John Deere owners will get the right to repair equipment under FTC settlement
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He started a website called Consumer Rights Wiki to document anti-consumer practices.
https://consumerrights.wiki/w/Main_Page
He's also involved with FULU Foundation which has a bounty of 25k to get Ring cameras working without Amazon's servers.
Reminds me of old internet, when activists we doing it for The User.
> You fight for the users?
It comes from Don Quixote, as I recall, and suggests a fruitless effort. A waste of time.
Deere is a long way from the user accessibility of the Model A or B.
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48802162
I read inhumanely fast.
I browse HN at work in-between GH Actions runs, compiling and Claude thinking, so no time for videos.
Note they're also synonyms, so the confusion is understandable:
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/inhum...
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/inhum...
View rates must have dipped for a percentage we don't know of, but definitely made a dent.
For text, I change my reading speed based on comprehension, going faster for things I know, and slower or rereading for things that are new or complicated. For video, you're expected to consume the info at the rate provided in the video, losing attention when they spend too long on info you're already finished with, and then blowing by other info that I want to spend more time considering.
There are options like adjusting video playback speed and rewinding, but that's not how video is typically consumed and is much less convenient than just altering your reading speed.
And it's not just HN either, video is a very poor substitute for a well written article. Video can augment a well-written article, but it can't replace it.
Maybe they can make Overcast have dynamic speed based on speaker.
My overall minutes of YT have gone down, but I probably interacts with 2-3x more videos. Just like skimming on HN!
Having said that, I noticed that there is in general too much content to consistently e. g. vote or do similar actions. I was watching Rossman's video almost daily in the past; stopped doing so a while ago simply because of lack of time on my part. I need to choose more carefully where I invest my time. (Also, for some reason, when Rossman was in New York, his videos had a better punch; not sure if I am the only one noticing this but he seemed to have a better focus when he was still in New York, even though I understand he relocated, to stop getting milked by politicians in New York.)
I stopped coding for the past year or so and I'm considering going back because I definitely feel my own sharpness lost.
He puts his money where his mouth is too. Weighing in and challenging people to sue. Good guy, intense but good.
I think it is a shame youtube is forcing creators into longer videos
I watch his videos, but not from links here and that is probably what you are seeing: those of us who might follow your link have already seen the video (likely via grayjay rather than youtube) and will skip over it to the next interesting new thing. People who don't already watch him will see “[video] (youtube.com), 1 point, discuss” and think “oh, another video that could be a few paragraphs of text which would be much faster to read than watch, that so far no one else has seen as worth interacting with, preceded by two unskippable adverts”.
A link to youtube is only going to get much attention if it is lucky to have a title that jumps out to a few people so it gains the first few votes and/or comments that get the ball rolling. Even then Louis' videos aren't going to get a hot debate going: most people either entirely agree so don't see the point commenting further, or they aren't the sort of people who are reading HN at all or are but don't follow video links.
Super glad he does what he does / is who he is though.
Or:
"Why do you care so much about <Flock, Ring Cameras, big tech name>? We already walk around with cell phones in our pockets 24/7."
I used to be more passionate about persuading people about privacy, but I've pretty much given up. I've come to the conclusion that the majority of the population doesn't care what is happening around them as long as they have internet access and their iPhone.
And weirdly, the response I get is, "Oh yeah, fair."
I learned a LOT from watching his videos, and I don't even do board repair! Psychology, business, the human condition...
Point is to do what you want with the hardware you supposedly "own".
Never meet your heroes is just great advice, same as it ever was.
I would say "meet your heroes"; most of them are probably going to be better than your expectations.
Look at it from his standpoint. He has an untold amount of people vying for his attention, comments that hopefully are managed by a 3rd party/other folks, and who knows quantity of people contacting him with ideas for a story, video, or some such. I don't even know if he still even runs or manages his repair business at all at this point. When you combine all those things, you end up getting into a mindset of filtering out what matters to you and/or others very quickly and having little time for much else especially if people wax on and are not good at getting to the point.
I get that HN isn't Reddit in the sense that you don't see long form comments like this, but I've dealt with this a lot in the Information Security industry. I think that's what may separate people who get shit done from infosec rockstars and other folks who talk a big talk, but when you get to know them, they are deep down, jerks. I could share my own stories of Deviant Ollam, JohnnyXm4s or other individuals -- but how much of that is my own bias and frustration with what I did, or did not get when interacting with those people? It does not make them assholes just because I did not get the experience I expected.
I'm glad he's been able to turn this into a career doing genuinely good work that I agree with, but he is first and foremost a drama youtuber and that requires a confrontational personality.
What did he to you to give off that impression?
