#507 – Right To Repair with Louis Rossmann

Dave Jones: Welcome to the Amp Hour. I'm Dave Jones from the EEV blog.

Louis Rossmann: I'm Lewis Rossman with Rossman Repair.

Dave Jones: I thought you were going to say Rossman Real Estate.

Louis Rossmann: That really does seem to be a more fitting description nowadays. Steve has really been trolling me to get my real estate license.

Dave Jones: Oh, really?

Louis Rossmann: Yes.

Dave Jones: Just for shits and giggles or?

Louis Rossmann: Just for fun.

Dave Jones: Right. Yep. Terrific stuff. We will talk about the real estate at the end. But what I wanted to get you on today for is the right to repair stuff, which is what this episode is going to be about. So we'll jump straight into that. But everyone, of course, no introduction needed for Lewis Rossman. You've been on the show. August 2016 was when you were on last time. So I'll link in down below if people want to listen to that episode where we talk about repair. And I can't remember what else we talked about in that episode. All sorts of stuff, your background and all sorts of stuff. So anyway, right to repair. What is right to repair? Give us the skinny.

Louis Rossmann: Right to repair is the basic idea that you should be able to repair your own devices and that when companies put artificial barriers in place of you being able to fix your own stuff, that that is a lame thing to do that should be discouraged. So if an device is difficult to repair because it's modern and things are more integrated, and that's all fair game. That's part of the game. And you can't really complain about that within right to repair. But if a company puts a chip into a device that is, let's say, allows it to see the battery or allows it to charge the battery, and then they don't sell that chip. And if you try to read the programming from that chip to program a new one, the chip literally kills itself as you do it. That's the type of thing that right to repair would push back against. And these types of exclusivity agreements where companies that make that chip are not allowed to sell it to any repair shop or consumer that wants to fix their own device.

Dave Jones: This is where you separate it from very deliberate anti-repair tactics to, oh, it's just a modern device. It's by its nature of its construction, it's hard to repair, right?

Louis Rossmann: Yeah, because a lot of people will say, well, he's just complaining that technology is moving forward. And that's not the case at all. If stuff gets smaller, I'll just get a better microscope. I mean, I'll get smaller soldering tips. I'll keep going. But that's fair game. And that's part of the game. And it's my job to better my skill set so that I can deal with that part of the game of devices becoming more complex. I'm not complaining about it at all, at least within the context of the right to repair. When you're reballing a chip that has 300 balls, it's dual layer. You may curse on stream, but that's different from right to repair. It's when they change the charging chip from last year's model to this year's model. There's virtually nothing different in it except for how it speaks to the rest of the machine. And then it's not available. And I can't buy it. Even if I had $100 to buy it, there's no place where I can buy it because the manufacturer says, sorry, we can't sell to you. In my opinion, that's not really fair game anymore. And that's where right to repair says this is BS. So we seek to make the consumer... So right to repair really has several branches to it for me. The first is making consumers aware of why it's more difficult to fix their products and what the manufacturers are doing. The second is advocating for that to stop. And the third is showing people, here's how you can fix your own devices so that you actually think this is worth preserving. Because most people really, they need a reason to care. So if I can show a consumer, hey, I know you thought you were out $3,000, but you're actually out $50. Check this out. Or someone who just lost their job is now working at Walmart or something, is now able to make $80,000 or $90,000 a year for themselves after a few years of getting involved with repair and starting their own business. Now they're kind of invested in it. And once they are invested in it, they're going to care. Never mind the fireworks in the background. This is Brooklyn.

Dave Jones: Right.

Louis Rossmann: Sure it's fireworks? Well, you never know.

Dave Jones: Can you give us the specific example you were talking about there of this chip where the manufacturer won't, the manufacturer of the chip, i.e. it's Maxim Semiconductor or it's National Semiconductor, you know, it's Texas Instruments or somebody, where they won't sell that chip to anyone else. Is this something that in particular, say a company like Apple or some other company, have they contracted that company to actually produce that chip or how does that work? Do you know?

Louis Rossmann: Well, one of the chips I'm referring to is the ISL9240 made by InterSyl. And if you try to reach out to, let's say, I'm trying to think of the name, like Rochester Electronics or some certain vendors, they will say, you know, we're not able to sell this to you for this reason. And I've gotten a couple of my own subscribers that have, damn, they're going hard with the fireworks tonight. He's dead already. But anyway, July 4th is gone a month and a half ago and they're still doing it. Another example is with Texas Instruments with charging chips. So the CD3217, this is a USB-C MUX chip. You know, it deals with this is USB 2, this is USB 3, this is DisplayPort, this is charging and so on and so forth. I can't buy that chip. And if I ask, you know, Texas Instruments for it, they're not going to sell it to me. I can't buy it on Mouser, DigiKey, Newark. And this wasn't really the standard, you know, when I was growing up. But it is the standard now. And I think it's important to make people aware of it so that it does, so that that false narrative of this is just technology moving on doesn't really, you know, sink into the heads of normal people. It's the culture is moving on, not the technology. The technology is always changing, but the culture typically stayed the same, which is, regardless of how we miniaturize technology or advance it, we are not going to purposely keep you from fixing your own devices.

Dave Jones: Right. Because normally manufacturers of chips, they would often, I've been involved in this myself, where we would approach, a big company would approach a manufacturer and say, hey, we would like this chip. You know, we want this battery charger chip to do these specific things, you know, have these features or whatever. And they'll go, okay, if you've got the volume, we'll custom design that for you. But we will then make it available to everyone else, every other manufacturer and everyone else. You can just buy it on your DigiKey and your mouse and whatnot. So is that, are you seeing that more and more that that's not happening? The chips aren't just, just aren't available?

Louis Rossmann: Yeah, it's been happening more and more. So when I started in this industry, there are certain chips that you could buy on these websites. As the industry evolved, I realized that the only place I could get this from is, you know, people Skype me saying, hi, I'm from China and I have this. And I'll wire the money and I'll, you know, cross my fingers and pray that what I get doesn't blow up the board that I'm working on, where I'll have to test the stuff out before I use it on customers to make sure I got something legitimate. And then, which that really is kind of like buying drugs from dealers off the street. You know, it's one of those things where you find someone who's trustworthy, their stuff's good, it doesn't kill you. So then now you can let your friends have it kind of thing. And now it's gotten to the point with the newer machines where even all these, these companies that I've been doing business with prior to find this stuff can't find it. And I'll tell them, you know, I'm willing to buy a hundred thousand of this chip. There's a lot of people that would buy it from me if I could get it. So I'll make it worth your while. And they're like, you know, we understand. I can't, I can't find it. And that is, that is the worry that in the future, it's not going to be because the technology is too difficult. It's not because the people that work here haven't been able to figure out how to troubleshoot the board. It's not because we don't have the tools. It's purely a lack of supply. And with some of these chips, we're actually at the point of buying charging cases because the iPhone XR charging case has an ISL 9240, ripping the chip off of it and then throwing it away. This is so wasteful.

Dave Jones: That is ridiculously wasteful.

Louis Rossmann: Yeah. Because there's a lithium battery in there, which is like, yeah. So you're throwing away. I mean, technically I, you know, you could keep this stuff, but there's, there's really little to no demand for this. I mean, there are people in my YouTube comments that say, I'd love to take these batteries. And then it's, you know, you respond to it and you never hear back who wants a bunch of random cells. And even that's not a sustainable model to begin with because that cell is made for a very specific thing for a very specific application. And if we're fixing this stuff all the time, like why am I throwing away a PCB with good components and a case and all this because I need one chip. It also makes diagnosing things more difficult because instead of grabbing a chip from the bin, soldering it on, oh, this didn't fix my problem. Okay. Next thing I have to buy something that's $109, tear it apart without destroying the lithium battery, desolder a chip. That is kind of one of those new glass kind of chips. I don't know if it's a glass that they use. It has a glassy like structure to it and it breaks real easy. Reball it without breaking it and soldering it on only to realize that that didn't fix the problem. So that's kind of becoming the future of this job and it really sucks.

Dave Jones: So can you even get the data sheet for these chips? Is that available?

Louis Rossmann: No. You can get data sheet for similar chips, but you can't get a data sheet for this one. So for instance, the old USB-C MUX chip was a CD3215, which you cannot get. I don't think you can get the data sheet to that, but there's a chip that's supposed to be its sister chip, which is virtually the same thing in 99% of the way, except it doesn't actually work when you solder it on. I'm guessing it speaks to something on a different address or something like that. One of my friends from the Netherlands, Duke, was explaining this to me. And that, but yeah, I can't get a data sheet for the exact chip that I want information on.

