7 ms·

Once John Deere starting DRM’ing their tractors it just screams entrenched monopoly. But where’s the barrier to entry? AI is going to dramatically alter this c

by zaroth 6y ago

Once John Deere starting DRM’ing their tractors it just screams entrenched monopoly. But where’s the barrier to entry? AI is going to dramatically alter this competitive landscape and John Deere’s DRM is not going to to stop it. Honestly, I love watching these companies drive nails into their own coffins. I was on the Google homepage today on my iPhone and was getting popups advertising Chrome (on the homepage!) and then again in the search results advertising the Google app. I changed my default to DDG right then and there. Seriously, it’s like 4 taps. Settings > Safari > Search Engine > DDG. Don’t support these shitty companies and just watch them burn themselves to the ground. It might take 10 years but consumers ultimately will be the arbiter.

badconvincer 6y ago
It’s not enough to exist. You actually have to perform at least comparably, which DDG doesn’t unfortunately.
- monadic3 6y ago
  DDG is fine for many types of queries. It also doesn't have many of (what I consider) the drawbacks of google's search: hostile ad positioning, AMP, autoscraped meta crap. Pretending you can't compare them is ridiculous.
- nxmnxm99 6y ago
  Yeah I've tried DDG reliably for nearly a year. A good 30% of the time I end up having to run my query on Google anyway. I will literally pay money for a search engine that's privacy focused and can get closer to Google in terms of performance.
  - danwills 6y ago
    I reckon I'd pay for that too, actually sounds really, really awesome (assuming the performance is there)
  - nanna 6y ago
    Personally I need to switch from ddg to Google maybe 0.1% of my searches, but at least for you you've managed to avoid Google 70% of the time, and it's not like adding a !g to do so takes more a milisecond.
    - tempestn 6y ago
      Right, but running 30% of your searches a second time, after looking through unhelpful results on the first attempt, takes more than a few ms.
    - com2kid 6y ago
      For me, it is 70% I have to use Google. Even for not-that-obscure bands, all DDG needs to do is return the wikipedia page and it fails to do that.
    - nxmnxm99 6y ago
      I agree, and I'm still very thankful for DDG. Would gladly pay to have someone take me even further.
  - mkl 6y ago
    How long ago did you try DDG? Years ago I had a similar experience to you, and switched back, but now DDG is much better for me, and I only try !g < 5% of the time, often with no luck there either.
  - nitrogen 6y ago
    A good 30% of the time I end up having to run my query on Google anyway. A 70% reduction in Google sounds like a win.
    - nxmnxm99 6y ago
      Absolutely it is.
- throwaway201103 6y ago
  I use DDG exclusively, and also run Firefox on my Android phone and my desktop. No chrome, no google search anywhere for me.
- zaroth 6y ago
  90% of my search queries, particularly the ones I make from my phone, are really dumb.
- brodie 6y ago
  I’m sorry you were downvoted. I’ve tried to replace Google with both DDG and Bing. Both of their results are frankly terrible compared to Google’s. Google’s transition to its current hybrid Ask-Jeeves-style question/traditional query search engine, along with its inline answers above the result list both blow its competitors out of the water. Google also does a much better job of letting the user know the freshness or up-to-dateness of results with its inline last-modified/updated time stamps. Both of those things have made it impossible for me to switch off of Google without immediately having problems quickly finding relevant, up-to-date information on the web. I do desperately want to switch, though. I also especially despise AMP. It constantly breaks websites and itself, especially on iOS.
ptero 6y ago
> AI is going to dramatically alter this competitive landscape and John Deere’s DRM is not going to to stop it. I would love this state, but getting there is not simple. DRM is just one facet of it: companies selling machinery have worked on hardware for decades, making their systems physically robust and able to take lots of abuse. This raises the barrier to entry a lot. My 2c.
- NegativeLatency 6y ago
  The startup needs an exit (eventually) I’m sure if the deal was good enough John Deere could buy them
  - i_am_proteus 6y ago
    Startups with this mindset need not apply. The market for agricultural technology will always exist, and there's no reason a new player needs to "exit" instead of growing and sustaining the business. See the comments about repair parts. These aren't cheap toys like smartphones and eyepads that are only meant to last a few years. Ag machinery are capital assets that should function for decades. The people buying this equipment are in it for the long haul, and anyone financing such a venture should be also. If SV VC prefers scale-and-exit schemes, then it's not a good fit, but SV VC isn't the only source of capital.
throwaway9870 6y ago
Barrier to entry in Ag is the dealerships. Deere has the best US dealership network for heavy equipment outside of CAT. It is Ok if your Tesla is in the shop for a few weeks getting fixed, but for Ag equipment, even a few hours at the wrong time is super painful. Deere has parts for 20yr old equipment and their own freight trucks, don't overlook this advantage.
- vvanders 6y ago
  Its definitely a factor, most people I know out here who bale run multiple tractors so they can handle one or two in the shop if it's during a critical time. We've got a Kubota CUT, when rats chewed out the writing harness we were 4 weeks before we had it up and running even with insurance + dealership. Personally I'd love to see someone come in and clean house. Weight and torque are the two things you want in a tractor and electric has both in spades. I think tractors in the CUT space where hydrostatic transmission are common would make a really good fit since you can basically eliminate the HST.
