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

John Deere Announces Strategic Partnership with SpaceX

deere.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 170 posts

Re: John Deere Announces Strategic Partnership with SpaceX

#121

Post by advisedwang »

AlwaysRock wrote: post #53
mathgradthrow wrote: post #34

It is of incredible strategic importance that tractors not become "online only". Some fucking John Deere licensing server should not become a single point of failure for the nations agriculture.

I don't think you know that much about modern tractors. This headline is only surprisingly to people who still think of John Deere as an old school tractor company. Modern day tractors have tons of sensors on them that are always connected to make sure any failing part can be detected and fixed before it breaks, basically or actually do drive themselves, and likely have as much or more tech in then as any modern car.

I don't think the parent comment necessarily misses that online connectivity is delivering a lot of features, value and ultimately yield. These improvements come with a downside of the risk of outages. The comment is highlighting that John Deere is deliberately increasing this risk so that they can keep farms maximally dependent on the company.

Re: John Deere Announces Strategic Partnership with SpaceX

#122

Post by LudwigNagasena »

mrangle wrote: post #94
idiotsecant wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment still doesn't answer parent question. I design critical infrastructure control systems for a living. Every single component of my systems is user servicable and replaceable with an alternative COTS available component with a little bit of work. There is literally no reason a tractor can't also do that. Other than market moats and rent seeking.

Rent seeking is right. Farmers shouldn't be subjected to landlord economics via their equipment. That is, equipment cost shouldn't scale simply to eat farming profit (as rent costs quickly rise to eat rising incomes). I'd want to see the numbers on exaclty how much supposed always-up farming equipment saves in crop production, compared to farmers that don't use it. In fact, I know for certain that the most productive…

> Farmers shouldn't be subjected to landlord economics via their equipment.

That’s a funny way to phrase it considering that many farmers are landlords.

Re: John Deere Announces Strategic Partnership with SpaceX

#123

Post by bluGill »

dogman144 wrote: post #114
bluGill wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Farmers do not want that. John Deere collects a lot of opt-in data from tractors. That is the owner of the tractors chooses to upload that data because they get value from it. If the tractor is not online or the GPS isn't working the farmer will stay home to fix things as the data is too valuable to risk not having it uploaded. (you can export the data to USB, but that is a hassle). Farmers who don't get a good cell…

Quick question friend - that ag data gets sold into finance, for instance, at way higher monetary value than any value-add to ag output from those sensors for the farmer. Those farmers getting a cut of the sales? Edit - looking around my ag town, that also hammers right to repair which is blocked by JD's DRM approach, I don't think they are getting a cut. Edit 2 - > If the tractor is not online or the GPS isn't worki…

The data is a zero sum game - the value to finance company is exactly equal to the loss in value to the farmer. Many farmers have carefully read the contract before opting in because they understand the cost to them if the data is shared to the wrong people. they will refuse to upload the data (and there are other options to buy from if they don't like what we do so overall Deere stands to lose more than gain by selling data to finance company) The people who have admin access to the database where the data is stored are registered with the SEC as not allowed to trade commodities.

Re: John Deere Announces Strategic Partnership with SpaceX

#124

Post by Towaway69 »

the_other wrote: post #87
turing_complete wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's so great about a family farm? We're much better off without 90% of the population being poor, self-subsistence farmers.

That's like saying "what's so great about start-ups/bootstrapped tech firms?". You really want a tiny handful of rich incumbents owning all the land? That's never worked out well before.

Let's do the numbers: 8 billion people. Never before have we been so many. Success!

Something must be going right.

Pity everyone is competing for fewer jobs and AI is just entering the market. Quality of life has always been overrated.

It might sound cynical but quality of life depends largely on which side you are on: rich or poor?

Re: John Deere Announces Strategic Partnership with SpaceX

#125

Post by pasabagi »

iancmceachern wrote: post #65
arwineap wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does this have to do with TaaS, or right to repair? Just because it has tons of sensors doesn't mean they shouldn't be replacable

They're not really tractors. They sell land prep, crop sowing, and harvesting solutions. It's not like a car. These things are used for a few weeks a year, and if they don't do their job during that time the farm looses all their income for the year. A better way to think of them is like construction equipment that you rent. Even big construction companies rent their equipment.

Farmers use their tractors year round, though? I see what you're saying vis-a-vis specific sprayers, ploughs, or even a combine harvester, but tractors are in pretty continuous use.

