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

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

#291

Post by Timon3 »

throwaway27448 wrote: post #286
gbacon wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Sure, if you completely ignore the meaning of "purpose". What an asinine sentiment.

While I'm not sure I agree that the quote is applicable here, it is generally an incredibly useful way to analyze systems.

Reality doesn't care what you're hoping to achieve with a system, the outcome won't change based on thoughts and ideas. Since reality tends to be fairly complicated, we usually won't design perfect systems on the first try - instead we have to analyze the outcome, and make changes to nudge the results into the direction we want.

But what if we don't do that? What if we stick with the initial approach even after we measure that the outcome doesn't align with our initial intentions, maybe even introduces unwanted side effects?

It would be fair to say "well, we tried our best" if nobody was able to have hidden intentions, but that's not the world we live in. People can be very, very happy about our systems not aligning with our intentions & introducing unwanted side effects because this misalignment advantages them in some way. These people can then block changes to the system to keep these advantages alive.

I believe a small fraction of decision makers is enough to keep most systems fixed in such a misaligned state, and we'd never do anything about it if we followed your logic.

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

#292

Post by bumby »

mothballed wrote: post #241
darksim905 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 del…

What kind of government vehicles are you referring to that are typically modified to legally avoid emission standards? Short of military or emergency vehicles, I’m not aware of This as a practice.

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

#293

Post by bumby »

javawizard wrote: post #27
mothballed wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not John Deere that was doing that, just some Korean companies exploring the opportunity and importing to the US. John Deere is located in the US and too afraid of the whimsical interpretations of regulators to try something like that, I think. There was no "screw" for the commercial John Deere tractors with emissions controls, that I know of, as that was locked down to prevent "repair."

Lot of armchair quarterbacking going on, on both sides. I'd love to hear an actual farmer weigh in on this. Anyone in the room care to volunteer?

I did talk to a corn/soybean farmer on this recently and they weren’t nearly as concerned as I would have thought. They said they pay JD to maintain their equipment anyway. The equipment is apparently so expensive and sophisticated that people are wrenching on it much themselves (similar to the trend in road vehicles).

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

#294

Post by bumby »

criddell wrote: post #202
yason wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Emission controls are the best scapegoat for Deere and others to lock down systems as tight as possible for profit. They don't care about emissions, the farmers don't care about emissions, the emissions happen on a fscking large field out of nowhere instead of rush hour city traffic, and tractors usually run at high power which makes a cleaner combustion with less soot (but higher nox): all in all, the world doesn't…

Judging by what I've seen on Reddit lately, lots and lots of people have stopped caring about their personal impact on the environment. Why should we set the AC to 80 or be diligent about turning off lights when billionaires are flying in a private jet to go watch a football game and datacenters are popping up like Starbucks? How can anybody tell a farmer they should probably care more about emissions?

See: The Prisoners Dilemma.

In some collective action problems, if everyone acts in their own individual self interest it results in worse outcomes for everyone. In those cases, it requires some central coordination.

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

#295

Post by esarbe »

criddell wrote: post #202
yason wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Emission controls are the best scapegoat for Deere and others to lock down systems as tight as possible for profit. They don't care about emissions, the farmers don't care about emissions, the emissions happen on a fscking large field out of nowhere instead of rush hour city traffic, and tractors usually run at high power which makes a cleaner combustion with less soot (but higher nox): all in all, the world doesn't…

Judging by what I've seen on Reddit lately, lots and lots of people have stopped caring about their personal impact on the environment. Why should we set the AC to 80 or be diligent about turning off lights when billionaires are flying in a private jet to go watch a football game and datacenters are popping up like Starbucks? How can anybody tell a farmer they should probably care more about emissions?

I find this a very reasonable frame of mind. Systemic issues and failures cannot be fixed or addressed by individual action. They have to be addressed in a systemic way.

It's good that people are catching up to this.

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

#296

Post by bumby »

atoav wrote: post #125
WarmWash wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, then there also must not be much relevance between lax guns laws and school shooters? I get what you are (trying) to say, but lets be real here. Right to repair people (myself included) just need to own that it will have some downsides.

If you want people not to have out of spec tractors that is a regulation and oversight issue, not an issue of locking down tech. Right to repair argues the tech should not be locked down, it doesn't argue you should be free to break the law. You are also free to remove the handrails on a set of stairs using a simple wrench, but if a building inspector shows up or someone falls because of it there will likely be conse…

>If you want people not to have out of spec tractors that is a regulation and oversight issue, not an issue of locking down tech.

It can be either, but be careful of the knock on effects. If you want to manage it via administrative controls now you may need a bureaucratic mechanism to regularly inspect vehicles. Generally, engineering controls are preferred over administrative controls.

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

#297

Post by bfdm »

pchristensen wrote: post #255
spacedcowboy wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I never watch video posts. I can skim-read a text site in seconds to see if it's worth a real read. I can't do that with video, and there's always some ads in it, whether the author put them there or not. I hate ads. And it's not just HN either, video is a very poor substitute for a well written article. Video can augment a well-written article, but it can't replace it.

If you have YouTube Premium, you can use their Gemini AI to summarize videos. I've "consumed" tons more videos since I discovered it, since I can get a good idea from the summary if it's worth actually watching the video. My overall minutes of YT have gone down, but I probably interacts with 2-3x more videos. Just like skimming on HN!

If you're Google you could transcribe and summarize all videos on upload for easier consumption, but then you lose your ad revenue so...

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

#298

Post by mothballed »

bumby wrote: post #292
mothballed wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 del…

What kind of government vehicles are you referring to that are typically modified to legally avoid emission standards? Short of military or emergency vehicles, I’m not aware of This as a practice.

The ones I've seen, IIRC, were from DHS (CBP, etc) or various border operations. They pop up on auction every so often, but I don't have the links off hand.

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

#299

Post by bumby »

mothballed wrote: post #298
bumby wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of government vehicles are you referring to that are typically modified to legally avoid emission standards? Short of military or emergency vehicles, I’m not aware of This as a practice.

The ones I've seen, IIRC, were from DHS (CBP, etc) or various border operations. They pop up on auction every so often, but I don't have the links off hand.

I know people used to look for retired police cruisers back in the day because they thought they were “detuned” but I’m pretty sure that was a resale marketing myth.

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

#300

Post by Shocka1 »

cgyvbunji wrote: post #78
srejk wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate everything he stands for - he's on the right side of just about every issue. I just wish he could make more succinct and effective videos.

Personally I think if he did that people wouldn't pay attention. My experience is that when you complain to people about digital rights they just glaze over unless you walk them through all the ins and outs and the implications.

Almost every conversation I've had over the years goes two ways: "Why do you care so much about ? If you have nothing to hide, why are you so concerned?"

Or:

"Why do you care so much about ? We already walk around with cell phones in our pockets 24/7."

I used to be more passionate about persuading people about privacy, but I've pretty much given up. I've come to the conclusion that the majority of the population doesn't care what is happening around them as long as they have internet access and their iPhone.

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