  - sangnoir 6y ago
    I doubt anyone will come in and "clean house" - especially not from a VC-funded startup. The (oft-subsidized) money is just too good to "leave on the table". The best we can hope for, are solid Right-to-repair laws that make DRM illegal/possible to bypass to at least allow custom firmware
    - vvanders 6y ago
      I dunno, in the CUT space you've got the 3-point hitch, SSQA, hydraulic remotes and a bunch of other standards that make implements pretty interchangeable. Makes brand lock-in pretty difficult. If I had the option for either a pure-electric or diesel-electric I would have seriously considered it. At least in our case the workload is a lot of hauling, intermittent groundwork and field mowing(<10ac) all of which would have fit really well. Also all the JD DRM stuff only applies in the larger 100hp+ market. In the SCUT/CUT/Utility Tractor market there's a fairly robust set of companies(Kubota, LS, JD, Mahindra, Yanmar, etc).
SubiculumCode 6y ago
see Mojeek! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25372401 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25372401
rational_indian 6y ago
> Safari > Don’t support these shitty companies Then start by changing your phone.
- amerine 6y ago
  What do you recommend as an alternative?
- zaroth 6y ago
  Personally I don’t consider Apple one of the shitty ones, but I didn’t want to get off-topic.
markdown 6y ago
Are Mahindra tractors sold in the US? I'm sure they'd have the money to compete with JD. Mahindra is the worlds most popular tractor and any man and his dog can service them.
- phasetransition 6y ago
  There is a Mahindra dealership in Cumming, GA (exurb north of Atlanta). I noticed it over Thanksgiving on a drive up to the mountains. I've eyed their jeep in the past. That said, lots of Kubota around these parts with KMA and KIE in the greater metro area.
- mythrwy 6y ago
  Yes they are. I was told by a dealer that they are iterations of the old International Harvester tractors. They look solid, like cast iron old style tractors. Also they are relatively inexpensive compared to like John Deere. All that being said comparing them to big John Deere tractors is like comparing a golf cart to pickup truck. They don't make the massive sized ones that are responsible for the bulk of production field activity.
shock 6y ago
> I was on the Google homepage today on my iPhone and was getting popups advertising Chrome (on the homepage!) and then again in the search results advertising the Google app. I changed my default to DDG right then and there. I just switched my search engine from DDG to StartPage because I was on a DDG results page and there was a pop-up advertising their app. Why does a search engine need a phone app? Seriously!
- Retric 6y ago
  It’s a privacy focused browser. Considering all iOS browsers use the same rendering engine and most people are on DDG for privacy reasons, it might be worth considering. Honestly, if you’re concerned about being tracked then you should ignore adds directly related to the webpage your on. Advertising yoga mats on a yoga website don’t take insight into you. Advertising yoga mats on a personal finance site after you visited the yoga webpage is another story.
  - throwaway201103 6y ago
    Aside from using an ad blocker another thing I do to combat that is not re-using browser sessions. If I'm visiting a yoga website, I'll quit the browser and relaunch before I visit the personal finance website (especially then). My browser is configured to clear all history and site data when I quit, so I start with a clean blank slate. I quit/relaunch my browser dozens of times a day.
    - Retric 6y ago
      That’s both inefficient and ineffective vs browser fingerprinting, so you might want to just use a privacy focused browser behind a VPN to hide your IP address.
somethoughts 6y ago
It does seem though that the subscription economy and DRM was invented by Tech Companies and then copied by companies in other sectors. It seems highly likely the Electric Monarch will not be have right to repair support and will probably be acquired by one of the existing companies if the tech works, no?
- SturgeonsLaw 6y ago
  The embedded promo video specifically mentioned they support the right to repair which was nice to see, and they include the service manual with the tractor for self repair purposes. Of course, having that at launch is one thing, but future decisions could always be made by the bean counters leading to a locked down platform.
tomjen3 6y ago
I use DDG as my default search engine, but I often have to go to google, because DDG isn't very good. It also doesn't help that searching for a local company will turn up their italian site because DDG doesn't use my location by default. Forget searching for local Danish news at all.
- cgriswald 6y ago
  These threads have convinced me that how a person uses search is the biggest factor in whether they find DDG useful. By that I mean what type of things they search, how they craft their queries, and what they intend to do with the results.
aaron695 6y ago
> AI is going to dramatically alter this competitive landscape and John Deere’s DRM is not going to to stop it. > Honestly, I love watching these companies drive nails into their own coffins. There's trillions to be made before AI is needed. There's no AI problem AI isn't magic beans, it's only sold that way. AI will have DRM. Can you use GPT-3? John Deere can at any time remove the DRM so not sure why they will get nails in their coffins. They have the lead and can pivot at any time. If DRM is a killer...

