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Comment by salamandersauce | Hacker News Reader

DMCA. Breaking even the shittiest DRM is illegal. This of course kills incentives to break DRM from the commercial side as nobody can make any money off it without getting sued. Otherwise I imagine some 3rd party part manufacturer would attempt it.

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Even if it weren't illegal, we are rapidly entering an era where it won't be practical anyway: I work directly on these issues--participating in the DMCA exemption process every cycle and serving as a witness during the hearings--and the whole process just feels kind of dumb knowing that "sure, so let's say it is legal to jailbreak your tractor: they still have to make a mistake in a world where bootloaders are becoming increasingly reliable" :(.

The DMCA is the least of your worries. The EPA has figured out that the only only reason people actually want to update software on their tractors is to turn off emissions controls.

Emission control suit of requirements (both hardware & software) make these tractors failure more likely. Eg. from a youtube farmer in Sask, Ca., his NH tractor wiring harness failed because highly corrosive DEF was puked all over it. Wiring hardness is only needed to fine tune injection pump & the pletora of sensors because of regulations, and DEF is only needed because of regulations.

All of this decrease the useful lifetime of equipment.

And no, all of this is not required, a trucked was able to pass California regulations with an old pre-EPA-regulations diesel engine, but the tolerances are a lot tighter (ie. forget about that chinesium oil pump with a couple thousands too much shaft end play), maintenance is a lot trickier...

Reminds me of when Honda designed and installed CVCC cylinder heads on a Chevy 350, and were able to get those engines to pass the 70s emissions standards without a catalytic converter. Instead the EPA ruled that all cars must have a catalytic converter, even if you could figure out other ways to pass emissions. Must have taken a lot of pressure off of the US automakers at the time when smarter, smaller imports were starting to gain popularity.

Manufacturers of higher-powered diesel tractors have had to introduce features to allow for regen cycles to be postponed, so I wouldn’t be surprised at all

noteworthy facts: regen is only required because of EPA regulations.

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