Right to try to repair is a normal freedom.
I wouldn't trade it for the world though, we need more tinkering.
10 years. We report our compliance every 60 days, then once a year, which is to say we have turned handing you your own machine into a paperwork schedule that runs through 2036. Any new repair tool we build, we only have to share once more than 50% of our dealers already have it. We decide when a dealer has it. We build the clock and we wind the clock.
Those small time farms mostly don’t exist anymore. Today farming is done on an industrial scale, and equipment manufacturers are catering to the big players. They need big, efficient equipment that is profitable to operate at scale and they’re willing to pay for it. Only the big farms can.
I wonder how much of this is just the manufacturers making more high end, complex equipment that is just difficult to repair in general as opposed to them maliciously designing things to be difficult to fix.
Keep in mind, increasing the cost to repair something lowers its market value. There’s a reason Toyotas are more expensive than Dodges. The market prices these inconveniences. It’s not in the manufacturer’s interest to do this.
I think the real risk here is that the equipment manufacturers will use these settlements and regulations to build crazy reporting and compliance requirements that give them a moat that prevents upstart companies from competing with incumbents in the industry. What they really fear is competition, not the loss of a few percentage points on their part sales and service profits.
Most brands of cars can be repaired by independent technicians. Toyotas are more valuable because they are reliable -- because they are repaired less often.
In the short term they can increase their profits by reducing quality and designing their product so that it must be serviced at an OEM shop, but this will come at the expense of future sales when customers take these increased repair costs into account and buy from other manufacturers who don’t engage in these tactics.
This is why competition is so important: without it, buyers have no alternative and manufacturers have no incentive to provide value instead of fleecing thier customers by providing an inferior product with expensive repair options only.
Opening up John Deere tractors for right to repair virtually assures they will ~all be doing emissions deletes. Part of their lock-down was profit seeking, but the other half is that different vendors had different ideas interpretations of the law about how locked down the system had to be to prevent emissions tampering, and domestic companies more subject to US law were generally far more paranoid about it.
>Then why even manufacture them and cripple them?
They cripple them because they know people want bigger tractor without emission control so they sell it as a less powerful tractor and then just expect people to break the law and turn the screw, and everybody is happy.
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>Thankfully, it's not illegal to own a screwdriver and nothing changes there. There's absolutely no relevance between right to repair (not right to break emission laws!) and the situation you describe.
There is because on the John Deere tractors you can't set the "screw" unless you have right to repair the engine system. John Deere has no screw because they're in the US and they're too afraid of US regulators.
It sounds like you are saying everyone is doing it today, so denying the right to repair doesn't affect the situation.
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>You pretty clearly said everyone is currently bypassing this, otherwise companies would not be putting in larger engines.
Everyone is doing it on the import tractors with the screws. They are not doing it with John Deere tractors, which are locked down for emission compliance. John Deere is handicapped by the fact they're located in the US and regulators have more leverage on them to prevent the sort of right-to-repair which would enable emission bypassing.
>Do what? What is not happening today that you think would happen if people were given the right to repair?
What is happening today is people with John Deere are not able to unlock their tractor for repair and turn the "screw" like they can with import tractors. The very first thing they will do once they can "repair" is delete emissions controls. That's a big part of what the farmers were pissed about and why they wanted right to repair, they couldn't "repair" their tractor to not use DPF, etc on their domestic tractors.
You pretty clearly said everyone is currently bypassing this, otherwise companies would not be putting in larger engines. Is that wrong?
What is happening today is that it's of greater difficulty to bypass emissions on repair-locked tractors like John Deere and very easy to do on tractors like mine (mostly imports).
>You pretty clearly said everyone is currently bypassing this, otherwise companies would not be putting in larger engines. Is that wrong?
"Everyone" is bypassing it on the repairable tractors. Once John Deere are repairable, they will do it on those too.
I get what you are (trying) to say, but lets be real here. Right to repair people (myself included) just need to own that it will have some downsides.
Right to repair argues the tech should not be locked down, it doesn't argue you should be free to break the law.
You are also free to remove the handrails on a set of stairs using a simple wrench, but if a building inspector shows up or someone falls because of it there will likely be consequences. The argument here is that the simple wrench isn't the problem nor is your potential ability to remove handrails. In fact removing them may be necessary in some situations. The argument here is, you should be able to decide when it is necessary, while also facing consequences if tou do so in a way that is potentially harmful to others and the environment.
If you worry about the environmental impact of people turning a screw in a tractor you need heftier fines and more random unannounced controls. This is btw. how gun law works in countries where they make sense. Own a gun? No you don't unless you store it correctly and have documentation of ammunition spent etc.
