Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Nebraska farmers vote overwhelmingly for Right to Repair

uspirg.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 439 posts

Re: Nebraska farmers vote overwhelmingly for Right to Repair

#121

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

elihu wrote: post #50

> The measure adopted by the Nebraska Farm Bureau laid out specific standards for any agreement or legislation: > Right to Repair: Nebraska Farm Bureau supports the implementation of comprehensive right to repair legislation OR a negotiated written agreement between ag producers and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). This legislation or agreement must: .... > 4. Differentiate between repair (the restoration of…

This bothered me as well. Modding to a non-illegal condition should be as equally unencumbered as a restoration of hardware to it's original intended function.

Re: Nebraska farmers vote overwhelmingly for Right to Repair

#122

Post by jay_kyburz »

squish78 wrote: post #90
jay_kyburz wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people will argue that finance / tech have already fucked up farming.

I would agree, but we're not yet to the point of massive famine and crop failures - although it seems closer year after year. Every farmer I talk to is worn out and tired of the bullshit.

I've often wondered if our government has some massive stores of grain somewhere to feed the nation for a few years in the event of a near total crop failure. Seems irresponsible not to have it.

Update: I sometimes wonder what it would take for me to have a year of food in reserve here at home, but I worry that its just the crazy Prepper in me trying to come out.

Re: Nebraska farmers vote overwhelmingly for Right to Repair

#123

Post by novok »

wiremine wrote: post #58

Disclaimer: I'm a VP for an IoT software company. I also grew up in farming communities. I'm all for the right to repair, but I'm concerned we're creating a bit of false hope for famers. As more and more software gets injected into the equipment, "fixing" things requires touching both the physical devices and the software. Obviously, the right to repair for non-software related problems is easy to understand. I'm won…

Software does not physically wear out, mechanical parts do. So theoretically, the reasons why you repair something in the first place is wear and tear or physical breakage.

Fixing software bugs is like redesigning a part that has a design flaw, like the porsche's boxster IMS bearing issue. The fix for it is a redesigned part, which nobody expects mechanics to create, so it is out of the scope of the right to repair (vs the right to modify)

Re: Nebraska farmers vote overwhelmingly for Right to Repair

#124

Post by viklove »

SamWhited wrote: post #113
p1necone wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know, Americans seem to be relatively more in favor of allowing corporations to screw them than many other countries.

This post may sound flippant and is getting a lot of down votes, but this seems like an interesting discussion to be had. Do we (I am from the U.S.) tend to allow companies to screw us more than other countries? If so is it cultural, or something legal? Is it part of our broader convenience culture? I don't now, but it would be interesting to dig into if anyone can provide evidence for or against this.

It's getting downvotes because it was posted in bad faith. Many Americans would say we give corporations the freedom to act how they wish, and we give individuals the freedom to do business with the corporations they choose. The argument to be had is how much the government needs to watch out for the citizenship, because every "protective" law they pass is a restriction on the aforementioned freedoms.

The American school of thought (I'm calling it that to differentiate from the European school of thought) is that the amount of government meddling in interactions between two parties not involving the government should be kept to a minimum, and the individual should be responsible for the consequences of their actions. When you frame it this way, you might get less downvotes and more responses.

Re: Nebraska farmers vote overwhelmingly for Right to Repair

#125

Post by bduerst »

Balanceinfinity wrote: post #120

An economist would say that when considering buying this machinery the farmer would also consider the cost and availability of repairs and that the competition in the machinery market (the primary market) would police the secondary market for repairs. In reality, this kind of policing is hard to come by because of the time and expense of figuring out which company has the cheapest lifecycle1 costs for the equipment (…

When buying, if there are contractual strings attached to the use of the asset then it's more of a lease purchase than actual asset purchase. As it is now, farmers that are purchasing the asset are saying they want to use the asset as they deem fit, including repairs.

