Hacking McDonald’s Ice Cream Machines

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Andy Greenberg from Wired (archived, non-paywall version):

Of all the mysteries and injustices of the McDonald’s ice cream machine, the one that Jeremy O’Sullivan insists you understand first is its secret passcode.

But after years of studying this complex machine and its many ways of failing, O’Sullivan remains most outraged at this notion: That the food-equipment giant Taylor sells the McFlurry-squirting devices to McDonald’s restaurant owners for about $18,000 each, and yet it keeps the machines’ inner workings secret from them. What’s more, Taylor maintains a network of approved distributors that charge franchisees thousands of dollars a year for pricey maintenance contracts, with technicians on call to come and tap that secret passcode into the devices sitting on their counters.

This is a fantastic look inside the world of fast food, the kitchen tools that make the industry run, franchise and franchisee relationships, and the right to repair movement as a whole. I wonder what the outcome would have been had the protagonists had cozied up with the ice cream machine manufacturer.

Last Chance to Snag Emirates First Class Using Alaska Miles

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Just a quick reminder that starting April 1, 2021, Alaska MileagePlan members will no longer be able to redeem their miles for Emirates First Class. This comes after a late 2020 announcement by Alaska that Emirates was removing the ability for their partners to redeem for the coveted front cabin.

So, if you have some extra Alaska miles gathering dust, it’s a good time to do some searching for that award, you only have two days left. I booked a reward from the US to Malaysia in early 2022 to at least lock in an A380 with the onboard shower. With the uncertainty of Covid restrictions I went as far into the future as I could. I am hopeful that the world will be on its way to a full recovery and reopening by then.

A Tale of Two Grocery Stores

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H-E-B

When an H-E-B grocery store lost power in Austin, they didn’t throw food out or make people put back their purchases.

From the Washington Post:

Around him were a couple hundred shoppers, some with only credit cards, trying to stock up during a statewide emergency. The power had been going on and off in this Austin suburb as cold weather overwhelmed the Texas grid. But no one told shoppers to put their items back if they couldn’t pay cash.

When Hennessy got to the cashier, he said, she just waved him on, thanked him and told him to drive home safely.

Compare that to a similar incident in Portland where a Fred Meyer lost power. From The Oregonian:

The food continued to sit unrefrigerated as the power outage dragged on at the store in Northeast Portland, prompting employees to toss out boxes of packaged meat, cheese and juice, whole turkeys, racks of ribs and other items they feared had spoiled.

The mound of discarded food in two large dumpsters attracted a crowd of 15 to 50 people at times who started taking some of it. Employees called police when they felt the scene got tense. Activists said police were “guarding” the food. Police said they were responding to “restore order.” National media picked up the story.

Two very different ways of handling similar problems. And while I am sure there is more to the Fred Meyer story, the idea that the store had to call the police to “restore order” is preposterous. What I would have liked to have seen from Fredy Meyer, which is a Kroger owned brand, is them to create order themselves by having food that would have no problem out of refrigeration for a little while, cheese and other dairy products, packaged cold cuts, etc. and hand them out in a reasonable fashion. Throwing it all in a dumpster while people watch and then throwing your hands up when there is a commotion is disingenuous. At the same time, the Portland Police should have shown up and immediately said “you created this problem, fix it”.

Looking at the Austin story, I have to wonder if corporate will back up the store managers. Sure it is good press, but it is also a lot of product that is leaving the store. Even if there was no story, it would be tough at the corporate level to come down on store managers for doing what is right for the community, regardless of the cost. The situation in Texas was and continues to be dire for a number of individuals, a few thousand in expenses for a company the size of H-E-B is small potatoes.

The team at Fred Meyer needs to take a good look at the H-E-B story and the reasoning behind it and learn something.

Threats to Critical Infrastructure

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From War on the Rocks:

Circumstantial evidence suggests that Warner was protesting 5G technology — reportedly an FBI line of inquiry. The campervan was parked in front of an AT&T transmission building and the explosion knocked down a network hub. The company website called the blast “devastating,” reporting secondary fires, loss of power, damaged equipment, and hazardous work in a disaster zone. Internet and cellphone service across parts of Tennessee, Kentucky, and Alabama was badly affected. AT&T scrambled to reroute service or deploy portable cell sites, with 65 percent of service restored two days later.

