US Copyright Office “frees the McFlurry,” allowing repair of ice cream machines

Boskone

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Google "auto auth". Chrysler and Nissan now have cars that are locked behind a system that requires you to either pay a subscription to "authorize" your diagnosis tool (which of course has to have paid a fee to someone so they're on the approved list of tools to be authorized) or have an authorized dealer tool so that you can do such "sensitive" operations as clear codes and do bidirectional operations. Ostensibly it's an anti-cyber hacking thing but it's pretty clear on its face that it's an anti-independent repair thing.
That is some bullshit, but seems that bypass cables are less than $20.

Does require some mucking about behind the dash, at least in many vehicles, but I think most people mucking about with OBDII readers would be willing to do that anyway.

Still, I suppose that's another argument against FCA vehicles. There are better ways to avoid remote hacking of vehicles...like not including cellular modems on the CAN.
 
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D.Becker

Ars Tribunus Militum
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Wait are these ice cream machines actually are hooked up to the internet and have Trusted Platform Modules?!?! Just give me the days when they made a chocolate malt or shake in a blender. :/

'TPM' means 'Trusted Platform Module' to me as well.

But in copyright discussions it means Technological Protection Measures. This was defined in the story, although I also missed it in my first read-through:


Difficulties in repair related to "technological protection measures," or TPMs, were described as follows:
 
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the best part? those actually matter. Those are the reviews that actually have finanical impact. They've got real world power. You could have just been nice, and all this would have been avoided. Thanks for giving me the motivation to figure out how to do it. Now I've got the power to destroy businesses and put their balls into a vicegrip. new super power unlocked. an ounce of prevention is worth a whole pound of cure, but I guess you forgot that part.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2omjuU0Kks



Digital Daggers - The Devil Within [MALE VERSION/LYRICS]​


Oh wait that was you? This wasn't you pointing to someone and laughing? You did this yourself? You're ridiculous. Do you actually think this matters? No one anywhere is checking "Business reviews" like this for a site like this, and your complaint sounds like a petulant whiny child, the sort of thing people will look at, laugh at, and move on from. Do you realize how bad this makes YOU look?
 
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Thegs

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Oh wait that was you? This wasn't you pointing to someone and laughing? You did this yourself? You're ridiculous. Do you actually think this matters? No one anywhere is checking "Business reviews" like this for a site like this, and your complaint sounds like a petulant whiny child, the sort of thing people will look at, laugh at, and move on from. Do you realize how bad this makes YOU look?
Not to mention, longtime readers know that Ars HQ is on the moon, safe from negative Google Maps reviews.
 
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Quote
Editor Moonshark
Editor Moonshark
Moonshark dreading day Google lunar rovers drive all over place, leaving tire tracks and taking photos of all our rocks
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Not to mention, longtime readers know that Ars HQ is on the moon, safe from negative Google Maps reviews.
The moon is no longer safe:

Melies_color_Voyage_dans_la_lune.jpg
 
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(blah blah blah)...


Kicked the bullies in the balls , now watch me just walk away, coldly into the night. I don't care, you're not the first gang of shitgoblins who decided to pick on me in a pack. Not my first rodeo. just the first I found a way to fight back against.
How many comments are they going to expend while they "just walk away"? Get your bets down now.
 
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Aurich

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The person people are arguing with asked for their account to be deleted, given the newness of it and the worthlessness of the posts I've just nuked them with our spam tool rather than leave anything behind. Just FYI for why it's all vanished now.

I'm saving this for the hilarity though, imagine ... leaving a review of Condé Nast on Google Maps because you got mad you were downvoted in some internet comments.

Nice job Paul.

1730137479748.png
 
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digitalgriffin

Smack-Fu Master, in training
69
I hope McDonalds & Taylor looses badly to Kytch.

Not only did they act in bad faith, but they illegally obtained a copy of the device in question and reverse engineered it to be sold to their franchise owners saying "You can only use our diagnostic machine". That is quite literally anti competitive and a monopoly. And take a wild guess which one was a lot more expensive to buy.
 
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digitalgriffin

Smack-Fu Master, in training
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Buying less shitty hardware is probably a better and more sustainable way to get repairable hardware, than supporting crappy companies by buying non-repairable hardware and then hoping to be able to repair them anyway. After all, it sounds like the legal hurdles of repairability are just one part of the problem, and even removing them won't help interpret error codes, or get proper manuals and tools.

As part of the McDonalds Franchise system you have to buy their equipment. It's in the licensing agreement and your land lease (which McDonald's owns all the land your restaurant sits on) is dependent upon it. Basically you are a captive owner to McDonald's whims.
 
