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

gender pronouns and science

When I was younger, say in the first or second grade, I reasoned that if I wanted to become a scientist, I had to see gender pronouns as gender neutral. That way I'd never think I was excluded from science, and everything would be fine. I know, logic of a young child. It worked except other girls didn’t think the way I did and were confused that I liked science and didn’t want to play and worse some didn't want to talk to me as I was the weird one that was more interested in science. I just chose to focus on science when I had the chance. The downside is that I was very isolated save a few good friends.

Now days young girls have much more support in staying supported in science, and having a normal social life. If you know of any young one, lift her chin a little higher, and tell her science can move the world. We got to the moon, who knows where we’ll go next. And more importantly she can make it happen.

A fun book for little ones, Flatterland.

Nope, Still wage disparity in Tech

The Quartz article had a very catchy title of “There is no gender gap in tech salaries”. Unfortunately that statement although catchy, and wishful-thinking, it can’t be applied to all of the technology sector as it can’t be proven from a single study of 14,000 new graduates freshly hired in the year 2009.

This is a contentious issue, we need more data to find out if, and how radical is the wage difference. The AAUW report was on the DoE Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Study 2009 that sampled about 14000 new graduates compared to the US Census reports there are about 6M degree holding census respondents in the 25-29 age group. What would be great is if we can get the US census information broken out by gender. I’ve only seen the data by decade groups by age, i.g.: 20-24, 25-29 years old groups. I’d love to see some STEM group that conducts similar survey data and prompt them to fully break out this data as well as poll women from groups like IEEE,  ACM, Grace Hopper/Anita Borg Institute, WITI, SWE, AWIS, SVforum, etc…

Down to the Numbers

The numbers quoted in the Quartz article begged closer inspection as the graphs quoted from the AAUW study seem to counterintuitive. It seems weird that employment by major should differ from employment by occupation. In page 14 and page 17 of the AAUW study, employment by major and gender is reversed then employment by occupation, earning for engineers and eng tech, is 55,142 for men, and 48,493 for women yet Engineers is listed as the same for men and women at 55,046.

I pulled the raw stats from Department of Education that conducted the study. The DoE stats tool recommended I change my weighting to limit it down from 14600 to 13500. This it to account for data points in the follow-on study from 2012. The numbers from the AAUW study doesn't seem to lineup.

Here's a link to the stats, and DoE table generation information.

For 2009, women made more in Health Care Professionals, Physical Scientists, Other Educators, post secondary Educators, Social Scientists, and Social Service Professionals.

They were statistically the same in Business/Legal Support, PK12.

Men are shown in orange and Women in blue

For 2012, women made more in Health Care Professionals, Physical Scientists, and Post Secondary Educators. They were statistically the same in PK12 and Social Service Professionals.

Men are shown in orange and Women in blue

Women engineers in 2009 made 81% compared to male engineers. And women engineers increased to 88% in 2012 compared their male counterparts.

I wish there was no wage disparity. The fact that there is wage disparity doesn't stop me from personally pushing my envelope. That is what I hope inspires young women to keep going. Those that pursue and achieve excellence will be rewarded. I've been very lucky to find male allies in the workforce such that I felt I was fairly compensated. In times that I didn't feel that I would be fairly compensated, it would cause me to take a hard look at the team, and ask is it worth it? Is their culture hard driving and fair? Do they value correctness more than favoritism? Being a monitory has benefits, I been sought out by diverse teams, i.g., one of the co-founders was a openly gay man. They were one of the nicest bunch of people I've interviewed. 

It's 2016 already. I'm going back to my much needed research as I've taken too much time to talk about something that shouldn't exist. We're all humans, and if we do the same job, and have the same skills, we should be paid the same.