Deere suit sheds light on race for $240B farm tech market | Hacker News Reader

Deere suit sheds light on race for $240B farm tech market

chicagotribune.com

125 pointsjessaustin69 comments

This is an evergreen story. Regulations sold as weapons for davids to defend against goliaths are instead used by goliaths to fend off davids. It turns out that Goliath can learn to use a sling too, and can hurl bigger stones with it. This is why goliaths like regulations so much, and why patents may be more disease than cure.

It's like mandating a certain minimum stone mass, arguing that small stones are ineffective projectiles, and that we need to help stop people from getting scammed by unscrupulous stone vendors. But in reality all it does is make it so that only giants can use slingshots effectively.

It's refreshing to see such critical thought on HN; it's too often that the intent and aesthetic is of more concern than the consequences.

The real problem is when one's intent and focus is to create certain consequences (at a macro level)...inevitably it doesn't work (it may still work at a micro level), as evidenced by the analysis of actual consequences you are pointing at. Better to act according to a set of principles, consequences be damned--or blessed as the case may be.

Cf. Taleb's ideas on inductive reasoning/enduring conservative philosophy over deductive reasoning, etc

I understand and agree with the overall stirrings of your comment, but it's not necessarily relevant in this case. Taleb is about making choices in uncertainty where it's a reiteration of Biblical, Aquinas, Augustine of Hippo, Berkeley, Kant, Ricoeur, Geertz, and Eliade philosophy. It's no question that given an uncertain circumstance, one should stick to a framework that works independent of circumstance, a categorical imperative framework.

In this case I am sure that the concern is almost always on the intent of individuals rather than the consequences. I'm sure you can find your own examples of this, it would be more difficult for me to guess which examples you would agree have had negative consequences but good intent. Regardless, consequences can be deduced with good analysis: for instance physics has done such a tremendous analysis from deductive reasoning on the universe that I am able to communicate to you right now.

In regards to Taleb using only inductive reasoning over deductive reasoning: I hope not. Inductive reasoning is even controversial among logicians to be a reasoning at all, it's a weak logical intuition. Deduction is much more powerful, even Taleb argues for his non-novel idea of a categorical imperative, in the same way religions (and all the philosophers I listed) have, given that no circumstantial framework always works because circumstances change, we are forced to find a framework that is irrelevant to dynamic environment. The reasoning to choose a categorical framework at all is deductive.

Taleb shouldn't be seen as a tool to justify cowering from rational analysis but instead the justification for favoring morality and epistemology over utilitarianism.

I really only mentioned Taleb in passing it's not the main of my argument, and you seemed to latch onto it.

For me to elaborate on my point, I'd rather go on about a priori vs a posteriori reasoning, and anti empiricism, and the modern religion of "science" and all that.

I also hope you aren't suggesting that anything besides deduction is not "rational analysis."

You are surprised that people aren't debating the analogy yet?

I've been wondering, for a while, if regulatory capture is a natural outcome of two-party systems.

The central genius, IMHO, of the US Constitution is the built-in trilemma (separation of powers, court vs legislature vs executive), which has proven more durable. (Present circumstances notwithstanding, ahem.)

What would a trilemma for regulations look like? Give "the market", in the form of consumer advocates, a seat at the table?

I still have no idea.

I've asked everyone I can think of. Famed muckraker Greg Palast's, who has direct experience trying to thwart regulatory capture, answer was "more transparency, more participation".

Which I find very unsatisfactory. Having done the whole agitator, whistleblower routine, it really isn't sustainable for outsiders to serve as the counterbalance. It occurs to me each of the three parties needs some kind of veto power.

A few ideas:

1) Regulations by default should be capped at organization size or industry. Minimum wage is a great example of this, great for 25% of companies/industries, terrible for the rest - its hard to measure jobs that are never created as a result.

2) A powerful, well financed agency whose mandate is to audit all regulations, monitor and capture data regarding it's function, and review their ultimate utility to society as a whole. The vast majority of harmful regulations were designed in a different era and for a different evolved market. Markets also adapt to regulations as well naturally reducing utility.

This agency would have the power to temporarily end regulations until congress reviews it and either updates it or ends it officially.