Experts saw this coming. In May 2020, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security issued alerts about potential attacks on cellphone infrastructure due to conspiracy theories about 5G technology spreading COVID-19 — misinformation promoted by gullible individuals, celebrities, and nefarious actors like QAnon. U.S. alerts followed dozens of arson and vandalism attacks abroad, including on U.K., Belgian, Canadian, and Dutch cell towers. And in the wake of the Nashville bombing, federal, state, and local law enforcement feared copycat attacks on other U.S. communications infrastructure.

There have always been conspiracy theories but it seems that the prevalence of social media in people’s daily lives has helped perpetuate untruths even faster than in the past. When I talk to friends and family and their main source of news is Instagram, Facebook, or some obscure website, I usually expect to see or hear a conspiracy theory at some point.

Facebook’s Scale

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Adrienne LaFrance, writing for The Atlantic, “Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine”:

People tend to complain about Facebook as if something recently curdled. There’s a notion that the social web was once useful, or at least that it could have been good, if only we had pulled a few levers: some moderation and fact-checking here, a bit of regulation there, perhaps a federal antitrust lawsuit. But that’s far too sunny and shortsighted a view. Today’s social networks, Facebook chief among them, were built to encourage the things that make them so harmful. It is in their very architecture.

I’ve been thinking for years about what it would take to make the social web magical in all the right ways — less extreme, less toxic, more true — and I realized only recently that I’ve been thinking far too narrowly about the problem. I’ve long wanted Mark Zuckerberg to admit that Facebook is a media company, to take responsibility for the informational environment he created in the same way that the editor of a magazine would. (I pressed him on this once and he laughed.) In recent years, as Facebook’s mistakes have compounded and its reputation has tanked, it has become clear that negligence is only part of the problem. No one, not even Mark Zuckerberg, can control the product he made. I’ve come to realize that Facebook is not a media company. It’s a Doomsday Machine.

I disagree with the idea that Zuckerberg can’t control his creation. Facebook can be reined in, if Zuckerberg wanted it controlled.

Nine Months of Ringing

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When the first lock downs in the United States were announced I was returning from a work trip to Montreal. On the flight home I had not felt great but was not worried about Covid-19. The next day I felt a little better and went out for a lunch at a restaurant not knowing it would be the last time I’d have a sit down meal inside of a place for now 9 months.  On Saturday I woke up with what I can only describe as the worst ear pain I have ever experienced. My left ear felt like it was going to explode. Nothing I did relieved the pain and I eventually gave in and went to a ZoomCare clinic because finding an appointment at my primary care physician was not possible. The ZoomCare nurse said “yep, you have an ear infection”, gave me some antibiotic drops and sent me home. At first it seemed like the drops were working but on the second day of using them I noticed fluid coming from my ear and then blood.

I returned to ZoomCare and they put me on stronger antibiotics but also suggested I see my primary care doctor. I gave that doctor a call as I left and while my doctor wasn’t available his nurse practitioner was so I was able to get in. When the nurse practitioner looked at my ear she became very concerned that the infection had moved into the bone in my ear canal. A couple of higher strength antibiotics were given, including an oral one to try and fight the infection internally. They also made an emergency appointment with an ENT (ear, nose, and throat) specialist in case the infection was in the bone.

The scheduling process for the ENT was not easy as Covid had pretty much shut the practice down. The schedulers wanted to make sure that the appointment was absolutely necessary and that I had no symptoms of Covid. Again, I was in excruciating pain, I couldn’t drive because it hurt to move my head certain ways.

My appointment required a Covid test but the visit itself went fine. The ENT was convinced that the infection was not in my bone. He did confirm that my eardrum had burst and applied some thick steroids and antibiotics to the eardrum and kept me on heavy duty antibiotics. He also stated that he thought it would be a quick recovery and that the pain should really start to fade in the next day or two.

Returning home from that appointment felt like relief. There was a plan, some meds, and an optimistic view from the doctor. Sure enough, the pain started to fade away the next day and I started to really feel like I was improving. A week went by and the pain was completely gone but I was still having fluid in my ear so I returned to the ENT (after another Covid test) where I was told that stronger steroids needed to be applied, so that was done. I was also told that my hearing would eventually return and to be patient.

The waiting

After two months of carefully treating my ear I still felt like I could not hear very well still had a constant ringing in my left ear from when all of this started. The ENT wanted me to come in and having a hearing test and to just double check my ear. My hearing test came back with my results essentially being no different than a test that was performed a few years ago. The doctor did notice some scar tissue on my eardrum but did not see any fluid behind it. His explanation for the ringing was that eventually it would fade.