Dave Jones: It's most likely to be deliberate because from a design perspective, there are so many choices out there for, you know, ultra miniature charging chips and USB chips, for example, that I can't understand the rationale behind even, you know, as something as advanced and dense as a mobile phone to actually need a totally custom charging chip like that. So, and have you actually seen these chips in other devices as well, but you still can't get it? Or is it exclusive to one particular manufacturer?

Louis Rossmann: I haven't seen it in other devices, but to be fair, I also don't work on a lot of other devices. But I know that for a fact that a lot of parts that Apple gets, they'll take something that's somewhat off the shelf and modify it in some way to make it really only useful for them. So like with, with LED backlit screens, I remember they took the LP1-54WP2 TLC1 and changed it to TLA1. They changed the size of the connector, even though most of the screen was the same. Like I think that they take, with the CD3215, I know they took an off the shelf chip, whose name escapes me right now, and they, they modified something very minor. And then it was a CD3215 that only works on their stuff. I don't know if they're adding features and functionality that, and, and then saying this chip is only for us, or if they're just taking a chip and changing some stupid thing like the address it communicates on solely so that people can't fix the computer. But it, it has the same end effect. And I don't see why, even if you are making a custom chip for yourself, that you, you can't make it available for sale, even if you don't want to make it, even if you don't want to sell it and deal with the chargebacks. When your average iPhone customer says, I got a 16A3 friend and my phone still doesn't charge. Let Intersil deal with that or Mouser or Newark, if they want to deal with that and sell it.

Dave Jones: So what would the right to repair laws as you would envisage them have? Would, would it force manufacturers to make these chips available? Would that end exclusivity of custom chips or force the manufacturer to sell it? Because I can imagine, even if you put in the laws to force the manufacturer to sell it, then they could put in all sorts of red tape and paperwork to make it so difficult to get it, that it would effectively nullify that law anyway.

Louis Rossmann: That's a good question. So the, the way the law, at least the right to repair laws that are being pushed right now are written, they are written in a manner where I think it would be simple to make them virtually worthless and they would need some tweaking. So for instance, it says make available what is made available to manufacturers repair centers. However, Apple's repair centers are shipping depots. I mean, I did a video that was about an hour long a few years ago where I called up a bunch of Apple authorized service providers. They didn't even know that the charge port is not soldered to the phone. They told me the charge port soldered to the phone. They said any, virtually any issue, they just have to mail it off to Apple to actually have them swap it out with something else. So the law says, at least the, the, the bill says, not a law yet, that you would have to make available what's made available to the manufacturers or repair centers at a quote reasonable price. So the first piece of red tape there is reasonable. I have people who walk into my store who think that $200 is, you know, that that's the, that's the amazing. Thank you so much. They want to hug us. And then I have people where if we say this is 40 bucks, they say you're, they curse us out. You're a rip off. Get out of here. So reasonable is really like, it's, it's one of those words that you could argue about for years. But the main piece of red tape is made available to manufacturers or repair centers because Apple could easily say, well, our repair centers don't fix anything anyway. They really like, they literally just exist to tell you to buy a new one. So by that logic, you don't get access to anything. So I'm, I'm not an attorney by at all. So I'm not really good at writing or I'm not, I'm not someone who should be writing bills and saying this is the specific text to get the desired result. I think that telling manufacturers that chips that are in some, if there is a general interest for the customer and being able to purchase this so that they can fix their own device, you can't tell the manufacturer of that they cannot sell it to anybody. Something that gets that by.

Dave Jones: So where do we stand in the US and other countries at the moment with right to repair? I'm hearing, cause there's right to repair, you know, talk here in Australia and they're talking about the European union have specific laws at the moment. Do you know anything about that?

Louis Rossmann: So the issue with right, with the rights to repair laws in the United States are that most of the time we either get straw manned or laughed out of the room. And when the case of Ernie Chambers in Nebraska, they literally laughed us out of the room. It was, it was, I mean, it was hysterical if you're on the other side. It's kind of sad if you're us. I was able to kind of step outside myself so I could laugh in that moment. There are most of the politicians that we speak to, we've made no, just to be clear, we've made virtually no progress here legally, like zero, none. Wow. Most of the politicians, they either don't understand it, they're not interested in it, or they just, or they purposely ignore you. Like for instance, earlier in the year, there was one person that said, you know, we would install TikTok on people's phones. Or they were implying that we would install TikTok on people's phones and, you know, security, security. And by the way, I don't need your password to do a screen replacement and I need your password to install apps. But that aside, so I made a video where I said in the thumbnail, this guy is clueless. Because he said, you know, I'm really offended at this. And the politician said, listen, we would consider passing this bill, but we need to hear from the opposition lobbyist in order to, you know, have a dialogue. And he doesn't want to speak anymore because he's offended that you put this guy is clueless in the thumbnail. So he's not showing up, so I guess we can't consider it. And I'm just thinking to myself, like, are you fucking kidding me? Because I've tried the nice route for a really long time. And, you know, it doesn't really work very well. So in like in 2017, there was a politician, Bob Crist, in Nebraska, who was a senator. He had a meeting with with myself and a few other farmers that the morning of this hearing, he canceled the hearing. He canceled the meeting last minute. And then I check on follow the money dot org. And I see that one of the one of the people who testified against right to repair that day, Kim Roback, heard a lobbying firm gave that guy over three thousand dollars. That's in. Oh, so it's like, you know, this this it's it's pushing a boulder up a hill half an inch at a time to try to get to the top of Mount Everest. And I believe that the legal side of this is mostly theater. And when I go to these hearings and I record them and I show this stuff to the public, what I'm doing is I'm really trying to make it more and more and more clear with each hearing that this is never going to get anywhere. I want them to understand the frustration. I want them to understand that this is that their legal system, that the legal system and the political system is broken in this way. The way that I'm trying to get change done is by getting people that work within these companies to actually want to change things. I want it to get to a point where the where these companies have people working there that go, wait a second. I didn't know that's why you you wanted this chip to wait. When you said when you said I'm supposed to ask Intercel to not make this chip available to people, this is why. Or when you told me to take this chip and copy the circuit to this and change the address, this is why you did it. I'm not working here. And I want people to actually be aware of what's going on. So the real right to repair is not the legal stuff because this is going nowhere. It's an actually getting people to look at what the system that they're a part of, realize, oh crap, wait, so this is why I was asked to do this. And then they just say, screw it. I'm not going to be a part of it anymore.

Dave Jones: Right. So there's nothing in the US, there's no law in any state at all yet, any way regarding right to repair or any form of it.

Louis Rossmann: There is an automotive right to repair bill that passed in Massachusetts in 2012. And in spite of all of the lobbyist funk, the sky has not fallen. People are still selling cars in Massachusetts. Cars have not gone Skynet and crashed into anything. So for automotive, it's passed. And the bill that is making the rounds in most states now is mostly a copy and paste of that bill, just edited a little bit to be for consumer electronics repair.

Dave Jones: Got it. I was going to say, yeah, why not copy something that worked at least once anyway? So does this have to happen on a state by state basis or is there anything you can do federally?

Louis Rossmann: The argument to have it done on a state by state basis is twofold. First, it's a consumer protection issue, which is often something that you cover at the state level. The second is that the federal level is such a clusterfuck that you will never get anything done. So that is the argument there.

Dave Jones: Right. Because here in Australia, we actually have, there's a couple of, there's a few petitions going, which I'll link down below. Feel free to sign it. Various right to repair groups are trying to get this done at a federal level because our consumer protection laws, I believe here in Australia, stand to be corrected, happen at a federal level because we're a much smaller country, obviously. But we do have very good consumer protection laws here. And technically, our current law here in Australia, it just says that the manufacturer must either replace or repair the product. So the law as it stands here is that you can, the manufacturer can choose to repair it if they want to. And you as a consumer can't demand a replacement. They can actually choose to repair it. But in most cases, of course, they don't because it's just easier and simpler to fill the landfill up, you know, and just send you a new one. Have you heard about the EU laws?

Louis Rossmann: Well, I mean, I know in the EU, in certain areas, you have these extended warranties where the company is forced to replace it for a longer period of time. But I haven't seen anything in other countries that is really where there's a legislation that says, you know, you can't sue someone because they made a schematic available or you can't force a company to make a chip available.

Dave Jones: So how do you see this happening? What about the schematic? Like, let's say these laws get passed and would it force them to provide schematics or would a simple clause like, look, you can't sue somebody because they've recreated the schematic or they've got hold of the schematic and they're passing it around, they're publishing it, that kind of thing?

