And Interpol. I should really find a more private truck one of these days.
The Tech Random Crap Thread
- Thread starter DarkAudit
- Start date
Intel predicted to finally introduce its own line of discrete GPUs in 2020. Some people think "it's about time," but I wonder if they're trying to hitch up to get a piece of all this Machine Learning and/or Cryptocurrency lucre.
Intel has already killed off the low-end market with their ABSOLUTE market dominance in integrated graphics (2 out of every 3 computers on the planet run Intel GPUs!), now it looks like Intel might be gunning for the 1050/1060 or R550/R560 category. AMD is already in bed with Intel, does this mean NVIDIA should be worried?
--Patrick
Intel has already killed off the low-end market with their ABSOLUTE market dominance in integrated graphics (2 out of every 3 computers on the planet run Intel GPUs!), now it looks like Intel might be gunning for the 1050/1060 or R550/R560 category. AMD is already in bed with Intel, does this mean NVIDIA should be worried?
--Patrick
Maybe it'll drive down some Nvidia GPU prices. I'd love to not have to wait 5 years each time they release a new card to be able to afford one. Most new NVIDIA cards (I almost wrote cars there and it would've been a Freudian slip) cost anywhere between 1/3 and 1/2 of my monthly mortgage payment and frequently cost more than my car payments did (back when I had car payments). Granted, if you hunt around and find a good manufacturer, and luck your way into a good card, they can last for years without having to RMA them six times; but the sticker shock up front is just insane. I can buy an entire laptop/chromebook/Microsoft Surface/iPad for less than some GPUs.
In short, no, it's not illegal to refuse to repair it any more than it's illegal to ban someone from your restaurant UNLESS you're trying to refuse service based on a protected class.
--Patrick
--Patrick
A
Anonymous
Anonymous
"I've been drinkin'" Is not a protected class. It's not an emergency. You already have a ride. No locals means no locals.
But what apple is doing is still pretty damn anti-consumer, but we all know that's par for the course.
Don't know if it's "anti-consumer" so much as "anti-3rd-party-repair" but as far as "par for the course" goes, that's pretty much everyone these days. NO company seems to want someone else to be able to repair their stuff, whether it be the whole "void-if-removed" sticker thing, the requirement for specialized tools or software, or just leveraging laws to make it so fixing them is outright illegal. Everyone these days seems like they're far more about creating a long tail of streamed revenue than moving a certain volume of units.
--Patrick
By blocking third party repair (whether it be a licensed repair shop or even the owner of they wish to do it themselves) they are limiting consumer choice, which to me is one of the very definitions of anti-consumer.
Emphasis added by me
And I don't use Apple btw.
Yes, but anti-consumer is not the same thing as illegal, though my understanding from reading other things is that other actions they do in pursuit of anti-repair ARE illegal.
And I don't use Apple btw.
I didn't say it was illegal. What they're doing, as far as I know, is currently legal in the US
Interesting retort to the EU's $5 fine of Google: Google reportedly offered Android changes to EU in 2017
May be hot air, but interesting nonetheless.
But let's turn it around and look at it from their perspective.
You make the next whiz-bang Frobbit, and in a few critical (to you) respects it handily beats out all the other Frobbit makers.
Your manufacturing process includes a rigorous calibration and inspection procedure that guarantees your Frobbits are better than the others in the aforementioned respects.
You provide repair services that similarly guarantee them in those respects, and you offer extended warranties and insurance for those who would like to use those services.
A third party offers to repair you Frobbits.
You can't guarantee that their repair process will bring them back to your standard. The unit comes back to the customer and they blame you, rather than the third party, for substandard equipment. Or it's resold and the new customer assumes all your products are just that way, and never tries your Frobbit line again.
It's not just a pocket lining exercise to make third party repair difficult, there are other reasons to encourage users to send them to you.
Yes, there's also pocket lining going on, but assuming that their intentions are only malicious is probably not a reasonable assumption to make.
And that's why cars and many other things are "warranty void if opened/tampered with". I can still take my Kia to a non-Kia dealer and have them replace my...errr....something-motory-part, I'll simply lose that sweet 7 year warranty I have on it.
Umm, in many places, that's illegal. In Canada at least, you can take your car to anywhere, and it's still fine for warranty. It's on the dealer to PROVE that a repair shop fucked something up, rather than saying "it was TOUCHED somewhere else, we're free!" They certainly cultivate the impression that you'd better take it to the dealer for all service, or warranty void, but up here at least, that's not required.
In this case, it was "No, we won't repair your frobbit, and we will do our best to ensure no one else can, either."
figmentPez
Staff member
That's not true. "Warranty void if opened" stickers are not only a bluff, but they're illegal. You cannot void your warranty simply by opening your device yourself, nor can you void it by having a 3rd party do a repair.
figmentPez
Staff member
It is a very difficult thing to learn in this world that not all evil is malicious. Some evil is done with the best of intentions. No matter what Apple's motivations are, their actions are still anti-consumer; and ultimately I believe that they cause harm to Apple as well, though that is harder to prove.
