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Hope Deere gets what's coming to them and this sets a precedent for other companies. Next on the list should be devices remotely disabled when they're discontin

Hope Deere gets what's coming to them and this sets a precedent for other companies. Next on the list should be devices remotely disabled when they're discontinued, which would have otherwise continued to work perfectly fine (like the Spotify car device).

tmm 2y ago
Would also like to see a ban on firmware updates and programming tools locked behind a dealer (or support contract) portal and a ban on time-restricted software licenses for hardware. In line with remote-bricking discontinued hardware, these policies only serve to generate eWaste. If you sell programmable hardware, or really anything with embedded software, you should be required to make all the tools and software available to end users (doesn’t have to be free, but shouldn’t require a subscription or support contract either) in perpetuity. Licenses to enable additional hardware features are fine, but they must be granted for the life of the device (i.e. as long as it can be kept working), not an arbitrary “we think the life of this thing is 5 years”. You should never have to keep paying to use a device you already bought.
- zelon88 2y ago
  > You should never have to keep paying to use a device you already bought. You think that's bad? I bought a "RAM upgrade" over the phone from HAAS for a CNC machine back in 2016ish. The upgrade was from 1mb to 16mb of RAM. The technician on the phone told me to go to the machine and punch in a series of keys followed by a 21 digit code. That was my ~$2,000 RAM upgrade. The RAM was always there. It was just locked away as "reserve value" for the manufacturer.
  - 0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
    The most upsetting version of this is when you actually have to remove hardware. “Upgrading” the machine entailed removing a certain screw from under the hood to double the performance.
  - m463 2y ago
    tesla does this stuff. For instance, I believe every car is actually running full self drive software in simuation mode. But if you pay $8k it can actually control pedals/steering. also OTA performance boosts, etc.
    - ocdtrekkie 2y ago
      Indeed, driving a Tesla is collecting training data for the company whether you benefit from it or not. (The idea you can own a Tesla is laughable, you might have the title but Elon can brick it and refuse to activate it.) They're also well-known for artificially capping battery capacity unless you buy an unlock. There have been a few stories before about them unlocking the expanded capacity for free during emergencies.
      - BeFlatXIII 2y ago
        Jailbreak time when?
        yupyupyups 2y ago
        Jailbreak is a cat and mouse game, which you shouldn't have to play if buying something so expensive. The best thing to do is to not buy it in the first place.
    - Ajedi32 2y ago
      Charging for software features is fine. Tesla is spending a lot of money to develop their self driving software and its perfectly reasonable for them to expect to be paid for that. Charging to stop blocking the use of hardware features that are already present on a product you own however (like seat heaters or battery capacity), is unacceptable in my opinion. Software Freedom would solve all these problems by making it trivial for users to buy a software patch from a third party vendor for cheap that unlocks the seat heaters, thus destroying the incentive for manufactures to do stupid stuff like that in the first place.
  - 7thpower 2y ago
    I don’t see the problem with this?
    - theobreuerweil 2y ago
      When you pay for goods or services, you should expect to receive something. If you pay extra for leather seats, you’re getting leather seats. If you pay for DLC as part of a game, you’re subsidising the cost of the developer adding more stuff to the game. The pricing of digital products and add-ons may not always be fair but you should be getting access to something valuable that you didn’t already have, i.e. something that costs money to develop and/or host. In this case, you already bought and paid for the additional RAM. The manufacturer is refusing to let you use it until you pay additional money, even though you theoretically own it already. That’s not providing a service, it’s just extortion. If you could somehow prove that the additional RAM was not factored into the original cost of what you bought then this might be fair (albeit wasteful) - but I doubt it…
      - ericd 2y ago
        16 megs of ram was ~free by 2016.
        theobreuerweil 2y ago
        You may be right, I’ve no idea. For me it’s the principle more than the specific amount. I can’t understand why a manufacturer is entitled to charge you to use something that you supposedly own. Car manufacturers charging to unlock seat heating is a good example.
      - datavirtue 2y ago
        This is the market not working.
- m463 2y ago
  > ban on firmware updates and programming tools locked behind a dealer Tesla won't let you buy parts unless you enter the vehicle vin. I believe some other things you have to order through the tesla app. I think those kinds of requirements should be disallowed too.
  - nickff 2y ago
