[HN Gopher] Colorado becomes first to pass 'right to repair' for...
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Colorado becomes first to pass 'right to repair' for farmers
Author : hubraumhugo
Score : 283 points
Date : 2023-04-26 14:36 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wivb.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wivb.com)
| ViperPilot wrote:
| Congratulations and thanks to Eron Wolf and Louis Rossmann of
| FUTO (https://www.futo.org/) for their massive help in getting
| this done. Announcement video here:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gZwaIjpZB0
|
| There are additional videos linked in that video's description
| for those wanting additional context as to what this bill is all
| about.
| bwanab wrote:
| What are the odds that passing this bill will actually help the
| mostly Democratic lawmakers who pushed and passed this bill? My
| guess is the beneficiaries will still largely vote against them
| due to nebulous culture war issues.
| dcow wrote:
| What happened to making the world a better place because it's
| beneficial to everyone? Not everything has to be election
| politics game theory.
| davidsawyer wrote:
| Obviously making the world a better place is great, but you
| still gotta win races to have the ability to do so!
| eganist wrote:
| There's a dark counterargument to this: that those seeking to
| raise the tide for everyone need to account for the maneuvers
| by those who wish to opportunistically deregulate and profit.
|
| There's a fine line between elevating the opportunity and
| quality-of-life _floor_ v. making everyone the same at the
| expense of individualism and _all_ opportunity (i.e. in favor
| of "sameness") But basic quality of life improvements that
| require public funding are often lobbied against with
| arguments equating raising the floor with "sameness," which
| harms pretty much everyone.
|
| Hence a dwindling middle class etc
| RangerScience wrote:
| > There's a fine line
|
| I don't think that's the case, not at all. I _do_ think it
| 's easy to think you're doing the first when you're not,
| and I do think it's easy to make the first look like the
| second, particularly in scarcity-based circumstances, or by
| "counting the outcome" differently.
|
| I'm interested in hearing why _you_ think that 's the case,
| tho.
|
| To be clear, I'm _not_ arguing that the second (call it
| "forced equalization") can't or doesn't happen - I'm
| arguing _against_ it being similar enough to opportunity
| elevation (good word choice btw!) that there 's merely a
| fine line between them.
| eganist wrote:
| > I'm interested in hearing why you think that's the
| case, tho.
|
| It's a good question, and in hindsight I can see why it
| wouldn't be obvious.
|
| Basically: because the two are part of an equality
| gradient where one end is effectively an opportunity
| lottery with the worst odds and the other end is
| "sameness", and where a society draws the line
| (manifesting as parties with their positions, which of
| course means there can be more than one line to dice up
| the gradient a bit) depends on a whole host of factors.
| Culture, experiences, etc.
|
| Your points above largely support the Gradient argument;
| it's easy to assume teal is blue, or perhaps green, or to
| convince some people blue is green (comically, some
| stoplights come to mind). I'm merely sharing my formula
| for how the line manifests.
|
| I'm guessing we're on the same page and are debating a
| nuance. Lol
| Hankenstein2 wrote:
| Currently Colorado is solidly a blue state and Democratic
| lawmakers don't actually need help. I am in Titone's district
| (the sponser) and the right to repair was broadly supported.
| bobleeswagger wrote:
| I'll be excited for these bills 'passing' when they're not run by
| every rent-seeking grifter before they make it to the public eye.
|
| Y'all have no idea how fucked the US is and you're all _cheering_
| like it 's not happening.
| dang wrote:
| Can you please stop breaking the site guidelines? I don't want
| to ban you again and it looks like you've been doing a
| reasonable job of sticking to them (thank you!), but comments
| like this one, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35602686,
| and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35043900 are the sort
| of flamebait/fulmination/snark that we're trying to avoid here.
| You can make your substantive points without that.
|
| If you wouldn't mind reviewing
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the
| intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
| bobleeswagger wrote:
| Allow me to start by quoting your profile:
|
| _" Conflict is essential to human life"_
|
| Do you ever ask yourself if the folks who report my comments
| just have a hard time with freedom of expression?
|
| Do you ever reach out to the ones that report everything that
| isn't a mainstream opinion? I know they exist. It's the bread
| and butter of the culture here.
