12 ms·

It's ironic that farmers (traditionally thought of as less technical people, "workers of the earth", etc) and hackers (highly technical nerds writing operating

It's ironic that farmers (traditionally thought of as less technical people, "workers of the earth", etc) and hackers (highly technical nerds writing operating systems and engineering compatibility parts) are so connected by this issue. Some of the farmers I've talked to understand the importance ownership and right to repair better than even many engineers. That said, I think John Deere is just the asshole willing to weaponize the legal system to enforce their dreams. The real problem is laws that protect IP like the DMCA and the patent system. I'm not saying we should just delete all those, but they are in bad need of reform and enable a tremendous amount of abuse. The abuse is only going to get worse unless we treat the cause(s) rather than just the symptoms. I'm glad the feds are giving John Deere some attention, but I really hope they are going to fix the lopsided system instead of just try to bully or micro-regulate John Deere into "voluntarily" allowing more repair. If we stopped unleashing the lawyers on people for modifying or interfacing with devices they purchased, it would shift the balance of power more toward the center (whereas currently the power is almost entirely on the side of the companies). Even if you have no interest in repairing or "tinkering" with your own stuff, you should be on the side of right to repair.

FredPret 2y ago
Where did you get this stereotype of farmers? I’ve always though of them as business owners with special skills in growing things, auto mechanics, and logistics.
- mcmcmc 2y ago
  People who’ve never lived in or around rural communities tend to stereotype those populations as country bumpkins. Newsmedia doesn’t help.
- serf 2y ago
  >Where did you get this stereotype of farmers? it's not a hard guess even if you don't share the opinion ; nearly every movie where 'farmer' is a plot point demonstrates a rural-living poorly educated family living in dust-bowl conditions and barely scraping enough resource by to feed the animals. grapes of wrath, wizard of oz, of mice and men, o brother where art thou, ballad of buster scruggs -- yes it's a stereotype , but it's a common one in movies and literature.
  - FredPret 2y ago
    Maybe I haven't noticed this since I got inoculated against this notion by the reality of farmers early on. It still seems surprising to me that this idea can survive more than five seconds of thought. Farmers own tracts of land, lots of equipment, and have to navigate the market for their product, financing, capital allocation, weather patterns, all sorts of random events. They frequently have dozens of employees, and constantly have to negotiate with those, and with customers, and with vendors. All of this is in addition to the actual growing of crops. It seems like the most natural thing in the world that this type of person won't take kindly to being dictated to by John Deere (doesn't mean it doesn't happen anyway) and would try their hand at a bit of hacking if needs must.
- AyyEye 2y ago
  The mass media likes to portray farmers as straw-chewing hicks. It's the farmer stereotype. I even saw a conversation on here a few months back where someone on here not-so-nicely corrected a user that the big industrial farmers are smart but the rest of them are backwoods hicks that barely know what electricity is.
  - dreamcompiler 2y ago
    I saw a comment recently on HN about how farmers exemplified unsophisticated investors who would never be able to understand complicated financial instruments. I pointed out that futures trading was literally invented by farmers.
- t-3 2y ago
  It's endemic to urban areas of the US, where "rural" has the connotation of ignorant, backwards, stupid, inbred, etc., and "farmer" is the epitome of rural. Bog-standard xenophobia and classism.
  - FredPret 2y ago
    It’s an interesting form of classism because I’d bet the average farmer is vastly better off than the average cubicle slave, in addition to being masters of their domain.
- freedomben 2y ago
  > Where did you get this stereotype of farmers? It would probably be easier to describe where one would not get this stereotype. Pretty much every city person (which as many sibling comments have pointed out, control essentially all media and pop culture) holds and perpetuates that stereotype. Pretty much only people who are or know farmers know the reality behind it. But I do think it's important to point out that farmers are a very diverse group, just like many other professions. There are geniuses and there are morons. You can't take a sample size of n <= 5 and extrapolate characteristics of millions of people.
genter 2y ago
> traditionally thought of as less technical people You've never met a farmer. Admittedly no one in my family is a farmer, but half of them are loggers, diesel mechanics, or heavy equipment operators. Most of them are ridiculously intelligent and able to fix anything that moves.
- cyberax 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - genter 2y ago
    Actually mine don't.
    - bigstrat2003 2y ago
      More to the point, it's not really acceptable to accuse people of being stupid based on how they vote. Reasonable people can disagree on things. I strongly disagree with the political views of some of my family members, but that doesn't make them stupid or anything... we just see things differently.
      - CamperBob2 2y ago
        Reasonable people can disagree on things Usually. Not this time around, though. You can't call yourself a "reasonable person" and vote for the people behind https://i.imgur.com/WQ4qbfj.png https://i.imgur.com/WQ4qbfj.png . Sorry. You just can't.
        llamaimperative 2y ago
        +1 Could you share a link to that full PDF? I assume it's from the recently published documents from Smith? Edit: Found it! https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25238371-chutkan-order-government-appendix-vol-iv https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25238371-chutkan-ord...
        2y ago
akovaski 2y ago
> The real problem is laws that protect IP like the DMCA and the patent system. That is A problem, but that is not the problem seen here. The problem here is trade secrets. Specifically electronic secrets that prevent third parties from fully servicing their own equipment. Like HP inkjet electronic restrictions that prevent people from refilling their own ink cartridges. This is still a problem without patent law, without copyright law, and without lawyers.
simonsarris 2y ago
Many people (including comments on hacker news!) have called farmers the original hackers. The amount of bespoke problem solving needed is tremendous. Uniformity in farming is an extremely recent phenomenon. eg: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=626534 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=626534
- dghughes 2y ago
  Everyone was a farmer until not so long in the past.
  - mistrial9 2y ago
    most of the named countries that are recognized today, were founded by hunting groups (defined by spoken language) that sought control over farmers and definitely over migrants.. oddly, farming itself is cited as a major driver of armed conflicts
