Keurig 2.0 DRM Bypass | Hacker News Reader

Keurig 2.0 DRM Bypass

keurighack.com

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My Keurig's electronics died and I was able to recreate them with an Arudino:

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.

How did you go about reverse engineering it?

I'd be curious to read about that, myself.

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:

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.

What would happen if there is no water in the reservoir and you turned on the heating element?

Assuming the thermister isn't very close to the heating element you'll be heating air for a while and the heating element might burn out.

On a lot of consumer products there's a resettable thermal fuse built into the heating element. Burning down people's houses is bad for business :)

I'll put my hand up for that one.

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.

[1] http://www.objectmentor.com/resources/articles/CoffeeMaker.p...

Keurigstein! I have visions of a guy in a lab coat standing over it waiting for a French Roast cup crying out "It brews! It brews!"[1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8H3dFh6GA-A

haha, anyone remember the linux coffee machine controller?

http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Coffee-1.html

If you hook up Ethernet to the Arduino, you might be able to get the first implementation of https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2324!

Good old days of reading RFCs. Thanks for remembering this.

A Trusted Friend in Science — Aperture Laboratories

Discussing "licensing" in a thread about coffee. Fuck.

This is not what the future was supposed to be about. The future was supposed to bring us infinite possibilities through the means of technology. It was meant to be awesome.

It was not meant to be artificially limited through the means of technology which could have been used to make our lives better instead.

Where did we go wrong?

Money.

"The Calorie Man" (short story by Paulo Bacigalupi) is about licenced crops and agribusiness. It'd be neat to read something similar about domestic DRM. http://www.nightshadebooks.com/Downloads/WindupStories.pdf

All of the stories in Bacigalupi's _The_Windup_Girl_ universe contain sub-plots about the 'Calorie Cartels' based in Iowa. Really good reading for a near-apocalyptic vision of a post-Oil, mid-climate crisis world. Full-on Trigger Warning for some of the sexual content in _The_Windup_Girl_ though.

Wow! You are right. This is an incredibly apt dystopian view of the future of DRM. Read it.

We started drinking garbage coffee

Yes! If you care more about coffee and less about convenience you'll end up pouring freshly ground beans over hot water and there isn't a damn thing technology can do to interfere there.

Cough, cough, AeroPress[1], cough.

It's almost as convenient for a single cup as Keurig, much cheaper, and if you've got a local coffee roaster, much, much better.

[1] http://aerobie.com/products/aeropress.htm

Where did we go wrong?

Had unreasonable expectations?

You watched different movies than I did.

Where did we go wrong?

"Because money" is sufficient justification for actions in business that would otherwise be classified as sociopathic. This is fairly light in the grand scheme of things.

Did you expect not to need to be smart?

Matter energy conversion didn't happen...

And if/when it does you totally know you'll pay a licence fee for each "pattern" you materialise.

I mean people pay over $1 for a Christmas card and the justification for that is "someone has to come up with the designs!"

> Where did we go wrong?

Fantastic line of discussion! Glad you're bringing it up.

We went wrong when we said, "We can have infinite possibilities, but only through >ME<."

And then we cemented the deal when we went along with the "guy" who said, "You can only have infinite possibilities through >ME<."

And we let it get worse when we rationalize the Keurig with bullshit like "Having a pot of coffee around is unsafe because of the burner, etc."

Technology is a stand-in for relationships - what you would do for someone if you were there, but conveniently you've duplicated yourself via machine. We went wrong when we said, "Well, if I was there, I would prevent you from having coffee from a convenient machine." In reality you wouldn't - you would share as much as possible. However, when we replace ourselves with machines designed by greedy committees, we write ourselves out of the equation.

Not to mention that pouring boiling water through cheap plastic leaches industrial chemicals into our coffee, thereby increasing our chances of cancer.

Plus Keurig tastes like a cup of monkey-poo. French press is the way to go (or iced coffee).

The flaw is thinking that technology alone can help people. If you created a machine that magically makes everyone the equivalent of a billionaire, but don't fix an imbalance of power - that certain people are allowed to take as much as they want from anyone with less power and privilege - then you have helped nobody.

We first must fix the problem of authority.

We went wrong when we discouraged hackers and competitors from doing this kind of thing. If this wasn't encouraged by government, products like the Keurig 2.0 would be broken quickly and soon after vanish. DRM should not be a viable business model. You want to prosecute copyright infringers, fine, that's one thing, but if you're attacking people who break DRM systems, that's quite another.