|
| Look, I get it. YCombinator isn't a constitutionalist
| organization, or whatever. You are based in America, though.
| I hope you reflect on that. Often.
|
| Let's get to the meat:
|
| If you want to censor people (or your boss wants you to), you
| should just do it. Bullying folks into censoring themselves
| is no bueno, and I am more than happy to call this out as
| exactly that. It's hilariously ironic because I'm the kind of
| person who could absolutely help this community, but you are
| certain I need to be pushed out whenever we meet. How fun to
| push up that hill. Still, I try.
|
| If sharing my thoughts, freely, on topic is "breaking the
| rules," feel free to call out the specific rule I am
| breaking. This "PlEaSe ReAd OuR GuIdElInEs" crap is pretty
| despicable and my time is worth a lot more than that. Your
| time is worth a lot more than that.
|
| If you can't be specific: Please, don't bother. I haven't
| broken any site guidelines with this comment, or the last
| one.
|
| It's a two way street. I'd be grateful if you started taking
| my perspective into account, but I guess that is a lot to
| ask, even though you have had so many opportunities.
| dang wrote:
| I already referenced which rules you're breaking, though
| perhaps I didn't do so clearly enough. Here's the list in a
| more explicit form: you're breaking the rule against
| flamebait (" _Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents._
| "), the rule against fulmination (" _Please don 't
| fulminate._"), the rule against snark (" _Don 't be
| snarky._"), and probably others (such as the rules against
| name-calling and ideological battle) as well.
|
| If you want to make a case for yourself as a principled
| poster of dissident views, you need a better foundation to
| stand on than the GP comment and the other ones I linked
| to, which are just typical flamebait of the sort we're
| trying to avoid here. If you keep posting like that, we're
| going to have to ban you, not because we/I have anything
| against you or your views in the slightest, just because
| we're trying to have an internet forum that doesn't burn
| itself to a crisp. Scorched earth is uninteresting.
| bobleeswagger wrote:
| For the record, you don't reference any rules when you do
| your little schtick. It has clearly happened more than
| once for me, but I've seen it done to plenty of others.
| Don't present yourself as doing something that you
| clearly must be asked for. How ridangculous. My point is
| that I'm not re-reading guidelines if you cannot give me
| the courtesy of explaining exactly what parts of my
| comment broke what rules. Vagueness doesn't help your job
| in any way. At least you have me here to set a good
| example.
|
| > I already referenced which rules you're breaking,
| though perhaps I didn't do so clearly enough. You're
| breaking the rule against flamebait ("Eschew flamebait.
| Avoid generic tangents."), the rule against fulmination
| ("Please don't fulminate."), the rule against snark
| ("Don't be snarky."), and probably others (such as the
| rule against name-calling) as well.
|
| I believe those are all strict matters of subjectivity, I
| was not flame-baiting, fulminating, or being snarky. I
| also didn't directly call anyone names. I said the
| statement. Do you know something I don't about my
| thoughts on the matter...? Where's the name calling?
|
| > If you want to make a case for yourself as a principled
| poster of dissident views, you need a better foundation
| to stand on than the GP comment and the other ones I
| linked to, which are just typical flamebait of the sort
| we're trying to avoid here.
|
| If you want to be taken seriously as a moderator of this
| site, I'd start by realizing what a bad job you do when
| it comes to matters like this. Another opportunity to
| improve the site drastically, vanquished by you. I know
| my value, I'm happy to wait for someone like you to
| realize how much you're missing it.
|
| Next time I'll just make a comment that backs up the
| ever-present echo chamber, instead of sharing how I
| really feel about the issue. We all know it's what you're
| asking for.
| dang wrote:
| It's part of the social contract here that commenters are
| expected to be familiar with
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and make
| a good faith effort to stick to those rules. It's neither
| long nor hard to read. I don't think it's discourteous or
| too much to ask people to read it if they're going to
| post here, and it's so rare that anyone objects to the
| request that I have to assume the community agrees with
| me about that.
|
| It's hard for me to understand why you're responding so
| combatively because, from my perspective, this is
| entirely routine, bog standard moderation. It's nothing
| personal! You're as welcome here as anyone else, as long
| as you stick to the rules. There's no reason at all why
| you can't make your substantive points within the
| guidelines, and no one's asking you to change your views.
