The video explained that clearly. New Keurig coffee machines, in order to bolster their own coffee sales, refuse to operate on non-Keurig cups. By bypassing it, consumers can buy equipment then put whatever they want in it, returning control to the consumer.
Holy crap this is the most dystopian-sounding statement I've seen in a long time. (From the point of view of someone who's never heard of "Soylent" outside of the Charlton Heston movie)
I intend this humourously, by the way. If you're the type of person who hates bothering with food, seems fair to also skip brewing coffee and just get striaight to the source.
Primarily because caffeine is extremely bitter and adding too much will ruin it. I tried to put like 500mg of caffeine powder in my cereal once and it was utterly disgusting. I got about 4 spoonfuls in before I couldn't take it anymore.
Not a coffee drinker, but the packaging waste is what amazes me about the system. At the end of the day, the trash can at work is half-full of used k-cups. AFAIK, only the foil lid can be recycled.
I love the Keurig. It is very convenient but I agree the waste is a bit much.
I paid $10 for reusable K Cups and they work great (just don't overfill)[1].
These are easy to accidentally throw out at the office, unfortunately. Mine lasted about 2 weeks before I forgot to remove it from the machine and it went out with all of the other K-cups that everyone else was throwing out.
Don't deal with Keurig, because they are taking a page out of the printer industry, making their machine only compatible with their cartridge / coffee pod so, that they can control the price, keep it high...
I would not use a Keurig machine as you cannot properly clean the water container, machines end up with mold and other nasties growing inside the machine, so they are potential health hazards, plus the K-cups made of plastic also add chemical residue to your coffee...another reason to leave it alone!
You can also use frenchpress, aeropress or Espresso Machine. You will make far better coffee at ¼ of price.
I use Rancilio Hd Silvia & Vario grinder, it is very durable and allows me make high quality coffee. The following article will introduce you to espresso machines, there is listed best espresso machines within various price range&class - http://wikiespresso.com/the-best-espresso-machines-for-the-h.... If you want to dig deeper, you can visit coffeegeek and home-barista forums, where community members will help you with great enthusiasm.
Yeah, I'm gradually coming around to an RMS-y way of thinking – having to tape small bits of an old K-cup onto my Keurig 2.0 is DRM bullshit that I have no room for in my life. Fuck them.
Some people will use the new Keurig and its DRMed cups because it provides them with enough value. I will completely bypass this nonsense and make a DRM-free cup of dirt cheap coffee that stimulates my senses, as outlined in another comment. I suggest that you do the same.
Can I recommend an Aeropress? It's only a little more work than a Keurig (about the same as a french press), and makes some of the best coffee I've ever had. It's also $25, and has no moving parts or electrical components.
I agree 100% on the Aeropress. I never thought i'd enjoy such a simple and in-expensive coffee making device as much as I do my Aeropress. I bought one to keep at my office too =D
Another developer and I share an Aeropress I bought (he bought the metal filter, a must for dark roasted coffee) at work. It's brilliant, and makes amazing coffee with little to no mess. Well worth the money, and much better than a DRM-laden landfill generator.
I don't even drink coffee (bitter to me), but those who like coffee at my former employer where skipping the company provided machine and coffee packets and using one of those.
I love my Aeropress, but an arguably even simpler option is something like the Hario V60 (http://www.amazon.com/Hario-V60/dp/B000P4D5HG/). $19, and no plastic if that matters to you. I think the filters probably cost you a bit more than the Aeropress.
IMHO you should have several different coffee brewing methods at your disposal :-)
Right. I've been using the Aeropress for about seven years. To this day I still use it every week, if not every day. I think the plunger is starting to go.
The point is it makes great coffee, and I've convinced many friends and family to buy one, but now I caution people that while it probably makes the best single serving coffee in a $25 package, it's not perfect. Basically there are a lot of parts and you're working the whole time you're using it. One guy at work accidentally punched the filter holder into the compost bin, lost forever.
If you're making 2+ servings very often, get a 6- or 8-cup Chemex. Much fewer parts. More: pour, stand around, repeat.
If the rubber plunger is starting to feel "gummy" around the edge, you might be able to get a replacement for free. They had a problem for a while and were shipping out replacement parts no questions asked.
Thanks for the tip. The seal let some coffee through one time and I also had some slime growing inside it. Gross. But it's several years old maybe expected at some point.
I also have an Aeropress and Lido hand grinder on my desk. We have hot water taps at work, and hand-grinding enough to make a cup takes about 30 seconds: http://www.oehandgrinders.com
Much better quality than anything that comes out of a Keurig at comparable up-front costs and much lower recurring costs (just buy whole beans) plus a virtually limitless selection of coffee.
There's a company making reusable metal filters for the Aeropress too if you don't want to buy any supplies for it ever in the future.
There are also many other products which make coffee of higher quality than Keurig; cold-brew drippers, pour-over systems, vaccuum brewing, Moka pots, French presses, portable espresso makers, etc. There are so many awesome ways to make coffee these days that it boggles my mind how popular Keurig systems are. Outside of hotels, I really don't understand the appeal. Even some brands of instant coffee / mocha mix are tastier IMO.
The metal filters do not filter out cafestol, which may raise LDL cholesterol.
You can reuse the good aeropress paper filters as well (peel off before puck ejection, rinse and let it dry for a few minutes, then store with the press). I use each one five or six times, which puts me at about $1.50 worth of filters per year.
Thanks for the Lido grinder suggestion, I had been looking for one.
I actually have tried both metal and paper filters, and really prefer the paper ones! I think you end up with a bit less oil in the coffee, which I just happen to like better.
I paid $11 for my drip coffee maker, in the local branch of a national chain grocery. I've had it for two years. It makes one to twelve cups of any kind of coffee you care to put in there, from $5 store brand to dont-even-ask café whose beans were grown on a free-trade farm in Guatemala under the supervision of the executive committee of Juan Valdez' estate's charitable trust and staffed by former independent coffee growing peasants who play guitar at night and wear neckerchiefs, and irrigated with water collected from jaguar kittens kept at a constant but humane level of annoyance.