3) Time limits on regulations forcing them to be renewed every x years, requiring data to show it's helping, not harming society

RE: your point #1, nope that won't work. By capping based on revenue, bigger companies will simply spin off certain employee segments into separate contractor companies. Create a possible loophole, and it will be exploited.

1) Hmmm. Like sectoral bargaining for wages? https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/4/9/17205064/un...

I'd have to chew on this one. I'm not willing to forfeit environmental, consumer, safety umbrellas without an compelling upside (upgrade).

2) Ah. An regulation ombudsman? Like the Congressional Budget Office, but for rules and regs?

3) Emphatic agreement. I've adopted an almost religious devotion applying TTL (time to live) to everything. DHCP lease expiration and renewal, auth security tokens, cache invalidation are such effective architectural patterns, they feel like magic to me.

I feel that minimum wage pushes companies to invest in technology and automation. Which is always good. Set the minimum wage at $50 and eventually no human will need to work for so less money.

I would say that regulatory capture is the natural outcome of a Republic, due to the fact that the representatives can be persuaded to act against their constituents wills.

A Direct Democracy is now technologically viable, and having people regularly participate in voting on small topics keeps people accountable and also allows more nuanced views where somebody doesn't have to, eg. be anti single-payer-healthcare AND be anti illegal-immigrant at the same time. This reduces deadlocks and we don't get stupid compromise bills with pork spending being passed so that each team gets something they are happy about.

I think a direct democracy would be a disaster.

The average person can't sink the time to become knowledgeable on all matters that affect them. Worse yet, the average person is trivially manipulated through mass media. To game the entire system, you just have to gain control of the education sector and grow yourself a generation of placated consumers that do as they're told. And exactly this seems to be happening in many countries right now.

Getting a desired outcome on any given vote by polarising the topic along some axis sounds like something that could be achieved with current generation ML.

Are you arguing that it is easier to corrupt an entire population than a few elected representatives?

> I think a direct democracy would be a disaster.

For an example of what this would look like, see: popular subreddits, Twitter, etc. Sensationalism prevails, actual content fails.

Actually, we had sort of a trilemma, during the cold-war- when there was a external force on the market to behave "well" or face socialization of capital by internal forces.

Thats why the front-states of the cold war where either war-zones or rich show-rooms.

> This is why goliaths like regulations so much

My favourite irony about this phenomenon is how often people attack the anti-regulation libertarians for just want to help mega-corps become even bigger.

Regulations help big companies, but no regulation helps big companies even more. Just imagine the profits you could make if you could save on safety inspections or workers rights.

Depends on if the externalities can be priced in via tort or insurance.

You think that long-after-the-fact punishments that require long-term planning would have an effect?

We have evidence that even the most severe punishment of all does not work as a deterrent (example link: https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/study-88-criminologists-do-not-...). Or smoking, where knowing how bad it is seems to have little to no effect (even doctors do it).

Even if people did act completely rationally, a dollar earned today is worth much more than dollars lost tomorrow even without inflation. And how many expensive and useless mergers have been performed even when the executives and even the top stock owners knew it was a bad strategy long-term? They just sold their stake and let somebody else deal with the fallout.

So even with complete rationality, detaching punishment from the "crime" (in time) gives people time to get in the harvest and move on before punishment occurs, making it useless as a deterrent (given that, as linked above, it does not even work when people cannot detach themselves from facing the ultimate punishment it's even worse).

If you want insurance to take the role of regulation you quickly end up with certification programs that are necessary to get any insurance. Those programs are just regulations in disguise that are divorced from any democratic process for changing them. If you want to rely on litigation you face the problem that big companies can afford armies of lawyers that can delay rulings until the injured party runs out of funds or fighting will.

Have you ever worked in a large corporation? Many of us who have, are convinced that without massive state interference on their behalf they couldn't survive at all. A corporation might be set up so that one sort of regularly-needed thing might happen quickly and efficiently, but every other sort of thing requires massive coordination among non-cooperative parties. Shit takes forever. Large firms are quite concerned with getting just the regulations they want, not no regulations at all. Fortunately for them we have a society in which they are well-placed to designate exactly those regulations they desire.

