We've gotten to the point that in the future at the coffee shop you're going to have farmers asking each other, have you jailbroken your new John Deere?
Surely John Deere are releasing source code to farmers and giving them the build instructions and install instructions needed to update the code on the tractors? /s
If the Software Freedom Conservancy win their lawsuit against Vizio, this means that farmers across America will be able to sue John Deere for GPL compliance.
Assuming John Deere suddenly complies with the GPL, then what? The kernel source code is a tiny fraction of the actual software that makes up the entire product, and as far as I know no where does the GPLv2 require you to provide build instructions, let alone a way to flash new software?
You're right that most of what makes Deere tractors useful is probably proprietary, but once the base layer is open source, modifiable and reinstallable, then you can start building open source components on top that do everything else. We saw that with routers, the OpenWRT distro started out as a bunch of basic low-level code from a GPL compliance case and now there is a full-featured comprehensive web interface and a full OS for routers that is open source and runs on a variety of hardware.
It is a common misconception that GPLv2 doesn't have build/install requirements, GPLv2 does actually require users to be able to both rebuild and reinstall the GPLv2 parts.
It sounds like you want more detail. That is different than claiming that the author doesn't know proper English.
To reiterate what the other poster said, referring to a tractor as a John Deere is perfectly valid coloquial English.
You wouldn't refer to an iphone as an Apple because Apple is generally known to produce several different categories of products. John Deere is broadly understood to only make tractors. Also, the article "a" in front of "a John Deere" is an additional clue that we are talking about a product, not the company. If you find that hard to understand, you might want to avoid casting aspersions about other people's English skills.
> John Deere is broadly understood to only make tractors.
It is not a tractor that is jailbroken here, though; not even a computer built into a tractor.
It is their "Universal Display" that has been jailbroken, which is a computer that is sold as an independent unit. Often you will move these displays between machines and, in some cases, even use them in tractors built by other manufacturers or even away from farm machines entirely.
For all intents and purposes it is a different category of product.
> You wouldn't refer to an iphone as an Apple because Apple is generally known to produce several different categories of products.
I expect the real difference here is that the iPhone is a household name. Most know what an iPhone is and are able to recognize one when they see it. It would absolutely get called "an Apple" if that is all that was known about the device. In fact, I know some not-so-technically-engaged people who do call their iPhone "an Apple", reflecting the branding visible on their device. Apple removed the iPhone logo several iterations ago.
How many are familiar with the 4640 Universal Display? Approaching nobody, I expect. Especially when at a tech conference and not a farm show. The device is branded with "John Deere" and no other visible markings, so it is understandable that it was called that in the absence of additional information.
> so it is understandable that it was called that in the absence of additional information
no it isn't; the attackers have that information and could have looked it up if they didn't.
"John Deere" is three things: a company, a brand/trademark of that company, and a dead person whom the company and trademark are named after. none of those things can be jailbroken.
all I am trying to say is that "jailbroken a John Deere" makes zero sense on its own, and doesn't convey any useful information on its own. THATS ALL IM TRYING TO SAY
> the attackers have that information and could have looked it up if they didn't.
The Tweet was clearly not written by the attacker... The attacker did reply with the exact model of the device later on.
Trying to figure out what you're looking at while live-tweeting a presentation isn't exactly easy. Us farmers might have recognized it right away, but the CEO of iFixit is decidedly not a farmer. These are not common devices outside of niche uses.
If you want detailed information, maybe don't turn to something that is being reported as it is happening through a short messaging service?
> all I am trying to say is that "jailbroken a John Deere" makes zero sense on its own, and doesn't convey any useful information on its own.
It might not make sense on its own, but it wasn't stated on its own. It accompanied photos of the device in question. You know full well from context what "John Deere" means in this case; at very least you can discern it is some kind of computing device made by John Deere.
The "Turns out our entire food system is built on outdated, unpatched Linux and Windows CE hardware with LTE modems." part of the Tweet was far more ridiculous.
No, I don't want more detail. I know the detail. I want people to recognize that "jailbreak a John Deere" makes no sense when there aren't additional words after those in the sentence. that's it.
I guarantee you it makes total sense to the vast majority of readers who know what a jailbreak is.
Similarly, would you be confused if someone said they were going to drive their BMW to work? Or would you play the same pedantic game? "What... how do you drive a company or brand to work?..."
> You don’t jailbreak an Apple, you don’t borrow a library, and you don’t order a McDonald’s.
You can indeed jailbreak an Apple and order Mcdonald's.
>It’s an important distinction and everyone is looking at me like I’m a moron because I know that and they don’t.
You're being unnecessarily pedantic. Anyone who actually cares about the distinction can watch the DefCon presentation or view the associated media about it. I would think most HN users don't own industrial agricultural machinery that they'd be desperate to jailbreak, and those who do are probably already in the right communities. For everyone else this is just cool news about jail-breaking / right to repair / etc., and are not going to need to implement it in practice.
For what it's worth, it is apparently model 2630 and 4240 control consoles which appear in a variety of tractor models.
>Also, don’t tell someone to “chill.” It is extremely disrespectful and incendiary.
It is appropriate to tell someone to chill out when they're needlessly dramatic and aggressive over trivial details. Check your ego at the door.
My apologies. I appreciate the effort that goes into moderating this place and making it such a pleasant community, and I'm sorry to have caused you extra work.
