John Deere

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Farmers Turn to Tractor Hacking to Fight Corporate Gouging

Sam Rolley | Personal Liberty | March 22, 2017

Reports that American farmers are turning to foreign hackers just so they are able to work on equipment sold to them by John Deere shine light on a new problem in the era of software-controlled durable goods. In a bygone era, it wouldn’t be uncommon to find a grease-covered farmer working his tractor over to avoid costly downtime on the farm, sometimes even employing jerry-rig solutions meant to hold just long enough to get through the growing season. But as tractors, like everything else, become more technologically advanced, companies like John Deere are installing locks that make it impossible for certain maintenance to be performed without the  help of a costly technician...

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The New Rules of Healthcare Platforms (Part 1): Value Creation Shifts from Pipes to Platforms

Value for customers is created differently on platforms than by traditional product/service business models. Today we’ll present and discuss the metaphor of how traditional businesses can be thought of as “pipelines” and how these pipes differ from digital platforms. This post is the first in a new series: “The New Rules of Healthcare Platforms.” We’ll be writing about platform thinking, new mental models, and the new economics of platform business models and strategy. We’ll have at least seven posts to explain these new rules. You’ll have some unlearning to do. We’ll illustrate how platform business models are fundamentally different than traditional product/service business models. To understand platforms, we need to change more than just our thinking—we need to learn new rules about how the digital world works and how platforms fit in.

Tractor Owners Using Pirated Firmware To Dodge John Deere's Ham-Fisted Attempt To Monopolize Repair

Karl Bode | Tech Dirt | March 29, 2017

We've been noting for a while how numerous states have been pushing so-called "right to repair" bills, which would make it easier for consumers to repair their own products and find replacement parts and tools. Not surprisingly, many tech companies have been working overtime to kill these bills. That includes Apple, which recently proclaimed that Nebraska's right to repair bill would turn the state into a nefarious playground for hackers. Opposition also includes Sony and Microsoft, which both tend to enjoy a repair monopoly on their respective video game consoles...

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