I wonder what's causing the downward trend with white-tail deer specifically since 2000. New approaches to wildlife management? Renewed interest in hunting?
This is so, so important for helping family farms stay alive.
The amount my family has saved by being able to fix and even modify stuff on their own is huge. My dad still mows our lawn with an antique Allis-Chalmers hooked up to a commercial mower. Equipment is wildly expensive compared to margins at smaller scales (think like 2k acres for small farms). Things need to last for decades or generations in order to keep a profit.
2000 acres is a "small" "family" farm?? The myth of farming in the United States far over-estimates the where the _value_ in farming lies. Yes, John Deere is exploitative - but what about the wealthy land owners that profit off the backs of poorly paid _farm workers_? Or the huge government subsidies paid to growers of commodity grain? The idea of the "family farm" as a productive and legitimate sector of the economy is mostly a myth[0].
[0] See "Farm and other F words" by Sarah Mock for a more complete treatment.
This only seems large by European standards I think. The 50-100 acre farms in my homeland are a relic of pre-industrial times, and can't be competitive in a world market without vast EU subsidies.
>Since 1974, the Census of Agriculture
has defined a farm as any place from
which $1,000 or more of agricultural
products were produced and sold, or
normally would have been sold, during
the census year.
That's a weird definition.
Acres of contiguous land controlled by a single owner is how people tend to use the word farm.
In reality, farmers are often equipment owners and negotiate with landowners to manage X acres.
None of this discussion is worth wile in referencing farms.
Best could be said : a farmer who has to service equipment equal to a 400 acre farm benefits by laws protecting their farm equipment.
Here in Western Australia, the average cropped area per farm is almost 3,000 acres. From my perspective, 2,000 acres is a small-ish farm, and the 50-100 acre farms surrounding my parents' house in Scotland are comically small, heavily-subsidised gardens.
GP may be wrong about the USA as a whole, though I'm sure there are areas of the US where 2,000 acres would indeed be a small farm.
Do you have any references on small farm size efficiency? In Japan ~90% are < 50 acre both by land mass and count, and seeing the 100m^2 farms in my neighborhood I can't believe it's anywhere near efficient, even when sharing farm equipment.
Small family farms are good when a country is still developing and has excess labour, but once industrialization gets going folks move to urban areas for factory jobs and farms need to consolidate and mechanize. This has been the story over history for all countries have been 'developed', and in the post-WW2 is generally true of Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. Though this mechanization never really happened in Japan.
How Asia Works: Success and Failure in the World's Most Dynamic Region goes over this quite well:
How many of the farms surveyed are the owner and operator’s full time job? How many of those farms are owned and operated by multiple families at the same time?
Farming in the US is nothing like a corporate job, or even most small businesses, for reasons I just don’t have the time to share. Your comparison to income for the general population…doesn’t work.
Farms with 2k acres or less are indeed small, family run operations. Especially if you only farm cash crops. These are the kinds of farms that rely on right-to-repair the most. Not the homesteader family with 16 acres and some goats.
Sorry all, your idea of what most full-time, successful, multi-generational farming operations in the US looks like is simply not accurate.
2000 acres is not a small farm period. For context the price per acre where I live (centre of Quebec, Canada) is 15k$. So 30M$ for 2k acres, it's an industrial farm that need employees (at least one or two if it's a highly automated crop) and can afford the price of brand new John deer. You can even afford a Combine harvester at that size. Our farm is around 120 acres and we definitely cannot.
That really depends where you live, since this thread is about Colorado:
>The 2021 Colorado average farmland real estate value, a measurement of the value >of all land and buildings on farms, was $1,610 per acre. This is an increase of >1.3 percent from 2020 and 2.5 percent from 2019.
So we're talking $3.2mm today and by what the person you replied to said, I'm betting that his family bought that land a very long time ago.
I'm not a farmer by any means, but I just did a quick search for land in Colorado and I'm even seeing ~2,400 acres on sale for $1.7mm today. There's 15,000 acres listed for $2.1mm. I mention not being a farmer because I don't know if those lands are viable for anything.
2,000 acres of highly-automated 4-employer farm nets an income of $240,000 USD per year. John Deere equipments all cost more than that.