So we will have right to repair but it's only legal if you document all repairs, keep records of parts ordered, only use verified vendors for those parts....etc etc. Right to repair laws shouldn't be onerous, and people should be able to (illegally) remove emissions controls, and we should recognize that as a bad thing that comes with the territory.
Don't freak out, things have downsides, it's actually admirable to be able to handle nuance, own it.
In the case of guns this documentation makes sense, because of what guns are used for typically.
It can be either, but be careful of the knock on effects. If you want to manage it via administrative controls now you may need a bureaucratic mechanism to regularly inspect vehicles. Generally, engineering controls are preferred over administrative controls.
1) Tractors are typically owned by low margin businesses (i.e. farmers) that need to be repaired in the field AND need to be repaired quickly, else you loose a crop. Adding complexity to tractors literally can cost the farm.
2) The actual emissions reduced is questionable. Tractors run significantly less than a truck, like 50-100x less often. Further there are at least 2x more trucks sold per year
3) To run the SCR system, the engine had to run hot for like 20 minutes burning extra fuel and required DEF (yet more input costs)
3) The emissions they are trying to reduce with the these are likely not excessively harmful from a tractor; largely because most tractors who need an SCR system is >75hp, which also means they're typically used on a large farm (100+ acres). Which dissipates the risks substantially.
For reference my 2022 Kubota tractor repeatedly had issues with the DPF / SCR system, mostly the software to enforce environmental rules. This lost us ~$20k one year due to the tractor being knocked out for a week (I was mid-cut for 140 acre hay, rained & rotted in the field post-cut).
For reference, I was very much ready to bypass the SCR system, but decided against it to keep the warranty. It had nothing to do about "right to repair", I figured out exactly how to bypass it.
That's infuriating. This kind of thing is why I specifically sought out a late '90s-early '00s Kubota, which has been great. Granted, I'm not doing anything commercial with it, and it hasn't been completely without issues. I had to make some compromises up front, I was initially looking for an L3710 DT but settled on an L3010 HST because the price was right and it was local. Added rear remote hydraulics last year, welded up some rust in the floor pan and repainted the bodywork. This year I will have to tear it all down again and split it to fix a hydraulic leak coming from the clutch housing (suspect front driveshaft seal). Still need to fabricate some brackets to hang the backhoe subframe. Need to put new ends on the tie rods because they're rattling like crazy. So it's not maintenance free, but the tradeoff I made is that there isn't anything on this machine that I cannot repair. Everything can be rebuilt, parts are available. In retrospect, would an older, simpler machine be a good tradeoff in your situation? So far I probably have 50hr/yr invested in tractor maintenance, but that includes some big ticket items so maybe over time that'll average out to ~10hr/yr. I could see how this might factor in the tradeoff.
All of this to reduce "particulate" which is not the actual polluting part of diesel emissions, even though it is the part you can see. The polluting part is what you can't see.
The EPA changed its rules a year ago to allow measuring NOx emissions (which makes sense) instead of just measuring DEF consumption (which does not make much sense) before forcing an engine into "limp" mode, and in particular retrofitting a system to measure NOx and reflash the computer (including aftermarket solutions to do so) is no longer considered emissions tampering. This should have been done a long time ago.
There was no "screw" for the commercial John Deere tractors with emissions controls, that I know of, as that was locked down to prevent "repair."
Anyone in the room care to volunteer?
I don't think VW and a few others trying to cheat the system to improve their bottom line makes it some kind of made up law that's supposed to be optics only and nothing in practice. It's just the typical corporate response to having to do something that's for the commons for once instead of tragedizing them.
Vendors’ compliance is not disputed, and you have produced no credible evidence of cheating. If there were demand for the smaller, more efficient engines that you’re fantasizing about, someone would already be building them with no legislative restrictions necessary. Under capitalism, any valid complaint can be rephrased as a business plan. You may not like how they complied with the law, but that’s a you problem. If you can’t bear to see it that way, then take it up with the inept authors of the restrictions. The purpose of a system is what it does.
Stating a broader principle in order to apply it to this instance, we in the U.S. are not obligated to go out of our way to pay more in taxes: “The legal right of a taxpayer to decrease the amount of what otherwise would be his taxes, or altogether avoid them, by means which the law permits, cannot be doubted” (Gregory v. Helvering, https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/293/465/). Similarly, the law requires manufacturers to meet the restrictions and does not require them to go out of their way to incur the enormous costs of design, certification, building and tooling up new factories, testing, hiring, training, etc., etc., etc. to produce entirely new engines. Anyone who seriously proposed such a rigamarole would have been accused of over-engineering or Rube Goldberging. Executives who put such a plan in place would have been sued and likely lost their jobs.