Yeah, well, it doesn't compare at all. You're talking about a filter coffee machine whereas Keurig sells an espresso machine.
Your filter doesn't put out the same coffee as an espresso machine; there's pressure involved, temperature, etc..
Your coffee will be "longer" (more water) and contain way more caffeine.
You also won't ever be able to produce the foam and taste of an espresso with a filter machine.
I'm not saying that it's bad, simply that you cannot compare the two, they don't produce the same coffee.
Apart from that, what Keurig is doing (Nespresso is doing the same in Europe) is just plain wrong and should be prevented on a legal level. In France we have this "interop" law that allows us, for the sake of interoperability, to reverse-engineer a patented system to use with non-standard consumables. We have these capsule-based espresso cups, but anybody can sell the capsules.
If you want a real espresso, though, one that doesn't lock you up in a franchise and DRM-ed capsules, just buy a normal espresso machine.
This is how someone can sell a Keurig machine. That's not espresso and the coffee is a poor value. Seriously folks, is it that hard to make your own coffee that's better than these things?
The convenience is hard to beat. I recently switched from a drip coffee maker to a Keurig, and I love it. My wife and I don't drink much coffee and so making 12 cups is a huge waste, we end up throwing away 3/4 of the pot. I also leave for work fairly early (and I don't have a lot of time to spend making coffee in the morning) and so being able to put a pod in the Keurig and get decent coffee out of it a minute or two later is really nice.
I can't agree with their attempt to use "DRM" to prevent users from buying pods from independent vendors (and arguments that they need to "control the experience" so that users don't buy low quality pods and get poor coffee ring hollow to me) but the machine itself is great.
Fortunately, their efforts to control the k-cup market seem doomed to failure in any case.
And every time you make a cup of coffee you throw away a little plastic container. It's inefficient, expensive and wasteful, and it supports DRM. Putting some grounds into a filter and then composting them afterwards should not be a huge inconvenience.
I can understand the multiple cup problem, it sucks to throw out coffee. For anyone else in your situation, check out an Aeropress [0]. It can make a single cup, it's easy, and I have to boil the water to make tea for my wife anyway :) Less waste than a Keurig, and cheaper TCO.
No, talking about an air popper. Have ran about 26 pounds through it over the last year (92 grams at a time!). I might try other methods in the future. Thought about those $300 drum rollers, but really, I have been happy enough with my popper.
Hmm, I also just realized I drank 26 pounds of coffee this year, awesome.
Well not buying a 2.0 machine. My 1.0 machine has been doing fine for years but I do not plan to buy a 2.0 I thought there were other k-cup capable machines, surely if the patent went out on the first cups there cannot be one on the actual machine? Why wouldn't someone else step into this market.
The advertising practically writes itself, works with all k-cups, the "universal k-cup koffee maker"
Its not the best coffee, but its fast and good enough. I have a press which is good for coffee; also awesome for making ginger tea; and a Bonavita for when friends are here and a pot will work.
Fortunately with 1.0 machines the refillable works fine and EkoBrew makes a very simple and great refillable
I feel like the refillable would be easier to circumvent. You could just tape the label to the lid and use it like normal, instead of to the machine itself.
My work recently got a new machine, not sure if it has DRM, but the cup holder you have to remove to use the Keurig branded refillable brew basket has 2 tabs that block you from inserting the refillable one.
I paid 12 dollars for a cheap coffee press from IKEA. It doesn't ask any questions about the quality of the coffee or where its from. All it asks for is hot water and coffee.
It may take up more time to prepare and clean, but that's an opportunity cost for good coffee every morning.
Keurigs are not for individuals, they are meant for workplaces where people like different flavors of coffee and it's impractical to have someone manage the coffee pot.
What kind of engineers keep building these anti-consumer, anti-competition DRM systems? Someone should call them out publicly, by name. The world doesn't need more DRM systems.
Maybe they didn't have the option of protesting a design decision from higher up in the company and possibly being out of a job. It may be a crappy thing to do from a consumer perspective, but it's not illegal and arguably not immoral.
Or maybe some young inexperienced engineer wanted to show what he could do and did THIS. That is one way of growing up and becoming experienced: bad judgement.
The kind of engineers who get told by their bosses that the new product needs to have DRM so that they can profit from cups. The razor and blades business model looks great to corporate execs.
Speaking as someone who on a variety of occasions has been asked to bake these kinds of restriction into a piece of code, I've tended to follow the restriction to the letter but not the spirit -- yes, this product has "DRM", but yes, any child with a hex editor can disable it in a few minutes.
From this I guess that weak DRM is very often entirely intentional.
As for the kind of engineer that does it, you do. Or more accurately, every engineer who has ever been asked to place their ideals ahead of their paycheck -- and realized jumping ship simply wasn't worth it
There have been a few instances of this sort of "malicious compliance" that I've noticed, the biggest of which has been Pandora: If you're not in the US, you have to convince their website that you are in order to play music (due to licensing restrictions). However, last I checked, the audio servers have no such restrictions, so you can still stream directly from them rather than having to push that through a proxy as well.
Yep, most country restrictions seem to work that way. The worst though is billing -- e.g. having to have a credit card from that country -- or auto-updating DRM. In both of those cases, it's not impossible but it raises the bar quite a bit. That said, even in billing scenarios, people seem okay with lying about your address, so long as parts of it match and the card can still be billed. E.g. if out of the US and it asks for a US zip code, just use the numbers from your postal code.
I think integrity is a better word here than ideals. We're not talking about doing the best you can, we're talking about doing something that you know will do harm. And yes, I've given up the paycheck twice in that situation. Don't pretend you're just like everyone else if you think choosing not to do the right is okay. Because you are not like me. Sometimes you absolutely have to, but by being an engineer in a first world country, that simply does not apply.
