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This is a HUGE problem. If John Deere were to go out of business tomorrow, a huge swath of our world's farmers would be unable to produce anything thanks to tra
by VonGuard 7y ago
This is a HUGE problem. If John Deere were to go out of business tomorrow, a huge swath of our world's farmers would be unable to produce anything thanks to tractors turning off and not working properly. Remember that old game you like with online validation for single player mode? Remember how it stopped working when the servers went offline. There's a DMCA fair use exception to allow you to circumvent that DRM thanks to the EFF and the MADE, but there is no such fair use allowance for tractors....
- genericone 7y agoYou would think tractor usability would be of far greater importance compared to game availability!
- toomuchtodo 7y agoSeveral US politicians (Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, former Colorado governor John Hickenlooper) are advocating for federal right to repair legislation for farmers. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8xzqmp/bernie-sanders-calls-for-a-national-right-to-repair-law-for-farmers https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8xzqmp/bernie-sanders-cal... As always, if this matters to you, get involved and vote.
- maxxxxx 7y agoLet’s hope they don’t make a law specifically for farmers. It should be the same for all goods.
- cromulent 7y agoYou are right, but I am a bit concerned about self-driving cars.
- maxxxxx 7y agoIn what way?
- cromulent 7y agoIf someone was to add their own ...umm... improvements to the software, or perform shoddy repair work on the hardware for steering, then there would perhaps be negative effects.
- frosted-flakes 7y agoThat's no different than the current situation. I can do anything I want to my car, even if it kills me and the people in the car ahead of me. Like not fixing my brakes correctly, or driving without brakes altogether¹. ¹ Which I have actually done, carefully, on my way to the mechanic 20 miles away to get them fixed.
- mehrdadn 7y agoA broken killing machine that's 'intelligent' is a lot more scary than a broken killing machine that's dumb.
- dodobirdlord 7y ago> I can do anything I want to my car, even if it kills me and the people in the car ahead of me. Actually no, and driving without brakes is a perfect example. Driving a car without brakes on a public road is a crime. Arranging approval for autonomous driving on public roads is an involved and highly regulated process. Hacking in your own "improvements" is similarly criminal.
- C1sc0cat 7y agoI would have suspected that the US and other countries had old laws that could dusted off and take over JD if it was impacting Critical infrastructure.
- nerdponx 7y agoI think I prefer right-to-repair laws compared to a government takeover of John Deere.
- openfuture 7y agoThe US isn't old enough to have old laws.
- howard941 7y agoThat's why many states expressly import the common law from Old Blighty as they existed on independence day, Louisiana's civilian law preferences excepted. My own state's example discussed at https://www.floridasupremecourt.org/About-the-Court/History-of-Florida-Law https://www.floridasupremecourt.org/About-the-Court/History-...
- chicob 7y agoAnd some models can simply lose support as they age, which is something just accelerates planned obsolescence. My father owns a John Deere, kind of old, and it is a good machine. It is not that sophisticated, and all the electronics we use are bought separately. We do not have this kind of problem yet. The convenience and added benefit of a self-guided, GPS/RTK oriented tractor has this annoying cost. John Deere wants a share of what farmers save with more efficient machines, and then some more.
- solotronics 7y agoAt some point in the near future won't many of the tractors be fully automated?
- JohnFen 7y agoPerhaps, but "fully automated" does not mean that the machine has to be dependent on an outside service to operate.
- chicob 7y agoMaybe. Or maybe they'll be just like regular tractors with a side module for your AI of choosing. In which case you still won't be locked out of your machine, in the sense that you can choose the company with the best farming AI. The only way for a quick automation scenario is to make crops a lot more predictable. In our days, this means linearly sown and harvested, artifact free crops. If we choose a more hands-on approach to farming (and food production in general for that matter), then automation ceases to be as interesting.
- wang_li 7y ago> Maybe. Or maybe they'll be just like regular tractors with a side module for your AI of choosing. We can't even get interop between instant messaging platforms, and video calling platforms. Why would we anticipate that companies manufacturing $200,000+ pieces of equipment are going to work together when they have the option of lock-in?
- abtinf 7y agoJohn Deere will never go out of business in the manner you suppose. Worst case is restructuring through bankruptcy.