by zaroth 6y ago

badconvincer 6y ago

It’s not enough to exist. You actually have to perform at least comparably, which DDG doesn’t unfortunately.

monadic3 6y ago
DDG is fine for many types of queries. It also doesn't have many of (what I consider) the drawbacks of google's search: hostile ad positioning, AMP, autoscraped meta crap. Pretending you can't compare them is ridiculous.
nxmnxm99 6y ago
Yeah I've tried DDG reliably for nearly a year. A good 30% of the time I end up having to run my query on Google anyway. I will literally pay money for a search engine that's privacy focused and can get closer to Google in terms of performance.
- danwills 6y ago
  I reckon I'd pay for that too, actually sounds really, really awesome (assuming the performance is there)
- nanna 6y ago
  Personally I need to switch from ddg to Google maybe 0.1% of my searches, but at least for you you've managed to avoid Google 70% of the time, and it's not like adding a !g to do so takes more a milisecond.
  - tempestn 6y ago
    Right, but running 30% of your searches a second time, after looking through unhelpful results on the first attempt, takes more than a few ms.
  - com2kid 6y ago
    For me, it is 70% I have to use Google. Even for not-that-obscure bands, all DDG needs to do is return the wikipedia page and it fails to do that.
  - nxmnxm99 6y ago
    I agree, and I'm still very thankful for DDG. Would gladly pay to have someone take me even further.
- mkl 6y ago
  How long ago did you try DDG? Years ago I had a similar experience to you, and switched back, but now DDG is much better for me, and I only try !g < 5% of the time, often with no luck there either.
- nitrogen 6y ago
  A good 30% of the time I end up having to run my query on Google anyway. A 70% reduction in Google sounds like a win.
  - nxmnxm99 6y ago
    Absolutely it is.
throwaway201103 6y ago
I use DDG exclusively, and also run Firefox on my Android phone and my desktop. No chrome, no google search anywhere for me.
zaroth 6y ago
90% of my search queries, particularly the ones I make from my phone, are really dumb.
brodie 6y ago
I’m sorry you were downvoted. I’ve tried to replace Google with both DDG and Bing. Both of their results are frankly terrible compared to Google’s. Google’s transition to its current hybrid Ask-Jeeves-style question/traditional query search engine, along with its inline answers above the result list both blow its competitors out of the water. Google also does a much better job of letting the user know the freshness or up-to-dateness of results with its inline last-modified/updated time stamps. Both of those things have made it impossible for me to switch off of Google without immediately having problems quickly finding relevant, up-to-date information on the web. I do desperately want to switch, though. I also especially despise AMP. It constantly breaks websites and itself, especially on iOS.

ptero 6y ago

> AI is going to dramatically alter this competitive landscape and John Deere’s DRM is not going to to stop it. I would love this state, but getting there is not simple. DRM is just one facet of it: companies selling machinery have worked on hardware for decades, making their systems physically robust and able to take lots of abuse. This raises the barrier to entry a lot. My 2c.

NegativeLatency 6y ago
The startup needs an exit (eventually) I’m sure if the deal was good enough John Deere could buy them
- i_am_proteus 6y ago
  Startups with this mindset need not apply. The market for agricultural technology will always exist, and there's no reason a new player needs to "exit" instead of growing and sustaining the business. See the comments about repair parts. These aren't cheap toys like smartphones and eyepads that are only meant to last a few years. Ag machinery are capital assets that should function for decades. The people buying this equipment are in it for the long haul, and anyone financing such a venture should be also. If SV VC prefers scale-and-exit schemes, then it's not a good fit, but SV VC isn't the only source of capital.

throwaway9870 6y ago

Barrier to entry in Ag is the dealerships. Deere has the best US dealership network for heavy equipment outside of CAT. It is Ok if your Tesla is in the shop for a few weeks getting fixed, but for Ag equipment, even a few hours at the wrong time is super painful. Deere has parts for 20yr old equipment and their own freight trucks, don't overlook this advantage.