I've always assumed that weak DRM is the result of a cost benifit analysis. A child with a hex editor could disable it in a few minutes, but most of your customers do not have a hex editor. And, of those that do, the ones who are willing to spend the time to break your DRM (however trivial) would probably not have bought your software anyway. The intersection of people who would work around your weak DRM, and who would pay if they could not do so is small enough that it is not worth paying developers to spend the time to implement a strong DRM.
Yeah! We should find these engineers who might have families and shame them to the world! They'll never work in this town again after they traded in their scruples for a few bucks.
In other news, I'm excited to announce my social dating startup just got acquired for a bunch of money! We'll be deleting all the data and shutting down.
NO. Don't dox people. Don't threaten to dox them. Don't encourage others to dox. We judge ourselves by our intentions and others by there actions. Think about that every time you start to grab your pitchfork.
Who said anything about doxxing? Cheap intimidation tactics aren't going to change anything.
I don't care about these people's home addresses or even their contact info. I just want to know who they are so that I can avoid surrounding myself with people like them---people who won't/can't walk away from projects that harm end-users---and thereby avoid putting myself in situations where I would be pressured to do the same thing. To do that, we need transparency around this sort of thing.
Right now, writing code in PHP can hurt an engineer's reputation more than writing DRM code in any language. That's pretty ridiculous IMHO.
It's an amusing video, but note that that same barcode is also what provides coffee/tea-specific brewing parameters to the machine. Using the same barcode for all cups breaks that. (Using a barcode from one coffee on another seems unlikely to seriously affect the results, though.)
It just seems so trivial, both in terms of the item being targeted and the workaround, in comparison to the presentation of the website with its custom domain and all, that it most likely has some satirical element to it.
Domains are cheap, and some people just have a flair for the dramatic. I think the satire here is that Keurig spent a lot of money on drm, and it was broken with a $0.01 piece of scotch tape.
I'm wondering if the average k-cup consumer would even try this or just buy cups that work. I know a lot of people that have antivirus protection, but never press the button to actually scan. It is simple, but they don't do it.
What Lexmark lost in court was a case that they brought claiming that the DRM circumvention violated the DMCA. There's no law or case prohibiting printer makers or coffee machine makers from implementing locks like this though.
Ah, yes, that's exactly what I had in mind. So they can't prevent circumvention by law, but they can make it as hard as technically possible.
But as Cory Doctorow points out, DRM can never succeed, because in order to sell a working system to your customer, you have to give them the encrypted content, and the decryption engine, and the key (otherwise, they can't use it). But if your customer is your attacker (or your competitor), you just gave your attacker the encrypted content, the decryption engine, and the key, so now they have everything they need to build compatible cartridges...
I think Keurig's and Lexmark's definition of success might be different than yours though. They don't need the DRM to be unbreakable. They just need to protect their market enough that the benefits (to them) of the DRM exceed the costs.
In the case of digital media, any weakness in the DRM means game over, because file sharing is so easy. But when talking about physical goods like printer ink and coffee capsules, it's a battle at the margins. They just need to discourage enough competition that their business stays profitable.
where the courts ended up rejecting Lexmark's theory that a particular way of making refilled cartridges work with Lexmark printers violated the DMCA's anticircumvention provisions.
However, you could still say that the printer companies are succeeding in using DRM to prevent competition (to some extent), even if it's difficult for them to sue companies like Static Control for circumvention.
The real joke is the Marketing concept: that making coffee starting with water, those dirty, scary soil colored grounds, and having to wait 5 minutes is too much work for a cup of coffee.
I have owned two Nespresso machines. They were both great for about 8 months. Then no matter how much I 'cleansed' them they made terrible tasting coffee. You can never get the insides completely clean. I suspect the Keurig has a similar problem. I'm now back to my ceramic filter cone (one-time $20 cost) and the coffee has never tasted better.
Nespresso says ammonia can destroy the coffeemaker. I believe the substance in their cleaning pouches are pure ascorbic acid. I've tried everything. It still makes crappy coffee afterwards.
Yes, I followed the instructions. If you put a coffee from your machine in front of me and one from a traditional machine, I could identify yours by the bad taste I'm certain of it.
Consider descaling the machine - it helps. You should do it every 200-300 uses.
Also if you are planning to stick with the cone but miss the convenience of nespresso, please check out our ground coffee pack product for pour over. We take high end 90+ rated beans, roast them to order and grind for your brew method. The hermetically sealed pack keeps it fresh for 2-3 months in our tests. Use FREEPACK coupon for the free sample bag.
This video took me on a little YouTube adventure which led me to this site[1] giving away a little thing to clip onto your K2.0 machine for a nicer looking bypass. I don't have a K2.0 machine so I can't verify that it works. But it appears to be free so what have you got to lose?
I applaud the fact that they don't seem worried about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that makes it illegal to create devices that bypass DRM. DMCA is supposed to apply only to protecting copyrighted works, but prosecutors and lawyers in general try to extend the laws in all sort of crafty ways, and usually companies are too fearful to try anything proactive.
That depends. Does Keurig even consider this to be DRM and protected under the DMCA? Or is that just what we call it because that is what we talk about on HN.
"No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title."
"[..] is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing protection afforded by a technological measure that effectively protects a right of a copyright owner under this title in a work or a portion thereof"
Just about any software DRM exists to protect some kind of copyright. In this case, however, I don't think the Keurig authenticity check controls access to any copyrighted work (not even a trivial one like a logo or small program), so it wouldn't count.
That was my thinking too. I don't think this K2.0 scheme really fits into the typical DRM scenarios. I'm trying to compare the main components of this set up and other DRM set ups. I can't quite make them match up logically. But something just doesn't add up for me.
The closest version is this one:
Chamberlain made garage door openers and claimed that the rolling code that opened the door protected access to their copyrighted "open the door" routine in their garage door opener... Since Skylink's replacement remotes caused that code to execute, they were bypassing the DRM. This was shot down.
There is also the lexmark one... They claimed that the numbers read out of their cartridges were a copyrighted algorithm (in a secret language!) that described how to measure the toner amount. Copying this code verbatim was copyright infringement. The courts ruled that this wasn't copyrightable because access controls weren't copyrightable (like you can't copyright a key). Even if it was an algorithm that was creative, it didn't really act like it. Lexmark was told to get lost.