I think it's important to at least acknowledge the desire a "razor/razorblades" device manufacturer has for maintaining the quality of their brand by controlling to some extent the user experiences that are possible with their tool. To me, this seems similar to Sony and Nintendo wanting the right to certify titles that run on their consoles. You can argue about whether removing freedom from the user is worth the trade for a reliable user experience, and you can argue about the right place to draw the quality line, but they're trying to guarantee a certain minimum level of user experience by doing this.

If Keurig coffee was somehow astoundingly good out of their machine, with their pods, would we have less of a problem with what they are doing?

What Keurig is doing also doesn't prevent another manufacturer from competing with an unencumbered alternative. Shouldn't we expect such a system to compete in the marketplace on its merits?

> What Keurig is doing also doesn't prevent another manufacturer from competing with an unencumbered alternative

Not sure if this fits the definition of irony, but Keurig is the company that came up with the unencumbered 1.0 coffee pod standard. The original DRM was the idea that a scoop of ground coffee beans was incompatible with the pod brewer. 2.0 is exactly the same, but with the RFID (I'm assuming. I haven't cared to look into it) "protection". I'd imagine 3.0 will have some kind of boolean logic much like inkjet cartridges have these days that will make the thing complain that the pod has already been used.

Though, I entirely agree with you. This DRM is only present because Keurig wants to protect it's brand. It came up with the pod brewer concept, much like Apple came up with the iPhone and it's app store. Rejecting what it deems to be inferior or competitive to it's goals is it's objective. I'd wish everything was more open and available for interoperability, but it's their product up until I purchase it, so the design is out of my control.

I suppose it's making Keurig's lives better. Infinite possibilities through the means of technology includes digitally protected coffee.

A big ah hah moment for me was realizing that money is a representation of inefficiency. So for example, if everyone had a means of growing their own food, generating their own electricity, taking care of their own health, and had unlimited access to information, we wouldn't need to buy things or pay for services. A Mr. Fusion and a replicator would be all we needed.

That’s probably the real reason they don’t use money on Star Trek. Not so much because they eliminated scarcity (which they obviously did, with numerous planets to choose from) but because giving everyone the basic means to sustain themselves was such a small fraction of the economy that it became dehumanizing to force people to work so much when society could provide for all within the percentage of a rounding error.

This concept’s relevance for coffee makers: what’s a coffee maker without coffee? Anyone can brew coffee by pouring hot water through a sock (as it’s done in much of the developing world) and I can say from experience that it’s both more convenient and can even make a better cup. So the key is the coffee, not the machine. It’s not really surprising that Keurig wants to cement itself as a middleman, and since coffee is everywhere, it was probably inevitable that they’d turn to a DRM solution.

Hydroponics, fabless photovoltaics and big data medicine are going to be what take us into the future, not some kitchen gismo. In fact, the more I witness “progress” in my lifetime, the more I see that the really revolutionary stuff like the internet is generally free and shared by all. Otherwise it just makes some guy rich. I want to be rich too, but I’ve spent half my life chasing a goal that wouldn’t even be necessary if I was off the grid and could just get left the heck alone.

The internet is far from generally free and it is in danger of being shared by all (which of course this community is well aware of) by "fast lanes" and other detrimental laws motivated by middlemen who want money.

Money is just a tool humans use to represent value. It is up to us to decide what is valuable.

It's not about efficiency or inefficiency. You can't alone create everything. Food, water, power, maybe. But what about designing something great and complex?

You could argue people would do this for free, but that's not right. A designer isn't an emoting artist seeking to express some particular vision. A designer solves humanity's problems. There's usually lots of things we want to express, but we don't have time to express them all. The way we select the problem to solve is by evaluating the economic potential of it.

In other words, money makes people solve problems other people care about. It's the fitness function of technological evolution.

> A big ah hah moment for me was realizing that money is a representation of inefficiency.

Ehhh. I guess that's basically true, but people would probably read the wrong idea into it if you phrase it this way.

An economist would rather phrase it as "a dollar spent on something is a vote for there to be one dollar more of something." But it can be flipped around to your line of thinking as "a dollar spent is a representation of one dollar's worth of dissatisfaction or unmet need that someone has." If everyone has exactly what they want, then market velocity goes to zero. Money doesn't cease to exist; it just ceases to be moved around. (Inflation is, partly, a disincentive for ever letting this happen.)

Either way, even in a post-scarce utopia, capitalism would still survive; it has useful emergent information-redistribution properties beyond its use in plain survival. For example, an "everyone gets a basic income and spends it in a market" system thoroughly beats a central-allocation system when it comes to figuring out what crops need to be grown, what factories need to be built, etc.

