John Deere owners will get the right to repair equipment under FTC settlement

https://apnews.com/article/john-deere-right-to-repair-agriculture-equipment-cb7514ffedb95c130a976af661f2bc02

by djoldman • 14 days ago

1397 302 14 days ago

apnews.com

frollogaston2• 14 days ago

Good. It's a tractor, not some tiny glued-together tech gadget.

dugite-code• 14 days ago

Shouldn't we be able to repair a tiny glued togethee tech gadget as well?

sublinear• 14 days ago

This is only getting this level of scrutiny because it's related to big ag, and John Deere is the worst example.

They're a political football now and it's more of a feel good measure.

frollogaston2• 13 days ago

Nah, there's a line somewhere

taurath3• 14 days ago

Deere must pay $1 million collectively to the five states for antitrust enforcement costs and will be subject to strict compliance oversight for the next 10 years.

$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.

snypher3• 14 days ago

probably $10 billion in profit

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.

syntaxing3• 14 days ago

Not OP but I went through some data and John Deere makes 5B NET profit for the worse years. 10B for their best (only looking back 10 years). I wouldn’t be surprised these anticompetitive (as in anti “consumer”) has netted them north of 10B.

yard2010• 14 days ago

In 2025 John Deere net income was $4,998m. $1m is 0.02% of that. They make it in less than 2 days. Imagine making money in an unlawful way for years then paying only 2 days worth of salary.

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/DE/deere/cash-flow...

taurath3• 14 days ago

I made an educated guess that John Deere is roughly the size of Monsanto so in the tens of billions category, which is usually enough revenue to play really dirty with senators, regulators, lobbyists, and customers.

acters• 14 days ago

The biggest loss to them is the right to repair stuff. They will be still making it exceptionally difficult to repair their stuff, and might even dip into exotic materials to make cheaper parts fail more often, but this is a bigger loss to them in the long run.

Unfortunately, I hate that they got away with such a low AF fine.

jauntywundrkind• 14 days ago

They only have to behave for 10 years before they can go back to being hostile parasitic vultures.

bigfudge• 14 days ago

Can someone explain to me why any farmer buys JD? It seems like $1000 oil filters is something farmers would notice and talk about in that community?

ashdksnndck• 14 days ago

This is a negotiated settlement. The FTC agreed to settle without Deere admitting wrongdoing. Deere did give up something far more valuable than the $1M by agreeing to the right to repair. You can argue that instead of accepting the settlement, FTC should have taken the risk of going to trial. But Deere agreed to change their practices without that risk.

naikrovek• 13 days ago

there has not been $10B in profit solely or partially because of a lack of a right to repair. There's no way.

ggoo3• 14 days ago

Bananas that stuff like this needs to get litigated in our society - if you asked 100 random people "should farmers be able to repair their equipment", you would get 100 yes's.

mothballed9• 14 days ago

Until you tell them how easy it makes it to bypass emissions restrictions. My tractor was shipped with a screw turned down to <25hp to bypass emissions controls. I could turn that screw back up and have a ~35hp tractor, but of course, that would be illegal and make lots of environmentalists cry.

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.

triceratops• 14 days ago

I don't understand, are 35hp tractors illegal under emissions rules? Then why even manufacture them and cripple them?

snypher3• 14 days ago

If we could get our operators to just run regen when they should, it wouldn't be an issue. They don't mind filling DEF and we don't mind paying for it.

hatsix• 14 days ago

Right to repair doesn't change any of that. Farmers were adjusting that screw anyways, that was the entire point. I'm not mad at farmers for doing it, I'm mad at John Deere at cheating the system.

q3k• 14 days ago

Doing that is already illegal and should be enforced using appropriate tools. We shouldn't be relying on unrelated technical measures to enforce laws.

notamario2• 14 days ago

So replacing a part requires DRM but defeating environmental protections is as easy as turning a screw?

Surely I can’t be understanding that correctly given your overall position.

xgulfie2• 14 days ago

Right to repair doesn't mean they'll get the ability to install custom firmware for example, it just means they'll get the ability to flash it with the signed, official firmware. It doesn't mean they can DPF delete, it means they can install a new one if the old one cracks.

atoav3• 14 days ago

Yes? But if you want to solve that issue locking down the tech is not the solution. The solution is to have an inspector show up unannounced and give you a hefty fine if that screw is set incorrect.