Incidental note... Nintendo tried this with the gameboy and trademark law. It wouldn't load a 3rd party cartridge unless it had the nintendo logo in the ROM. Of course a 3rd party couldn't display that logo because that would be trademark infringement. Courts told nintendo that they lost the right to claim infringement when they required the use of that bitmap as an access control device.
--
So, no, I wouldn't worry about losing the DMCA here. Of course, getting sued just to hassle you is another thing - Kuering could file a case they knew they'd lose.
Do we know that they think it can be protected under the DMCA?
We know they provided a technological measure meant to require the use of their branded cups. That doesn't neccesarily mean they think their measures are protected under the DMCA.
I hope they don't (and hope they are wrong if they do!). The DMCA is intended for copyrighted works, which a K-cup is not. (or shouldn't be, anyway, who knows what crazy things the courts will do).
Those are certainly more civilized options, this is just the cheapest way imaginable. Great for backpacking too, all you need to bring besides your stove is cheese cloth.
There's absolutely no correlation between how expensive your coffee making process is and how good it tastes.
For the price of a good fine colander, you could buy a $15 Mr. Coffee and automate much of this. People buying keurig machines aren't doing it because they don't know how to make coffee or think it's better tasting- they're doing it for the speed (30-60 seconds) and the convenience.
And the price to the environment, and the price to a relationship unable to handle a minor disagreement? Perhaps you haven't considered all the factors at play.
I'd like to see the breakdown on KCup usage in the home versus in the Office.
The majority of K's I've seen are in the office, where you're looking for simple streamlined solutions to keep people from bitching about the surrounding environment, and get back to work.
I think most people in a relationship can deal with the morning coffee differences
Honestly nobody should get married to someone with incompatible preferences regarding coffee ;-) This is also the beauty of the aeropress or paper cone method: you make your own coffee, everyone else can make theirs or not. And when I make the french press too strong, I'm happy to drink the whole thing myself!
An old coworker tipped me off to the Bunn STX 10 cup maker that was $150 or so, I bought one, and ended up buying my parents one too. Makes an entire (great tasting) pot of coffee in 3 minutes, and thermal carafe keeps it warm for hours without burning it, some of the best money I've ever spent. If you drink a lot of coffee, it's hard to beat the cost effectiveness and convenience over time.
I can't understand the current fascination with single cup makers, but I grew up in a family that went through several pots a day at home. Perhaps as a starbucks replacement the economics work out.
It depends on your use case. If you have a family, a big pot is fine. If you go through several coffees in a day, a larger pot is fine. If you are single and want a cup of coffee on your way out the door, a single cup maker really fits the bill.
For 5¢ more you can make your own "pour-over cone" by cutting a soda can in half and sticking the top half upside down in the the mouth of your mug. Put the filter or cheesecloth or bandana in there.
When I first moved in with my wife (well, fiance at the time), I moved from a place where my roommate owned the coffee maker to a place where my "roommate" didn't drink coffee. I spent several weeks making coffee this way, too lazy to go buy a coffee pot.
To filter the coffee, I had a large mason jar in which I arranged four chopsticks sticking out in an upside-down pyramid, on top of which I cradled the bottom of a half-gallon milk jug in which I had punched several holes. The coffee filter went in the milk jug and the weight of the assembly pressed on the chopsticks, which then levered against the rim of the jar and braced against the side, creating quite a stable setup.
One way to look at the razors and blades business model that Keurig is doing here is like so:
1. The consumer purphases product A (here the coffee maker) on the normal consumer market we're all familiar with.
2. Doing so forces the consumer to purchase product B (here K-cups) on a different market.
Keurig's goal is to control the second market. By making having all the market power, they can jack up prices to the consumer's detriment.
The reason you see companies like this invoking the DMCA or using DRM is because they have no actual competitive advantage in that second market. They are at a disadvantage because they burned money selling product A at a loss to get people into their market.
Most of the R&D went into the cups themselves. Simple as they seem, it appears the company went through a lot of iterations to get the right gas mixture and volume right to have fresh coffee with long shelf-life.
if by right gas mixture you mean 100% nitrogen, it's inert, and is used in tires and bags of chips. When the bags of chips are opened, however, the other special ingredient 'crisp' that they put in escapes
Loss-leader market models don't HAVE to abuse customers. We're just not comfortable with licensing vs ownership arrangements.
Often market forces put us here. Locked, subsidized cell phones with contracts or DRM printers are sold to get people into the market; they wouldn't buy it at full rate.
I don't want to be part of that deal so I buy the unlocked cell phone and DRM-free coffee machine. The alternative is very nearly theft.
I wouldn't agree that the alternative is comparable to theft.
When you buy a thing, you own the thing. The manufacturer may have sold the thing to you at a loss, because statistically this works out for them in the long run, but it's not your responsibility as the consumer to ensure that that deal works out for them.
Take another example: suppose I want to buy a cheap printer to hack up for some kind of robotics project. Can we seriously propose that this would be "very nearly theft"?
Or another: several cruise lines are really inexpensive because the cruise line expects to make most of their money from alcohol and gambling. I don't particularly enjoy alcohol and gambling. Am I stealing from the cruise line if I cruise with them?
I don't understand why it's a different market. Do you mean that cartridges are just intrinsically different from the actual machine using the cartridges? This is identical to printers, so would you say the market for ink cartridges is different than the market for printers? On a literal level I suppose this is correct, but I wouldn't consider pens and pen ink to be different markets... Maybe I haven't thought it through enough.
A market (as far as economics or competition law goes) is demarcated by whether the items within it are substitutes, not by their intrinsic nature or subject.
