I would also

13:03

agree that it seems nefarious. Then I

13:05

think what is motivating them to do

13:07

this? Obviously it's money, right? Obviously

13:10

it's the stock value going up, shareholder

13:12

value going up. That seems to be

13:14

in the words of Silicon Valley's

13:16

TV show whenever Jack

13:19

took over Pied Piper

13:21

as CEO, he said, hey, the product is

13:23

not you. The product

13:25

is not the software or the platform. The

13:27

product is the stock value and

13:29

the value of the stock. That's the product, right? And

13:32

so if that's the case, is capitalism

13:34

to blame? Like is it this

13:36

greed mechanism to blame? Because

13:39

obviously Tim Cook is out there with a smile

13:41

on his face praising the opportunities

13:43

and the innovations of Apple and there's

13:45

the beloved brand, etc. And

13:48

I'm a Mac user personally. I'm also

13:50

a Linux user personally. For

13:52

the show I said, hey, are you using a Mac?

13:54

I was going to guide you on how to do

13:56

your local audio. You're like, no, I'm a PC user

13:58

in this case. I go back and forth. I mean,

14:01

I'm primarily on Ubuntu. I switched to Windows machine for

14:03

this interview. Oh, wow. Yeah. I

14:05

guess what I'm driving at really is how

14:08

much have you examined what you think is

14:10

motivating Apple to be this nefarious? Given

14:13

its, you know, beloved

14:15

state with, you know, a lot of

14:17

its Apple fanboys and girls and people

14:19

out there, you know, they just love Apple

14:21

and they have privacy focused. They

14:23

have all this innovation. What would make them do this?

14:26

Why? Yes, two under underlying

14:28

factors. One, they're certainly very

14:30

bottom line focused. And

14:32

the money in this case isn't really

14:34

them making money, taking your phone in

14:36

and paying them for repair. The money

14:38

is upfront in Apple Care. Apple is

14:40

the second largest extended warranty company in

14:42

the world. And that's where the

14:44

profit is, is in scaring you away from other

14:46

repair options and making you think there really isn't

14:49

another choice. So when you buy the device, let

14:51

me spend the extra money upfront and get into

14:53

Apple Care. And their system, their ecosystem, and then

14:55

you're going to go back in. Oh, by the

14:57

way, this is deductible than when you take it

14:59

in. So you're really just paying upfront for the

15:02

option to have a discounted repair later. But

15:04

that's really where the money is at.

15:06

So absolutely, there's a bottom line focus.

15:08

But there's also a cultural component for

15:10

this that isn't completely nefarious. I disagree

15:13

vehemently with it, but it's not at

15:15

its core unethical. Apple

15:17

wants to control the customer experience.

15:20

They want to really optimize for the best possible customer

15:22

experience. This has driven a lot of

15:24

the innovation that we've seen from them. And

15:27

they think that they can

15:29

deliver a better repair total

15:32

lifetime ownership experience themselves than

15:34

if you're fixing it yourself or if you're taking it

15:36

to a local repair shop. They think

15:39

that their Apple store ecosystem is better. And

15:42

this is an area where I just really

15:44

disagree with them. If you look at what

15:46

is the most optimal outcome for

15:48

a customer, it's not happening to live

15:50

close enough to one of the 500 Apple

15:53

stores that I can go in and get my

15:55

device fixed quickly. I'm in Chattanooga, Tennessee right now.

15:57

It is a two-hour drive to the closest Apple

15:59

store. or like, good luck, I'm not going

16:01

to do that. And there is so

16:03

much of the world that's not near an Apple store.

16:06

And I think them being in Cupertino, like they're in

16:08

this bubble where they don't realize what most of the

16:10

real world is like, is there an Apple store in

16:12

Wyoming? What are you supposed to do

16:14

if you have one of these devices and it breaks

16:16

and the repair shops can't fix it because of these

16:19

parts sparing shenanigans? So they're

16:21

myopically focused on this idea that they

16:23

can create a better customer experience. And

16:25

then they're on the other side, they're

16:28

basically delivering the McDonald's or repair. Like

16:30

it works much of the time

16:32

for many people, but it certainly doesn't

16:34

deliver what everybody needs. So

16:37

you're saying then you don't think it's fully

16:40

nefarious. It's really about the Apple brand and

16:42

the desire to be so focused

16:44

on the customer experience slash user

16:46

experience that they, to have

16:49

this parts sparing, it aids them in

16:51

enabling a controllable world. Absolutely,

16:53

and I think you look at, you have

16:55

to say, look at from Apple's perspective, they're

16:58

really good at creating great experiences and that their

17:00

ethos, their ego is around, we're going to create

17:02

the best possible customer experience and they're trying to

17:05

do a thousand different things, right? And so they're

17:07

gonna try to be the best at a thousand

17:09

different things. And they would say from a repair

17:11

ecosystem perspective, they're really bad at it. They're

17:14

terrible at it, but they have to apply

17:16

the same philosophy to that that they do

17:18

everything else. And so they have this conflict

17:20

internally where they want to control the

17:22

total experience, but they don't know and

17:25

they don't have the culture and they're

17:27

not willing to spend the money to

17:29

build the kind of authorized repair network

17:31

that would really be required to deliver

17:33

the customer expectations that their brand proposition

17:36

promises. Yeah, how does this compare

17:39

then to an adjacent competitor?

17:41

Let's say like, Samsung

17:43

is the most well-known I can think of

17:45

like the Galaxy phones that they have. I'm

17:47

not an Android user, so I'm not well

17:49

versed in literally Apple competition. Sure, well, let's

17:51

pick Motorola because we've been working with Motorola

17:53

for a long time. Okay. And

17:55

the Motorola sells Android phones, they have some

17:58

small single digit percentage market share. but

18:00

they have good phones. So Motorola

18:03

doesn't have the Apple store experience. They don't have

18:05

the ability to have those stores that you can

18:07

take them into. And so instead they've said, well,

18:09

they have to have a more open ecosystem. And

18:11

so they came to us and said, Hey, well,

18:13

you distribute repair parts for us. And we said,

18:15

sure. And we put repair kits together. So you

18:17

can buy parts from other G from

18:20

us. You get the, you get the screen and it

18:22

comes with the tools. And then we

18:24

also distribute parts to repair shops. So there's 20,000 independent

18:26

cell phone repair

18:28

shops in the US. So those folks are coming to

18:30

us. They're buying Motorola screens. They stock them

18:33

at their facility if they want, or they

18:35

order them on demand as they need. And

18:37

then look now, Motorola, who has vastly smaller

18:39

market share than Apple, has far more service

18:41

locations that can service their customers than Apple

18:44

does. And it's because they're more

18:46

permissive. So they can actually end up with

18:48

a better customer experience by being more open

18:50

than Apple with where it feels like Apple

18:52

is trying to control it. They're trying to,

18:54

you know, they want to like really control

18:57

the baby's experience and they're strangling it to

18:59

death rather than opening it up and saying,

19:01

well, well, let's let a thousand flowers bloom.

19:04

But I can't run iOS on

19:06

a Moto G or a Moto

19:08

razor, Motorola razor, right? Yeah. But

19:10

Android is quite good. Yeah. And it's always been the

19:12

thing. I mean, there was a time back in the

19:14

nineties when you could run Mac OS on

19:17

aftermarket PCs, but that ended in

19:19

98. Yeah, for sure.

19:21

And especially now that Apple Silicon is

19:23

there, it's like never going to go

19:25

back. Right. But you can try to

19:27

run Linux on their hardware. You can't

19:29

run their software on their hardware. So

19:31

then we get into this scenario where,

19:33

okay, maybe I'm iOS focus, my household

19:35

is iOS focus because of an

19:37

ecosystem. It's not just a choice

19:40

that I like Apple in quotes better,

19:42

or iOS in quotes better. It's

19:44

simply that we've now adopted now we

19:46

have sunk cost into an

19:49

ecosystem. We have applications that we bought

19:51

from the app store that my kids

19:53

use to learn piano or different things

19:55

that like, they're great

19:57

applications, great things that you

19:59

can buy. subscriptions potentially even these – just these

20:01

things that sort of lock you in. Now

20:03

we have even this Worldware apps can't move around. They

20:06

don't move around very well or they are

20:08

only Mac OS or iOS

20:10

focused. And it's great that

20:12

Motorola has that story, but I can't run iOS

20:14

there, which is an absolute bummer. Do

20:16

you think we'll get into the position where rights

20:19

repair becomes right to run, I suppose, in

20:21

a way? Like I want to run

20:23

my iOS wherever I want, not just on your

20:25

hardware. Well, let me take that – let's just

20:27

talk about repair first and we can talk about

20:30

OS portability. Well, I think the reason why that's

20:32

important is because you get stuck

20:34

by the hardware and it's limitations in repair,

20:36

but you come for the software. And so

20:38

you've got this lock-in mechanism, even iMessage. I

20:40

mean there's such a posh

20:43

posture to iMessage. Are

20:45

you a green bubble or are you a blue

20:47

bubble? I mean even from that perspective. Well, try

20:49

Beeper. Happy Beeper user

20:51

over here. It's fantastic. You

20:54

can bust outside of the iMessage bubble. I'm going

20:56

to 911 you, Kyle. I need you now. Go

21:01

ahead. I interrupted just to sort of like round out

21:03

my perspective. No, sure. I mean I

21:06

would say let's just start and say like you have

21:08

hardware, whether you're in the iOS or Android camp, should

21:10

you be able to fix your thing without

21:12

having to phone home to the manufacturer for help? Maybe

21:15

a fundamental right that we have across all hardware.

21:17

Maybe Apple has the right to build a closed

21:19

operating system, but they don't have a right to

21:21

artificially limit how long hardware lasts. And

21:24

they don't have a right to have a

21:26

monopoly and privilege their repair centers over aftermarket

21:28

centers. So that's what right to repair laws

21:30

are about, is leveling the playing field, enabling

21:32

competition, and making it so that you, if

21:34

you have an iOS ecosystem in your house,

21:36

you should be able to repair the power

21:38

supply in your home pod if it fails

21:40

because Apple doesn't have a repair plan for

21:42

that. It's an epidemic of home pod power

21:44

supply failures. Really? Yeah. I never

21:46

bought into it personally. If it hasn't failed

21:48

on you yet, just wait. If you

21:51

have AirPods, your batteries are going to die.

