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We can now fix McDonald's ice cream machines

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Re: We can now fix McDonald's ice cream machines

#41

Post by subarctic »

> Meanwhile, Canada is in the final stages of considering legislation that would fix the Canadian version of the DMCA, a bill called C-244 that is in its third reading in the Senate and expected to move before the end of the month. If Canada legalized circumventing technological protection measures for the purposes of repair, we might just have to head north to find the tools we need to do repairs.

That's good news, I didn't know about that bill. It looks like it was voted for unanimously in parliament. It's nice when you hear about our government doing something good for once.

Re: We can now fix McDonald's ice cream machines

#43

Post by vidarh »

mschuster91 wrote: post #38
jessriedel wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand the last sentence. If the machines are frequently broken, that damages the Macdonald's brand in the consumer's eyes. And if the franchisee's are paying unnecessary costs, making a Macdonald's franchise less lucrative for the owner-operator, that will lead to fewer franchises renewals and new franchises in the future.

> I don't understand the last sentence. If the machines are frequently broken, that damages the Macdonald's brand in the consumer's eyes. Try to quantify that to the MBA bean counters, good luck. No one cares about ice cream from Mc f..ing Donald's, given that most employees in fast food stores are high school kids and I got the runs more than once from that shit, I don't trust them anyway to follow up with the strin…

> No one cares about ice cream from Mc f..ing Donald's

People care enough that there's a website mapping working McDonalds icecream machines across several countries, that has been up for years, and was referenced in the linked article:

https://mcbroken.com/

Quite a few places where softserve ice cream is not that widespread, McDonalds is one of the most reliable places to be able to find it.

Re: We can now fix McDonald's ice cream machines

#45

Post by [deleted] »

greensh wrote: post #15
dylan604 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So don't sell. Open an account on GitHub and post the procedure there

from the article: > The ruling doesn’t change the underlying statute making it illegal to share or sell tools that bypass software locks. I think this also includes sharing code.

[deleted]

Re: We can now fix McDonald's ice cream machines

#46

Post by eli »

readthenotes1 wrote: post #16
coder543 wrote: post #10

I wish we would just repeal the DMCA. Under no circumstances should we need an exemption from the copyright office just to be able to repair an ice cream machine. It's not even a permanent exemption! The DMCA causes many weird problems.

Disney was willing to go to the ends of the Earth to protect Mickey mouse...

Sure, but the anti-circumvention provisions in particular just inconvenience everyone. It's not like DVDs being "protected" prevented them from being ripped.

Re: We can now fix McDonald's ice cream machines

#47

Post by cmrdporcupine »

mcdow wrote: post #9

Here's a great YT video on why McDonald's ice cream machines are always broken: https://youtu.be/SrDEtSlqJC4 TL;DW: there are some perverse incentives to keep them broken. Basically the owner operators are forced to use a particular brand by corporate. Corporate McDonalds has a deal with a particular ice cream machine company. That particular company is the only company owner operators are allowed to buy from, and th…

Very weird, here in Canada I don't think I've ever been to a McDonald's without working ice cream machines.

Re: We can now fix McDonald's ice cream machines

#48

Post by colejohnson66 »

mcdow wrote: post #27
throw0101d wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Here's a great YT video on why McDonald's ice cream machines are always broken: https://youtu.be/SrDEtSlqJC4?si=IK1S-Yx9Zq4nEVrr As habit or policy, can we all agree to get rid of the tracking information in Youtube links? * https://youtu.be/SrDEtSlqJC4

My bad! Fixed. Didn't even realize the YT links had tracking info on them!

FYI, it's the "si" query parameter; It identifies the account that clicked the share button

Re: We can now fix McDonald's ice cream machines

#49

Post by MichaelZuo »

Izikiel43 wrote: post #19
readthenotes1 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disney was willing to go to the ends of the Earth to protect Mickey mouse...

And Paraguay won

Well they didn’t literally go to every last square km on planet Earth… so it’s not that surprising.

Re: We can now fix McDonald's ice cream machines

#50

Post by crooked-v »

yreg wrote: post #23

I've heard plenty of stories about the MCD ice cream machines, but it doesn't add up for me. Can someone who has more insight shed some light into this? - Are the machines listed as "broken" on https://mcbroken.com/ actually broken? Or is that more of a meme, with many just undergoing routine cleaning, etc.? - Why does this seemingly happen only in US? In European McDonald's it's pretty much unheard of. - Why would M…

The short version is that the machines' sensors are extremely picky (because the stuff that goes into soft serve is just begging for massive bacterial growth if not handled correctly), and McDonald's corporate requires (I'm pretty sure by franchisee contract, not just by the copyright restrictions the article is about) that their specific chosen vendor handles it, even for minor issues.

A lot of people like to treat this as a conspiracy, but I think it's much more likely it's the corporate people being paranoid about local franchisees overriding the machines, and that leading to listeria outbreaks happening in the only non-sealed food item that isn't heated to safe temperatures shortly before it's handed off to customers.

I don't know about the contrast with Europe, but it might just be geographical size causing time delays for individual techs showing up. McDonald's franchisees are everywhere, and the U.S. is gigantic.

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