Examples:
- Aluminium foil and cling film are both in the market for flexible food wrapping materials
- Aluminium foil and aluminium rulers are _not_ in the same market, as they are not substitutes (alternatives)
In cases where it's not clear whether two items are in the same market (e.g. tea bags and instant coffee powder could be considered substitutes) competition regulators will use historical price data to estimate the XED (cross-elasticity of demand) between two products. If XED is high (e.g. a reduction in the price of tea bags significantly reduces demand for instant coffee powder) then the two goods are substitutes, and are deemed to be in the same market.
Now, apply this to your coffee pod/machine and pen/ink examples.
It seems to me that they are very much different markets, just like how gasoline and cars aren't the same market. Why would the company that makes electronics also be responsible for making ink? The only reason we even have that idea is because the ink comes in a somewhat electronic package.
Yep, it was an immediate upgrade when my wife wanted coffee after our second child was born. When I found out my dad was pressing two cups through the Aeropress every morning to take to work, I couldn't buy him a Chemex fast enough.
I like Aeropress better than everything you listed, but I think a pourover with my glass V60 has to beat even Aeropress. I still use my Aeropress once or twice a week, but nothing beats a solid pourover, especially pourover iced coffee.
long story short, transparent plastic containers tend to imbue their contents with a chemical called bisphenol-a (aka bpa), which is a compound similar to estrogen which may impact human physiology in a wide array of ways[0], or chemicals that are structurally related that aren't well studied but could be similarly damaging[1]. this applies to all transparent plastics and isn't specific to aeropresses
That may be true, but unfortunately research is showing plasticizers of many varieties (including those used in "BPA Free" plastics), are endocrine disruptors.
No, it's Cafestol, which unlike dietary cholesterol does substantially increase serum cholesterol. Whether it's the harmful kind (LDL pattern B), I've been unable to figure out.
seems like responses here were assuming you meant the french press somehow had chemicals, but you're saying that the coffee beans have substances that maybe a filtration system removing from the coffee makes it better? Can you source that, because people have been drinking coffee a long time and I don't think that's a concern. After all, coffee is a plant material harvested then burned grinded up and suspended in water. Like most plants it probably contains substances, which in great quantities could kill humans, but if it were toxic we'd know by now. Plus the fact that you can buy chocolate covered espresso beans, where you consume the bean entirely. That would surely be the most toxic no? Never seen a warning on those.
Cold PVC pipe, not hot (slower leakage). Plus the leakage has diminishing returns (it cannot leak the same amount forever, it is physically impossible).
Pretty simple, actually!! This model (B31) contains:
- 12VDC air pump to push water from tank into coffee pod
- 10K thermistor, stuck in the tank
- 1400 Watt heating element
I wired all three to the Arduino through a transistor for the pump, a resistor divider to use analogRead() and calculate temperature, and a mechanical relay.
The Arduino uses 4 buttons: heating element toggle, temperature up/down, and pump engage. I didn't bother with the water sense non-sense Keurig uses (to know if water is in the tank or reservoir), so it pretty much checks temperature and if it is low engages the relay. When it's done I then hit the button to dump the water through the coffee (so it's not as automated as Keurig, but better than buying a new one). Code is here:
The thing was a pain to disassemble too. It's one of those "oooooooohhhh that's how it's put together" products where you have completely destroyed the plastic tabs before you see the one magic screw holding it together.
Old fashioned non-automatic electric kettles had such a device that handily pushed out the kettle lead thus disconnecting the mains. I was saved from some embarrasment and redectoration by this a third of a century ago.
PS: how could you detect the presence of water? Photocell? Ultrasound? Conductivity between two small contacts 20% of the way up the jug?
The old way in industrial automation is a float sensor, which is basically a reed switch with some buoyancy on the end. With substances that are corrosive, or where there's a cross contamination concern, you drop down to load cells or a rangefinder, both of which are more expensive and fussy. :)
At least in my Keurig: there are 2 tanks, 1 external, 1 internal. There is a float in the external tank that detects if there is enough water in the external to fill up the internal. If so, then it brews the internal tank and then fills it up from the external after the coffee is made. If there is not enough water to fill up the tank, it won't start.
Looking through the code I got flashbacks to "Agile Principles, Patterns, and Practices" because of Robert C. Martin's "Mark IV Special Coffee Maker" [1] sample problem.
Now that I am aware they're trying to monopolize small plastic coffee packets, there's no possible way I'd buy anything from them.
Build products for consumers, not against them.
Although, on second thought, I guess I was never going to buy a Keurig in the first place; producing a ton of trash in exchange for expensive mediocre coffee was enough to convince me it was a bad idea?
I love how such a simple solution can bypass a DRM scheme that Keurig probably invested considerable time and effort into producing. In some cases DRM is warranted, but for a coffee machine, it is just plain ridiculous and anticompetitive to have DRM to block out competitor coffee pods when history has proven that printer manufacturers like HP have been trying and consistently failing to do this for years now.
So simple to bypass, I expect they didn't spend much effort or money at all. They aren't trying to make an unbreakable system, they're trying to make a deterrent. If they had made the detection method too complicated, it could lead to false rejections and that would ultimately be more costly. They just needed a method that they can prove in court that a third party is using to defeat their DRM. This is the equivalent to ROT-13 encryption.
I agree, but I don't know that it's even necessary for Keurig to go to court to realize the value of the DRM scheme.
Their weak DRM certainly serves as a deterrent to the average consumer, but even more so to the mainstream coffee distributors that have been selling "knock off" cups up to this point.
Community Coffee, which is a major roaster/distributor in the deep south, just caved and penned a licensing agreement with Keurig:
Prior to the (negative) publicity surrounding the 2.0 launch, I didn't pay enough attention to notice that the Community Coffee K-cups I've bought (exclusively and in bulk at Sam's Club) for the three or four years that I've owned the machine weren't bonafide Keurig cups, but I think a typical consumer (and retailers, too) would likely be put off if the pods came with instructions for cutting the lid off an authentic Keurig cup and taping them onto the machine.
I'm betting every region has their version of Community Coffee and that Keurig will succeed in converting many of them into licensees. There might be negative publicity that is seen by those of us who care about such things, but on average, Keurig will come out ahead -- maybe without filing a lawsuit.