21:53

It's just a question of whether it's, you

21:55

know, in the next

21:57

three months or six months. I mean, AirPod batteries

21:59

last about two months. years and then they're toast

22:01

and Apple doesn't have a repair strategy for that.

22:03

So we have to deal with the

22:05

hardware and whatever ecosystem you're in, finding a way to

22:07

make it last longer. So I would start with that

22:10

and that's the first set

22:12

of right to repair battles that I'm focused on. Once

22:15

we get beyond that, then we can talk

22:17

about OS freedom and kind of the war

22:19

on general purpose computing. Well,

22:27

friends, I have some good news for you.

22:30

It is launch week once again for Sentry

22:32

and I'm here with Rahul Chabria from the

22:34

Prime team at Sentry. So Rahul, can you

22:36

tell me about the launch week this year

22:39

for Sentry? In March, we're

22:41

making a huge investment into our product

22:43

platform. We're trying to make it faster,

22:45

better. In November, we shared

22:47

a sneak peek about our new metrics

22:49

offering. So now developers are able to

22:52

define custom metrics they care about and

22:54

monitor how quickly their app is responding

22:56

to the business measures they have to be

22:58

accountable for. Plus also like the customer experiences that

23:00

they've committed to and that's going to be available

23:02

in an alpha. People can sign up to get

23:04

access. We'll turn it off for them like

23:06

in a couple of days once they write in and they can

23:08

get going right away. Now, on top of

23:11

that, it's like we are looking more at how

23:13

do we make the product smarter. Now, I know

23:15

the world is talking about AI and ML and

23:17

they're all solving like we think like entertaining problems,

23:20

but Sentry is taking a more thoughtful approach to

23:22

it. We are trying to look at what is

23:24

the developer trying to do? Like our goal is

23:26

not to have use in Sentry all day long. Our

23:29

goal is not have it like be a tab that

23:31

you need to keep open. Our goal is to have

23:33

this be a tab you open when something is wrong,

23:35

give you the information you need right away, tell you

23:37

how impactful it is to your user base and if

23:39

you should care and if it is something you should

23:41

care about, here's how to fix it. So we're taking

23:43

a broader look at how

23:45

developers use the product. Where

23:47

is the noise they're seeing? Like are they seeing

23:49

repeat events? Are they seeing like things that are

23:51

not critical rise to the top and have to

23:53

automatically resolve them or ignore them? So we're going

23:55

to make Sentry a little bit smarter with artificial

23:57

intelligence to give you a more

23:59

prioritized. view of the issues that really

24:01

matter so you can solve them quickly and

24:03

move on and not be distracted by random

24:06

rage clicks that are just ghost

24:08

issues. Those are the two major things coming out,

24:10

like thinking about more like defining the metrics you

24:12

care about, also figuring out ways to organize your

24:14

issues so developers can actually solve those problems faster.

24:17

And then we're also working on a few features

24:19

for our mobile developers, like Sentry is a platform

24:21

that works with any technology you want. But for

24:23

mobile developers, there's always been this like, wait a

24:26

second, there was an error, but hold on, let

24:28

me go dig up this device and see if

24:30

I can recreate it. I can't recreate it. Okay, let

24:32

me go look at the stack trace. Like it's definitely

24:34

something there. I'll just fix it and push release. And

24:37

hopefully those are like the crash rates go up and

24:39

the crash for user rates go up. But there's always

24:41

like this idea, like I still need to figure out

24:43

like, where is that bank of used old devices for

24:45

someone running, you know, iOS 13 on an iPhone 11

24:48

somewhere. So

24:50

we're giving them the ability, we're previewing the

24:52

ability for mobile developers to actually see what

24:54

happened on an end user session. So that

24:57

way there's no question about the problem or

24:59

the latency issue and building out more performance

25:01

capabilities so they can see exactly how fast

25:03

their app is performing. Those are the three

25:05

big things we're planning on talking about aside

25:07

from core platform announcements, some integrations

25:09

and cool partnerships we're working with. Yes,

25:12

the big investment in machine learning and

25:14

artificial intelligence. Okay, Sentry's launch

25:16

week happens March 18th through the

25:18

22nd. Check the

25:20

show notes for a link to the launch

25:23

week page. I'll be showing off new features,

25:25

products, you can tune into their YouTube channel

25:27

or Discord daily at 9am Pacific Standard Time

25:29

to hear the latest scoop. Or

25:31

if you want to get swag

25:33

along the way, enter your email

25:36

address at the page, we'll link

25:38

up to get swag all along

25:40

the way. Or join the Discord,

25:42

whatever works for you. And the

25:45

sentry.io, that's s-e-n-t-r-y.io. I'm

25:47

sure they'll link it up somewhere. Or check the show

25:49

notes for a link. While you're at it,

25:51

use the code CHANGELOG to get 100

25:53

bucks off the team plan. Again, use

25:55

the code CHANGELOG. Go to sentry.io. Here

26:12

is me, okay, let me just use my

26:15

perspective. Not really well

26:17

versed with my fix-it-until-recently. Watch

26:19

your tools, love them. Use the

26:21

repair guide to gut the Mac Mini to replace

26:23

the hard drive. Not because the

26:25

hard drive was bad, but because it was sort of obsolete.

26:27

It was not an SSD. And

26:30

so I replaced the spinning disc that was a 3.25 or

26:32

3.5 inch drive, 5200 rotation speed. It's

26:37

not a very fast drive. It's terrible. Go

26:40

to this Mac Mini as an experiment to

26:43

explore the Linux world. Like, hey, I want to

26:45

take this Intel 2014 Mac

26:48

Mini and wow, here's this repair

26:50

guide on ifixit.com. Oh,

26:52

they have this toolkit that

26:54

I saw my buddy Luke

26:57

Miani talking about and he's a big fan, right? And I'm paying

26:59

attention to these folks out there that are just like leading the

27:01

way. And I'm like, you know what, I've got four

27:04

of these things sitting here because at one

27:06

point those Mac Minis with those rusty

27:08

spinning hard drives and it was how

27:10

we Skyped everybody for these podcasts back

27:12

in the day. We used to have

27:15

a Skype tower where each person would

27:17

call in on each Mac Mini, we

27:19

would pipe that audio out into a

27:21

mixer and record to a multiple interface.

27:23

I mean it was archaic but it

27:25

worked. But I had this

27:27

hardware that was essentially non-useful to me now

27:30

and that's where I discovered your brand and who you

27:32

are. Well, not so much you personally but who your

27:34

brand is. But I've never gone even

27:36

beyond that until recently with your

27:38

involvement in these bills getting passed or these

27:41

acts getting passed and all the fight that

27:43

has to happen. So here's me saying,

27:45

whoa, it's John Deere because they've just like

27:48

– they basically build gigantic farm

27:50

computers, right? And this whole movement there,

27:52

taught to query doctors several times, again,

27:54

follow Louis Rossman and just like knee

27:57

deep in this, how does someone like

27:59

you – So software engineer decides

28:01

that you want to do something with a repair

28:03

guide. Now you're part of this change

28:05

that needs to take place because I

28:08

do want to gut my Mac Mini six

28:10

years from now or eight years from now when it's not

28:12

useful to me anymore and repurpose it if

28:14

I so choose. I want to be able

28:16

to run Linux literally on – if it's a computer, I feel like

28:18

you should be able to run Linux on any given computer in the

28:20

world. So Linux is open

28:23

source and it should be the replacement OS

28:25

when that OS can no longer

28:27

work. In this case, this Mac

28:29

OS version was on Mavericks or

28:31

something like that for this Mac Mini. So even if I wanted

28:33

to run Mac OS, I'm limited

28:35

to – I can't go to the newest operating system.

28:37

I have to go to this older generation that has

28:40

limited security, no updates. Great. But

28:42

Linux still works. Ubuntu still

28:45

works on any given thing. So long story

28:47

short, I'm new to learning about you and

28:49

your company, but how did you

28:51

get into this movement? Why are you so

28:53

passionate about it? Obviously, there's some steam here,

28:56

but what makes you be the right person

28:58

to build the company, to distribute parts, and

29:00

to be the in-close advocate for those who

29:02

are not advocating or don't know how to

29:05

advocate for their rights? Yes,

29:07

I mean I started by me getting

29:09

radicalized by this censorship through copyright law.

29:12

What gives them the right to prevent me from having access

29:14

to the information I need to fix my stuff? As

29:17

we've been systematically moving and enabling people to

29:19

fix more things, we encounter obstacles. And where

29:21

there are obstacles, like I'm an engineer, I'm

29:23

going to solve that obstacle. And

29:26

so one of the main obstacles that has come up

29:28

is Section 1201 of

29:30

the DMCA, which is this law that

29:32

makes it illegal to do certain kinds of math. Yeah,

29:35

please look it up. So Section 1201

29:37

says it is illegal to circumvent

29:40

a technological protection measure protecting access

29:42

to a copyrighted work. And

29:46

that was intended to make it illegal to

29:48

distribute tools to pirate DVDs. That was the

29:50

reason they passed it back in the 90s.

29:53

But now that that law is being abused

29:55

in all kinds of ways, Apple used it

29:57

to go after jailbreakers. people

30:00

who are unlocking cell phones. Because the way

30:02

that it's being interpreted is a copyrighted work

30:04

could be any software. So if

30:07

you have a cell phone baseband that is made

30:09

out of software and it's on a device and

30:11

you want to unlock the cell phone to move

30:13

it from Verizon to AT&T, you

30:15

are making a change to that copyrighted work. You're

30:17

bypassing a lock in order to do it. And

30:20

so you're in violation of Section 1201. So

30:22

this is a absolutely ludicrous law. And so

30:25

we have been fighting to get the law

30:27

revoked for a long time. And this was

30:29

actually what brought right

30:31

to repair for ag equipment to the forefront.

30:33

I applied for an exemption with the US

30:36

Copyright Office to be able to jailbreak tractors.

30:39

And John Deere opposed it. And I wrote a

30:41

letter in, I

30:43

wrote an op-ed in Wired magazine. This was back

30:45

in 2012, something like

30:47

that. And saying, hey, this is a

30:50

problem. Farmers, they need to be able

30:52

to modify software on their equipment in order to fix

30:54

them. And John Deere

30:56

went nuclear. And they sent a letter to all

30:59

of their dealers calling me a liar and calling

31:01

out my Wired article. And that really was the

31:03

beginning of the fight for right to repair for

31:05

farm equipment. And so ever since

31:07

then, every three years, we go back to

31:09

the Copyright Office. We go for more exemptions.