- spacecadet 2y ago
  Yeah... I grew up on a multi-generational family farm and we hacked everything to repair or extend its functionality. Or just consider animal husbandry at its roots, OG bio hacking...
  - cogman10 2y ago
    Not just animal husbandry. Modern corn is the result of centuries of genetic engineering. Farmers have long used bio engineering to make crops tastier or more resistant to disease or drought.
    - spacecadet 2y ago
      Oh I know, a relative was bio-chem at monsanto related to corn... but I normally avoid telling people that because of the stigma it carries (unfair considering the global impact to yield)... now he works tirelessly to reduce invasive species to reduce coastal erosion.
Xelbair 2y ago
> The real problem is laws that protect IP like the DMCA and the patent system. system created to protect inventors and authors from being abused by more powerful people(investors, corporations, publishers) is actually used to abuse everyone except powerful groups then yeah - it is a horrible system that needs to go.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
agtechthrowaway 2y ago
We're already seeing another dark cloud on the horizon with Deere. They're almost done with the work to move to single-pair Ethernet on their vehicle bus and leave the traditional CAN/ISOBUS connector behind. We have a number of things that sniff the traffic for important implement data and state and Deere is going to lock it all up. You'll be left with minimal data on the J1939 connector like the automakers did with OBD2.
- neuralRiot 2y ago
  There’s such a dark cloud for automotive too, usually there’s a gateway between the diagnostic port/ bus and the vehicle network (usually CAN, LIN, Flex-ray) where you can still see traffic. They’re moving towards ethernet(100base-T2), although it’s easier to analyze the traffic the authentication is more complex and in many cases it requires “personalized login” which of course means paying a fee on top of your diagnostic tool subscription. In most cases re-programming used control modules is not permitted “for safety reasons”. Some brands sell a short time subscription but others (like Mercedes Benz) do so in the EU but not in USA/ CAN, there you need to buy a yearly subscription for around $4.5k plus taxes and fees and on top of their “approved tool” (another $2-4k).
throwway120385 2y ago
The feds are not in charge of key legislation like the DMCA, and their power to regulate things has been severely curtailed by the supreme court in recent months. If we want these things to change, we need to seek out all of the individuals in the House and Senate who oppose these things and mount systematic campaigns to replace them. And do the same thing at the state level. Demanding that the feds "do something" without clear legislation is not going to work anymore.
moffkalast 2y ago
> I'm not saying we should just delete all those It wouldn't be the worst thing. 20 years for a patent may have been sensible a century ago but these days it's almost absurd.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
quickthrowman 2y ago
> It's ironic that farmers (traditionally thought of as less technical people I see you’ve never met a farmer. The exact opposite of what you claim is reality. Farmers are highly technical and have come up with plenty of ingenious solutions to problems on their farms, any labor saving device they can dream up can save them lots of time and money. Repairing equipment quickly is an important skill to have when something shits out during harvest, the weather isn’t going to wait.. A farmer can work miracles with a welder, hammer, wrench, and pliers since they’re generally put in the middle of nowhere and need to keep equipment operational.
- freedomben 2y ago
  > I see you’ve never met a farmer. More evidence that people really shouldn't trust their first, shallow reactions to things. You know nothing about me and yet have jumped to an absurdly wrong conclusion, ironically while trying to correct what you think was an incorrect conclusion of mine. For more information, see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41887807 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41887807 > The exact opposite of what you claim is reality. Please read it a little closer. I'm not claiming any such thing. I'm pointing out that it is a popular conception - and it is. That the popular conception is wrong does not mean it isn't a popular conception. That's quite the logic error. And for someone to point out a popular conception does not mean they agree with it, and even if they did, it certainly does not mean they've never met a farmer (lol). This has so many fallacies in it, it's actually funny.
aucisson_masque 2y ago
Fix the root of the issue instead of it's consequences ? One can dream. Too much money and private interest here.
_yb2s 2y ago
Farmers are - and have been for most of history - some of the Most technical people on the planet… probably more so then your modern “hacker” that probably couldn’t actually disassemble and repair most of the things they own and use. I spent a summer working on a 3rd generation family farm, and it was one of the most technically competent workplaces I’ve ever seen. The owner had a degree in agricultural engineering, and dozens of patents from farming equipment he initially invented for his own use. Much of the equipment they used day to day was designed and built on site and they had a full machine shop, electrical shop, etc. Modern equipment like combines are so complex, automation heavy, and unreliable that they are usually operated by master mechanics that also weld, code, and are otherwise primarily technical people. When those multi-million dollar machines break- which happens daily- they are losing money fast and need to fix it immediately, right there in the field. The idea of farmers as uneducated non-technical people is an ignorant stereotype held by urban people that have no clue what farms are really like.
- datavirtue 2y ago
  Can you blame them? If you drive through farm country you see crazy Trump effigies everywhere and Trump/Vance signs in every yard. So it's difficult to know that these people don't care about Trump at all and think he is just as ridiculous as you do. They just hate the Democrats so much that they will do anything they can to stop them. The reasons are numerous and valid, btw.
  - _yb2s 2y ago
    Indeed the situation isn’t as simple as it seems on the surface. The 3rd generation farmer/inventor I mentioned above is an environmentalist and many of his inventions are focused on improving the long term sustainability and environmental impact of farming- he liked to talk about how he wants the farm to be sustainable to pass down for many more generations by protecting the soil quality, water table, etc. Yet he also has massive signs all over his land supporting conservative politicians. Most likely not because he really likes or agrees with them on much, but because he believes their opponents are actively trying to shut his farm down. I couldn’t say more, because I actively avoid having political discussions with my boss.
whoitwas 2y ago
Farmers and hackers share a lot in common. They're people who roll up their sleeves, find a solution within their means, and implement it.