So if that is really an issue, apply the correct fix and don't push the blame on environmentalists.

tancop• 14 days ago

tractor emissions are nothing compared to all the normal cars and planes. the long term solution is scaling up synthetic fuels or solid state batteries but its just not a big deal today.

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.

yason• 14 days ago

Emission controls are the best scapegoat for Deere and others to lock down systems as tight as possible for profit. They don't care about emissions, the farmers don't care about emissions, the emissions happen on a fscking large field out of nowhere instead of rush hour city traffic, and tractors usually run at high power which makes a cleaner combustion with less soot (but higher nox): all in all, the world doesn't become a better place because of farm equipment DPF/SCR filtering. But emissions are the perfect mandate for manufacturers to make it impossible for the owners to own the equipment.

Cthulhu_• 14 days ago

Tractors (and farms) should be subject to regular emissions checks anyway, just like cars etc. Both to check for intentional tampering and wear & tear issues causing excess emissions. The party making the change is responsible for the violation.

...which has a neat overlap with e.g. chat control and online age verification.

Gigachad• 14 days ago

Because they don't ask it like that. It'll be "Woke communists want to confiscate the money of enterprising businesses." Combined with some AI generated video of the right to repair supporters laughing in an evil way or something.

toomuchtodo• 14 days ago

"Don't you believe in free markets and capitalism? It's their right to maximize profits." /s

userbinator• 14 days ago

The same side can also say "Woke environmentalist communists want to stop you from tuning your vehicles or rolling coal." That will probably get even more support, given what I've seen of the political leanings of farmers and RtR supporters in general.

GuB-42• 14 days ago

Except it is not the right question in a market economy like ours.

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.

ggoo3• 14 days ago

If you asked 100 people which question is more important, yours or mine, I don't think I'd get 100, but I'd probably get 90+. IMO, asking the dollar value of our rights isn't the "right" questions to be asking ourselves.

ajkjk• 14 days ago

It is the right question to ask. The idea that moral questions should have a market value is itself a moral failing, so assuming you want moral principles to rule over the design of your economy (which.. you'd better; otherwise slavery is permissible), you should not allow such things to be up for debate.

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.

AnthonyMouse2• 14 days ago

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 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.

BrenBarn• 14 days ago

The right question is "what is the value (in dollars) of the right for farmers to repair their equipment".

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.

mghackerlady• 13 days ago

"What is the value (in dollars) of the minimum wage", "What is the value (in dollars) of emancipation", "What is the value (in dollars) of owning your things"

MarkMarine• 14 days ago

Great news, the fine is so small doesn’t matter, but curing the wrong does. My hope is this standard will apply to modern cars as well, repair manuals and the software tools to interact with the cars are also heavily restricted by the manufacturers.

aceki• 14 days ago

As much as I hope this is a turning point, I’m not holding my breath.

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.

ourmandave• 14 days ago

The suit was brought be Dems in a 3-2 commission vote in Jan just before Trump took office. I'm not sure he cares since he's not running again and I don't see a way he can use it for graft.

macintux• 14 days ago

I'm not sure he cares since he's not running again

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.

arwhatever• 14 days ago

We’ve got to be sure the manufacturers get a solid decade or two to profit off of these schemes, so that future manufacturers know it will be worthwhile perpetrating future schemes.

brikym2• 14 days ago

"...Deere will now be required to make diagnostic and repair tools available to equipment owners and independent repair shops..."

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.

snypher3• 14 days ago

Having operated a ~1995 7800 with flat glass and a ~2015 7270 with curved, I know which one I'm picking.

Are automobiles using curved windshields so they have a stranglehold on the replacement windshield market?

Your example doesn't pass my sniff test.

e44858• 14 days ago

How is a curved window better on a tractor?

dreambuffer• 14 days ago

There's a cognitive dissonance on this site where everyone claims to hate this attempt at regulatory capture, yet they would do it too if it was their tech company and call it a "moat", and many are actively working towards that.

esseph2• 14 days ago

Two different groups: the hackers, and the money people.

j2kun• 14 days ago

I heard someone say recently that one reason tech sucks is because the sociopathic narcissists domesticated the hackers.

stevemk14ebr• 14 days ago

I wouldn't do it, your point is now disproven

trollbridge2• 14 days ago

I haven't done this with any of our technology. Of course, I'm also not as profitable as some companies and have much less control over trying to lock my customers in.