31:11

The Copyright Office agreed with me and the

31:13

farmers, and they granted the exemption for that.

31:15

And we've been fighting it ever since. We

31:17

have not successfully fixed the federal issue, but

31:19

we have started to make progress on it.

31:21

So last year, we worked

31:23

with farmers across the state of Colorado and

31:25

passed the nation's first agriculture right to repair

31:28

bill. Huge victory, huge success,

31:30

goes into effect soon. And

31:33

we're looking to build on that victory in

31:35

other states. I look at the

31:37

whole landscape. I'm looking at the entire material economy.

31:39

What are all the things in our lives that

31:42

could break? Is it farm equipment? Is it construction

31:44

equipment? Is it your Mac Mini? Let's level

31:46

the playing field. Let's enable repair across all

31:49

of this. And what that has meant is

31:51

that we've had to break open monopolies in

31:53

all kinds of different areas. When I started

31:55

helping people fix iBooks, I didn't know that

31:57

John Deere was monopolizing repair and forcing farmers

32:00

into paying them through the nose for

32:02

service. But that was part of our

32:05

mission. So we identified the problem and

32:07

we've been systematically tackling it. And we're

32:09

gonna do that in industry after industry.

32:11

Wow. Since you mentioned

32:13

Wired, I went to your

32:15

author page on Wired and I'm surprised

32:18

to see how far back your

32:20

byline goes. I mean, you personally, not

32:22

just like, wow. We've been doing

32:24

this a long time. So

32:27

to go back, the first law that I got

32:29

passed, let's talk about cell phone

32:31

unlocking because it's part of kind of the

32:33

war on general purpose computing. So my

32:35

buddy, Sena Conifer, made a unlock

32:38

tool for unlocking the foot

32:40

phones back in the day. And AT&T

32:43

got very upset at him and others.

32:45

And so they sued him. He

32:47

went to the Copyright Office and asked us for help.

32:49

And in the process, we put together a White House

32:51

petition. So this is in the Obama era. And

32:54

this is really our first opportunity or the

32:56

first time we use activated the internet to

32:58

achieve political change. So we

33:00

got the second highest petition count on the

33:03

Obama, We the People petition site that they'd

33:05

ever had for a cell phone unlocking bill.

33:08

The first most popular petition was

33:10

to deport Justin Bieber back to Canada, which

33:13

I think we can also get on board with. Obama

33:17

did not respond to that petition, but he did

33:19

respond to ours and he said that he agreed.

33:21

And so I got experience like flying back and

33:24

forth to DC and I got to get a tie and we

33:26

got it done. And we went from where the US was

33:28

the only country in the world where it's illegal to unlock

33:31

a cell phone to it had been re legalized. And that

33:33

was the first time that we touched that section 1201. So

33:36

that was back in the 2012 era. And

33:38

then I spent the last decade since then

33:41

fighting for rate repair laws. And it was

33:43

a long time kind of wandering in the

33:45

wilderness working on this. We have introduced hundreds

33:47

of bills and we have lost hundreds of

33:50

times before we've won four

33:52

in the last year. Would you say that

33:54

you're getting better at them? Because I mean,

33:56

once you get some experience, you kind of like make

33:59

a network. obviously gain more friends. And

34:01

politics is all about who you know, right? It's all

34:03

about the friends. It's all about

34:05

the coalition and the political momentum. I mean,

34:07

we had in New York State, we had

34:10

trillions of dollars in market cap registered to lobby

34:12

against our bill. So it really

34:14

is, do we have enough inertia and momentum

34:16

to overcome these entrenched corporate interests? And

34:19

the answer for, you know, a decade was

34:21

no, we didn't. But we

34:23

kept at it, we kept building, and now we're at

34:25

the point where we are overcoming. How

34:28

much have you dug into the DMCA Act

34:31

itself in terms of

34:33

like who was personally responsible for its

34:35

movement of it, and what was

34:37

their motivation? Like, were they paid? Were

34:39

they lobbied? You know, like, was there a lot

34:42

of golf involved? Like, at some point, like, there's

34:44

corruption of – a version of

34:46

corruption happening here or a version of unfairness,

34:48

if not trip corruption, right? Yeah, I mean,

34:50

I actually know a lot of the Congress

34:52

– members of Congress who were

34:54

involved in passing. That law, as

34:56

flawed as it is, it was a

34:59

compromise between technology companies and Hollywood. They

35:01

really were terrified of internet

35:03

piracy. This is the Napster era

35:06

and of undermining the creative economy

35:08

of the United States. And they were

35:10

concerned about technology getting in the way. Now

35:12

they wrote a law that was bad, and

35:15

it may have been industry, you know, the copyright

35:17

industry that helped them write that. But I think

35:19

it was a genuine mistake at the time. No

35:22

one at the time had any idea that

35:24

this law that they were crafting that they

35:27

thought was applying to media would

35:29

apply to all embedded software and therefore all products

35:31

that are manufacturing going forward, right? Anything that's

35:33

going to be made in the next century is

35:35

going to have a microchip and therefore software

35:37

in it. And so this is the most accidentally

35:40

overbroad law in history. So

35:42

it desperately needs to get fixed.

35:44

But I wouldn't say that it

35:46

was corruption up front. It was

35:48

a well-intentioned, flawed compromise. Okay. Better

35:50

words. I'm definitely more

35:53

of a politician than I am because you

35:55

can word better things than I can. Even

35:58

that was terribly worded. Okay. So

36:00

not necessarily on purpose, accidentally flawed, because

36:02

it was too broad. I testified. So

36:05

Congress had a hearing on fixing the

36:07

DMCA last July. And so I flew

36:09

out to DC and put on my

36:12

tie again, and I got to testify.

36:15

And Representative Zoe Lofgren, who has been in

36:17

Congress for a long time, she was in

36:19

Congress when they passed it. She

36:21

said, look, you know, I was involved in drafting

36:23

this thing, and we screwed up, and it was

36:25

not our intent at all to have an impact

36:27

for Paris and all the things that it's impacting

36:29

today. So Congress knows that there's

36:31

very active interest in fixing this. They had

36:34

a hearing. There was this House Judiciary Committee

36:36

that is looking at this. They want to

36:38

do it. And honestly, really, the headwinds right

36:40

now between getting this thing fixed and where

36:42

we're at now is just that it's very

36:45

hard to get anything done in Congress right

36:47

now because of the macro political situation. If

36:49

Congress could just buckle down and do their job

36:51

and get laws passed, I think we'd have a

36:53

shot at getting this thing fixed. So

36:56

what's the get revert then? If we're going to

36:58

try to use some software terminology, how do we? We

37:00

just need to delete Section 1201. There's

37:02

no reason for this law at all. Do you replace it?

37:04

It doesn't need to be replaced. It doesn't need to be

37:06

there. Because what Section 1201

37:08

says is it's illegal to circumvent the

37:10

law. It doesn't say, like, if you

37:12

took a copy of Pick a Movie,

37:15

Mulan, you take a copy of Mulan and you

37:17

copy it and you sell it, that's that you're

37:19

violating copyright. There's $150,000 per infringement fine.

37:23

You can go to jail for 12 years. Like, there's serious

37:25

fines for this. We don't need

37:27

to also make it illegal to make the software

37:29

to copy Mulan. We can just make

37:32

it illegal to do the infringement. And

37:34

so there's a variety of fixes that have been

37:36

proposed over the years. The simplest thing would be

37:38

to just get rid of it. Practically

37:40

it's going to be hard to get that all the way

37:42

through Congress. And so we have a more nuanced fix that

37:45

has been proposed. That's what we're working on. When

37:48

will that happen based upon what you know and

37:50

estimates? Yeah, that's a great question. In a decade

37:52

or when? It could be

37:54

any day. You know, I mean, in terms of

37:56

being a bill could be introduced any day, but

37:58

actually getting it moved through. It's unlikely

38:00

that a whole lot is going to move through

38:03

Congress until after the election. Because

38:05

the Republicans don't want to pass something

38:07

and give Biden the win that he

38:09

can run on. And so you're probably

38:11

in stasis with any legislation in Congress

38:13

through the election. Yeah, it's such a

38:15

weird thing, too, to be just

38:18

a person trying to do their thing. And then you've

38:20

got this ebb and this flow. And the ebb is

38:23

that last year of a president's term and whether or

38:25

not they'll be reelected. And that last year really is

38:27

a stale year. And then that first year is sort

38:29

of like getting a lot of stuff done, that last

38:31

year they're in before reelection comes to

38:33

play or a new election comes in play. It's

38:36

like, well, should we let all this happen because that

38:38

might aid them? And that's not cool. Like for me,

38:40

I was like, Republican or not,

38:42

Democrat or not, just get something done that

38:44

helps the people, right? Okay,

38:47

so this goes deep. The MCA 1201,

38:49

we've been talking about that. I

38:51

speculated it was nefarious actions, possibly even

38:54

corruption. You push back on that. I

38:56

don't disagree. You said things

38:58

like the material economy. I've never thought about the

39:00

material economy like you have. What else

39:02

can you enlighten us on? Red pill

39:04

us. Red pill the entire

39:06

audience on this whole thing. What

39:09

are we not thinking about as just normal people

39:11

who are just trying to work hard for

39:13

their families and advance their careers and build great

39:15

software and build great companies? What

39:17

are we not seeing? Where are blinders up for us?

39:19

Yeah, so I've got buddies who do all kinds of

39:22

construction work. So it was worked very well to me

39:24

one time. He says, look, if you build a fence

39:26

out of wood, you're renting the fence. If you build

39:28

a fence out of metal, it'll last forever, right? Your

39:31

wooden fence, it's going to rot. You got to paint

39:33

it regularly, right? Just build it once, build it out

39:35

of metal, make it durable. So I

39:38

would say the same thing. If you buy a thing with a

39:40

battery, you're just renting it, right? The

39:42

battery is going to wear out. That's a consumable.

39:45

So anything with a battery has a lifespan of

39:47

between 500 and 1,000 charge cycles, depending on

39:50

how they configure the battery. So 500 charge

39:53

cycles on AirPods is

39:55

how much do you use them? A year and

39:58

a half, three years, something like that? And

40:00

there is no path, I

40:02

have destroyed many AirPods trying to remove the batteries.

