Ice cream machine hackers sue McDonald's • Hacker News Board

Re: Ice cream machine hackers sue McDonald's

#91

Post by paulmd » Wed, Mar 02, 2022, 6:07 PM UTC

gruez wrote: post #84

paulmd wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

McDonald's exerts extremely extremely tight control over its franchisees by corporate standards. Every single thing about a McDonald's is meticulously specified and regulated by corporate, from the equipment installations to the number of pickle slices that go on a burger and the soap that goes into the bathroom. Franchisees in general don't wear the pants in this relationship. If McD corporate says you use this mach…

>but it's not like there's a union here https://nationalownersassociation.com/join/

Haha, fair, guess I should have checked.

But anyway, corporate wears the pants is the dynamic. It's a very very tightly managed and top-down "franchise".

Re: Ice cream machine hackers sue McDonald's

#92

Post by grouchomarx » Wed, Mar 02, 2022, 6:09 PM UTC

s_dev wrote: post #87

tfvlrue wrote: post #26

I've been following this story for a while. When people say the soft serve machine is "broken", they really mean "unavailable to serve ice cream to customers". That could mean something as innocuous as performing a pasteurization cycle during the day (because it failed to run at night for some reason, perhaps the machine's clock is set wrong). It could also mean there is a physical problem with some part of the machi…

How come these issues aren't existent in McDonald's in Europe?

there's a more reliable Italian machine that is also available to franchisees. most (all) american locations use the Taylor. I assume the opposite is true in europe

Re: Ice cream machine hackers sue McDonald's

#93

Post by seanw444 » Wed, Mar 02, 2022, 6:09 PM UTC

I can't remember the last time I went to a McDonald's and they didn't tell me "sorry, our ice cream machine isn't working right now."

Re: Ice cream machine hackers sue McDonald's

#94

Post by effingwewt » Wed, Mar 02, 2022, 6:12 PM UTC

daenz wrote: post #18

>Kytch has argued that Taylor was incentivized to keep its machines broken; repair and maintenance contracts across its business lines accounted for a quarter of the company's revenue stream in 2018, according to a document Taylor published at the time. But Kytch cofounders Nelson and O'Sullivan admit that doesn't explain why McDonald's would similarly seek to prevent a fix for its embarrassing—and expensive—ice crea…

What's even more strange is once they started getting bad publicity and the lawsuit talks became public, mcflurry machines magically all started working in my city. All of them. Some had not worked since the store opened.

Another thing companies seem to be doing a lot is false advertising. 7-11 is so bad with this. Sales posted everywhere but when you try and buy them 'it's not in the system sorry it will be regular price.'

Or even worse they list the (sale) price if you buy 2 or more, but do not list the regular single price anywhere.

I'm so tired of companies running our country.

Re: Ice cream machine hackers sue McDonald's

#95

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Mar 02, 2022, 6:13 PM UTC

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #73

wronglebowski wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've commented on this previously as I worked as a jack of all trades for a McDonald's franchisee for years. The machines tanks and shaving cores must be disassembled and cleaned every two weeks. They have a very intelligent series of sensors and internal mechanisms that make it impossible to defeat or cheat. This is not a low skilled job. I'd say it would be easier to change your cars oil than complete this. There's…

> This is not a low skilled job. I'd say it would be easier to change your cars oil than complete this. There's multiple gaskets and seals which need to be rotated quarterly in a tune up kit. While we were hiring at minimum wage the shake machine trained people were making 15$. I can only imagine what they're making now. Genuine question: Mom-and-pop shops used to somehow keep their frozen yogurt machines running wit…

[deleted]

Re: Ice cream machine hackers sue McDonald's

#96

Post by LatteLazy » Wed, Mar 02, 2022, 6:18 PM UTC

I always assumed the margins on ice cream were very very thin and that was why the machines were so often broken: people come for the promise of ice cream, they buy a burger and fries anyway, so who cares if they actually get the ice cream...

What a messy story...

Re: Ice cream machine hackers sue McDonald's

#97

Post by dang » Wed, Mar 02, 2022, 6:23 PM UTC

McDonald’s unreliable ice cream machines reportedly under FTC investigation - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28407525 - Sept 2021 (41 comments)

The Feds Want to Know What the McFuck Is Going on with the McFlurry Machines - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28386567 - Sept 2021 (151 comments)

The McFlurry Machine Company Just Got Hit with a McRestraining Order - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28119447 - Aug 2021 (3 comments)

Why the McFlurry machine company just got hit with a restraining order - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28117164 - Aug 2021 (67 comments)

Investigating why McDonald's ice cream machines are often broken [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26936774 - April 2021 (234 comments)

