I work in an operating room, and have been around long enough to see multiple pieces of perfectly good equipment get replaced just because it hit the manufacturer’s end-of-life date.
I’m talking things like a several-hundred-thousand dollar microscope for microsurgery.
Basically that date means if the microscope fucks up somehow, the vendor takes zero liability, and any legal expenses fall onto the hospital… so we trash it and buy another one. Rinse and repeat after another few years.
That end-of-life date is always crazy early, and is like that 100% because the manufacturer knows hospitals would rather just treat a quarter million dollar microscope as disposable than accept liability for an equipment fault.
The waste is unreal.
Does this make hospitals good for dumpster diving? I’m only half kidding, but really, how would you dispose of this stuff? Would you just donate something like that to something less immediately critical to life like a research or education facility?
One of my old jobs had a pallet full of perfectly good PSUs, o-scopes, H bridges, and a bunch of miscellaneous data cables. They were all gonna be trashed either because their projects were cancelled or had a minor flaw they didn’t want to fix. My buddies and I rescued a bunch of equipment before the company padlocked it. My advice is be discreet. Companies hate it when people recover shit they throw out whether it be perfectly good equipment or food.
That makes me really sad. Our town dump has a pay-to-dispose system for electronics like that. It’s $15 to dump anything from laptops and monitors, to ancient hulking mainframes, industrial equipment, stage lighting, and all manner of other unwanted electronic things which doubtless spent time rotting in someone’s attic or basement before finally being considered as trash and hauled off for disposal. The disposal container has always had a “no scavenging” sign that I would ignore, and I’ve found some pretty sweet loot in there. Stuff like whole gaming PCs whose only problem is a single bad component, vintage analog turntables I’ve cleaned up and repaired, etc.
Recently, the shipping container in which these items are placed by their former owners was moved to a new spot under an existing security camera, and a sticker system was implemented. I’m starting to think they might be profiting on both ends from it (the disposal fee from residents and money from a recycler/salvage?) but I’m not quite sure. More likely they’re just overly worried about liability from someone doing something dumb or unexpected, and someone getting hurt, and/or simply maintaining the appearance of accountability. The camera only sees who and what is going in and out of the container though, not what happens inside there.
My latest strategy to defeat these measures has been to buy a sticker to gain access but bring two pieces of unwanted junk: one is the paid item - my “ticket”, so to speak - giving me the legitimacy of access to the shipping container, and another secret “replacement” item. I usually find some way to make these look like a single unit, which is easy, as what constitutes a single item is defined very loosely. As long as everything seems ok with that transaction, I drive over to the spot, back up to the shipping container entrance and open up the lift gate of my little hatchback, which partially blocks the camera’s view. Then I drop my legitimate “decoy” item, quickly try to find something good in there (I make sure it’s busy when I go, so there usually is) and then do a cheeky, sneaky sticker swap onto my secret item and whisk my quarry into the back of the car. If I don’t find something worth taking I just leave the whole bundle of both items as-is.
I assume they check and count stickers sold from the front office vs. actual items stickered at the end of each day or week, but they can’t feasibly keep track of what things are or who brought what. Any items you’ve brought can remain in your vehicle while you’re paying your dues at the fee station near the main entrance, and they don’t ever ask to check it if you seem halfway competent with their system and setup. I’m a known quantity (as far as they’re aware) so the most they ever do is glance at my vehicle and make sure it still has an unexpired sticker (these are issued by the town annually) which allows me to enter the facility in the first place. Then, after payment, you have to drive all the way across the facility to an area in the back, where the disposal container is. While you may encounter another worker there, it’s unlikely for them to connect the dots or even see the actual items at all until after you’ve left. Plus they’re perennially understaffed – usually just 2 or 3 overworked guys are handling everything that happens at a dump for a town of over 40,000. They’re usually doing something far more important than trying to bust petty rule breakers, like handling the mountain of human trash generated daily by all the wonderful consumer denizens of our middle-class suburb.
If there was an incident detected - signs of malfeasance or any other cause for concern - I assume it would be a reactive choice that cameras would be more closely scrutinized, your identifying details would be collected, and an investigation would ensue if deemed necessary. Otherwise, they simply don’t have the resources to track what’s what, and just kinda wing it with a process that seems tight at first glance, but is really still partially on an honor system. I also get the vibe they’re happy to be bringing any revenue at all for the town, and don’t necessarily care much unless flagrant violations occur or someone gets hurt or a suspicious pattern is noticed. Unless you’re really unlucky, simply the appearance of innocently following the established systems of dump bureaucracy and not being a jerk is enough to avoid arousing any suspicion at all.