|
| Yes, there's some interpretation involved-that's
| inevitable with moderation--but I'm not interpreting the
| rules in any extreme way, nor any differently than I
| would with any other user, nor with any perverse agenda
| in mind. As I said, we're just trying to have an internet
| forum that doesn't destroy itself. Flamebait leads to
| flamewar; flamewar, if unchecked, leads to conflagration,
| which leads to scorched earth and internet heat death.
| We've been consciously trying to stave off that outcome
| for over 15 years now
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html).
| bobleeswagger wrote:
| Thanks for ignoring most of my critique about the site
| and how you moderate it!
| dang wrote:
| I've tried to respond to everything you said that I
| actually understood. Some of your critique (e.g. the
| "what a bad job you do" paragraph) is too unspecific to
| be answerable. If you want to clarify one or two specific
| points that you feel I didn't reply to, I'd be happy to
| take another crack at it.
| bobleeswagger wrote:
| _" Conflict is essential to human life"_
| dang wrote:
| You added that after I'd already posted my reply to that
| comment. I understand about editing comments - I do it
| all the time as well - but I don't think 'ignoring' is
| the right word for someone missing an after-the-fact
| addition.
|
| Conflict is essential to human life, yes, but that
| doesn't mean everything that people do in conflicts is
| ok. Quite the contrary. Milner's point is that we need to
| figure out how to stay with / tolerate / endure
| conflictual differences _without_ resorting to the things
| that make conflict worse. In internet forum terms, that
| means without resorting to snark, flamebait, swipes, and
| the other things that the HN guidelines ask commenters
| not to do. Allowing the tension of differences without
| lashing out is, I think, the heart of tolerance, and is
| what gives a chance of finding solutions other than
| endless battle. Milner 's point about that seems to me
| profound, original, and directly relevant to HN--that's
| why I put it in my About box.
|
| I don't think that the people who flagged your GP comment
| did so because they have a problem with freedom of
| expression. I know the users who flagged it. I think they
| were simply, and rightly, reacting to the flamebait in
| the comment. It shouldn't be hard to understand why posts
| like "Y'all have no idea how fucked the US is and you're
| all cheering like it's not happening" get flagged here.
|
| Btw, I did respond to this part of your argument already,
| when I said "If you want to make a case for yourself as a
| principled poster of dissident views, you need a better
| foundation to stand on than the GP comment and the other
| ones I linked to, which are just typical flamebait of the
| sort we're trying to avoid."
|
| Have I answered your critique now? I'm not asking if you
| agree with my answer--I'm sure that is too much to hope
| for--but I'm curious to know if you at least feel like
| you got a response.
| gok wrote:
| I'm sure Colorado will be rewarded with cheaper food and more
| efficient agriculture.
| 72f988bf wrote:
| Meanwhile in WA state, the house bill advertised by
| https://washington.repair.org/ has, in its most recent iterations
| (after 02-08-2023, in this list
| https://app.leg.wa.gov/bi/tld/documentsearchresults?biennium...),
| an exemption that magically appeared:
|
| "Exempts manufacturers or distributors of certain medical
| devices, motor vehicles, any power generation or storage
| equipment, or equipment for fueling or charging motor vehicles."
|
| Wondering what type of farmer equipment count as "motor vehicles"
| here, and if tractors are counted or not.
|
| https://lawfilesext.leg.wa.gov/biennium/2023-24/Htm/Bill%20R... :
|
| > (Other) Motor vehicles are not the focus of the bill, but could
| be impacted by the bill, especially for things like touch screens
| in vehicles and electric vehicle chargers. The industry would
| appreciate an exemption to exclude motor vehicles and related
| devices from the scope of the bill
|
| https://lawfilesext.leg.wa.gov/biennium/2023-24/Htm/Bill%20R...
|
| > (Other) There are concerns regarding the definition of digital
| electronic equipment. A clarifying amendment to exclude digital
| electronic equipment in vehicle charging stations would be
| appreciated. New York's right to repair law had similar language.
|
| The list of entities testifying in the "(Other)" category (versus
| "(In support)") is thankfully visible in these docs you only need
| to Ctrl+F for "(Other)".