There is a term, "economy of scale", that makes a certain sense when applied to some factory-based manufacture of commodities. Rather than be restricted to that particular field in which it is valid, this term is a shibboleth used by Economist writers and their dupes to hamper any critical examination of anything a corporation might do.

I have, in fact, worked in a large corporation and I agree that regulations are a big reason why they survive. I just don't think that no regulation at all is the better alternative. I wish I knew how to prevent big corporations writing their own regulations, but for many topics most people who know anything about it are on their payroll.

A better link, one that's not blocked in European countries:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-20/deere-sui...

I had looked for that one, because that was what got syndicated in the little local farmer paper in which I first saw this. However, after 5 minutes in DDG I just took the top result that mentioned that Deere is alleging infringement for work done by a firm it had previously attempted to purchase. I thought that was a notable detail...

Why is it blocked in European countries?

Because they don't understand how GDPR applies to them, or they don't want to respect their users' privacy.

Thanks for that, it's also blocked in South Africa, which is pretty damn far from Europe. I suspect they just block anything non-NA.

>Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism.

Nice - "get tracked or fuck off" approach.

Yeah this is hilarious to me. If they offered an ASCII-only version of their website, they (1) wouldn't be losing any revenue (i.e. they're making zero right now on Europeans anyways), and (2) they wouldn't be losing any reputation ("a publishing company firmly stuck in the 19th century").

But then they might have data on you in their logs.. and may need to service removal requests (even if its just to say they dont have anything). So that would just open a can of worms.

The Chicago Tribute is a small paper in chicago. They've lost zero reputation here.. since their user base is in chicago.

Be honest: how much information about Chicago do you want to read? This article isn't even theirs -- it's syndicated from Bloomberg. Go click on their homepage.. you want to read about the local protest? Or the restaurant downtown? Are you interested in the list of great ice cream places in Chicago? Are you ever going to pay them for a subscription?

> But then they might have data on you in their logs

If that's the case, then they already have data on my on their logs...

GDPR only applies to foreign companies targeting the EU. There's no way to misconstrue an outright block as targeting the EU. So it doesn't matter if your data is in their logs -- it doesn't apply to them.

On the other hand.. doing as you suggest -- a special text only version for the EU... that's definitely targeting the EU. Not only did they serve up the data to an EU user, but they took the time and effort to craft a special EU version of their website. The GDPR 100% applies to them in that case, and they definitely need to understand the law, handle removal requests, etc.

You suggest they avoid the GDPR by making themselves subject to the GDPR. That's nonsensical. They're doing exactly what the GDPR says they need to do to avoid being subject to it's legal requirements--blocking you.

> GDPR only applies to foreign companies targeting the EU.

Why do you believe this?

From the text:

> This Regulation applies to the processing of personal data of data subjects who are in the Union by a controller or processor not established in the Union, where the processing activities are related to: [...] the offering of goods or services, irrespective of whether a payment of the data subject is required, to such data subjects in the Union [0]

There is no targeting required - it is enough that EU "citizens" consume a service.

[0] https://gdpr-info.eu/art-3-gdpr/

See recital 23: https://gdpr-info.eu/recitals/no-23/

But recital 24 is an important caveat.. and the reason why you see EU blocks.

But an EU citizen accessing or ordering from a foreign website does not automatically mean the GDPR applies.

>The Chicago Tribute is a small paper in chicago.

The Tribune is the top newspaper in Chicago (the third-largest US city) and the eighth-largest paper in the country by circulation - about the same as the Washington Post. It may not have the journalistic reputation of the Post or the New York Times, but it's certainly a major national newspaper.

It was, once. "The World's Greatest Newspaper", the Tribune once boasted. Now, the company is called "Tronc", Tribune Tower has been sold to be converted to condos, the radio and TV stations have been sold, and the LA Times and some other papers have been sold to a biotech billionare in China.

Wasn’t the whole point of the internet that geographical distance no longer matters?

What if you’re travelling to Chicago and want to know where to get the best blueberry ice cream? What if you’re just a Chicagophile?

There must be a non-infinite-large-numnerid reasons why it would be a good idea for a foreign national to access the local papers website.

> Wasn’t the whole point of the internet that geographical distance no longer matters?

Yup, the EU needs to understand that.

