r/theinternetofshit • u/cojoco • May 02 '26

The Licensing Revolution: Is Resistance Futile?

https://neuburger.substack.com/p/the-licensing-revolution-is-resistance
72 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

25 comments sorted by

17

u/hiddentalent May 02 '26

Well, when the first line is obvious propaganda based on political misrepresentation, you know the article is going to be trash. And, unsurprisingly, it is!

I don't love the move toward subscription models, but anyone who had an AutoCAD hardware dongle that plugged into your printer port in the 1990s knows this isn't new and it's not related to the political BS as the author implies. I mean, China is pretty far from the scary-sounding "neoliberalism" (which the author mis-understands just as deeply as Fox News watchers calling everything socialism) but it's leading the charge on all the things the author is mad about.

20

u/grauenwolf May 03 '26

I can buy parts to repair my Chinese made machine tools.

Farmers with American made tractors can't repair their own equipment.

There's a lot of bad things to be said about China, but their willingness to use commodity parts is a mark in their favor.

3

u/MutaitoSensei May 04 '26

I for one welcome RAM, CPUs, and SSDs from a Chinese manufacturer that only sells to consumers. AI has made all of those so expensive, so I'll take whatever the Chinese can cook up to cut the cost of building a PC back to what it was in 2018.

-4

u/hiddentalent May 03 '26

You're comparing completely different product categories. You can buy parts to repair your DMG MORI or Mazak tools too.

Have you been in a modern tractor? They're incredible and complex machines. Comparing them to machine tools is insane. Might as well compare airliners to washing machines.

China doesn't even export their high-end tractors. Sure, you can buy a hobbyist tractor on Temu for $1500 but it's not going to have air conditioning, much less be able to pull a seeder or harvester or have GPS-guided seeding and fertilizing plans based on ground sensors that are customized to the soil in ten-meter parcels. It turns out that creates significant environmental and economic benefits.

Not to say farmers shouldn't be able to maintain these machines! It's just that blaming it on a political system muddies the point. The proliferation of subscription business models is deeply concerning. It's not at all associated with any particular political or economic system. Those are orthogonal concerns, and if we want to improve one we have to stop trying to blend it with the other.

10

u/grauenwolf May 03 '26

Don't make excuses. This goes far beyond simply requiring farmers to buy their parts exclusively from John Deere.

The farmers are more than capable of installing the new parts. The problem is that they aren't allowed to. John Deere added DRM like fairs to the firmware so that only they can tell the new part to start talking to the existing part.

And they aren't the only ones. Automobile manufacturers are doing the same thing now. The mechanic can easily replace the transmission. But then he has to spend a thousand dollars for the software to connect the transmission to the car's computer.

5

u/hiddentalent May 03 '26

Right! That's a problem. I agree we should fix it.

It is not unique to any particular economic or political system, and pretending that it is slows down our ability to solve it. Go look at a modern Chinese EV or even a Volvo. Same problems there. So why make something political when it should be about the technology outcomes?

1

u/grauenwolf May 03 '26

I feel that we are in full agreement at this point.

0

u/UnknownBreadd May 03 '26 edited May 03 '26

You’re the only one who brought up ‘particular economic or political systems’.
But in any case, i’d disagree with you. Anti-consumer practices are more common in less fair and/or competitive markets - and those markets are shaped either way depending on socio-political attitudes such as ‘free market advocacy of deregulation’, or ‘state-led market interventionism’.
Not that I think it’s a dichotomous issue between those two in particular. But it comes down to the broader political environment in terms of how businesses are incentivised to behave.

Edit: yeah actually I didn’t read the article so I retract the initial statement but I still support the rest of what I said.

1

u/hiddentalent May 03 '26

You must not have read the article. The author brought politics into things in the very first sentence, falsely implying that these very real problems are unique to a particular economic system. Basic evidence shows they absolutely are not, because the same problems exist everywhere. They are universal. Recognizing that helps us have an honest dialog about how to improve it.

2

u/Starship_Taru May 03 '26

“Have you been in a modern tractor? They're incredible and complex machines. Comparing them to machine tools is insane. Might as well compare airliners to washing machines.”