Louis Rossmann: The originally it was just make available what you make available to your own internal repair shops, which again, the problem there is many of the companies that are the the worst offenders are the companies whose own internal repair shops are literally just replace it, toss it out, get a new one. Now, maybe Apple is doing component level board repair at some other facility. And that's where the next battle would come in, because I know that they do their own refurbishing of boards because I've seen boards that they've given to customers that are clearly been worked on at component level. But when the law says make available what you make available to your own repair shops, they're going to point to their own Apple authorized service provider, which is literally a mailing depot. They don't fix anything there.

Dave Jones: Right. So so the law would have to say that it covers the manufacturer themselves.

Louis Rossmann: Yeah. And this is why even if so, we've been laughed out with the most basic watered down version of this law for five or six years now. This is why I put most of my effort into the cultural front and very little, if any, into the legal front, because the only way to actually change this is to get people from inside these companies rather than putting rather than passing a law that forces them to do something that they don't want to do. How do I get the company culture at all these businesses to change that they actually want to do the right thing or at least pretend that they're doing the right thing?

Speaker ?: Right.

Louis Rossmann: No, I mean, you see nowadays lots of companies, they want to be seen as socially conscious. Now, sometimes it's a good thing. Sometimes it's a bad thing, depending on where you're sitting. But the point is, many companies don't want to be seen as the villain, whether it's, you know, Gillette with their commercial or, you know, there are companies supporting a lot of the Black Lives Matter stuff going on right now. Whether you agree or disagree with any of this stuff, it's clear to me that companies don't want to be perceived as evil, even when they kind of are being evil. And a lot of this is often driven by the employees that work at these companies. So I'd rather not force people's hand with the law so much as I want people who work at these businesses to actually watch my stuff, understand the frustration of our customers, understand that this is an industry that takes people that yesterday may have been, you know, assistant manager of a pizzeria and today are making a living for themselves and their family and really realized where their place is in screwing these people over if they have a hand in it and then decide, I don't want to do this anymore. Yeah. Because when you put a light on it, it makes it really, really hard to hide behind the, this is for safety. This is, you know, this is, and for all the other reasons that they give.

Dave Jones: Surely you would think that a manufacturer would, you know, some marketing department at a manufacturer would go, hey, let's, let's actually try this. Let's advertise our stuff as super repairable. Surely that's, surely that's a differentiator against the competition. Didn't, didn't Microsoft kind of sort of do this with their new surface or something? They made an announcement that it was, you know, repairable in some way, or at least easy to open.

Louis Rossmann: Yeah. They showed that it was easier to open with one of the newer surfaces and that's a step in the right direction. You know, there's still a lot that they don't give out, but that like, that's a step in the right direction and I'll acknowledge that they made it. And I appreciate that they made that step. And one of the guys at the national review would ask me this question too, you know, with food, we have that move towards, you know, organic and cruelty free and all this crap. How, why don't people do that with, with repairability? And I think the reason that they don't do it is there's no incentive to, because people don't even really know this is an issue. They, they're not at the point of realizing that this is an issue until it's, oh crap. My most recent backup was this morning. And I, and like, I just edited the best video I've ever made and oh no, the drive is soldered. Oh no, I can't. Oh God. Like it's at that moment that they realize that this is an issue. And I want them to realize that it's an issue before it hits that point. And what I'm hoping is that if people get into electronics and engineering through watching my stuff who are smarter than me and go to college and eventually become real engineers, once they're at that point where they work at these businesses, if they grew up or like got into the field by watching me fix boards, they will never take part in any of this anti-repair crap. So I'm thinking more about the long game than the legal game. Cause I've been laughed out of enough legislatures to realize in the United States, this is going nowhere.

Dave Jones: Wow. But you're not going to stop though. You're still going to turn up to the hearings and, you know, try and push it as much as you can.

Louis Rossmann: I'm not even showing up at the hearings to push the legislation. So much as I'm showing up at the hearings to show you what the opposition is saying, because when the opposition says there's a part called the magtometer in a microwave and it could explode. I think people need to hear that. That's what a ham is saying to these people to get them to say that rights or repair is bad. When, and I learned this in 20, I figured it was 2014 or 2015 when I showed up to speak to a bunch of senators and assemblymen. And one of them said, well, one of the lobbyists said that when you replace this part on the MacBook board, you turn it into a PC and you don't tell your customer that it's a PC and not a Mac when you give it back to them. So this is actually encouraging people to lie about what they're getting back or, and defraud customers. And the guy was kind of elderly, wasn't into technology much. And I had a small aneurysm when he told me that. And after I recovered from it, I said, so, you know, why'd you believe him? And he goes, I don't know about this stuff. And, you know, you aren't here to tell me otherwise. And that really sat with me. You know, you aren't here to tell me otherwise. But he signed it once I told him otherwise. And there should always be a voice there to speak. I realize it's hopeless, but there should be a voice there to counter the BS. But more importantly, I think that when people make arguments like that, when they say that we're going to install TikTok on your phone, when people who are so uneducated, they say the game plays the console. And I want you to hear the voices of the opposition. I want you to hear how uninformed they are. I want you to hear that they're reading off of the script. I want you to hear that they're ashamed of their words and they don't even believe them, like in the case of CTIA. I think that's I think that's important. If you're going to do those things, at the very least, you're going to do it with a microphone to you as you speak to a million people. You don't get to bullshit 12 people or five senators up there anymore. You're going to bullshit the world. And that's why I show up at these hearings.

Dave Jones: Do any of them seem to care about the environmental aspect of it? Because I thought there's lots of political currency in being, you know, seen to be eco-friendly these days.

Louis Rossmann: There is. That's why Apple pretends to be eco-friendly in many ways and why they release an eco-sustainability and all this other stuff. And you know what? They may have a building that square foot for square foot, maybe they use less fossil fuels than I do. But they also have a business model that really does allow millions of dollars in totally usable machinery to become junk. And they have a hand in it. There are people that care about the environment. And there are people who are like, I'll actually, honestly, I'll go at this from every angle. So when I meet someone who really cares about the environment, I'll bring up that aspect of it. When I meet somebody who's like really a right wing and hates environmentalists and is talking about the evil socialists and all that, I'll say, you know, all these companies that virtue signal about loving the environment are the same PR or that, you know, they're all run by these really progressive seeming people that in reality, they just want to control everything that you own to the point where if something breaks in it, sorry, you got to buy a new one from us. Maybe someday they'll tell you that you have to that you have to rent it from them and they'll take away the concept of personal property. Like, I'll go at it from whatever angle is necessary to get the politician who is in front of me to understand that it's an issue. At the end of the day, they don't listen to me. They listen to other people. And even when they actually do want to listen to this and they think it's important, it doesn't get brought up for a vote because there's other important things that wind up getting brought up for a vote. Given a choice to go over abortion, immigration, health care, you know, police reform, right to repair, this is always going to get tabled.

Dave Jones: Have you got any stats on the US one? Because I've got stats here that in Australia, every person generates 25 kilos of e-waste per year. That's just e-waste. That's just the farting gnome gadgets that we throw out.

Louis Rossmann: There are people that read that, but then there's also someone who came up from CTA. That's the trade association for the Consumer Electronics Show, which by the way, shows up at almost every hearing to lobby against right to repair. Really? And they talk about, yep, anybody who goes to CES, something you should know. They've been lobbying against right to repair. And they're the ones that actually came up with that fallacious crap that we're going to install TikTok on your phone. Oh, wow. You can Google a gentleman named Charlie Brown and you can find his testimony on this, along with someone else in Maine. There was a hearing, I think, on the 23rd and another on the 24th of January. They had people show up to both. And it was different people. So they have people around the country that show up to all of these to testify against them. But one of them in Maine, it was this guy from Consumer Technology Association in Maine in January testified against it. And he was talking about how much better we've come at recycling and how we're much better at recycling now than before. And we're taking things back in. All that stuff is true. All these manufacturers have become better at taking back their waste, at coming up with recycling programs, at encouraging consumers to give stuff back to them. That is also, and that's usually what they'll say in response to the environmental part. But it doesn't really make up for the fact that you are taking part in practices that force consumers in some way to just throw it out and get a new one. Because even if they had the capability to repair it, they can't.

Dave Jones: Is this mainly targeting, are you mainly targeting like consumer type stuff? What about specialist stuff like test gear? Would that be covered under the same legislation? Or would it only be like really high volume consumer stuff?