Furthermore, computerizing farm implements means shorter life span for its equipments.
Probably why older cars are lasting longer than newer ones. Computer chip failure of a 20-yo car means a trip to the wrecking yard to get that chip or get totaled; 40-yo car, not as much.
Huh? This is about things like hardware modules not connecting to the bus until an authorized repairer allows them to, exposing part numbers so board level repairs can happen, releasing board schematics, and things like that. Nobody is suggesting re-writing firmware? There is a mountain of context that you're either unaware of or leaving out on purpose for some reason.
software documentation includes things like APIs, bus protocols and configuration, and other interface points. It need not have anything to do with re-writing firmware and nothing is calling for that.
If the John Deere engineers understand those systems so well, then they could design their products in ways that the farmers could repair the products for common use cases. They are intentionally designing the products to prevent that. That's the whole problem.
This legislation is more akin to allowing you to repair your PC and replace a damaged RAM module.
I don’t think any farmer is looking to tinker with the control software, and even if they want they should be able to tinker considering it’s their property and their farmland and only they themselves are liable for any damages caused to neighbours or otherwise.
John Deere is just trying to create artificial barriers and extract more value from existing customers.
(As an outsider looking in) I think Deere's (and many other companies) financial incentives more align with product gatekeeping, than with maximum safety and performance; maximum safety does not pay Deere's bills, but service appointments do.
It kinda just sounds like you're content with family farms not existing, because all of your points fail to address the economic realities for these farms.
Product liability for industrial and agricultural equipment gets interesting.
You can modify a household lawn mower and if you get maimed by it by those modifications, you're at fault.
However, for industrial equipment if you can modify it - the manufacturer is likely liable. Consider how often you hear about deaths due to manufacturing defects (the stats for deaths for framers is 60 - 70 per year per 100,000 in the US).
> However, for industrial equipment if you can modify it - the manufacturer is likely liable.
That’s interesting if true, but do you have a better source (ideally, a court case)? I don’t see that theory of liability discussed anywhere on the page you linked.
The main piece is that industrial and agricultural equipment falls into the category of strict liability. Going back up a few parent posts:
> >They're designing the products for maximum safety and performance
> How do you know this. Do you work for Jon Deere? Since the code is closed source that's simply an assumption
If you have a piece of equipment that is known to be dangerous (e.g. farm equipment like combines and such) then anything that is considered a defect or failure to warn about and prevent someone from using the equipment in an unsafe way the liability falls on the manufacturer - even if there is no proof of negligence in its design.
> Strict liability, in contrast, does away with the analysis of whether the defendant's conduct met or fell below a certain standard. The thinking here is this: If it were necessary for a consumer to identify and illustrate the specific unsafe or unreasonable conduct that occurred at some point along the timeline of a product's journey to the marketplace—including design, manufacture, and distribution—these kinds of cases would be nearly unwinnable. Courts and state legislatures recognize this, so strict liability is established law in product defect cases.
> Simply because a plaintiff is required to prove less in a strict product liability case (compared with a negligence-based action) does not mean a defendant's liability is automatic. There are a number of ways a strict liability case can fail, or be successfully defended. The defendant might be able to show that:
> the plaintiff used the product in a way that he or she knew (or should have known) could lead to injury, or used the product despite knowing of the defect ("assumption of the risk")
> the plaintiff's own careless actions contributed to or were the only cause of the injury, including using the product in a manner for which it was not intended, or
> some other person or event interacted with the product to such an extent that the product was not the real cause of the injury.
---
So, here's the question that will be posed.
Does a farmer using 3rd party firmware on their JD tractor know that this could lead to injury?
Is using 3rd party firmware in a JD tractor careless?
Is a farmer updating the firmware of a tractor sufficient interaction with it that the JD tractor itself is not the real cause of injury?
If these questions are answered with "no" then JD is responsible and would be expected to take all reasonable actions to prevent those interactions.
> They're designing the products for maximum safety and performance. It was never in the cards to make it open.
