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Farmers look for ways to circumvent tractor software locks

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Re: Farmers look for ways to circumvent tractor software locks

#201

Post by frik »

hristov wrote: post #195
throwaway_jddev wrote: post #92

Hey all, I worked on software for John Deere. This is a throwaway account for obvious reasons. Opinions expressed here are MY OWN. I no longer work for John Deere or am associated with them in any way. I was part of one of the many teams that work on this software. Specifically I was part of John Deere's ISG division also known as the Intelligent Solutions Group. The ISG division (was at the time) responsible for tyi…

Wow the public relations sock-puppetry on HN is getting very clever and sophisticated. I really love the green account - nice touch. It really helps your authenticity to pretend like you are afraid of retribution from John Deere when you are totally kissing their asses. Let me ask you this -- why in the world do the lines of software you write prevent a qualified mechanic from changing a transmission? You know people…

> Wow the public relations sock-puppetry on HN is getting very clever and sophisticated.

Very true. There are a few companies that engage sophisticated sock-puppetry on HN like P§l§nt$er, M$, M§n$ant§ and J§hn D$$r.

Ethic should be a mandatory school subject.

About dongled binary signed software in hardware devices. We sincerely need a law to prevent this. Tesla cars and John Deer tractors actively prevent the second buyer market with this. And one can imagine it's going to get worse with more self-driving cars and more software in vehicles.

Re: Farmers look for ways to circumvent tractor software locks

#202

Post by barking »

frik wrote: post #201
hristov wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow the public relations sock-puppetry on HN is getting very clever and sophisticated. I really love the green account - nice touch. It really helps your authenticity to pretend like you are afraid of retribution from John Deere when you are totally kissing their asses. Let me ask you this -- why in the world do the lines of software you write prevent a qualified mechanic from changing a transmission? You know people…

> Wow the public relations sock-puppetry on HN is getting very clever and sophisticated. Very true. There are a few companies that engage sophisticated sock-puppetry on HN like P§l§nt$er, M$, M§n$ant§ and J§hn D$$r. Ethic should be a mandatory school subject. About dongled binary signed software in hardware devices. We sincerely need a law to prevent this. Tesla cars and John Deer tractors actively prevent the second…

I can understand MS but John Deere? Hard to credit that they'd be monitoring HN. I mean how many farmers read HN?

Re: Farmers look for ways to circumvent tractor software locks

#203

Post by ehsankia »

hristov wrote: post #195
throwaway_jddev wrote: post #92

Hey all, I worked on software for John Deere. This is a throwaway account for obvious reasons. Opinions expressed here are MY OWN. I no longer work for John Deere or am associated with them in any way. I was part of one of the many teams that work on this software. Specifically I was part of John Deere's ISG division also known as the Intelligent Solutions Group. The ISG division (was at the time) responsible for tyi…

Wow the public relations sock-puppetry on HN is getting very clever and sophisticated. I really love the green account - nice touch. It really helps your authenticity to pretend like you are afraid of retribution from John Deere when you are totally kissing their asses. Let me ask you this -- why in the world do the lines of software you write prevent a qualified mechanic from changing a transmission? You know people…

Not on either side here, but I feel like you're missing the point there. Let's say someone does modify the code, then the machine messes up and ends up killing someone. Who would be the culprit there? I guess they could have something that detects when the software is modified, but even if they did, I bet it would still be poor publicity for them (similar to when people misuse Tesla's assist and getting in accidents).

Also, honest question here about changing transmission. You make it sound as if it's completely unrelated with the code, but is it? The code may very well be tuned for the hardware as it is, and changing any of it could also lead to unexpected results.

Of course there's much better ways of going about it, but from a lawsuit protection perspective, I think you're simplifying an issue which is much more complex than it may seem at the surface.