It might be a turn off to ship your coffee with instructions on how to cut the top off a 2.0 K-cup. But if your K-cups just needed an "adapter"[1] then many consumers would probably not think twice about it. We use adapters all the time to make one thing work with another.
Wouldn't it be deliciously funny if the adapter was engineered such that all third-party k-cups worked, but Keurig's own k-cups ceased working. It should be possible; I thought of ways using electronics or a prism, but nothing simple yet.
I really wonder how much money Keurig has wasted trying to develop DRM for their machines. Would have been better off putting that money into designing better machines.
Actually this is the same business model as consoles.
Sell the hardware at very low to zero margin, make money on the capsules/games which sell at a premium.
This has happened multiple times to me, today, all from SME. So many things in life require scissors, tape, and hacks to qualify for "decent" to me now.
I really hate YouTube and I hope something else comes along to take a bite out of it's market share.
The most annoying thing to me is that they require you to be logged in to disable Annotations and other settings. And...even if I do choose to login, it conveniently "forgets" to disable Annotations for some reason.
302 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 264 ms ] threadSucks to be anyone who bought more than a box before their machine broke.
(really.)
I intend this humourously, by the way. If you're the type of person who hates bothering with food, seems fair to also skip brewing coffee and just get striaight to the source.
Keurig even sells their own reusable cups.[2]
[1]http://www.amazon.com/Brew-Save-Refillable-Single-cup-Brewer...
[2] http://www.amazon.com/Keurig-K-Cup-Reusable-Coffee-Filter/dp...
You can also use frenchpress, aeropress or Espresso Machine. You will make far better coffee at ¼ of price.
I use Rancilio Hd Silvia & Vario grinder, it is very durable and allows me make high quality coffee. The following article will introduce you to espresso machines, there is listed best espresso machines within various price range&class - http://wikiespresso.com/the-best-espresso-machines-for-the-h.... If you want to dig deeper, you can visit coffeegeek and home-barista forums, where community members will help you with great enthusiasm.
Some people will use the new Keurig and its DRMed cups because it provides them with enough value. I will completely bypass this nonsense and make a DRM-free cup of dirt cheap coffee that stimulates my senses, as outlined in another comment. I suggest that you do the same.
I agree 100% on the Aeropress. I never thought i'd enjoy such a simple and in-expensive coffee making device as much as I do my Aeropress. I bought one to keep at my office too =D
Seems lest wasteful.
IMHO you should have several different coffee brewing methods at your disposal :-)
The point is it makes great coffee, and I've convinced many friends and family to buy one, but now I caution people that while it probably makes the best single serving coffee in a $25 package, it's not perfect. Basically there are a lot of parts and you're working the whole time you're using it. One guy at work accidentally punched the filter holder into the compost bin, lost forever.
If you're making 2+ servings very often, get a 6- or 8-cup Chemex. Much fewer parts. More: pour, stand around, repeat.
"IMHO you should have several different coffee brewing methods at your disposal :-)"
Agreed!
Now, where's my vacuum pot? I feel the need to expose myself to grievous bodily harm while making some joe.
Much better quality than anything that comes out of a Keurig at comparable up-front costs and much lower recurring costs (just buy whole beans) plus a virtually limitless selection of coffee.
There's a company making reusable metal filters for the Aeropress too if you don't want to buy any supplies for it ever in the future.
There are also many other products which make coffee of higher quality than Keurig; cold-brew drippers, pour-over systems, vaccuum brewing, Moka pots, French presses, portable espresso makers, etc. There are so many awesome ways to make coffee these days that it boggles my mind how popular Keurig systems are. Outside of hotels, I really don't understand the appeal. Even some brands of instant coffee / mocha mix are tastier IMO.
You can reuse the good aeropress paper filters as well (peel off before puck ejection, rinse and let it dry for a few minutes, then store with the press). I use each one five or six times, which puts me at about $1.50 worth of filters per year.
Thanks for the Lido grinder suggestion, I had been looking for one.
It has never complained to me about anything.
I'm not saying that it's bad, simply that you cannot compare the two, they don't produce the same coffee.
Apart from that, what Keurig is doing (Nespresso is doing the same in Europe) is just plain wrong and should be prevented on a legal level. In France we have this "interop" law that allows us, for the sake of interoperability, to reverse-engineer a patented system to use with non-standard consumables. We have these capsule-based espresso cups, but anybody can sell the capsules.
If you want a real espresso, though, one that doesn't lock you up in a franchise and DRM-ed capsules, just buy a normal espresso machine.
> Keurig is not an espresso machine.
Keurig is a company. They make espresso machines. They also make K-Cup coffee machines which is not expresso.
I can't agree with their attempt to use "DRM" to prevent users from buying pods from independent vendors (and arguments that they need to "control the experience" so that users don't buy low quality pods and get poor coffee ring hollow to me) but the machine itself is great.
Fortunately, their efforts to control the k-cup market seem doomed to failure in any case.
[0] http://aerobie.com/products/aeropress.htm
Interesting that they branched out to a coffee press from all their other products., which are basically all things that you throw.
Hard to get a consistent roast, but the result is very, very fresh. And you get to enjoy coffee roasting smoke!
Hmm, I also just realized I drank 26 pounds of coffee this year, awesome.
Costs about 20-30$ and makes great coffee A simple yet effective solution to my coffee needs :)
The advertising practically writes itself, works with all k-cups, the "universal k-cup koffee maker"
Its not the best coffee, but its fast and good enough. I have a press which is good for coffee; also awesome for making ginger tea; and a Bonavita for when friends are here and a pot will work.
Fortunately with 1.0 machines the refillable works fine and EkoBrew makes a very simple and great refillable
My work recently got a new machine, not sure if it has DRM, but the cup holder you have to remove to use the Keurig branded refillable brew basket has 2 tabs that block you from inserting the refillable one.
It may take up more time to prepare and clean, but that's an opportunity cost for good coffee every morning.