vvanders 6y ago
Its definitely a factor, most people I know out here who bale run multiple tractors so they can handle one or two in the shop if it's during a critical time. We've got a Kubota CUT, when rats chewed out the writing harness we were 4 weeks before we had it up and running even with insurance + dealership. Personally I'd love to see someone come in and clean house. Weight and torque are the two things you want in a tractor and electric has both in spades. I think tractors in the CUT space where hydrostatic transmission are common would make a really good fit since you can basically eliminate the HST.
- sangnoir 6y ago
  I doubt anyone will come in and "clean house" - especially not from a VC-funded startup. The (oft-subsidized) money is just too good to "leave on the table". The best we can hope for, are solid Right-to-repair laws that make DRM illegal/possible to bypass to at least allow custom firmware
  - vvanders 6y ago
    I dunno, in the CUT space you've got the 3-point hitch, SSQA, hydraulic remotes and a bunch of other standards that make implements pretty interchangeable. Makes brand lock-in pretty difficult. If I had the option for either a pure-electric or diesel-electric I would have seriously considered it. At least in our case the workload is a lot of hauling, intermittent groundwork and field mowing(<10ac) all of which would have fit really well. Also all the JD DRM stuff only applies in the larger 100hp+ market. In the SCUT/CUT/Utility Tractor market there's a fairly robust set of companies(Kubota, LS, JD, Mahindra, Yanmar, etc).

SubiculumCode 6y ago

see Mojeek! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25372401 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25372401

rational_indian 6y ago

> Safari > Don’t support these shitty companies Then start by changing your phone.

amerine 6y ago
What do you recommend as an alternative?
zaroth 6y ago
Personally I don’t consider Apple one of the shitty ones, but I didn’t want to get off-topic.

markdown 6y ago

Are Mahindra tractors sold in the US? I'm sure they'd have the money to compete with JD. Mahindra is the worlds most popular tractor and any man and his dog can service them.

phasetransition 6y ago
There is a Mahindra dealership in Cumming, GA (exurb north of Atlanta). I noticed it over Thanksgiving on a drive up to the mountains. I've eyed their jeep in the past. That said, lots of Kubota around these parts with KMA and KIE in the greater metro area.
mythrwy 6y ago
Yes they are. I was told by a dealer that they are iterations of the old International Harvester tractors. They look solid, like cast iron old style tractors. Also they are relatively inexpensive compared to like John Deere. All that being said comparing them to big John Deere tractors is like comparing a golf cart to pickup truck. They don't make the massive sized ones that are responsible for the bulk of production field activity.

shock 6y ago

> I was on the Google homepage today on my iPhone and was getting popups advertising Chrome (on the homepage!) and then again in the search results advertising the Google app. I changed my default to DDG right then and there. I just switched my search engine from DDG to StartPage because I was on a DDG results page and there was a pop-up advertising their app. Why does a search engine need a phone app? Seriously!

Retric 6y ago
It’s a privacy focused browser. Considering all iOS browsers use the same rendering engine and most people are on DDG for privacy reasons, it might be worth considering. Honestly, if you’re concerned about being tracked then you should ignore adds directly related to the webpage your on. Advertising yoga mats on a yoga website don’t take insight into you. Advertising yoga mats on a personal finance site after you visited the yoga webpage is another story.
- throwaway201103 6y ago
  Aside from using an ad blocker another thing I do to combat that is not re-using browser sessions. If I'm visiting a yoga website, I'll quit the browser and relaunch before I visit the personal finance website (especially then). My browser is configured to clear all history and site data when I quit, so I start with a clean blank slate. I quit/relaunch my browser dozens of times a day.
  - Retric 6y ago
    That’s both inefficient and ineffective vs browser fingerprinting, so you might want to just use a privacy focused browser behind a VPN to hide your IP address.

somethoughts 6y ago

It does seem though that the subscription economy and DRM was invented by Tech Companies and then copied by companies in other sectors. It seems highly likely the Electric Monarch will not be have right to repair support and will probably be acquired by one of the existing companies if the tech works, no?

SturgeonsLaw 6y ago
The embedded promo video specifically mentioned they support the right to repair which was nice to see, and they include the service manual with the tractor for self repair purposes. Of course, having that at launch is one thing, but future decisions could always be made by the bean counters leading to a locked down platform.

tomjen3 6y ago

I use DDG as my default search engine, but I often have to go to google, because DDG isn't very good. It also doesn't help that searching for a local company will turn up their italian site because DDG doesn't use my location by default. Forget searching for local Danish news at all.

cgriswald 6y ago
These threads have convinced me that how a person uses search is the biggest factor in whether they find DDG useful. By that I mean what type of things they search, how they craft their queries, and what they intend to do with the results.

aaron695 6y ago

> AI is going to dramatically alter this competitive landscape and John Deere’s DRM is not going to to stop it. > Honestly, I love watching these companies drive nails into their own coffins. There's trillions to be made before AI is needed. There's no AI problem AI isn't magic beans, it's only sold that way. AI will have DRM. Can you use GPT-3? John Deere can at any time remove the DRM so not sure why they will get nails in their coffins. They have the lead and can pivot at any time. If DRM is a killer...