This does mean my YC application is far less likely to be accepted.

jdrmag• 14 days ago

There's no cognitive dissonance. If it's not legislated against you're just being naive and kneecapping yourself by not abusing the rules. End of story.

sobani• 14 days ago

You might be a victim of the Goomba Fallacy[0] where you're seeing two opposing opinions from two distinct groups of people, but since those are expressed on the same site, it seems as if 'the site' is contradicting itself.

[0] https://knowyourmeme.com/editorials/guides/what-is-the-goomb...

bluesign• 14 days ago

Doesn't Goomba fallacy require at least one opinion should be minority?

izacus3• 14 days ago

Just because someone wrote a post on a site with orange banner it doesn't mean they agree with other people that wrote posts on the site with the orange banner.

Let's learn the concept of "different people have different opinions", shall we?

netcan• 14 days ago

Is this cognitive dissonance, or is this just people being normal?

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.

Cider9986• 14 days ago

Shout out to Louis Rossmann for doing a ton of work on Right to repair.

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.

https://bounties.fulu.org/bounties/ring-video-doorbells

aj_icracked• 14 days ago

I agree with this. Louis has done a ton in the last decade and deserves thanks for sure.

Papazsazsa• 14 days ago

The man is an icon.

Reminds me of old internet, when activists we doing it for The User.

cobbzilla• 14 days ago

Reminds me of a line from Tron, where the other programs ask Flynn in disbelief:

You fight for the users?

mnadkvlb• 14 days ago

he is one of the very few people who inspires me today.

gleenn2• 14 days ago

Extra props for tilting thw windmill that is tech behemoths funneling data to government agencies without oversight. Aiming at Amazon is certainly something not to be taken lightly.

frogulis• 14 days ago

Your "tilting at the windmill" phrasing is interesting. I don't get the sense from your tone otherwise that you disapprove of it or think it's pointless.

srejk• 14 days ago

I appreciate everything he stands for - he's on the right side of just about every issue. I just wish he could make more succinct and effective videos.

edoceo• 14 days ago

Sometimes the problems are so complex and entangled it's hard to fit solutions into sound bites (vis: taxes, healthcare(USA) and apparently product "ownership".

Deere is a long way from the user accessibility of the Model A or B.

cgyvbunji• 14 days ago

Personally I think if he did that people wouldn't pay attention. My experience is that when you complain to people about digital rights they just glaze over unless you walk them through all the ins and outs and the implications.

Abishek_Muthian• 14 days ago

His video style is just fine, him and his cats. I don't mind the expletives as the people/companies he uses it against deserves them but I had instances where I couldn't show his videos to some elderly people because of the expletives.

yesimahuman• 14 days ago

I love his videos. He makes you feel like we can actually fight back and win. If he changed his style I think something great would be lost

messh• 14 days ago

The videos work because they deliver also some entertainment. The signal that Louis really cares is strong in them

amelius• 14 days ago

After this he should work on "Right to buy products that don't work against the user".

stogot• 13 days ago

Does YouTube monetization force creatives to do these longer videos to earn more?

darksim9056• 13 days ago

You really want more succinct videos than what he already makes? Although they may seem long in a modern day where people have the attention span of a gnat -- his videos are fantastic and to the point. He literally ignores a lot more complexities and drama surrounding a lot of issues. Does he ramble sometimes? Maybe, but the talks so fast at times that the video is over before I've even gotten half way through with my own research. And this is from someone who has followed him since he posted videos on spinning on your own VoIP server and when he was still based in NYC.

de6u99er• 14 days ago

Wouldn't it be easier to build an open hardware/source alternative to Ring cameras.

thevillagechief• 14 days ago

The point is there are already many millions of Ring cameras installed. Most people aren't just going to rip them out for open source ones.

inigyou2• 14 days ago

Why would someone buy one? It would be three times as expensive, harder to set up, and require a self-hosted video server.

letmeinhere• 13 days ago

Design and manufacture open hardware for 25k?

alnwlsn• 13 days ago

The other home security camera companies already make cameras in a doorbell form factor.

Point is to do what you want with the hardware you supposedly "own".

maldev• 14 days ago

I wish he wasn’t such an ass. Had a never meet your heroes moment outside defcon a few years ago. Not a friendly person and went from big fan to disdain when I hear his name.

Balgair• 14 days ago

I think it's a trait with these types that makes them what they are to begin with. They don't just turn it on and off for the bad guys, they're like this all the time with everyone.

