Comment by random5634 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by random5634 | Hacker News Reader

1) Are farmers really unable to repair their tractors? I know the Deere has a major repair network and their PowerGuard plans - you can do relatively comprehensive coverage for 5 years or so I think with a $100 deductible.

2) Don't they sell original, reman and alternative parts? https://www.deere.com/en/parts-and-service/parts/

3) Don't they have a major dealer network - 3,000 dealers in the US alone? At least where I am there is a ridiculous number of deere dealers. Is the complaint that farmers cannot fix things themselves vs not get repaired at all?

4) Isn't a lot of this hacking around getting features you didn't pay for - license key gen stuff and getting around speed limiters etc? I'm not sure I count that as "repair" though I know it's super annoying and everyone wants to turn off stuff, turn off features.

Same thing with DPEF deletes and bypasses on diesel equip in US (also rampant) and a lot of the tuning. Plenty of folks "hack" their equip with a tune or to do a DPEF delete, then submit a warranty claim (at least in cars) when they burn something up. But major demand is not around repairs, a lot of the black market demand is around this other stuff.

5) The integrated combine stuff is not simple software, there def is a major investment in the tech stack for some "farms". I might call it ag engineering now? 3 cm accuracy season to season, active yield management (ie, monitors how settings affect yield, can map yield, tweak settings etc etc).

For future reference, you are supposed to paste only the response, in your own words to the individual topic or question from the talking points we provide you. Not the entire set of forum talking points all at once! Please talk to your supervisor at once to re-evaluate your career goals at the company.

Sincerely,

Kathy J. Strubbins

Director, Marketing

John Deere Corporation

Uh?

You're being called a JD shill / astroturfer

You spoke against the hive mind and you're being sarcastically reprimanded for it

This is great, thank you.

If a piece of equipment breaks down in the field you need to be able to repair it right there and continue working. Stopping what you're doing to take it to the Apple store isn't acceptable.

The repairs that need software changes are not (generally) the ones that are at issue here.

One big issue is that a fair number of tractor code faults are emissions control faults on these machines which are super annoying as the emissions system is sensitive especially as it ages. That may be in part a problem with overly strict emissions controls. So deleting emissions controls is popular in this space. And yes, dealers actually do help with this on tractors.

If you need to be able to hack your stuff in this way - lots online here: https://machinery-tunes.com/john-deere-dpf-egr-def-scr.html

Farming is not a high margin activity, and often depends on subsidies to operate. That's why farmers have always done their own mainteinance whenever possible.

Deere is moving towards a different model -> all data under your seat getting uploaded to the cloud, equip that is much more hands off (autodrive and steer, very high accuracy track following). Their machines can run $800,000. They seem to be targeting larger farms / ag engineering models -> driving very large scale efficiencies.

They see more margin in this cloud based revenue, the same way Microsoft does with its push into the cloud. Eventually it's probably going to migrate to essentially power by the hour type models that are already out in other higher end equipment. Their powerguard stuff is trending that way (all costs included for $100 deductible).

It's going to be some other company (Kubota?) that could do the open firmware / open source version. There should be some market for this, not sure how commercial it will be.

They're also creating an opportunity for competitors to capture their former market after they finish pissing everyone off.

FWIW I built an RTK GPS system with two raspberry pi’s and three $75 GPS receivers and it has 3cm accuracy. Deere didn’t do anything to get that accuracy beyond integrating existing GPS technology in to their tractors.

For others that want to know more check out: http://rtkexplorer.com/

Also there’s a new device called the OpenRTK330 that looks promising.

RTK is certainly handy. Autosteer would be a neat addition.

See:

https://agopengps.discourse.group/

John Deere really needs to buy better bot software.

Has anyone here actually worked on a farm at all? I did briefly when younger and seem to know a fair bit more than most commenting with snarky comments. And I know almost nothing relatively.

It is not a matter of working on a farm or not, your post reads like something strait out of the John Deere PR Dept or from /r/hailcorporate on reddit.

Almost every major business is moving towards pay for SERVICE / LICENSE rather than ownership.

You used to own your music. The next generation largely DOES NOT. Does HN not understand this?

You used to own your movies etc. The current netflix generation DOES NOT.

You used to buy equipment (like tractors). Now a surprising range of stuff is going to pay for power / hour etc. This includes firmware for tractors which enforces whatever emissions control regime, speed control, overload control, annoying safety things (lane departure warnings on commercial vehicles are so maddening commercial drivers have the silence button built into their muscle memory and almost all would turn them off if they could).

John Deere and EVERY other company is going this direction as fast as they can. This is not a question of PR, it is a question of current fact. This is to make money, build big tech platforms, allow for snitching on all sorts of things (elogs now let fleet operators know about tailgating by drivers in commercial trucking) etc.

One factor for me - things were opened up in the automotive world, and emissions controls on diesel trucks are a MAJOR source of the "hacking" people came up with.

Some estimates are 50%+ of trucks in places like texas are running delete's. So that is an incredible pollution impact.

It would be helpful to have some more specific examples (other than emissions bypasses / feature lockout bypasses - yes very annoying on a 800K vehicle!, etc) where farmers can't do a repair. What repair, in particular, do farmers want to do in the field, that they can't? That might help ground the convo.

Ahh yes, the Great Reset / Post Ownership society fantasy.

I still own music, still own movies, and I also subscribe to Spotify and Netflix, it is not an either / or proposition

Further attempting to compare Tractors, Cars, and other hard goods to something like a Movie or music is well naive

Many of us understand that corporations and even governments are attempting to push people to a Post Ownership mentality, many of us also understand the EXTREME danger in doing so and are attempting to push back against this very FLAWED and DANGEROUS path corporations want to push society down.

Your positions so far are 1000% pointing out why corporations desire this, not why a consumer should.

>>where farmers can't do a repair. What repair, in particular, do farmers want to do in the field, that they can't? That might help ground the convo.

There are several parts on mordern Tractors that are firmware locked by Serial, things like Pumps, that even if you replace the physical part the electronic controls will not allow it to interface with the rest of the system with an approved dealer software to update the serial number or other control code for the new component.

very Similar to how the iPhone originally would only allow the Original camera to work on the phone and if you changed it out for one from a different phone it would not work (apple later back peddled on this) [1]

>>>One factor for me - things were opened up in the automotive world, and emissions controls on diesel trucks are a MAJOR source of the "hacking" people came up with. Some estimates are 50%+ of trucks in places like texas are running delete's. So that is an incredible pollution impact.

I see the disconnect, you are Pro Authoritarian government control over everyone's lives to micromanage everything "for the greater good". See I am libertarian so I am pretty sure we are never going to agree on well pretty much anything.

Aside from the fact that these regulations you talk about generally do not apply to non-road equipment (unless there is a state law) as the federal government only has the authority to regulate Vehicles approves for Interstate Highways (funny thing about the pesky 10th amendment and separation of powers)

Putting that aside the proper way to enforce an environmental control is not to install a Big Brother nanny box on every system to report back to Federal government every time I do a naughty thing. That is some freaking Orwellian dystopia shit right there, and I can not image anyone seriously supporting it

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPnz7DjM4CE

> Does HN not understand this?

I don't WANT this. That doesn't mean I don't understand it.

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