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Do we need right to repair anymore with AI? Could you get Claude to code an entire tractor software and flash it onto your own hardware and put it in the tracto

Do we need right to repair anymore with AI? Could you get Claude to code an entire tractor software and flash it onto your own hardware and put it in the tractor? In other words just use the tractor for it's hardware?

gnatman 8mo ago
That’s not what this is about, it’s about access to dealership level diagnostic software. But you don’t have to wait for the farmers, you could “get Claude to code an entire car software and flash it onto your own hardware and put it in your car.” Post back here with your results!
- slopinthebag 8mo ago
  [flagged]
  - electroglyph 8mo ago
    because all the shit is locked down and the corpos can use state violence to stop you from doing so if you manage to succeed
  - gnatman 8mo ago
    Give it a shot, I guess. Sounds like you’ll have a big market in Iowa.
  - samrus 8mo ago
    You sound naive and people are mocking you, but honestly who knows. Maybe theres nothing holding this back other than AI skepticism. The proper way to find out is to get some peice of heavy machinery and try it out. Maybe not a tractor neccesarily, but something that presents a similar quality of risks, even if at a smaller scale. Maybe a forklift? I think its a bad idea so i wont do it, but why dont you?
kmeisthax 8mo ago
Half the process of jailbreaking electronics involves reverse-engineering. There's some promising work in that direction, but reverse-engineering is still not AI's strong suit. Also, you'll actually need to hook up Claude to all the debug interfaces and pins present on the chip you're trying to break. Also also, if this worked at all the feds would put a gun to Anthropic's head to make Claude refuse to do anything that might break DMCA 1201. Law is code.
superice 8mo ago
Aside from the legal question whether the manufacturer allows you to do so, I’m pretty excited about somebody vibe coding firmwire to a 35 ton machine with a bunch of big attachments at the back and plenty of ways to mangle the bodies of careless operators without the rpm so much as audibly rising from strain. Should give us plenty of videos to traumatize the next generation of children with a little bit too much internet access at an early age. I feel nostalgic for those days. (This is sarcasm, pretty please don’t vibe code car firmware, let alone anything more dangerous than that)
- slopinthebag 8mo ago
  As long as you have a sufficient test suite you could probably run a Ralph Wiggum loop and have it brute force it. Creating the test suite would be harder though.
  - superice 8mo ago
    I've never been fond of the argument that there should be a professional software engineer certification, but hearing people like you being presented with the potential dangers and just going 'oh yeah just go with a better test suite and you can just wing it' makes me seriously reconsider. Vibe code administrative systems for your local golf club to your hearts desire for all I care, god forbid somebody will have to stand around a bit longer before going for their 9 holes. But safety critical equipment is not the place to fuck around with the code prediction machines that have existed for 4 years, have been writing more-or-less acceptable code for 2, and will still regularly refer to themselves as MechaHitler or just make up shit. "Yes you're absolutely correct, I was wrong" doesn't help you one bit if you have just been chewed up by heavy machinery, and the fact that people like you exist who go 'oh just a few more more unit tests surely will fix it' is a terrifying thought.
    - slopinthebag 8mo ago
      But don't humans make mistakes too? Like are we sure the failure rate of AI with the right checks and bounds is lower than humans, who are flawed machines themselves? If you need assurances, have a different LLM write the test suite.
b00ty4breakfast 8mo ago
What a great idea! what could possibly go wrong allowing farmers with no expertise in writing firmware for gigantic farm equipment, overseeing code output from an LLM and then uploading it to the aforementioned gigantic farm equipment? Let's just ignore the part where this wouldn't even address the problem at hand!
- defrost 8mo ago
  .. and the farmers with firmware experience? "Farmers" aren't a monolithic lump of homogenous yokels with straw sticking out their teeth. The Ukranian farming community birthed the cracked and reverse engineered John Deere software now being uploaded into US tractors by US farmers to bypass kill switches, for custom addons, data retention, etc. #NotAllFarmers are SWEs, great welders, advanced diesel mechanics, pilots, ... but all these skillsets are within or closely adjacent to farming communities.
  - Braxton1980 8mo ago
    I don't think he was calling them yokels. Software for farm equipment is very specific field. I don't think it would matter if they were software developers because that mostly means front end and back end web development.
    - defrost 8mo ago
      > I don't think it would matter if they were software developers because that mostly means front end and back end web development. Really? I've been a software developer since 1980 or so, never ever touched web development .. horses for courses I guess. Interfacing with machines and instruments, no worries. Circling back, the farmers I know want to be able to maintain everything they can within their local circle (state and federal) without being forced to reach out overseas to foreign companies such as John Deere. Eg: Our local farmers co-op run their own rail networks and bulk handling facilities. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBH_Group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBH_Group * https://www.cbh.com.au/ https://www.cbh.com.au/ See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47131063 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47131063 > Software for farm equipment is very specific field. Meh - there's a lot of overlap with avionics, GIS data aquisition, mining equipment (autonomous trucks, trains, processing circuit control), general industrial applications, etc. I'm a farmer, but I've messed about with geophysical data aquisition across entire countries, industrial control, abstract algebra systems (Cayley / Magma), sheep shearing robotics, and other fun stuff.
doodlebugging 8mo ago
1. Yes 2. Maybe, probably not though. It's complicated 3. No
samrus 8mo ago
The critical part of software engineering, verifiability and correctness, is still something AI cant do properly at all. And by that i dont mean testing software against a test suite, i mean making a good and extensive test suite to build software against Given that, the farmer or vibe coder is still going to have to take responsibility for making sure the software is verifiable and correct. Thats a heavy responsibility with a huge peice of machinery like this, its naive to equate that with making sure your todo list app or even c compiler works. The economic calculus still means its better for an corporation to take on that responsibility, and be compensated for it. Now we just need that corporation to not be rent seeking dicks, and we could have a good thing going

gnatman 8mo ago

That’s not what this is about, it’s about access to dealership level diagnostic software. But you don’t have to wait for the farmers, you could “get Claude to code an entire car software and flash it onto your own hardware and put it in your car.” Post back here with your results!

