Latest news with #Wiens
WIRED
09-04-2025
- Business
- WIRED
In Trump's Tariff Era, the Right To Repair Will Be More Important Than Ever
The tech we buy is about to get more expensive. It's time to keep the stuff you already have running longer. Photo-Illustration: Wired Staff;If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. Learn more. Hang onto your stuff. That's the advice right-to-repair advocates are giving anyone worried about how the tariffs will hit their wallets—and collections of electronic gadgets. Trade tariffs touch nearly every product out there, especially when they're as widespread and sky-high as the ones president Trump announced on April 3. But electronics are especially dependent on worldwide trade. Components used to assemble devices are usually built in manufacturing plants in countries like China, Vietnam, Taiwan, and Cambodia, which are now being hit with tariffs of 30 to 50 percent. While the price increases as a result of this have not yet gone into effect—and are difficult to fully predict—these economic proclamations have already had broad repercussions. The stock market tanked in the days after Trump's announcement due to 'extreme fear' in the market, according to CNN, and there have already been delays while companies assess the tariff impact, like the pre-order for the recently announced Nintendo Switch 2. The economic turmoil and uncertainty makes the prospect of buying a new device, especially an already pricey smartphone, laptop, or gaming console, seem like it's going to become a lot more expensive. And if buying something new becomes harder and harder, it makes more sense to keep what you already have going strong. 'Right to repair could not have come sooner,' Kyle Wiens, CEO of the repairability company iFixit, says. Right to repair efforts—actions by consumer advocates intended to raise public awareness and force companies to make devices more repairable—have been in the works for decades. In recent years, the push has made great strides. In 2024, the European Union instituted a ruling that requires companies to make devices more repairable. RtR has also garnered widespread bipartisan support in the US, even while in the throes of a chaotic federal administration that seems intent on dismantling many of the systems that keep the country running. Wiens compares the moment to the early days of the Covid pandemic, a time when the future of how people would be able to get the new stuff they wanted looked similarly bleak. In 2020, Wiens wrote for WIRED that the right to repair would help foster resilience in times of uncertainty. As tariffs kick in and a global trade war ignites, the parallels start to feel very similar. 'We don't know what's going to happen,' Wiens says. 'So what do we do? Well, repair is just the default.' Wiens suggests that people should prepare for new device prices to increase by 50 percent or more. If you apply that same logic to the stuff you already have, it means that hanging onto your smartphone or laptop another couple years may be a much better investment then trading it in for something new. "Just expect to keep anything that you have that's durable in any way,' Wiens says. 'So durable goods—microwaves, toasters, cell phones, Nintendo Switches, whatever it is, they're worth 50 percent more now than you thought they were.' The tariff era will require a shift in how products are produced and reduced. Wiens says he has also been talking to workers at electronics recycling facilities and telling them not to harvest discarded products if they're still working. 'Hey, whatever you are going to shred, stop shredding it,' Wiens says. 'Whatever materials you're going to export, stop exporting it. That product's going to have more value than you thought.' Despite the doom and gloom that watching the stock market plummet might invoke in our collective psyche, RtR advocates hope this moment helps make the case for keeping devices in working order. 'I don't feel like the sky is falling,' Nathan Proctor, who helms the campaign for right to repair at the consumer advocacy group PIRG, says. 'First of all, Wall Street people are the 13-year-old girls of social commentary. Everything is total drama all the time. Let's not go overboard. Let's see how this plays out.' Like Wiens, Proctor believes that repair makes society more resilient and will help people get through this where it can. 'It's going to be very disruptive in the short term,' Proctor says. 'I'm not sure how long that's going to last or what the impact's going to be. But I do know that a more resilient society is better.' Leo Gebbie, a principal analyst at the research firm CCS Insights says that another segment of the market that could benefit from higher tariffs are secondhand markets that sell used devices, like Backmarket. They've been doing quite well even before the tariffs were announced, with secondhand devices frequently bought and sold within the US. Now, that popularity is likely to increase. 'They are more cost effective,' Gebbie says. 'There is a strong supply of secondhand iPhones within the US, so for US consumers, there shouldn't be a need to import those devices from elsewhere and have them subject to tariffs.' Backmarket in particular seems to be well aware of its place in this trend, as right now it is cheekily offering a 'Recession Special' where customers can use a code (ELON) to save 10 percent off their purchase. However, if demand for secondhand devices goes up, there could be a knock-on effect where more phones being sold in the US could lead to prices being raised across the board—including in European markets that have tended to have stronger demand for used devices than the US. 'Really we will [only] know more once we see prices change,' Gebbie says. 'Obviously consumers are then in a position where they have something to react to.' Rethinking how we repair and replace our devices already has an analogue for how to guide that behavior . The automotive industry (which is bound to feel its own impacts from the tariffs) offers an example of how to care for products long term. 'Do people buy new cars? Sure,' Wiens says. 'Do they keep cars for 20 years? Absolutely. Yeah. Does anyone throw away a car because the windshield's broken? No.' Sadly, even the repair side of things is bound to feel the effects of tariff inflation. Spare parts and tools needed to fix things depend on global manufactures as much as finished products do. Wiens, who runs a business that sells tools meant for repairing devices, says he will also directly feel the effects of the tariffs and be forced to pass the increased cost onto customers. Even then, he hopes that a silver lining in the tariff chaos will be consumers changing their buying habits. 'Let's stop buying cheap crap. Let's have fewer, nicer things, and let's use them for a long time,' Wiens says. 'And so then you say, well, if we're going to stop buying new things, what do we do with the stuff? How do we take care of the things that we have? Well, that's where the right to repair world comes in.