It’s slightly unethical, objectively, according to some, sure, and I might get caught doing this eventually – but it’s hard to emphasize just how little I care about that. I’m willing to play dumb, act sorry, promise to behave in the future, take whatever minor slap on the wrist that follows, then eventually move onto whatever other weird game I end up playing with society next which tickles me in this specific way. It’s not like I’m selling any of this stuff; I fix it up and keep it for myself unless and until I find someone else who needs it more. You could call it a rationalization for petty theft concocted by an autistic mind, maybe that’s right, but in my estimation I’m not really doing any harm, since they end up with the same net number of items in the end, plus I bought a sticker with actual money, I’m disposing of items which are actually dead and useless, and I’m rescuing something else by extending its useful life. If the new thing I’ve acquired can’t be used or repurposed, and is indeed trash, that’s my new “ticket” for next time! Everything described above fits into quite nicely into my personal framework of morality, so fuck it. Plus it’s fun!
I feel like you have the ethical upper hand, keep doing what you’re doing.
No idea how they dispose of it. I’ve asked my immediate management chain if I can take damaged/pitted instruments that need to be replaced to donate to the local colleges - Anatomy & Physiology classes all have a lab component to dissect something, and the school I went to had instruments that were absolute garbage.
The answer was no… We just put instruments that need to be replaced in a red bin with other sharps like needles, and the bins are shipped off somewhere, probably to be incinerated.
Bigger stuff like equipment, we send to the biomedical engineering department for outprocessing. From there, no idea. Probably land fill.
I wouldn’t dumpster dive at a hospital though. It’ll be a sea of ruptured catheter bags, linens saturated with poop, and just all manner of pathogens. And probably sharps - that stuff is supposed to go in sealed red bins, but all it takes is one lazy employee and you’ve got yourself an HIV+ needle stick.
Not sure where you’re at, but the hospitals around here are pretty meticulous with sorting waste, especially segregating biowaste. I am near to Boston though, so they’re admittedly some of the best.
US deep south. The only sorting of trash I see in the hospital is sharps vs non-sharps. Outside the hospital, sorting is vitually nonexistent… there’s no recycling here, everything just goes in a landfill. It’s fucking stupid, but this is what we get for putting Nazis in charge of everything.
Zeiss famously ended support of a popular microscope, then destroyed all parts stored worldwide.
Got to be Apple slowing down older iPhones to mask battery degradation, and hoping no one would notice.
I love to shit on companies for doing evil shit (like Apple removing Targeted Display Mode from their iMacs), but Apple did the right thing here, but communicated it in the worst way possible.
I had an old iPhone that would randomly shut down when it drew too much power for the old battery to provide. If they hadn’t done the fix, I would have had to get a new phone; it just wasn’t reliable anymore. With the fix, things were slow, but they worked. Honestly, this is the opposite of planned obsolescence.
I’m going to respectfully disagree; had the phone kept shutting down you would have gone to Apple or a 3rd party repairer and got a new battery for 30-80£€$.
By masking the real issue and just giving you a poor experience, you wonder if it was always like that, or if there is something wrong at all, maybe you compare it with a snappy new phone and decide to upgrade for 1000£€$
Apple pisses me off. I have a 2012 MacBook Pro that could have continued to be supported, Apple just decided it wasn’t in their best interest to continue supporting it and if I want to continue I’ll just have to buy a new one!
My MacBook is on MacOS 13 thanks to open core legacy.
Mine is on Debian 13; I love my little 13" 2012 MBP!
Android does this by just bloating the software out and reinstalling games I uninstalled. It’s gotten to the point that I’m not sure if its actually dialing out or not when I make a call.
This is one of the worst companies. They are about saving the planet with recycling their products. They don’t. Its all ends in landfills. Its all a grift.
I’ve refused to buy another Apple product after the slow down basically disabled my iPhone 4. I was even looking at a new iPhone, but it left such a bad taste in my mouth I’ve been android ever since.
Sealed in batteries on smartphones and Surface tablets.
The device will eventually reach a point where it won’t even boot (or shuts down randomly) when plugged in because the charger connection isn’t actually wired to power the main board without going through the battery first (most smartphones) or the device consumes more power than the port is designed to deliver (Surface).
Dealing with this right now. Battery is 4 years old and going weak, decided to no longer recognize any charger below a certain battery percentage (like 72%) unless it’s wireless. Thought it bricked itself when it first happened until seeing it’s an issue with the batteries used for this model just straight up rejecting to charge for many heavy users. Getting a new phone soon since its so inconvenient while working outside.
I’ve been successful in replacing built-in batteries in 2 different phones. Granted my families phones are all > 4 years old so maybe it’s gotten much harder lately.
I had an LG phone for a few years until one night it literally just died on me. I was messing around on it one night, just scrolling randomly, then I set it down for a few minutes to play a game. When I went to check my phone again, it wouldn’t turn on or anything.