40:05

There's no path to pulling the batteries

40:07

out and swapping it. And

40:09

so this is really a challenge if you

40:11

look at most products today come with a

40:13

battery. Like you get a thermostat, it's got

40:15

a battery in it. There's a whole variety

40:17

of products that have batteries in them these

40:19

days. And we need to do

40:21

something about that. Because having a battery glued inside

40:23

the product is like buying a car with tires

40:26

welded to the frame. No one

40:28

would do that, right? And it's like, oh, your tires

40:30

wore out, time to get a new car. That is

40:32

ludicrous, no one would ever do that. But

40:34

that's the world that we are in with

40:37

batteries. And it's a real problem.

40:39

We've been like brain swaggled into thinking that,

40:42

oh, your batteries run out, let's just get

40:44

a new phone. Yeah, I'm

40:46

with you on that. I'm an AirPods owner

40:48

and I have a charger right next to

40:50

my bed. And so I put

40:53

them over there on that thing on the daily. Last

40:55

time I checked, there's 365 days in a year. I'm

40:58

joking. I know how many days we're in a year. So

41:03

I imagine every night I'm just chiseling down that

41:05

charge cycle. So maybe a year and a half

41:07

or two years. I got

41:09

life in there if that is accurate to their

41:12

battery. You can't replace them. They're

41:14

so small. But at the

41:16

same time, can we just not appreciate the innovation

41:18

of like, wow, there's so much tech in there?

41:21

Yeah, but it didn't have to happen. I

41:23

mean, there are some products that have so many

41:25

downstream impacts that they just shouldn't exist in the

41:28

first place. It's illegal to

41:30

make something that pollutes the groundwater. It's the

41:32

same thing. AirPods flat out as a product

41:34

should be banned the way that they

41:36

are. And I think Europe will. Go deeper. Tell

41:38

us the details. What is your reasoning for that?

41:40

Well, so I'll give you an example. You go

41:42

to Best Buy and you're like, I want some

41:45

wireless earbuds. And you got the Samsung Galaxy Buds

41:47

and you got the Apple AirPods. Same

41:49

price. You look at the Verge. They've

41:51

got equivalent product reviews. They seem

41:53

to be functionally equivalent products. And so if you have a Samsung

41:55

phone, you get the Samsung one. If you have an iPhone, you

41:57

get the Apple one, right? Done. unbeknownst

42:00

to you, if after a

42:02

year and a half or three years, whatever it

42:04

is, when the battery dies, with

42:06

the Galaxy Buds, you squeeze them

42:08

a little bit, you pop it open, you go buy $20

42:11

new batteries from iFixit or wherever, stick

42:13

them in, and it continues to operate,

42:15

and the AirPods, you throw them away.

42:18

When you throw the AirPods in the trash, it

42:20

goes in the trash, it goes in the trash

42:22

compactor that the garbage truck compresses garbage that you

42:25

throw in there, and your

42:27

batteries catch on fire and they set the garbage truck

42:29

on fire. I would encourage

42:31

anyone listening, look at your

42:33

local newspaper and search in your community for

42:35

garbage truck fires in the last year

42:38

or two. Every community

42:40

in the country is having a

42:42

pandemic of fires and garbage facilities

42:44

and recycling centers caused by batteries

42:46

in these devices. You

42:49

cannot put anything with a battery in the trash.

42:51

You can't put it in the recycling. It has

42:53

to be handled totally separately. It has to go

42:55

to electronics recyclers who also don't want

42:57

to deal with AirPods because they're not profitable for them

42:59

to manage. This is a product

43:01

that, at end of life, is

43:03

hazardous and it's screwing you out

43:06

of money because you're going to spend $179 for AirPods

43:08

the only last two years. This is crazy. It is

43:10

absolutely crazy. It should have a big disclaimer. When you're

43:12

at Best Buy and you're going to make the choice,

43:14

do I go left or do I go right? It

43:17

should be clear. I think Samsung is being

43:19

idiotic by not advertising how easy it is

43:21

to swap the batteries on them. It's a

43:23

major miss. I mean, wow.

43:26

Why is Apple not being held

43:29

then to a standard that says

43:32

like an end of life standard? I

43:34

feel this way about even recyclable product

43:36

packaging. There's so much products that are

43:38

packaged and things like why in the world? I

43:40

just want the thing, not all the package. I

43:42

get it to me safely that it doesn't break.

43:44

I can tell you exactly why. Tell me why.

43:47

There's a guy named Walter Alcorn. Walter

43:49

Alcorn works for the Consumer Technology Association

43:51

in DC. He wears

43:53

fancy suits. He's in DC. Probably

43:55

most states have introduced some kind

43:58

of extended producer responsibility law. that

44:00

would require products like AirPods, companies who have

44:02

to pay in recycling, it might require more

44:04

labeling, it would fund recycling

44:06

programs. Walter spends all his time flying around

44:08

to different states and making sure they don't

44:10

pass those laws. And Walter's salary

44:12

at the CTA is funded by the

44:15

tech companies led by Apple. And

44:17

he's very good at it. And for a

44:19

long time, there were states passing more extended

44:22

produced, responsibly, electronic recycling laws, and there haven't

44:24

been very many passed in the last decade

44:26

because he's done his job very well. Hmm,

44:29

I couldn't help but ask Chat GPT really quickly

44:31

because sometimes when I'm on these calls, I will

44:33

just say, tell me more about X. And

44:36

that's what I did here. I said, tell me more about

44:38

Walter Alcorn. What does Chat GPT have to say? Well, I'm

44:40

not gonna read the whole thing. It's just

44:42

too much, but it's said in particular, in

44:45

describing who he is, it says,

44:47

in quotes, for instance, he has

44:49

served on various boards and commissions

44:51

related to environmental policy, urban

44:54

planning, and community development,

44:56

reflecting his commitment to

44:58

environmental sustainability and community engagement.

45:00

Now, based on what you

45:03

said about this person, it seems

45:05

like maybe that's a skewed description of

45:07

what he does. That may be what

45:09

he does, but that's not what, that's

45:11

not the effects of his actions based upon what you

45:14

just said. Because if he goes

45:16

around flying everywhere to ensure these laws

45:18

aren't passed, or bills aren't passed, or

45:20

whatever, then the problem

45:22

remains. Like having an end

45:25

of life product like AirPods go into the

45:27

trash instead of trash, come back on fire.

45:29

Now, at the same time, maybe people don't

45:31

care because the person who's driving that truck

45:34

is less of a person, because they're a trash

45:37

person. I'm not saying that. I'm saying

45:39

maybe they're thinking that. Because, well, you would

45:41

have to assume they just don't care about the little people,

45:44

the people doing the work. Just

45:46

driving the trash truck out there, taking care

45:48

of everybody's things. You know what

45:50

I mean? Maybe they think that, I don't know. But

45:52

what a shame. And

45:54

it's frustrating because you have a lot

45:56

of really fantastic environmental organizations and local

45:59

waste management organizations. trying to

46:01

do the right thing and trying to set things

46:03

up. And they run into the buzzsaw of opposition

46:05

to new rules. Industries'

46:08

general stance is, hey, let

46:10

us do our work. Let's

46:14

try to minimize regulation. And I can empathize

46:16

with that as a business owner, absolutely.

46:19

But when you get situations, when you get

46:21

externalities, there was a recycling center in the

46:23

Bay Area that caught on fire, burned to

46:25

the ground a handful of years ago. And

46:28

I have video of a consumer electronics device,

46:30

kind of looks like a tablet, going through

46:32

the shredder. And then you have a battery

46:34

that goes into a shredder. It's already got

46:37

maybe a bunch of suspended metal dust in the air.

46:40

The battery provides a spark and you get an explosion. In

46:42

this case, the whole facility burned to the ground. And

46:45

they have been told that if they have another fire, they

46:47

will never be able to get insurance again. So

46:49

now you're in a situation where you have

46:51

an entire Bay Area affluent community that might

46:53

not be able to have municipal recycling anymore

46:55

because they can't get insurance to operate their

46:57

facility. Wow. Yeah. I

46:59

mean, that's a whole other thing

47:02

that's, I guess, several layers

47:04

adjacent to rights repair and the movement you're a

47:06

part of and the bills you're

47:08

helping get passed and laws you're getting in place.

47:10

But is this idea of recycling

47:13

generally? I feel like it's – you

47:15

know, you read headlines and are the headlines true. And

47:17

there's some headlines, for lack of a better term, saying

47:19

that recycling is a scam, basically.

47:21

Well, recycling electronics is not a scam. We

47:24

can and should recycle electronics. For sure. The

47:27

problem is when you glue batteries into it,

47:30

it's like – right? I mean, just

47:32

imagine like trying to recycle propane canisters and you

47:34

want to take – like it's metal. It ought

47:36

to be recyclable, but it could have flammable gas

47:38

inside and you can't take a propane canister and

47:41

chuck it into a shredder. Really

47:43

bad things can happen. It's the same thing with

47:45

batteries. And I can show you a video after

47:47

video. I love to show people

47:49

videos of recycling facilities, of battery

47:51

recycling facilities on fire, because it looks

47:53

like a firework factory that's on fire.

47:56

It's incredible the energy and what happens

47:58

as a result. It's very

48:00

challenging to manage and recycle these batteries.

48:03

So who takes responsibility for those fires? It

48:05

has to be the folks who made money

48:07

in the first place making and selling them

48:09

to us. That's what I was going to

48:11

ask you. Like who, how can we, I

48:13

mean, we said Apple several times. I'm curious

48:15

that there's other brand names, not to keep

48:17

slapping them around. Well, I would pick, the

48:19

brand name is every single company that sells

48:22

a phone with a battery that's glued in,

48:24

which is every phone on the market right

48:26

now. Wow. How do we make

48:28

that illegal? So we've done it.

48:30

So Europe is banning glued in batteries

48:32

starting in 2027. And

48:34

there's probably two reasons why. One, repairable, but

48:37

then also the fires. Yes. Right.

48:40

The responsibility of the end of life.

48:42

Yeah. We just have to flat out

48:44

stop gluing batteries into products. How

48:47

can we make companies responsible for the end

48:49

of life of a product? Like even

48:51

if it was a scenario where it does make sense

48:53

to say, okay, in this case, a

48:55

glued in battery just is better. And

48:57

let's just say we buy that, right? And we're like,

48:59

okay, cool. You won the argument. You've

49:02

got it. But now you have to be responsible.