Re: Nebraska farmers vote overwhelmingly for Right to Repair

#126

Post by Erlich_Bachman »

ISL wrote: post #14

Right to repair is increasingly hitting people outside of agrarian/industrial contexts. This month, Google shipped the last update for my Pixel phone. The hardware is functional and in great shape, but I don't think there are any truly viable ways for me to keep it secure. I have a tablet that long-ago met the same fate. This is in the same world where I can 'apt-get update' my seven-year old desktop and work with ap…

Librem phones can't come soon enough.

Re: Nebraska farmers vote overwhelmingly for Right to Repair

#127

Post by bryanrasmussen »

getpolarized wrote: post #107
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #100

Thinking of who wouldn't vote for right to repair I can only come up with: 1. leaders of companies that would be adversely affected by right to repair 2. perhaps employees of same companies but that seems iffy as I doubt the adverse effects would be so great as to threaten employment. 3. People who actually think that although it would be to their benefit to have a right to repair there is an encroachment on a compan…

The same reason millions of Americans voted for "trickle down" and other irrational economic decisions. They're overly manipulated by propaganda.

Well that's sort of #3, but the thing is trickle down is a lie about how economy works that fools people who have not done any reading on the subject.

I guess a similar lie for repairing products would have to be something like - the possibilities of modern manufacturing have progressed to such a point that it is simpler, cheaper, and easier to make longer lasting products that do not need to be repaired if they, paradoxically, are made in a way that makes it impossible to repair them.

I actually do not know enough about modern manufacturing to know if the above is false but I assume it must be as I have not heard the argument, and I just made it up now, it seems unlikely I would make up an argument that was also true. I would also of course be unlikely to believe the argument given that I would see how it was made to the benefit of the people who would profit from its truth, and at any rate it would make it easier to make built in obsolescence a part of the manufacturing process.

But anyway that would be my example of a similar argument to trickle down in the context of right to repair.

Re: Nebraska farmers vote overwhelmingly for Right to Repair

#128

Post by squish78 »

bdamm wrote: post #99
squish78 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Explain how what I said is patently absurd. Are we looking at the same USDA data?

Specific farms may be able to take advantage of their position or specialization and use hand-tools to gain more value per-acre, but that kind of specialization cannot scale up to commercial scale where a farmer with a set of machines can profitably farm dozens of acres or more. They aren't putting as much care into each acre, but in the end it doesn't matter. And, if everyone was doing what the specialized teams are…

You make several outdated assumptions about farming in the USA that are based in 20th century models of agriculture. The entire sector is incredibly fragile in its present form, because every method is unsustainable.

Industrial agriculture is depleting soil fertility faster than it can be replaced. Topsoil has been decimated in the past 100 years. This is primarily due to tractor tillage and herbicides. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/only-60-years-of-...

Correlation between monoculture field crops and bee colony collapse https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/honey-bees-a...

Monoculture field crops are 100% dependent on chemical nitrogen fertilizer, the supply of which is finite https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1247398/

This is nothing to say about the ethics of undocumented indentured servitude of migrant labor, which floats the entire California farm sector

Re: Nebraska farmers vote overwhelmingly for Right to Repair

#129

Post by 8ytecoder »

aguyfromnb wrote: post #117
ProZsolt wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should get ~7 years of update. Here you can check: https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/6220366?hl=en I think it should be more, but it's on par with MacBooks

> You should get ~7 years of update. Interesting. Thanks for the link. It appears that the hardware is older than I assumed (yet perfectly capable for browsing the web), which begs another question: I bought this thing brand new a few years ago. Should it be up to the consumer to ensure that there is life left for updates? I will be certain to now, going forward. But I can't expect less-savvy consumers to do the same…

It's confusing to say it receives updates for 7 years when what they mean is 7 years from launch and not 7 years from sale (of a new device).

Re: Nebraska farmers vote overwhelmingly for Right to Repair

#130

Post by thaumasiotes »

yorwba wrote: post #88
thaumasiotes wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do wish Lineage had a way to promote and adopt community versions more officially. They do. That's what official support is. https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/ But they're a dead project.

Last change 4 minutes ago: https://review.lineageos.org/q/status:open Looks quite alive to me.

An active project that supports no hardware is still a dead project. If you want to run LineageOS, that's not a realistic goal. It's a pipe dream.
Post reply on HN