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Comment by gruez | Hacker News Reader

>No, when you BUY a server you should be able to do what you want with it, including burning up the CPU in a week.

Meanwhile in a top voted comment from yesterday's thread: "I'm thrilled by [Nvidia cripples cryptocurrency mining]": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27200700

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As far as I know they aren’t retroactively crippling GPUs. A vendor is well within their rights to artificially limit hardware to create market segmentation. That’s just a fact of doing business. I don’t see anything wrong with it. Want to mine? Buy a mining card or a piece of hardware from some other vendor.

How does this tie in with other popular initiatives, ie. right to repair? "A vendor is well within their rights to artificially limit repairs to increase margins. That’s just a fact of doing business. I don’t see anything wrong with it. Want a repairable phone? Buy it from some other vendor."

You want a right to repair things you have rented?

My initial comment[1] was supposed to point out that it's not limited to rentals, contrary to what OP says. The rest of the thread is talking about your rights when you purchased something.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27213202

To this outside observer, the discussion between you and tw04 appears to consist mainly of you trying to change the subject away from tw04's trenchant comment, through the introduction of increasingly distant irrelevancies. What does right of repair have to do with Hetzner's new policies?

Because it's a slippery slope in terms of user freedom. The comment I was replying to basically says "well that's what you get for renting, if you want the freedom to do what you want buy your hardware", which is starting to become false. The right to repair is a follow up to that: if you can't do what you want when you rent, and can't do what you when you buy, where does this leave other user freedom initiatives?

> if you can't do what you want when you rent, and can't do what you when you buy, where does this leave other user freedom initiatives?

Right where they were, given the rather significant difference between owning and renting.

In one instance we have society’s collective desire to reduce waste by allowing people access to fix their goods. In another, you want government to tell a vendor what product they have to sell because you personally don’t like their product selections. Furthermore the thing you want them to support is horrible for the environment. That’s apples and pine trees.

And completely off topic.

>In one instance we have society’s collective desire to reduce waste by allowing people access to fix their goods.

So you'd oppose right-to-repair if manufacturers are willing to carry out the repairs themselves, presumably negating the environmental/waste benefits?

>And completely off topic.

That's the beauty of comment trees. If it becomes too off topic for you, you can collapse it.

Want to drive your car? The car vendor is well within their rights to eliminate your ability to drive in certain areas. That's just market segmentation.

You might be shocked to find out that speed limiters in cars are a thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limiter

If there were just 2 car manufacturers (which there is in the GPU space) I would agree with your counter argument. But there are plently out there. If Ford said you couldn't drive your car in the snow and labeled their cars as such at point of purchase well then you are free to by GM, Toyota, Tesla, Mazda, Kia, Honda, Subaru, etc etc etc etc.

Many rental car companies actually do restrict where you can drive your car, for example, by forbidding off-roading, or from taking the car over state or country borders. Most restrict rental cars from being used for commercial purposes (meaning in this context, food deliveries or rideshare services).

If you want to treat your car however you like, you can buy a car and abuse it to your heart's content.

When I buy a GPU from a retailer, it is a rental GPU?

Wait until you find out what happens to your warranty if you take your car to the track…

You've got the analogy wrong. It's more like: Want to drive your car to deliver pizza? That's market segmentation.

You're still allowed to mine with those (or hit them with a hammer). They're just much less good at it.

The difference is that you're renting a server but you're buying the GPU. You should be able to do whatever you want with the hardware you own. When you're renting you have to agree to the restrictions the owner puts on your rental.

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