Re: John Deere Announces Strategic Partnership with SpaceX

#126

Post by kube-system »

tcmart14 wrote: post #116
kube-system wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Already too late. Farmers already use quite a bit of connected technology in the field. Modern high-output farming and the cheap food we have really wouldn't be possible without it. e.g. https://www.smh.com.au/national/farmers-crippled-by-satellit...

That is fine and great. But there is a big difference between a farmer who has a system to, lets say set time for watering and can control, repair (the pipping for that system is run of the mill PVC and they can source parts from suppliers for other parts of the system), and operate each set of equipment without it needing to reach out to some company's API, but another piece of equipment the won't work if it can't p…

Supplier lock-in is definitely a concern I agree with. But many modern farms do make a fair use of external data that does inherently require an external connection.

Re: John Deere Announces Strategic Partnership with SpaceX

#127

Post by randomdata »

advisedwang wrote: post #121
AlwaysRock wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you know that much about modern tractors. This headline is only surprisingly to people who still think of John Deere as an old school tractor company. Modern day tractors have tons of sensors on them that are always connected to make sure any failing part can be detected and fixed before it breaks, basically or actually do drive themselves, and likely have as much or more tech in then as any modern car.

I don't think the parent comment necessarily misses that online connectivity is delivering a lot of features, value and ultimately yield. These improvements come with a downside of the risk of outages. The comment is highlighting that John Deere is deliberately increasing this risk so that they can keep farms maximally dependent on the company.

> These improvements come with a downside of the risk of outages.

Which is why the current use of land tower connectivity is being expanded to use satellite service, providing greater redundancy and improved coverage. That reduces the risk of outage.

If you want no chance of outage on a modern tractor, you are going to have to find yourself a time machine and go way back in time. That ship sailed decades ago.

Re: John Deere Announces Strategic Partnership with SpaceX

#128

Post by Towaway69 »

Onavo wrote: post #67
afandian wrote: post #21

When they say > agreement with SpaceX to provide cutting-edge satellite communications (SATCOM) service to farmers surely they really mean > agreement with SpaceX to provide cutting-edge satellite communications (SATCOM) service to John Deere

I thought John Deere was going to send tractors to Mars.

But they won't work... No Internet signal up on Mars. /s

Re: John Deere Announces Strategic Partnership with SpaceX

#129

Post by brandonagr2 »

PedroBatista wrote: post #31

John Deere & SpaceX , a match made in hell. Hopefully the world will end before they spice up their marriage and extend the offer to Tesla. Technically it makes some sense, but most of the push is because for more "data, intelligence, cloud, AI" in order to get more "value" to big agrobusinesses or anyone who can pay to stay in the party. Agriculture is already a massive business only a few gigantic corporations can…

All Tesla cars are already constantly connected to the internet via cell network, not sure what you mean by extend the offer to Tesla.

The recipe for Tesla and SpaceX are to offer the best product (Model Y is the best selling vehicle in the world and Starlink is taking over because no one offers satellite internet anywhere close to as good), how does that align with John Deere selling tractors as a service?

Re: John Deere Announces Strategic Partnership with SpaceX

#130

Post by dogman144 »

bluGill wrote: post #123
dogman144 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quick question friend - that ag data gets sold into finance, for instance, at way higher monetary value than any value-add to ag output from those sensors for the farmer. Those farmers getting a cut of the sales? Edit - looking around my ag town, that also hammers right to repair which is blocked by JD's DRM approach, I don't think they are getting a cut. Edit 2 - > If the tractor is not online or the GPS isn't worki…

The data is a zero sum game - the value to finance company is exactly equal to the loss in value to the farmer. Many farmers have carefully read the contract before opting in because they understand the cost to them if the data is shared to the wrong people. they will refuse to upload the data (and there are other options to buy from if they don't like what we do so overall Deere stands to lose more than gain by sell…

You've completely missed my point, and your zero sum game comment is a tangent.

I'm pointing out how the farmer isn't getting a cut.

Another way of saying what you just did is the value to the finance company's buy is going straight to JD, and not to the farmer.

And that data is powering a massive commodities trading industry, with value at orders of magnitude ever higher than a farmer could hope to earn, even though the value is only, and fully, sourced from their work.

And the point is I doubt JD is bothering to consider or tell the farmer they could get a cut of the data from their own fields powering that value. When farmers and ranchers are losing their multi-generational livelihoods largely driven by other impacts from a digital world, it's a gross practice by JD, considering the farmer's work plays a key role in it.

Edit - I'm not going to veer into a back-and-forth on this, but I encourage you to ask a JD product manager about a farmer getting a data-sales cut, or maybe even try to force that across the company from your relative position, and see how that plays out.

Post reply on HN