Well, then, that was stupid of John Deere and makes them a victim of their own arrogance. Period. There wouldn't be a law right now if John Deere hadn't unnecessarily, by their own actions, pissed off so many people in the process of increasing "safety" and "performance". As though anybody complained about the lack of "safety and performance" in the century-long history of tractors before computers came along and saved us.
Let's be clear here: John Deere, a multi-billion dollar company, isn't the victim here, but the aggressor against family farms, good intentions or not. Mourning for them is absurd.
> A huge change, that will take years and millions to achieve?
Nope. It's as easy as clicking "Publish" on the repositories and setting the Dropbox folder to "Public." I could do it in 15 minutes. Any legal review or trade secret review or whatever else is entirely the company protecting their own interests. John Deere has done that long enough, a hard deadline is their self-inflicted penalty.
This is an odd comment in my opinion. Do you work at John Deere? I ask only because you say you are familiar with their testing environment. I don't think your horror scenario is realistic. How many farms are located in a neighborhood? If a farmer destroys property they are probably liable. I don't think John Deere is restricting repairs to protect random property damage since since I've never heard of that happening before.
Sorry, should have said, worked on the John Deere guidance module for auto-driving tractors. As a contractor.
There are field limits defined. But they are respected as algorithms need, to determine turn parameters at the end of a row. I could imagine easily that fiddling with that code could end up with a tractor on the other side.
What horror scenarios do you think are realistic? Remember we are considering multi-ton machines with maybe a thousand horsepower, wielding huge spinning blades and crusher mechanisms. What scenario can we consider that is not a horror show?
Your car, heater, air frier, lawn mower, etc all have the potential to kill you. I’d even argue that the probability of a car killing someone due to technical malfunction or user tinkering is way higher than a farm equipment that operates in a large open area.
If all of these things were locked down following John Deere’s logic our daily lives would become very expensive and inconvenient.
We as a society have more than enough legal and insurance frameworks to mitigate any of the risks that you’ve mentioned.
Your car, heater, air fryer, and lawn mower are consumer devices. If you modify them and they become unsafe, you're at fault.
However, farm equipment is classified as industrial equipment and if you can modify it to be unsafe without being an expert in that domain, then it is the manufacturers fault that you can do that.
Locking down industrial equipment so that it requires a trained technician to modify it is one of the ways that industrial equipment manufacturers try to mitigate the liability that they face.
> then it is the manufacturers fault that you can do that.
This is not always the case, and if it gets to the point that legislation has to be written to stop you, it's likely you don't care that much about the law in the first place.
When Marvin Heemeyer built the Killdozer, nobody blamed Komatsu for providing him the parts. Unprecedented, violent problems can happen with all sorts of equipment. We stop these accidents by holding professionals liable, not their machines.
The legislation and liability for industrial and agricultural equipment already exists. Under that structure, the manufacturer is the one facing the product liability claims if any claims are to be paid out.
If you (the framer) modify a JD tractor and someone gets hurt, JD is is the one likely to pay.
While I agree these systems are highly complex, I am not sure why farmers need to mess with source code to perform a repair? If farmers are messing with the code (disabling sensors or whatever), then I'd have to assume the farmer knows they are taking on this risk that their tractor will not function as expected.
If sensors can be safely disabled, then why not provide an easy to do that?
Again, we're not talking about a lawn mower or toaster. We're talking about a multi-ton autodriving machine of destruction. God no, don't disable a sensor, any more than you'd disable a sensor on a jet airliner.
I agree; farmers should under no circumstance mess with code to perform a repair. I'm concerned that the software documentation is part of this bill (and in the minds of many technologists, should be open).
The closest example I can think of is my car. If the seat belt sensor doesn't detect when my safety belt is properly working, I think it's ok to disable the sensor so that I can operate my vehicle without warning lights and sounds distracting me while I drive.
I am sure there are comparable sensors on these vehicles that can have inaccurate readings that can safely be ignored if the operator knows what they are doing.
To me, even though you might call this hitting a nerve, this comment and the one you did earlier, scream the classic stereotype of white collar workers looking down on blue collar workers like farming. "If they were smart like me, they wouldn't be farmers." "They are too dumb to manage a multi-ton machine despite having done it for over a century. Unlike me, who has written code for a few years."
