Flockintech

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What kind of tech is "flockintech?" Stick around. What do Polish trains, premium EVs, and farm tractors have in common? Stick around. What does flockintech have in common with - no, hang on. Just stick around...

John Deere

So you probably know about the John Deere vs farmers saga. If you bought a John Deere tractor and got your local mechanic to change a filter, the tractor would probably shut down. John Deere designed this and other gotchas into the machines. The idea was that a JD technician would come to the farm, change that filter with an identical filter that your local mechanic would have put in, typed in a secret JD authentication code, and the tractor would work. 

The JD technician would cost the farmer thousands of dollars, the mechanic probably only a few hundred. Can you say residual income rip-off? 

Premium Vehicles

Many premium cars and especially EVs, come with dozens of features included in the construction by default, but you can't have them unless you pay extra fees for them. This is a particularly vexing ... umm, let's call it what it is, a total fraud - because you bought the car with all those features in it but the manufacturer is holding you to ransom if you want them enabled. Worse still, some of those features are only available by subscription, meaning they can deny you them if you don't provide them with that residual income rip-off. 

There aren't all that many ways around this issue unless you're extremely good at writing a whole new management program for the vehicle, and of course if you muck it up you void any warranty...

Polish Trains

"Newag, the company that manufactured the trains, had software in place that put locks on the carriages if they were serviced by third party mechanics or if the cars remained stationary for too long."

Seeing a familiar theme develop here? Gouging goes deep, and there needs to be some kind of solution. 

Worldwide, "Right To Repair" laws are being drafted and enacted, that will force manufacturers to allow a person who buys a product, to perform maintenance and repairs on that product. Many manufacturers are pooling their resources to fight these laws being introduced, but as you read, John Deere have been wrestled to the ground on this, and once more RtR laws are enacted, so will most of these other thieving bastards.

RtR laws will also require that devices are not "permitted" to be repaired but then physically obstructed, that is, no "proprietary" fasteners to prevent access, no filling the electronics with potting resin except where a product's Ingress and Explosion ratings require it. 

And as for the Polish railway line, their fightback has involved a rather strange ally. Read it here.

Anonymous Assistance

The precedents have been set, before JD were forced to relinquish their ransom booty, a few farmers hacked their own tractors and faced legal action from JD, and in fact was one of the factors that shaped the JD-farmers outcome. 

It would now appear that the few hacks I've found online for unlocking the premium features of your car, may soon be legal, and there's not a thing BMW will be able to do about people unlocking the massage feature and heated seat options of their cars, because the car was sold with those things already built in, and you can argue that the manufacturer locking them down amounts to sabotaging the vehicle and introducing faults that it's your right to repair.

There's another name that sprang to mind when I read those articles, and it's "Lock-In Tech." They lock you into a system and then charge you a premium price or subscription to unlock the features. In the case of JD, there may be a case for charging them with sabotaging a farmer's livelihood, I'm not sure on that point. 

But now when you read me writing F Lock In Tech you'll know exactly what the title means...

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Supermarkets And The Nuclear Option

First - please scroll to the bottom to see what's happening in my life, and take action. Then come back up here. Thank you.

Okay, what? Nuclear? What are the supermarkets up to now? If that was your first thought, then congratulations, you've proved one of my points. We wouldn't put anything past supermarkets, including - stuff to do with whatever nuclear whatsname I'm referring to.

If you thought maybe there might be more to this than just one of the supermarkets serving berries with a side of Cherenkov radiation, then I'm betting you know more about me and my radical recommendations... 😸

UPDATED: There may be some activity afoot. (https://www.thenewdaily.com.au/finance/finance-news/2024/01/16/grocery-prices-inquiry) I ask in this article whether the probe will have teeth, i.e. will it be able to actually compel the corporations that own the thieving supermarkets to act with humanity, and this update seems to suggest that the probe will get teeth. Unfortunately, legal action in a year is still a little bit too late for people already doing it hard...

What's The Story?

This is. The Reserve Bank keeps raising interest rates because inflation isn't going down, and the supermarkets - by some strange coincidence - are making billions of dollar more per quarter which could possibly raise inflation...

Supermarkets are making record ten to twenty billion-dollar quarterly profits and the Australian government has "had enough of it" and is appointing Craig Emerson to head a "probe," a "Code of Conduct review." I don't think this goes anywhere near far enough. 

This "probe," this "review." Does it have teeth? And by that I mean, does it have any power to not merely "make recommendations" but to compel? Somehow, I doubt it'll have those teeth. And yet it should - WAY more teeth. If you know me, you know...

Note how they only release QUARTERLY figures because if we actually saw the annual figures we'd be torching their fucking stores and lynching anyone above the level of floor manager. Here - I'll do it for you:

"Coles posted $10.25 billion in first-quarter sales in 2023, a 3.6 per cent rise compared to the first quarter of the 2022 financial year, while Woolworths’ revenue grew by 5.3 per cent for a total of $17.2 billion."

That was 2023. Their costs have gone down even further since then, and - as we're all to painfully aware - their prices have gone up inexorably. But just extrapolating those figures for the last year:

Coles would have made between $41bn and $45bn depending on how many more opportunities they took to screw their producers and consumers. 

Woolworths would have made $69bn - $72bn. In a year. 

If I projected a steady 3.6 to 5.3 percent per annum growth they'll make between $43bn to $49bn and $73bn and $79bn, roughly, this year. 

That's not only not right, I think that's criminal level fraud and pricing scams. There ought to be jail terms attached to this investigation, AFP-level search and seizure of paperwork and documentation. 

Possibly, if some amounts of deliberate malfeasance is established, the installation of government officials as the final arbiters of policy in the corporate offices of those supermarkets.

THAT is my nuclear option. Whattya reckon? (Note the UPDATE at the head of this article - it seems I wasn't the only one thinking the time for the carrot was over...)

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Family facing health crisis. I may not be able to post as often, meaning fewer announcements, meaning fewer visitors. I'm asking you to help out. Share this post to all your social media, share it by email. Go to the image just below here, find the rolled-up newspaper icon, and share that URL too, so that more people get to see my latest 20 posts. Maybe even donate to help out with server and domain fees. 

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