Never meet your heroes is just great advice, same as it ever was.

gosub1002• 14 days ago

I've never met him just can't stand how bitterly angry he is / appears to be. He has the anger of someone who is recovering from a beating and plotting his revenge. I don't know if that's how he is normally, or a result of getting thrust into this right to repair. But I'm not going to spend my time watching a jaded, pissed off guy.

bumby10• 14 days ago

Perhaps disagreeableness is a necessary trait for these kinds of results. Unfortunately, that can is also an innate personality trait rather than something easily turned on/off.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits

everdrive• 13 days ago

Not everyone is pleasant to interact with, but that's not quite the same as whether or not they are a good person. The world's a better place with him around.

darksim9056• 13 days ago

Not to be rude, but what explicitly, made him an ass from your perspective?

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.

ImHereToVote• 13 days ago

"I wish he wasn’t such an ass."

What did he to you to give off that impression?

palata2• 13 days ago

What about Cory Doctorow? I heard about this from him, I don't know Rossmann

NalNezumi• 13 days ago

I feel like Cory Doctorow is trying to tackle a bit broader issue (enshittification) than just right to repair. Rossmann is more specific and hands-on to RoR

trinsic2• 14 days ago

The settlement changes nothing [0]

[0] https://fighttorepair.substack.com/p/this-doesnt-break-the-m...

foolswisdom• 14 days ago

Is this not about a separate class action lawsuit?

ryukoposting2• 14 days ago

It is, yes.

doginasuit2• 14 days ago

The very concept of IP was a mistake. I understand it helped make a lot of work possible. But virtually nothing useful came from nothing, and the reservoir of human knowledge belongs to all of us. Unless you are Isaac Newton, you took a good idea and made it better or more applicable. Pretending like you own it is just dishonest.

If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.

--Isaac Newton

tialaramex• 14 days ago

Intellectual property is a broad swathe of different rights and they each have some merits and are worth considering separately.

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.

doginasuit2• 12 days ago

Very good analysis! I generally agree, especially about patents being the most abused. Even still, I wouldn't completely get rid of them without some kind of replacement, they've made a fair amount of tech possible. Trademarks are downright useful and justified. I'm neutral about whether the grandkids get a free ride. I see artistic expression as the most worthy of some kind of protection, I just think intellectual property is not a great framing for the concept.

josefritzishere• 14 days ago

1 Million isn't enough. The CEO should personally pay 1 million, the Deere corp should have to pay 100 M.

BorisMelnik• 14 days ago

so happy to hear this, I know many farmers that went with other brands or used equipment without chips. most farmers I know just want pure mechanics anyway

xgulfie2• 14 days ago

1 million dollars? Like, less than 1 tractor after financing? How will they recover from this?!

gigel82• 14 days ago

Good, do Apple next.

al_borland• 14 days ago

It was always crazy to me that farm equipment was locked down. I almost understand yuppie buying an E-Class not working on their own car, but a farmer not able to work on his own tractor just felt so wrong. It made me wonder how John Deere was still so popular and seemingly beloved.

silisili2• 14 days ago

Brand name/heritage, and not much competition. I think there are only two US based companies left in business.

hobo1232• 14 days ago

My guess is there a few German or Japanese competitors in the market as well. And buying American is all well and good until you can get a better machine for less somewhere else.

maxhille• 14 days ago

It was always crazy to me that computers were locked down. I almost understand Karen buying an iPhone not coding her own apps, but a dev not able to deploy on their own device just felt so wrong. It made me wonder how Apple was still so popular and seemingly beloved.

ActorNightly• 13 days ago

I wouldn't feel too bad about farmers. These assholes expect socialism in the form of farm subsidies, but then overwhelmingly vote in favor of harming others.

jamienk• 14 days ago

"Right to repair" isn't some kind of little negotiated contract fiddling. A company can't agree to a 5-year right to repair. Right to repair is a normal freedom, like speech, like using everyday objects you buy or make, generally walking around, meeting people, etc. Don't let's get all twisted up here and start thinking some dumb-ass business plan is the starting point in our basic conceptualization of humanity.

tzs• 14 days ago

Right to repair is a normal freedom

Right to try to repair is a normal freedom.

darknavi• 13 days ago

Right to watch five YouTube videos on how to fix my horrid soldering job.

I wouldn't trade it for the world though, we need more tinkering.

jmole• 12 days ago

"Right to not be locked out of performing repairs yourself" doesn't roll off the tongue quite as well.