Louis Rossmann: I think that would be covered as well. The sometimes in the past, we've taken, we've made exemptions for stuff like medical or tractors or this, that, and the other. But ideally, I would want it to cover more. You know, the idea that, you know, medical equipment is so important. You can't have people fix that. No, it is important. That's why there should be more flexibility in fixing that. And just look at the shortage that there was with ventilators and everything else recently. I mean, I'm not saying that I should be allowed to fix a ventilator because I have no idea to fix a ventilator. But I'm fairly certain that if right to repair were passed, that my, you know, Mount Sinai is not going to bring a ventilator. It's a Rossman MacBook repair. And there were places going over repairing endoscopes. And I had a talk with someone in 2018 about right to repair regarding endoscopes. And they were going over the price to fix these endoscopes and how parts weren't being made available anymore. So they had, so the hospitals would have to buy new ones. And, you know, there are companies out there that specialize in this. They're, you know, they're licensed. They're insured. They're good at it. They don't, you know, they don't perform repairs that result in people dying of, I don't know, cancer or radiation or random crap. And they would, so there is an argument that the bill is way too broad because it covers everything. But I almost kind of like it being broad to cover everything. And in the past, we've put these exemptions in there so that, okay, fine, I get it. You're against medical equipment. We'll take that out. Or you're against this. You'll take that out. But at the end of the day, it's like, it doesn't matter how many exemptions we put in, you're still going to show up against it. So what's the point? Like, I've learned my lesson there. I'm not, I've learned the lesson that going forward, that it doesn't really make sense to continue narrowing the scope of the bill because it doesn't change the fact that people are opposed to it.

Dave Jones: Now, even let's say these bills were passed and it forced the manufacturers to release schematics, for example, for products would, tell us about the schematics. Because I'm looking at the board, the Paul Daniels software that you use, right? Paul Daniels is an Aussie's software for those who don't know. That I think, I'm watching your repair videos and I'm going, holy crap. Look at how useful. This makes repair like an order of magnitude easier that you have this, you can import the schematic and the PCB overlay into this software. And then you can hit a net on a, you know, the plus 3.3 volt rail and it shows you overlaid on the actual PCB layout where all the traces go and everything is brilliant. Is that, how does that, is there a common format for that sort of stuff? How does that all work?

Louis Rossmann: Yeah, those board views are all .brd files. For at least for MacBooks, that appears to be a standard format. And yeah, I'm very grateful for Paul Daniels' software. Before that, I was using something called Landrex Test Link. It has not been updated since 1995 or 96. And the software is about as awful as you can imagine.

Dave Jones: Right.

Louis Rossmann: It is real. Yeah. So now the argument against that is, you know, if this stuff gets leaked, oh my God, other companies are going to steal our stuff. If someone like as uneducated and specialized as myself is able to get access to these schematics, then I mean, I'm pretty certain that Toshiba and Sony and Samsung and all these other companies are considerably better when it comes to corporate espionage than I am from my computer. This stuff has been, nobody was really afraid of this. I mean, in the 50s and 60s, a lot of the stuff that you got, you just opened it and the schematics were all there. Had the schematic in it. Yeah. So I would want to be able to get access to a schematic if we asked. And what the bill was asking for was the same stuff that your repair centers have access to. And when we say repair centers, I'm not talking about the Apple authorized service providers. I mean, people actually refurbishing the board. So, you know, the guy that's doing your GPU replacements for your 2015 and 2016 recall program, I'm sure they have access to a schematic. They need it. What if they knock something off the board while they're working on it? They need to know what that resistor is. So I would want access to what they have access to.

Dave Jones: So where do all these schematics and board files come from that you get? Are they just leaked out of the manufacturer? Does somebody there in there, you know, somebody in the engineering department just secretly dump them on some, you know, cloud somewhere or?

Louis Rossmann: That appears to be the way that it happens. And I've been meeting more and more people lately who are the, who are the individuals that actually do that stuff. Because before I just thought, you know, I Google it and it's some random Russian or Polish website and it says, you know, put your credit card here. And I fully expect that my credit card is going to wind up getting used in some sort of money laundering scheme. But yeah, it just shows up on these random websites and then you get it. And people will often ask me, you know, where do you get schematics from? I can't find it to this device. And I go, yeah, I can't either. That's why I don't offer repairs to it. And it's a, it's a, so for the newest machines, I usually wind up waiting a year to a year and a half before I actually get schematics of them. Until then, I just try to guess where things are based on last year's model and pray that I'm right. One point of particular contention for me was in 2014 to 2015, they took the backlight circuit and they literally just turned everything upside down. So it looked virtually the same, except everything was upside down, which I learned my lesson on checking the direction of the diode in that one.

Dave Jones: Right. Do you turn down repair requests for products that don't, that you don't have any schematics, either old or new models for?

Louis Rossmann: Yeah, constantly. The thing is you can do a repair without a schematic. So I can do a repair of a 20, like a 2018 MacBook Pro, even if I only know if I don't have a schematic, but I'm, but I have the layout for the 2017 and 16 MacBook Pro. It probably uses a lot of the same, the chips, it probably uses a lot of the same layout. It probably has a lot of the same general faults to it. So I already have that built up in my head. But if you give me a random device that I've never worked on before, of course, I'm going to want a schematic because most of the time when people ask me for a pair of something that I don't have a schematic for, it's something I will never see again. So with a MacBook, even if I don't have a schematic, it may actually be worth it to hire someone who literally sits there for, you know, eight hours a day for three months and measures everything, how it's supposed to be on a working board, like literally everything and just measures it all so that we have that information because I'm going to get 5,000 of that computer to fix at two to $400 a piece. And I know it's worth it for something that I've never seen before that I know I'm never going to see again where the customer needs me to be able to fix it for $75 or less. I can't, I can't do open into troubleshooting there. I could do either basic see broken, fix broken troubleshooting there where it's obvious. Or if there's a schematic, I could check some basic things and see what's going on. But for the price points of a lot of these repairs, this is, you know, it's, it's not that it's impossible to do something without a schematic. It's just, it becomes completely financially unviable to do so for, you know, less than like 10 or $20,000.

Dave Jones: Have you noticed that repairs have been getting more common because people are keeping older stuff? They just don't have a need to buy new stuff. Cause I'm hearing about like people still using 10 year old MacBooks because they're just, they don't need to upgrade. Cause they're just so powerful that they were so powerful back then. And nothing's their requirements. They don't have any extra requirements that requires them to buy a new PC, for example.

Louis Rossmann: Yeah. There's a, there's a few things behind that. So I started this business in 2008 when everybody was losing their job. And the last thing they wanted to do is buy a new one in a good economy. If I tell someone, you know, it's a, it's 300 to fix this, or it's 800 to buy a new one. They'll actually think about it. They're like, Oh, I'll just buy a new one. Whereas now, you know, if I say it's 300 to fix this, but it's for, you know, it's $350 to buy a new one. They're like, God damn it. You know, and they'll just don't give me the $300. A big part of it is, is the economy. So in a bad economy, like either now or 2008, when people are really looking to save their money, lots of people are going to want to have things fixed versus buy a new one. And the second part is tech, you know, a lot of this, this technology, it's not really, especially with cell phones. I mean, you know, there's this one YouTuber, grade A underlay that makes me laugh when he goes over new cell phones. He goes, put it, you know, here's the two ways you can tell it's a newer phone, put it closer to your face and pay twice as much money for it. He's making fun of the fact that they just keep making the screen bigger and charging you more money and pretending it's this innovative device. And, you know, the innovation, you know, when you were going from like the iPhone two to the iPhone four, it's not really, you know, there's some difference there when you're going from like iPhone seven to eight or, you know, it does not, there's not a lot there to get really excited about. And I think people just, they don't, they don't need the most powerful device to browse Facebook, watch YouTube videos, use Excel, have a Skype video. You can, you can use an eight year old computer and it will do just fine.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Cause I, I find like, I can't see myself buying a new computer at the moment, like all the computers I've got, you know, many years old. And it's like, well, my, my requirements haven't changed. It does the same job as, you know, I don't need to render 10% faster. What's the point?

Louis Rossmann: Yeah. And I mean, I, now there's these big jumps in processors with a lot of the AMD thread ripper stuff, but for several years, you know, the, the performance boost year over year with processors was getting really lame. And more so than that, I don't think most people like the newer machines enough to want to buy them versus fix the old one. I shouldn't say most people, I shouldn't speak for most people. That's a mistake. But I think that when you look at the new machines Apple's producing, you know, you can't, for several years, you couldn't even open the screen all the way without it dying. The keyboards were dying for no reason. The drive is soldered to the machine. A lot of people were just, you know, I, I don't want to pay to get this one fixed, but I hate the new ones. I can't buy a new one. So can you fix mine? I've been hearing that more and more. I don't remember hearing that as much in 2012 or 13 or 14, but in 2018, 19 and 20, I'm hearing people say all the time, I have to fix this one because I'm not typing on that new keyboard.