Keurig
Don't like it? Don't buy a Keurig. There are hundreds of other ways to brew coffee at home.
From this I guess that weak DRM is very often entirely intentional.
As for the kind of engineer that does it, you do. Or more accurately, every engineer who has ever been asked to place their ideals ahead of their paycheck -- and realized jumping ship simply wasn't worth it
In other news, I'm excited to announce my social dating startup just got acquired for a bunch of money! We'll be deleting all the data and shutting down.
I don't care about these people's home addresses or even their contact info. I just want to know who they are so that I can avoid surrounding myself with people like them---people who won't/can't walk away from projects that harm end-users---and thereby avoid putting myself in situations where I would be pressured to do the same thing. To do that, we need transparency around this sort of thing.
Right now, writing code in PHP can hurt an engineer's reputation more than writing DRM code in any language. That's pretty ridiculous IMHO.
I mean, you just completely made that up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexmark_Int'l_v._Static_Control...
But as Cory Doctorow points out, DRM can never succeed, because in order to sell a working system to your customer, you have to give them the encrypted content, and the decryption engine, and the key (otherwise, they can't use it). But if your customer is your attacker (or your competitor), you just gave your attacker the encrypted content, the decryption engine, and the key, so now they have everything they need to build compatible cartridges...
In the case of digital media, any weakness in the DRM means game over, because file sharing is so easy. But when talking about physical goods like printer ink and coffee capsules, it's a battle at the margins. They just need to discourage enough competition that their business stays profitable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexmark_Int%27l_v._Static_Cont...
where the courts ended up rejecting Lexmark's theory that a particular way of making refilled cartridges work with Lexmark printers violated the DMCA's anticircumvention provisions.
However, you could still say that the printer companies are succeeding in using DRM to prevent competition (to some extent), even if it's difficult for them to sue companies like Static Control for circumvention.
The coffee machine is real (we've got one in my office), the DRM is real (it won't brew 3rd party cups), the hack works (we did it the first day).
Despite it's Onion-iness it's completely true. That's just where the world is.
I have many Nespresso machines and never had a problem with degrading taste. Usually something else breaks like the milk frother on the Lattissima.
Also if you are planning to stick with the cone but miss the convenience of nespresso, please check out our ground coffee pack product for pour over. We take high end 90+ rated beans, roast them to order and grind for your brew method. The hermetically sealed pack keeps it fresh for 2-3 months in our tests. Use FREEPACK coupon for the free sample bag.
HTTPS://www.hilinecoffee.com
[1] https://www.gourmet-coffee.com/Keurig-DRM-Freedom-Clip.html
"No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title."
"[..] is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing protection afforded by a technological measure that effectively protects a right of a copyright owner under this title in a work or a portion thereof"
Just about any software DRM exists to protect some kind of copyright. In this case, however, I don't think the Keurig authenticity check controls access to any copyrighted work (not even a trivial one like a logo or small program), so it wouldn't count.
The closest version is this one: Chamberlain made garage door openers and claimed that the rolling code that opened the door protected access to their copyrighted "open the door" routine in their garage door opener... Since Skylink's replacement remotes caused that code to execute, they were bypassing the DRM. This was shot down.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chamberlain_Group,_Inc._v._....
There is also the lexmark one... They claimed that the numbers read out of their cartridges were a copyrighted algorithm (in a secret language!) that described how to measure the toner amount. Copying this code verbatim was copyright infringement. The courts ruled that this wasn't copyrightable because access controls weren't copyrightable (like you can't copyright a key). Even if it was an algorithm that was creative, it didn't really act like it. Lexmark was told to get lost.
Incidental note... Nintendo tried this with the gameboy and trademark law. It wouldn't load a 3rd party cartridge unless it had the nintendo logo in the ROM. Of course a 3rd party couldn't display that logo because that would be trademark infringement. Courts told nintendo that they lost the right to claim infringement when they required the use of that bitmap as an access control device.
--
So, no, I wouldn't worry about losing the DMCA here. Of course, getting sued just to hassle you is another thing - Kuering could file a case they knew they'd lose.
Their failure there feels like the reason their trying to make a device that they think can be protected under DMCA.
http://blogs.findlaw.com/federal_circuit/2013/10/patent-exha...
We know they provided a technological measure meant to require the use of their branded cups. That doesn't neccesarily mean they think their measures are protected under the DMCA.
I hope they don't (and hope they are wrong if they do!). The DMCA is intended for copyrighted works, which a K-cup is not. (or shouldn't be, anyway, who knows what crazy things the courts will do).
1. Bring water to boil in a pot
2. Add 2 tbsp ground coffee per cup of water
3. Kill the heat, cover for 5 mins
4. Pour into cup through fine colander or cheese cloth
Seriously it's delicious and you already have the tools you need in your kitchen.
There's absolutely no correlation between how expensive your coffee making process is and how good it tastes.
"But I want Hot Tea" "But I want vanilla frappa-bullshit" "But I want Hot Cocoa" "Your coffee is too strong" "Your coffee is too weak"
It's the expensive convenient machine that shuts everyone the fuck up. What's the price on that?
The majority of K's I've seen are in the office, where you're looking for simple streamlined solutions to keep people from bitching about the surrounding environment, and get back to work.
I think most people in a relationship can deal with the morning coffee differences
Then I wake up with her and get her coffee, as well as my own. I usually go in to work between 8-10.
I can't understand the current fascination with single cup makers, but I grew up in a family that went through several pots a day at home. Perhaps as a starbucks replacement the economics work out.
:next morning:
Remove apparatus and filter containing coffee. Heat coffee for 1 minute in microwave. Significantly less bitter, delicious cold-brewed coffee.
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61DFW0RJVxL._SY355_.jp...
You get a little bit of super-fine dust through it, but it's reusable for years and lets all the yummy oils through.
To filter the coffee, I had a large mason jar in which I arranged four chopsticks sticking out in an upside-down pyramid, on top of which I cradled the bottom of a half-gallon milk jug in which I had punched several holes. The coffee filter went in the milk jug and the weight of the assembly pressed on the chopsticks, which then levered against the rim of the jar and braced against the side, creating quite a stable setup.
