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The thriving black market of John Deere tractor hacking

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Re: The thriving black market of John Deere tractor hacking

#151

Post by fastbeef »

hwillis wrote: post #129
fastbeef wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. This process is 100% carbon neutral. It recycles the carbon already in the pig manure as opposed to natural gas which is a fossil fuel and adds to the carbon cycle.

Any lost methane is significantly worse than the equivalent amount of CO2. Even though it's carbon neutral, the intermediate step converts it to a much more potent greenhouse gas that is very easy to lose to atmosphere. Without a digester, the biomass will be converted to co2 instead. Energy that could have been stored as methane is converted to heat. The best case scenario is to skip biology entirely and throw it in…

But when in the form of methane it can be used as fuel on the farm which means that the equivalent amount of fossil fuels don't need to be consumed.

Re: The thriving black market of John Deere tractor hacking

#152

Post by Kalium »

bougiefever wrote: post #78

Farmers are an independent group. They are used to relying on their own skills and hard work to make a living, and they are not going to tolerate this. I think it is an overreach for John Deere and other manufacturers to control what I do with my (my!) devices. I really hope this law gets passed to prevent companies from doing this. Farmers can really help, because everyone knows we depend on them for our food, so an…

> Farmers can really help, because everyone knows we depend on them for our food, so anything that messes with them, messes with all of us.

Really? Because I'm perfectly happy getting my produce from Mexico and my rice from Thailand instead of American farmers. Farmers as a group feed the planet, but American farmers we don't need at all.

Re: The thriving black market of John Deere tractor hacking

#153

Post by Arnt »

hwillis wrote: post #131
Arnt wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which form is that? Elaborate?

Carbon is converted into methane (ch4) rather than co2. Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas[1] [1] https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/overview-greenhouse-gases

Well, he burns that, he doesn't emit it, so I don't see why that matters. Once burned it seems like the same old CO₂ is emitted, so what he does is a net win... or? I'm not a chemist.

Re: The thriving black market of John Deere tractor hacking

#154

Post by joe_the_user »

mathgeek wrote: post #82
joe_the_user wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if avoiding liability for their products is great way to make money or not. But if they are making a large effort to avoid liability, they are doing that as a way to guarantee profits - ie, make money. Deere effectively has a monopoly on tractors at the scale discussed in the article. That's why farmers are buying the tractors and illegally moding them rather than buying competing brands - see comments e…

> But if they are making a large effort to avoid liability, they are doing that as a way to guarantee profits - ie, make money. This can also be viewed as the more general "companies act in a way that gives them the best chance of continued indeterminate existence."

Well, I just want to put out that the "greedy or not" discussion frame is just terrible for discussion of issues in a liberal capitalist democracy.

Of course, most companies exist to make money. A few companies might other do good things in the mean time (go out of their way to hire under-privileged youth or something). But the assumption of liberal capitalism is that following market forces will usually do good and when it won't there are or should be laws saying otherwise.

So the "bad" companies aren't the "greedy companies" but rather those companies which either break the law or "pervert" the law - find their ways around laws that should be there or use their influence to create laws that shouldn't be there. That is, unethical corporations but not necessarily more greedy that a company hoping to make lots of money fully in the bounds of the law.

But despite this, "Corporate Greed" is shouted on the left as an objection (an objection that really makes no sense for left, right or center damn it).

And with this weak argument on the left, comes the equally disingenuous argument, "not bad because not greedy" which winds-up being a content-less defense. "What you're abusing those people but even aiming to profit by it, tell me again why this makes it OK?"

Re: The thriving black market of John Deere tractor hacking

#155

Post by galdosdi »

losteverything wrote: post #108

Help me bound things. # times in a year a Deere requires repair? My point of reference is my car. I can go several cars and not have to get a "repair" as long as I trade in about yr 4 or 5. Is Deere the Yugo of tractors wrt visits to the shop?

> as long as I trade in about yr 4 or 5.