CBC
22-03-2025
- Health
- CBC
Leslieville drug consumption site closes doors for good in response to Ontario law
A supervised drug consumption site in Toronto's east end closed its doors for good on Friday less than two years after a shooting near the site killed a mother of two. The keepSix Consumption and Treatment Service, located inside the South Riverdale Community Health Centre (SRCHC), 955 Queen St. E., closed ahead of the March 31 deadline to shut down as directed by the Ontario government. Sixteen staff members have been laid off and the site closed earlier than required due to limited availability of staff, according to the centre. "While this marks the end of an important service, we remain dedicated to providing compassionate care, equitable harm reduction services and advocating for the wellbeing of our clients," the centre said on Friday in a post on X. Karolina Huebner-Makurat, 44, died in hospital on July 7, 2023 after she was hit by a stray bullet near the site in the area of Queen Street E. near Carlaw Avenue in Leslieville. The fatal shooting prompted a community outcry and provincial reviews of the sites, which were followed by legislation that bans any supervised consumption sites within 200 metres of a school or daycare. KeepSix is among the 10 safe consumption sites that were slated to close by the end of the month because of the legislation. It's one of nine sites that will transition into what the province calls Homelessness and Addiction Recovery Treatment (HART) Hubs. As a result of the closure, the centre says it will not offer supervised drug consumption, needle exchange programs and safer supply of drugs. But on its website, the centre says it will continue to offer sterile harm reduction supplies. Daily sweeps for drug litter in the area and overdose response training will continue, the centre says. The room inside the centre dedicated to the site will be used as a meeting area. Shannon Wiens, CEO of the South Riverdale Community Health Centre, said in a news release on Wednesday that staff were preparing for the closure by providing overdose response training and referrals. "Over the past eight years, we have had many ups and downs but, through it all, we have reached thousands of people and saved hundreds of lives," Wiens said. "Our compassionate staff, including community health workers, social workers, nurses and physicians, have made countless referrals to health and other services, such as housing support and mental health treatments, and provided team-based primary care, counselling, vaccinations, foot care, wound care and more," Wiens added. "Grief and loss are not feelings that are unusual for our staff, clients and family members who use, work in or support our services and many are feeling the loss at the impending closure of keepSix. We are leaning on each other and remembering our work is never done — we will just need to do it differently in the coming year." The centre is now co-lead of the East Toronto HART Hub, which is slated to open in April, that will provide healthcare, day programs, social services and housing support. The centre said clients will have access to primary care, mental health and substance use supports with referral to other services. Fourteen organizations in all will operate the East Toronto HART Hub, which means it will be located at different sites. Health ministry says sites closing for safety reasons Hannah Jensen, spokesperson for Ontario Health Minister Sylvia Jones, said in an email Friday that the provincial government passed legislation requiring nine sites in Ontario to close for public safety reasons because they "are located dangerously close to schools and daycare centres." The government did not require the sites to close earlier than its March 31 deadline, she added. Jensen said the HART hub locations will open on April 1 to ensure no service gap. The closure comes as a coalition of groups prepares to argue in court next week that the legislation forcing the sites to close violates the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The case is to be heard at the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in Toronto. Supervised consumption sites save lives, activist says At a media briefing on the court challenge Thursday, Zoe Dodd, co-organizer of the Toronto Overdose Prevention Society, said supervised consumption sites save lives and the legislation passed by the province to close them will lead to more overdose deaths. "And the government knows this," Dodd said. In a post on X on Friday, Dodd said she'd worked at the keepSix site for 15 years. "The closure of this site is the loss of a life line," she wrote. "These last weeks many people have died including a coworker who we bury on Thursday. Life is struggle for the majority."
