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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