- swarnie_ 7y agoYeah and Lehman Brothers are too big to fail... Oh.
- NTDF9 7y agoDon't other countries have their own tractor makers?
- mikestew 7y agoI know Italy has Lamborghini. Put that sticker on the back of your work truck: "My other vehicle is a Lambo."
- maxxxxx 7y agoThe story how they came to producing sports cars is a fun one.
- jacquesm 7y agoI just had to look that up: http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/03/lamborghini-cars-were-a-result-of-a-tractor-company-owners-frustration-with-ferrari/ http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/03/lamborghini-...
- telesilla 7y agoMost interesting: "Ferruccio Lamborghini confessed that he never actually invented anything, rather, would simply copy and try to improve on others’ work." Nothing to confess, in my view, but be proud of - he certainly created something unique out of it.
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- Glawen 7y agoThe biggest european tractor are case new holland (cnh) and claas. Then there are other in eastern europe and china, but not available in europe
- lazyjones 7y agoThey would just switch to e.g. CNH tractors. I don't see the problem.
- bduerst 7y agoYeah, this is kind of faux outrage. John Deere doesn't even have near the monopoly that GP is eluding to. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Tractor_manufacturers_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Tractor_manufacturers... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tractor_manufacturers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tractor_manufacturers
- jameshe 7y agoThe issue would be in transitioning to any alternative. Equipment is super expensive - and tractors are wayyy expensive, especially if you're a small-scale farmer with only two or three of them. Plus, if your equipment quits working, farmers would have a hard time selling beyond salvage value and would have no way to make more money (aside from existing inventory) to buy new equipment.
- newnewpdro 7y ago> would have no way to make more money (aside from existing inventory) to buy new equipment. It seems likely to me a bank would be thrilled to loan money to a consistently profitable farmer whose machines just shut themselves off because Reasons and need replacing ASAP.
- JMTQp8lwXL 7y agoSurely some party would come in and fill the gap, reverse engineer the thing, whatever is necessary. Food security is a national security priority for the United States. We wouldn't go hungry if John Deere went under instantly. There would be a response.
- CoffeeDregs 7y agoThat is certainly the hope. What is the plan?
- JMTQp8lwXL 7y agoPeople are already hacking JD equipment with firmware found online. I don't have an exact answer to your question, but this thread seems over-blown. Somebody will know how it works, or learn how to work on it. I trust the ingenuity of this nation wouldn't leave us with an unmaintainable or unhackable tractors without "John Deere" the business existing, in the same way the technique for jailbreaking the latest version of iOS comes relatively quickly. The country that went to the moon can reverse engineer a tractor. It's not like we need to prove P = NP or not to start getting people fed again, to fix the problem.
- grawprog 7y agoI personally agree the problem's being overblown here, and I agree with what you say about technology like that, but, just to counter a bit, when it comes to agriculture, time's not always available. Depending on when that theoretical stopping of Deere's servers were to occur. There could be massive crop failures. It's all well and good to get everything back up again, but by this time a loaf of bread costs $50 and everyone's flipping their shit. Not that I think any of this is ever likely to happen, but even small disruptions to the food supply can have large consequences.
- johnchristopher 7y agoThat's the "Is there an adult in the room" plan.
- 7y ago
- elliekelly 7y agoIt's surprising to me that these major equipment manufacturers have so much power over our economy and yet (as far as I'm aware) aren't required to earmark emergency funds for this kind of scenario. A bank that goes out of business doesn't just shut the lights off one day and leave customers to figure things out on their own. Each state and the federal government have funds set aside contributed by banks to fund continuing operations while customers navigate the transition. That doesn't seem unreasonable in this scenario either.
- jonknee 7y agoYes, if a dominant player disappears it will result in chaos. This is not unique to agriculture, imagine Boeing disappearing. Or Amazon (see ya later AWS!). The thing is big companies don't really disappear. They might go bankrupt, but even then the valuable bits will continue to be valuable and run by new management.
- rileymat2 7y agoIs this true or theoretical? In many rural areas cell reception is not good.
- astrodust 7y agoTurns out farmers really like their WiFi because driving around in a tractor all day is really boring without some entertainment.