Intertemporal effects matter, but they are so frequently left out of what passes for economic analysis.
Are you able to read minds to know what someone else’s outlook is? Your interpretation cannot be the most charitable one. https://ethics.org.au/ethics-explainer-the-principle-of-char...
Maybe I'm missing your point, but the vendors non-compliance is documented fact in a court of law. Multiple individuals were indicted and the company itself pleaded guilty to multiple felonies (including fraud). Further, as with most collective action problems of this type, relying on individual choice to correct the problem all but ensures it won't be corrected. This is one area where the extreme libertarian mindset (which seems to be overrepresented on HN) tends to miss its mark.
Reality doesn't care what you're hoping to achieve with a system, the outcome won't change based on thoughts and ideas. Since reality tends to be fairly complicated, we usually won't design perfect systems on the first try - instead we have to analyze the outcome, and make changes to nudge the results into the direction we want.
But what if we don't do that? What if we stick with the initial approach even after we measure that the outcome doesn't align with our initial intentions, maybe even introduces unwanted side effects?
It would be fair to say "well, we tried our best" if nobody was able to have hidden intentions, but that's not the world we live in. People can be very, very happy about our systems not aligning with our intentions & introducing unwanted side effects because this misalignment advantages them in some way. These people can then block changes to the system to keep these advantages alive.
I believe a small fraction of decision makers is enough to keep most systems fixed in such a misaligned state, and we'd never do anything about it if we followed your logic.
In most situations disregarding intent is not useful for getting things done unless you have unilateral power to override intent.
A better explanation is that John Deere, like the massive truck corporations that make pickups, was happy to take advantage of blatant loopholes.
Of course the government exempts itself from this because they know all that bullshit of "it's just as reliable etc" is trickery. It's common to buy previously government owned deleted vehicles, because the people working in federal government don't want to eat the dogfood the plebs do, and AFAIK if you buy it from them then you're allowed to have it.
Generally though, you'd also want a police vehicle because of how well maintained fleet vehicles are in general, along with some added features and viewing the idle engine hours.
They laughed and let him go. Technically, he was legal.
Realistically, he was learning lies work. (He's now a perpetually homeless drug abuser with an increasing criminal record - before somebody jumps to cheer for his cleverness.)
Instead of selling tractors with more powerful, but limited motors, they should have sold tractors with less powerful motors and no screw. There is no need to do any of this in software. They were purposefully avoiding the regulation by telling farmers, "do not loosen that screw, or you'll break the law, wink-wink!"
> They were purposefully avoiding the regulation by telling farmers, "do not loosen that screw, or you'll break the law, wink-wink!"
They were? The whole point of John Deere locking down the firmware was to prevent this metaphorical loosening of the screw. It looks more like John Deere invested heavily in preventing modification of its hardware, much to the chagrin of farmers who wanted to cheat emissions.
It's more like: every engine has a metaphorical screw that can change the fuel mixture - this is inherent to combustion engines. John Deere made it really difficult or impossible to change that screw. Now farmers regained the ability to change that screw under the guise of repair.
Surely I can’t be understanding that correctly given your overall position.
So if that is really an issue, apply the correct fix and don't push the blame on environmentalists.
Risk mitigation (where the risk defined here is emissions outside some acceptable threshold) usually follow this hierarchy from most preferrable to least:
- remove the hazard (make it impossible for emissions to exceed the limit, even by altering the operation)
- install an engineering mitigation (filters, def, altered fuel mapping etc.)
- administrative mitigation (training, inspections)
- protective equipment (?? make everyone in society wear a mask?)
In this framework, a technological solution is preferrable to an administrative one.
i think everyone outside of the most hardcore greens will agree that consumer rights are more important than making emissions rules that are still in force harder to bypass.
Why should we set the AC to 80 or be diligent about turning off lights when billionaires are flying in a private jet to go watch a football game and datacenters are popping up like Starbucks?
How can anybody tell a farmer they should probably care more about emissions?
In some collective action problems, if everyone acts in their own individual self interest it results in worse outcomes for everyone. In those cases, it requires some central coordination.
It's good that people are catching up to this.
...which has a neat overlap with e.g. chat control and online age verification.
The right question is "what is the value (in dollars) of the right for farmers to repair their equipment".
If John Deere values it more than farmers, then they will sell tractors that farmers can't repair on their own, hoping to earn more on repairs rather than easier to repair tractors that are more expensive up front. Basic market economy.
It only needs to be litigated when there is a threat to the market itself (ex: monopolies) or when there are greater concerns (ex: the environment).
