> This project is not a fork of the Unix/Linux sudo project, nor is it a port of that sudo project. Instead, Sudo for Windows is a Windows-specific implementation of the sudo concept.
Seems good but unlikely to accomplish anything. Manufacturers obviously don't want to make third-party repairs easier because they think they'll lose money, so if the EPA says one excuse isn't valid anymore they'll just find another one. This new guidance doesn't ask or even suggest that manufacturers actually do anything, it just says "hey if you want to help your customers repair stuff, we'd be ok with it".
As long as the manufacturer isn't on the hook for a violation of the EPA when the owner modifies their vehicle to be out of spec.
For automobiles, this has been the case - that the owner is responsible the vehicle goes out of spec... and the owner can also do a lot of customization of their vehicle.
For heavy machinery (which tractors fall into), the manufacture is almost always on the hook for any modification that the owner makes.
> Here’s one real-life scenario that Natalie Higgins, vice president of government relations and general counsel for EDA, shared during a recent presentation for the United Equipment Dealers Assn. “An Ohio equipment owner purchased a tractor and then installed a turbocharger on the engine. The tractor owner sustained injuries and then sued both the manufacturer and the equipment dealer, alleging that his injuries were the result of negligence on the part of the manufacturer and dealer. Remember, neither the dealer nor the manufacturer were involved in the turbochargers installation.”
> ...
> And, if you service equipment that has been chipped, the warranty will most likely be denied and you will not be paid for your work. “That can also put your dealership in a sticky situation if technicians in the shop are not conveying to the rest of the dealership what is going in,” says Wareham. F
> Financial consequences can be harsh for not following the law. Under federal law 40 CFR § 89.1006, the penalty for a dealer who removes or renders inoperative emissions controls is subject to a penalty of $32,500 for each violation. Wareham says that one manufacturer of chipping software was initially fined $300,000 by the EPA and then $6 million to ensure future compliance with the Clean Air Act. “The EPA has stated that their intent is to crack down on defeat devices in 2020,” says Wareham.
> A dealer may face liability issues when customers tamper with the equipment they purchased, even if a dealer had nothing to do with the modification. For example, in instances in Ohio and Oregon, customers were injured as a result of modifications and dealers were sued.
But did the tractor owner win the lawsuit? Anybody can sue anybody. Winning is what matters. That anecdote doesn't tell me anything, and the whole article reads as FUD. I wonder if it is paid for by John Deere?
> Whether or not someone is eligible for workers’ compensation depends on their state and the industry they work in. There are no requirements at the federal level that mandate states to have workers’ compensation laws. Nevertheless, every state, except for Texas, requires most employers to carry workers’ compensation insurance. However, the majority of state workers’ compensation laws specifically exclude or limit agricultural employers from the workers’ compensation requirement.
Take note of 42:23 where it goes to who is at fault and the liability for it (the case study starts at 21:21 - jumping to 42:23 you can get the "who is paying for it" in two minutes). The entire video is interesting (if you're interested in product liability for industrial (farm) equipment ... but I can understand someone not wanting to watch an hour long video about it). It boils down to "every piece of farm equipment is dangerous from the insurance perspective and a manufacture allowing unapproved modifications to the equipment is still at fault, even if the modification was made by another party."
Agreed! A fix would be nice. But owning a tractor could get you sued. Going outside could get you sued. Being a good neighbor could get you sued. There's no reason to think that modifying your tractor makes you more likely to get sued. Let alone the dealership.
The very act of existing as a corporation with a lot of money is what makes you a lawsuit magnet. Nothing you can do will prevent that. Trying to prevent people from making modifications to their tractors they bought from you is just as likely to get you sued as not trying to stand in their way.
There are corporations that are well-known to use lawsuits as a way of silencing people. They have lots of money to keep lawyers on the payroll and bankrupt their opponent.
I can see why that regulation would be in place though. I don't want heavy industrial machinery coming with "here's how to make it run faster and stronger but ruin the environment, which you definitely should not do wink wink."
It's a reasonable goal, but I think that one can find better ways to meet that goal than making manufacturers responsible for what the owner of the equipment does with it. That method is just insanely unfair to the manufacturer.
It'll be hard to do because it's like the more restrictive gun laws. It'll never stick so they never take it though court, but they threaten it to get the conduct they want. OEMs have spent huge sums locking down computer systems "because emissions".
The EPA has a ton of ways to expensively scrutinize (heavy on the "screw") oems at their discretion so it doesn't really need to be a serious threat, just a warning.
Same dynamic as local business vs local code enforcers basically.