    The VIN requirement may be due to part (version) differences between vintages. Most automakers make few changes during production of (one year’s) model, whereas Tesla seems to make changes all the time.
    - izacus 2y ago
      Other manufacturers manage just find without this kind of block, there's really no need to jump at corporate defense like this.
      - mschuster91 2y ago
        Legacy car industry has a life cycle for a model of about 6-8 years with a "refresh" in the center, so usually you can get by with model variant code(s) and construction mm/yy to find a specific spare part. Designs are locked in-between and you can't just go and swap suppliers or whatnot, which is what almost broke the neck of the entire industry back in the heyday era of covid - there was no flexibility, even if there were alternative suppliers for missing parts. Everything is solidly locked with multi-year long contracts on both sides. Tesla however, they change stuff alllll the damn time because they make so much of their stuff in-house, the vertical integration eliminates the need for rigid contracts. You absolutely need the VIN because for some differences even knowing the week of the production doesn't give sufficient resolution. By the way, legacy car makers are also shifting to that model, BMW for example doesn't deliver paper-printed sheets for which fuse in the fuse box does what for a few years now, you have to use an online service. The logistics for printing the sheets for all the variants became too complex.
        2y ago
- potato3732842 2y ago
  >Would also like to see a ban on firmware updates and programming tools locked behind a dealer (or support contract) portal and a ban on time-restricted software licenses for hardware. Won't happen. Feds find the status quo too useful to let every tom dick and harry start wrenching on these things I'm pretty familiar with what's going on at CAT. A large part of the way all the emissions stuff that everyone (I'm talking about the customers, dealers, OEMs, the people who actually pay for things, not the online peanut gallery) hates gets enforced is that the OEM threatens the dealers that they'll cut them off from the software if they don't run a tight ship and their techs are too frequently caught doing things like plugging into vehicles outside the scope of their job, working on deleted equipment and whatnot. The dealers roll this downhill to their employees. I assume Deere is similar. Basically removing the dealers and therefore the OEM's stranglehold on software would take the teeth out of emissions enforcement.
  - titzer 2y ago
    > Basically removing the dealers and therefore the OEM's stranglehold on software would take the teeth out of emissions enforcement. I don't buy that. This strangehold is the only way that VW managed to cheat emissions for years without getting caught.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - Cheezmeister 2y ago
    In a world where rolling coal[1] is a thing that people do voluntarily, I submit that emissions enforcement (as it stands) is a failed experiment. It's time to rethink it from first principles. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_coal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_coal
- hsbauauvhabzb 2y ago
  How would you implement that though? As soon as you push a law in a single state, the company will move states, over a single country and the company will move countries, and you’re not gonna get this law passed somewhere like China
  - F-Lexx 2y ago
    > and you're not gonna get this law passed somewhere like China That's exactly what embargos are for.
    - jimnotgym 2y ago
      Or at least proper regulation. If you want to import X to the US then it must comply with Y
      - freedomben 2y ago
        Yes, but we should also be honest about the fact that this protectionism will have a cost. In the case of farm equipment, it means that everyone who buys food will be paying more to subsidize the protected industry. I'm not making a judgment on whether it's worth it or not, I think that depends on a lot of details, but when people throw out tariffs they are rarely honest about the fact that it's a tax that flows downstream to the end user. In some cases multiple ways, like farmers who pay higher cost for equipment due to tariffs, so production of their soybeans (or whatever) are higher, so then they needs USDA subsidies to make them price competitive for export, so there's multiple layers of taxation there to make it work.
- datavirtue 2y ago
  I don't think it's going to happen. Too many shares of automotive companies locked up in influential institutions. The same reason Microsoft is untouchable.
- gosub100 2y ago
  Even low-tech anti-features are insidious. They make the windows in a 3D "bubble" type shape so when you break one, they can charge you more, or use it as leverage to scare you into paying for a support plan that "covers" broken windows. If they were made out of flat panels, 3rd parties could make them, farmers could make their own, and they would be cheaper.
artursapek 2y ago
Hahaha I hadn’t seen that they’re discontinuing that already. It seemed like such an obvious dud when I saw them announcing it. What a waste of resources.
grishka 2y ago
If you buy a device, the manufacturer should retain no control over it whatsoever. There should not be technical provisions to make such control possible. Otherwise, it should be considered a rental and made very clear to you before you commit to it.

