Good, I wish them every success.
I hope this sets the trend for cars too.
I would happily buy a new car with a 2000s Japanese engine and no tech.
Alberta startup sells no-tech tractors for half price
581–590 of 814 posts
Re: Alberta startup sells no-tech tractors for half price
#582Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know anything about tractors but our modern world is full of useless and inherently bad "tech" that only exists for the flashy factor. People are just tired of being mislead and abused by corporations, which is why there is now a market for non-tech products.
The best analogy that I can think of is cruise control on a car. Do you need it? No. Is it nice to have? Yes. The strict "no tech" premise of these tractors feels comparable to someone disabling the cruise control feature on their own car because they read an article about BMW locking heated seats behind a subscription. I don't know much about tractors, but I would think that surely there are some modern benefits tha…
For cars the classic example of inherently bad tech are touchscreen controls instead of physical knobs.
If you want more examples look into IoT products like smart toothbrushes, many of them now are "AI enabled".
Re: Alberta startup sells no-tech tractors for half price
#583Earlier quoted context omitted.
My son recently broke the string on the light cord in the bathroom. I opened it up in perhaps the naive expectation that someone would have designed that in such a way that the string can be reattached. Sadly it wasn't. In fact when you open the interior plastic piece the whole thing springs apart and everything from the clicking mechanism to the electrical terminals explode in different directions. Thankfully, someo…
The ones here in the UK have these little plastic connectors on the string. The switch itself has a very short string coming out of it( I actually had one of these connectors break on a bathroom light and just 3D printed a new one. But it should be fairly trivial to add one of these to any light pull you already have. https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5140505 (not my design)
Yeah, for some reason the knot broke on the inside rather than at that connector.
Re: Alberta startup sells no-tech tractors for half price
#584Earlier quoted context omitted.
The irony is cars got screens largely due to the backup camera mandate which was intended to be a safety feature. Governments are very bad at understanding unintended consequences.
A screen for the backup camera doesn't necessarily mean everything has to be through the screen at all. Most Toyotas I've seen have a screen for the backup camera and the carplay/music/gps console, but everything else is still knobs and buttons. This is true on both my 2013 and 2026 Toyotas.
I last had that on a (rented) Fiat 500: the "standard" controls (including the monochrome LCD in the instrument panel) looked really clunky and old-fashioned, and all the advanced features (audio, navigation, mobile phone connectivity, not sure if it had a backup camera) were via the (third party, Pioneer) entertainment system which was state-of-the-art with a nice high-res touchscreen. That's probably because this was the more expensive version of the car, I guess the "basic" version only has a radio - no navigation, no backup camera, no nothing. Not sure if it's the same principle at work at Toyota, I haven't driven one in a while?
Re: Alberta startup sells no-tech tractors for half price
#585That's how you deal with vendor lock in. These farmers have more balls than most Apple users.
Huh? Aren't the tractors using a loophole to avoid emissions regulations?
You can do a lot of things if you don't care about the spirit of the law and your negative externalities.
Re: Alberta startup sells no-tech tractors for half price
#586Nice. This is the kind of technology we need when we'll have to fight back against AI overlords.
Re: Alberta startup sells no-tech tractors for half price
#587Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Precision tech helps reduce operator fatigue and increases efficiency with respect to equipment operation time and material used That’s the kind of MBA speak a giant corporate food production facility loves to hear, but not a farmer.
That's untrue. I know a farmer, who buys a John Deere combine before harvest. It stays unused until his harvests are done, and returns it by end of harvest season incurring $30k on this entire transaction. Why does he do that? Because he has two weeks to finish up harvesting or start incurring losses on his harvest. Farmer does care about saving costs/losses AND getting the job done in time.
That's interesting, why don't farmers run some sort of common reserve pools of vehicles, as a form of insurance?
Re: Alberta startup sells no-tech tractors for half price
#588Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cessna 172s are great if you are learning to fly. But most people using these things for actually getting from A to B will be looking for something with a bit more range, speed, etc. That still might be sixty year old plane but one with a bigger engine; or two of them even. And if you want to go really fast you get something with a turbo prop or even jet engines. The newer ones are a bit more efficient with the fuel…
>Buy some old EV batteries wire them up and you can make anything with wheels move. Including really old tractors, pickup trucks, etc. Anything from the largest mining trucks to the smallest lawn mower can already be powered by batteries. And everything in between. With battery cost dropping, there are very few obstacles that prevent adoption left. Mostly import tariffs in the US. It's not even close to that easy tho…
What car? It probably depends on what you want the end result to be. You won't be able to DIY a Porsche Taycan, but basically if you can do an engine swap on an ICE car, you should be able to do a semi-ghetto EV conversion (i.e no fast charging or advanced thermal management, but safe and robust enough to run daily for years). Tons of people are doing it on YouTube.
Re: Alberta startup sells no-tech tractors for half price
#589Earlier quoted context omitted.
I once changed a broken release bearing of a truck. It was a relatively simple repair but the very heavy gearbox has to be taken out to do this - which is problematic especially if done on a yard without proper equipment. Since then I always pop into neutral when standing at a traffic light. It is interesting how many people in manual driving cultures think there would be no wear and tear if they press the pedal down…
As a motorcyclist stopped at the traffic light I always keep the gear on and clutch pulled in. Why? Because I have to be ready to take off when the moron driver on the phone behind me fails to stop.
Fair
Re: Alberta startup sells no-tech tractors for half price
#590What is it with American companies that eventually always try to sell crap and low moral products/services. As if the people are educated in luring people into traps to only benefit themselves.
That to me just seems like the inevitable result of capitalist market economy.
Its the result of MBAs and private equity. Capitalist market economies have existed since the dawn of civilization. Money literally predates writing and the first writings were often invoices. There is no inevitable result of capitalism as almost all of human history happened under some sort of capitalist system.