Your video, Tractor Hacking: Farmers Breaking Big Tech's Repair Monopoly, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

My uncle had a very large frozen pond in winter, out back of his house. He used to shovel a skating area with 2-3 foot high berms of snow around it. Then he would hook up a tractor tire inner tube and tow us around with a snowmobile. It was the greatest day when we figured out how to put the tube on the other side of the berm and use the snowmobile to launch us off of the lip. We were thrown so high in the air we felt like we were flying, and only manages to land back on the tube about half the time. Didn't stop us from doing it for hours, despite the impacts.

I didn't think it was possible to loath these fucking Chelsea tractors and the people that drive them more...

The video is right that pretty much the number one most important question is the weight of the truck (basically tare weight, which is actually the tractor plus empty trailer). When I watched the announcement, I thought Musk was slightly cagey about that, but I thought that he said that it would be in the ballpark of a normal ICE semi. Guess I should watch again.

I think Musk made some semi-optimistic predictions about battery tech improvement and economy of scale. Frankly, I think he's earned the right to be semi-bold with his predictions, given his and Tesla's track record (paying off govt. loan very early, single handedly pushing forward battery tech and production, etc. etc.). His optimistic predictions have a tendency of panning out.

The average American is never going to switch to an electric car purely or even largely for "green conscious" reasons. The switch will happen when the electric car is better than the ICE alternatives in concrete metrics like performance, reliability, and operating cost. Musk is pushing that date forward at an incredible pace. Arguably it is already true for many use-cases at the high price-point range of the Model S, but that price point limits the scope of the impact quite a bit. He knows that to really shake things up, he's got to get that price point down, and he knows that to do that he's got to improve the economy of scale on battery tech. Which he's doing by expanding it into adjacent markets like home batteries, etc.

I think he deserves a lot of credit for "walking the walk" when it comes to working hard to protect/improve the environment, as opposed to Al Gore et al. "talking the talk".

Sounds like an old farm tractor idling.

I drove a semi sometimes for a couple years for my family farm. Didn't drive a whole lot, and pretty much all on back dirt roads and in lots/fields, to get some experience before possibly getting a CDL. Never ended up getting the CDL because I moved and changed jobs. I was around and learned from skilled drivers (my dad for one), so I know a little bit, but I'm certainly no expert. That being said:

Backing up a vehicle with a trailer is quite difficult because compared to a normal vehicle with no trailer, all your intuition is wrong and little mistakes get amplified quickly.

Backing up a car and want your tail end to go right? Turn the wheel right. Want the same thing to happen in a semi with a trailer? First turn the wheel left while you back up, which will push the tail end of your tractor left, causing a reaction like pressing on a lever that pushes the tail end of the trailer right. But don't overdo it, because that same lever-type action causes more movement the further you get away from the fulcrum point, so a tiny move there can result in a BIG swing.

Complicating that, you have no central rear view mirror. Side mirrors work, but distance can be obscured by the huge trailer very quickly.

Basically, backing up is one of the most daunting things about learning to drive a truck, particularly for people new to it. The "pull ups" he mentioned are the best way to overcome that. Pulling forward a short/medium distance gets the tractor and trailer back into alignment, so that straight back should result in the trailer going straight back. From that point, you can try to make small corrections. If it starts to swing a lot, pull up again and straighten out, lather rinse repeat.


The guy in the video does a good job (way better than I could do), but he seems to think he's the shit. I don't think you earn real trucking community bragging rights until you can reverse double trailers, or even triples if you want to be worshiped as a god.

Here's a video with doubles:


One of the full-timers on my family farm was quite good with doubles. Not "obstacle course" good, but I saw him reverse a slow circle around a grain bin. And he liked to tell stories about a some semi-mythical whiz guy that could reverse triples around a corner, etc.

Gliders are stupid, jet fighters are the only real way to fly.

Aikido requires the same body/mind training as any other martial art, with as much physical intensity as you want to put into it. Yes...it's not focused on agression. I don't need to train to react agressively. I need the opposite.

Motorcycles are faster than tractors. That's not going to help me plough a field. If I want to compete in MMA I'll study a martial art that's suited to it. Aikido is suited to my life and my goals.

I would never try to argue that my martial art is superior for your purposes. It's superior for my purposes.

All that aside, the video is a really enjoyable demonstration of mastery by someone who has dedicated more time and effort to her art than most martial artists, regardless of what they study or why.