49:05

Fine. This thing end of life, it has

49:07

no recyclability to it in terms of like

49:09

having the battery placed or whatever it

49:11

might be. You got to take it back and you

49:13

got to be responsible for taking it back and properly

49:16

disposing of the thing or finding another use

49:18

for it. How do we do that?

49:20

Yes. It's a legal framework called extended producer

49:22

responsibility. And the idea is you hold manufacturers

49:24

responsible at the end of life for manufacturing

49:26

the product in the first place. There

49:28

are 25 states that have electronics extended

49:30

producer responsibility laws, but unfortunately, those laws

49:33

are kind of frozen in time two

49:35

decades ago and they're not getting updated.

49:37

So for example, in California, when you

49:39

buy a TV, you pay an extra

49:41

couple dollars that goes into recycling fund

49:43

and that goes to additionally fund recyclers

49:45

over and above the raw commodity value.

49:48

Because most of the time recyclers are

49:50

not funded, like they pick up your

49:52

recycling. It's free. The recycling is

49:54

not funded. They have to make money off of the

49:56

commodity value. So my microphone here, if I send it

49:58

in to recycle, they're going to take this. steel

50:00

and aluminum and the copper in that and

50:02

they'll make, you know, maybe there's 50 cents

50:04

of raw material in this microphone and that's

50:06

the most they're going to make unless there's

50:09

an extended produced responsibility funding model from the

50:11

manufacturer. And

50:13

that's kind of why they say recycling is

50:15

a scam because you have

50:17

to be willing to put the

50:19

work in to find the value of this commodity

50:21

that's no longer valuable to somebody else that originally

50:23

bought it, right? Or the company that made it.

50:25

Right. Yeah, the term recyclable is

50:27

really an economic term. Right. The question

50:29

is, is it economically viable to recycle?

50:31

Am I going to get more value,

50:33

commodity value out of this thing than

50:36

the effort of collecting and processing it?

50:38

And so there's some products, the answer is yes. Cardboard

50:41

generally is very profitable to recycle. We'll output

50:43

it on the other side. And so everybody

50:46

loves recycling cardboard. Other products,

50:48

it's more tenuous. Glass is kind of on the

50:50

borderline. Recycling like electronics,

50:53

like classic old electronics, the old ones

50:55

with lots of like RAM chips with

50:57

the gold connectors. That's actual gold. You

50:59

look inside it, it's gold. That's very

51:01

profitable. They love doing that. But

51:03

when you get to some of the smaller new electronics,

51:05

there's very little gold and copper in it. And the

51:07

battery is glued into something like an AirPods. What's the

51:09

commodity value in an AirPods? Far less

51:12

than the time and effort involved in

51:14

dealing with that safely. It's

51:16

all about dollars in, dollars out. What's the cost to

51:18

collect and process? And then what's the commodity value I'm

51:20

going to get on the other side? What's

51:36

up friends? I'm

51:38

here with one of my new friends, Zane Hamilton

51:40

from CIQ. So Zane, we're coming up

51:42

on a hard deadline with the CentOS end

51:44

of life later this year in July. And

51:47

there are still folks out there considering what

51:49

their next move should be. Then last year

51:51

we had a bunch of change around Red

51:53

Hat Enterprise Linux that makes it, quote, an

51:55

open source in the eyes of the community.

51:57

With many saying, Red was open source, but...

51:59

Where is the source and why

52:02

can't I download and install it? Now,

52:04

Rocky Linux is fully open source and

52:06

CIQ is a founding support partner that

52:08

offers paid support for migration, installation, configuration,

52:11

training, et cetera. But what exactly does

52:13

an enterprise or a Linux sys admin

52:15

get when they choose the free and

52:17

open source Rocky Linux and then ultimately

52:20

the support from CIQ if they need

52:22

it? There's a lot going on in

52:24

the enterprise and the Linux space today.

52:27

There's a lot of end

52:29

of life of CentOS. People are making decisions on

52:31

where to go next. The standard of what enterprise Linux

52:33

looks like tomorrow is kind of up in the air.

52:35

What CIQ is doing is we're trying to help

52:38

those people that are going through these different

52:40

decisions that they're having to make and how

52:42

they go about making those decisions. And that's

52:44

where our expertise really comes into play. A

52:46

lot of people who have been through very

52:48

complex Linux migrations, be it from the old

52:50

days of migrating from AIX or Solaris onto

52:52

Linux, and even going from version to version

52:54

because to be honest, enterprise Linux version to

52:56

version has not always been an easy conversion.

52:59

It hasn't been. And you will hear

53:01

that from us. Typically the best idea is to

53:03

do an in-place upgrade. Not always a real easy

53:05

thing to do, but what we've done is we

53:07

have started looking at and securing a path of

53:09

how can we actually go through that? How can

53:11

we help a customer who's moving from CentOS 7

53:13

because of the end of life in July of

53:15

this year? What does that migration path look like?

53:17

And how can we help? And that's where we're

53:19

looking in ways to help automate from an admin

53:21

perspective. If you're working with us, we've been through

53:23

this. We can actually go through and build out

53:25

that new machine and do a lot of the

53:27

backend manual work for you so that all you

53:29

really have to do at the end of

53:31

the day is validate your applications up and

53:33

running in the new space and then we

53:35

automate the switchover. So we've worked through a

53:37

lot of that. There's also the decisions you're

53:39

making around I'm paying a very large bill

53:41

for something I'm not necessarily getting the most

53:43

value out of. I don't want to continue

53:45

down that path. We can help you make

53:47

that shift over to an open source operating

53:49

system, Rocky Linux, and help derive what's next,

53:52

help you be involved in a community, and

53:54

help make sure that that environment you have

53:56

is stable, is going to be validated by

53:58

the actual vendors that you're using today. And

54:00

that's really where we want to be as

54:02

a partner from not just an end user

54:04

perspective, but in an industry perspective. We are

54:06

working with a lot of those top tier

54:08

vendors out there of certifying Rocky, making sure

54:10

that it gets pushed back to the RESF,

54:12

making sure that we can validate that everything

54:14

is there and secure that needs to be

54:16

there and helping you on that journey of

54:18

moving. And that's where we, CIQ, really show

54:20

our value on top of an open source

54:22

operating system is we have the expertise. We've

54:24

done this before. We're in the trenches with

54:26

you and we're defining that path of how

54:28

to move forward. Okay, ops and sys

54:30

admin folks out there, what are you

54:33

choosing? Sentos is end of life soon.

54:35

You may be using it, but if

54:37

you want a support partner in the

54:40

trenches with you, in the open source

54:42

trenches with you, check out CIQ. They're

54:44

the founding support partner of Rocky Linux.

54:47

They've stood up the RESF, which is

54:49

the home for open source enterprise software,

54:51

the Rocky Enterprise Software Foundation, that is.

54:54

They've helped to orchestrate the open ELA,

54:57

a collaboration created by and upheld

54:59

by CIQ, Oracle and SUSE.

55:01

Check out Rocky Linux at

55:04

rockylinux.org, the RESF at resf.org.

55:06

And of course, if you

55:08

need support, check out our

55:10

friends at ciq at

55:13

ciq.com. What's

55:31

the future of all this like? Can you

55:33

forecast a decade from now? Like where

55:36

are things heading in terms

55:38

of consumers having quality,

55:40

high quality products to buy and

55:42

use and enjoy to how

55:44

it affects the long term, just the long

55:47

term economies and even the way that these

55:49

companies profit and work? Yes,

55:51

so the question is, how do we align the incentives

55:53

better? Because it's not like these companies are sitting there

55:55

in smoke filled rooms saying, how do I wreck the

55:57

planet? Starting from an evil perspective.

56:00

But their incentive is to sell more products

56:02

and they're also reacting to how people interact

56:04

in the market. And so

56:06

right now consumers don't have the information

56:08

that they need to send the signals

56:10

to the manufacturers to build better products.

56:12

So you're looking at the Galaxy Buds

56:15

versus the AirPods and you don't know.

56:17

Like I bet the Galaxy Buds

56:19

work fine with an iPhone. I bet I had

56:21

no idea about this. I mean like I bet

56:23

some people would love to buy that and then

56:25

have a product that would last longer. Yeah, nobody

56:28

would. So what we need is a repair score

56:30

next to the price. So when you go to

56:32

buy a product, it should say, hey, this is an 8 out of 10.

56:34

This is a 3 out of 10. And then

56:36

you know like, well, I don't care if

56:39

this is fixable or maybe I really do care. I'm spending

56:41

a lot of investing and I want it to last a

56:43

long time. And so this is

56:45

not a novel idea. France implemented this

56:47

law about three years ago. And

56:49

France rolled out a rule for cell phones

56:51

and laptops and a bunch of other product

56:53

categories. It says you have to have the

56:56

call the Indice of Repairability. It is a

56:58

score card that factors in. Is service manuals

57:00

available? Can you get parts quickly? How easy

57:02

is it to take it apart? And so

57:04

if you go to apple.fr and you look

57:06

at an iPhone, look at the price, the

57:08

repair index is right next to the price

57:11

on apple.fr. And if you

57:13

go into the French equivalent of Best Buy at retail

57:15

next to the price, it's got the repair index next

57:17

to it. So we worked with

57:19

the French government and helped them technically build

57:21

and develop the scoring system. This

57:24

is going to be integrated Europe-wide in the

57:26

coming years. It's going to be built into

57:28

the European Eco Index. There's going to be

57:30

a variety of information available when you go

57:32

to buy an electronic product in Europe and

57:34

it will include repairability. So

57:37

then the question is, how do we do that in

57:39

the good old US of A? Because all of us

57:41

are not shopping for electronics in France. And

57:44

The answer there is the Federal Trade Commission.

57:46

So. You know how you go and you

57:48

buy a water heater and there's a yellow

57:50

sticker on it that says how much energy

57:52

it's going to consume over its life? Yeah.

57:54

So That's a program called Energy Guide and

57:56

it's run by the FTC. So They already

57:58

are in the business of labeling products. Then

58:00

giving consumers information. So along with all

58:02

of our friends on the internet over

58:04

the last couple months, we gathered sixty

58:06

thousand signatures asking the Ftc to do

58:08

a repair scoring system like this. And

58:10

and just at the end of February

58:12

or Beanie February, we deliver the signatures

58:15

to them. And now the Ftc. As

58:17

said, they're considering a formal rulemaking process

58:19

where they can maybe require, develop and

58:21

then require a repair scoring system like

58:23

this on products in the Us. So

58:25

there's precedent. We do this for appliances.