Farmers aren't stupid. They're actually sometimes very high-IQ people because maintaining a profit with so many constraints and uncontrollable circumstances is extremely difficult; and Silicon Valley flunkies would be in bankrupt within days of trying. If they could even survive waking up at 4AM for more than 3 days in a row.
I’m a robotics engineer designing an open source solar powered farming robot (links in my profile).
I gotta be honest it sounds like you have been exposed to Deere’s propaganda and believed it. To put this another way, I feel like you’re missing what this bill is really about.
Deere has added software locks to their modules so that even if you can source another identical module with identical firmware and you’re capable of plugging it in, you have to use dealer software to change the software lock and allow the module to work with your tractor.
No one is saying farmers need source code, they’re saying they need access to the dealer software tools (not engineering tools!) to allow replacement of modules without a trip to the dealer.
This is extremely important for farmers! Please read the replies to your comments and consider that you may have been misinformed. Respectfully, I think this can be a learning moment for you today.
and I feel we can add a dash of smug superioty over presumed to stupid farmers.
I worked on sheep shearing robots in the 1980s at UWA and went on to have a global career in geophyical data aquisition, processing, and interpretation with a sideline in developing "Google Earth" pre current Google Earth .. all funded by part time work in 800 million tonne per annum iron ore mining projects.
Now I'm hanging about with farmers in rural WA.
"Giant John Deere tractors" are small fry compared to mining machines .. and many farmers here have FiFo (Fly In - Fly Out) minesite experience working as electricians | mechanics | operators on mining operations.
The bulk of local area mechanics that come to fix tractors have that same background .. understanding the technology is not the issue with agricultural machine repair, it's gate-keeping by the companies and system protocols designed to hinder part replacement, board updates, diagnosis, etc without a commission going back to oginal manufacturer.
This reminds me of when I taught a robotics class for a week at a university in Mauritius, off the East coast of Africa near Madagascar. We're exposed to so much nonsense about how "people over there" are simple and can't understand complex concepts. But those kids from Kenya, South Africa, Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Morocco were exactly as talented as students from Palo Alto. People don't need to be treated like babies, they need to be given tools. No matter how special some engineer thinks they are, there's loads of equally talented people all over the globe.
I would like to have a couple of sock-puppets to upvote this more!
I jest, of course, but, this is such an important point that engineers and the designers of a product don't have monopoly on intelligence and people need not to be babied. I think some people even come to believe it themselves and develop some kind of learned helplessness.
Hey, I joined up a few days ago and wrote a little intro post, but I seem to be blocked from posting pending admin approval. I know you’re busy, so I don’t want to bother you, but I’m eager to participate.
I imagine this multi ton machine running over a fence, into a tree stump. The stump disconnects the wheel from the axle and it's no longer able to drive.
I think what we're saying here is changing the oil is not allowed. You can't change your own oil, or use third party oil because there is a detector that says this oil is not John Deere brand oil. The engine is now deactivated and you must call a John Deere technician to put in the encryption key to unlock the engine. Your next available appointment is in 938 days. Please note, we have a higher than expected volume of repair calls than usual this year. Your appointment may be de-prioritized. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Assuming that there is some sort of sensor that’s measuring these turn radiuses? What happens to the machine when the sensor malfunctions? Does it shut down (requiring work to stop), keep going (being a huge liability) or is there a box of them under the chair the operator can swap in and keep going? I think what’s being asked for here is option 3, not so much being able to modify turn parameters.
I'd argue allowing farmers to fix their own stuff is way better (and safer) than them having to seek out sketchy foreign vendors/hacks in order to fix their own equipment on the black market as an alternative.
Obviously the majority of farmers aren't going to be going into the software and editing it themselves, but instead paying reputable companies in the industry to do the programming/fixing/debugging for them.
Companies like John Deere could embrace this by releasing a ton of guides and self-learning classes to teach these same farmers how to do basic coding, repairs, debugging and etc. themselves. Could start a whole new wave and generation of tech-literate and educated farmers which would be better for all involved.
