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Re:Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous by TaylorAlexander on Tuesday August 14, 2018 @09:37AM (#17757730)
An essentially never discussed option is also that the fridge could be open source. Now when it breaks there is both motive and opportunity for third party repair companies to offer upgrades and fixes.
Re:Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous by grogenaut on Tuesday August 14, 2018 @09:40AM (#17757757)
Most fridges are repairable modulo buying one with a complex motherboard. Even then they're still fixable just spendy to do so. Also most aren't complex enough that you couldn't just reverse engineer the Mobo easily. People do this for cars and computers.
Re:Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous by Qwertie on Tuesday August 14, 2018 @09:10PM (#17763151)
They could be much cheaper to repair if they used standard parts so repair places didn't have to order in custom pieces that they only use about 1 per year because every fridge has it's own version.
Re:Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous by grogenaut on Tuesday August 14, 2018 @10:03PM (#17763293)
They might be more expensive to build, esp since customers may be more interested in having a tablet in their fridge than a repairable fridge.
Re:Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous by EADGBE on Tuesday August 14, 2018 @09:44AM (#17757794)
Needing to make a fridge open sources screams at me that we really need to be simplifying the operation of a fridge.

I think component complication for planned obsolescence is much more of a thing than programming something in X years to kill itself.

Re:Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous by TaylorAlexander on Tuesday August 14, 2018 @09:47AM (#17757824)
Err it depends on your outlook. I’m such a hacker at heart I literally want everything I own to be open source.
Re:Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous by white-flame on Tuesday August 14, 2018 @12:49PM (#17759532)
Devices that are more efficient tend to be more complex, so that's another tradeoff to consider.
Re:Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous by EADGBE on Tuesday August 14, 2018 @02:08PM (#17760366)
I.E. Internal Combustion Engine vs Electric Motor