Thread by @doctorow

#RightToRepair has never been more urgent. There's a reason farmers have been on the front lines of R2R: they have pressing deadlines ("make hay while the sun shines") and are located far from service depots and transport hubs.

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That's why farms have workshops and even forges. They have to rely on their own ingenuity to fix their stuff, or they have to do without, often at critical junctures.

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During pandemic, hospitals taken on the characteristics of farmers: isolated from service with urgent needs. And so do we all, to a greater or lesser extent, as our stuff breaks down and no one is around to fix it.

pluralistic.net/2020/03/20/plu…

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There are three major reasons companies like @Apple, @JohnDeere and @Medtronic have fought so hard against R2R, killing 20 bills at the state level:

1. It lets them charge you extra for repairs and parts.

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2. It lets them decide when a device needs to be retired so they can sell you a new one (Tim Cook called longer Iphone usage cycles the biggest threat to Apple profits).

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3. It lets them charge you extra for features already in the device. For example, @ThermomixUSA's new blender/cooker has a high-temp mode that you have to pay a subscription fee to unlock. Independent repair could subvert this, committing "Contempt of Business Model."

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This is rampant in med-tech. Think of sleep apnea CPAP devices: they had proprietary data-formats that allow manufacturers to charge doctors to monitor their use.

vice.com/en_us/article/…

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They're also riddled with spyware that lets insurers gouge you on consumables and deny benefits to people who need them:

propublica.org/article/you-sn…

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Enter @ResMed's Airsense 10, a CPAP machine that the company claims cannot be retrofitted to serve as a ventilator, because it can only push air, not pull it out again:

resmed.com/en-us/sleep-ap…

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Security researcher @qrs analyzed the Airsense 10 and found a mode in its firmware that allows it to pump air both in and out of the user's lungs. He's released Airbreak, a jailbreaking patch for the Airsense to turn it into a ventilator.

airbreak.dev

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This is presently only for research purposes. As Hudson writes, "in its current form [this patch] should be considered a proof of concept and is not intended for use in a life-support capacity."

arstechnica.com/information-te…

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Significantly, the jailbreak brings "the AirSense S10 to near feature parity with BiPAP machines from the same manufacturer, boost the maximum pressure output available, and provide a starting point to add more advanced emergency ventilator functionality."

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Hudson and colleagues are calling on Resmed to release an official, supported patch that enables the latent functionality in their widely available, low-cost CPAP machine.

eof/