58:27

Why do we do it for everything

58:29

else? I think I think it's possible and

58:31

we're working on yeah, I

58:34

just leads to be that farm. A stretch to say

58:36

if you want to make a product that has and

58:38

and of life that is basically. Dangerous.

58:41

You should be responsible for taking a back in some way,

58:43

shape or form, Especially someone at the

58:45

skill of apple. Yeah. Love of

58:48

reading of Walter, any mountain man. And

58:50

will. Will. See what happens? There are

58:52

no the illicit the oh but this month

58:54

of regular try. Why? Is that

58:56

person the gatekeeper to change So like

58:58

what is a good salesperson like what

59:00

is it that he's got that no

59:02

one else can where he's able to

59:04

like sort of freeze. You mentioned being

59:07

frozen in time keep these things frozen

59:09

is so what happens is in that

59:11

politicians are that they're trying to get

59:13

things done through consensus so most of

59:15

the time you're someone comes as as

59:17

hey we should they my post office

59:19

after yellows local worker and ever been

59:22

to say let's do it also those

59:24

was sail through. Then. You get one

59:26

the say hey we should require manufacturers to

59:28

pay up front for a cycling may such

59:30

like while that can be owners burden there's

59:32

also has reasons will want that and so

59:34

Walter as the guy and and there's a

59:36

bunch of other folks a show up and

59:38

fight new regulations that might impact the tech

59:40

industry and and knee jerk they oppose it.

59:42

Any any ideas whether they're gonna not because

59:44

as additional regulations So I said that we've

59:46

introduced hundreds of rage repair bills over the

59:48

years. Will that has met hundreds of hearing

59:50

side gone and tested by law, kinds of

59:52

these and just about every single one of

59:54

them. They're. Arguing for a to repair and

59:57

Walter there's been a bunch of other folks have

59:59

been on the other that saying no we shouldn't.

1:00:01

And. So now these politicians have to

1:00:03

make a choice system and co value

1:00:06

judgment of who's telling them and truth

1:00:08

and to they wanna put in the

1:00:10

effort of going up the and doing

1:00:12

were asking for an also potentially upsetting

1:00:14

some very large economic actors. Answer:

1:00:17

The answer for a long time was

1:00:19

no, you know what says take the

1:00:21

easy path and what will skip at

1:00:23

this time Now we have enough momentum

1:00:25

on our side that New York, Minnesota,

1:00:27

Colorado, California, Oregon have now passed right

1:00:30

through per laws and and we think

1:00:32

more coming. So. He

1:00:34

or the sea of I Sex it. Does. I

1:00:36

fix it. How are these

1:00:38

costs for you? How you fund your advocacy

1:00:40

and when you my tools my fix it

1:00:42

as you doing is funding our work spaces

1:00:45

Talisman Last time I miss the away a

1:00:47

small team in internally that works on these

1:00:49

issues. We have someone full time in Brussels

1:00:51

working on things like the the glue them

1:00:54

battery ban and then we work on policy

1:00:56

here arm and A we also are volunteer

1:00:58

coalition ah and and members of repaired Other

1:01:00

that Japan and the Helps really is a

1:01:03

industrywide collaboration but yeah I mean any money

1:01:05

that you spend that I fix it goes.

1:01:07

Directly the fun their advocacy work. On.

1:01:11

Giving about my direct than I did buy from

1:01:13

Amazon a bunch of from ah you are directly

1:01:15

to say that basis doesn't need it so I

1:01:17

figured you know just because is available on Amazon

1:01:20

that buy on Amazon. And. Like as

1:01:22

a Viking, the direct when I go

1:01:24

direct support in the ecommerce appreciated yeah

1:01:26

for sure for sure. Is.

1:01:29

I'm not even for of all the things you

1:01:31

do like, what else do you do is a

1:01:33

company that you mean like with what is your

1:01:35

economics? As a company hot you all make money.

1:01:37

Is it just simply tools, widows, and you get

1:01:39

mass? They're all sort of like some sort of.

1:01:42

A Hardware Artifacts Repair Something to me

1:01:44

more. Yeah, so we think about it

1:01:46

as we we give away the bits

1:01:48

and sell the atoms So all the

1:01:50

information everything I fix is free. We

1:01:52

don't run ads, it's just like Wikipedia

1:01:54

open free repairman of for everything. We

1:01:56

really want to be truly comprehensive as

1:01:58

confirmation for everything. Then we cross

1:02:00

link goes with parts and tools in the hope

1:02:02

is that the also is useful content. So if

1:02:04

you're if you're looking at how I fix the

1:02:06

screen of my laptop will link you to a

1:02:08

screen. You can buy that screen from us if

1:02:10

you want and obsolete we can send it to

1:02:12

with the tools you need to do the repair.

1:02:15

So that's that's your business is split between

1:02:17

the parts in the tools. We saw that

1:02:20

that's how we we make our money the

1:02:22

as the beginning we we thought about running

1:02:24

and as a nonprofit like Wikipedia and the

1:02:26

I could but my face of every December

1:02:29

we could do fundraising drive and decided you

1:02:31

know repairs a little bit different than Wikipedia

1:02:33

because in order to repair things you really

1:02:35

like the information isn't enough. You also need

1:02:37

the parts and tools so we see providing

1:02:40

parts stores information altogether as part of the

1:02:42

service of of enabling her. Alma.

1:02:44

Come through the salon of the stuff you

1:02:47

have. this might not tooling is so Google

1:02:49

Pixel Seven pro screen staring you in. His

1:02:52

in a Macbook Air Thirteen insulate

1:02:54

Twenty Ten Twenty Seventeen battery. Whole.

1:02:56

Kit to do an aftermarket barrier placement if

1:02:58

you want to. In. A Bootleg

1:03:00

if you buy the new M, one,

1:03:03

and two, and three. Whatever is they've

1:03:05

got. On. I can

1:03:07

you replace batteries on currents Apple's

1:03:09

look on Max? You can the

1:03:11

absolutely can. Yeah, you can. Okay.

1:03:14

And. So does a be here events the what's

1:03:16

that? I am what stops will have I'm

1:03:18

yes yes Oh the thing is sobs you

1:03:20

with those. This is the glue. So when

1:03:22

we cell battery kids for modern math books

1:03:24

which the absolute never ever throw a map

1:03:26

of the soy worth your while to replace

1:03:28

the battery. Unfortunately the glue is kinda hard

1:03:30

to get to get loose and because the

1:03:32

battery so think it's hard the heat it

1:03:34

and so we include with the battery we

1:03:36

include a solvent. It's a chemical that you

1:03:38

use to dissolve the glue and make it

1:03:40

easier to work on. So when you buy

1:03:42

a battery kit from us it comes. To

1:03:44

safety glasses and and gloves, solvent and

1:03:46

and everything that you need to can

1:03:49

I get through the glue, get the

1:03:51

whole battery out and then replacement and

1:03:53

Agu strips the glue, the new battery

1:03:55

and. What does it take to

1:03:57

make profitable products that you can see? Like

1:04:00

it sounds like such detail

1:04:03

oriented, high skill, high

1:04:05

investment. Like you just mentioned, like

1:04:07

we include a solvent. We've thought about this. We've tried to

1:04:09

fix it ourselves. What does it

1:04:11

take for you to run a successful company?

1:04:14

Yeah, I mean, it's painstaking detail or any

1:04:16

work. It is figuring out

1:04:18

just like what? Okay, cool. We

1:04:20

got this battery for this laptop. Which different

1:04:22

laptops is it compatible with? We

1:04:25

sell thousands of different batteries. And so identifying

1:04:27

the cross compatibility is really important. The

1:04:30

objective is to present it to you. You go

1:04:33

and I fix it. You plug in your device

1:04:35

model. We find you the part and we

1:04:37

say, yes, we have complete confidence. This will

1:04:39

work in your device. We'll guarantee compatibility. We'll

1:04:41

put a lifetime warranty on the part. That's

1:04:43

the experience we want to provide to people

1:04:45

behind the scenes. It's a lot of database

1:04:48

munging and spreadsheets and parsing

1:04:50

opaque information. Sometimes in the

1:04:52

case of Apple products, it

1:04:54

involves painstakingly swapping and testing.

1:04:56

Is this particular antenna

1:04:58

or ribbon cable, does it work in the 15 and the

1:05:00

15 Pro? Does it work in

1:05:02

the, which different versions is it working?

1:05:05

And so our technicians are painstakingly

1:05:07

testing all of that and then

1:05:09

creating compatibility spreadsheets and then that

1:05:12

at the end of the day, that just adds up to

1:05:15

this cohesive experience where we tell you whether it will

1:05:17

fit or not. I love that you

1:05:20

have the part as an option

1:05:22

as well as the fix it kit. Because

1:05:24

here I'm thinking, gosh, I've got a Nintendo Switch for

1:05:26

my son. Thankfully, we haven't

1:05:28

had a battery issue yet. We primarily leave

1:05:30

it as a console connected to

1:05:32

its dock on our TV, but it does move

1:05:35

around sometimes. So I'm sure the battery

1:05:37

will eventually die down. I'm looking through the list. I'm

1:05:39

like, wow, there's a Nintendo Switch

1:05:41

console battery kit that

1:05:43

gives you all the tooling, which I

1:05:46

own some of those things already because I already told you I

1:05:48

bought your Pro bundle. But

1:05:50

then you can also just get the part

1:05:52

only. I guess I'll just

1:05:54

Google it, like Nintendo Switch battery replacement. Would I find

1:05:57

you if I Googled that? I hope

1:05:59

so. But I would encourage

1:06:01

people, just if you have something broken, just go

1:06:03

to iFixit and search for it. Google search is

1:06:05

so inconsistent. It's all over the map and I

1:06:08

spend a lot of my life. So

1:06:10

what was the result? You're first, I

1:06:12

believe. If you search

1:06:14

for the exact title, we should be first. I'd also

1:06:17

like to try how you'd normally search for it. Well,

1:06:19

I did. I searched exactly

1:06:21

what your title is, which is Nintendo

1:06:23

Switch Battery Replacement, thankfully. And

1:06:26

Craig Lloyd did this and nine other contributors

1:06:28

and his last updated March 6, 2024. So

1:06:31

that was yesterday. Someone's tweaking

1:06:33

that page yesterday. All right.