The way I understood the issue (as an outsider) is that they weren’t offering things like gaskets for sale. Sure, I can pull out the old one if it pops but what do I do now? That plus there being a remote kill switch if someone does figure out how to manufacture replacements…
Joe's been an active member here with good contributions for a long time. I disagree with his opinion in this thread, but he's not some fake account trying to cause trouble.
This article summarizes a feeling I’ve had such a hard time articulating.
At many of my previous jobs, I was so frustrated by the people obsessed with tooling instead of doing the work. Like, why are you trying to develop a react application in VIM after you spent months evangelizing VScode to me?? Who cares, ship the thing!
Of course, these were the most visible people to upper management, and the darlings of our department. :/ Meanwhile I was the one staying on task, making sure things got out on time. Lesson learned: be loud. Advertise your accomplishments and advocate for yourself if you’re a do-er.
Looks like their redirect service for links was down, not twitter itself. I could go to my profile, but clicking links in my tweets gave me an API error. Ugh, not good.
Author here - Thanks, glad to hear that part resonated with you. I agree, you can't let your passion burn too bright, or it will consume you. "a small flame inside you" is a great approach.
Author here - Sorry for the confusion. The term originated from the Indie Hacker forum launched around 2016, a forum that was dedicated to helping people start small businesses online. This is the website I linked to at the beginning of the article to give people context. I've seen this term used often in the context of startups on reddit as well as hacker news, so I thought it was common knowledge. It doesn't have anything to do with "hacking" computers, though I can see why people might think that.
Author here - Yes it works. I have two programmatic sites so far, one of which I built in public on my blog. I also consulted on programmatic SEO for a bit. Just like human written content, Google won't index your pages if they are low quality or straight up spam. You have to actually provide value to the user. A common example I use for when programmatic SEO is appropriate is nutritional information.
Author here - Sorry about that. Since I haven't been much of a success, I didn't think people would be interested in my recommendations. But here are a few that I found really helpful:
Books:
The Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris,
The E-myth by Michael Gerber,
Running Lean by Ash Maurya
As the other posted said, any resources provided by MicroConf are also great. Basically look up their videos on YouTube and follow all of their speakers on Twitter or subscribe to their newsletters.
Author here - That's awesome. I admire your grit. Realizing you needed to change and focus more on marketing is a big step in the right direction. We all start out doing the wrong things and making mistakes. The key is learning from them, which it seems, you are willing to do. Best of luck!
Author here - Thanks for reading! Glad you enjoyed the article.
Programmatic SEO has a long history of being conflated with spam, though, it is not. There are many instances where this approach to creating content is the best approach for users, and many are surprised to learn how often and how much programmatic content they consume (I often use nutritional information as an example).
I've talked about this at length on my twitter, podcast interviews, and my free course on the subject. I will put links to these below. If you're concerned about the efficacy and morality of programmatic SEO, I'd suggest getting more information from these resources in order to make an informed opinion.
Also, my product does not provide any AI services. I know it's common for people to assume "programmatic" means "AI", but this strategy has been around much longer than AI.
I don’t think anyone’s going to listen to a whole podcast to get the answer they’re looking for. I’m still of the opinion that “programmatic SEO” == spam, but perhaps you can use the space here to explain why that’s not the case. I perused your Twitter but was admittedly left even more confused.
“ Programmatic SEO is not a means for replacing human written content.
This strategy targets keywords that aren't served well by human written content. It lacks the critical analysis and nuance only humans can provide.”
Maybe you can explain. Is it a real human writing every line of the copy you’re generating? If not, how is it not very directly “replacing human written content”.
What you’ve mentioned in this thread seems to run contrary to what’s on your Twitter and the product page itself.
"This strategy targets keywords that aren't served well by human written content."
One example I often use is nutritional information. We don't need in-depth, 1200 word articles for how many calories, carbs, protein, etc. there are in every food and drink item out there. Plus, there are billions of them. So it's not even feasible to create human written, long-form articles for every item. Websites use templates to plugin in nutritional information into webpages, and Google picks it up. That's programmatic SEO. It's applicable to lots of situations, and we consume tons of it every day.
If you can't see even a single legitimate use case for this strategy after all the resources and details I've provided, I just have to assume you're looking for people to argue with. Not worth my energy, sorry dude.