Re: Farmers look for ways to circumvent tractor software locks

#206

Post by tomlong »

barking wrote: post #202
frik wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wow the public relations sock-puppetry on HN is getting very clever and sophisticated. Very true. There are a few companies that engage sophisticated sock-puppetry on HN like P§l§nt$er, M$, M§n$ant§ and J§hn D$$r. Ethic should be a mandatory school subject. About dongled binary signed software in hardware devices. We sincerely need a law to prevent this. Tesla cars and John Deer tractors actively prevent the second…

I can understand MS but John Deere? Hard to credit that they'd be monitoring HN. I mean how many farmers read HN?

I'm sceptical as well but I imagine people there search Twitter and Google and such to see what is being said by them.

Re: Farmers look for ways to circumvent tractor software locks

#207

Post by michaelt »

Nilzor wrote: post #158
tzs wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't sound like the farmers are asking to rewrite or replace that software. It sounds like they are just asking to be able to make the same kind of repairs that their local dealer makes.

And what kind of repairs are that? As a software developer I don't understand what equipment is failure needs software change. Software don't wear and tear. Hardware does.

I don't know about tractors, but I do know some examples from cars that might be relevant.

The security system on some cars talks to keys electronically, and relies on a chain of trust between components. Kinda makes sense - you don't want a thief to be able to reach under the car, plug into a cable and issue the unlock doors command. The practical upshot of this is replacement doors won't unlock the central locking, unless you have them installed by the stealership. This happened to my father, when someone reversed into his car in a car park and dented his passenger side door.

The go-to example used by car manufacturers when they want to advocate for this lock-in is 'counterfeit' airbags. You can google and find reports of this sort of thing - authentic-looking airbags selling for $200 when the manufacturer charges $400. Some of them aren't as good as manufacturers' parts - and short of discharging the airbag, buyers have no way to check their quality.

The car manufacturers would then argue that unscrupulous second hand car salesmen might not tell you the car had a non-original airbag.

Looking to the future, in some articles about self-driving cars you'll hear that cars of the future will communicate with one another, allowing drafting between cars at highway speeds, and intersections without traffic lights [1]. If such a system comes to exist, I sure hope bad actors wouldn't be able to remotely crash my car - and I'm sure car manufacturers will use this as an excuse to lock out owner and third party repairs.

[1] https://youtu.be/4CZc3erc_l4?t=22s

Re: Farmers look for ways to circumvent tractor software locks

#209

Post by GTP »

throwaway_jddev wrote: post #124
grigjd3 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many lines of code does it take to register as the largest you've dealt with? The largest I dealt with took 45 minutes to grab the repo. I don't state that as a point of honor, more like a point in needless over-effort.

I would say the JD's tractor software (if taken in it's entirety) is on par with the modern Linux kernel in size, if not larger. Worse yet, the codebase is spread along many different repositories, teams, and build systems. I've seen integration builds take days to finish (not including running of unit tests). Look I get it, John Deere is evil. But this codebase is beyond any one person or team's comprehension. It's…

How is possible that a software developed for a very specific purpose is comparable in size to a general purpose OS? I see this as an indication of a bad developed/vastly overcomplicated​ software. Correct me if you think otherwise.

Re: Farmers look for ways to circumvent tractor software locks

#210

Post by dotancohen »

RowanH wrote: post #179
rando832 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If a team of hundred of engineers struggle with their codebase internally, Joe Farmer isn't going to have a fucking clue how to repair their software correctly. > But trust me on this, locking this down is a very good idea. Joe Farmer may not know, but Joe farmer has "the internet", and ability to pay an independent software engineer. And people would absolutely find and fix bugs that john deer is missing. Honestly…

So semi related, been in software for 20 years and contemplated getting a Motec w e-throttle for my (road legal) race car "no f-king way" is my thought process, I've got a race engine management system but no way I'm having anything other than a cable between me and the throttle body. I love software, I love engineering, I love what an e-throttle can do for traction control. But there will always be bugs with softwar…

> I can't imagine single engineers being able to test and have foresight on the umpteen permutations of "what-if"

Maybe the answer to this is to have the software unit tests open source as well, and document the hardware integration tests (including spectacular failures) on Youtube.

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