Flying SquidiFixit Tears Down McDonald's McFlurry Machine, Petitions Government for Right to Hack Them
fuboWhat baffles me about this whole situation is McDonald’s (corporate) role in perpetuating it. It doesn’t make sense as a way to squeeze money from the franchises, because the extracted rents¹ don’t go to corporate; it goes to Taylor. It’s a loss to the franchisee, and no benefit to McDonald’s central.
This smells of graft. Someone at McDonald’s corporate is getting paid off illicitly.
¹ In the political-economy sense of “rent”, not the one that means “lease payment”.
Executives who run McDonalds likely also own shares in Taylor.
Well, the company was taken over by a milkshake machine seller.
There is also no loss for McDonald’s central, but they have a old and close business relationship with Taylor that they seem to care about more than their own franchise owners.
CorkyskogIt hurts the brand immeasurably, how is that not a loss? Not only does it annoy customers, it causes them to go to other franchises instead. That decreases the value of their franchise, which directly hurts the company.
Long trip, daughter wants an ice cream, I am hungry, pull off the highway and go towards McDonald’s, then remember their ice cream machine is probably broken so I go to Wendy’s instead. Realize they are running their biggie bag promotion and get like 2 meals worth of food and an Ice cream for like 7 bucks… Why would I go to McDonald’s again for fast food if I have the option?
AltoI honestly don't understand how they're still around when places like Wendy's exist. Their prices have skyrocketed and the food is mediocre of im being incredibly generous.
I think it smells more of grift.
BuelldozerThis smells of graft.
It IS graft. I’ve forgotten where I ran into the information but someone tracked it down. Taylors (the machine company) pays McDonald’s Corporate for the right to an exclusive contract and McDonald’s Corporate receives a portion of the service revenue whenever a Taylor machine is “fixed”.
The Superior Court of Alameda County is charging roughly $1 per page to get legal filings. To download the entirety of the court proceedings to date, the court wants $2,999.
Alright, fuck it! Lets build our own soft serve ice cream machines… with blackjack and hookers.
Okay, and then you get fined for violating your franchise contract that requires you use these machines.
originalucifermcdonalds is somehow profiting from this, or it just wouldnt be happening.
More likely someone at McDonalds than the company itself.
wjriiFrom the article: "A DMCA exemption would allow McDonald’s franchises to legally do repair work on their own machines."
Wait, copyright can be used to prevent repairs? What is the justification? Is it a “ice cream machine company owns the copyright to mcdonalds ice cream and if you tamper with the machine you can’t call it McDonald’s ice cream anymore” kind of deal or straight up tampering is illegal situation?
The DMCA criminalizes the act of circumventing an access control, whether or not there is actual infringement of copyright itself.
This only applies to digital access controls right? Otherwise those ‘warranty void if removed’ stickers would be legal
I think there needs to be a digital component but it can still apply to physical goods. Either way, “warranty void if removed” stickers aren’t a control. It only applies to “effective” controls:
For the DMCA, circumvention means that there is a user attempting to “descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner” – assuming that there is a technological measure in place that “effectively controls access to a work.”
If you need to reverse engineer the product to bypass the access control, then that generally qualifies as an effective control. But if you can just press F12 or Escape or remove a sticker, that wouldn’t qualify as effective.
(For what it’s worth I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice.)
But isn’t it ineffective once it’s been bypassed, therefore making it legal again?
Unfortunately that’s not what they mean by “effective.” They define it like this:
a technological measure “effectively controls access to a work” if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the work.
The key verbiage there is “in the ordinary course of its operation.”
Someone should tell these people that words have meanings.
You need a bunch of passwords to get the machines to still work after doing any repairs. The only legal way to obtain those passwords is from the (copyrighted) service manual, which is only available to authorized maintenance people.
It’s the same BS as with John Deere and Apple, which triggered the whole “right to repair” movement.
Taylor must pay McDonald’s a tidy sum for the exclusivity contract. Both parties make out like bandits in the deal. I’m kind of surprised McDonald’s never in-housed it out of greed, but that day may be coming due to all the negative publicity.
I suspect it’s a case of they thought they were getting a good deal out of this when they signed the contract but didn’t realise how much Taylor was going to take the piss until it was too late. Likely when the contract expires it probably won’t be renewed.
It’s not an exclusive contract, franchise owners can also buy Carpigiani machines.
Not necessarily. If the losses they are sustaining aren’t understood or obfuscated through corporate and bureaucratic bullshit, it could go unnoticed for quite a while.
Eh not necessarily. It's a common joke, and ifixit gets publicity both for their own brand and for right to repair out of it
As a result of these shenanigans by Taylor and ion their behalf McDonald’s itself I haven’t considered McDonald’s a viable place to go for any kind of ice cream or ice cream-adjacent thing for many years, whereas this was once not the case. I know I’m not the only one either.
