"California safety regulations currently require operators to be "stationed" at the controls."
This is NOT a huge burden. Any robotics company operating a fleet today will have someone watching almost all the time in one form or another anyways. So this really just becomes a matter of interpreting what "the controls" means. The regulation seem to omit any mention of "on the device/vehicle" so these controls can clearly be remote. It also doesn't seem to specify a 1:1 ratio of operators to devices. So if there is one operator, e.g., at the air-conditioned HQ of the robotics vendor, at the "controls" of twenty tractors that are operating in the field which the operator can see remotely using low-latency video-streaming and which he can stop instantly with the press of a button, then that might already be all that is required. It certainly is logically.
robocat · 15h ago
> so these controls can clearly be remote
If data connectivity is available.
Maybe a reasonable assumption now with starlink, but previously not so easy in a lot of rural area.
PeterStuer · 11h ago
Many of these (used to?) have a local positioning setup for getting high resolution local precision. Maybe advances in vision have lessened the need.
For control network you'd rely on local comms. Not generic telco grid.
cyode · 20h ago
"[John Deere autonomous] tractors are currently being used by farmers in 11 states but not California."
And what of the other 38 states?
The graphic shows those tractors are also not adopted in Texas, Montana, Oklahoma, Kentucky, and Tennessee, all top 10 farming states by acreage. [0]
California is an ironic example due to its tech industry, but hardly seems like something specific to "dysfunctional" California, as suggested by other commenters.
Seems kind of silly, but at the same time, with the width of modern combines and tractor implements, it isn't really a big deal. The labor cost of people driving a row crop tractor or combine is barely even a blip in the cost of food. I would be surprised if this even came out represent even a single percentage of food costs for row crops.
9rx · 3h ago
The problem isn't so much an issue of cost of labor, but the ever-present situation that the abled bodies, who by and large live in cities, have this idea that there isn't any work in rural areas. There aren't usually strong social ties between regions to make introductions and when one is searching for a job, nobody is trawling the jobs sites with "Find me a job in the middle of nowhere" over "Find me a job in <insert city name>". Meaning that connecting with someone to do the work is a huge challenge.
Of course, there is a strong case to be made that if you can't find enough people to help, you've simply bit off more than you can chew and that it is time to scale back your operation.
PeterStuer · 11h ago
You have one guy in the 'master' cab, and several other harvesters following in convoy diagonally behind it. So the single (hands off) 'driver' is running a whole fleet of these.
Dig1t · 19h ago
Typical example of how bureaucracy and over-regulation stifles productivity and innovation.
Many such cases.
It’s no coincidence that the industries that have seen the most explosive growth and added the most value to the economy have also been the least regulated ones (e.g. software).
fxtentacle · 19h ago
Crypto? It’s very unregulated. But did it add value to the economy?
guywithahat · 22h ago
[flagged]
tomhow · 15h ago
Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer...
Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
You don't even need to involve the feds or the balance of fed-state power. Just slice up the damn state. There's just no avoiding dysfunction at its current scale. No one state government can serve so many diverse interests.
On the east coast they solve this problem by having smaller states. Wouldn't want those Massachusetts doctors or NYC financiers sticking their dick in Pennsylvania's farming economy or Maine's lumber and tourism economy and screwing it all up. Or vise versa. And those are the problems that CA suffers from.
If the argument not to is federal party politics there are plenty of solutions to slice and dice in a net-neutral manner.
pavel_lishin · 21h ago
> On the east coast they solve this problem by having smaller states.
That makes it sound like the eastern seaboard was originally the size of California, and then we recently decided to break them up when it was too big to effectively govern.
(I mean, I guess you could say that is what happened during the colonization of the area, and the Revolutionary War... I'll leave that debate to someone who studied more history than I did.)
Although I will say that New Jersey and NYC do constantly do things that affect the other one; it's just a function of NYC being a huge city, on the border of a dense state.
potato3732842 · 21h ago
I should have said "doesn't have this problem much at all" rather than "solves" but regardless...
>Although I will say that New Jersey and NYC do constantly do things that affect the other one; it's just a function of NYC being a huge city, on the border of a dense state.
And their misery is their own doing so nobody feels bad for them in the way that people feel at least a little bad for CA famers who are getting crapped on by people the white collar workers elected or feels bad for LA being hamstrung by policy that appeals to SF and Sac or whatever.
singleshot_ · 20h ago
Did you know Maine used to be part of Massachusetts?
pavel_lishin · 6h ago
I did not!
Terr_ · 20h ago
> Just slice up the damn state.
Not that simple. Other states, the small ones, will not permit [0] it to happen, since it would dilute their own unfair influence on the federal government, [1] the relic of an ancient join-up bribe from 1788.