FredPret 2y ago

Where did you get this stereotype of farmers? I’ve always though of them as business owners with special skills in growing things, auto mechanics, and logistics.

mcmcmc 2y ago
People who’ve never lived in or around rural communities tend to stereotype those populations as country bumpkins. Newsmedia doesn’t help.
serf 2y ago
>Where did you get this stereotype of farmers? it's not a hard guess even if you don't share the opinion ; nearly every movie where 'farmer' is a plot point demonstrates a rural-living poorly educated family living in dust-bowl conditions and barely scraping enough resource by to feed the animals. grapes of wrath, wizard of oz, of mice and men, o brother where art thou, ballad of buster scruggs -- yes it's a stereotype , but it's a common one in movies and literature.
- FredPret 2y ago
  Maybe I haven't noticed this since I got inoculated against this notion by the reality of farmers early on. It still seems surprising to me that this idea can survive more than five seconds of thought. Farmers own tracts of land, lots of equipment, and have to navigate the market for their product, financing, capital allocation, weather patterns, all sorts of random events. They frequently have dozens of employees, and constantly have to negotiate with those, and with customers, and with vendors. All of this is in addition to the actual growing of crops. It seems like the most natural thing in the world that this type of person won't take kindly to being dictated to by John Deere (doesn't mean it doesn't happen anyway) and would try their hand at a bit of hacking if needs must.
AyyEye 2y ago
The mass media likes to portray farmers as straw-chewing hicks. It's the farmer stereotype. I even saw a conversation on here a few months back where someone on here not-so-nicely corrected a user that the big industrial farmers are smart but the rest of them are backwoods hicks that barely know what electricity is.
- dreamcompiler 2y ago
  I saw a comment recently on HN about how farmers exemplified unsophisticated investors who would never be able to understand complicated financial instruments. I pointed out that futures trading was literally invented by farmers.
t-3 2y ago
It's endemic to urban areas of the US, where "rural" has the connotation of ignorant, backwards, stupid, inbred, etc., and "farmer" is the epitome of rural. Bog-standard xenophobia and classism.
- FredPret 2y ago
  It’s an interesting form of classism because I’d bet the average farmer is vastly better off than the average cubicle slave, in addition to being masters of their domain.
freedomben 2y ago
> Where did you get this stereotype of farmers? It would probably be easier to describe where one would not get this stereotype. Pretty much every city person (which as many sibling comments have pointed out, control essentially all media and pop culture) holds and perpetuates that stereotype. Pretty much only people who are or know farmers know the reality behind it. But I do think it's important to point out that farmers are a very diverse group, just like many other professions. There are geniuses and there are morons. You can't take a sample size of n <= 5 and extrapolate characteristics of millions of people.