Here, it is a little bit of both. That John Deere is in a monopoly position, so a more repairable competitor can't develop (debated), that agriculture is critical (literally life and death) and John Deere has too much power over it, and if the "right to repair" is a fundamental right.
But the regulations that would require John Deere to change their practices and designs for repairability are not about your rights, they are about what we require John Deere to provide. And the more you require John Deere to provide, the more costs add up. When designing regulations that we require companies to follow, the costs of those regulations should be considered.
For routine repairs it seems very beneficial for farmers to be able to repair things themselves. But there’s a very long tail of problems where at some point the cost will become meaningful, and the benefits might not be that great.
You don't have to force them to do anything, all you need is for them to not prevent others from doing certain things. Which is easy, because it's preventing documentation from being copied around or preventing independent third parties from making compatible replacement parts which requires active effort.
It's actually so simple you answered it right here! It's John Deere's problem to comply with the regulations we as society require of them - that is the cost of doing business.
Although perhaps your disagreement is over whether this is a moral issue, in which case, fine, but let's be clear that that's what we're disagreeing over.
It isn't possible for that to happen without one of your other concerns also being true, because the profits from preventing repairs come from the customers. So it's at best zero sum and in practice it's negative sum, because the manufacturer isn't always the most efficient party to do the repair, e.g. because the farmer who is already on site and does it themselves can get the equipment back in service faster than waiting for the company's mechanic to arrive.
Meanwhile in cases where the manufacturer is the most efficient party to do the repair, the customer could still use them even if nothing forced them to. So the fact of it happening is by itself proof of this:
> It only needs to be litigated when there is a threat to the market itself (ex: monopolies)
Moreover, notice that this keeps happening with tech products. Since customers don't like it, you would expect a competitor to show up and make the exact same product but without the locks, so why don't we see that? The answer, of course, is copyright, a government-granted monopoly. The law prohibits a competitor from copying their design/code. So there's your monopoly.
But copyright is only meant to prevent the competitor from making a direct copy of their software and competing with them in the market for the original product. They're only supposed to have that monopoly. Leveraging that to monopolize the separate market for repairs is monopoly abuse, and applies equally to every company selling a product covered by a patent or copyright monopoly.
That is exactly right. That is why the punishment for not giving customers the right to repair needs to be in the billions, so that the value of giving customers that right is huge.
This does mean my YC application is far less likely to be accepted.
[0] https://knowyourmeme.com/editorials/guides/what-is-the-goomb...
Let's learn the concept of "different people have different opinions", shall we?
You pursue business strategies as a profit maximizing business person concerned with outcomes for your company and investors. You comment on the regulatory/political matters as a pro-social citizen concerned with societal benefits.
Cognitive dissonance tends to occur when attempting to avoid hypocrisy... and doing mental gymnastics to make it so there are no clashes between your different perspectives.
$1 million fine for probably $10 billion in profit. I know what lesson I'd learn if my only personal value was maximizing shareholder value. The compliance part can be dealt with later.
Can you expand on this number or is it vibes-based? I'd be surprised if $10b profit was made from Service Advisor.
Anecdata; we've had a handful of problems with our tractor "computers" recently, and we haven't been charged a dime by the dealer. Our newest is 2018 model so definitely not covered by warranty.
At a minimum, you'd have to break out profit from equipment sales vs service contracts.
In that scenario, a lot of growth companies or just poorly performing companies could just say "sorry, we don't make any profit, so our maximum fine is $10," and obviously that wouldn't be fair at all.
Fines should really be about "what size fine will be a deterrent for this company?"
To a degree. But it also has to be commensurate to the actual market size and impact. If an Amazon releases a defective dog toy that is bought by 10 people, it’d be unreasonable to fine them $100 billion dollars just because they’re a huge company.
If it is, the fine must be large enough to matter against the backdrop of corporate P&L. Courts have an entire category for this type of fine: punitive damages.
It's true that the fines differ per the act, but that's only because the act itself determines how much people would desire to continue it despite a deterrent.
The fine for jaywalking is less than the fine for speeding because (a) society doesn't want to stop jaywalking as desperately and (b) even a small fine of $25 will cause people in cities to follow the rules and not cross the road willy-nilly but with speeding even with the fine you may want to still speed hence why almost all states also give you only a few chances to break that law in a year before they take away your license.
---
You're supposed to collect damages on top of the fine.
Which is why John Deer is paying our almost $100 million[1].
An additional $50 million plus FTC oversight for 10 years is to ensure John Deer comply, and to set a standard for further fines if they do not comply. If they continue to willfully not comply, like some people continue to jaywalk or speed, the fines will drain billions or reach a point that the company will be dismantled.
[1] https://www.wired.com/story/john-deere-is-paying-farmers-99-...).