He says he's "done for the day" because of it. Probably intends to get a new shear pin "tomorrow" and continue mowing. Depending on how far away everything is, it could be more efficient to avoid two extra tractor trips just to repair a pin.

I'm still at a loss on why he's waiting for a ride? Disconnect the tractor from the equipment, drive the tractor back... Heck, I'd think even once the PTO shaft was disconnected, he'd still be able to tow the equipment back using the tractor.

EDIT: Of course, I'd guess it would take a few tools to disconnect the equipment so it could drive back, or tow... so perhaps that's what he's waiting for, tools, not really just a ride, and then tow the tractor and equipment back...

No snow here. Can they adapt them to be autonomous lawn tractors?

The yt description is:

This is video of a fuel tanker sliding over the rail on I-95 this AM and EXPLODING shortly after.
2 killed in 40-vehicle pileup after tractor-trailer plunges off highway in Maryland

There's porn for tractor lovers now too?

@newtboy

If you are only growing twice what you can eat yourself, you are describing a large garden, not a farm.

More over, what you class as 'industrial' farming is in fact the entirety of all grain farming. If there is a place in farming for wheat, corn, soy, canola and so on, 99% of it is done on what you class 'industrial' farming.

Your typical family farm is over a thousand acres today. If I go out and start naming the family farms of just friends and family I know, I can come up with 30-40+. They all farm over a thousand acres, they use tractors and combines and they make a fair bit more food than twice what they can eat. They aren't the ultra rich land barons that your 'industrial' moniker would imply either, at most they have a singular hired hand to help out with the work. The ones with children interested in taking over often don't need to hire anyone at all.

If you want to abandon that agricultural production and the methods used you mean raising the cost of production more than 100 times over. I can't even fathom the cost of weeding a thousand acres of wheat by hand, let alone removing grasshoppers from a corn crop that way. I'm sorry, but what works for your garden doesn't scale to grain crops.

Oh, and the conflation of herbicide and pesticide was done by the fear monger crowd. Listing round-up as a chemical that only kills plants and not insects and animals didn't fit their agenda so now everything is supposed to be called a pesticide across the board. Maybe that's just a Canadian thing, but the bottom line is that if you had a crop completely over run with insects you could spray it once a day with stupidly high concentrations of round-up and the water in the sprayer would do about the same damage to the insects as would the round up.


As for the video's other claims, I stand by my characterisation. You can't honestly tell me the video is trying to put forward on open and honest picture of Monsanto's actions and history. For example, the Manhattan Project, here's a transcription for clarity:
"Monsanto head Charles Allen Thomas was called to the pentagon not only asked to join the Manhattan project, but to lead it as it's co-director. Thomas put Monsanto's central research department hard to work building the atomic bomb.Fully aware of the implications of the task the budding empire sealed it's relationship with the inner cicrcles of washington with two fateful days in Japan.
"
- queue clip of nuclear blasts-

I think I stand by my summation.

OK, 2 things we do know for certain....
1)they came out publicly claiming that "deputies took off their belts and tried to rush into the water to save the girls." but "didn't get far".
2) we know they didn't enter the water at all, and made absolutely zero attempt to save the screaming girls (unless you count loitering around until the screaming stopped before considering even calling for a tractor as some kind of attempt to save them...I don't).

Had #1 been true and the officers had actually had trouble reaching the car, or getting the girls out, fine. It was in no way true, though. In fact, we hear them discussing the screaming girls and waiting around until "they're done" before even considering any action.

You are welcome to your own opinion about that, but TRYING to save people from drowning is one of the things we pay first responders to do. When they completely, intentionally, and unequivocally shirk that duty (and the lie is proof that they knew it was wrong), and people die, that's murder...they have a DUTY to try. When they lie about it in an official capacity, that should be compounding special circumstances and get them a needle.

The thing about this is that they are going down a hill and travelling between 40-60 kph on a 1 lane road with no shoulder. The cars behind should have no expectation that they should do anything other than they did because to 'invite' a car to pass in a situation like that is to put yourself in mortal danger. as you'd have no idea what will happen once that car is next to you. It's much safer to ride in a group for this very reason, and the whole group should be treated as one vehicle. The cars should do exactly as this girl did and hold back until she could pass safely in the other lane. Just without all the rage;) If a slow moving vehicle like a tractor was driving down the highway, it would be the same deal.