Dave Jones: Right. Or I need my headphone jack, you know?

Louis Rossmann: Yeah. Or that, you know, there are people that want to be able to charge the device and listen to it at the same time. And they don't want to have to have a dongle or Bluetooth.

Dave Jones: And right. Makes sense. I've got a couple of Twitter questions here. Some of them are quite good. Um, this one comes from Michael, uh, Mulhern. Do you find that, uh, glues and bondings are an impediment to repair? What is your take on the assembly methods as far as right to repair?

Louis Rossmann: I think it's interesting that they glues devices in that they used to use screws in. So the MacBook air, they said with the new MacBook pro retina, they'll use this, uh, adhesive strips for the battery. That is difficult to remove this, but the battery is not encased in this, in something. So when you're trying to remove it, if you mess up, you can make the battery explode, which is something I know all too much about lately. And you know, it's, it's easy for that to happen. So that is an impediment to people fixing it. Now they'll say the battery, the battery needs to be glued in because the machine is so thin. But how do you make the MacBook air? Cause the MacBook air is even thinner and there's no glue. It's five screws holding the battery in. So that, that doesn't make sense to me. Uh, so how is it that for this thinner model, you're able to make it work, but not for this one. Now it is kind of an impediment. I'll, I'll still deal with the glue. You know, I, I, and the one thing to be clear about, with right to repair legislation, I'm not asking them to, to design things the way that I want them designed. It would be more convenient to me to have screws instead of glue. But if you put glue there, that's still fair game. You designed it that way. It's up to me to figure out how to fix it. You know, I'm not saying that all I'm saying is you can't cheat in the game. You know, make it, you can make it as difficult to repair as you want. It's on me to figure out how to actually do the repair. It's only once you start putting these obstacles in place that are, you know, game over, unless you have a game shark that I say that that's bullshit. You know, you, you, you can make it as hard to fix as you want. You can't say, okay, you figured out what's wrong with it, but ha ha, LG is not going to sell the screen to you. So nah, nah, nah, nah, like no. So yeah, glue adhesive makes things much more difficult and a pain in the ass more so for the, for, for the consumer rather than for us, because we'll eventually come up with a way to do it. Whereas the consumer is probably going to butcher their product the first time around trying to get around the, the adhesives.

Dave Jones: Right. You said they're like, you know, some models will have screws, some will have glues, et cetera. It's almost as if the manufacturer, like they're not doing this deliberately. It's just whatever the designers of that new model happened to think was best or the, or they got a new designer in that said, oh, let's, let's just glue this. And they don't really put any thought into it. Does that seem to be the case?

Louis Rossmann: Yeah. I'd really be interested to hear from a designer. You know, why is it that the A1466 doesn't have glue or adhesive, but the A1398 or the A1502 do? I'd want to hear from them. I'd be curious what they have to say. And I'd also be curious as to whether or not it would be possible. Is it being done to save space? Is it being done because it's easier? Is it being done because nobody ever thought to do it differently? I don't think they're doing it. You know, I don't think they're rubbing their hands together maliciously and saying, yes, make it harder for them to replace the battery. Because if they were doing that, then they wouldn't have produced the MacBook Air for five years after they started gluing batteries in with a screwed in battery. They would have glued it in two to be dicks. So at some point, I don't think that that's being done to be a dick. I think that's just a byproduct of other factors, which is probably affordability and just ease of manufacturing and making it slimmer. But I can't speak for the designers.

Dave Jones: Well, from a design point of view, in my experience, it varies between design teams. It's like it's very hard to have a very specific company policy on this sort of in the way to design. The designers are often given the liberty to sort of, you know, to a certain extent, to design it the best way they see fit. As long as it meets the cost and performance target and the manufacturing targets and all that sort of stuff, then we're pretty much free. So maybe different design teams will do things different ways in the one company.

Louis Rossmann: Interesting. Yeah. So it could be a different group of people that made the MacBook Air versus the MacBook Pro that year.

Dave Jones: Could certainly be. And another question here, which I think is a really good one from Jesse Sintar on Twitter. From a security standpoint, do you think right to repair could hurt device security or help improve it?

Louis Rossmann: I don't think it would hurt the device security because if the reason I think that is if giving a schematic to someone like me would harm the device's security, you had a serious problem that you needed to figure out beforehand. Because most of the people that are doing this, we are, you know, I didn't go to college for engineering. Most of the people that I work with didn't. We just, a lot of us figured a lot of this stuff out on our own. We're not, we're not genius hackers or not even that's, many of us, especially me, are not even that smart. So if, if your security is able to be compromised by the, the, the circuit diagram that says this resistor is 10 kilolms, this one is 20, you screwed up like way before that schematic ever got to me.

Dave Jones: Gotcha. Do you see any difference between like Apple owners, for example, cause they're like an exclusive group and other owners of other type of other manufacturers. Do you see any difference in their willingness to have something repaired or is there, you know, does one, you know, always want, they love their Apple thing and they want it repaired or will they buy the new fancy gadget?

Louis Rossmann: People definitely love the Apple stuff a lot more. Uh, people do, do want to get things fixed. It's just with Apple, I realized people want to get it fixed when it's, you know, 13 years old or 15 years old. There are people that show up with, you know, ATI X 1600 based MacBooks that want to get them fixed. And it's just, you know, this is, this is $30 on eBay, man. Like what are you doing? I mean, I have to, I have to pay an employee. I have to buy a 30 or $50 chip and then pay someone for an hour of work with a $7,000 machine to fix this. But this machine is $30 on eBay. And I'm like, but I like this one. It's kind of like when I was a kid, my dad took me to, I think McDonald's or something. And I got a balloon or Roy Rogers. And I walked outside in the balloon. I let go of the balloon. And I, and I, I, my dad said, I'll get you another one. And I said, but I want that one. And what I noticed with people that own Apple devices is they'll, you know, they, they do this, what I did with the balloon.

Dave Jones: Apple fanboys. They're hilarious. Anyway.

Louis Rossmann: The device holds its value in that way to them. And that, that, that's, that's good marketing.

Dave Jones: That's why they come in and want their 10 year old MacBook fix. Cause they think it's, you know, the duck's guts. So let's talk about real estate. Shall we? What's, what's going on with New York real estate? Cause, cause you're killing it on the views for your Rossman real estate series. What's going on? Well, let, let's talk about moving stores first. Cause when, when, when did you change move stores?

Louis Rossmann: Uh, I moved around, I signed a new lease November of last year. I moved in beginning of February this year cause I'm an idiot who chose the wrong contractor. Uh, I, I have, I have a recurring meme of always choosing the wrong contractors. And, um, that, that, that was, so the guy that I hired to do that, uh, to, uh, make the floor even apparently had, uh, from the court documents that I read, someone else said that he had screwed over, um, his family for over a hundred thousand dollars, sent them photos of work. That was someone else's work that he never did. And I can't read his side of the story because he never showed up, which is why there's a default judgment against them. Uh, right after there was a default judgment against them and his bankruptcy filing didn't go through. It was really interesting because within 12 hours his house went on fire, which is just one of those crazy things that just, yeah, yeah. I'm a dumb ass. This is why if you give a schematic to an idiot like me and we can break the security in your product, you screwed up. But, uh, yeah, so I moved in, uh, it was about four times the space. I had somewhere between 12 or 14 people at any given time working out of a space that was 650 square feet. That was, that was bad. And, um, it's funny cause when we moved into this space, people said, wow, you took up almost the entire space already. Uh, and you added a lot of stuff. And I'm like, what do you mean added? It was a clown car in the old one. So, and over the course of moving, I was, uh, I dealt with a lot of unscrupulous realtors and I kind of just figured at some point this is adding to my stress. It's adding to my aggravation. It's annoying. I'm kind of curious if anybody else would find this interesting. And I just started taking my GoPro to all of these places and just recording what, what they said. And the content really wrote itself. It's like, it didn't need a script. I didn't need to be overly bombastic. It's just, I would, they would say it's 1800 square feet. I'd show up by a little Bosch tool. It was Bosch tool would say, this is 800 square feet, not 1800 square feet. And then I would record their reaction. And like people just, people like that. So they, they like watching that content. And I think there's also a lot of people that just wonder how the hell is New York sustainable? Because they want 25 or $30,000 for spaces that are the size of a garage. And you know, they think this is all hysterical. Listening to a realtor explain why a space that's the size of a garage is worth $19,000 is honestly that it makes good entertainment. It's funny. It does. And there's this, there's this old meme with my channel, which is, you know, everybody says, why don't you make more border pair videos? You know, you're, it's going to fail because of the, there's less border pair videos. I've been posting these repair videos for over seven years consistently at the same rate, give or take maybe a little vacation here or there, but like virtually the same rate of a couple of them a week for seven years. People view everything else. I upload a video of my cat meowing, gets 10 times the views of a border pair video. Look, here's a realtor farting, 10 times the views of it. Like, nope, which is interesting. So people find this interesting. And I think they find it interesting now because a lot of the major cities that had unsustainable budgets are crumbling. I think there's, you know, there's this giant culture war that's been going on in the country for a really long time. And it seems to be coming to a peak at this point at the time. Everybody is kind of hurting in the United States right now because of coronavirus and everything else and the economy going to shit. But that hurt is being shared way more by these cities. Because if your income goes down by, you know, a thousand or two thousand dollars and your mortgage is eight hundred dollars, it sucks, but you'll figure it out. If your income goes down by, you know, a few thousand dollars and your rent is five or eight thousand, it's like, now you're fine. Yeah. And so places like New York City are collapsing first because with the rents that are charged in New York City, there is no there is no such thing as a rainy day fund. There is no money for a rainy day fund. If you put money away for a rainy day, you would just wouldn't be paying your staff or your or your rent. So I I've been kind of going. I wanted to see if the price for real estate had dropped since everything that happened. So I responded to a couple of listings. I just wanted to hear what they had to say. Yeah. Yeah. Explain to me how this place is worth twenty five thousand dollars when it's the size of a kitchen.