|
| Also interested people can probably spend time watching the
| videos in
| https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?BillNumber=1392&Year=2023...
| to learn more, such as the few minutes at 2:31:25 in
| https://tvw.org/video/house-appropriations-2023021401/?event...
| JohnFen wrote:
| Damn, talk about largely neutering a bill. It shows how much
| contempt many manufacturers have for their customers.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| Totally, and in my experience it's above a certain level in
| the company, below that level the employees have pride and
| care about their customers because they are them and can
| relate to them, above a certain level they are not users of
| their own products, cant relate to regular people and then a
| different dynamic takes over.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| It happens when stock compensation is greater than wage
| compensation. This shifts the incentive from pleasing
| customers to pleasing shareholders.
| Groxx wrote:
| Politicians too
| cronix wrote:
| And the contempt the politicians have for their voters who
| actually put it into law, which is more egregious imho. I
| don't necessarily blame an industry for trying to get things
| in bills that benefit their industry, but I do blame the
| politicians who actually make it a reality over the interests
| of their citizens and then a governor who signs it into law.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Yes, the politicians are also bad actors here. But I also
| absolutely blame industries for trying to get things like
| this into law.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| Apathetic and ignorant voters share the blame, as do our
| education system and media.
| dotancohen wrote:
| > as do our education system
|
| What do you think is the purpose of the education system,
| that blame might fall on it?
| pmoriarty wrote:
| civics education, critical thinking, math, science, and
| humanities education all have an impact on how and if
| people understand and get involved in issues that affect
| the population and the world, politics, etc...
|
| It's a lot easier to manipulate and misinformed people
| when the lack a basic education in these fields.
| atkailash wrote:
| [dead]
| passwordoops wrote:
| I wouldn't say the contempt for customers is conscious. It's
| more a single-minded focus on revenue maximization, leading
| to an obscene effort to defend against any percieved threats
| to that revenue maximization, that results in what looks like
| contempt... When you only care about one thing, nothing else
| matters.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| It's two sides of the same coin, no?
| andjd wrote:
| This is potentially an advantage for the Colorado bill, which
| (I think?) specifically targets right-to-repair for
| farmers/farm equipment. When you only target one industry, that
| industry can't say "give us an exception, the bill will still
| be fine."
| ortusdux wrote:
| "We are worried this manufacturing bill might affect vehicle
| touch screen and electric charging technology. Lets exempt the
| entire auto industry, the single largest manufacturing sector
| in the country, that represents 3% of the US GDP."
|
| Who's bill is this?
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| Thankfully, most automakers do make diagnostic
| tools/parts/info available to everyone (due to Massachusetts'
| 2012 right to repair law). The automakers don't really mind
| because more users licensing that software is more revenue.
| If anyone cares in that industry, it's the dealers.
| yupyup54133 wrote:
| What gets missed in this discussion is that John Deere and other
| large machine manufactures offset the purchase price of these
| machines with the expected cost of maintenance for the lifetime
| of the machine. This lets business owners (in this case farmers)
| obtain financing for machines that might in other situations be
| difficult to obtain. In other words, these large machine
| manufactures are taking on part of the cost to "finance" these
| machines because in the past other financial institutions have
| been reluctant to do so.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| There is _nothing_ in the JD tractors that cannot be
| accomplished with open source. Nothing.
|
| Most recently I saw it as retrofit in a Workmaster 60. It had
| not only engine control, but lane tracking, soil sampling, and
| more. Al kinds of cameras, relays, and stuff. It was a
| Frankenstein's dream, but it worked.
|
| The cost offset justification is horse lemons. Much of JD's
| smarts come from off the shelf code and material, including
| open source.
| celestialcheese wrote:
| Even worse - john deere uses open source code, and doesn't
| honor its licenses.
|
| https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2023/mar/16/john-deere-gpl-
| vi...
| mountainofdeath wrote:
| That makes sense. Perhaps go to the full SaaS model like Rolls-
| Royce did for jet engines with "Power by the hour" where you
| lease the engine on a per flight-hour basis with all
| maintenance included.
| flangola7 wrote:
| They did what now?
