Remember when technology made people's lives better?
this post was submitted on 17 Dec 2023
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That was a good week.
Does Mcdonalds not own the entire linearity of their raw to counter enterprise?
this 3 man team from Kytch i pat on the back with one hand and slap up side the head with my other. 3 hackers, didnt think McDonald's was gonna shank them?
They already ran down an old lady after they burned her, both physically and socially.
I stayed in a ronald mcdonald house with my single mother as a kid, it was worse than a failing female help center.
if i was Kytch, Id double down. talk to each owner separately and lay out the absurdity of it all and get them back on track to using an ice cream machine to make ice cream and not some lobbyist bullshit power play. Corporations really can and do ruin anything they touch.
McDonald's has a lot more power over its franchises than many other chains since they own the land under every single location and lease it to franchisees. McDonald's itself is only tangentially in the restaurant business. Primarily they're a corporate landlord, marketing company, and kitchen supply broker.
Although there's a little back and forth because some of the larger franchisees get a lot of input on some of their internal committees. Like with the Taylor ice cream situation, one of the people involved runs one of the larger franchise organizations but also sits on their kitchen equipment committee. He allegedly violated his NDA with Kytch and gave Taylor one of the devices to analyze. Presumably he's getting a cut of the Taylor-to-McDonald's Corp kickback money.
Yeah, instead of playing along with this McDonald's scam, franchisees should just have a seperate ice cream truck out back and direct people there. Leave the machine out of order, no need to call anyone in, and customers can just get ice cream regardless if they wish.
The three year old email maybe points towards a smoking gun.
Unfortunately, while this reads well for news articles, it probably doesn't hold enough for courts to actually action against.
The article is a little hard to follow, since it's about an email about sending an email. It wouldn't surprise me if Taylor gave themselves enough plausible deniability to survive a motion for summary judgement, but I think if this goes before a jury it will be obvious what was going on.
I certainly hope it gets there and they get what's coming to them.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A little over three years have passed since McDonald's sent out an email to thousands of its restaurant owners around the world that abruptly cut short the future of a three-person startup called Kytch—and with it, perhaps one of McDonald's best chances for fixing its famously out-of-order ice cream machines.
The Kytch device would essentially hack into the ice cream machine's internals, monitor its operations, and send diagnostic data over the Internet to an owner or manager to help keep it running.
On Wednesday, Kytch filed a newly unredacted motion for summary adjudication in its lawsuit against Taylor for alleged trade libel, tortious interference, and other claims.
The new motion, which replaces a redacted version from August, refers to internal emails Taylor released in the discovery phase of the lawsuit, which were quietly unsealed over the summer.
Although FitzGerald's email doesn't actually order anyone to act against Kytch, the company’s motion argues that Taylor played a key role in what happened next.
The email stated that the Kytch gadget “allows complete access to all aspects of the equipment’s controller and confidential data”—meaning Taylor’s and McDonald’s data, not the restaurant owners’ data; that it “creates a potential very serious safety risk for the crew or technician attempting to clean or repair the machine"; and finally, that it could cause “serious human injury.” The email concluded with a warning in italics and bold: “McDonald’s strongly recommends that you remove the Kytch device from all machines and discontinue use.”
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