Right of repair and old hardware

A few weeks ago, I was lucky to replace my Macbook Pro (now vintage, mid-2014) laptop battery. It was heavily swollen from years of commuting, a few accidental drops, warmer than typical ambient temperatures, demos, and some infrequent air travel years ago.

The battery hadn't reached the hard cap of 1000 cycles yet was severely swollen. My current housing rental has a great view of Sutro Tower; however, with constant sunlight or even moderate fog combined with hardly any insulation or UV protection, still reaches the 80s in the daytime.

After years of working on my startup, I can't really be without my laptop, nor can I really afford Apple support post the initial extended three-year warranty. So when, in late '19, the battery first posted the needs service notice, I tried to put off the replacement.

The swelling was getting worse this summer, so I opted for replacements, either Apple or do it myself. Since this laptop is now considered vintage, Apple won't do the replacement. Luckily, I was able to purchase a replacement from iFixit and successfully replace it.

Now, mind you; I have significant experience with expensive computer internals due to years of rising the ranks of what's now DevOps. Armed with a humble anti-static strap and the right screwdrivers, possibly some rubbing alcohol, upgrades are a snap.

Prior to extraction, I drained the battery to lessen the fire risk. I also had rubbing alcohol (91%, 70%), gloves, eye protection, a mask (more for my allergies than anything else), the aformentioned anti-static strap and pentalobe and tri screwdriver set, and some silicone dielectric paste. And I familiarized myself with the procedure by the tear-down directions from iFixit. I did a modified extraction to limit the hazards to only rubbing alcohol. Yes, it was a complex replacement, and I feared damaging the ram. Unfortunately, I think accidentally removed the dielectric paste between the touchpad cover and touchpad/keyboard connector but replaced it with the silicone dielectric paste.

 

Here's the battery post-extraction. I have it on tinfoil for ease of transport.

 

 

Here's a quick shot of the inside of my MBP, filled with dust. :(

 

Luckily for me, San Francisco provides free battery waste disposal and the same-day or next-day pickup. Once extracted, the battery's puffy condition scared me enough to consider actually driving it over to Recology. After talking to Recology, they said the risk was low enough such that I could wait for the next day's pickup. Given its puffiness and my lack of a bucket of sand, I opted for my twenty-plus-year-old French cast iron oven. It was the only thing large enough, actually. So, here's a yummy battery:

Thankfully, Recology's ewaste was out the next day to retrieve it.

After resetting the SMC, it hasn't crashed post replacement. The laptop passes Apple's diagnostic boot, and the touchpad and keyboard work correctly.

This laptop has a limited lifetime, as it has a compact flash drive that will eventually fail after exceeding the drive write lifetime.

Once a consumer has taken home a piece of hardware, I believe unless there are trade secrets or hazardous materials, the consumer has full rights to disassembly, reassembly, and upgrades.
 
Given the radical need for beyond-effort battery recycling that needs to take shape to have the best chance at Climate Restoration, we need to do all we can to incentivize the most renewable action properly.

I hope the right of repair, zero-(e) waste will be accepted in more places than just San Francisco.

Thankfully, some forward-thinking state senators and assembly members (introduced by Senator Eggman, Coauthors: Senators Dodd and Skinner, Assembly Members Haney, Bennett, Wicks, Kalra, and Lowenthal) introduced bill SB244. Thank you!!

 

As of Sept 1, California has a Right of Repair passed appropriations. For SB244, add support here: https://act.consumerreports.org/Sq9qeyg. 

Find your right of repair legislation: https://www.repair.org/stand-up

outside the box

We commonly hear, it can't be done, it won't be done, and all types of fear uncertainty and doubt, when looking at CDR and 100% REs.

When I was a child there was one way to make pasta. Boil water on a stove, and anything less than al dente was sacrilegious. Today I know that if I use different pasta, (but still calorically the same) angel hair instead of penne, add boiling water from an electric kettle, then microwave it, it's done in less than 5 minutes and al dente. If I'm plugged into an electric grid, it's entirely fossil free. (Yes, induction and radiant work too, but do take some time to boil.) So, it's not the traditional pasta unless you wanted angel hair, but it's less energy intensive, even though it's now has two heat process steps.

This is the kind of thinking we'll be doing to find ways to engineer more ways to reduce the energy demands of our lifestyle and our carbon removal efforts. Couple this with the falling price in Solar PV, and batteries, and we hopefully will meet before reaching 1.5ºC & using up the remaining carbon budget.

This is the exciting frontier of re-imaging and engineering to lower energy costs. And I haven't even touched on the cool stuff that's incubated from Activate & Cyclotron Road.

And remember, just because the fo**il fu*l industrial complex can pull oil from Alaska and refine it in the lower 48 then ship it to a Walmart or gas pump in Florida, doesn't mean that process needs to continue if EVs take over transportation.

The cost of that entire process I just described was offset by fossil fuel subsidies, shareholders, corporation value, existing supply chains, etc ... 

How much ceases to exist or gets replaced by REs and CDR? How much more efficient would it be to just use Solar PV deployed within 50 mi radius of the vehicle that uses electricity instead of oil? How many more new jobs when PV is installed, and the grid transmission upgraded, and the machinists and heavy industry workers are hired to maintain the grid, and new CDR technology? What happens when this is deployed in a city's existing industrial area? But it's totally electric and the new biz owners are fully 3x bottom line so they operate a zero emissions site?

Just imagine!

Commentary on MIT Energy Initiative Study

MIT Energy Initiative released a highly detailed study on the state of venture funding for Cleantech.
Striking was the dismal rates of returns:

• Companies developing new materials/process/chemicals - returned 1/6th the investment capital
• Hardware Integration - $.05 per dollar invested
• Cleantech Software Companies on average returned 3.5x
• Deployment Finance Companies - returned 1/4 of investment capital

Venture funding readies a startup to ship more product during the funding cycle (for an average software startup approximately 18 months). If it’s not ready to ship in that time frame, venture funding isn’t likely a good fit. Venture capital needs to have an liquidation event before the fund matures, some number under 10 years. For solving engineering challenges in under 10 years, however difficult, it's realizable, for solving scientific challenges however that may be a moonshot. Using a Lean Startup method for productizing some or all of the technology as well as be extra innovative with the business model (Keurig/Apple/Intel/Tesla/SpaceX) can help Entrepreneurs reach profitability faster.

It’s conclusions of creating more funding opportunities via SBIR/STTR/ARPA-e/National Labs, and restructuring for long term funding vehicles beyond the 10 year cap on venture capital investment vehicles outside of venture funding should help Cleantech blossom.

Indeed, these are huge challenges to be solved, which may take longer than 10 years to realize. Given the vastness of climate change, and the time we have to implement a working solution, we need all roads to all carbon neutral and carbon negative products and technologies. The world would definitely be a better place when energy is completely clean and quite possibly free.