this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2024
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This is a nice win for self-repair hardware rights.

For context, see their old video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uCpY3tFTIA

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[–] [email protected] 116 points 6 months ago (1 children)

While there is feel good framing, write ups like this just reinforce what a dystopian hell hole we live in. It is depressing.

[–] [email protected] 63 points 6 months ago (4 children)

You're not wrong, but I'd still encourage everyone to celebrate the small victories. If we wait for perfection it may never come.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 6 months ago (1 children)

"Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the merely good" is one (imo important) way to state it.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Yes, but framing is important. Saying "Oh look what our perfect corporate buddies over at Taylor let us do even though it's their call" (a huge lie btw.) vs. saying "We finally got this victory, we can finally do part of what we should've never have been unable to do due to corporate greed, thank you Taylor for getting some sense, it seems like your scrooges still have some semblance of a soul left" is a big difference. As always, the truth is somewhere in between these two extremes. However, I'm inclned to lean towards the latter more than the former on the spectrum.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

Oh, tbh I was just commenting the sort of "pithy" way to say what commenter above me was saying. I wasn't actually commenting on the situation, screw McDonalds and Taylor both lol

[–] [email protected] 15 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

as long as we are walking forwards, and not backwards or sideways, we can go one step at a time and we will be closer to something better.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

Plus it's still an improvement over the alternative.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

The only Victory I see in my medium term future is leaving the country. The US is fucked 5 ways to sunday and honestly I don't see that recovering any time soon

[–] [email protected] 82 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (4 children)

Ah this bit is sad. The exception only covers bypassing DMCA protections to fix your own stuff not distributing the tooling for it.

It is still a crime for iFixit to sell a tool to fix ice cream machines, and that’s a real shame. The ruling doesn’t change the underlying statute making it illegal to share or sell tools that bypass software locks. This leaves most of the repair work inaccessible to the average person, since the technical barriers remain high. Without these tools, this exemption is largely theoretical for many small businesses that don’t have in-house repair experts.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 6 months ago

Long hard fight.

We take our Ws where we can get them.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Illegal like sharing pirated media.
It can't be commercialised, but if you just "happen" to find the software somewhere, you are allowed to use it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

Corpos hate decentralized operations...

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 months ago (1 children)

They should do like the folks selling weed in DC, where they sell you a $200 cookie or sticker and give you a free ounce of weed with your purchase.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

I wonder if someone could invent a new open source machine of some sort along with a tool to fix that, and that tool just happens to also be able to fix the McDonald's ice cream machines?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago

I mean, you could. The problem becomes "do you have more money and lawyers than McDonald's" to keep pretending it has nothing to do with it in court.

[–] [email protected] 53 points 6 months ago

That's great, but I'm sure Taylor (ice cream machine manufacturer) will still void your warranty, and McDonald's corporate will still tell you you're required to have Taylor service it. There were blackboxed control bypass devices for these machines that let them run longer and self-clean better, but McDonald's sent out a memo requiring all franchisees to remove them and only allow Taylor to work on those machines.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Sweet! Sub par soft-serve for everyone!

[–] [email protected] 33 points 6 months ago (2 children)

It’s not even cheap anymore :(

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago

Was McDonalds ever cheap in the first place?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

Costco’s soft-serve is way better than McD’s and actually is cheap.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago

Maybe not now since we can hack it

[–] [email protected] 29 points 6 months ago (1 children)

McDonald's franchisees being forced to buy one specific problematic ice cream machine is ducked up on it's own. Let them choose what works.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

The whole situation is ducked IMO.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 6 months ago (1 children)

My ice cream came with bronzer smeared all over the cone last time I went there.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago

No extra charge?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 months ago

"You are allowed to repair the thing you own"

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Why would you buy an ice cream machine from McDonalds? They have bland food and cut cola with hygiene problems in their ice machines.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 months ago

If you run a franchise, you have to get the machine from a specific vendor. That vendor makes a killing charging for their techs to come over to fix those machines. There's some videos on YouTube that explain how the scam works.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

Why would anyone even eat there?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (2 children)

This company sure has been making the rounds on the internet. I estimate maybe 1-2 years before they decide to cash in on their goodwill with some kind of monetary product

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago

Ifixit? They've been selling tools for years, and they're great.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I am honestly not sure if you're joking or not

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

I'm not really. Who are these guys and why am I hearing about them on every social media outlet.

They're a company whose sole aim is to make money. Right now they're in the goodwill phase of building community trust, but what's their endgame? Is this an emerging market they're cornering.

I know these sound like sarcastic questions, but I'm genuinely wondering.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Ifixit has been a community driven repair site for over 20 years. It was indispensable for repairing apple laptops when they were still transitioning to Intel from PowerPC. I haven't kept up with all the changes, but they sell tools and parts now. Even from a jaded perspective one can see the right to repair is in their best interest.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Well, that sounds promising at least. I hope their interests continue to align with their consumer-base for another 20 years, and doesn't nosedive into the CEO rot we've seen with Mozilla

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

So far they haven't shown any form above declined. In fact the actually just decided to separate from being an official Samsung repair partner, because Samsung was trying to dictate how much they were charging for the repair costs and were actively hinderings efforts regarding repairing Samsung products, so they decide that Samsung wasn't aligned with their programs values and decided to drop the program. This doesn't mean that they dropped how to repair Samsung devices, it just means that they no longer offer second party access to Parts it's now third party and Samsung themselves aren't providing the repair manuals anymore (not that they really did in the first place)

While I find their tools pretty steep in pricing, there's still nowhere near cost of doing it through Apple or Samsung

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

Thanks for the informed context -- I think my brain is just predisposed towards seeing such efforts as disingenuous, but I should learn to criticize companies after they do bad things, and not before.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Thumbnail isn't even a Mcds unit.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago

Well they weren't allowed to before

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (3 children)

I don't think I've ever ordered ice-cream from McDonald's. Not exactly the type of product I'd go to a hamburger joint for.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

While McDonald’s ice cream isn’t great, hamburger joints are usually a great spot for ice cream and milkshakes

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Their ice cream and McFlurry is used to be really good for the value

I say used to because they more or less butchered the McFlurry in the past 7 years they no longer have the iconic spoons they've removed the packaging replacing it with a slightly smaller packaging and they've increased the cost by about double.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

That's all I used to go there for, but not sure if it's different ice-cream in Europe.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (2 children)

World on fire and there are people worried about repairing ice cream machines of an evil corporation and consider it a "victory". Depressing

[–] [email protected] 19 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

The right to repair in general is pretty significant.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago

Repairing things helps reduce the endless resource expediture and trash creation. Ice cream machines are just a random example. As you can read in the article they were going for much more, and more significant stuff, but got denied.