John Deere Announces Strategic Partnership with SpaceX • Hacker News Board

Re: John Deere Announces Strategic Partnership with SpaceX

#161

Post by advisedwang » Wed, Jan 31, 2024, 4:15 AM UTC

randomdata wrote: post #160

advisedwang wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 g…

One can imagine a cyber attack bricking every John Deere tractor in US overnight. That's a whole different ball game than the slow wearing out of machines and slow rising cost of repairs.

Re: John Deere Announces Strategic Partnership with SpaceX

#162

Post by randomdata » Wed, Jan 31, 2024, 4:18 AM UTC

advisedwang wrote: post #161

randomdata wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 g…

One can imagine a cyber attack bricking every John Deere tractor in US overnight. That's a whole different ball game than the slow wearing out of machines and slow rising cost of repairs.

Maybe, but theoretically you've already been able to do that for decades. Again, what's the new concern brought about by using satellites over towers (or even other satellites, which John Deere also utilizes for communication with tractors)?

Re: John Deere Announces Strategic Partnership with SpaceX

#163

Post by BenjiWiebe » Wed, Jan 31, 2024, 4:45 AM UTC

sgtnoodle wrote: post #77

mathgradthrow wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GPS is ideally quite redundant, and the data from it is usable without an internet connection. GPS is fine.

I imagine a mostly autonomous land vehicle relying on GPS would also require RTK GPS, which does require an external source of the data. Some GPS receivers can receive that from satellites, but the data is encrypted and requires expensive commercial licenses or military grade equipment.

You can generate your own correction data for GPS, using a fixed base station, and relaying the data over a radio link or through the cell network. Look up ArduSimple if interested how. Something like $400 IIRC (for the base station).

Source: we are doing it, using AgOpenGPS (OSS autosteer) with RTK

Re: John Deere Announces Strategic Partnership with SpaceX

#164

Post by sgtnoodle » Wed, Jan 31, 2024, 5:57 AM UTC

BenjiWiebe wrote: post #163

sgtnoodle wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine a mostly autonomous land vehicle relying on GPS would also require RTK GPS, which does require an external source of the data. Some GPS receivers can receive that from satellites, but the data is encrypted and requires expensive commercial licenses or military grade equipment.

You can generate your own correction data for GPS, using a fixed base station, and relaying the data over a radio link or through the cell network. Look up ArduSimple if interested how. Something like $400 IIRC (for the base station). Source: we are doing it, using AgOpenGPS (OSS autosteer) with RTK

Oh I know. I've plumbed RTCM3 streams over radios and cell networks aplenty as well. There's a real cost to setting up and maintaining a base station properly, though. Subscribing to a service is attractive if you're only operating a small fleet, which is sort of the point?

Re: John Deere Announces Strategic Partnership with SpaceX

#165

Post by NotSammyHagar » Wed, Jan 31, 2024, 6:41 AM UTC

blackoil wrote: post #99

NotSammyHagar wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I can’t drive to work, I won’t be paid, i’ll lose all my income. Thus, somehow the car company should prevent me from repairing my car, working with any independent qualified garage?

You'll lose all the income of that day or week. Farmer will lose months of income.

And you help the farmer by preventing them from fixing their own vehicles and equipment? Somehow we seem to be talking from different worlds. If you are worried about people losing potential to use their equipment at an important time, then (this will sound crazy!) let them fix their own equipment.

Re: John Deere Announces Strategic Partnership with SpaceX

#166

Post by greenie_beans » Wed, Jan 31, 2024, 1:27 PM UTC

greenie_beans wrote: post #23

great, now he controls our food. legitimately, this might be the scariest musk news in history.

buncha musk freaks down voting me. don't come to me when the tractor network stops working and you starve because you haven't been supporting your local food system.

Re: John Deere Announces Strategic Partnership with SpaceX

#167

Post by voakbasda » Wed, Jan 31, 2024, 3:21 PM UTC

tastyfreeze wrote: post #82

voakbasda wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Small family farming is already dead unless (a) you are willing to turn a large fortune into a small one or (b) you are willing to live in poverty.

Farmers in every generation of my family's existence in the US. The current ones are decidedly not poor. Maybe not a lot of free time but not poor.

To be clear, I was speaking more toward starting new family farms. Few families can afford to invest the capital required to compete with families like yours that have inherited generational wealth. Put those assets on a balance sheet charted over time, and I suspect their net value has decreased relative to their productive returns. If so, that’s a large fortune turned into a small one.

Do you honestly think your family could start from scratch and still successfully compete in a saturated commodity market entrenched with others in such a position?

And don’t talk to be about nice markets, because that’s far less farming and much more marketing (as another commenter pointed out).

Re: John Deere Announces Strategic Partnership with SpaceX

#168

Post by dogman144 » Wed, Jan 31, 2024, 6:03 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #157

dogman144 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

where do you think this data comes from - https://www.cmegroup[.]com/market-data/browse-data/agricultu...

More context:

"...Seba sees it differently. It’s one thing for Deere to use his data to make a better tractor. But, he said, Deere knows when he’s planting, and he’s convinced the company sells that data to weather companies and commodities traders. Deere denies that it sells aggregated farm data to traders. Nevertheless, it’s the billions of acres of data the company collects that allows it to enter into lucrative business partnerships with complementary companies, such as Dow DuPont, which depends on soil information to make nutrient and seed planting “prescriptions.""

https://thecounter[.]org/farmobile-farm-data/

Re: John Deere Announces Strategic Partnership with SpaceX

#169

Post by tastyfreeze » Thu, Feb 01, 2024, 7:31 PM UTC

voakbasda wrote: post #167

tastyfreeze wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Farmers in every generation of my family's existence in the US. The current ones are decidedly not poor. Maybe not a lot of free time but not poor.

To be clear, I was speaking more toward starting new family farms. Few families can afford to invest the capital required to compete with families like yours that have inherited generational wealth. Put those assets on a balance sheet charted over time, and I suspect their net value has decreased relative to their productive returns. If so, that’s a large fortune turned into a small one. Do you honestly think your fa…

Sure they have wealth that was grown over time. My family started working somebody else's land. Why would you expect starting a farm now to be easier than way back? There are constantly farms or land in farm country for sale. If owning is too much, starting as a sharecropper is still a possibility. Like any business it requires a lot of hard work and risk to make a successful farm. It is still very possible to start small farming and build up.

All of that is separate from the value destruction of inflation. We would all be better off with a stable measure of value.

Re: John Deere Announces Strategic Partnership with SpaceX

#170

Post by dcplaya » Fri, Feb 02, 2024, 4:36 PM UTC

NotSammyHagar wrote: post #146

dcplaya wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EVs are currently exempt from this! We need OBD regulations to be updated for reflect these new technologies. I think hydrogen vehicles are also exempt.

Are they exempt? At least one state, I believe it was Mass has a law on the book allowing work. Of course we need independent repairs (and training to do it properly) on EVs. There are a few repair garages for Teslas that seem to be people who used to work at Tesla, they fix wonky things on battery packs sometimes.

Exempt from requiring an ODB port that outputs the narrow scope ODB data.

They are mainly exempt because most of that data is emissions related. ODB came about due to CA requiring lower emissions and smog checks. They needed a way to quickly and cheaply verify it independently of the manufacturer. Unfortunately, in VWs case, the law assumed the data isn't modified before being sent.