Yahoo
15-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
NASA Rover Shoots Laser at Martian Rock And Reveals Ancient Secret
Rocks loafing about on the surface of Mars have been harboring secrets about the red planet's mysterious past. The mineral content of oddly pale rocks found in Jezero Crater can only have formed under very warm, very soggy conditions – suggesting that, long ago, Mars may have been a lot more peculiar than we ever suspected. "On Earth, these minerals form where there is intense rainfall and a warm climate or in hydrothermal systems such as hot springs. Both environments are ideal conditions for life as we know it," says planetary scientist Roger Wiens of Purdue University in the US. "These minerals are what's left behind when rock has been in flowing water for eons. Over time, the warm water leaches away all the elements except those that are really insoluble, leaving behind what we found on Mars. It's fascinating. It's unexpected on a cold, dry planet like Mars." What Mars looked like in the early eons after its formation, and how it has changed over the years, are mysteries planetary scientists are intent on solving – not least because the answers could tell us whether the red planet has ever been hospitable to the emergence of life as we know it. The history of Mars is written in its rocks, and Earth has taught us the language to understand it. The trick is to identify salient Mars rocks, and find the information to decode – no small task from millions of miles away. NASA's Mars rovers, Curiosity and Perseverance, are designed to perform this function as our proxy, with human scientists here on Earth operating the robots remotely. The rocks in this discovery were discovered by Perseverance in Jezero Crater, standing out as oddly pale, just sitting on the surface of Mars, incongruous with their surroundings. Rocks like these are known as float rocks because they 'float' above the bedrock, having been transported from their original location by processes such as weathering, erosion, or water to somewhere new. Scientists had spotted these float rocks hanging around in Jezero Crater from Perseverance's very first day of operations, but hadn't taken the time to really look at them… until they did. They directed Perseverance to use its Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy instrument. This is a tool that fires a laser pulse at a mineral. That laser pulse vaporizes a small amount of the mineral, and excites it; the spectroscopy instrument then studies the light emitted by the atoms and ions in the mineral vapor as they return to their ground state, to see what elements those atoms and ions are. The results were a huge surprise. "These rocks are very different from anything we've seen on Mars before," Wiens says. "They're enigmas." The main composition of the rocks is a mineral called kaolinite, a soft, white silicate clay mineral. The Martian kaolinite is slightly different from terrestrial kaolinite; it's significantly harder, perhaps as a result of different weathering conditions on Mars. Kaolinite requires temperate, wet conditions to form; conditions that are hospitable to some forms of microbial life. With over 4,000 of the rocks spotted in Jezero Crater, this makes the discovery particularly exciting. The researchers also identified a mineral called spinel. Here on Earth, spinel is a magnesium aluminum gemstone. How the spinel got into the kaolinite rocks is unknown, but the researchers believe it is an aluminum-rich type that can form in both igneous and metamorphic environments. It's also unclear where the kaolinite came from. Satellite images show kaolinite-rich rocks in the rim of Jezero Crater. If scientists can work out where the rocks formed, they can get a better idea of how they formed. That information may also reveal vital clues about the water history of Mars, and its past habitability. "The big questions about Mars are about water," Wiens says. "How much water was there? How long was there water? Given how cold and dry Mars is now, where did all that water go? As a mineral, kaolinite has a lot of water bound up in its structure. It's possible that a lot of the water is still there, on Mars, bound up in the minerals." The research was published in Nature Communications Earth & Environment. En Route to Asteroid Collision, HERA Snaps Rare Images of Martian Moon Blood Moon: Here's How to Watch Tonight's Rare Total Lunar Eclipse Energy Signals From Milky Way's Core Hint at New Type of Dark Matter
Yahoo
14-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
NASA Rover Shoots Laser at Martian Rock And Reveals Ancient Secret
Rocks loafing about on the surface of Mars have been harboring secrets about the red planet's mysterious past. The mineral content of oddly pale rocks found in Jezero Crater can only have formed under very warm, very soggy conditions – suggesting that, long ago, Mars may have been a lot more peculiar than we ever suspected. "On Earth, these minerals form where there is intense rainfall and a warm climate or in hydrothermal systems such as hot springs. Both environments are ideal conditions for life as we know it," says planetary scientist Roger Wiens of Purdue University in the US. "These minerals are what's left behind when rock has been in flowing water for eons. Over time, the warm water leaches away all the elements except those that are really insoluble, leaving behind what we found on Mars. It's fascinating. It's unexpected on a cold, dry planet like Mars." What Mars looked like in the early eons after its formation, and how it has changed over the years, are mysteries planetary scientists are intent on solving – not least because the answers could tell us whether the red planet has ever been hospitable to the emergence of life as we know it. The history of Mars is written in its rocks, and Earth has taught us the language to understand it. The trick is to identify salient Mars rocks, and find the information to decode – no small task from millions of miles away. NASA's Mars