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John Deere owners will get the right to repair equipment under FTC settlement

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Re: John Deere owners will get the right to repair equipment under FTC settlement

#201

Post by thijson »

lettergram wrote: post #43
mothballed wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tractors are legal above 25hp but it requires DPF, and at I want to say about 75, possibly more than that. Farmers generally hate DPF systems and will disable them the microsecond they get the right to repair. >Then why even manufacture them and cripple them? They cripple them because they know people want bigger tractor without emission control so they sell it as a less powerful tractor and then just expect people t…

As a tractor owner. Two things, the DPF & SCR (>=75hp) on a tractor is not a great idea -- 1) Tractors are typically owned by low margin businesses (i.e. farmers) that need to be repaired in the field AND need to be repaired quickly, else you loose a crop. Adding complexity to tractors literally can cost the farm. 2) The actual emissions reduced is questionable. Tractors run significantly less than a truck, like 50-1…

I've watched youtube videos where the farmer is complaining that his million dollar combine has to do a regen cycle. Each hour that machine is running is costing the farm hundreds of dollars in depreciation.

Re: John Deere owners will get the right to repair equipment under FTC settlement

#202

Post by criddell »

yason wrote: post #137
mothballed wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until you tell them how easy it makes it to bypass emissions restrictions. My tractor was shipped with a screw turned down to Opening up John Deere tractors for right to repair virtually assures they will ~all be doing emissions deletes. Part of their lock-down was profit seeking, but the other half is that different vendors had different ideas interpretations of the law about how locked down the system had to be to…

Emission controls are the best scapegoat for Deere and others to lock down systems as tight as possible for profit. They don't care about emissions, the farmers don't care about emissions, the emissions happen on a fscking large field out of nowhere instead of rush hour city traffic, and tractors usually run at high power which makes a cleaner combustion with less soot (but higher nox): all in all, the world doesn't…

Judging by what I've seen on Reddit lately, lots and lots of people have stopped caring about their personal impact on the environment.

Why should we set the AC to 80 or be diligent about turning off lights when billionaires are flying in a private jet to go watch a football game and datacenters are popping up like Starbucks?

How can anybody tell a farmer they should probably care more about emissions?

Re: John Deere owners will get the right to repair equipment under FTC settlement

#203

Post by Grombobulous »

koolba wrote: post #65
Grombobulous wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This concept of percent of profits shouldn't be considered in the context of fines. For regulations to have teeth, punishments shouldn't just slap you on the wrist just because harmful practices weren't responsible for a lot of profit. In that scenario, a lot of growth companies or just poorly performing companies could just say "sorry, we don't make any profit, so our maximum fine is $10," and obviously that wouldn'…

> Fines should really be about "what size fine will be a deterrent for this company?" To a degree. But it also has to be commensurate to the actual market size and impact. If an Amazon releases a defective dog toy that is bought by 10 people, it’d be unreasonable to fine them $100 billion dollars just because they’re a huge company.

In this example Amazon could get around culpability for significant fines by making slight variations on the same product.

“We only sold 10 dog toy model A00001, any owners of dog toy model A00002 were not impacted”

Re: John Deere owners will get the right to repair equipment under FTC settlement

#204

Post by moffkalast »

Manuel_D wrote: post #94
hatsix wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right to repair doesn't change any of that. Farmers were adjusting that screw anyways, that was the entire point. I'm not mad at farmers for doing it, I'm mad at John Deere at cheating the system.

The point is that when the firmware was locked down, it was vastly more difficult to bypass emissions restrictions. I'm not sure what you mean when you say John Deere was cheating the system. Arguably they were taking compliance more strictly before this ruling.

The emissions restrictions were meant to get the likes of Deere to design and use smaller, more efficient engines, not to keep doing whatever they were with a slightly more restricted fuel hose.

Re: John Deere owners will get the right to repair equipment under FTC settlement

#205

Post by everdrive »

maldev wrote: post #108
Cider9986 wrote: post #16

Shout out to Louis Rossmann for doing a ton of work on Right to repair. He started a website called Consumer Rights Wiki to document anti-consumer practices. https://consumerrights.wiki/w/Main_Page He's also involved with FULU Foundation which has a bounty of 25k to get Ring cameras working without Amazon's servers. https://bounties.fulu.org/bounties/ring-video-doorbells

I wish he wasn’t such an ass. Had a never meet your heroes moment outside defcon a few years ago. Not a friendly person and went from big fan to disdain when I hear his name.

Not everyone is pleasant to interact with, but that's not quite the same as whether or not they are a good person. The world's a better place with him around.

