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

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241–250 of 320 posts

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

#241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

posit: are these considered 'road vehicles' in the same way that a car is?

No, there are different standards, between road vehicles, mobile power trains, fixed, emergency, etc. Emergency and fixed tend to have the most liberal allowances. Public road vehicles the most stringent. Tractors are somewhere in-between.

Of course the government exempts itself from this because they know all that bullshit of "it's just as reliable etc" is trickery. It's common to buy previously government owned deleted vehicles, because the people working in federal government don't want to eat the dogfood the plebs do, and AFAIK if you buy it from them then you're allowed to have it.

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

#242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I share his videos here but nobody seems to see them and/or care enough to vote; all I get is crickets. It's baffling to me. Examples: - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48802162 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48395520 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47043208

Unless the video is about an extraordinary natural phenomenon that can be seen, video (and audio) is strictly inferior to text for communicating information.

that seems pretty easily falsifiable. Sometimes you want want to consume content while doing something else that precludes reading. Sometimes you want to relax your eyeballs after staring at a screen all day. Theres plenty of reasons to consume audio or video.

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

#243
post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I'm not sure what you mean when you say John Deere was cheating the system. Instead of selling tractors with more powerful, but limited motors, they should have sold tractors with less powerful motors and no screw. There is no need to do any of this in software. They were purposefully avoiding the regulation by telling farmers, "do not loosen that screw, or you'll break the law, wink-wink!"

I'm no mechanical engineer, but can't any motor be run with greater power if the fuel mixture settings are remapped? Is it possible to design a motor that runs at 25 horsepower at leaner emissions-compliant settings, but can't run at higher power if a user changes the fueling settings to a richer mixture? I'm skeptical if it's even possible to design an engine that runs at 25 horsepower when complying with emissions requirements, but can't be tuned to run at higher power if users have the ability to change fuel settings.

> They were purposefully avoiding the regulation by telling farmers, "do not loosen that screw, or you'll break the law, wink-wink!"

They were? The whole point of John Deere locking down the firmware was to prevent this metaphorical loosening of the screw. It looks more like John Deere invested heavily in preventing modification of its hardware, much to the chagrin of farmers who wanted to cheat emissions.

It's more like: every engine has a metaphorical screw that can change the fuel mixture - this is inherent to combustion engines. John Deere made it really difficult or impossible to change that screw. Now farmers regained the ability to change that screw under the guise of repair.

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

#244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm one of the people who mostly ignores his videos due to their length and the 'old man angry ranting about things' vibe they give me.

Everyone should be as angry as him, then companies wouldn't keep screwing us over.

"I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!"

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

#245
post #206

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

I feel like Cory Doctorow is trying to tackle a bit broader issue (enshittification) than just right to repair. Rossmann is more specific and hands-on to RoR

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

#246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

“The purpose of a system is what it does.”

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

#247
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think it's a trait with these types that makes them what they are to begin with. They don't just turn it on and off for the bad guys, they're like this all the time with everyone. Never meet your heroes is just great advice, same as it ever was.

[deleted]

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

#248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a trait with these types that makes them what they are to begin with. They don't just turn it on and off for the bad guys, they're like this all the time with everyone. Never meet your heroes is just great advice, same as it ever was.

[flagged]

LOL, that's funny

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

#249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deere employee, but speaking for myself, not the company. Farmers buy Deere because they are the most repairable. The dealer is just down the road, and has the parts that you need. The things you cannot do yourself are things that farmers think "I wouldn't do that anyway".

> they are the most repairable. That's a really weird way to spell "incumbency and network effects". In fairness, you're not wrong, but that seems to be a very specific framing that hides a lot of what this whole discussion is about.

It is more than that. It is also the dealer has the parts you need, even for older stuff. Deere is well known to stock replacement parts longer than anyone else, and can get replacement parts where others would say not possible. network effects and incumbency help as well, but Deere is the most repairable.

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

#250
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think it's a trait with these types that makes them what they are to begin with. They don't just turn it on and off for the bad guys, they're like this all the time with everyone. Never meet your heroes is just great advice, same as it ever was.

[deleted]
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