Dave Jones: And we're talking per month, by the way. Per month? For those who don't know, this is not per year. This is per month.

Louis Rossmann: Yeah. Per year, that would give that would probably buy you a, you know, the corn bathroom or something. But not even. But I think it's funny. Just tell me why this is worth seventy five thousand dollars. Like, do it. And I think people they like listening to bullshitters in some sense. I think they like like they don't want to actually, you know, they won't want to listen to a lecture from a bullshit. But I think they want to listen to a bullshit or sell them something when they know that they're laughing and they're at it, which is, I think, the appeal that I'm trying to guess what the appeal of the audience is. I still don't get it. If I did, I'd have a more successful YouTube channel. But I don't I don't know what people find as fun, as interesting about it. I wanted to see if the prices had went down, because if I if walk in traffic does keep declining the way it is, I may wind up actually moving again. There's no point in, you know, paying twelve thousand plus for this gigantic space that I have if I'm going to move to a mail in depot somewhere else. And if walk in traffic continues to decline, if the city decides to have another lockdown, if all the offices and schools stay closed or all the people leave or, you know, the early June riots happen again, I kind of, you know, I would see myself setting up a mail in location somewhere else and a small walk in place in New York. I never wanted to do that because I wanted everybody to be under one roof because, you know, that's how you solve problems better. That way you learn cross-piling. Everything happens way better that way. But that was when mail in was 20 percent, maybe 30 percent of the business. Now it's over 65 percent. So that changes the equation altogether. And I don't see that going. I see that trend continuing. If that continues, I'm out of here.

Dave Jones: Right. And what would be the trigger point, you think, for mail in percentage of your business? Surely at like 70 percent. Like once it hits half, you start thinking, geez, you know.

Louis Rossmann: Over 60 percent, over 65 to 70 percent consistently would be a point where I talk with the people here and I have a conversation that goes. Can you imagine doing the work that you do except being able to actually own a house with a backyard, a front yard and maybe a pool on the salary that you get here? What do you think of that? Just think about it. And then and then I try to figure out who would be open to coming with and who wouldn't be. Because the moving the business is not difficult. Move it. Finding new people is. And I realize that I'm a very lucky man and a very lucky business owner that has really good people here. And that if I reopen some, you know, there are all these these books like the Michael Garber books and how you need to be able to have a manual for everything and make a business that's completely, you know, you can easily duplicate it anywhere else. He's bright with a lot of businesses. I don't see how you do that with this business. And the reason I say that is I've never seen a business in this particular industry ever do that successfully. Franchising open ended diagnostics of electronics that need to be repaired cheaply to be economically viable. I can standardize as much stuff as I want. I'm never going to get a duplicate of the staff that I have now. Maybe I shouldn't say never, but I don't want to underscore the appreciation I have for the people who've helped me make this business what it is. You know, I started it. I did a lot of the work. I worked here for years by myself before I got anybody else. But the value that the people that work here now have added is tremendous. And I'm not going to find these people again in just three or six months if I move somewhere else. You know, it's... Of course. That's the hardest part. It's not even getting... You know, I thought the hardest part would be getting the business. That's when I started trying to do a mail-in push in 2013. And that actually wound up being easy. The hard part is, well, now I have the best staff in the world, but they live here. You know, the question is, do they want to continue living here as the city devolves into a dumpster fire?

Dave Jones: Oh, what... Where are the mail-ins coming from? Are they within New York or are they like from across the country? What's the percentage?

Louis Rossmann: A lot of them are in New York recently. A lot of them are from around the country. In the very beginning of the COVID lockdowns, the mail-ins from New York went up because people were afraid if they walked outside that they'd die. And now that's settled down after all the protests and you had 10,000 people walking shoulder to shoulder. Then that kind of went down and people started going outside again more often. But it's mostly from just all around the country. Any from overseas? We get them from overseas, but I try to discourage them because most people want things done incredibly quickly. And overseas shipping and customs and everything else, it creates problems that I can't really control. So if something is stuck in customs for six weeks, the customer is really, really mad at me, but I can't do anything and they don't want to, they can't accept that I can't do anything. And it actually, it really does make me sad when I read these emails regarding it or someone sends something to me from overseas and it never makes it here. Like that makes me sick because that was your data and your stuff on it. So I try to encourage people from overseas to find their own local repair shops just because international shipping is going to have a higher chance of losing something than national shipping. But yeah, we still get a lot of stuff from overseas, surprisingly.

Dave Jones: Interesting.

Louis Rossmann: The other thing is the estimate. You know, I offer a free estimate. If you walk in, you're going to pay early 20 bucks to ship it to me in the country. But if you know, if you're in Europe or Asia, you're going to pay like 50 to $80 to send me something and then pay that again to get it back. So like if I can't fix something and the estimate is going to cost $150, that's a real kick in the teeth. Like if I tell you, I'm sorry, I can't do anything for this and it didn't cost you much or it costs you $15, you're not that mad. But if you know you're paying $150 for the shipping both ways and I can't fix it, you're probably going to be a little saltier than you would if you went to a local repair shop. Totally.

Dave Jones: What is your take on the state of New York at the moment? Because I've been hearing a lot of stuff that New York's done. It's gone. Like if everyone's moving out, everyone's, you know, it's not coming back. What's your take on it?

Louis Rossmann: There's two paths. Behind door number one, most of the people who are leaving are the people who weren't really, who weren't really needed anyway. The people who are leaving are the people who are, you know, they moved here to follow their dream because they wanted to become an actress or an actor or, you know, a famous singer or something. And they didn't really belong here anyway. And that's not really going to hurt things. Or it's the really, really rich people that owned five apartments that are now going to go to the people that actually live and work here. And the city, the prices are going to come down for storefronts and apartments. People will be able to afford to live near their job. And the city will be less overcrowded. And everything will be great once the transformation is over. Behind door number two, the city, all the taxpayers leave. So there's no money for services like garbage men, police, teachers, and city workers. Those people, once they're all unemployed, now don't make money to pay for their super expensive apartments in the city. That means that you have a very high concentration of people who are broke to is more broke than the rest of the country where your apartment's 700 bucks or 600 bucks a month, who are now incredibly angry, which contributes to the social unrest and the rioting until it pushes more and more people out. And then it becomes a ghost town. No one wants to live in. I am biased because I haven't really liked New York for a really long time. I'm I am biased. So I'm not an I am. I'm very biased and I believe it's door number two. But there's there is a possibility for door number one, which is, again, you know, who cares of all these if there's one less Verizon store? That means, you know, a grocer can move in there. And instead of paying 80,000 a month, they'll charge him 10,000 a month. But the thing is, there's an adjustment period for that because the city is used to having a budget about what is like 60 or 70 billion or something like that. They're used to having that as a budget. And if all the taxpayers move out and that budget is now eight billion or two billion.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Louis Rossmann: Well, that that money went to people. And when that money stops going to those people, whether it is workers, city workers doing work or programs or individuals on assistance, they're all going to be really, really angry. And there's going to be unrest when you when you make that type of budget cut. And that's why I kind of find a lot of the defund the police stuff a little interesting, because I mean, this time next year, not just defund the police, it's going to be defund the garbage men, defund the teachers, defund everything, because a lot of the landlords that my accountant has said his tenants are not paying any rent. So they're not paying any property tax because they're not getting any rent money. So where is that money coming from? And I think that there's going to be a cascading unrest once the city budget tanks and goes to shit. And I don't think it was I don't really think coronavirus is the specific reason for it. I think that this was something that was going to happen at some point in time. You had a very unsustainable budget. The prices to live here were ridiculously out of whack and unsustainable. And the city still had some deficit, even with all the money it was collecting based on these unsustainable prices. So everybody's going to get hit right now, for sure. But the cities that had the least sustainable budgets, the least sustainable models are the ones that are going to get hit worst of all. New York is definitely up there because if you're taxing properties the size of a garage based on it being worth $30,000 a month, like, man, you don't need corona to know that that's not going to last forever.

