As much as I love this, I fail to see how this would be able to be written into law. It’s basically gov mandated warranty period. If the goal is to have manufacturers make products that last, how long is long enough? What’s to say that they do the same thing and design products that fail right after warranty ends? Who decides if there is foul play in designing faulty products and how? Unless the gov makes their own product that lasts for 20 years and tells every other company to use this as a baseline otherwise get fined, I don’t know how they would be able to enforce this.
I just think this is a big gray area and it would be hard to make this cut and clear. The only thing I think they could do for now is to have companies provide repair manuals and provide parts for a set amount of years after product launch, and repairs should be able to be made by customers themselves without needing to go through 1st party verification like Apple requires with their phones.
Think you answered your own question there.
Mandated warranty periods. Pretty straight forward.
And they currently engineer product to have things fail right after their warranty expires, so, that’s not really a concern, since we’re already living with the that.
Which is exactly my point of why mandated warranty period does not really fix the core of the problem, which is intentionally making products not last. It’s just a bandaid solution (Yes I know a solution is still better than nothing, and may be the first step to address this issue). What I want to see is prolonging the life of a product by letting consumers freely fix their own stuff (parts, schematics, etc.) without the manufacturer locking things down, even after the warranty expires.
Let’s not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Mandated warranty minimums and right to repair regulations are not mutually exclusive. We can do both, even if we don’t do them at the same time.
Samsung: god damnit, now we have to use the $0.30 washer instead of the $0.29 washer and itll last at least 10 years longer!
That’s 10s of millions in extra sales lost!
The spirit is willing, but the machine is spongy and bruised.
Bullshit. My aunt has a washing machine with all knobs and switches that’s probably 30+ years old and it still works fine.
They need to stop putting all these digital components into washing machines or make the boards standardized so they can be easily swapped out. These aren’t laptops that you toss after 3-5 years. Appliances should last 10-20 years.
Laptops should last longer than 3-5 years too. It should go without saying, but this is the internet.
Agreed but in most larger businesses swap out the laptops around 3-5 years.
Consumers use laptop 5-10+ until they die.
Framework like modular laptop would fix this. Need a new screen? No problem. Need a new processor? No problem.
Upgrade whatever is outdated and just that
Yeah but imagine if we had a laptop motherboard standard like desktops.
Instead of ATX it would be something like MLF - Modular Laptop Framework
Where there would be some board standard for laptop boards.
Then you get screen ribbon standards, keyboard ribbon standards, etc.
This would allow one to order a laptop case with screen, keyboard and touchpad. But you can pick your board, cpu, ram.
I know some companies have done GPU upgrades but how nice would it be to upgrade your 4 year old $3k laptop’s GPU?
Oh look! So much progress is being made since USA embargoed itself!
I know this is a joke, but it is important to point out for others that such policies get years to be designed, discussed and published in the EU.
And this law came into effect last July
Imagine - government “of the people, by the people, and for the people” - that’s crazy SoCiAlIsM talk!
Longer means more forever chemicals
I’d love to hear how you came to that conclusion.
Not necessarily, you can use more steel, stronger parts. And if forever chemicals become a problem, you can regulate them just like with everything else. Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.
Do you even know what forever chemicals are or do you think they’re a magic thing that are added to machines to make them last longer?
Companies literally add pfas to everything to make things last longer
Ahhh, so you are the type of dumb that heard the name and assumed the wrong interpretation and ran with it. The so-called “forever chemicals” are called that because they themselves don’t really break down, but they don’t give that property to other things. These “forever chemicals” are stuff like teflon, they’re stuff that doesn’t react with other things and that makes them nonstick, something that can be useful in a bunch of different things besides just nonstick pans, but because they’re so nonstick, it’s difficult to make them stay in the pan or whatever industrial machine they’re a part of, so they can flake off and be in the end product, in our food, water, soil and much more, and since like I said before they’re not reactive, they can just stay there as their molecules, forever. Using them in a machine doesn’t give the machine more durability or extends it’s work life, it just helps it not stick to stuff
Right, so if they break down faster the forever chemicals disappear faster. Is that what you mean?
Back to the good old days when products were of higher quality. What a concept.
We have a Bosch washing machine we bought second hand 15 years ago for £50. It’s basic, not digital, but has all the functions we need. We’ve never had a problem with it. It will break one day but I’m hoping it lasts a lot longer still.
Bosch makes good appliances.
And to a world where repairing is both possible and feasible.
I’ve heard this from service techs who have worked on my refrigerator and dishwasher - major appliances in America last a third as long as they did 10 or 15 years ago.
I can tell you from firsthand experience it’s even worse than that. I had a washer that lasted me damn near 20 years that was made in the 90s. Finally decided to get a new set from Samsung. Made it just past warranty, or basically 1 year. The repair would have cost as much as the washer was new. Similar experience with an LG fridge. Bought it and the ice machine broke in it, TWICE, within the first year. Fuck these brands and their established hold on the market.
My washing machine is around 25 years old. Not giving it up till its absolutely done haha. But since parts are relatively available, it might just be a few more years.
And that’s nothing. You know how they’re pushing for washing machines, dishwashers, etc. to be internet connected? Currently they’re forcing this for data mining purposes. But I have no doubt their real goal is to eventually make these devices like printers, with expensive consumables locked in by internet-connected DRM. They’ve already gotten people used to using dish and clothes detergent pods. How long until they’re putting everything in plastic cartridges, locking things down with DRM, and charging like printer companies do?
they are truly junk. the only goal of American industry, it seems, is to make more money than ever.
Always has been.