| GaveUp wrote:
| I'd argue that's a sign that John Deere is just out to maximize
| their profits at the expense of everyone else. Plenty of
| evidence out there to support that. Sure, any company's goal is
| to maximize profits to some degree, but instead of manipulating
| the market to extract additional money target a product to what
| the market can afford. If a market can't afford the product the
| problem isn't the market, it's the product. Instead Deere has
| has manipulated the market to extract money the market can't
| sustain.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| overall, the economy is not "fair" by most measures.. older
| industries do not get new influx of dollars and talent..
| people only want to pay so much for a commodity product.
|
| ... far from defending John Deere, instead realize that this
| is an example of a truly "political" problem.. the needs and
| wants of direct stakeholders are vastly one-sided, compared
| to the outputs over time for the rest of society.
| JohnFen wrote:
| If that's the business model manufacturers want to follow,
| surely it could be done more honestly by requiring a service
| contract in exchange for financing or a reduced initial price.
| jackmott42 wrote:
| Would be cheaper than doing work to make the thing non self
| repairable as well.
| rkagerer wrote:
| >> _What gets missed in this discussion is that John Deere and
| other large machine manufacture[r]s offset the purchase price
| of these machines with the expected cost of maintenance for the
| lifetime of the machine. This lets business owners (in this
| case farmers) obtain financing for machines that might in other
| situations be difficult to obtain._
|
| That would be fine and dandy if there were a *choice* to
| discount the price in exchange for the reduced degree of
| ownership. (And if they were decent folks, once equity had been
| fully paid off they would unlock everything).
|
| The reality is nothing more than rent-seeking MBA bastards
| trying to improve their own bottom line.
|
| It's dangerous when companies get into the financing business
| with their products and dictate the terms in user-hostile ways
| for which you have zero bargaining power. You wind up with
| problems like phones you can't transfer to another provider and
| cars that want to lock you out if you're late on a payment.
|
| As consumers our best way to fight this bullshit is to just say
| NO, and stop buying products that are encumbered with such
| shenanigans.
|
| It's one reason I never buy my phone from the same company that
| sells my service. I hold the unorthodox view they have no
| business being device resellers, and I wish they just stuck to
| selling me airtime and focused on being good at that (fast
| speeds, good coverage, network capacity, customer service,
| etc). Instead they load products up with bloatware, and over
| time poisoned the incentives of manufacturers to prioritize
| their interests over my own user experience. In any event I
| find better deals and truly unlocked units off eBay, usually
| from a region of the world where the model supports the ROM I
| prefer to use.
|
| Unfortunately it's becoming harder in practice to locate
| alternative supply, and not everyone is in a position to make
| this principled choice. Some can't afford it, but most of us
| are ambivalent and just want to get a phone and get on with our
| lives.
|
| A traditional financing outfit could care less about
| restricting what features you can use on your product or who
| you're allowed to pay to fix or upgrade it (as long as the
| repairs are competent, which is justifiable seeing as they are
| part-owners, and such conditions are all lifted once you buy
| them out). While I dislike government dictating relationships
| between businesses and consumers, I feel like there should be
| anti-compete laws to keep some degree of separation between
| corporations "product" and "financing" arms to avoid customer-
| harming conflicts of interest. Particularly when that
| corporation is the manufacturer. There's just too much
| temptation for them to degrade toward the direction I described
| above, and in practice not enough market diversity for
| consumers to fight back in other ways.
|
| ____
|
| _Edit: Quoted portion of your post so folks who can 't see the
| text of deleted comments have some context._
| sigden wrote:
| I believe the point was they _are_ offering the reduced price
| as-is. What they aren 't offering is a higher priced variant
| where have you have the right to repair.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Right, but they're never going to sell the "you will own
| everything and we will be pissed" version of the tractor.
| Because the value to the consumer for being able to repair
| what they own is less than the control premium that
| companies are willing to pay in order to lock people into
| branded repair. Furthermore, providing you the actual
| repairability often requires re-engineering the product to
| support it. Like, I don't think most people would pay
| _just_ to have, say, Apple get rid of the iPhone 's Face ID
| lock and nothing else. They want an actually repairable
| phone.