genter 2y ago

> traditionally thought of as less technical people You've never met a farmer. Admittedly no one in my family is a farmer, but half of them are loggers, diesel mechanics, or heavy equipment operators. Most of them are ridiculously intelligent and able to fix anything that moves.

cyberax 2y ago
[flagged]
- genter 2y ago
  Actually mine don't.
  - bigstrat2003 2y ago
    More to the point, it's not really acceptable to accuse people of being stupid based on how they vote. Reasonable people can disagree on things. I strongly disagree with the political views of some of my family members, but that doesn't make them stupid or anything... we just see things differently.
    - CamperBob2 2y ago
      Reasonable people can disagree on things Usually. Not this time around, though. You can't call yourself a "reasonable person" and vote for the people behind https://i.imgur.com/WQ4qbfj.png https://i.imgur.com/WQ4qbfj.png . Sorry. You just can't.
      - llamaimperative 2y ago
        +1 Could you share a link to that full PDF? I assume it's from the recently published documents from Smith? Edit: Found it! https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25238371-chutkan-order-government-appendix-vol-iv https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25238371-chutkan-ord...
      - 2y ago

akovaski 2y ago

> The real problem is laws that protect IP like the DMCA and the patent system. That is A problem, but that is not the problem seen here. The problem here is trade secrets. Specifically electronic secrets that prevent third parties from fully servicing their own equipment. Like HP inkjet electronic restrictions that prevent people from refilling their own ink cartridges. This is still a problem without patent law, without copyright law, and without lawyers.

simonsarris 2y ago

Many people (including comments on hacker news!) have called farmers the original hackers. The amount of bespoke problem solving needed is tremendous. Uniformity in farming is an extremely recent phenomenon. eg: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=626534 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=626534

dghughes 2y ago
Everyone was a farmer until not so long in the past.
- mistrial9 2y ago
  most of the named countries that are recognized today, were founded by hunting groups (defined by spoken language) that sought control over farmers and definitely over migrants.. oddly, farming itself is cited as a major driver of armed conflicts
spacecadet 2y ago
Yeah... I grew up on a multi-generational family farm and we hacked everything to repair or extend its functionality. Or just consider animal husbandry at its roots, OG bio hacking...
- cogman10 2y ago
  Not just animal husbandry. Modern corn is the result of centuries of genetic engineering. Farmers have long used bio engineering to make crops tastier or more resistant to disease or drought.
  - spacecadet 2y ago
    Oh I know, a relative was bio-chem at monsanto related to corn... but I normally avoid telling people that because of the stigma it carries (unfair considering the global impact to yield)... now he works tirelessly to reduce invasive species to reduce coastal erosion.

Xelbair 2y ago

> The real problem is laws that protect IP like the DMCA and the patent system. system created to protect inventors and authors from being abused by more powerful people(investors, corporations, publishers) is actually used to abuse everyone except powerful groups then yeah - it is a horrible system that needs to go.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

agtechthrowaway 2y ago

We're already seeing another dark cloud on the horizon with Deere. They're almost done with the work to move to single-pair Ethernet on their vehicle bus and leave the traditional CAN/ISOBUS connector behind. We have a number of things that sniff the traffic for important implement data and state and Deere is going to lock it all up. You'll be left with minimal data on the J1939 connector like the automakers did with OBD2.