The CAA allows parties with no standing to sue, to magically have standing to sue, and then have their victims pay lawyers fees (or otherwise go to jail[0]). So there's no need for the EPA to get involved. You can just be sued by, say " Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment" and end up paying unlimited lawyers fees because some guy 300 miles away says you dropped a particle of carbon on them.
> Here’s one real-life scenario that Natalie Higgins, vice president of government relations and general counsel for EDA, shared during a recent presentation for the United Equipment Dealers Assn. “An Ohio equipment owner purchased a tractor and then installed a turbocharger on the engine. The tractor owner sustained injuries and then sued both the manufacturer and the equipment dealer, alleging that his injuries were the result of negligence on the part of the manufacturer and dealer. Remember, neither the dealer nor the manufacturer were involved in the turbochargers installation.”
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This is such a weasley disingenuous argument. First of all, it was a guy's insurance company that sued the tractor manufacturer and the supercharger manufacturer. The guy filed an insurance claim, the insurance company is just suing anyone they can possibly imagine to try to make the quarterly results better.
It was also dismissed under summary judgement because the case is ridiculous on it's face. This was not a case where restricting the right to modify things you own based on possible harm to a corporation was justified.
Quite the opposite, this is a case where a greedy insurance company made a really stupid hail-mary lawsuit to try and recover from a legitimate insurance claim.
The fact that we're repeating this blatant corporate propaganda is frankly embarrassing.
Exactly. My understanding is that the manufacturers interpreted the clean air rules as conveniently requiring them to use digital restrictions management (explicit or even just tacit) to prevent tampering (aka repairing) your own equipment. Low-emissions diesel engines then get hated on for the "EPA requirements", with the immediate bad actor corporations sidestepping blame (as usual). Removing the initial motivation / excuse isn't going to get rid of those digital restrictions, openly document the systems, nor provide the tools required to work on them.
The way this is framed, it doesn't even sound like the goal is to affect this dynamic at all. Rather it's to create a loophole of "temporarily" bypassing emission systems, such that if you delete and get caught you can just pinky swear that it's temporary for a repair that you're about to complete real soon. So the only real goal seems to be implicitly rolling back emissions enforcement across the board.
Actual right to repair action would focus on making it so individuals are able to self-repair the emissions control systems to function as designed. So this really just seems like yet another instance of a lofty idea being abused as cover for the destructionist agenda.
It is not just hate because of EPA requirements. These engines are more complicated and prone to failure. Small time operations can not afford the expensive repairs combined with loss of income during repair downtime.
As a result, only corporations remain or the few remaining owner operators avoid any engine newer than the year ~2000. These older vehicles also have the added benefit of having minimal electronics, sensors, and ECMs.
The "more prone to failure" seems to be driven by some abjectly terrible implementations (eg the notorious Kubota B3350). And it's certainly understandable that someone who knows how to repair things based on mechanical linkages would rebel against digital electronics.
But we're on a technology website. We shouldn't really be scared by a extra sensors, a CAN bus, and an embedded controller - assuming all of these things are openly documented and usable with freedom-preserving systems. In fact we should welcome them, as extra telemetry can help avoid downtime and effect repairs.
I think regardless of implementation, if the added complexity reduces reliability and introduces forced failure modes it's reasonable for people to avoid these systems altogether. For example, EGRs causing fouling or DEF engine throttling.
This may be true for our group, but I know numerous blue collar workers at the poverty line struggling due to these systems. Corporations / manufacturers have no incentive to make these systems more accessible. Even if they did, more complex -> more expensive to repair.
> Corporations / manufacturers have no incentive to make these systems more accessible
That's the exact point of actual right to repair legislation.
> Even if they did, more complex -> more expensive to repair.
No, this is not true as a general rule. For example if problems can be diagnosed easier (or even ahead of full failure) with digital controls, this brings down the cost of maintenance. Or if the hardware shrinks in complexity while the software grows in complexity more, this can still be a win as individual bits of a digital controller aren't likely to break down.
But on this topic we aren't actually talking about manufacturers being able to resume production of the previous non-digital engines. This would require actually repealing the Clean Air Act, and probably even directly mandating that manufacturers remove such systems from their current designs.
Rather the only thing this declaration seemingly does is remove one excuse manufacturers have for having locked down their systems with digital restrictions, with the goal of allowing customers to "disable" those extra controls "temporarily" - not really an actual win for any of the repairability or cost issues you bring up.
This is the same fundamental dynamic I've observed in all of the destructionist policies - large print that performatively throws a bone to those suffering, but the actual details don't even try to unwind the poor dynamic - never mind attempting constructive solutions (in this case, straightforward right to repair legislation).