|
| A similar problem happens with advertising. Theoretically I
| should be able to pay for first-party ad block from every
| site and social platform I visit. In practice the value
| that a larger ad inventory commands is always greater than
| the small fractions of people who would pay X/mo for an ad-
| free version of that service, minus however much it costs
| to maintain the ad-free option. Why serve a niche that cuts
| into your bottom line?
|
| The few exceptions to the above that I can think of largely
| prove the rule:
|
| * Framework and Fairphone are able to market repairable
| phones and laptops. In this case, they aren't actually
| charging a repairability premium over an existing product,
| they're just selling into higher-end markets. Repairability
| is built into both the product and the pricing in ways that
| aren't separable - you wouldn't be able to sell a cheaper
| Framework that isn't repairable.
|
| * YouTube sells ad-free access, but this is mainly because
| online video ad revenue has cratered badly. Advertising is
| a moat that keeps YouTube _out_ of profitability, not in
| it.
|
| * Twitter tries to sell ad-free, except it's "less ads",
| and mostly exists because Elon desperately needs to justify
| how much money he spent on buying the crack factory he was
| addicted to.
|
| Whether or not repairability commands a _premium_ or having
| everything locked down comes with a _discount_ is
| immaterial. Consumers are not in a position to actually
| realize said discount or pay said premium. Because it 's
| not a matter of consumer choice. It's a matter of control.
| We (the MBAs) put shit in the product you were going to buy
| anyway, and it isn't immediately causing you to run to the
| hills, so we win.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Where is the proof that this results in lower price of
| machines?
|
| You are truing to justify a straight forward cash grab
| kube-system wrote:
| If they want to move product, they're going to have to do that
| anyway. The auto industry still subsidizes loans through their
| own lending operations even though we have Magnuson-Moss which
| allows people to go to non-manufacturer affiliated mechanics.
| malshe wrote:
| This part caught my eye:
|
| Manufacturers and dealerships raised concerns that providing
| tools and information to farmers would allow equipment owners to
| illegally crank up the horsepower and bypass emissions controls
| -- putting operator safety and the environment at risk.
|
| These are not serious arguments, are they?
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| Performance tuning (horsepower) and bypassing emissions
| shouldn't be possible by the approved technicians anyway. From
| my experience, those capabilities are reserved for an
| engineering tool, not a diagnostics/repair tool. So, those
| don't seem like legit arguments to me.
|
| One safety concern for untrained technicians is the possibility
| of activating motors, and other circuits during the repair
| process without ensuring those things are safe to operate in
| their repair/disassembled state. So, there is a legit safety
| argument, but that's true for many tools that are sold at the
| local hardware store.
| skinkestek wrote:
| For at least some cars, benchmarking / tuning software seems
| to be widely available even for unapproved (it seemed to me)
| technicians.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| No, none of the lockouts were actually intended to prevent
| farmers from rolling coal in their tractors. Also, I'm not sure
| why a farmer would _want_ to roll coal. But since rolling coal
| is a thing that people occasionally do, it 's a useful
| boogeyman.
|
| Serialized parts don't prevent you from defeating emissions
| controls anyway - there's plenty of low-tech ways to tamper
| with sensors to do the same thing. Even the theft prevention[0]
| benefits are limited, because the chip with the serial codes on
| it can be desoldered and resoldered onto a new board.
|
| [0] i.e. if someone were to chop-shop your phone or tractor. It
| happens.
| dotancohen wrote:
| Roll coal? Would that be a dangerous term to search for, or
| should I play ignoramus and ask here?
| fanatic2pope wrote:
| Perfectly SFW example here:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2G44D7_p50
| Arrath wrote:
| A practice typically done by rednecks with their diesel
| pickup trucks, tweaking the ECU and fuel profiles run the
| engine overly rich so the exhaust billows out thick black
| clouds (thus, "rolling coal"), particularly when they rev
| the engine.
| jutrewag wrote:
| Disgusting. I just watched some videos and it seems to be
| mostly used as a soft attack on bicyclists,
| environmentalists, pedestrians, people on the left etc.
| Some "anti-environmentalists" were literally sticking
| their face right next to the exhaust while it was rolling
| coal to make a point lol. That'll show them.