If you mean you buy brand new or almost brand new and sell at year 4 or 5, then you're spending a lot more than you need to, which is buying you the extra "reliability."

But that reliability isn't even entirely real -- a lot of the repairs you'd expect after about 5 years or 50,000 miles are predictable and listed right there in the maintenance schedule in the manual, so as long as you do them proactively rather than roll the dice, a modern car should easily be very reliable for at least 100,000 / 10 yrs.

Trading in for a new car is probably costing you a lot more than just sticking to the maintenance schedule and budgetting for the major repairs would. I think a lot of people mistakenly overestimate the pain of those major scheduled repairs because they just don't do them and wait till they need to be towed in to have it fixed (and by then a few other things need fixing too)

Speaking in generalities of course

Anyway, point is, farms are a business, they're not going to piss money away by trading in a tractor that can much more cheaply be maintained -- you trade it in when it costs more to maintain (and abstain from new features) than to replace

Re: The thriving black market of John Deere tractor hacking

#156

Post by linksnapzz »

throwaway40483 wrote: post #132
weberc2 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both. They've operated their own foundries for longer than I've been alive; probably closer to a century. They've since purchased at least one semiconductor company to design and manufacture some of their electronics. And yes, John Deere has built its own engines for a long time; the division is called Power Systems or JDPS, and they build engines in factories all over the world, and they sell their engines to other…

I highly doubt that John Deere operates any semiconductor foundries. Those foundries aren't your normal run of the mill factories. They are $10B monsters just to get started.

John Deere may not, but General Motors actually does:

http://kokomogmch.com/kokomo-semiconductors/about-kokomo-sem...

Re: The thriving black market of John Deere tractor hacking

#157

Post by alasdair_ »

Kalium wrote: post #152
bougiefever wrote: post #78

Farmers are an independent group. They are used to relying on their own skills and hard work to make a living, and they are not going to tolerate this. I think it is an overreach for John Deere and other manufacturers to control what I do with my (my!) devices. I really hope this law gets passed to prevent companies from doing this. Farmers can really help, because everyone knows we depend on them for our food, so an…

> Farmers can really help, because everyone knows we depend on them for our food, so anything that messes with them, messes with all of us. Really? Because I'm perfectly happy getting my produce from Mexico and my rice from Thailand instead of American farmers. Farmers as a group feed the planet, but American farmers we don't need at all.

>Farmers as a group feed the planet, but American farmers we don't need at all.

Until something happens to knock out the supply chain for a while, then we're fucked.

Re: The thriving black market of John Deere tractor hacking

#158

Post by dragonwriter »

bougiefever wrote: post #78

Farmers are an independent group. They are used to relying on their own skills and hard work to make a living, and they are not going to tolerate this. I think it is an overreach for John Deere and other manufacturers to control what I do with my (my!) devices. I really hope this law gets passed to prevent companies from doing this. Farmers can really help, because everyone knows we depend on them for our food, so an…

> Farmers are an independent group. They are used to relying on their own skills and hard work to make a living, and they are not going to tolerate this.

In the increasingly-distant-from-reality world of yeoman farmers rather than corporate agribusiness.

Re: The thriving black market of John Deere tractor hacking

#159

Post by PeterisP »

hwillis wrote: post #27
ethbro wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not like he's dumping the methane in the environment though (e.g. dumping manure on a field): it's ultimately being run through a combustion engine.

Methane leaks. In the US, so much of it leaks that it's a greater source of ghg than cows and manure, if I recall.

If half of his pig-manure methane leaks away, it's still a win for the environment, as otherwise 100% of it would have leaked.

Re: The thriving black market of John Deere tractor hacking

#160

Post by print_r »

I really hope that legislature passes that invalidate these TOSes. Farming is hard work and they shouldn't make it harder for people already scraping by in some cases. I think where their TOS makes sense is for corporate farming where a larger corporate entity has to manage a fleet of these tractors. Unfortunately, John Deere does not make any distinction on their licensing based on who is using their product. I think it's time to send John Deere a... Dear John? :P
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