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Comment by thelastgallon | Hacker News Reader

Now, farmers can txt and drive!

Tractors now day can have more screens than my home office.

More like, never use their tractors without them phoning home first. Probably to look for illicit parts, or make sure the combine license is up to date and paid.

Can't do that, if connectivity is spotty.

For those downvoting this comment, the body of evidence doesn’t look great that this won’t happen at some point in the future.

https://www.csoonline.com/article/572811/remote-bricking-of-...

https://doctorow.medium.com/about-those-kill-switched-ukrain...

https://hackaday.com/2023/12/08/the-latest-john-deere-repair...

And this of course isn’t a John Deere only issue.

https://hackaday.com/2023/12/14/polish-train-manufacturer-th...

Well, the machines can drive on its own and text the farmers working remotely, for human-specific inputs.

what farmers?

There's gotta be some farmers, someone needs to be there to accept the Monsanto lawsuits

Without bucks, no Buck Rogers.

Not a problem, unlike Musk, John Deere actually has a real working self-driving product.

Not really. Just like Tesla, you cannot use Deere' self driving system without someone there looking for safety issue. Musk's is clearly better at detecting and avoiding hazards - at least they try, while John Deere admits the system doesn't even try, it will just drive a line and if something is there kill it. The difference is John Deere's system is for use in a field where there is essentially never anything to hit/kill in the first place unlike roads where pedestrians and other cars could be in the way, so Tesla has a lot harder problem.

Not speaking for Deere here.

My comment was a bit tongue-in-cheek. I know Deere has a different and easier problem set to address. However, auto-steer and similar tech have been working well on tractors for a long time.

I just fear people who mostly don't know what is going on will read too much into the claim. while your claim is technically correct, it is very misleading to the average person.

I mean, I think the average person realizes a farm tractor on a farm doesn't have to deal with pedestrians, other cars, stop lights, etc.

Now see, that makes much more sense. Without RTFA I was thinking lunar farm equipment.

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