What 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".
Someone at McDonald's corporate is getting paid off illicitly.
By the values of Corpmurica, that executive is just acting out of rational self-interest.
Isn't our society in favor of fucking over anyone we can for individual profit? Isn't that what we're taught by example to do, lest we be considered an un-American commie?
You can bribe our politicians legally with infinite sums of money to PACs since Citizens United, you think anyone gives a shit about bribing a McDonald's executive?
This smells of graft.
It IS graft. I've forgotten where I ran into the information but someone tracked it down. Taylors (the machine company) has an exclusive contract with McDonald's Corporate for the machines and McDonald's Corporate receives a portion of the service revenue whenever a Taylor machine is "fixed".
That's why McDonald's is fighting Kytch / helping Taylor.
Oh, so it is just screwing the franchisees.
Well, shit.
Executives who run McDonalds likely also own shares in Taylor. Just like they have a financial interest in paper straws.
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.
There's already a link to the vid talking about the utter bullshit and corruption surrounding the McD's ice cream machines posted in this thread, but here's a resource I haven't seen posted yet: an online tracker to find out if your local McD's ice cream machine is working or broken right now.
(love the domain name)
I swear that site makes green dots smaller until they disappear when you zoom out. Still pretty cool though, our nearest McDonalds has a broken ice cream machine
How do they get the data?
They reverse engineered the ordering API (that the app uses) and try to add a McSundae to an online order. If the ice cream machine is broken, it won't let you add that item to an order for the specific location. If the McSundae machine is working, it will let you add that item to the order for the designated location.
It updates each location every 30 minutes, so is very up to date.
More details about it here: https://hypebeast.com/2020/10/mcbroken-site-mcdonalds-ice-cream-machines-working-tracker-info
If its the one I know, it sends an online ice cream request through the API, and then cancels the successful ones before they reach the stores. The unsuccessful ones are broken machines, essentially.
Hey, kids! Do you want to play a game? Its called "Everyone In Any Position of Power is Corrupt!"
I 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.
Can you explain the rules? This game kinda sounds like it sucks.
Can you explain the rules?
Here you go! The Rules for Rulers
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/rStL7niR7gs
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
BTW, fixing broken machines' software (printers) was how Richard Stallman got so frustrated to invent the GPL license...
Imagine being the guy who wrote so buggy software that you inadvertently saddled the entire world with rms
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.
Pretty sure they explicitly do not want legislators to think they will "hack" them. Is this article shillin' for Taylor?
You probably already know but hacking originally meant to modify a machine for instance (or furniture as in ikea hacks) but it really is a word one should avoid when speaking with people who aren't part of the communities that use it in its original meaning.
As a result of these shenanigans by Taylor and on 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.
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.
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.
mcdonalds is somehow profiting from this, or it just wouldnt be happening.
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.
From 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 is tampering straight up illegal?
The DMCA criminalizes the act of circumventing an access control, whether or not there is actual infringement of copyright itself.
Unrelated to the topic but has anyone else noticed the quality of the soft serve has gone down dramatically in the last several years. I got a ice cream cone and it didn't even taste good. I was looking at their advert for a Mcflurry and it looked all ice crystally and not good at all. If they can't even make the picture look good that is saying something.
I watched a youtube deep dive into this, the corruption is insane.
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