neuralRiot 2y ago
There’s such a dark cloud for automotive too, usually there’s a gateway between the diagnostic port/ bus and the vehicle network (usually CAN, LIN, Flex-ray) where you can still see traffic. They’re moving towards ethernet(100base-T2), although it’s easier to analyze the traffic the authentication is more complex and in many cases it requires “personalized login” which of course means paying a fee on top of your diagnostic tool subscription. In most cases re-programming used control modules is not permitted “for safety reasons”. Some brands sell a short time subscription but others (like Mercedes Benz) do so in the EU but not in USA/ CAN, there you need to buy a yearly subscription for around $4.5k plus taxes and fees and on top of their “approved tool” (another $2-4k).

throwway120385 2y ago

The feds are not in charge of key legislation like the DMCA, and their power to regulate things has been severely curtailed by the supreme court in recent months. If we want these things to change, we need to seek out all of the individuals in the House and Senate who oppose these things and mount systematic campaigns to replace them. And do the same thing at the state level. Demanding that the feds "do something" without clear legislation is not going to work anymore.

moffkalast 2y ago

> I'm not saying we should just delete all those It wouldn't be the worst thing. 20 years for a patent may have been sensible a century ago but these days it's almost absurd.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

quickthrowman 2y ago

> It's ironic that farmers (traditionally thought of as less technical people I see you’ve never met a farmer. The exact opposite of what you claim is reality. Farmers are highly technical and have come up with plenty of ingenious solutions to problems on their farms, any labor saving device they can dream up can save them lots of time and money. Repairing equipment quickly is an important skill to have when something shits out during harvest, the weather isn’t going to wait.. A farmer can work miracles with a welder, hammer, wrench, and pliers since they’re generally put in the middle of nowhere and need to keep equipment operational.

freedomben 2y ago
> I see you’ve never met a farmer. More evidence that people really shouldn't trust their first, shallow reactions to things. You know nothing about me and yet have jumped to an absurdly wrong conclusion, ironically while trying to correct what you think was an incorrect conclusion of mine. For more information, see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41887807 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41887807 > The exact opposite of what you claim is reality. Please read it a little closer. I'm not claiming any such thing. I'm pointing out that it is a popular conception - and it is. That the popular conception is wrong does not mean it isn't a popular conception. That's quite the logic error. And for someone to point out a popular conception does not mean they agree with it, and even if they did, it certainly does not mean they've never met a farmer (lol). This has so many fallacies in it, it's actually funny.

aucisson_masque 2y ago

Fix the root of the issue instead of it's consequences ? One can dream. Too much money and private interest here.

_yb2s 2y ago

Farmers are - and have been for most of history - some of the Most technical people on the planet… probably more so then your modern “hacker” that probably couldn’t actually disassemble and repair most of the things they own and use. I spent a summer working on a 3rd generation family farm, and it was one of the most technically competent workplaces I’ve ever seen. The owner had a degree in agricultural engineering, and dozens of patents from farming equipment he initially invented for his own use. Much of the equipment they used day to day was designed and built on site and they had a full machine shop, electrical shop, etc. Modern equipment like combines are so complex, automation heavy, and unreliable that they are usually operated by master mechanics that also weld, code, and are otherwise primarily technical people. When those multi-million dollar machines break- which happens daily- they are losing money fast and need to fix it immediately, right there in the field. The idea of farmers as uneducated non-technical people is an ignorant stereotype held by urban people that have no clue what farms are really like.

datavirtue 2y ago
Can you blame them? If you drive through farm country you see crazy Trump effigies everywhere and Trump/Vance signs in every yard. So it's difficult to know that these people don't care about Trump at all and think he is just as ridiculous as you do. They just hate the Democrats so much that they will do anything they can to stop them. The reasons are numerous and valid, btw.
- _yb2s 2y ago
  Indeed the situation isn’t as simple as it seems on the surface. The 3rd generation farmer/inventor I mentioned above is an environmentalist and many of his inventions are focused on improving the long term sustainability and environmental impact of farming- he liked to talk about how he wants the farm to be sustainable to pass down for many more generations by protecting the soil quality, water table, etc. Yet he also has massive signs all over his land supporting conservative politicians. Most likely not because he really likes or agrees with them on much, but because he believes their opponents are actively trying to shut his farm down. I couldn’t say more, because I actively avoid having political discussions with my boss.

whoitwas 2y ago

Farmers and hackers share a lot in common. They're people who roll up their sleeves, find a solution within their means, and implement it.