Not revenue, profit.
It's a deterrent. It says: "you did a really bad thing and I'm going to slap a huge fine on you so you think twice about doing it again". And "huge" has to scale with the entity paying the fine. It has to be an actual wound, not a papercut.
“We only sold 10 dog toy model A00001, any owners of dog toy model A00002 were not impacted”
Nothing in their SEC filings shows anything mentionable about such claims. It does break out actual profit by company sectors.
That's what John Deere was up to.
Also, I'd point out that tractors are, by and large, actually pretty simple machines. At their core they are an engine and a hydraulics system. Not much more. The most fancy tractors will obviously have a lot of creature comforts in the cab. GPS, auto steering, AC, etc. But the actual things that do the thing are effectively just solid metal parts that plow through the field or cut down the crop.
Tractors, because they are so simple, but also because they all operate at lower speeds than other vehicles, are almost immoral machines. My family literally has a John Deere from the 40s that starts up just fine. We also have a Massie from the the 70s that still operates just fine. And our newest Massie from the 00s is still doing farm work. The only reason we got the Massie in the 70s was because it had more horsepower than the John Deere from the 40s. And the only reason for the 00s tractor was because it had a closed cab with AC and more horsepower.
It would not shock me to learn John Deere was also integrating some planned obsolescence to speed up the turn over of their tractors.
>That's what John Deere was up to.
Is that an actual price and the actual process?
The most well known example is probably printer ink/toner. (Razors is another often quoted example.) But this applies to car parts too. I needed a new small plastic clip to my Dacia. I was quoted 100 SEK (about 10 USD) for that. I 3D printed a sturdier version that will last longer for less than 5 SEK in materials (less than 0.5 USD).
From that you can estimate the approximate margins many companies have for spare parts. Of course being able to prevent cheaper third party parts will seem enticing if they want to maximise shareholder value. And this is why we need regulation.
There's a reason they all now need digital service books which are locked to their partnerships.
This is honestly one of my biggest fears about the modern auto repair situation. Previously it was fairly common to eventually find service manuals for sale second hand after enough time had passed. Or someone would scan and dump them online. Then it turned into waiting for PDF's to leak from dealership CD's.
Now with having them locked down to dealership tablet pc's I worry they will never hit the public.
That's a big part of what's made it harder to maintain cars and has driven up the prices.
It should be possible, for example, to swap in a new infotainment system on any old car. It should be possible for 2 EVs from different manufacturers to swap batteries.
John Deere hasn't been insane enough to soft lock their oil filters. But they do soft lock about everything else they can.
https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/08/17/43...
> "The tech came out and it took him a couple hours to diagnose that there was one small sensor out. And that one small sensor, I think it was a $120 part."
Two hours of labor to diagnose and then however long the replacement took + the cost of the part. $120 doesn't seem overpriced for that.
The time it must take to get a limited pool of technicians to drive out (40 miles) and do that work is probably the real issue. The price seems completely reasonable.
I agree that right-to-repair should be a thing but you're grossly exaggerating the situation.
However, it is unclear but I think my point still stands, a $120 piece of electronics is an order of magnitude less than a $1000 non-electronic, non-mechanical oil filter.
JD is charging anywhere from $130 to $210/hr [1] for labor. That is my point. And that $120 part can only be replaced by their technicians which means that while the part itself might be reasonably priced, the labor is forced.
That's what was being said about that part, it's a cheap part which you have to spend a lot of money on the labor to install it. The farmer spent from $380 to $520 to install that part. Not exactly that far off the $1000 mark.
> The tech came out and it took him a couple hours to diagnose that there was one small sensor out. And that one small sensor, I think it was a $120 part."
[1] https://talk.newagtalk.com/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=115102...
Go do some legwork, get some actual data, not make believe feel good fairy dust.
The fed suit had exact numbers, which they blacked out for public. The fed suit settled for a dollar amount. If they thought they’d get a better amount, they’d go to trial. So likely the proceeds are on order of the settlement, else they’d likely win more by trial. The feds are not idiots.
But some people are.
I talked to a hobby farmer once about a tractor. It wasnt cheap, but he spent more to biuld it a proper shed than he spent on the (used) machine. Leave it out in the rain/snow/mud all winter and it wont be there for you in spring. Maintenance and support is everything.
Even a tiny fraction of revenue, on the other hand, could easily reach $10B. 4% of ~40B times 12 years = $19B.
Their average revenue for the last dozen years is reasonably close to 40 billion.
4% is a tiny fraction.
Those are the only numbers I used.
> 4% of ~40B times 12 years = $19B.
as if this might be close to reasonable estimate of the profit off these farm repair contracts.
