Hey,
Some days are quite productive, but others are an absolute right offā¦
My perception of time is whack, one minute itās slow and as if weāve been in quarantine for months, yet at the same time the days are just flying by, blending together, you havenāt even left the house and suddenly itās 7 pm.
I actually will try to put something constructive together for next week, to make sense of it all, see what the science says.
I just thought Iād mention it, as youāre not alone.
Donāt worry, weāll be passed it all very soon.
Anyway, Cāmere to meā¦
Tractor Hacking š
John Deere Software Licensing
Iām no farmer, yet I found this really interesting, and it certainly applies to tech beyond the agriculture industry.
Vice published a cool mini-doc a few weeks ago highlighting the issue where farmers or independent garages canāt access the software to repair their machines, thus requiring equipment to be returned to the ālicensedā manufacturer.
This particular case is about John Deere and the state of Nebraska, however, more than 20 US states have similar activist groups fighting for legislative change too.
Image: The Bullvine
The āright to repairā, you may be familiar with this movement, it has been in the media a lot, particularly surrounding smartphones, as consumers get frustrated with having to constantly upgrade.
āRepair is a huge business. And repair monopolies are profitable. Just ask Appleā¦ā
(read more - Wired)
Tractors are incredibly complicated machines these days, the latest and greatest are even self-driving, farming as an industry is much more high tech than most people assume.
Unlike shipping your phone off to be examined, which people rightfully still make a fuss about, it can cost thousands of dollars just to transport a tractor to a licensed dealership.
And having forked out all of that cash, imagine that the issue turns out to be relatively minorā¦.
Access to the software is required in order to run diagnostics to work out which part has failed, it is rarely a software issue.
Remarkably, and most unfairly, even if parts are replaced by the farmer, second-hand etc, the tractor still wonāt work as the software wonāt recognise or ābe compatibleā with the new parts.
Essentially it can tell if it has undergone an unlicensed repair, for older parts used, John Deere simply say āwe donāt support that component anymoreā.
āThe ability to maintain their own equipment is a big deal to farmers. When itās harvest time and the combine goes kaput, they canāt wait several days for John Deere to send out a repair technician. Plus, farmers are a pretty handy bunch. Theyāve been fixing their own equipment forever.āĀ
(read more - Wired)
Farmers are resorting to using pirated software and quite literally hacking into their own devicesā¦
This is not just an agricultural problem though, the legal procedures proposed have caught the attention of tech giants such as Apple and Microsoft, who sent teams to monitor and disrupt the bills, which would affect all tech products sold in those states.
Worth a little watch.
Do you think we should have the right to repair our physical devices, containing software we donāt technically own?
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Until next week,
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