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digitalgriffin

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Why does a softserve machine need any kind of software?
Because everything today is controlled by computers to handle the various request of the machine. The machine in question has several functions, each which runs a separate program based on the requested food. It might be soft serve, a mcflurry, or a milk shake. Each runs a different program. Then there's prep, maintenance (refrig cycling and cleanout), operation monitoring (pump overheating), environmental monitoring (milk too warm), and cleaning/sterilization stages.

Even your dish, fridge, and clothes washer have chips in them to handle different conditions.
 
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forkspoon

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A narrow, three-year exemption that allows people to repair machines they already own. We're pretty normalized to this BS.

Idk if the founding fathers & co. actually cared about the "encouragement of learning" when they introduced copyright, but if you really stick with that justification it's hard to square with our current state of affairs.

From Wiki:
The Copyright Act of 1790 was the first federal copyright act to be instituted in the United States, though most of the states had passed various legislation securing copyrights in the years immediately following the Revolutionary War. The stated object of the act was the "encouragement of learning," and it achieved this by securing authors the "sole right and liberty of printing, reprinting, publishing and vending" the copies of their "maps, charts, and books" for a term of 14 years, with the right to renew for one additional 14-year term should the copyright holder still be alive.
 
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Bernardo Verda

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As part of the McDonalds Franchise system you have to buy their equipment. It's in the licensing agreement and your land lease (which McDonald's owns all the land your restaurant sits on) is dependent upon it. Basically you are a captive owner to McDonald's whims.
It sounds to me like MacD "franchises" are kind effectively really a modern variation on sharecropping.
 
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The person people are arguing with asked for their account to be deleted, given the newness of it and the worthlessness of the posts I've just nuked them with our spam tool rather than leave anything behind. Just FYI for why it's all vanished now.

I'm saving this for the hilarity though, imagine ... leaving a review of Condé Nast on Google Maps because you got mad you were downvoted in some internet comments.

Nice job Paul.

View attachment 94340
Thank you for preserving this piece of comedy.
 
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phoenix_rizzen

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Interesting.

But based purely on your description, I'd expect to see the same issue with Wendy's Frosty machines, or really a number of other fast-food chain machines. I don't think that happened though. Could it be that your explanation is also missing some relevant parts?
Not to mention this hasn't been an issue with franchises in Canada (although I've heard they use a different model/vendor for ice cream machine up here?). It's still the same minimum-wage workers doing the maintenance/cleanings, but without all the issues seen in the US franchises. There's definitely more to this than "expensive machines hard to use".
 
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Shavano

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So does this mean the jack in the box milkshake machines will be fixed?
it doesn't mean Jack, right?
Why does a softserve machine need any kind of software?
To decide it has made enough soft serve and you need to call the manufacturer for service.
Also it's the cheapest way to implement a PI controller to keep the ingredients at the right temperature and make sure it mixes the ingredients often enough, and remind you to clean it and replenish the ingredients.
 
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herko

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The person people are arguing with asked for their account to be deleted, given the newness of it and the worthlessness of the posts I've just nuked them with our spam tool rather than leave anything behind. Just FYI for why it's all vanished now.

I'm saving this for the hilarity though, imagine ... leaving a review of Condé Nast on Google Maps because you got mad you were downvoted in some internet comments.

Nice job Paul.

View attachment 94340

Have you ever listened to “Beach too sandy, water too wet?” It’s a podcast where they read reviews like this one in as much of a deadpan as possible.
 
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Aurich

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dbrower

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Who would have thought that repairing a machine was linked to copyright somehow. Crazy world we live in ...
Software eats the world, and software has copyright, TPM and DMCA attached.

As I understand it, these particular machines are unique in being combination soft-server ice-cream and milkshake machines in one unit. This ostensibly saves a duplicate unit for one function or the other, but seems to accrue complexity and software to switch function for each operation.
 
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Boskone

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Next Stop: Farming equipment.
I think Case New Holland (at least) is releasing some such.

Wouldn't surprise me if other major mfgs aren't working on something, too.

Probably mid-sized tractors first: small tractors go to smaller operations, and the big tractors are really complicated (articulating tractors, combines, etc). But mid-sized tractors are comparatively simple, get a ton of use to benefit from being hybridized, and aren't so expensive that risks have to be minimized.

(And there are, of course, some Chinese electric tractors. They're pretty good, apparently, but only run for a few hours; ag tractors during planting and harvest are frequently in constant use most of the day. Still, an electric yard tractor in the vein of the old Deere 317--basically a riding mower with PTO and hydraulics--would be pretty cool.)
 
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CyrixInstead

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Interesting to read this when a few days ago on Twitter I saw Trump proclaiming he'd fix ice cream machines at McDonald's. He must have been told by someone in his team and wanted to make the most of his recent 'work experience' being in the news. Just the kind of taking undue credit I'd expect from him.

https://x.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1850326584537858393
\Edit - not sure how to get the tweet to embed in the page and the link to Twitter looks weird, sorry!
 
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