<story><title>EU to make it mandatory to use customer-replaceable batteries in household items</title><url>https://www.eevblog.com/forum/dodgy-technology/not-dodgy-at-all-and-long-overdue-user-replaceable-batteries/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kasabali</author><text>Comments in the linked thread are spot on. Manufacturers would do anything to avoid abiding spirit of that law to keep their bottom line.&lt;p&gt;What&amp;#x27;s  more depressing is  &amp;quot;tech enthusiast&amp;quot; circle (eg. in reddit or hardware forums) will be more than eager to rationalize, defend and disseminate any weak technical excuse made up by manufacturers for keeping their anti consumer practices.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nickysielicki</author><text>I hope you don&amp;#x27;t take this the wrong way, but have you ever worked for a company where you were involved with making physical things?&lt;p&gt;Making things is an incredibly difficult dance between electrical engineers, purchasers, manufacturers, sales and product managers, and logistics teams. I think that people who work exclusively in software often trivialize how difficult it is to choose how many of something to produce, how many extra pieces to keep around for repairs, etc., because they took some EE classes in school and they think that they basically understand the process of making boards.&lt;p&gt;The reality is the actual engineering is usually the easy part. The hard part is logistics, and it&amp;#x27;s not something that you can just outsource to a dedicated purchaser and be done with. Software people don&amp;#x27;t actually have something analogous.&lt;p&gt;For everyone that works in hardware, the last 2 years has been hell in terms of quickly redesigning things around parts availability, often stripping functionality entirely and reevaluating how it can be done generically in software without a certain chip. We make PoE devices and we can&amp;#x27;t get validated ethernet PHYs.&lt;p&gt;Basically, what I&amp;#x27;m saying is this: as someone who sees how things are made, the idea that there&amp;#x27;s some guiding principle of being evil or some principle of maximizing overall bottom line at all costs and making shit products is just so far from the truth that it makes my head spin. Things suck because it&amp;#x27;s hard.</text></comment>
<story><title>EU to make it mandatory to use customer-replaceable batteries in household items</title><url>https://www.eevblog.com/forum/dodgy-technology/not-dodgy-at-all-and-long-overdue-user-replaceable-batteries/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kasabali</author><text>Comments in the linked thread are spot on. Manufacturers would do anything to avoid abiding spirit of that law to keep their bottom line.&lt;p&gt;What&amp;#x27;s  more depressing is  &amp;quot;tech enthusiast&amp;quot; circle (eg. in reddit or hardware forums) will be more than eager to rationalize, defend and disseminate any weak technical excuse made up by manufacturers for keeping their anti consumer practices.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>lamontcg</author><text>Comments in the linked thread are what is annoying about nerd fights.&lt;p&gt;This is a good and necessary first step.  Focusing on all the ways it could be circumvented isn&amp;#x27;t a rationale for not doing it, they are all just rationales for strengthening it.</text></comment>