Many people don't know that you have to milk a dairy cow twice a day because they produce so much milk. They will experience severe pain of not milked, so in case of an emergency, usually all cows are euthanized. In today's world, farmers need to have more cows than they could ever milk by hand.
> >Many people don't know that you have to milk a dairy cow twice a day because they produce so much milk. > > Why? This doesn't seem natural (or ethical) > > >In today's world, farmers need to have more cows than they could ever milk by hand. > > Why? This doesn't seem sustainable (or ethical)
Short answer: capitalism
Longer answer: cows have been bred for more milk throughput, not more milk storage. A good dairy cow can yield up to six and a half gallons every day. The udder is simply not large enough to hold that much milk. Whether this kind of selective breeding can be called natural is up to you.
And milking machines, even the simplest kind that provide just a suction mechanism, are ubiquitous in the developed world and can easily allow the farmer to milk multiple cows in parallel, pipelined. And you need to have some machines to survive on the market. So you get more cows to increase the yield. These machines are usually very reliable, so people begin to rely on them. If you can get them fixed weithin a couple hours you're good.
Nope. It's the opposite way. The cow produces so much milk, because it's milked so often. In normal world, cow produces milk for the children, and when they drink less and less milk, the cow produces less and less milk. In the not normal world (aka the farm) cows are inseminated almost every year, the children are taken away (causing shock in children and mothers) then cows are milked all the time. Then impregnated and so on. Till a cow is so exhausted that she cannot give enough milk to be "economically productive" and then she's slaughtered as useless.
Well, they’re correct. It’s a predicament the farmer has put the cow in. The top comment’s framing makes it sound like cows just exist in nature and need us to milk them.
A farmer from Zug is hacked. One of his cows dies as a result - can a cyber attack now affect all farmers?
Farmer Bircher refused to pay 10,000 francs to a gang. A cyber security expert says: "Agriculture is where the banks and insurance companies were fifteen years ago."
Farmer Vital Bircher from Hagendorn in the canton of Zug receives a text message from his milking robot. It was no longer receiving data from the computer. Thinking nothing of it, he goes into the barn and sees that the milking machine's display is black. Bircher contacts the manufacturer of the machine. An employee tells him: "You've been hacked."
This incident occurred nine months ago, as first reported by the "Luzerner Zeitung". At the time, Bircher refused to pay the ransom of 10,000 francs demanded by the hackers. As a result, he was denied access to his data. This included important information on when his mother cows were inseminated.
Because Bircher was unable to find out exactly when a cow was inseminated and complications arose, the calf died in the womb and the cow had to be euthanized. Bircher is convinced that he could have saved the mother cow's life without the hacker attack.
How could farmer Bircher have prevented the hacker attack?
When asked by the NZZ, Bircher says that the hacked computer was technically up to date: The farmer had only bought the device a year ago, it had Windows 11 installed and also an antivirus program.
Marc K. Peter, Professor of Digital Transformation at the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland, says that the case of the farmer from Zug is not atypical. One in ten SMEs in Switzerland has already been compromised by cyber criminals, as he found out in a study that investigated cyber attacks last year.
Industries such as agriculture, which are still in the process of digital transformation, are particularly affected, says Peter. He sees a similar accumulation of cases in municipalities and the army. The international and highly professional hacker gangs are deliberately targeting organizations that are still undergoing digital transformation. "In terms of cyber security, agriculture is where banks and insurance companies were fifteen years ago."
Farmer Bircher explains that he does not regularly store his data externally. Peter recommends making regular encrypted back-ups on external hard drives. And preferably on a rotating basis: on different external data carriers, in different locations. Because there are also cases where access to cloud data is blocked.
Case two years ago: Milking machine paralyzed
The "Bauernzeitung" reported on a case similar to Bircher's two years ago in April. Back then, ransomware paralyzed a farmer's entire milking system. He had to set up an emergency milking parlor. This cost him time and money.
The Zug farmer Bircher was lucky that certain parts of his milking systems were disconnected from the computer. He was able to continue milking his livestock despite the hacker attack. If not, the financial loss, which already amounted to 6,000 francs, would have been significantly higher. This is because Bircher would not have had a contingency plan at hand.
This is the case for many small and medium-sized companies in Switzerland, says expert Peter. Ninety percent of companies are technically well protected against cyber attacks. But only around a third are organizationally prepared in the event of a hacker attack.
This involves simple things, such as storing passwords on external devices. Because once the laptop has been hacked, the data can no longer be retrieved. This is why companies should definitely run through emergency scenarios.
SMEs are also not where they should be when it comes to cyber insurance, says Peter. Only ten percent have taken out such insurance. Insurance covers financial losses and also helps with coping. Insurance employees help victims to take the right steps after an attack.
For Bircher, a farmer from Zug, the cyberattack is over. He is looking to the future and says he now carries out back-ups more often.
"The Zug farmer Bircher was lucky that certain parts of his milking systems were disconnected from the computer. He was able to continue milking his livestock despite the hacker attack."
Don't connect important machines to the internet... all these hacker stories comes down to the same fundamental mistake.
If not as a privacy and rent seeking nightmare. You are in reach of every hooligan in the world.
The interesting thing about this one is that he presumably didn't download any malware onto it. Such machines just run a single app that comes from the factory, and aren't use for general computing.
>Such machines just run a single app that comes from the factory, and aren't use for general computing.
And those machines are always running a purpose built program made by the lowest bidder and have TRIVIAL flaws to exploit.
The malware got in the same way malware got into Windows 2000 back in the day: the code exposed to the network is trash and is full of holes you can drive a truck through.
From reading above, I assume they are referring to the software company hosting the data for the herd in the cloud which then has a reliance on networking, which then requires a recurring fee to access.
In reality a local version on a standalone system would probably be better as most farmers may not need anything more than a local system with a soft and hard copy backup for safetly.
The cloud data is probably being sold to hedge funds to make bets on yields/futures.
Maybe the phrase I rather should have used would be "profiteering"?
But according to Wikipedia, I think the "classic example" fits many SaaS vendors:
The classic example of rent-seeking, according to Robert Shiller, is that of a property owner who installs a chain across a river that flows through their land and then hires a collector to charge passing boats a fee to lower the chain. There is nothing productive about the chain or the collector, nor do passing boats get anything in return. The owner has made no improvements to the river and is not adding value in any way, directly or indirectly, except for themselves. *All they are doing is finding a way to obtain money from something that used to be free*.
But how does that fit SAAS vendors? If someone cut my fibre wire and added a box that stopped it working if I didn't pay them, I would say that that is rent seeking. A SAAS vendor doesn't seem to fit that pattern.
> Rent seeking is getting the government/a regulator to mandate the use of your service.
That sounds like your personal narrower definition. Where did you get that from?
The wider use is both historically and semantically accurate and I believe people familiar with the term will still recognize its intended meaning today.
Needlessly making a physical product unusable without the continued subscription to an associated service, and designing the product in such a way that only the manufacturer can/may provide that service (aka vendor-lock-in) is pretty much rent-seeking, yeah.
> Bircher says that the hacked computer was technically up to date: The farmer had only bought the device a year ago, it had Windows 11 installed and also an antivirus program
People think this is sufficient. Microsoft has a giant marketing budget to ensure they never think differently.