- naikrovek 7y agoThat's the truth. Give a tractor wifi and you will soon see a farmer riding with Netflix. That is not an assumption or a guess. I've deployed Wi-Fi to farms and the first thing they reach for is an iPad and Netflix.
- ryandrake 7y agoI recently got to set up a hunter’s tree stand in the middle of the woods with a directional waveguide WiFi “cantenna” link to their house... because Netflix.
- theluketaylor 7y agoFor many years now my grandfather has read ebooks from the cab of his tractor. He puts his sony ereader in a ziplock bag to protect it from the dust and reads a few pages each row. Despite his age he was a really early ebook adopter since they live in such a rural spot. The library can transfer books from bigger cities, but the shipping time is so slow and there is a limit to the number of books you can check out at once. Basically the netflix disc problem before they switched to streaming. Taking out ebooks from the library is really easy and a great way to pass the dull time spent on the tractor.
- cheschire 7y agoI've watched a German tractor driver on Twitch livestreaming before. It was surreal.
- throwayEngineer 7y agoIf they went out of business, you could buy and install third party boards. Not that I like that John Deer is the Apple of Farming, but let's not act like people can't hot wire and program electrical systems.
- lithos 7y agoIt's not that simple when everything runs on software including cylinder firing and timing.
- throwayEngineer 7y agoWhere did I imply it was simple? Writing a controller is a non trivial task. But it can be done.
- opencl 7y agoThere are companies that will sell you an entire diesel-electric hybrid drivetrain to retrofit into old tractors, and autosteer systems to go with it. It is not cheap though.
- Dirlewanger 7y agoWe are absolutely no where near this reality for some industries, and sadly may never be. See how fervently Apple is fighting consumers being able to repair their devices.
- mikestew 7y agoIf John Deere were to go out of business tomorrow, a huge swath of our world's farmers would be unable to produce anything thanks to tractors turning off and not working properly. Ergo, you can count on JD not going out of business any time soon. "Too big to fail" and all that. JD's master plan has now come to fruition.
- astrodust 7y agoWhat if they got bought up by a hedge fund, raided, and sold for scrap?
- Johnny555 7y agoBut can you count on their tractor DRM servers not being DoS'ed, or hacked and taken down for an extended period?
- bunderbunder 7y agoHmm. That would imply that it's not just a fairness problem or a copyright politics problem, but a national security problem.
- oldjokes 7y agoIf the reality is as you describe it then John Deere is effectively a government entity now, there is no way the feds/state would actually allow them to collapse and all those fields to die off. If you work at or buy John Deere products you're just living on the taxpayer dime, call it what it is. I'm not sure why half our economy suddenly seems to be structured around these "too essential to fail" business models, but it's brand new and really really stupid. I guess this is the end result of a generation of people coming up while a gaggle of billionaires get bailed out while absolutely nobody went to prison.
- mywittyname 7y ago> really really stupid Sounds like it's really, really smart from a business perspective. I think it's similar to the idea of, "if you owe the bank a million, that's your problem, but if you owe the bank a trillion, it's their problem." Would you rather have the gov't bail out JD or risk massive food shortages? I know my choice.
- vageli 7y ago> > really really stupid > Sounds like it's really, really smart from a business perspective. > I think it's similar to the idea of, "if you owe the bank a million, that's your problem, but if you owe the bank a trillion, it's their problem." Would you rather have the gov't bail out JD or risk massive food shortages? I know my choice. What kind of society are we building where it is sound business strategy, effectively, to hold a gun to the head of government?
- jandrese 7y agoIs it the case that if the servers are down/unreachable the tractor will refuse to start, or simply that the automation features will fail? In the latter case you have to go back to the old system of having a human behind the wheel directing the machine. Most of the time that is the farmer, his family, and some hired help on really big farms. Food prices go up due to increased wages, but it's not a catastrophic food shortage as grain rots in the fields. If it's the former then John Deere has set itself up for some massive liabilities if their servers crap out for extended periods during critical planting/harvest windows.
- packetpirate 7y agoYeah, except that if they were to start failing and needed a bailout, you can bet that would fall on the farmers, because they have enough of a stranglehold on the business that it would be their only option.