It does, that's why the GDPR applies globally ;)

This is a perfectly reasonable response to GDPR if you are a non-European content service with little traffic from Europe.

Why even comply to GDPR if you are our of jurisdiction?

because tribune media (who owns the paper) has 2b in annual revenue, and would make a great example case if the EU wants to test its ability to enforce the law against foreign companies.

Why take the risk?

> its machine has far more lines of computer coding than a space shuttle.

This kind of comparison is ridiculous. It's like saying "Niagara Falls produces far more water per second than a kitchen faucet." Well of course it does. The computing power of a space shuttle is laughably tiny in comparison to an Arduino, which is itself a tiny computer by modern standards. Does the general public not know this?

  The computing power of a space shuttle is laughably tiny in comparison to an Arduino

Is that so? I'm actually surprised and yes I did not know this. Do you have something to read about that? Sounds interesting.

Some quick research tells me:

Arduino: 8 million instructions per second

IBM System/4 Pi: 480,000 instructions per second

People tend to overestimate the actual complexity of code for a space shuttle; it's rocket science, therefore it must be some sort of complex black magic.

Most of the space shuttle is going to boil down to control theory. The code for a control system essentially looks like this:

    while (true) {
      readInputs();
      smoothInputs();
      computeUserDesiredSetpoints();
      adjustVariablesToHitSetpoints();
      makeActuatorsMove();
    }

These functions are not computationally challenging. Even the complex mathematics boils down to "evaluate this function", and you can often get away without needing high precision if you have a feedback mechanism that can adjust for systematic error. There's also a lot of leeway on how simple or complex you can make the user direction: it is far more complex to implement a "perform a translunar injection orbit" than it is to say "burn thrusters at X heading at Y thrust for Z seconds" (think the difference between self-driving cars and cruise control).

The difference, of course, is that when smoothInputs() throws an exception, everybody dies.

There may not be very many lines of code in the shuttle command program, but every single one has a mountain of work behind it.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if fully half the tractor's code was buggy DRM junk. (And spaghetti code 12 times longer than if should have been at that)

Also there's the factor that every line on the space shuttle is a potential bug, and bugs might be deadly. There's a huge incentive to reduce the code to its absolute minimum.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_AP-101

> Does the general public not know this?

The general public, assumes that because launching rockets and space shuttles into outer space, they must be much more computationally intensive than something like say, a farm tractor. It's a bit condescending to question whether they know this or not, as I think it's quite reasonable and expected that most people don't know this.

>>“There must be sufficient difference in the technology, or else Deere wouldn’t have wanted to acquire it in the first place."

Or just to kill a competitor for next to nothing ($190 mil.) Together they have 80+% market share

This is the way it should be: well financed competitors fighting each other in courts, not a farmer vs John Deere.

There's some cliche about two wolves deciding how split the lamb...

As long as AGCO sells retrofits that give old, completely-depreciated planters the performance of new planters, they are firmly on the farmers' side.

I thought it was going to be some sort of farming iron man.

Same. Though instead of an arc reactor it'd probably run on ethanol.

Farmers have historically benefited little from advancement in technology and this is no exception. If I think I'm worth more than my employer is paying me, I can shop my services around for a higher bidder. And while the concept is true for a farmer's output/services in reality most farmers (I grew up on a small family farm) have little choice but to sell at the price the local market will give them. Likewise they have to buy input goods (seed, fertilizer, breeding stock, etc.) at the price others choose. Holding output product is often not an option as banks (and other bills) need paid and food needs to be on the table. I'm thankful for a fairly healthy (by comparison) tech market.

That's just not true. Farmer's have benefited MASSIVELY.

Go try breaking some ground without a Rototiller, or tractor.

Harvest crops by hand. Or go ahead and seed by hand.

Oh! Don"t forget to weed! And you might want to fertilize as well.

The thing is there is only the IMPRESSION the farmer doesn't benefit from tech. Modern "Tech" I.e. software is no exception. The reality is the farmer has to cope with the realities of physical constraints, and learns how to deal with things in a way that requires minimal input. They acquire an economy of action.

"Tech" today wouldn't understand the notion if it slapped them in the face. "Lets make another thing to do a thing, so THIS thing is justified/monetized."

