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Comment by slr555 | Hacker News Reader

This is true for farmers in many places who buy or lease machinery from companies like John Deere. Using IOT, Deere can tell when a non-OEM part has been installed and they can remotely disable the machine until the "proper" part has been installed. Their customers are locked into their parts and service.

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Here's [0] a nice article from Vice which discusses the Tractor-Hacking movement and the wider push for right-to-repair.

[0] https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/kzp7ny/tractor-ha...

Fact. Considering the financial situation of the vast majority of farmers, this gets me furious. Independent agriculture advocate and "Apple Grower" author Michael Phillips strongly suggests using 50-year-old tractors, etc, for just this reason.

p.s., in addition, a significant proportion of Deere's manufacturing is now overseas / outsourced -- but of course they still trade on their historical image as an American working-class icon.

To be fair, there is a pretty big difference between something like a tractor, where most of the parts are simply large pieces of machined metal, and something like a computer where most of the parts are not repairable and, due to security concerns which benefit the customer, there are things like secure enclaves which may entail chain of custody concerns to be properly replaced.

If a secure enclave requires chain of custody for replacement, is it even secure? If it was possible to circumvent by replacing a hardware module, wouldn't law enforcement/(industrial or government) spies/thieves/etc. just do that?

It isn’t possible to circumvent it; it just won’t work if it’s repaired outside of a trusted chain of custody.

A modern tractor isn't simply a bunch of machined metal, they have several computers on board, including integrated laptops with vendor branding, to control various equipment or the engine or many other things. Several of these parts are not repairable and need to be swapped entirely (if you want a taste of this; modern car lighting assemblies with LEDs can't have individual sections replaced, the entire assembly needs to be swapped).

What you’re saying is true. What I’m saying is also true. I worked in construction for a while. The equipment is similar. Most of the repairs are fixing worn out or broken pieces of machined metal or broken or leaky hydraulic lines, not electronics.

Phones are different. Usually repairs on a phone involve replacing a piece of highly integrated electronics, not a work out or broken piece of metal or plastic.

Security is a completely baseless excuse here. Apple could easily provide a repair unlock key to users via their Apple accounts.

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