You can, because any fluent English speaker will understand that you are referring to some type of mobile phone or tablet device manufactured by Apple (which implicitly excludes Macbook, iMac, etc. devices that do not need to be jailbroken). It is not necessary to specify exact model numbers and so on.
Keep in mind the source material was a tweet and not a media release or technical documentation where that level of detail would be appropriate. The use of colloquialisms is fine in casual communication.
> and you can't order "a" McDonald's.
Because no one would say "I'm going to order a McDonald's" without specifying some particular item. But if you are ordering McDonald's in general you would drop the "a", e.g. if you were with a group of people you might say "I'm ordering McDonald's, does anyone want anything?", you wouldn't say "I'm ordering a McDonald's cheeseburger, does anyone want anything?" as it is far more clumsy and the other people involved will neither care or need to know about what you are ordering for yourself.
Out of curiosity, is English an acquired language for you? I have seen ESL speakers with similar problems when informal / day-to-day use of the language differs from the more formal version they were taught.
> you can't jailbreak "an" Apple, and you can't order "a" McDonald's.
Nor can you drive a Ferrari, but people often say such things anyway, especially when they don't know what kind of Ferrari it is that they see being driven where only recognizing the Ferrari branding. This is not uncommon at all.
It's only less common when specifics are common knowledge. Most people are familiar with Apple's products, so they can be more specific. Most people are familiar with McDonald's products, so they can be more specific. Most people have absolutely no idea what John Deere does beyond some fuzzy notion of "farm equipment manufacturer".
In hospitality, "I'll order a Local Craft Beer Co." is something I hear quite often, where the individual beers made by 'Local Craft Beer Co.' don't have wide recognition. This is functionally the same as your McDonalds example.
In this context, I think one can assume some high level of commonality between the implementation of the security of the different John Deere products. So, phrasing it as a group makes some sense.
Lack of detail doesn't make something wrong. You are the one who is wrong here. Is English perhaps not your first language? I'm having trouble imagining how a native speaker could think referring to a specific tractor as "a John Deere" is somehow incorrect English.
John Deere makes many things: tractors, lawn mowers, displays, harvester combines, excavators, and many more things, including stuff that works in non-john Deere vehicles.
It’s not normal to get this worked up about something you are so clearly wrong about and is so insignificant. It’s also so bizarrely pedantic that this whole thread is hilarious.
You need to chill.
“Chill what? It doesn’t make any sense! How can anyone understand that!! How does my core body temperature have any bearing in the point I’m desperately trying to make about how I don’t understand colloquialisms!!!”
The device brands itself as a "John Deere", displaying no other visible markings, so I think it is reasonable in this case.
Obviously those with inside technical knowledge can refer to it with more clarity, but the tweeter doesn't seem to be someone with strong ties to agriculture to have that technical knowledge in the moment of live-posting something happening in front of him. He's working with the information he has. A branding fail by Deere, perhaps.
It is not unusual to refer to objects by their visible markings, especially when you don't have any additional information to be more specific.
Were you left to believe John Deere, the person, was being jailbroken? There should be no room for confusion, especially when the text was describing a photo of a Universal Display playing Doom. "Device" is already given by the nature of the photos.
Can you please stop? I'm sure we can all relate to getting triggered by linguistic annoyances but this is way off topic, seriously tedious, and against the site guidelines:
"Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—[...] They're too common to be interesting."
"Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead."
I just want some consistency in the grammar we use.
I made my point and was fully prepared to leave it at one comment, but others had to swoop in and tell me how wrong I was. you're not picking on them, just me.
You're right that other users broke the site guidelines as well, and I've scolded a couple of them now.
Putting the blame on others, though, is not an appropriate response. When the same commenter who started the flamewar is also the one who most perpetuated it, that commenter is the one primarily at fault. Moderating that is nothing personal and certainly not "picking on you".
Please don't do this on HN again. We've already had to ask you many times in the past not to break the site guidelines.
Those guidelines feel a lot more like “rules” than guidelines, when you phrase that the way you did.
Just ban me already, then. Don’t threaten people, just do it. I would have deleted my account after reading this if I could quickly figure out how.
I don’t want to be trouble for you or any other mod, so just nuke me.
I’m not kidding. I can’t play nice, I guess, so do the right thing. It’s a personality flaw of mine and despite working on it for 40+ years, it isn’t going away. ADHD & Autism if you want to know what is so unfixable.
All I ever want is some acknowledgment that I have a valid point, even if it isn’t 100% to-the-tee correct, and I can’t seem to get that from the users here. They need to win. All I wanted out of this thread was “I can see your point” but no.
I see nothing in your comments to suggest there is grammar inconsistency. If it had instead said "Sick Codes has jailbroken a 4640 Universal Display", which maintains identical grammar, I doubt we would be here. What you have actually suggested is that the subject selection isn't consistent.
I am not sure a strong case has been made for that, though. We can found countless examples of people referring to an object by the name of the business who produced it. This is very common when the individual product lines are not well known, and especially when the branding of the business is what is front and centre.
Furthermore, the message was written to describe a set of photos, so what detail was lacking in the words was made up in the images. If you are familiar with Deere's product lines, you can plainly see it is a 4640 that is being referred to. If you are not familiar with Deere's product lines, you know it's not a plow, all while the device calls itself a "John Deere". A branding fail on John Deere's part, perhaps, but the words are consistent with what is shown.