Yeah pretty sure CA suffers from humans not made up gibberish as you put it
Soon as you open the door to the conversation though your simple pipe dream is clogged by every land developer, US or overseas, environmental groups, etc
Because people outside the government exist and will engage. It’s opening a new lane on the freeway assuming it will help forever and it’s clogged in a couple years.
People flock to a void and a new set of states and legal boundaries is a knowledge void to fill with special interests.
But go ahead and forget every NGO, and people themselves and just put our agency at the whims of government. Not say government bad, just that no it won’t just be government dictating. And it should not be cause that’s how you get to “government bad”.
LPisGood · 20h ago
California is one of the best functioning states in the country.
vondur · 19h ago
I'm going to need some data support that. I would consider it the worst run state in the Union...
LPisGood · 18h ago
Its education, wages, healthcare, opportunities, safety net, crime, etc are all top tier.
Most claims to the contrary are just propaganda.
amanaplanacanal · 17h ago
Best in terms of outcomes, but I guess worst in terms of some people's preferred politics :)
jay_kyburz · 17h ago
Haha, just wait to see what happens when they succeed from the Union. :)
_DeadFred_ · 14h ago
Wait until you hear about the Feds rounding up the farmers workers (right out of the fields) this week. Talk about dysfunctional.
This is NOT a huge burden. Any robotics company operating a fleet today will have someone watching almost all the time in one form or another anyways. So this really just becomes a matter of interpreting what "the controls" means. The regulation seem to omit any mention of "on the device/vehicle" so these controls can clearly be remote. It also doesn't seem to specify a 1:1 ratio of operators to devices. So if there is one operator, e.g., at the air-conditioned HQ of the robotics vendor, at the "controls" of twenty tractors that are operating in the field which the operator can see remotely using low-latency video-streaming and which he can stop instantly with the press of a button, then that might already be all that is required. It certainly is logically.
If data connectivity is available.
Maybe a reasonable assumption now with starlink, but previously not so easy in a lot of rural area.
For control network you'd rely on local comms. Not generic telco grid.
And what of the other 38 states?
The graphic shows those tractors are also not adopted in Texas, Montana, Oklahoma, Kentucky, and Tennessee, all top 10 farming states by acreage. [0]
California is an ironic example due to its tech industry, but hardly seems like something specific to "dysfunctional" California, as suggested by other commenters.
[0] https://www.agriculture.com/farming-across-america-a-state-b...
No comments yet
Of course, there is a strong case to be made that if you can't find enough people to help, you've simply bit off more than you can chew and that it is time to scale back your operation.
Many such cases.
It’s no coincidence that the industries that have seen the most explosive growth and added the most value to the economy have also been the least regulated ones (e.g. software).
Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
On the east coast they solve this problem by having smaller states. Wouldn't want those Massachusetts doctors or NYC financiers sticking their dick in Pennsylvania's farming economy or Maine's lumber and tourism economy and screwing it all up. Or vise versa. And those are the problems that CA suffers from.
If the argument not to is federal party politics there are plenty of solutions to slice and dice in a net-neutral manner.
That makes it sound like the eastern seaboard was originally the size of California, and then we recently decided to break them up when it was too big to effectively govern.
(I mean, I guess you could say that is what happened during the colonization of the area, and the Revolutionary War... I'll leave that debate to someone who studied more history than I did.)
Although I will say that New Jersey and NYC do constantly do things that affect the other one; it's just a function of NYC being a huge city, on the border of a dense state.
>Although I will say that New Jersey and NYC do constantly do things that affect the other one; it's just a function of NYC being a huge city, on the border of a dense state.
And their misery is their own doing so nobody feels bad for them in the way that people feel at least a little bad for CA famers who are getting crapped on by people the white collar workers elected or feels bad for LA being hamstrung by policy that appeals to SF and Sac or whatever.
Not that simple. Other states, the small ones, will not permit [0] it to happen, since it would dilute their own unfair influence on the federal government, [1] the relic of an ancient join-up bribe from 1788.
[0] https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artIV-S3-C1-4...
[1] https://medium.com/qri-io/youre-probably-underrepresented-in...
Soon as you open the door to the conversation though your simple pipe dream is clogged by every land developer, US or overseas, environmental groups, etc
Because people outside the government exist and will engage. It’s opening a new lane on the freeway assuming it will help forever and it’s clogged in a couple years.
People flock to a void and a new set of states and legal boundaries is a knowledge void to fill with special interests.
But go ahead and forget every NGO, and people themselves and just put our agency at the whims of government. Not say government bad, just that no it won’t just be government dictating. And it should not be cause that’s how you get to “government bad”.
Most claims to the contrary are just propaganda.