tmm 2y ago

Would also like to see a ban on firmware updates and programming tools locked behind a dealer (or support contract) portal and a ban on time-restricted software licenses for hardware. In line with remote-bricking discontinued hardware, these policies only serve to generate eWaste. If you sell programmable hardware, or really anything with embedded software, you should be required to make all the tools and software available to end users (doesn’t have to be free, but shouldn’t require a subscription or support contract either) in perpetuity. Licenses to enable additional hardware features are fine, but they must be granted for the life of the device (i.e. as long as it can be kept working), not an arbitrary “we think the life of this thing is 5 years”. You should never have to keep paying to use a device you already bought.

zelon88 2y ago
> You should never have to keep paying to use a device you already bought. You think that's bad? I bought a "RAM upgrade" over the phone from HAAS for a CNC machine back in 2016ish. The upgrade was from 1mb to 16mb of RAM. The technician on the phone told me to go to the machine and punch in a series of keys followed by a 21 digit code. That was my ~$2,000 RAM upgrade. The RAM was always there. It was just locked away as "reserve value" for the manufacturer.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
  The most upsetting version of this is when you actually have to remove hardware. “Upgrading” the machine entailed removing a certain screw from under the hood to double the performance.
- m463 2y ago
  tesla does this stuff. For instance, I believe every car is actually running full self drive software in simuation mode. But if you pay $8k it can actually control pedals/steering. also OTA performance boosts, etc.
  - ocdtrekkie 2y ago
    Indeed, driving a Tesla is collecting training data for the company whether you benefit from it or not. (The idea you can own a Tesla is laughable, you might have the title but Elon can brick it and refuse to activate it.) They're also well-known for artificially capping battery capacity unless you buy an unlock. There have been a few stories before about them unlocking the expanded capacity for free during emergencies.
    - BeFlatXIII 2y ago
      Jailbreak time when?
      - yupyupyups 2y ago
        Jailbreak is a cat and mouse game, which you shouldn't have to play if buying something so expensive. The best thing to do is to not buy it in the first place.
  - Ajedi32 2y ago
    Charging for software features is fine. Tesla is spending a lot of money to develop their self driving software and its perfectly reasonable for them to expect to be paid for that. Charging to stop blocking the use of hardware features that are already present on a product you own however (like seat heaters or battery capacity), is unacceptable in my opinion. Software Freedom would solve all these problems by making it trivial for users to buy a software patch from a third party vendor for cheap that unlocks the seat heaters, thus destroying the incentive for manufactures to do stupid stuff like that in the first place.
- 7thpower 2y ago
  I don’t see the problem with this?
  - theobreuerweil 2y ago
    When you pay for goods or services, you should expect to receive something. If you pay extra for leather seats, you’re getting leather seats. If you pay for DLC as part of a game, you’re subsidising the cost of the developer adding more stuff to the game. The pricing of digital products and add-ons may not always be fair but you should be getting access to something valuable that you didn’t already have, i.e. something that costs money to develop and/or host. In this case, you already bought and paid for the additional RAM. The manufacturer is refusing to let you use it until you pay additional money, even though you theoretically own it already. That’s not providing a service, it’s just extortion. If you could somehow prove that the additional RAM was not factored into the original cost of what you bought then this might be fair (albeit wasteful) - but I doubt it…
    - ericd 2y ago
      16 megs of ram was ~free by 2016.
      - theobreuerweil 2y ago
        You may be right, I’ve no idea. For me it’s the principle more than the specific amount. I can’t understand why a manufacturer is entitled to charge you to use something that you supposedly own. Car manufacturers charging to unlock seat heating is a good example.
    - datavirtue 2y ago
      This is the market not working.
m463 2y ago
> ban on firmware updates and programming tools locked behind a dealer Tesla won't let you buy parts unless you enter the vehicle vin. I believe some other things you have to order through the tesla app. I think those kinds of requirements should be disallowed too.
- nickff 2y ago
  The VIN requirement may be due to part (version) differences between vintages. Most automakers make few changes during production of (one year’s) model, whereas Tesla seems to make changes all the time.
  - izacus 2y ago
    Other manufacturers manage just find without this kind of block, there's really no need to jump at corporate defense like this.