Dave Jones: Wow. Yeah, there's going to be a time lag on this. Definitely. Do you see people holding out to, oh, I'm going to wait and see what happens in November, which is your election, of course? Do you see people waiting for that as the trigger to either stay or go?

Louis Rossmann: No, not at all, because it doesn't have anything to do with it. Let's say you have there the arguments. Anytime someone looks through a Twitter feed, based on their own internal biases, what it is that they find more important or is more relevant to them, are they going to focus on the police brutality towards innocent protesters just exercising the First Amendment rights, or are they going to focus on rioters and looters setting shit on fire and starting fights for no reason? There's enough Twitter feeds giving you enough videos of both of those things happening. Well, it's Twitter. Yeah, which one you choose to focus on, that's up to what you find culturally relevant or more important. Like, what resonates with you? But that has nothing to do with Trump or whoever is in the White House. You know, when Trump says, this is all terrible, you know, vote for me because of look what's happening in these Democrat-run cities. It's like, yeah, but it's happening with you as the president. So it's going to happen one way or the other. You know, what happens in these cities, it doesn't, you know, Trump doesn't really have any effect on what happens in these cities. You know, it's not like there's, it's not like, you know, if Biden wins or versus he wins, it's going to really genuinely affect people that live in these cities when it comes to these major issues. New York City rents are still going to be insane. New York City taxes are still going to be insane. New York City is still going to be a very left place. New York is still going to be, you know, all these factors. It's not like Trump can just, you know, wave his pen and change them all. So I don't think the election is really what people are, I think people will vote based on this as an issue, but I don't think it actually has much of an effect.

Dave Jones: Got it. Because things are mostly locally city and state run in the US, aren't they? That's where it all happens. That that's where it all succeeds or fails.

Louis Rossmann: Yeah. Like whether or not we let out certain criminals, whether or not New York has bail reform, whether or not property taxes are what they are, whether or not, you know, that we have like the affordable housing initiatives or not. All a lot of like a lot of this stuff is not really. Trump is not deciding it. You know, it's the it's de Blasio, Cuomo and the city council, the city assembly, these politicians. So I don't think anybody in New York City is saying, you know, man, I'd love to I'd love to leave. But let me just if Trump gets elected, I'll stay here. That's not what they're basing their decision on, because him being in office is really all the stuff that's occurred right now has happened with him in office. And I don't and all the stuff that's happened regarding the city being unsustainably expensive to live was the same thing with Obama in office. It's like, you know, these prices being ridiculous, the city having the unsustainable budget that it did, the city having the high concentrations of people, having an MTA where the train is always broken, being polluted everywhere, having rents that are insanely high everywhere, having high taxes. All this stuff was is the same, regardless who is in the White House.

Dave Jones: Do you see prices and rents coming down or do you think that the owners are just going to hold on until the wheels fall off the billy car?

Louis Rossmann: I've seen some apartments that go for four to four thousand to forty five hundred start to go for thirty five hundred to four thousand. I spoke about this with a friend of mine, but I for me, that's not really a meaningful correction, because even if you did take 10 percent off, you took 10 percent off of something that's, you know, needs to come. It needs more than a 10 percent discount. I don't see the prices coming down at all. And the reason that I don't think they're going to come down anytime soon is because a lot of the places that were vacant when I was looking for my first store in 2011 are still vacant today. They've watched that video. Damn. There are a lot of these places that have been vacant for eight years, so they don't care. I don't think that they I don't think they even care about the money they get from rent or selling the building. I don't. Maybe it's money laundering. Maybe it's something else. But I don't see the prices coming down anytime soon. I don't think people are making their decisions on whether to stay or leave based on the president. They're making decisions whether to stay or leave based on where's the economic opportunity? What is there to do here? And where are my friends and where am I culturally compatible? So like I, you know, I have I know people that said, listen, I would never go to New York City. No, no offense, but I just don't fit in there. And then there are people where if I say, you know, I'm going to the map and I'm just finding areas and I say Huntsville, Alabama looks really nice. Oh, look at look at the places there. They're like, I'm not moving to Alabama. So, you know, it's where are you culturally compatible? Where is the where is the opportunity, the economic opportunity? Where are your friends and what is there to do? So right now there's nothing to do here because a lot of places are closed. The economic opportunity is leaving. So I think it's going to be a combination of those things that make people decide where it is that they're that they're going to go.

Dave Jones: Got it. Well, like here, if you're like I, I own an office, you know, I'm moving back into my old office. I'm downsizing. So I don't have to pay someone else rent. But if my place I used to rent it out, but if I don't rent it, if I don't have a tenant for my office, I have to pay the outgoings, which is what they're called here, which is the strata levies, the building funds, you know, all that sort of stuff. Is it the same thing there? Is there an ongoing cost if you're not renting it?

Louis Rossmann: Sorry for the ignorance, but what do you mean by is outgoing is your idea of property tax?

Dave Jones: No, it's not property tax. It's it's the fun to keep the building going. So it's to service the lifts. It's to pay for the cleaning of the building and the grounds and the maintenance and all that sort of stuff. And for my little 50 square meter office, don't know what that is in feet, but that's about 5,000 a year. So if I don't find a tenant for that and it's sitting vacant, that's costing me $5,000 a year just to keep it.

Louis Rossmann: Well, so like for cleaning it or for what else?

Dave Jones: Well, because well, cleaning, because it's got like, like the toilets on every level, like, you know, they, they have to be clean because I don't have toilets in the unit. So it's got each level has its own facilities. There's, you know, grounds maintenance around side, have to service the lifts. You have to pay for the, you know, just the maintenance and upkeep of the air conditioning systems and all sorts of stuff like that.

Louis Rossmann: I mean, in New York, nothing is like a lot of the places that I saw, they had cockroaches in them. They were falling apart. There were holes in the ceiling and the walls. Like, I mean, I'm a little, I'm just a little confused and I'm probably missing something really stupid. But if a place is vacant, then like if some, if nobody poops in a toilet, does it get dirty? Or if nobody uses an elevator, does it, does it stop working kind of thing? Like I'm trying to figure out how that's 5,000 a year.

Dave Jones: Well, it's just like a building. I don't know, but like it costs money to every, cause I'm a part owner of that building. Essentially.

Louis Rossmann: Are you paying these expenses out of pocket? Like, are you going to the maintenance or are they just saying we need 5,000 from you every year to keep up the maintenance and you don't ask what exactly, where exactly it's

Dave Jones: going? Well, no, I know exactly where it goes. I know exactly all the things that goes into, cause I'm on the strata committee or any tenant can just ask for where it's going and where all these funds are going. But if I rent it out, then the, then the tenant pays for those outgoings. Oh, yeah.

Louis Rossmann: I, I, I honestly don't know how that works. I know that they have to pay the property tax in terms of outgoings. It seems like outgoings means general maintenance. And if you get an idea from a lot of the stuff that you may watch on my channel, they don't, they don't maintain shit.

Dave Jones: They don't maintain anything. Okay.

Louis Rossmann: There are lights behind walls. There were doors 13 feet above the ground. There are holes in the wall. There's, it is a oriental cockroaches getting killed by American cockroaches in the basement. According to a, this one guy, I think it was an entomologist or something that was going over my channel. And he said like, that's an American cockroach killing or eating an oriental cockroach. Like they don't maintain shit. And when you get the, when you get the place, it's on you to clean all that up. They would rather just give you a month of free rent than have anything to do with maintenance. They are not going to maintain their property. Wow. It's the last. Now in office space in Midtown, that's different. They will maintain the property and they'll even build it out the way you want. If you're willing to pay, you know, 60,000 for a shoebox, but I don't even count that. If you want something that's even, if you want something the size of my store for less than $25,000, then you are going to be doing all your own maintenance. And if the place has been in disrepair for three years, that's on, that's on the tenant. Like they're, they're not paying to fix any of that or maintain any of that property while, while it's vacant.