Re: John Deere owners will get the right to repair equipment under FTC settlement

#206

Post by palata »

Cider9986 wrote: post #16

Shout out to Louis Rossmann for doing a ton of work on Right to repair. He started a website called Consumer Rights Wiki to document anti-consumer practices. https://consumerrights.wiki/w/Main_Page He's also involved with FULU Foundation which has a bounty of 25k to get Ring cameras working without Amazon's servers. https://bounties.fulu.org/bounties/ring-video-doorbells

What about Cory Doctorow? I heard about this from him, I don't know Rossmann

Re: John Deere owners will get the right to repair equipment under FTC settlement

#207

Post by bombcar »

gosub100 wrote: post #184
spacedcowboy wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I never watch video posts. I can skim-read a text site in seconds to see if it's worth a real read. I can't do that with video, and there's always some ads in it, whether the author put them there or not. I hate ads. And it's not just HN either, video is a very poor substitute for a well written article. Video can augment a well-written article, but it can't replace it.

Posting here for anyone who might not know this: you can click and hold on most YouTube videos and they will play at 2x. I find that to be a good test at whether the host is communicating effectively. If I can understand them perfectly clear at 2X they are talking too slowly.

Then you get things like the ATP (I can't bring myself to say ATP podcast because La Brea Tar Pits and all that) where two hosts are fine at 1.5x and the third becomes a chipmunk.

Maybe they can make Overcast have dynamic speed based on speaker.

Re: John Deere owners will get the right to repair equipment under FTC settlement

#208

Post by mghackerlady »

GuB-42 wrote: post #47
ggoo wrote: post #7

Bananas that stuff like this needs to get litigated in our society - if you asked 100 random people "should farmers be able to repair their equipment", you would get 100 yes's.

Except it is not the right question in a market economy like ours. The right question is "what is the value (in dollars) of the right for farmers to repair their equipment". If John Deere values it more than farmers, then they will sell tractors that farmers can't repair on their own, hoping to earn more on repairs rather than easier to repair tractors that are more expensive up front. Basic market economy. It only n…

"What is the value (in dollars) of the minimum wage", "What is the value (in dollars) of emancipation", "What is the value (in dollars) of owning your things"

Re: John Deere owners will get the right to repair equipment under FTC settlement

#209

Post by 27183 »

lettergram wrote: post #43
mothballed wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tractors are legal above 25hp but it requires DPF, and at I want to say about 75, possibly more than that. Farmers generally hate DPF systems and will disable them the microsecond they get the right to repair. >Then why even manufacture them and cripple them? They cripple them because they know people want bigger tractor without emission control so they sell it as a less powerful tractor and then just expect people t…

As a tractor owner. Two things, the DPF & SCR (>=75hp) on a tractor is not a great idea -- 1) Tractors are typically owned by low margin businesses (i.e. farmers) that need to be repaired in the field AND need to be repaired quickly, else you loose a crop. Adding complexity to tractors literally can cost the farm. 2) The actual emissions reduced is questionable. Tractors run significantly less than a truck, like 50-1…

> For reference my 2022 Kubota tractor repeatedly had issues with the DPF / SCR system, mostly the software to enforce environmental rules. This lost us ~$20k one year due to the tractor being knocked out for a week (I was mid-cut for 140 acre hay, rained & rotted in the field post-cut).

That's infuriating. This kind of thing is why I specifically sought out a late '90s-early '00s Kubota, which has been great. Granted, I'm not doing anything commercial with it, and it hasn't been completely without issues. I had to make some compromises up front, I was initially looking for an L3710 DT but settled on an L3010 HST because the price was right and it was local. Added rear remote hydraulics last year, welded up some rust in the floor pan and repainted the bodywork. This year I will have to tear it all down again and split it to fix a hydraulic leak coming from the clutch housing (suspect front driveshaft seal). Still need to fabricate some brackets to hang the backhoe subframe. Need to put new ends on the tie rods because they're rattling like crazy. So it's not maintenance free, but the tradeoff I made is that there isn't anything on this machine that I cannot repair. Everything can be rebuilt, parts are available. In retrospect, would an older, simpler machine be a good tradeoff in your situation? So far I probably have 50hr/yr invested in tractor maintenance, but that includes some big ticket items so maybe over time that'll average out to ~10hr/yr. I could see how this might factor in the tradeoff.

Re: John Deere owners will get the right to repair equipment under FTC settlement

#210

Post by officeplant »

izacus wrote: post #178
VorpalWay wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even in other industries it is common that spare parts and consumables have a very high margin (while the initial purchase has a much smaller margin or in some cases is even subsidised). The most well known example is probably printer ink/toner. (Razors is another often quoted example.) But this applies to car parts too. I needed a new small plastic clip to my Dacia. I was quoted 100 SEK (about 10 USD) for that. I 3D…

It's also absolutely no secret that fattest margins and profits for automobile industry is also made with "aftermarket service" - which include upsales and inflated prices for service intervals. There's a reason they all now need digital service books which are locked to their partnerships.

>There's a reason they all now need digital service books which are locked to their partnerships.

This is honestly one of my biggest fears about the modern auto repair situation. Previously it was fairly common to eventually find service manuals for sale second hand after enough time had passed. Or someone would scan and dump them online. Then it turned into waiting for PDF's to leak from dealership CD's.

Now with having them locked down to dealership tablet pc's I worry they will never hit the public.

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