Money burns the world to the ground
Now, this is the trading standards that we all ask for; not “be more racist” or repeal the protection on lgbt. Christ, American fascism is the weirdest i have seen. Fascism in the past didn’t even try to dictate the laws and regulations of other countries.
“We will stop our tariffs if you accept our diseased, chlorinated chicken”
I don’t even understand what fascism means in each case on lemmy and whether it is a fixed term or some adaptive catch it all
What exactly is there to dispute with a government that is trying to carve a unitary executive out of a 3 branch system, admires Nazis, has ties to actual neo-Nazis and leaders who have literally seig heiled, and is currently turning an agency into the gestapo and deporting anyone he wants to concentration camps?
I usually go by Umberto Eco’s points but some scholars added their own. By and large, most agree that aspects such as militarism, demonization of out-groups, belief in a strongman authority figure, and lack recognition of civil rights and liberties are key characteristics of fascism. Trump 2.0 has most if not all the characteristics of fascism. Even now, Trump refuses to comply with court orders, has police harass and grab people without lawful warrant, demonizes out-groups and threatening military action.
I think it is rather controversial to use it in this way
Yes, because then you have to recognize a lot of communists as fascist. Dessalines won’t like that.
“Red fascist” is a term used pejoratively, you know?
There are scholarly consensus already. It is not controversial. Unless you are trying to muddy the water.
Scholarly consensus that some president is fascist?
Fascism is a precise term for a specific political movement not some “I don’t like this” adjective
Trump is the president who happens to be the leading figure of MAGA movement and Project 2025, which are unquestionably fascist movements, and seeing as how his administration deliberately ignore court rulings and thereby undermining civil liberties, which is the key characteristic of fascism.
key characteristic of fascism
That’s not true and even a glance at first encyclopaedia you can get your hands on can disprove this. This is a very broad characteristic of many ideologies such as Bolshevism
This is a good first step. The next would be to lower the ridiculous amount of electronics in them and remove wifi and telemetry functionality. A dish washer should never have to connect to a server to do its job.
I would like it to come with an open source firmware that I could connect to my locally hosted servers.
I would enjoy mapping out load weights, water and electricity consumption, and cross reference that with a lot of other stuff. Plus some remote controls, and a better interface to choosing washing programs and scheduling start/end…
I just don’t want any of that data to leave my house, ever.
Exactly this. Wifi is awesome. Some opaque server on the internet is not. Let me home assistant the shit out that load of dishes.
And have an easily accessed setting to turn it all off if you don’t want it. I’d even be okay with a physical switch. The short answere is, your appliance should do what you and only you want it to do, and you should be able to enforce that.
When buying future appliances, I have to be sure to get them from the EU. Standards in the US are going to be below the floor.
I’m liking the sound of “Made in EU = high quality”
Prepare to pay out the ass for that though. Between tariffs and a weakening dollar.
If you are in the EU yourself it’s not that bad. All my appliances are actually made in Germany, and they were mid-price (BSH and Liebherr, a bit more expensive than chinese/korean but with better efficiency, warranties and reviews).
Why? We don’t buy products like this from the US. If its imported its coming from China.
Quick edit: I clearly misread the comment you replied to
I think about the lightbulb cartel all the time. How has no one managed to recreate those super long lasting bulbs in all this time?
They can and have been recreated. They just suck due to having very low light output.
Aren’t led “bulbs” really durable? I’m using mostly led and feel like they last longer because they don’t heat up and cool down as bad…
IIRC in LEDs its normally the transformer that dies rather than the LED.
Electronics in general should last longer, just like back in the day.
Well yes it’s ridiculous we have (in EU) a mandatory warranty of only 2 years on anything electronic.
Phones should be 5 years. Appliances should be 10 and cars 15 or 200k kilometers. How have we normalized the fact that it’s okay for a car to break down after two years and the manufacturer is not on the hook ?
Plenty of short-lived stuff back then, too. Survivorship bias means that all the stuff that happened to survive to today is not necessarily representative of the typical thing that was manufactured back then.
We really need to stop with this “build to break” mentality for products. Our wastes, as humanity, would significantly lower and reduce wastes…. But hey, we also have to think of the investor’s, right?
Hell yeah. This is the good shit.
And work without apps.
You can buy LED lightbulbs that all have their own apps. It’s getting ridiculous
Just use home assistant, you don’t need their hubs/apps (assuming they use a standard like Zigbee or zwave). For wifi try tasmota.
To be fair most do work without the app. The app is for remote control and other features like colors usually.
Do like Dubai (for this instance) and demand better LED bulbs too.
If you read into it, the video is misleading and the bulbs aren’t as good as it claims. They don’t go out but they suck when it comes to the light they produce
That’s too bad, I haven’t kept up with the news I. That I guess. The main problem I saw was that specifically Dubai preferred cold white light, while that should have nothing to do with longevity, the only place I can tolerate that is in my workshop, where I already have LED florescent replacements.
This drives me nuts. I only buy Philips LEDs now since the others only seem to last a year, which is infuriating.
I only use IKEA, and they last forever for me.
That’s weird. I tried IKEA first and they died super quick too. Only thing that makes sense to me is they are somehow overheating which doesn’t make sense since they weren’t fully enclosed and room temp is normal.
Maybe I’ve give them ago again, it was 5+ years ago I tried them.
My first Led for a regular lamp at home was an Osram for nearly 20€. It died after ca. 3 years. After that Ikea had launched their cheap LEDs and I started buying them. I can’t really say how long each of them lasted, but I moved and started reusing them in different lamps. I guess most of them are over 5 years old by now. Every now and then one of them dies but my subjective feelings is that they offer great value.