    - mschuster91 2y ago
      Legacy car industry has a life cycle for a model of about 6-8 years with a "refresh" in the center, so usually you can get by with model variant code(s) and construction mm/yy to find a specific spare part. Designs are locked in-between and you can't just go and swap suppliers or whatnot, which is what almost broke the neck of the entire industry back in the heyday era of covid - there was no flexibility, even if there were alternative suppliers for missing parts. Everything is solidly locked with multi-year long contracts on both sides. Tesla however, they change stuff alllll the damn time because they make so much of their stuff in-house, the vertical integration eliminates the need for rigid contracts. You absolutely need the VIN because for some differences even knowing the week of the production doesn't give sufficient resolution. By the way, legacy car makers are also shifting to that model, BMW for example doesn't deliver paper-printed sheets for which fuse in the fuse box does what for a few years now, you have to use an online service. The logistics for printing the sheets for all the variants became too complex.
      - 2y ago
potato3732842 2y ago
>Would also like to see a ban on firmware updates and programming tools locked behind a dealer (or support contract) portal and a ban on time-restricted software licenses for hardware. Won't happen. Feds find the status quo too useful to let every tom dick and harry start wrenching on these things I'm pretty familiar with what's going on at CAT. A large part of the way all the emissions stuff that everyone (I'm talking about the customers, dealers, OEMs, the people who actually pay for things, not the online peanut gallery) hates gets enforced is that the OEM threatens the dealers that they'll cut them off from the software if they don't run a tight ship and their techs are too frequently caught doing things like plugging into vehicles outside the scope of their job, working on deleted equipment and whatnot. The dealers roll this downhill to their employees. I assume Deere is similar. Basically removing the dealers and therefore the OEM's stranglehold on software would take the teeth out of emissions enforcement.
- titzer 2y ago
  > Basically removing the dealers and therefore the OEM's stranglehold on software would take the teeth out of emissions enforcement. I don't buy that. This strangehold is the only way that VW managed to cheat emissions for years without getting caught.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- Cheezmeister 2y ago
  In a world where rolling coal[1] is a thing that people do voluntarily, I submit that emissions enforcement (as it stands) is a failed experiment. It's time to rethink it from first principles. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_coal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_coal
hsbauauvhabzb 2y ago
How would you implement that though? As soon as you push a law in a single state, the company will move states, over a single country and the company will move countries, and you’re not gonna get this law passed somewhere like China
- F-Lexx 2y ago
  > and you're not gonna get this law passed somewhere like China That's exactly what embargos are for.
  - jimnotgym 2y ago
    Or at least proper regulation. If you want to import X to the US then it must comply with Y
    - freedomben 2y ago
      Yes, but we should also be honest about the fact that this protectionism will have a cost. In the case of farm equipment, it means that everyone who buys food will be paying more to subsidize the protected industry. I'm not making a judgment on whether it's worth it or not, I think that depends on a lot of details, but when people throw out tariffs they are rarely honest about the fact that it's a tax that flows downstream to the end user. In some cases multiple ways, like farmers who pay higher cost for equipment due to tariffs, so production of their soybeans (or whatever) are higher, so then they needs USDA subsidies to make them price competitive for export, so there's multiple layers of taxation there to make it work.
datavirtue 2y ago
I don't think it's going to happen. Too many shares of automotive companies locked up in influential institutions. The same reason Microsoft is untouchable.
gosub100 2y ago
Even low-tech anti-features are insidious. They make the windows in a 3D "bubble" type shape so when you break one, they can charge you more, or use it as leverage to scare you into paying for a support plan that "covers" broken windows. If they were made out of flat panels, 3rd parties could make them, farmers could make their own, and they would be cheaper.

artursapek 2y ago

Hahaha I hadn’t seen that they’re discontinuing that already. It seemed like such an obvious dud when I saw them announcing it. What a waste of resources.

grishka 2y ago

If you buy a device, the manufacturer should retain no control over it whatsoever. There should not be technical provisions to make such control possible. Otherwise, it should be considered a rental and made very clear to you before you commit to it.