Washing machines. In the stores, you see a shiny stainless steel drum, but holding up the drum is a raw aluminum spindle. Those spindles corrode with typically caustic laundry detergents to last about 6 years. Replacement was possible, with a day of work. Now, manufacturers seal the drum unit with welded plastic so replacement is impossible.
The entire smartphone industry.
I use five year old smartphone (Pixel 4a). I can afford a new one, but I don’t need a new one, and it would be worse in ways I care about (bigger, probably without a headphone jack), without being better in any way that really matters to me, so I don’t want a new one.
Official software updates ended a couple years ago, but I’m running LineageOS and I got an update this week. Google has intentionally made it hard for most people to use LineageOS or any other Android distribution not blessed by Google as their primary phone by allowing app developers to check whether it’s Google-approved. For now, I can usually work around that, but it would be too big a hurdle for most people.
The kernel is getting pretty old though; it’s 4.14 when I’m up to 6.17 on my laptop. This is because SOC vendors don’t release open source drivers, nor maintain the proprietary ones for very long.
Finally, there’s the battery. Mine is in great shape because I use AccA to limit charge to 60% most of the time, but charging to 100% as most people do would have greatly reduced its capacity by this point. Replacing it requires melting glue and some risk of damage. Most phones are like that now (though that’s changing due to EU regulation).
What do you do on the phone? Browsing? Aren’t all the drivers out of date including the android version? My impression is that, the security primarily is completely lacking because of dated drivers and the android version
Messaging, web browser, podcasts, navigation, a couple services that require a phone to access. I tend to not install apps that could be websites.
Hardware drivers are surely dated. Android, on the other hand is 15, and I assume getting updated to 16 soon. I think I’m pretty good with regard to the sort of zero-click exploits I’ve heard of used for targeted attacks. If somebody slipped a trojan into a software update, I could have a problem, especially if it was a privileged app like AccA or Adaway. Of course, updated drivers wouldn’t protect me from that.
My GF had one. Battery was bad, normal consumer use OFC. Somewhere last year the play services security check changed. It was just invalidated by Google like 2 years after she bought it or something? Crazy.
But the thing that killed it was Google purposefully downgrading the battery so it was almost literally unusable. Would just die at 50%. She got 50 USD back. Not worth it at all.
I will take my bloated Samsung eith amazing hardware over Google’s piece of shit policy any day now. My phone is almost 5 years old and works without any issues. OS updates stopped but we have intermittent security updates this year.
EDIT: I forgot to mention I spent literal over a hundred hours trying to fix a charging issue on the 4a that came with it which was a software bug. Worst I have ever experienced in tech actually.
That sounds like a very negative experience, pretty much opposite to my experience with the same model.
She got 50 USD back. Not worth it at all.
50 USD was one of the compensation options Google offered; a battery replacement was another. The latter might have been wise if she wanted to keep using the phone.
Not where I live buddy. It was 50 USD or 100 USD discount voucher for another pixel phone upgrade. Not happy as you can understand.
I loved my Pixel 4a with LinageOS. It was the perfect form factor. Sadly, I had to give it up when my banking app decided that it was exclusively only for Android/IOS and deemed LinageOS to “unsafe” which was bull shit.
Be sure to give it a one-star review.
So far, Magisk and Play Integrity Fix have been sufficient for apps that don’t like it.
Windows 11’s TPM requirements.
I recently built a brand new computer for my uncle. He was running a 3rd gen Core i7 machine running Windows 7. I get a call that it won’t boot. I do manage to get it booted, the SMART data shows the hard drive is on its last eyebrows, and anyway he’s running an OS that’s three generations out of date.
I’m a big Linux user, I’ve got my aunt running Linux Mint. My uncle is such a dunce at computers I don’t think I can do that, because he lacks the vocabulary to tell me what he wants his computer to do. “I might use it for business.” In his line of work that could mean anything from going to quickbooks.com to needing some piece of Windows-only shitware. So “Get a .exe from somewhere” had to remain intact.
For everything he actually does with that computer, that old 3rd gen i7 was fine. Replace the hard disk with a SATA SSD, maybe replace the weird 2-4-2-4 some but not all of it is dual channel 12GB of RAM with two 8 GB sticks of DDR3 and let it roll…except no currently supported version of WIndows runs on this computer.
For a large number of people, computers became objectively fast enough in 2015. That’s about when SSDs became standard equipment, fixing any hardware reason for “damn this thing is slow” even out of midrange consumer hardware. Gamers, home labbers and AI startups need more power, the rest of the world doesn’t. And that was a problem for Microsoft.