1:06:35

Apparently. Yeah, apparently. Well,

1:06:37

my son's birthday is today. So

1:06:39

maybe that's why. Maybe that's why. Oh,

1:06:42

there you go. Oh, we did it just for

1:06:44

his birthday. I mean, so that's part of, iFixit's

1:06:46

a wiki, right? So the original repair procedure that

1:06:49

we published is not the best one. It's

1:06:51

version one. And then over time, it gets better.

1:06:53

So if you're trying a repair on iFixit and

1:06:55

you notice an error or something is different, great.

1:06:59

Hit edit and update it. It happens

1:07:01

sometimes. Manufacturers change products as

1:07:03

different versions. And so the one I opened

1:07:05

and wrote the manual might have had six

1:07:08

screws. You might have seven. So

1:07:10

having that information is really helpful. I've

1:07:12

not dug this far in. I've only dipped

1:07:15

my toe in your iFixit waters. I've

1:07:17

got the badge over there. It's on my refrigerator.

1:07:20

I love that when I got my ProBundo. I got some

1:07:22

stickers. I think I got a magnet.

1:07:24

And I put that immediately on my refrigerator. I'm

1:07:27

like, yes, I got my fist up. I'm a

1:07:29

fixer. I can do this. And honestly, now that we're –

1:07:31

I want to say this early in the show, but we've been so

1:07:34

focused on the bigger picture here. I got to

1:07:36

credit you all for giving me the courage to – or

1:07:38

part of the many things giving me the courage to build

1:07:40

my own Linux box and

1:07:42

PC boxes because your guys were

1:07:44

so good at dismantling this

1:07:47

Mac Mini that I was like,

1:07:49

well, if I'm doing this, now

1:07:51

I have confidence to actually build something. Like, I never

1:07:53

had that confidence before to say, let me source the

1:07:56

CPU, the motherboard. I just never did it. I

1:07:58

had this always bought – I'm not doing it. a Mac

1:08:00

computer or a Dell computer back in the

1:08:02

day when I was on Windows. Yes, there was a day when I was

1:08:05

on Windows. And I want to say like you're

1:08:08

a part of the many layers of gaining confidence and

1:08:10

trust in the fact that I can do some of these

1:08:12

things myself. And now I'm like, well, if I wanted

1:08:14

to build another – now I'm deep into

1:08:16

home lab and building my own things and building up

1:08:18

my home lab, like it's just like a gateway drug

1:08:20

in a way or a gateway path to

1:08:22

this idea. Are you

1:08:24

pretty popular? Are you

1:08:27

pretty – I feel like the more of

1:08:29

the people in the world should know this

1:08:31

because there's a refrigerator epidemic.

1:08:34

Like I don't know how much you pay attention to. I

1:08:37

call my refrigerator Cadillac because it costs so dang

1:08:39

much. I'm like – and my sons have

1:08:41

remote control cars in the house. I'm like don't hit the

1:08:43

refrigerator because it's my Cadillac. I

1:08:45

think it was like $3,500. I mean it's our primary refrigerator.

1:08:48

It's the one we have in our kitchen. I

1:08:53

think some people have too. We happen to

1:08:55

have two because we have a large family and people

1:08:57

come over and we need room for Thanksgiving dinner

1:08:59

and stuff like that. But anyways, aside

1:09:01

from having two, my kitchen

1:09:03

aid in my refrigerator – my kitchen is

1:09:06

my Cadillac. I don't want to

1:09:08

have to repurpose or rebuy that thing because it's

1:09:10

just so expensive. And there's

1:09:12

a refrigerator epidemic where there's failure after failure after

1:09:14

failure. And some

1:09:16

people want to say, okay, well, it was because of the pandemic

1:09:18

and all the shifting with

1:09:21

the parts manufacturing and distribution. You're shaking

1:09:23

your head. No. Are

1:09:25

you in that realm too? Does I

1:09:27

fix it? Okay, tell me. Oh, very

1:09:29

much so. Yeah, search for ice makers

1:09:31

on it. Fix it. Okay. Yeah,

1:09:34

we have thousands of parts for fixing

1:09:36

appliances. Actually, what

1:09:38

I'm spending much of my time now

1:09:40

is parsing through databases of appliance. We

1:09:42

have – I think we've identified 100,000

1:09:45

different refrigerator model numbers in our database.

1:09:48

We're adding more all the time. So, yeah,

1:09:50

I think submission is to enable you to fix

1:09:52

everything. We take that pretty seriously. We're the largest

1:09:54

database of power tool parts, of

1:09:57

Medical equipment, you name it.. Hundred

1:10:00

is in particular were very six is on right

1:10:02

now. Part of this is this as we had

1:10:04

electronic some more more products the getting shorter lived

1:10:06

for fridge useless thirty years now the last five.

1:10:09

Why is that? Well it's because we like put

1:10:11

tablets inside them like they have to worry about

1:10:13

Security updates is all these website says check for

1:10:15

security of these for your fridge or it or

1:10:17

every other month a kid you not that's and

1:10:19

they're a fake you. And.

1:10:22

Then the A what's their plan to replace

1:10:24

capacitors when they fail? So these are things

1:10:26

that we need to we need to be

1:10:28

thinking about or and I think we in

1:10:30

the in the software electronics industry bears some

1:10:32

brought responsibility for this. Were doing a hot

1:10:34

meal cool the things we don't I'm but

1:10:36

long devotee and then everyone else wants to

1:10:38

make their boring old products hip and cool

1:10:41

new gadget and is less her com is

1:10:43

that come with. It. Now. On

1:10:45

the refrigerator and particular like. I. Don't

1:10:47

know and by a my by no

1:10:50

means a. Free. On expert

1:10:52

or how refrigerator works but I can't

1:10:54

imagine that. We've. Had these things for

1:10:56

a while now. And. The mean innovation

1:10:58

has been like windows to see what's

1:11:00

inside. maybe your grocery list added to

1:11:03

it's in a things like that blink

1:11:05

the asshole refrigeration. You might have multiple

1:11:07

things, you might have multiple zones you

1:11:09

might have the open for which can

1:11:11

be either refrigerator. Or. A freezer and

1:11:13

I girl that there's a lot of high tech things

1:11:15

happening in there. Are. More at least as

1:11:17

a complex. Not much hi tech, How.

1:11:19

Do we allow things like this to

1:11:21

be manufactured? That doesn't

1:11:24

house. I suppose a

1:11:26

standard seems like planned obsolescence or

1:11:28

just screwed up. Don't.

1:11:30

Care sell an expensive thing and just

1:11:32

don't care. Because. You're a corporation

1:11:34

you could hide behind a warranty. I

1:11:36

mean, there's people who choose to hunt

1:11:38

down their warranty. And like you said

1:11:40

before, if I'm an X, y or

1:11:42

z, how far away as the apples

1:11:44

or same thing here, how close is

1:11:46

A in Quotes authorized. Repair. Person

1:11:49

and. i was watching

1:11:51

an episode of on the comments as

1:11:53

much i guess a video of lose

1:11:55

rothmans it was a samsung repair person

1:11:58

authorized repair person he put a Box

1:12:00

cutter knife through the person's TV so

1:12:03

that he can get off earlier. I'll

1:12:06

link it up for the show notes,

1:12:08

but is the authorized dealer slash repair

1:12:10

person or folks even for

1:12:13

you so that you can get

1:12:15

your warranty covered? Sure, things break. Get it. Totally get

1:12:17

it. But shouldn't it be

1:12:19

standardized to be built in a way

1:12:21

so that it can be repaired and

1:12:24

not have to be down

1:12:26

for months or weeks with a refrigerator?

1:12:29

Yeah, but so the problem up front is

1:12:31

you don't know and so if you're a

1:12:33

company, you have a choice A or choice

1:12:35

B, which one do I get? And people

1:12:37

don't know, then it's random and there's no

1:12:39

incentive to make the more repairable product. It

1:12:41

is more effort. Sometimes it's more cost. And

1:12:43

so we have to find a way as

1:12:45

a market as consumers to reward the companies

1:12:47

that do a good job. Patagonia makes products

1:12:49

are really designed to stand the test of

1:12:51

time to charge a premium for it. Cool.

1:12:55

How do we do that in the refrigerator

1:12:57

world? Right? Which fridges are more repairable are going

1:13:00

to last longer than others. So how do we find

1:13:02

that out? Consumer Reports? Well,

1:13:04

that's why we need repair labeling. It's hard.

1:13:06

Consumer Reports doesn't factor it in. Wire

1:13:08

cutter doesn't factor it in. I can show you

1:13:10

product after product that Wirecutter has recommended that have

1:13:12

failed because Wirecutter's review is this is what it's

1:13:15

like the first week you have the thing. They

1:13:18

spend a lot of time in a week, but they don't spend time

1:13:20

longer than that. So the easiest

1:13:22

proxy in a world

1:13:25

where we don't have a repair scoring system is to look up

1:13:27

front and see can I get repair parts for that thing? If

1:13:29

I'm going to buy a $3,500 refrigerator,

1:13:31

are they selling parts for it? Are they selling

1:13:33

parts for the equivalent of this that they sold

1:13:35

seven years ago? Are those still available? That's how

1:13:37

you start to get a feeling of what that

1:13:39

company's ecosystem is like. I wouldn't even know

1:13:41

where to begin. Just pick the

1:13:43

new thing and just Google blah blah blah spare parts

1:13:45

and see if they're out there. I'll

1:13:48

give you an example. Shark Ninja makes a lot

1:13:50

of plastic blenders and vacuums and that kind of

1:13:52

thing. It's impossible to find parts for them. Well,

1:13:54

speaking of them, I just want to blend something this

1:13:56

morning on one of their things and the

1:13:59

blender didn't work anymore. I just bought it a year ago. Ah,

1:14:01

what's so upset about that? I hope

1:14:04

the company comes around because we've written lots of repair

1:14:06

guides for their stuff when I fix it. But right

1:14:08

now, their products are effectively disposable because I don't know

1:14:10

where to tell you to get the spare part for

1:14:12

your blender. They should. If you go

1:14:14

with a higher end, if you got a

1:14:16

Blendtec or with one of the higher end

1:14:18

blenders, those companies do make parts available. They

1:14:20

do sell them. So it

1:14:23

can be, you know, flip of the coin, you

1:14:25

don't know. And that's why upfront, you have to

1:14:27

do your research before you buy the thing. Unfortunately,

1:14:30

it's a little hard to do the research. So

1:14:32

we publish repair scores on iFixit. We've been scoring

1:14:34

things for a while. So we

1:14:37

rate all the new smartphones when they come out. We give it a

1:14:39

score from one to 10. So we're trying

1:14:41

to help, but I'm not consumer reports.