We are lucky enough to have a drive-through Baskin Robbins in this town. So my convenient ice cream choices are quite nice. But it must suck if your only option for ice cream is broken.
Wow, I really don’t envy your options. I’d prefer pretty much any ice cream chain over BR.
It’s not the best ice cream, but between that and McDonalds when you don’t want to get out of your car, I’ll pick the one with more flavor options.
We do have one other ice cream place. It’s inside the lobby of a gun range. I’m not kidding.
They also had a bullshit private ‘mask-free school’ going on during the height of COVID, so fuck them.
That sounds like the kind of place I grew up in and eventually escaped.
You grew up in a gun range? I’m glad you got out
Lol no. I grew up in a place where you’d have an ice cream parlor in a gun range.
I haven’t even thought about getting McDonald’s ice cream in years just because it seems like they are never able to serve it so I’m not even going to try. When I want ice cream I’ll go to the place that make ice cream on a cold slab.
I just stopped considering McDonalds a place that serves ice cream. The menu item just doesn’t exist there in my mind.
I wonder how much this actually hurts their business? Probably more than they realize. My daughter loves ice cream, and I am not going to play McDonald’s roulette, unless I have to. We just go to Wendy’s if we are going to eat fast food, the foods better and cheaper anyway and I have yet to run into a broken machine.
It probably hurts the franchisee more than it hurts McDonalds proper, and they make it back and then some from their deal with Taylor.
∟⊔⊤∦∣≶I watched a youtube deep dive into this, the corruption is insane.
YES! I was meaning to find it, thank you!
ImFresh3xNot defending McDonald’s or Taylor. Awful companies. And I’m all about the right to repair. But there’s some glaring YouTube style documentary oversimplification here.
For instance, if someone who isn’t a technician - someone who’s sole motivation is to get the machine to spit out cold goop - can alter the parameters of temperature without verifying that it should be altered, therefore tricking the machine into thinking it reached or sustained safe temperatures during cleaning or normal operation, it could be a disaster for both McDonald’s and Taylor.
Also safety aside, things like viscosity (because that a parameter you can change in technicians service menu too), being off potentially jeopardizes everything McDonald’s probably hopes to achieve in its franchise: global consistency.
Also the UI sucks. But it’s not really cryptic to me. I’m idiot and could immediately tell you the errors at time stamp 18:10:
LHPR>45F 1HR
LPROD too VISC
Means
Left hopper went over 45 degrees Fahrenheit for 1 hour. A clear safety issue.
Left side product is to viscous. A quality issue.
And that was the best example of cryprtic error messages the video could come up with. And 3rd party app didn’t seem any better tbh, other than sending you an email. Which is nice for the owners, no doubt.
It’s just a shit product. Made by shit companies. With little incentive to fix it. With McDonald’s and Taylor benefiting. Big bank take little bank. Not really an exposé.
SanctusHey, kids! Do you want to play a game? Its called “Everyone In Any Position of Power is Corrupt!”
RiikkaTheIcePrincessI freaking hate this game, when can we play something else :(
The game only ends when there are no remaining players who can stand or when the players have nothing left, not even the clothes on their backs.
orcaWow, season 2 of Squid Game is brutal.
Can you win if all the people in power happen to not be alive anymore?
Thats a surprise tool that we’ll save for later
EdibleFriendOne way to find out?
No, that just starts the next round.
Dablin"A strange game. The only winning move is not to play."
Can you explain the rules? This game kinda sounds like it sucks.
vaultdweller013Well if you win ya get a free guillotine!
Can you explain the rules?
Here you go! The Rules for Rulers
You Would Be a Terrible Leader
CookieJarObserverId blow them up and buy one from a reliable source…
McDonald’s Franchisee’s can’t buy anything other than these specific machines from Taylor. They can’t even buy the machines that Taylor sells to other chains like Wendy’s!
Kind of seems a bit pointless what they’re campaigning for in this regard. A DMCA exemption wouldn’t allow franchise owners to use an alternative repair company, as no doubt their franchise contract specifies who they can use.
A DMCA exemption wouldn’t allow franchise owners to use an alternative repair company
That’s not the point. Often there’s nothing actually wrong with the machine, you simply need to be able to reset a system flag which you can easily do using the box that Kytch makes. So the Franchisee buys a Kytch box and then doesn’t need to call ANYBODY.
PeachManY’all are really busting out the pitchforks for this shit? You’re gonna demand change at McDonald’s?
Have you considered not eating there? You know that food is terrible for you, right? Crazy amounts of salt, sugar, and garbage meat processed in weird preservatives. You’d be healthier, and there’s no better way to hurt a corporation than to stop giving them your money.
I mean its not real ice cream anyway its some horrible mad science concoction which probably causes cancer so the scam McDonalds and the manufactured are pulling here is likely doing the public a favor.