Originally published at: Russians take $5m worth of farm vehicles from Ukraine dealership, only for them to be remotely disabled | Boing Boing
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And likely from Ukrainian sources.
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When you assume all your customers are thieves you’re bound to catch a real thief now and then.
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Exactly. The fact that that technology proved (temporarily) useful here doesn’t negate the fact that that technology is awful and should be banned.
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Or perhaps repurposed to be in the hands of the owners as a theft prevention method. Except when they put that tech in soft serve ice cream machines. That is just plain evil.
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Да. Большое спасибо, товарищ.
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what few people seem to realise is that the two main pipelines coming into europe come right through ukraine
but the calling card is for germany who buy more
https://www.fendt.com/int/tractor-registrations-germany-2018
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And you can see that the proposed pipelines on the map are designed to bypass Ukraine.
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If the manufacturer really wanted to get nasty it would be quite a sight to see remote-controlled combines chasing down hapless Russian soldiers like something out of Maximum Overdrive.
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$5M sounds like a lot, but that farm equipment is expensive! “in all 27 pieces of farm machinery.”
It seems that Milovich Minderbinder has far better logistics than the regular Russian forces.
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To be honest, M&M Enterprises was better at logistics than the American and Germans together.
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Or that other movie…
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Indeed. Most city folk aren’t aware that the average large tractor or combine costs more than most peoples’ houses. It’s why farming is a tough business- you’re effectively paying a dozen mortgages.
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enemy of my enemy, etc, etc…
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The Russians are actively sabotaging their whole energy exports to Europe. The war already made Europe question their partnership with Russian. When Russia turned off the gas to Poland and Bulgaria, well, we got this:
Basically, Russia turbo charged Europe’s move towards renewables. (Fingers crossed)
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Yeah, the negative consequences of this for Russia have only started.
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The original;
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The technology that allowed this is actually fairly cool and has allowed for some farmers to reduce costs, waste and environmental impacts of farming. The idea being that you can determine what parts of a field need more or less fertilizer or pesticide and a sprayer can adjust on the fly how much it is applying as it moves across the field. Some tractors can even run semi-autonomously once driven to a field and will stop if something gets in their way or if GPS shows they left the field.
The problem is that this has also let John Deere and others keep control long after they have sold the equipment. Since this is a story about unsold equipment I have no problem with the remote kill, the dealer or manufacturer had the right to disable the equipment they owned. This is a legal problem not a technology problem, it effectively makes all pucrases of John Deere equipment a undisclosed lease as John Deere maintains a property right in the ‘sold’ item. That should be illegal, but for some reason what a consumer car dealer would be put in jail for a farm equipment manufacturer can do freely.
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