Ask a Farmer if or why they don't collect metrics on all their customers. If they aren't industrial, answer is easy. More important things to do.

You can learn a lot from the guys and gals who grow your food. I certainly have. The value you can get out of not doing things you don't need to can be quite large.

Grain farmer here:

> Farmers have historically benefited little from advancement in technology and this is no exception.

I think I have benefitted massively from technology. As a sixth generation farmer on my family's land, I expect I do not make any more money (inflation adjusted, of course) on the farm than my forefathers did. I believe this is where your concern lies.

However, they spent the entire year working on the farm. I can do all the work in a few weeks, thanks to technology. That also allows me to have a career in the tech industry. Being able to have everything they did and a tech salary is a huge gain!

> most farmers (I grew up on a small family farm) have little choice but to sell at the price the local market will give them

Western Canada, for instance, had a wheat/barley pool until a few years ago where you had to put your product – by law – into the pool and receive whatever price the pool was able to market your grain at. But these kind of programs are pretty much long gone in 2018. In America, which seems to be the main audience of HN, there was never such a thing. Subsidies are the preferred way to support farmers.

Not knowing where you are from, you may still have such a system, but generally that is not the case. For me, different buyers, even within the local market, will pay more or less depending on what they plan to do with the product, and will generally negotiate price. And, of course, I can ship my product outside of the local market if an even better deal is found elsewhere.

> Likewise they have to buy input goods (seed, fertilizer, breeding stock, etc.) at the price others choose.

This is the same as every other business in existence, however. All sales require negotiation. If the offer made by the seller is not acceptable to any buyers, the seller will make no sales and will be quickly compelled to reduce their next offer.

> I'm thankful for a fairly healthy (by comparison) tech market.

Uncompetitive is the word you are looking for, I believe. Everything you mentioned before is a result of farming being very competitive. I might even suggest the most competitive industry in the world. Tech is not very competitive, relatively speaking. When it comes to labour, there are not a lot of people to go around, and intellectual property laws limit how many vendors can offer the same product.

Did you write more about this somewhere? I feel like an AMA would be very interesting to read. My mother’s side of the family comes from a very rural area where they farmed on a very small scale so I’ve always eyed the technological efficiency gains in agriculture with a very curious eye considering how much back-breaking labor they still have to do.

> there was never such a thing

Not exactly the same thing, but onions have a special place in the law:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onion_Futures_Act

> Farmers have historically benefited little from advancement in technology and this is no exception.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution

The cotton gin advance farmers and arguably extended slavery in America.

So yeah... That's the one example my US history teacher gave me in slavery and technology.

We don't exactly have dust bowl anymore or the Irish Potato Famine. Crop rotation is actually a thing since at least the Aztec.

I’m pretty interested in a lot of AgTech. While I like to see these pieces as it justifies my interest, it reminds me you can’t escape capitalism and everyone is going to try to make a dime off of you. As such, I feel like I’ll only be able to take my projects seriously if they’re funded or vested by an incubator or VC who is equally benevelont or altruistic. I’m even contemplating going for a PhD just so a large university would be willing to handle this burden. Farmers are always thought of as the humble, true “American” figure. The idea that hard work pays off. But I’ll be damned if it’s not rife with more corruption than any other industry.

Can we recall for a moment, that more than 70% of the continental US population lived on farms or in rural areas, not much more than 100 years ago. The crush of humanity to the cities, and the concentration of capital in farming, is very much a huge experiment. There is nothing in capitalism that says that humans have to live, or enjoy life, or said another way, the drives of capital take over even common sense things.

Secondly, wafting around some huge number of dollars for a market cap is getting pretty close to (WS:WEASEL) weasel words..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Word...

In its patent-infringement complaints, filed June 1 in federal court in Wilmington, Delaware, Deere said the combination of AGCO unit Precision Planting's vSet seed meters and SpeedTube seed-delivery system infringes 12 patents related to Deere's ExactEmerge, which allows farmers more accurate seed placement and spacing while planting at higher speeds.

Getting flashbacks to Apple's infringement claim based on it's patent for rectangles with rounded corners.

Apple's case was a design patent case, this is a utility patent. The two are quite different.

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