slopinthebag 8mo ago
[flagged]
- electroglyph 8mo ago
  because all the shit is locked down and the corpos can use state violence to stop you from doing so if you manage to succeed
- gnatman 8mo ago
  Give it a shot, I guess. Sounds like you’ll have a big market in Iowa.
- samrus 8mo ago
  You sound naive and people are mocking you, but honestly who knows. Maybe theres nothing holding this back other than AI skepticism. The proper way to find out is to get some peice of heavy machinery and try it out. Maybe not a tractor neccesarily, but something that presents a similar quality of risks, even if at a smaller scale. Maybe a forklift? I think its a bad idea so i wont do it, but why dont you?

kmeisthax 8mo ago

Half the process of jailbreaking electronics involves reverse-engineering. There's some promising work in that direction, but reverse-engineering is still not AI's strong suit. Also, you'll actually need to hook up Claude to all the debug interfaces and pins present on the chip you're trying to break. Also also, if this worked at all the feds would put a gun to Anthropic's head to make Claude refuse to do anything that might break DMCA 1201. Law is code.

superice 8mo ago

Aside from the legal question whether the manufacturer allows you to do so, I’m pretty excited about somebody vibe coding firmwire to a 35 ton machine with a bunch of big attachments at the back and plenty of ways to mangle the bodies of careless operators without the rpm so much as audibly rising from strain. Should give us plenty of videos to traumatize the next generation of children with a little bit too much internet access at an early age. I feel nostalgic for those days. (This is sarcasm, pretty please don’t vibe code car firmware, let alone anything more dangerous than that)

slopinthebag 8mo ago
As long as you have a sufficient test suite you could probably run a Ralph Wiggum loop and have it brute force it. Creating the test suite would be harder though.
- superice 8mo ago
  I've never been fond of the argument that there should be a professional software engineer certification, but hearing people like you being presented with the potential dangers and just going 'oh yeah just go with a better test suite and you can just wing it' makes me seriously reconsider. Vibe code administrative systems for your local golf club to your hearts desire for all I care, god forbid somebody will have to stand around a bit longer before going for their 9 holes. But safety critical equipment is not the place to fuck around with the code prediction machines that have existed for 4 years, have been writing more-or-less acceptable code for 2, and will still regularly refer to themselves as MechaHitler or just make up shit. "Yes you're absolutely correct, I was wrong" doesn't help you one bit if you have just been chewed up by heavy machinery, and the fact that people like you exist who go 'oh just a few more more unit tests surely will fix it' is a terrifying thought.
  - slopinthebag 8mo ago
    But don't humans make mistakes too? Like are we sure the failure rate of AI with the right checks and bounds is lower than humans, who are flawed machines themselves? If you need assurances, have a different LLM write the test suite.

b00ty4breakfast 8mo ago

What a great idea! what could possibly go wrong allowing farmers with no expertise in writing firmware for gigantic farm equipment, overseeing code output from an LLM and then uploading it to the aforementioned gigantic farm equipment? Let's just ignore the part where this wouldn't even address the problem at hand!

defrost 8mo ago
.. and the farmers with firmware experience? "Farmers" aren't a monolithic lump of homogenous yokels with straw sticking out their teeth. The Ukranian farming community birthed the cracked and reverse engineered John Deere software now being uploaded into US tractors by US farmers to bypass kill switches, for custom addons, data retention, etc. #NotAllFarmers are SWEs, great welders, advanced diesel mechanics, pilots, ... but all these skillsets are within or closely adjacent to farming communities.
- Braxton1980 8mo ago
  I don't think he was calling them yokels. Software for farm equipment is very specific field. I don't think it would matter if they were software developers because that mostly means front end and back end web development.
  - defrost 8mo ago
    > I don't think it would matter if they were software developers because that mostly means front end and back end web development. Really? I've been a software developer since 1980 or so, never ever touched web development .. horses for courses I guess. Interfacing with machines and instruments, no worries. Circling back, the farmers I know want to be able to maintain everything they can within their local circle (state and federal) without being forced to reach out overseas to foreign companies such as John Deere. Eg: Our local farmers co-op run their own rail networks and bulk handling facilities. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBH_Group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBH_Group * https://www.cbh.com.au/ https://www.cbh.com.au/ See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47131063 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47131063 > Software for farm equipment is very specific field. Meh - there's a lot of overlap with avionics, GIS data aquisition, mining equipment (autonomous trucks, trains, processing circuit control), general industrial applications, etc. I'm a farmer, but I've messed about with geophysical data aquisition across entire countries, industrial control, abstract algebra systems (Cayley / Magma), sheep shearing robotics, and other fun stuff.

doodlebugging 8mo ago

1. Yes 2. Maybe, probably not though. It's complicated 3. No

samrus 8mo ago

The critical part of software engineering, verifiability and correctness, is still something AI cant do properly at all. And by that i dont mean testing software against a test suite, i mean making a good and extensive test suite to build software against Given that, the farmer or vibe coder is still going to have to take responsibility for making sure the software is verifiable and correct. Thats a heavy responsibility with a huge peice of machinery like this, its naive to equate that with making sure your todo list app or even c compiler works. The economic calculus still means its better for an corporation to take on that responsibility, and be compensated for it. Now we just need that corporation to not be rent seeking dicks, and we could have a good thing going