| malshe wrote:
| Thanks for the explanation. I did not know rolling coal was a
| thing. But it clearly looks like a boogeyman
| naikrovek wrote:
| lots of vendors sell tractors across a line which all have the
| same engine, but whose horsepower is limited by the ECU
| according to the actual model that you purchase.
|
| it allows for manufacturers to greatly simplify manufacturing
| requirements and lower costs, and it allows farmers to buy the
| tractor they need today and to grow into upgrades as they need
| them, without the downtime or expense of an engine swap if they
| need horsepower later.
|
| manufacturers are afraid that the tools they would be required
| to provide could allow someone to "upgrade" their engine for
| free, but that's not what right to repair is about, and I would
| be surprised if a law required that this be possible.
|
| so it's a legit concern if you compare what's being done in
| other areas of consumer electronics and you are afraid of that
| happening to your stuff, but in reality it is not much of a
| concern.
|
| the main problem for tractor manufacturers is that new
| regulations require them to spend money in order to be in
| compliance with those regulations. money that was not budgeted
| and which affects earnings reports and changes work priorities
| within a company, and the desire to avoid regulations which
| require expenditure of any kind is what is drives the
| motivation of every company that resists right to repair
| efforts.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| No. "But they could do something illegal with the thing they
| need to do their job" is not a good argument.
|
| These tools aren't being used to work on skateboards or jet
| skis, these tools are being used to fix a tractor so the farmer
| can do their job.
|
| One could think of a ton of illegal things a welder could be
| used for, but we aren't taking welding tools away from welders
| are we?
| jimhefferon wrote:
| Good for farmers. What about others?
| kwiens wrote:
| We have introduced bills in 28 states so far this year. Some
| are ag, some are medical, some are consumer electronics
| focused. Making very good progress.
| dd36 wrote:
| Why must they be so narrow?
| TheFreim wrote:
| It's easier to pass, I believe.
|
| If you made a sweeping all encompassing "right to repair"
| bill you would then be targeted by every single group which
| opposes right to repair, if you target agriculture or
| medical areas you are likely to only primarily receice
| heavy opposition from a segment rather than a large swath
| of industries.
|
| Narrow bills are easier to understand and explain. They do
| one thing and they do it right rather than trying to solve
| every problem.
|
| A narrow bill has less of a target. If you have a large
| bill there might be one small element which some politician
| couldn't vote for for various reasons, reduce the scale and
| you reduce the target area.
|
| Those are just a few ideas, not an expert in this but these
| seemed to make sense. Let me know what you think.
| [deleted]
| fnordian_slip wrote:
| I was mildly interested in the article based on the title,
| because the right to repair is imho necessary in many areas of
| life. But I am most definitely not interested enough to do the
| trivial work to bypass the " This content is not available in
| your country/region." message.
|
| If you can't figure out how to serve your content to users
| without extreme tracking (at least I assume that the reason for
| this message is the consumer protection found in the EU), then
| your content can't be that important.
| pie_flavor wrote:
| You can provide them with your email and they will send you a
| newsletter. That counts as storing user data and would require
| them to have to deal with the GDPR behemoth. Compliance costs a
| lot of time and money. Or you could just block EU users, which
| are not going to be reading a lot of Buffalo local news.
| Categorizing it as just extreme tracking is disingenuous.
| _a9 wrote:
| Like another commenter mentioned, using archive.today bypasses
| most paywalls and blocks.
|
| A trick I always use is to just append the url to
| archive.today[0] to get a page with no ads and bloat. You could
| also make a bookmarklet to make it a 1-click thing. Sometimes
| it might not be archived so you will have to click 'archive
| this url' to make one, but people are usually quick to archive
| articles that are posted here
|
| [0]: https://archive.today/https://www.wivb.com/news/colorado-
| bec...
| neon_electro wrote:
| You can read it here: https://archive.ph/elD6M
| Clubber wrote:
| It's not that important for the EU. The summary is John Deere
| would put chips in their tractors that were aware if you
| replaced a part. If you replaced that part, the tractor would
| brick until you took it to the dealership to update the
| computer.
| test6554 wrote:
| Pitting big business interests against rural/agricultural
| interest. Seems like a potential wedge issue for US conservatives
| if I've ever seen one.
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