Yeah, too lazy to go buy a pot.
1. The consumer purphases product A (here the coffee maker) on the normal consumer market we're all familiar with.
2. Doing so forces the consumer to purchase product B (here K-cups) on a different market.
Keurig's goal is to control the second market. By making having all the market power, they can jack up prices to the consumer's detriment.
The reason you see companies like this invoking the DMCA or using DRM is because they have no actual competitive advantage in that second market. They are at a disadvantage because they burned money selling product A at a loss to get people into their market.
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/magazine/2011/0807/
Most of the R&D went into the cups themselves. Simple as they seem, it appears the company went through a lot of iterations to get the right gas mixture and volume right to have fresh coffee with long shelf-life.
EDIT: single page.
Often market forces put us here. Locked, subsidized cell phones with contracts or DRM printers are sold to get people into the market; they wouldn't buy it at full rate.
I don't want to be part of that deal so I buy the unlocked cell phone and DRM-free coffee machine. The alternative is very nearly theft.
When you buy a thing, you own the thing. The manufacturer may have sold the thing to you at a loss, because statistically this works out for them in the long run, but it's not your responsibility as the consumer to ensure that that deal works out for them.
Take another example: suppose I want to buy a cheap printer to hack up for some kind of robotics project. Can we seriously propose that this would be "very nearly theft"?
Or another: several cruise lines are really inexpensive because the cruise line expects to make most of their money from alcohol and gambling. I don't particularly enjoy alcohol and gambling. Am I stealing from the cruise line if I cruise with them?
Examples:
- Aluminium foil and cling film are both in the market for flexible food wrapping materials
- Aluminium foil and aluminium rulers are _not_ in the same market, as they are not substitutes (alternatives)
In cases where it's not clear whether two items are in the same market (e.g. tea bags and instant coffee powder could be considered substitutes) competition regulators will use historical price data to estimate the XED (cross-elasticity of demand) between two products. If XED is high (e.g. a reduction in the price of tea bags significantly reduces demand for instant coffee powder) then the two goods are substitutes, and are deemed to be in the same market.
Now, apply this to your coffee pod/machine and pen/ink examples.
The Aeropress is better than all of those hands down.
It doesn't mention heat, but I presume leaching increases with heat.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol_A#Health_effects
[1] http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/03/tritan-certic...
http://www.aeropress.ca/faq/
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016648014...
http://myplasticfreelife.com/2011/04/bpa-free-does-not-mean-...
TL;DR: Just because plastic is BPA free, doesn't mean it is safe or even better.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cafestol
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_class_ring
http://i.imgur.com/1wWxu37.jpg
With this I can customize the temperature and use PWM on the pump to adjust pressure/flow. :D
If I had to use that 2.0 model I'd just lobotomize it right out of the box.
- 12VDC air pump to push water from tank into coffee pod
- 10K thermistor, stuck in the tank
- 1400 Watt heating element
I wired all three to the Arduino through a transistor for the pump, a resistor divider to use analogRead() and calculate temperature, and a mechanical relay.
The Arduino uses 4 buttons: heating element toggle, temperature up/down, and pump engage. I didn't bother with the water sense non-sense Keurig uses (to know if water is in the tank or reservoir), so it pretty much checks temperature and if it is low engages the relay. When it's done I then hit the button to dump the water through the coffee (so it's not as automated as Keurig, but better than buying a new one). Code is here:
http://pastebin.com/0fNtYcyM
The thing was a pain to disassemble too. It's one of those "oooooooohhhh that's how it's put together" products where you have completely destroyed the plastic tabs before you see the one magic screw holding it together.
Old fashioned non-automatic electric kettles had such a device that handily pushed out the kettle lead thus disconnecting the mains. I was saved from some embarrasment and redectoration by this a third of a century ago.
PS: how could you detect the presence of water? Photocell? Ultrasound? Conductivity between two small contacts 20% of the way up the jug?
[1] http://www.objectmentor.com/resources/articles/CoffeeMaker.p...
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8H3dFh6GA-A
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Coffee-1.html
Build products for consumers, not against them.
Although, on second thought, I guess I was never going to buy a Keurig in the first place; producing a ton of trash in exchange for expensive mediocre coffee was enough to convince me it was a bad idea?
Their weak DRM certainly serves as a deterrent to the average consumer, but even more so to the mainstream coffee distributors that have been selling "knock off" cups up to this point.
Community Coffee, which is a major roaster/distributor in the deep south, just caved and penned a licensing agreement with Keurig:
http://theadvocate.com/news/acadiana/10981551-123/community-...
Prior to the (negative) publicity surrounding the 2.0 launch, I didn't pay enough attention to notice that the Community Coffee K-cups I've bought (exclusively and in bulk at Sam's Club) for the three or four years that I've owned the machine weren't bonafide Keurig cups, but I think a typical consumer (and retailers, too) would likely be put off if the pods came with instructions for cutting the lid off an authentic Keurig cup and taping them onto the machine.
I'm betting every region has their version of Community Coffee and that Keurig will succeed in converting many of them into licensees. There might be negative publicity that is seen by those of us who care about such things, but on average, Keurig will come out ahead -- maybe without filing a lawsuit.
[1] https://www.gourmet-coffee.com/Keurig-DRM-Freedom-Clip.html
Fun that they hacked this DRM with plain tape
> This video contains content from SME.
https://i.imgur.com/4wlnL22.png
This has happened multiple times to me, today, all from SME. So many things in life require scissors, tape, and hacks to qualify for "decent" to me now.
The most annoying thing to me is that they require you to be logged in to disable Annotations and other settings. And...even if I do choose to login, it conveniently "forgets" to disable Annotations for some reason.
Also, Aeropress doesn't have all that not so eco friendly waste that Keurig's K-Cups have.
There is no DRM on Aeropress.
Instead, they shipped rootkits on music CDs. In hindsight, banning markers would have made too much sense.