I know it’s fun to bash on Gates, but it’s also bullshit. Dave Cutler worked on at least two major operating systems. He’s way up there in the Hall of Fame.

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Alarming, yet like an episode of a sitcom.

“Be a shame if something bad happened to you, Kyle.”

Years ago, folks hacked a Jeep Wrangler remotely, with a WIRED reporter in the car: https://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers-remotely-kill-jeep-highway/

That freaked the shit out of vehicle manufacturers. It led to encrypted CANBus messages: https://dev.to/living_syn/can-bus-message-security-3h43

Problem was, your mom and pop repair shop would need a special $$$ ‘authorized’ dongle from the manufacturer to be able to diagnose problems beyond what plain OBD-II let you see. This effectively locked out third-party repair shops. People screamed and IIRC, a lot of car manufacturers backed down and just hardened remote access.

What Deere did was even more harsh. They tried to block off not only self repair, but third-party firmware that made the tractors work better, especially older ones that were out of warranty: https://schiller-tuning.com/vehicle-listings/agriculture/john-deere

They’re trying to game copyright laws and click-through terms-of-service agreements to lock out third party repair.

This is a test case. If they lose, it’ll be a BIG win for Right to Repair laws, covering phones, laptops, consoles, etc.