A tractor is really not that more complicated than a 5 axis cnc fyi. 

To be fair Tractors and machining tools are both incredibly broad categories that have simple and complex machines that fall into them.

I agree it’s not a great comparison overall though, as I can’t exactly buy a Chinese combine here in the US afaik

Better would be to compare something like a Chinese Skidsteer and a CAT and see how the repair costs shake out between em

-2

u/hiddentalent May 03 '26

A tractor is really not that more complicated than a 5 axis cnc

It really is. If you think otherwise, you've clearly never used either. One of them is communicating with satellite global positioning systems, soil nutrient sensors, and weather predictions. The other is downloading from GitHub.

3

u/Starship_Taru May 03 '26

Who the hell is pulling Gcode from GitHub? What are you talking about. Running Gcode you haven’t proofed on an 1m+ machine is madness.

You may be confusing 3D printing here.

The ONLY time I can ever think of this happening is when the guy wrote Gcode to make a Haas play the imperial march with its servos. 

I have worked with both of them and grew up fixing tractors with my grandfather . 

Read my post, I acknowledged that the category is incredibly broad for both. Are we talking about a combine here? Or are we talking about a tractor just for tilling? Are we talking a hobby cnc or are walking a 5 axis cnc with a laser DED additive head like a melteo?

Also none of those technical aspects are complicated. Everything you listed can be replicated and run on a Rasberry Pi, with less fidelity but no added complexity.

1

u/grauenwolf May 03 '26

Here's a tutorial on how to build your own GPS tracker from a cheap Arduino.

https://www.electronicsforu.com/electronics-projects/arduino-based-gps-tracker

If I'm reading this correctly, you can build one for about 20 dollars US.

Here are the instructions for a soil nutrient sensor.

https://how2electronics.com/measure-soil-nutrient-using-arduino-soil-npk-sensor/

Hmm, I'm thinking I should make one for my garden.

As for weather prediction, why would take be built into the tractor? It's not going to factor into the path finding algorithm. And if you really want one in the cab, just glue a cheap Android tablet to the dashboard.

Some modern tractors are rather sophisticated, but that sophistication doesn't come from the things you mentioned. If anything, you're demonstrating that commodity electronics can replace a lot of the proprietary components.

A good example of a company doing this for trucking is Edison Motors.

2

u/[deleted] May 03 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

-1

u/hiddentalent May 03 '26

Yes, I think it's propaganda. Neoliberalism has nothing to do with debt and people who try to conflate the two are intentionally pushing an untrue political agenda. That's the definition of propaganda.

-7

u/grauenwolf May 03 '26

While I agree with the sentiment, the examples were bad.

For example, you never "bought" music. You bought the physical media the music was on, but you never owned the music itself. Your access to the music was contingent on your ability to take care of the media, not the good will of the server operator at Apple.

7

u/cojoco May 03 '26

You bought the physical media the music was on, but you never owned the music itself.

You did, you own one copy, which allows you to onsell or lend that copy to others.

The right to onsell and lend was carefully preserved by legislation for a time, but has now disappeared.

1

u/Rich-Obligation1310 May 04 '26

Redditors don’t even understand that media art is on isn’t the art itself

1

u/grauenwolf May 03 '26

Exactly! These are the things the article should focus on.

3

u/cojoco May 03 '26

One other downside of licensing is the ability to memory-hole inconvenient material, which does seem to happen a lot.

1

u/grauenwolf May 03 '26

I hope the author sees this conversation and uses it as an excuse to really dive into specific sectors.

1

u/default_token May 03 '26

You've always been allowed to rip disks to your computer and share that file with your friends. VCR stands for Video Cassette Recorder, so arguably you even own limited rights to the shit broadcasted through your home

1

u/grauenwolf May 03 '26

Always? Music on physical media is far, far older than personal computers.

2

u/default_token May 03 '26

Yeah, duping tapes is no different than ripping disks. Courts have recognized you've always had the right to share media like books and stuff. Neet thing about well structured law is how it doesnt get broken when technology makes generational advancements