There's a difference between legal minimum warranties - which tot can't lose - and manufacturer or seller based extra warranties, which you can and will (sometimes) lose when you do stuff yourself.
And @figmentPez : I didn't say I agreed with that, I just said it's a thing that exists. Kia's 7 year full warranty is rendered void if you either skip a maintenance check-up, or don't have it done by an official dealer/repair shop. In which case, of course, you fall back on the legal minimum warranties.
And @figmentPez : I didn't say I agreed with that, I just said it's a thing that exists. Kia's 7 year full warranty is rendered void if you either skip a maintenance check-up, or don't have it done by an official dealer/repair shop. In which case, of course, you fall back on the legal minimum warranties.
figmentPez
Staff member
Laws must be different where you are, because I can't find any information that would lead me to believe that what you're saying is true in the US. The neither the FTC article I linked, nor the Mag-Moss warranty act give any indication that it only applies to "legal minimum warraties". I'm not even sure there is such a thing as a "legal minimum warranty".
This FTC article firmly refutes what you're saying.
"The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the nation's consumer protection agency, says no. In fact, it's illegal for a dealer to deny your warranty coverage simply because you had routine maintenance or repairs performed by someone else. "
I’m not automatically assuming anyone has malicious motives, I’m just calling out the increasing pervasiveness of this business model across all durable goods, where a company tries to maintain control of all the stages of its products’ life cycles, often even after those products’ death.
—Patrick
I think you are misunderstanding me, too. This is not specifically an Apple thing.
This is about how common it is becoming for modern manufacturers to work to cement a strategy where the post-purchase options are artificially limited to just ones provided by that same manufacturer, and how that number is increasing as more and more companies see how lucrative that model can be.
—Patrick
Last edited:
Small question. A USB cable broke around here, so I'm going to get a new one. Ideally, USB 3.0 micro.
However, every 3.0 micro cable I've seen has the "larger" connector like this:
instead of the smaller connector like this:
On my girlfriend's phone, both are fine. My phone, though, doesn't take the bigger version. Does the combination simply not exist, and do I have to use a USB 2.0 cable if I want it to have the second type of connector? Or is it just my google that's failing me?
However, every 3.0 micro cable I've seen has the "larger" connector like this:
instead of the smaller connector like this:
On my girlfriend's phone, both are fine. My phone, though, doesn't take the bigger version. Does the combination simply not exist, and do I have to use a USB 2.0 cable if I want it to have the second type of connector? Or is it just my google that's failing me?
You will need to use a USB 2.0 connector. It will plug into both phones. It'll only run at USB 2 speeds on the 3 capable phone, but if that's an issue the only solution is two separate cables.
USB C is where it's at these days, and eventually new phones will support it instead of USB micro.
Post automatically merged:
USB C is where it's at these days, and eventually new phones will support it instead of USB micro.
I figured as much, thanks for the confirmation.
And yeah, I know, but I'm not buying two new phones just for a different connector
If you look carefully, you will see that the wider side of the USB3 micro connector is the same as the USB2 micro, it just has that adjacent expansion to handle the additional wires present in a standard USB3 connection. In other words, if it doesn’t have that extra piece, then it can’t be USB3.
The same is true of the USB “B” (square) connector, which also has a sidecar full of additional wires while maintaining physical backward compatibility with USB2.
—Patrick
The same is true of the USB “B” (square) connector, which also has a sidecar full of additional wires while maintaining physical backward compatibility with USB2.
—Patrick
figmentPez
Staff member
Logitech is acquiring Blue Microphones
It will be interesting to see what they do with their product lines in the future.
It will be interesting to see what they do with their product lines in the future.
This was worth the read IMO: The Bullshit Web
Basically about how the hell do we have 6x (or better) speeds these days, and it still takes 30s to load major websites? His answer is all the advertising and "not the content we want" on the pages bogging everything down.
Not a perfect article, but a good one IMO.
Basically about how the hell do we have 6x (or better) speeds these days, and it still takes 30s to load major websites? His answer is all the advertising and "not the content we want" on the pages bogging everything down.
Not a perfect article, but a good one IMO.
You might also be interested in this article, which is about how people are successfully pushing over 650Tb/s through a single optical fiber.
...and really, any major telecom who says “it would be too hard to roll out fiber to every resident” at this point is really saying, “we don’t want to lose our revenue stream from being able to charge separately for phone and TV service.”
—Patrick
The robots will take over because they'll say "please don't kill me" apparently: New study finds it’s harder to turn off a robot when it’s begging for its life