Dave Jones: Yeah, no, it's totally different here. It's almost as if everything here in, you know, your typical business parks here, everything's like a grade office space. So it's like your uptown, you know, you know, Manhattan commercial office real estate. So everything's maintained and kept very well. Like, yeah, if like there's places here vacant, but they're in perfect condition, like you could just move in. Like the idea of renting something here that's in a dilapidated state that just basically does not happen here. So unless you're buying some giant, you know, warehouse, like, you know, in the middle of some industrial park or something, maybe.

Louis Rossmann: The offices are usually much nicer, but they're also way more expensive. The store, the retail storefronts, the storefronts are different. The stores, you know, what you see is what you get. I honestly prefer the, what you see is what you get. I would rather pay 3,000, 3,500 a month for a space and have to spend 10,000 fixing it up. Even if I don't own it, then spend 9,000 a month for the space, but have it look slightly nicer. Like with, but the first store that I had, it started off at 3,500 a month and people said, wow, I can't believe that's so cheap. You know, they were jealous of it. You know, you should have seen what it looked like when I moved in here, I could see through to the basement.

Dave Jones: Right.

Louis Rossmann: Yeah. Well, so that's, yeah. So I don't understand. I think they, they keep it empty, but they, if the, all they have to pay every year is the property tax.

Dave Jones: Got it. Interesting. All right. Where our amp hours well and truly up, but I forgot to cover one last thing. So we'll go back to the right to repair thing. We'll close off with this. You've done a video requesting help because you want to create an industry standard for independent repair. Can you tell us what that's all about?

Louis Rossmann: I'd like to create a trade association or some sort of organization that focuses on right to repair more professionally. So rather than this being my random hobby that I talk about, or like rather being like, after I'm done with my job, I make a video about it. It'd be something that I push forward with a concerted effort. And part of that is helping with creating standards. So if you want to certify someone, you need to have a set of standards that you certify them to, which we don't, which I don't have. So I was looking for help from people who have companies that are in the repair business that have their own standards for internal use, just to give us a template or something to work with. And I wanted to create an organization that does three separate things. The first is it teaches people how to repair these devices. And it shows you how to do the repairs that other people are not showing you how to do by financially incentivizing people who figure it out to actually show people rather than keep it to themselves. I wanted it to focus on helping repair shops get to the level that I am or passed by giving them, you know, the kind of a rubric or a blueprint of how to do their job without having to join a Ubreak iFix or a CPR and some model that works. And I wanted to focus on getting more people to understand right to repair is an issue outside of, you know, Reddit r slash videos or a slash dot comment section.

Dave Jones: So and would this have like a it'd be a central voice, so to speak, to to lobby, so to speak, for the right to repair thing? Is that a goal or?

Louis Rossmann: Yeah, it would be. But a lot of the but lobbying is really not even most of what I'm looking to do, because as I said, most of it is going to be done through culture and through changing people's view on right to repair and that wind up buying these devices and working at these companies and also by getting more people involved in fixing things. So if I can get more repair shops to do what they do better and I can get more people to understand that this is an issue, I think we'll have more success. So what happened is some random person reached out to me and said, you know, what would you do regarding right to repair? What are the things you would do if you actually had a budget? And I said, this is what I would do. And he said, I'll you know, OK, cool, I'll pay for all that. And I said, ha ha. Yeah, right. And then I Googled him and then I found SEC documents and it's like, oh, never mind. You actually do have that much money. OK, I should have been nicer. But and so there's a lot that I would want to get done. But starting that type of organization takes a lot more time than I thought. So in the meantime, before I figured, what are the things that I could get done that actually don't require money? So what are the things where like I don't need money to get done? I could just get it done by using my time, my brain and other people. And I saw every day, you know, I this is not my job yet because I still have everything else to work on. And this organization hasn't finished getting formed yet. But I want to get as much done as I want to get as much added to it as I can.

Dave Jones: So if people out there listening, we have a large audience and they can offer help. What sort of stuff are you after?

Louis Rossmann: I'm after any sort of rubric of standards that you've created if you run an independent repair business that you have your employees and yourself abide by. I'd like to have the people in the industry that are like really at the top of their game, along with myself, look over this and really try to come up and together with a group of basic guidelines, suggestions, best practices. And like, no, this is something that's just a game. You have to abide by this if you're in the industry kind of thing. So I've been putting them all into a lot of it into a wiki right now. So there's just some like, you know, basic ideas like, you know, making sure you put the devices somewhere. And when you when you take it in, that you actually know where it is. So Jessa, when she was on her way to visit her family, you know, she met with someone that was having some board issues and she thought she's she's a people person way more than I am. So she thinks, you know, let me just walk into this guy's shop. I'll help him out in person. She has to see the board. The guy doesn't know where it is. He doesn't know where it is because he makes the mistake that every newbie makes, which is when he has a bunch of stuff on his desk. He puts the marking on the device, not on the board. And the board is separate from the device when he takes it out. So he doesn't know which one is which. Very bad. Label it. You know, now I'm not going to say you have to label it with this font. And this ink and this thing, if you separate the board from the device, label it. You know, like a lot of just a lot of basic stuff that is probably going to help out someone who's starting from scratch. You know, I put together a sheet recently on how to properly ultrasonic and clean the boards because most people, when they first buy an ultrasonic cleaner, they get really, really excited and want to make sure the board is as clean as humanly possible. And they clean everything. They clean the solder joints. They clean the Vs. They clean the 0201 resistors off of it. They make sure that half of their board is now inside the cleaner. So I put together a little standard sheet, you know, like of, you know, risk, what risk of death of different boards, the most common causes for a board to be dead after you take it out of a cleaner, how to properly put it in the cleaner, all this stuff. So like I'd want to go over. I would want to kind of take an aggregate of what everybody has already contributed and all of the stuff that I want to make available, whether it's educational materials, videos and how to do difficult repairs or this. It all has to be free. It's going to be freely available to the general public and anybody who wants to view it, not behind some sort of paywall that you have to pay to be a part of a franchise kind of thing. What I'd really like to be able to accomplish here is I'd like to take what it is that I was able to do with my luck and good fortune in life and be able to make it an easy thing for someone else to follow in my footsteps or the footsteps of, let's say, Jessa Jones or myself or Mark Schaefer or Tim Herman, but without going through all the misery in the beginning of figuring out how to do everything yourself.

Dave Jones: That's absolutely fantastic and quite noble.

Louis Rossmann: It's fun because it stops being fun when you do the same repair for the 30,000th time, but meeting someone else that says, I used to be the assistant manager at a pizzeria and now I make almost six figures. Thank you for your video. That stuff is rewarding and it kind of lets you relive the excitement that you had when you first started. That excitement I had when I first started, that goes away after a while, but when you get to see someone else relive that, that's really awesome. And the idea that someone else could relive that, but without all of the stupid, stupid, stupid mistakes that I made in the beginning, that's exciting.

Dave Jones: Fantastic. So I'll leave, if you can help Lewis out, I'll leave it in the comments down below.

Louis Rossmann: So yeah, my email is lewis at rossmangroup.com, two S's, two N's. And thank you very much for having me on. I really appreciate your stuff in the conversation. And it was honestly, videos like yours and Steel Wheels Down were what in the early 2010s got me to believe that I could actually learn this stuff without going to college. So thank you very much for all the stuff that you've put out there. Because without, you know, you explaining how electronics work or Steel Wheels Down, giving his really, really basic explanation of how a transistor works, I probably would have looked at a schematic and just, you know, given up and said, I'm sticking a basic screen and battery repairs.

Dave Jones: That's, I feel exactly the same way as you. I get a real kick out of knowing that, you know, my stuff has helped other people either start creating their own videos or start doing their own stuff, getting into engineering, electronics and stuff like that. It's really rewarding.

Louis Rossmann: You and Afrotech Mods both, I learned a lot from, but I got referred to this one video by Steel Wheels Down on how a transistor works. And after I saw that, for some, people are going to think that I'm a complete idiot if they didn't already know this. That I had no idea, like the real way a transistor worked until I saw that video and something clicked when I saw it and everything that I was starting to look at in a schematic made sense. And then I thought, wow, I can actually start figuring this out. And I started working on it. And that really wouldn't have happened without, you know, the people that, like you, that put this stuff out there for free for everybody to watch and made it simple and easy to understand. So thank you very much.

Dave Jones: No worries. Thanks for joining us, Lewis. All right. You have a good night. Catch you next time.