But, here we are 7 months later and my left ear still rings. I still have trouble understanding conversation when there is a lot of background noise or if the conversation is more on my left side. Even small background noises interfere with my ability to fully hear and distinguish words in a conversation. During conversations the ringing is there but is mostly just an annoyance. During silent moments the ringing is distracting and frustrating because it is all I hear.

As a Covid vaccine makes its way around the world I am really hoping it is easier to find a new ENT to get a second opinion. The reduced hearing is my biggest concern with the ringing a close second. I’d like to be able to have a conversation with people without having to adjust my head or hear ringing in the background. That’s all I really want in 2021.

Prepping for the New Year with a New Look

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In early November I hinted about a possible new look for this site and today I clicked the “update” button and took the plunge with a new design. It is a free design from the folks over at Themehaus and while I am still playing with the colors, I love the overall simplicity of the theme while keeping it easily readable. One of the quirks of the previous design was that the font was small and if you were reading on a large screen, the text became hard to read. Since it seems most people read directly on the site and not via RSS I focused on this as the main thing to change.

Hopefully people find this easier to read on their devices. If you would like to see a different set of fonts (ones maybe you find easier on the eyes), feel free to leave a comment with a suggestion.

Water to be Traded on Wall Street as a Commodity

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From Bloomberg:

Water joined gold, oil and other commodities traded on Wall Street, highlighting worries that the life-sustaining natural resource may become scarce across more of the world.

Farmers, hedge funds and municipalities alike are now able to hedge against — or bet on — future water availability in California, the biggest U.S. agriculture market and world’s fifth-largest economy. CME Group Inc.’s January 2021 contract, linked to California’s $1.1 billion spot water market, last traded Monday at 496 index points, equal to $496 per acre-foot.

It seems these futures are tied to the spot price of water rights in California, measured against 10 acre-feet of water (roughly 3.26 million gallons).

To be honest I am not sure how I feel about this. At the end of the article there is a quote from a researcher saying that there is currently no way for people to manage their water supply risk. I think that has the situation sideways, commodity doesn’t help you manage risk, it helps you make decisions based on general risk.

A Single Flight Conundrum

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Between January and March of this year I flew United quite a bit. When Covid travel restrictions hit in mid-March the airlines started changing their requirements to qualify for their statuses for 2021. In most cases the airlines actually extended a frequent flyer’s status into 2021 carte blanche but with some caveats. In United’s case, to earn their upgrade certificates a flyer still needs to spend a certain amount and fly a specific number of flights in 2020. Due to all of my work travel I had no issues meeting the spend amount (Premier Qualifying Points) but I am one flight short of the needed number to earn the upgrade certificates.

With Covid still ravaging the United States I reached out to United Airlines’ frequent flyer support team to inquire about whether there would be exceptions made for people like myself who came very close but didn’t cross the line for next year’s upgrades. The quick response verbatim was:

You must meet the published criteria for awarding of the PlusPoints.

Besides it being a rather terse, somewhat unfriendly e-mail, United is saying all flights must be flown and no exceptions will be made. For me, this means I need to fly that one flight to earn the upgrade certificates for 2021. But is flying that one flight worth it from a safety perspective?

We’ve been pretty good about social distancing and isolation during Covid so it seems irrational to go fly just to earn the upgrades but at the same time, it’s like throwing the upgrades away. The way I would do this would likely be to fly United to San Francisco or Los Angeles (Los Angeles would require a connection) mid-week as the flights are super cheap and then I’d take Alaska Airlines back home since they are still blocking middle seats when possible. I’d wear an N95 mask the entire time and wouldn’t plan on eating or drinking on the flights.

Now I just have to decide if this is too much of a risk or if I am being paranoid. What would you do?

Is United’s additional Thanksgiving capacity irresponsible?

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United will be adding 1,400 flights for the week of Thanksgiving and plans to use larger aircraft on some flights. From that same Bloomberg article –

Half of its Thanksgiving customers are buying tickets less than 30 days before the holiday, up from about 40% last year, United said. The airline will monitor bookings “in real-time to swap in larger aircraft when needed to accommodate last-minute demand.”

It seems a bit tone deaf for United to add all of this capacity for a holiday week. Yes, they need revenue but at the same time they are enabling behavior that will unfortunately lead to more Covid-19 infections. More people in airports, more people on planes (where Covid can and does spread), and people in their loved one’s homes in close contact. This is amid the U.S. setting new daily records when it comes to coronavirus cases.

United is a business and they are looking out for themselves but their disregard for public health in the name of money is a bad idea right now. I would hope that CEO Scott Kirby would take a moment to think about the company’s actions and the impact they will have on lives across the country.