rovers, Curiosity and Perseverance, are designed to perform this function as our proxy, with human scientists here on Earth operating the robots remotely. The rocks in this discovery were discovered by Perseverance in Jezero Crater, standing out as oddly pale, just sitting on the surface of Mars, incongruous with their surroundings. Rocks like these are known as float rocks because they 'float' above the bedrock, having been transported from their original location by processes such as weathering, erosion, or water to somewhere new. Scientists had spotted these float rocks hanging around in Jezero Crater from Perseverance's very first day of operations, but hadn't taken the time to really look at them… until they did. They directed Perseverance to use its Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy instrument. This is a tool that fires a laser pulse at a mineral. That laser pulse vaporizes a small amount of the mineral, and excites it; the spectroscopy instrument then studies the light emitted by the atoms and ions in the mineral vapor as they return to their ground state, to see what elements those atoms and ions are. The results were a huge surprise. "These rocks are very different from anything we've seen on Mars before," Wiens says. "They're enigmas." The main composition of the rocks is a mineral called kaolinite, a soft, white silicate clay mineral. The Martian kaolinite is slightly different from terrestrial kaolinite; it's significantly harder, perhaps as a result of different weathering conditions on Mars. Kaolinite requires temperate, wet conditions to form; conditions that are hospitable to some forms of microbial life. With over 4,000 of the rocks spotted in Jezero Crater, this makes the discovery particularly exciting. The researchers also identified a mineral called spinel. Here on Earth, spinel is a magnesium aluminum gemstone. How the spinel got into the kaolinite rocks is unknown, but the researchers believe it is an aluminum-rich type that can form in both igneous and metamorphic environments. It's also unclear where the kaolinite came from. Satellite images show kaolinite-rich rocks in the rim of Jezero Crater. If scientists can work out where the rocks formed, they can get a better idea of how they formed. That information may also reveal vital clues about the water history of Mars, and its past habitability. "The big questions about Mars are about water," Wiens says. "How much water was there? How long was there water? Given how cold and dry Mars is now, where did all that water go? As a mineral, kaolinite has a lot of water bound up in its structure. It's possible that a lot of the water is still there, on Mars, bound up in the minerals." The research was published in Nature Communications Earth & Environment. En Route to Asteroid Collision, HERA Snaps Rare Images of Martian Moon Blood Moon: Here's How to Watch Tonight's Rare Total Lunar Eclipse Energy Signals From Milky Way's Core Hint at New Type of Dark Matter
Yahoo
09-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Scientists Just Scanned Pale Rocks on Mars That May Have Huge Implications
The latest evidence suggests that Mars used to be a wet world covered in oceans, with astronomers uncovering not just icy remnants of this period, but signs of entire reservoirs of liquid water still lurking beneath the planet's arid surface. But we're still far from having a complete picture of what the Martian climate looked like billions of years ago, before these oceans dried up. Now, however, the chance discovery of pale yet unremarkable looking rocks by NASA's Perseverance rover suggest that the Red Planet was not only wet, but much warmer than once believed, according to a new study published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment. "These rocks are very different from anything we've seen on Mars before," coauthor Roger Wiens, professor of Earth, atmospheric, and planetary sciences at Purdue University, said in a statement. "They're enigmas." It's a discovery long in the making. The rocks, in the form of pebbles, were actually spotted the day that the Perseverance rover landed on the planet four years ago — but scientists had so much on their plate at the time that the objects went overlooked. But these pale oddities just kept turning up — over 4,000 of them, in fact, the researchers said. And on a planet as unremittingly monochromatic as Mars, any deviation from the color palette could be significant. Thus, later on, when the team found larger versions of the ashen stones strewn above the bedrock in the Jezero crater, they decided to finally take a closer look. To investigate, the team used the laser equipped on Perseverance's SuperCam instrument, the state-of-the-art camera that forms the WALL-E looking head of the rover. What they found was that these loose "float rocks" — so named because they come from somewhere else and not from the local bedrock — were composed of a suspiciously high amount of aluminum associated with a mineral called kaolinite. And here's the kicker: kaolinite, along with other uncovered minerals like spinel, typically form in the kinds of warm and wet environments that microbial lifeforms thrive in. "On Earth, these minerals form where there is intense rainfall and a warm climate or in hydrothermal systems such as hot springs. Both environments are ideal conditions for life as we know it," Wiens explained. "These minerals are what's left behind when rock has been in flowing water for eons. Over time, the warm water leaches away all the elements except those that are really insoluble, leaving behind what we found on Mars." "It's fascinating," Wiens added. "It's unexpected on a cold, dry planet like Mars." Wiens suggests that the kaolinite discovery means that "a lot of the water is still there, on Mars, bound up in the minerals." To follow up, the team is trying to determine where the rocks came from in order to study them "in place," which would allow them to test how they formed. More on Mars: Rover Discovers Evidence of Giant Ocean on Mars