1:14:43

I can't score everything in the world. Yeah,

1:14:46

I know. It's

1:14:48

a lot of work to do the things that

1:14:50

Divers does, for example, which they do a great

1:14:52

job of, from a media standpoint, gauging

1:14:55

and judging and their

1:14:57

media model or their funding models, they're

1:15:00

very different than yours or mine might be. Yeah.

1:15:03

And I would give Sean Hollister credit

1:15:06

at the Verge because he will disassemble products and

1:15:08

talk about the insides of them. But you don't

1:15:10

see very many tech journalists do this, but. Are

1:15:13

there places like I know in software

1:15:15

engineering and software development and the tech

1:15:18

world, so to speak, there's lots of

1:15:20

conferences or gatherings, community

1:15:22

gatherings. If someone was like listening

1:15:25

to this, then we get steeped in this beyond just simply

1:15:27

going to I fix it and following you and the different

1:15:29

things that you are publishing and what we

1:15:32

point to from this podcast to get

1:15:34

involved into the in quotes community. Where

1:15:36

does this community hang out? If

1:15:39

you're listening to this in your repair shop or

1:15:41

your repair professional, I would encourage you to come

1:15:43

to the electronics reuse summit or

1:15:45

ereuseconference.com. That's kind

1:15:48

of the closest thing in Austin

1:15:50

in October. I'm gonna go there then. I live in

1:15:52

Austin. Okay, well, come on down. You'll be

1:15:54

there? Yeah, I'll be there. So

1:15:57

ereuse.com. ereuseconference.com.

1:16:00

Okay, so I went to the wrong thing.

1:16:02

E-reuse conference. It's being renamed

1:16:04

the Electronic Sustainability Summit, but that really

1:16:06

is where the repair shops come to

1:16:08

hang out. I'd love to

1:16:11

definitely dig deeper into this because I've, for

1:16:13

many, many years now, I've had like a peripheral

1:16:16

– I've had an interest, but a peripheral

1:16:18

vantage point, I suppose, to

1:16:21

this movement. And I feel like even

1:16:23

here on this podcast and what we

1:16:25

do around here, especially this kind of conversation,

1:16:27

it's not software developer

1:16:30

at large kind of conversation, but it's very

1:16:32

much steeped in the things we

1:16:34

care about. As technologists,

1:16:37

I wear ear pods. Jared wears ear pods.

1:16:39

I'm sure that somebody's listening right now with

1:16:41

a set of ear pods on – or

1:16:43

air pods. That's not ear pods, air pods.

1:16:46

Okay, so lots to do. You kind of

1:16:48

red-pilled me a little bit here. I've already

1:16:50

been eating the red pill on this movement

1:16:52

anyways. What is a good

1:16:54

next step if someone's like, okay, maybe

1:16:57

this conference, the electronics reuse conference

1:16:59

here in Austin later this year, October 22nd to the

1:17:01

24th here in Austin, Texas? It's

1:17:05

one event. The entire industry is

1:17:08

there, apparently. That's what it says on the website, just reading

1:17:10

it for you all. What

1:17:12

else – where else should folks go? What's a good

1:17:14

place to go further? I mean, I

1:17:16

think the first thing is the next thing you have

1:17:18

that breaks, just try to fix it. The worst that

1:17:20

happens is it stays broken, right? That's fine. Maybe you

1:17:23

break it a little more. That's okay. It's already broken.

1:17:26

Beyond that, if you really want to get involved,

1:17:28

get involved with your state rate-to-repair organization. In

1:17:31

every state, if you go

1:17:34

to oregon.repair.org or connecticut.repair.org, texas.repair.org,

1:17:36

that will connect you with

1:17:38

a form to write your

1:17:40

legislator. Just fill out and drop

1:17:42

them a note and just say, hey, really support

1:17:44

Write Your Repair Bill. Right now, 27

1:17:46

out of 50 states have introduced bills so far

1:17:49

this year. We expect more are coming. Every

1:17:51

single one of those needs support from citizens

1:17:54

to get engaged and push their elected representatives.

1:17:57

Who is behind repair.org? Yes,

1:17:59

sir. Repair Org is a trade

1:18:01

association representing repair shops. I'm

1:18:04

on the board. There are advocates

1:18:06

and folks at the Electronic Frontier

1:18:08

Foundation. Their legal director is on

1:18:11

the board. Consumer Reports is very

1:18:13

involved. Other organizations that do repair

1:18:15

in data centers, there's folks who

1:18:18

do ag equipment, right to

1:18:20

repair advocacy. It's a great organization

1:18:23

and it's almost entirely focused on

1:18:25

advocacy and policy work. Are they

1:18:27

involved at all in this upcoming

1:18:29

conference too? Yeah,

1:18:31

they'll be exhibiting and

1:18:34

they'll be speaking. Usually we have a right to

1:18:36

repair state of the union round table and talk

1:18:38

about what's going on. What's left?

1:18:40

What's left unsaid? What do we not cover? What do you

1:18:43

want to say on the way out? I think it's

1:18:45

pretty comprehensive. I think it's just like we can

1:18:47

make the world we want to live in. Decide

1:18:50

how important repairability is to you. There

1:18:52

are brands increasingly starting to pay attention

1:18:54

to this. Lenovo just announced their flagship

1:18:56

business laptop. It has upgradable RAM again.

1:18:58

They had taken away. They brought it

1:19:00

back and it got a 9 out

1:19:03

of 10 on our scorecard, which is

1:19:05

really good. So companies

1:19:07

are starting to pay attention. We need to reward

1:19:09

them for that and continue to demand it from

1:19:11

the rest of the companies we interact with. Yeah.

1:19:13

All right. We'll leave it there, Kyle. Thank you

1:19:15

so much for taking the time to talk. Thank you for

1:19:18

giving me a deep dive into you. Like I said, I'm

1:19:20

a fan of iFixit. I hadn't gotten

1:19:23

a D for back stores. I was very encouraged

1:19:25

to have this conversation with you. Yeah. And

1:19:27

I got my magnet over there in my

1:19:29

refrigerator. I'm a fixer. I'm a fixer. Sounds

1:19:32

great. Thanks a lot, Adam. It was great

1:19:34

to meet you. Thanks, Kyle. Well

1:19:40

I have to be honest because I'm an honest

1:19:42

person. Of course, as you know. I

1:19:45

didn't know Kyle Weans until

1:19:47

this conversation, I

1:19:49

had been a purchaser, a

1:19:51

consumer, a fan of ifixit.com,

1:19:56

even a user of Their

1:19:58

tooling and did not know. Oh

1:20:00

how deep Kyle went into this

1:20:02

rabbit hole. My gosh, we have

1:20:04

a right to repair and we

1:20:07

have a right to fix the

1:20:09

things we have. We have a

1:20:11

right to have Apple and others

1:20:13

who decides who gluing batteries and

1:20:16

bloggers shrugs and not take the

1:20:18

responsibility to plan for the recycling

1:20:20

of their electronics to do so.

1:20:22

It is a blight on the

1:20:25

world and they are leaving their

1:20:27

footprints with our dollars. Okay author

1:20:29

so. Box that was awesome! So

1:20:32

had such a fun time

1:20:34

talking this through a tile

1:20:36

and I hope that you

1:20:38

learn something along with me

1:20:40

in this episode is Kyle

1:20:42

and his work is new

1:20:44

to you. his advocacy I

1:20:46

six it.com anything whatsoever. Come

1:20:48

in slack and say how

1:20:50

low So if you win

1:20:52

their British Sailors you seem

1:20:54

to on.com/community you are welcome.

1:20:56

Hang your hat, call it

1:20:58

home know imposters at. All

1:21:00

you Yes, you listen to this.

1:21:02

Yeah you, you're welcome. They're so

1:21:05

please. Them cheese? well.com/community Okay, one

1:21:07

more thing. I sort of the

1:21:09

show off Color joke in about

1:21:12

an ad for the tech bundle

1:21:14

Apotex bundle. Assessment of fact, I

1:21:16

don't. I don't really care if

1:21:19

he gone by. You should go

1:21:21

and buy it if you need

1:21:23

some good tooling. I bought it

1:21:25

and now that I know that

1:21:28

purchase funds directly A Spaces. About

1:21:30

it directly from isis.com I so that's

1:21:32

kind of cool to find that his

1:21:35

advocacy. And their advocacy for

1:21:37

this right to repair movement and

1:21:39

have people like him on the

1:21:41

front. mines funding for you so

1:21:44

you for me and funny for

1:21:46

future generations. rights to the technology,

1:21:48

we buy and use Everything that.

1:21:51

So. Go but if you want

1:21:53

to don't either way I like it

1:21:55

and you might like a to a

1:21:57

ah. But what I can say

1:21:59

art. Through advertisements is for our

1:22:01

friends at Till Skill, our friends

1:22:04

at since three in our friends

1:22:06

and I Q and Rocky Linux

1:22:08

love tail scale you know my

1:22:10

cell that is near and dear

1:22:13

to my heart. and of course

1:22:15

that hundred coupon as sensory use

1:22:17

the code seems odd to get

1:22:20

one hundred bucks off the team

1:22:22

plan that's so cool. Alert to

1:22:24

and of course see X Use

1:22:26

hard work to stand up and

1:22:29

support Rocky Linux! Be free and

1:22:31

open source enterprise linux platform. Wow!

1:22:33

Some good work out there and

1:22:35

I'm happy to have those that's

1:22:37

a false as sponsors of our

1:22:40

concept though of that stuff they're

1:22:42

amazing and of course the home

1:22:44

of she's other com flight I

1:22:46

hope to seek them out Fly.i

1:22:48

almost there for free near users

1:22:51

to easy So fun We do

1:22:53

it We love it. used to

1:22:55

get out if you haven't done

1:22:57

so already and last but not

1:22:59

least. Break Master Cylinder.

1:23:02

Those beats a bang bang

1:23:04

so hard and love. Okay,

1:23:07

I'm done. That's it. Shows

1:23:09

done and the states in

1:23:12

for friends of my friends.