My future is not artifically limited through the means of technology. I use my trusty moka pot for decent coffee and instant when I'm on the run (I have no shame).

Seriously: analogue for analogue things folks.

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.

Does Keurig actually sell their coffee makers at a loss? I've always thought they were overpriced to begin with.

Probably if it factors in how much R&D went into the DRM, the production price per unit increases. Nothing else about it is terribly complicated.

The Boston Globe Magazine had a pretty good piece on them a few years back. It was far easier to read in print, but I think this the article:

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.

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

That's not what I meant.

what else would they use? it's perfectly inert, there's nothing to engineer. Traditionally coffee is vacuum packed, but nitrogen works fine too

IE, you got marketed to. That's fine, I'm just saying, I don't think they did something new

Direct link: http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2011/08/07/the_insid...

EDIT: single page.

Thanks for the direct link. I probably should have discovered that was an option.

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?

That's the entire point: to hide pricing information from consumers in an attempt to trick 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.

Each proprietary cartridge type is a new market.

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.

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?

[1] https://www.gourmet-coffee.com/Keurig-DRM-Freedom-Clip.html

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.

The relevant clauses in the DMCA read:

"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.

Even Lexmark lost their toner DMCA claim, despite the clone containing an exact copy of the Lexmark software http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexmark_Int'l_v._Static_Control...

Two major cases apply to this.

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.

Keurig has already tried to use patent law to prevent competitors from selling pods.

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...

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).

I mistakenly thought titleV counted here, but that seems to be restricted to boat hulls. Unless it's been expanded from that.

Another solution is to not buy Keurig machines.

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.

Aeropress is the best! Great tasting coffee, cheap machine, easy to clean and maintain.

Yup,

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.

Seems lest wasteful.

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.

Just as a point of reference, I don't ever want to see the inside of a Keurig that's been neglected for years in some office or other.

Or you can get a plastic version (with a cup) for cheaper. And the filters are easier to find than pre-cut circles for the AeroPress.

"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.

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.

this is my suggestion for a great hack too! Less waste and a better cup of coffee as well!

This might be relevant to you: http://kohilabs.com/kohi-filter-for-aeropress/

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.

The reason I think some people prefer the Keurig-style (for better or worse) is the virtual complete lack of clean-up.

we're getting very efficient at permanently extracting wealth from the middle class

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.

It has never complained to me about anything.

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.

Keurig is not an espresso machine.

Keurig make espresso machines, the Rivo range.

That use K-cups? They don't look like K-cups.

The comment I replied to said:

> 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.

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.

[0] http://aerobie.com/products/aeropress.htm

When I saw Aerobie, I immediately thought of the flying ring.

Interesting that they branched out to a coffee press from all their other products., which are basically all things that you throw.

You're calling coffee from a Keurig an espresso machine? My $1200 Jura begs to differ

Agreed. Solution, get a popcorn popper and head over to sweetmaria's: http://www.sweetmarias.com/store/instructions.html

I'm hoping you are talking about a stove-top popper: http://www.whirleypopshop.com/stovetop-poppers.html

Hard to get a consistent roast, but the result is very, very fresh. And you get to enjoy coffee roasting smoke!

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.

I've had problems with air poppers---I couldn't seem to get the coffee hot enough for the second crack.

A presto poplite (1400 watt), though requires near constant stirring, can go beyond 2nd crack in about 4 minutes.

This! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AeroPress

Costs about 20-30$ and makes great coffee A simple yet effective solution to my coffee needs :)

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.

Alternatively, we could stop wasting so much packaging and take 5 minutes to make a pot of coffee.

But this way I have 5 more minutes to code.

I add powdered caffeine to my morning Soylent.

(really.)

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.

I'd recommend anyone trying this to be cautious with the amount you add.

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.

why wouldn't you just take caffeine pills man

It's much, much cheaper if you buy the powder. But yeah, I ended up buying gel capsules and making my own pills.

-10 minutes you spend on breaking the DRM

One-time cost.

Most important part of coding is thinking and and it is best done not in front of the monitor. Making coffee looks like a good process for thinking.

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].

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...

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.

I just use mine at home so I don't have this problem. I could see it being an issue in an office though.

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.

For a single cup of coffee, I'm partial to the AeroPress. It takes a bit more work, but the strange looks I get from my coworkers is worth it.

The Aeropress makes the best coffee I've ever had at home. I've tried moka pots, regular coffee brewers and French presses.

The Aeropress is better than all of those hands down.