I actually see the TPM requirement as a good thing bc it will help kill Windows as a gaming platform. Once the AI Bubble bursts, gaming will be cheaper again and with a destroyed economy, many kids will start gaming as it‘s a relatively cheap hobby and their family might nit afford expensive holidays anymore. Mobile PCs like the SteamDeck need to become mainstream as sitting for long periods is extremely unhealthy, especially for children.
I’m hoping the steam frame gets more people into vr. Just standing up to play video games is so much better for you.
VR is even better, didn’t think of that. It is honestly quite annoying having to sit in a dark room at a desk to game. I‘m definitely getting a Steam Frame just so I can play normal games from my bean bag or the living room.
I hope it’s not too heavy or at least well balanced. I can only last an hour or two with the meta quest 2 and 3 until it starts giving me a headache. But I’m solidly middle aged pretty much any repetitive action is painful
And Gaben is taking more gamers to Linux each year 🥳
AI startups need more power
The only point I disagree with. Apart from a few special usecases, the AI BS can go to hell.
Laboratory instruments controlled by shitty software that’s somehow tied to a particular version of Windows, and won’t work with 11. And, of course, the manufacturer won’t update it, because they’d much rather you drop a quarter million on the new model.
You just reminded me I still have an inspection camera which can only work with software that requires Windows XP, last time I used it I had to run it on a virtual machine on my laptop, it’s been a few years, I probably don’t have the VM anymore. The camera works perfectly, I wish I’d paid the extra for the one with its own screen.
A lot of manufacturers just didn’t give a rat’s ass about 64bit drivers. Those devices are the ones that are usually stuck on Windows XP. That happened well into the Vista era (which already came with a 64bit edition*), it’s infuriating.
*XP also had a 64bit release, but it wasn’t widely adopted.
Loved having to search on freaking Wayback Machine for a driver that existed in the Windows XP era.
Win11… The amount of perfectly good hardware that became ewaste in October is insane to me
About ten years ago I had my first smartphone, a Samsung. Over the span of a year the pre-installed apps got so bloated that I could only have one or two custom apps installed. There was an SD card slot and I tried to offload the apps to an SD card. Very normal and standard thing to do at the time. Except it didn’t work because Samsung had disabled symlink support in the apps directory. No good reason for them to do that, except to make the phone less useful to its owner. Haven’t bought anything from Samsung since them.
I’ve always been secretly jealous of Samsung hardware, then I remember how terrible their software is and buy the newest Pixel.
CPAP, comes with a cell chip in it to relay data for the Dr to monitor/access. Cell chip stops working after 5 years.
Edit: Realized this could use more clarity. The cell plan for the chip expires after 5 years and cannot be renewed, meaning the entirely functional machine needs to be replaced or the Dr can’t properly monitor necessary vitals.
Interesting! FYI, not all Doctors require the constant monitoring, so some people can keep using the same machine longer.
Samsung Galaxy S8 Pro. It’s one of these curved phones with glass on the back.
The front glass is hardened Gorilla Glass. The back glass breaks when you’re looking at it wrong. Because of the curved soapbar style, the phone easily slips out of your hand, shattering the back glass.
I am very delicate with my phones and never broke one in all of my life. The S8 was the final boss for me, though. I had to have the back glass repaired two times, one time it just fell off of my bed which is only 15cm above the floor. Fuck you, Samsung.
My body. Shits getting worse by the day.
65" Hisense TV. Bought it new and 1.5 years later the motherboard died. Scoured the Internet for the part and it turned out Hisense didn’t even sell it, you had to buy secondhand used boards.
But it must have been a common problem b/c over ~6 months even the resellers were permanently sold out. Recycled it in the original packaging.
IMO companies like that should be forced to recycle every scrap of their e-waste themselves.
Dishwashers, the 3 most recent dishwashers that I have had experience using across 3 very different households and use levels, from 3 different manufacturers, have all had minor to major faults in the 4-5 years since installation, just after the warranty period ended.
Mostly drawer and roller related, but also a pump failure.
Samsung washing machine. I watched a YouTube video about how they deliberately chose a material that wears out after like 4 or 5 years for a critical component. Real cool, thanks Samsung.
Not just Samsung, all manufacturers.
Is it easy to repair, or also deliberately made difficult?
They are hoping for people to get a new one. One of the drain pipe is made of plastic that is brittle after 4 years! There are Tupperwares that last 5 times than that without breaking. I refuse to believe its not a conscious decision for it to break. And no aftermarket alternative. You need $110 parts from Samsung supplier!
Ah yes, proprietary parts also get you.
And they make them so tricky to repair that appliance repair people will either have to charge too much or outright refuse to work on them.
Had a chrome book that worked just fine but unbeknownst to me had an expiration date that started counting down at its date of manufacture, not the date of purchase.
The thing worked great, but no more security updates after 3 years.