But you pulled that reasoning right out of nowhere. It's simply ignorant.
Multiplying 4% times revenue? Why pick revenue? Why not profit before taxes? Why not profit after taxes? Why not any of a ton of more relevant variables?
Because you have a belief in search of some numbers to make it sound smart.
Their net profit is around 10% of revenue, not at all out of line for companies in this sector. If you're going to magically claim that 40% of this profit is from farm contracts, that is massively ignorant of what they sell.
Since you seem unable to look at their financials, there's no need for me to show you how little of their overall revenue is farm equipment (which if course makes your number voodoo even more out of touch).
I took the math you proposed but I used revenue instead of profit. "Last year was 5b net profit on 44b revenue. Attributing more than a tiny fraction of profit to the right to repair stuff is wild dreams"
If the general idea of that calculation is wrong, it's your fault.
And obviously not all of that extra revenue can be profit, but most of it can. It's enough to make "tiny fraction" still work out well.
> Why pick revenue? Why not profit before taxes? Why not profit after taxes? Why not any of a ton of more relevant variables?
Because forcing people to use your parts/services brings in extra business. Revenue.
I already explained why not profit. If the company broke even, using profit would declare they could not have possibly made money on the program. If they lost money overall, calculating a percent of profit would declare that this behavior must have lost them money. It makes absolutely no sense to use profit in this calculation.
> Their net profit is around 10% of revenue, not at all out of line for companies in this sector. If you're going to magically claim that 40% of this profit is from farm contracts, that is massively ignorant of what they sell.
Why couldn't it be?
Let's consider a hypothetical. Red Moose sells $30B in tractors and the cost of doing that is $31B. But they have an anti-competitive program that brings in $4B on $1B in cost. Their overall profit is $2B, but the profit from that specific program is $3B. Despite being only 12% of their company, it brings in all of their overall profit (arguably 150% of their overall profit).
It's very easy for one piece of a company to make most of the profit. It's not magic.
> Since you seem unable to look at their financials, there's no need for me to show you how little of their overall revenue is farm equipment
They break out everything by equipment market and I couldn't find anything granular enough to figure out how much is servicing. I looked the first time I posted. If you have something better feel free to quote it. But talking about how much is farm equipment seems pointless to me. We should be looking at how much the company could plausibly make by spiting right to repair on all equipment, farm and construction and everything.
> (which if course makes your number voodoo even more out of touch)
Again, all I did was take the math you suggested except I used "revenue" instead of "profit" for a good reason.
The corporation you're defending is disproving your point by their own actions.
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/DE/deere/cash-flow...
Unfortunately, I hate that they got away with such a low AF fine.
Our family had ford tractors, ford mowers, and ford trucks until enough pain points added up to cause a change. Now they haven't bought a ford in over 40 years.
Farmers buy Deere because they are the most repairable. The dealer is just down the road, and has the parts that you need. The things you cannot do yourself are things that farmers think "I wouldn't do that anyway".
That's a really weird way to spell "incumbency and network effects".
In fairness, you're not wrong, but that seems to be a very specific framing that hides a lot of what this whole discussion is about.
For these guys, modern Deere hasn't broken the mirage because they all drive "old" tractors, anywhere between 20 and 60 years old. I put "old" in quotes because they don't consider those tractors to be old. To them, a tractor is a thing you own for life, care for dutifully, and hand down to your kid. Just like the house and the fields. 100? Now that's an old tractor!
If you're a boomer farmer, Pops probably had a Deere. And because he probably had a Deere, you probably have a Deere too, because you probably drive Pops's tractor. Brand loyalty takes on a more cultural air when it gets passed down through generations.
Also, some men just have a thing for Deere. You ever seen those pictures of some guy's house and every room is decked out floor to ceiling with Dale Earnhardt memorabilia? That's my grandfather. My buddy's grandfather? Same deal, but Deere instead of Dale.
As for the folks running the big operations with modern tractors, well I don't really know. I've never met any of them. But Deere has a massive network of licensed repair shops. Seriously, I can't tell you how many towns I've driven through around the Great Lakes that are nothing more than a gas station, a dollar store, a school, and a shop with a Deere logo hanging in the window.
John Deere was one of the most egregious offenders in the right-to-repair movement, especially with how expensive their tractors are. There’s definitely a difference paying for the repair of a ten of thousands of dollars machine versus having to buy new AirPods.
I’m no expert in US law, but my understanding is an FTC settlement doesn’t create any precedent like a court case would, so I don’t anticipate this leading to other offenders, like in tech, being held accountable. Their support is too important right now.
Ultimately, I think the underlying motive for the administration is scoring a win for a core constituency, farmers. Tariffs and immigration enforcement have really harmed the viability of their farms, but at least the admin can say the did something for them.