> And it's certainly understandable that someone who knows how to repair things based on mechanical linkages would rebel against digital electronics.
They're pretty right to be incensed that something that used to take one skill set now takes two.
>. We shouldn't really be scared by a extra sensors, a CAN bus, and an embedded controller - assuming all of these things are openly documented and usable with freedom-preserving systems
At what cost? For what benefit to the user?
>. In fact we should welcome them, as extra telemetry can help avoid downtime and effect repairs.
Oh, great, so the someone at the OEM can decide my model correlates with a higher $$ use and jack up parts cost. I don't trust you not to do this and I don't even own a tractor. Someone in middle america who's been on the receiving end of the raw deal that the "educated" classes have been peddling for the past 40yr has even less reason to allow your telemetry.
If you had bothered to pause grinding your axe, you might have read the part of my comment where I said "assuming all of these things are openly documented and usable with freedom-preserving systems"
I am not opposed to this (that's why I said "this seems good"), just wanted to point out that I don't believe their claim that "Today’s action will not only expand consumer choice and provide opportunities for farmers but also encourage the use of newer farm equipment". I do think this won't accomplish anything but that doesn't mean I think they shouldn't have done it.
Most planes broadcast their position using ADS-B, and some websites collect these signals and visualize them so you can track flight paths. Somebody broadcast a fake flight path that draws a picture of JD Vance on these sites: https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=adfdf9&lat=26.678&lon=-...
To expand on that, those websites mostly operate on random volunteers self hosting a (starting price) fairly cheap receiver and antenna with an open source stack that feeds the ADS-B data to the website operator in exchange for nothing or free "premium" benefits.
The spoofer could have just sent them fake location information drawing an image using latitude, longitude and altitude for color (in the default view flight paths have different colors based on the altitude of the plane at that point in time).
They could have built an antenna and actually broadcast this data, but that would be a lot more effort and most likely some form of crime.
Also, I'm willing to bet this guy isn't reading Cicero in Latin either, he's reading translations that were probably done by someone who went to Cambridge or Oxford.
That's more than 260 million people, and it doesn't include kids. I imagine a lot of the people in Barnes & Noble are kids or are shopping for their kids. I do also find it a bit surprising to find bookstores busy - I read a lot but it's nearly all ebooks or audiobooks, but if even a small percentage of readers like the feel of a physical book, that's enough to keep the stores full.
Obviously a lot of this was exaggerated for effect (dare I say attempting to entertain the reader, even though reading for entertainment is apparently obsolete), but I still couldn't agree with any of it. Clearly "everyone alive today has the same perspective" is not true because I can't really imagine having the perspective of the author.
> The average ancient historian led troops, tutored a prince, governed a province, advised a king, made a fortune, fell from favor, was exiled, and buried 7 of their 10 children.
No they didn't? I'm sure there are exceptions but I'm not even sure what exceptional case you're trying to use as the "average". The average ancient historian was a highly educated man who wrote a lot and corresponded with other highly educated people. "advised a king", sure, but it's not that unusual in modern times for academics to be appointed as advisors to world leaders. Arthur Schlesinger Jr. is a famous case in the US.
> And worse, they all passed the same tests at the same institutions.
Just read a book by someone who didn't go to one of the colleges you don't like? If you're worried about groupthink because all the historians were friends and worked together, you're going to have a much bigger problem finding independent ancient historians.
> Meanwhile Xenophon was an Athenian student of Socrates
Yeah man exactly, they were all students of Socrates, is that not the same problem?
> Thankfully it’s still possible to find people with unique experiences and perspectives.
What if you're looking for the perspective of someone who isn't in the 0.1% of the most educated people on the planet? Do you think you're more likely to find that in ancient historical works or modern books?
Finally, who do you think is finding, translating, and discussing these ancient historical works? Who decides which ones become famous and are published in English so you can read them? Unless you're doing original research, I think you'll find you're still subject to the perspectives of the modern historian.
Isn't "now this" just a synonym for "moving on" or "next order of business" or "apropos of nothing"? I don't think the concept of jumping to a completely new topic is something TV introduced.
It’s been a bit since I’ve read Amusing Ourselves to Death but I believe in the book the phrase ”Now this” is used disparagingly to refer to the fact that with tv you can go from a horrific news story like a local family being murdered to a completely unrelated story, both in content and emotion in the span of seconds. This doesn’t allow ample time for the viewer to process the former and essentially forces them to turn their brain off as the cognitive dissonance of holding both stories (and more) simultaneously would be impossible.
That's fair. It does seem pretty similar to just reading a newspaper and moving your eyes to the next story, but I get that TV is a lot more stimulating and you can't go at your own pace like you can with the paper.
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