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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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

"I wish he wasn’t such an ass."

What did he to you to give off that impression?

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.

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

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

> You fight for the users?

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.

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

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.

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".

Design and manufacture open hardware for 25k?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

> 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.

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.

"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"

> 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.

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.

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

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

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.

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...

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.

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?

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

> 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.

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.

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 ...".

It is, yes.

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.

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

How is a curved window better on a tractor?