Nevertheless, I’m glad that John Deere is being forced to provide parts and information to individuals and repair shops.
Don't underestimate the willingness of the GOP and the Supreme Court to kiss his feet.
> ...and I don't see a way he can use it for graft.
He's an expert at it.
They're a political football now and it's more of a feel good measure.
[0]: https://fighttorepair.substack.com/p/this-doesnt-break-the-m...
And for mighty HP and their printers, management needs to be put to wall and shot. There's no other solution.
I don't like people calling out soldered stuff. By the way, soldered stuff may still be serviceable at 3rd party service centers, just not at every DIYers home. It will cost you quite some money, yeah.
There are laptops that have soldered RAM + Free slot for upgrade. But regulating that stuff is just stupid I think - there is a valid reason for manufacturers to try make things more compact, more streamlined etc.
I'm going to scrap 120 almost mint condition 8th gen i5 Thinkpads thanx to 8GB soldered RAM, which is no longer enough for efficient office work on W11 + basic corporate background apps.
With 1 fookin RAM slot, these notebooks would be perfectly fine for another 5-10 years.
With all Intune distributed software for most departments, W11+background apps is 5+GB.
Their pen plotters and cutters are unrepairable and their mandatory app doesn't work without an internet connection.
where the bluegrass grows
where the right to repair
is made plain!
> Deere will now be required to make diagnostic and repair tools available to equipment owners and independent repair shops, not only its own network of authorized dealers.
In practice, this means Deere will now operate similar to auto manufacturers. They will make their proprietary scanning equipment, software, and manuals available… for a few-thousand-dollar/ month subscription.
You have options as to where you can replace the physical components… but still need to pay a subscription fee in order to use your vehicle’s full feature set or get access to the data you collected but don’t actually own. Your vehicle’s firmware is still locked.
They will make their parts available… but not necessarily to a common standard (we could have used a common bolt size or hose line, or specced a commonly available alternator, but we decided not to), making it prohibitively costly for third party manufacturers to compete on aftermarket parts, and keeping genuine part costs high.
You can (legally) work on the machine yourself… but work done without a licensed mechanic will likely void your warranty, or prevent you from using necessary software features.
Your local mechanic can now repair your equipment… but in order to do that work they may have to invest in not only scanners and software, but an odd handful of unique task-specific or custom tools in order to complete the repair.
Don’t get me wrong, this is still a win. It’s high time that the FTC addressed Deere’s blatantly anti-competitive behavior. However, this isn’t a silver bullet that will save farmers from the rising tide of extractive capitalism, or isolate their tractors from nation state cyber threats.
This is only the tip of the iceberg. They make the parts deliberately proprietary to prevent competition. The classic example is curved cabin windows instead of flat commodity glass.
Laissez-faire capitalism is efficient at extraction not productivity.
Are automobiles using curved windshields so they have a stranglehold on the replacement windshield market?
Your example doesn't pass my sniff test.
It’s also stronger.
If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.
--Isaac Newton
The trademarks and the protected designations I believe help consumers to know what they're getting and protect makers against competition with inferior products which are superficially similar. So that's things like "Coke" is definitely Coca-Cola's product and not just whatever brown liquid the seller could get cheapest, British Beef isn't actually from America just relabelled for a higher price. Champagne isn't actually a sparkling wine made in California. You can buy cheap brown liquid, Californian Sparkling wine and American beef, but it's right for consumers to know what they're getting and for the vintners in Champagne to know some Tech bro's side venture Californian winery isn't shipping bogus "Champagne" made in the Napa valley that will compete with their genuine product on store shelves in London. If consumers want to drink sparkling Californian wine they can do that, there's no need to use the name Champagne worked so hard for.
The patents are most reprehensible. There the deal is the government gives you a (surprisingly long) exclusive right to make a thing, and in exchange you give up some information about how to make it. Lawyers have managed to finagle providing almost no useful information about "how" in exchange for these quite unreasonable exclusive rights, that needs at least substantial rebalancing. In software it's just bullshit and should go entirely, in pharmaceuticals you can argue about the exact rules more.
Copyright is the most interesting tension. In theory Copyright protects creators - and that seems great. In practice this unavoidably also benefits non-creator heirs "Knives Out" style but that's not really the worst thing in the world. It also though benefits publishers which are corporate entities and that makes no sense whatsoever in the modern era. That needs drastic reining in, if while we're in there we can ensure that the author's grandkids don't get a free ride for life just because grandma wrote this amazing book that'd be nice. Copyright expansion seems to have slowed or stopped during my lifetime, which is good, but it needs reversing.