Deere caught in headlights — the US Federal Trade Commission is finally investigating farm equipment giant John Deere over its questionable repair policies. The company has made a habit of making it extremely difficult to outright impossible for its customers to repair the Deere products that they themselves own. — Read the rest

After much fuss, John Deere has divulged a curious piece of information that allows customers the right to (some) repairs.

Farm equipment manufacturing giant John Deere has staunchly defended the company's repair monopoly on products that customers had bought outright. One of the reasons they cited for needing control over repairing all facets of Deere products was that customers might tamper with machinery and accidentally alter emissions outputs. — Read the rest

John Deere, a company synonymous with American ingenuity, liberty, patenting a certain shade of green and farmers fending off the advances of women fresh from the catwalk. And farming, I guess.

Unfortunately in recent years, John Deere has also been hard at work in the fields of "bricking", monopoly law, and vehemently opposing the right to repair. — Read the rest

This 8-year-old young man is an absolute gem! His name is Jackson and he lives in Indiana, and he truly and deeply loves farming and farm equipment. The Farm4Profit podcast describes him as "your farming grandpa, reincarnated" and explains that he is "known for his quick-witted comments and knowledge of tractors, farming, trucks, and more!"  — Read the rest

John Deere must heere a right-to-repair lawsuit filed against it by customers sick of its efforts to prevent them repairing their own equipment, reports Reuters. The agricultural giant John Deere wanted to dismiss claims (pdf) alleging that it operates a monopoly through its products and the ability to service them. — Read the rest

John Deere, makers of farm machinery and vehicles, applies copyright law to make it illegal to repair your own equipment. After years of debate, anger and hacking, the company now promises to allow users to do so without voiding warranties or facing the prospect of legal action. — Read the rest

John Deere uses DRM to prevent its own customers from repairing their own vehicles, pushing them to use the company's own overpriced service options. A new jailbreak for the systems announced this weekend at DEFCON by Sick Codes restores a measure of ownership to the owners. — Read the rest

When the law comes calling Dusty Mobley takes off. The second time was the charm for the Okaloosa County Sheriff's Office, as Mobley managed a less creative but more effective getaway the last time they came calling.

Orlando Sentinel:

At around 9:30 a.m.

Willie Cade's grandfather Theo Cade was one of John Deere's most storied engineers, with 158 patents to his name; he invented the manure spreader and traveled the country investigating stories of how farmers were using, fixing, modifying and upgrading their equipment; today, Willie Cade is the founder of the Electronics Reuse Conference, having spent a quarter-century repairing electronics, diverting e-waste from landfills and rehabilitating it for use by low-income schools and individuals.

As I wrote last week, the California Farm Bureau (which lobbies for the state's farmers) struck a deal to gut the state's Right to Repair legislation, a move that will cost farmers their right to fix their own tractors and other heavy equipment.

Farmers are the vanguard of the Right to Repair movement; accustomed as they are to fixing their own equipment (you can't wait for a repair tech when the tractor doesn't work — as the saying goes, you have to make hay while the sun shines), they were outraged when companies like John Deere started using DRM to pick their pockets, creating tractors whose engines wouldn't recognize a new part until they paid a tech a few hundred dollars to drive out in a day or two and key an unlock code into the tractor's keyboard.

John Deere has turned itself into the poster-child for the DMCA, fighting farmers who say they want to fix their own tractors and access their data by saying that doing so violates the 1998 law's prohibition on bypassing copyright locks.

Tim O'Bryant, aka Cotontop3, is a logger in Mississippi who vlogs daily. In this episode, he uses the pincers on his log loader to toss leftovers from log bucking, which takes a surprising amount of dexterity.

John Deere is notorious for arguing that farmers who buy its tractors actually "license" them because Deere still owns the copyright to the tractors' software; in 2015, the US Copyright Office affirmed that farmers were allowed to jailbreak their tractors to effect repairs and modifications.

Rick Friday has been the editorial cartoonist for Farm News for 21 years, with a weekly slot in every Friday's paper.

John Deere freaked out over a a petition to the Copyright Office to let tractor owners break the DRM on their vehicles in order to diagnose and fix them.

This past weekend, O'Reilly Media held its annual geekfest FOO Camp at their Sebastapol, CA headquarters. Google co-founder Larry Page had himself flown in by helicopter for the afternoon. The chopper landed about 20 feet from where dozens of folks were camping in tents. — Read the rest

A Vermont man was so bladdered when arrested by Ontario Provincial Police that he did not realize he had made his way into another country. CNC News reports that the 52-year-old man was charged with impaired driving in Cobden, Ontario after the truck he was driving was found with flat tires "stuck in a drive-thru" at about 5 a.m. — Read the rest

On occasion, I'll look up from hour three of mindless scrolling and begin cursing the gods of technology for allowing me to become so helplessly glued to social media. I find myself praying for that big ole solar flare, you know, the one that's supposed to fry all the microchips or what have you. — Read the rest

In the next three minutes, prepare to witness a man, machine, and their unlikely ballet. The plot of this short film follows a man, after finishing up his day's work, catching sight of a 22-ton John Deere excavator and then instead of walking away, he's drawn into a mesmerizing dance with it. — Read the rest