The Reason McDonalds Ice Cream Machines Are Always Broken - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26932344 - April 2021 (3 comments)

ArsTechnica has retracted the story about McDonald's Icecream - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26918415 - April 2021 (8 comments)

They Hacked McDonald’s Ice Cream Machines–and Started a Cold War - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26874436 - April 2021 (4 comments)

I reverse engineered McDonalds’ internal API - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24861623 - Oct 2020 (420 comments)

Re: Ice cream machine hackers sue McDonald's

#98

Post by sircastor » Wed, Mar 02, 2022, 6:27 PM UTC

daenz wrote: post #60

sircastor wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the critical relationship here to understand is that it's 3 parties: McDonald's corporation, A McDonald's Franchisee, and Taylor. MCD Corp dictates franchisees must use this machine, which is very unforgiving in it's offline modes the machine may only be fixed by Taylor. McDonald's isn't losing the business, the franchisee is, and they are supposedly getting a kickback of some sort from Taylor. The party that…

If a kickback exists, that makes sense. But wouldn't the kickback have to be quite high to be worth the risk that McDonalds is opening themselves up to? I haven't looked at the Taylor financials, but the service contracts are supposedly 25% of their business, so a kickback is some % of that... but I'm having trouble seeing how it is worth the risk to McDonalds. Which is why I think it has more to do with competition,…

The thing that stands out to me is that apparently a lot of these "malfunctions" or "breakdowns" are not that at all, but safety features: "You overfilled the bin, so it can't automatically pasturize. I'm shutting off". So the fault ends up being on the Franchisee for using the machine wrong - and therefore the cost is on them.

Re: Ice cream machine hackers sue McDonald's

#99

Post by infogulch » Wed, Mar 02, 2022, 6:33 PM UTC

joezydeco wrote: post #81

chongli wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also needs to be said that similar machines provided by Taylor to McDonalds' competitors do not have anywhere close to the amount of downtime that McDonalds' machines have. There's also ample evidence that software updates to Taylor's McDonalds machines have made the error codes more cryptic and the machines more unreliable over time. I think there's a pretty strong legal case to be made that these machines are de…

"It also needs to be said that similar machines provided by Taylor to McDonalds' competitors do not have anywhere close to the amount of downtime that McDonalds' machines have" But they're not similar machines. The machines in question are models developed for McDonald's that use internal heat treatment to pasteurize the machine and clean it on a more frequent basis. The intent was to keep the machine running longer…

The fact that the design intent is to reduce downtime does not mean it is achieved in practice. McDonald's ice cream machines constantly being "broken" is so well known that it's a meme among normal people. This is not the case for other fast food places that use Taylor machines. I've seen statements from employees confused about why it's such a big deal to clean the machine once a day because it's not that hard. (Personally, I find it kinda gross that the machine is intentionally not cleaned for weeks.)

Re: Ice cream machine hackers sue McDonald's

#100

Post by ojosilva » Wed, Mar 02, 2022, 6:37 PM UTC

tfvlrue wrote: post #69

ojosilva wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the machine has determined it's unsafe to serve the contents Wouldn't that mean, though, that the Kytch device could be working around the issue in detriment of the patron's, or "end user", safety? The franchisees certainly were very happy with Kytch's reduction in their maintenance and downtime cost, caused by very temperamental, ill-designed machines. Franchisee's are clearly victims of a tightly controlled McD e…

I don't have any first-hand knowledge of what the Kytch device did. But nothing I've read about it ever gave me the impression that it was overriding lockouts. It was intended as a remote monitoring device and troubleshooting tool. For example, instead of an employee having to read a pattern of blinking lights on the machine itself, a franchise owner might receive an email that says "soft serve machine cleaning requi…

Regardless, like I said, the Kytch box (a Raspberry Pi) is overriding the code that accesses the secret menu of the ice-cream machines [1]. That's outside the intended operation. And that's liability if McD knows about it and says nothing.

The machine produces food that goes into people's bodies. Ie, if it were to produce a poisonous glycol ice-cream (glycol one of the pasteurization ingredients) all of a sudden, even if it has nothing to do with what Kytch is intended to do, could you really 100% discard in front of a judge that a glitch or a hack in the Kytch's linux computer, which is btw connected to the internet, didn't order the ice-cream machine to do that which, as a consequence, killed a hypothetical 5-year old kid from food poisoning?

Imagine McD is now Boeing and the Kytch box is something airlines found that make 737-MAX fly safer by plugging into and overriding the system codes so that it can warn pilots of possible 737-MAX issues... Does it make sense for Boeing to allow such thing even if it makes planes safer?

[1] https://www.wired.com/story/they-hacked-mcdonalds-ice-cream-...