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

151–160 of 170 posts

Re: John Deere Announces Strategic Partnership with SpaceX

#151

Post by [deleted] »

randomdata wrote: post #127
advisedwang wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: John Deere Announces Strategic Partnership with SpaceX

#152

Post by dogman144 »

tastyfreeze wrote: post #145
dogman144 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is my experience as well. Ranchers and farmers that are established are quite wealthy. Maybe sometimes that's paper wealth or paired with seasonal debt up to their eyeballs. Also probably some extremely single-threaded dependencies (JD and JD authorized repair outlets, seed strains, etc).

Agreed that a lot of it may be paper wealth. Farming is capital intensive. Having a successful farm often means hundreds of thousands to millions in equipment and infrastructure. Anybody with that kind of capital is absolutely not poor.

Ya, usually paired with significant political capital as well. Ranchers in the west make up a mess of state legislatures, are strong conservation advocates (although in an indirect/slightly selfish way), and so on. If I had the money to plan for and survive the land-value tax issue, I'd probably buy a mess of land and hand it back over to an operator.

Re: John Deere Announces Strategic Partnership with SpaceX

#153

Post by LudwigNagasena »

rangerelf wrote: post #147
LudwigNagasena wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Landlords are landlords, farmers are farmers. If you're renting a zillion acres to someone that grows corn or wheat on it, you're not a farmer, your a landlord; the renter is the farmer.

If you own a zillion acres and someone grows corn or wheat on it without renting the land, you're a farmer and they are a farmworker.

Re: John Deere Announces Strategic Partnership with SpaceX

#156

Post by advisedwang »

randomdata wrote: post #127
advisedwang wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My read on mathgradthrow's comment was that it isn't concerned about outages caused by the network being down, but by more existential things like John Deer going bust, being a victim of cyberwar and so on. Of course he never says that so that's probably my own politics and fears coming into play.

Re: John Deere Announces Strategic Partnership with SpaceX

#157

Post by bluGill »

dogman144 wrote: post #130
bluGill wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

AFAiK there is no data sales. Note that there is data from Europe subject to Europe's data laws - while we don't mix that data with non-europe data, all such data is treated the same.

Yes in theory we can do whatever evil you want to imagine. However realistically I don't see it happening. Getting caught selling that data means farmers lose trust and won't buy any more million dollar machines - sales of equipment is in the end worth far more than the data.

Re: John Deere Announces Strategic Partnership with SpaceX

#159

Post by mathgradthrow »

advisedwang wrote: post #156
randomdata wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

My read on mathgradthrow's comment was that it isn't concerned about outages caused by the network being down, but by more existential things like John Deer going bust, being a victim of cyberwar and so on. Of course he never says that so that's probably my own politics and fears coming into play.

that's correct, but I thought I was reasonably explicit.

Re: John Deere Announces Strategic Partnership with SpaceX

#160

Post by randomdata »

advisedwang wrote: post #156
randomdata wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

My read on mathgradthrow's comment was that it isn't concerned about outages caused by the network being down, but by more existential things like John Deer going bust, being a victim of cyberwar and so on. Of course he never says that so that's probably my own politics and fears coming into play.

Well, even the ancient (John Deere) equipment isn't going to work when John Deere goes bust. Farm equipment breaks constantly. Where are the parts going to come from? John Deere bought out the only only full-line after market parts manufacturer several years ago, so if you are eyeing up that secondary market, think again.

I mean, sure, you can go to your local machine shop to get custom parts made. But you can also go to your local controls shop to get custom computers made. There are ways to deal with that – not the end of the world, just annoying. Also, John Deere has been sending one-way data via satellite to their tractors since the 1990s and have had two-way connectivity via cell networks since the 2000s, should cyber warfare ever break out...

So, it's not clear why he is concerned now all of a sudden. The concern is not unwarranted exactly, but we've already been thinking about it for decades to centuries. What is it about augmenting tower-based connectivity with satellite-based connectivity that instills a new fear?

Post reply on HN