"Michael Straight, a former jockey paralyzed from the waist down, was left unable to walk for two months after the company behind his $100,000 exoskeleton refused to fix a battery issue. "
“I called [the company] thinking it was no big deal, yet I was told they stopped working on any machine that was 5 years or older,”
Why the fuck are they treating body part replacements like it’s a phone or another device
Because to them, it is no different. They aren’t making money off what they have deemed ‘out of production’ equipment, so the search for endless profits means they need a ‘new’ machine to be bought at a frequent pace.
It’s about profits, not people. Bottom line rather then bottomless life.
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Honestly, the law should be that the batteries need to be designed to be replaced by off the shelf options. Basically, add instructions on how to relatively easily to replace the battery cells with the same ones found inside laptop batteries that can be ordered off Amazon or similar places.
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But people don’t want that.
Until something goes wrong and they discover (usually too late) that they actually did want that.
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On the other hand, there is a very valid reason why things like batteries are so expensive to replace and why you can’t find replacement batteries for a lot of products a certain amount of time after production ends.
On the other other hand, there are tons of commonly available industry standard batteries that a manufacturer could choose to use, if they wanted to.
I remember learning about this back when I took a smog certification class back in community College. Learned the only computer approved to run the modern smog diagnostic stuff is from 1986 and it’s made by like one company to this day.
Add onto that all the dinosaur lathes and welding machines I’ve seen over my career and I wouldn’t be surprised seeing a commodore running the dmv database for the entire state at this point.
Why not use off the shelf 18650 or 21700 like some electric cars, then you just need to bundle the 18650 in a way that they can be desoldered or whatever
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Guess I shoudl’ve read a bit more, thought the skeleton was the issue not a shitty watch
Another reason right to repair is needed
“Sorry, we can’t work on your machine unless your story goes viral. Just policy, you understand.”
And yet there are people willing to get brain implants or other ‘utility’ bio-augmentations and dont see an unsupported/EOL product becoming part of their body indefinitely.