FloatArtifact• 14 days ago

Thank you all involved! Bring it to our cars next! I'm looking at you, electric vehicles!

smashah• 14 days ago

This should be extended to software We have the Digital Human Right to adversarial interoperability no matter the dimension/interface.

ikidd2• 14 days ago

In the last decade, on a fleet of almost 30 Deere machines from lawnmowers to high-clearance sprayers and combines, I could count on one hand the number of times I've needed the Deere laptop to diagnose a problem to fix it.

Whatarethese• 14 days ago

Well I guess you speak for everyone. Let's ban a persons right to repair.

ikidd2• 13 days ago

It astonishes me how aggressive people are on this issue that have never turned a wrench on a Deere machine.

wileydragonfly• 14 days ago

I’ll believe it when I hear farmers telling me it’s true

shuwix3• 14 days ago

We need same for Lenovo Deere, John Dell ... Soldered RAM's, soldered SSD's lately, batteries which have by purpose just slightly different size not to be interchangeable.

And for mighty HP and their printers, management needs to be put to wall and shot. There's no other solution.

kestiny• 14 days ago

and the car

aitchnyu• 14 days ago

Saw a video of Kia van where the presenter shows of a 3 piece bumper, a food vendor can buy a specific piece if he bashed one corner. Now car bumpers contain sensors and cameras and flush lights and a light hit can cause very expensive damage, and its brushed off with "compared to a 90s car, you can walk away from ...".

gkanai• 14 days ago

Apple too. They solder in the SSDs and memory.

jve2• 14 days ago

It may very well be because of process too.

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.

shuwix3• 14 days ago

Slots arw for upgrades, repair and salvage. Almost no nowadays notebooks with soldered RAM have additional slot. What of RAM takes 2 secocds with slot. Soldering lots of pins or reballing requires specialized equipment and skilled (and expensive) person.

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.

delfugal• 14 days ago

Great Stary. I wish he could go after the large format printer industry. (The really big printing machines). Those machines are locked for service and require service contracts, and you still can't get under the hood. And when the company decides to obsolete the product, customers are thrown out on their backsides.

j45• 14 days ago

It's nice to see enshittification being stopped and reversed.

shevy-java2• 14 days ago

Good. However had, one question still remains: why did the US government not have this automatically put in place in general? The title refers to one company for the most part. The question is why the US government, which assumingly should work for the people, prioritizes private commercial interests over individual ownership models.

MisterMower2• 14 days ago

Fifty years ago the average guy buying a tractor had a family farm with a few hundred acres. Equipment was smaller and had less frills because the John Deeres of the world were catering to those small time customers. There were a lot of them.

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.

solidsnack9000• 13 days ago

It can be in their interest if their model assumes certain revenue from sales and service.

Most brands of cars can be repaired by independent technicians. Toyotas are more valuable because they are reliable -- because they are repaired less often.

MisterMower2• 13 days ago

Buyers discount the equipment price based on the expected cost of repairs, and manufacturers capture more profit when they consistently produce equipment that is more reliable or easier to repair.

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.

mast6footer• 14 days ago

damn

dana321• 14 days ago

That is good news for once

a3w• 14 days ago

Does that enforcibly include tractors the Russian Federation captured in eastern Ukraine?

ursusarcanum• 13 days ago

Now do printers and MacBooks.

jMyles• 13 days ago

Oh I wish I was home, mama

where the bluegrass grows

where the right to repair

is made plain!

CircuitSeuss• 13 days ago

I think it’s important to understand that while this is a win, it’s only a small step.

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.

hunmernop• 13 days ago

Now can we get the same for our TVs and other electronics? We seem to just buy new cheap crap rather than fix what we have. Filling the landfills with toxic metals that seep into our drinking water.

mikewarot• 13 days ago

I've learned that I'm just not cynical enough. Here's the relevant Peter Girnus post[1], he tells the underlying truth through satire.

  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.

https://x.com/gothburz/status/2075211022198096180

invictati• 13 days ago

Why has there not been a class action lawsuit against Cricut for the exact same deceptive and invasive business practices?

Their pen plotters and cutters are unrepairable and their mandatory app doesn't work without an internet connection.

drannex• 12 days ago

just leaving this here: https://hackingisnotacrime.org

paradoxyl• 12 days ago

I demand from our reps a right to privacy and a right to repair and anyone who votes against this is out.

MSkill1• 11 days ago

I've heard it said that the Right to Repair bill that Trump signed actually only applies to exhaust systems and the right to repair to meet environmental protection standards. If that's true, then this is pretty meaningless. Does anyone know the truth?

John Deere owners will get the right to repair equipment under FTC settlement

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