Have you tried a Chemex or other pour over?

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.

On the subject of leaching dangerous chemicals into coffee, moka pots are definitely bad idea. The coffee absolutely picks up a lot of aluminum.

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.

Call me paranoid but I refuse to drink hot liquids out of plastic containers of any kind. A glass french press is the way to go.

As someone who owns (and regularly uses) an aeropress, may I ask why? Simply out of of curiosity, not out of disagreement.

I think it's because it is possible for materials in certain plastics to break down in the presence of heat.

Leaching chemicals. Here's an article I found after a quick google search, http://myplasticfreelife.com/2011/04/bpa-free-does-not-mean-...

It doesn't mention heat, but I presume leaching increases with heat.

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

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol_A#Health_effects

[1] http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/03/tritan-certic...

The Aeropress has been BPA free for years now.

http://www.aeropress.ca/faq/

That may be true, but unfortunately research is showing plasticizers of many varieties (including those used in "BPA Free" plastics), are endocrine disruptors.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016648014...

Here's another article about it (same content, but easier to digest):

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.

Strangely, I heard somewhere recently that french press coffee has toxins in it that would normally be filtered out by the paper filter...

that'd be the cholesterol, and there's not a good link between it and blood cholesterol

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.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cafestol

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.

I think it's a losing battle. The water in your kitchen tap has likely traveled through miles of PVC piping.

Cold PVC pipe, not hot (slower leakage). Plus the leakage has diminishing returns (it cannot leak the same amount forever, it is physically impossible).

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.)

If you care enough about the flavor differences, you'll do a whole lot better by not using a kureg in the first place.

Well, due to content management, I can't click play on the video in the website?

> 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.

It has the Imperial March from Star Wars as the background music, which was definitely a bad idea.

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.

DRM-free dirt cheap coffee:

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.

A pourover cone seems a more practical version of this method, or a french press. Though in a pinch it will work!

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.

Yeah, if you have money, spend it on nice beans and a burr grinder. My Porlex hand grinder has lasted for years of daily use!

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.

The second reason they've gained massive popularity is that people all want different shit.

"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?

That's precisely why we own one. My wife and I not arguing every morning over who made the coffee and how is well worth the price we pay in K-cups.

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!

I just make the coffee the night before and set the brew timer for 5:45am.

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 drink virtually anything except keurig coffee. It has a really weird taste that I've never had before except from instant coffee.

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.

I prefer a french press myself, but I suppose that will do in a pinch.

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.

Nice!

8 p.m. Stick ground coffee in a filter. Submerse in water. Place apparatus in refrigerator.

:next morning:

Remove apparatus and filter containing coffee. Heat coffee for 1 minute in microwave. Significantly less bitter, delicious cold-brewed coffee.

if you like this, you might like one of these

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61DFW0RJVxL._SY355_.jp...

I'll recommend using a really-fine mesh filter, like this: http://www.amazon.com/Finium-Brewing-Basket-medium/dp/B0037S...

You get a little bit of super-fine dust through it, but it's reusable for years and lets all the yummy oils through.

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.

Yeah, too lazy to go buy a pot.

Classic replay attack.

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.

You can pry my Breville BES870XL from my cold dead hands.

Pourover is still my go-to. One of my old ceramic cones I used for years cost me a buck fifty plus tax.

Ammonia is the way to clean a coffee maker.

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.

Did you use the Nespresso cleaning kit and then run the entire water tank through the machine twice without capsules?

I have many Nespresso machines and never had a problem with degrading taste. Usually something else breaks like the milk frother on the Lattissima.

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.

HTTPS://www.hilinecoffee.com

That's a really nice hack, I fear though that the next generation of "broken by design" consumer electronics devices will make use of much more sophisticated DRM technologies to make sure you only use them as intended by the manufacturer.

An example is the German startup Bonaverde (http://www.bonaverde.com), which manufactures a coffee machine that not only grinds but also roasts your coffee beans. To make sure that you use only their certified (and pricey) coffee beans they include an RFID chip with each package that you have to scan in order to start the brewing process. No tag, no coffee.

There is also a Gizmodo article that nicely sums up the Bonaverde story:

http://gizmodo.com/kickstarter-project-finds-exciting-new-wa...

Can't you just save an empty bag, and then fill it with any beans you want?

My general thoughts about companies trying to implement DRM is that there's always some stupidly simple hack around it. Like this Keurig hack. I guarantee that within a week or two of this coming out someone will just find another way to hack around the DRM.

Better mousetraps just breed cleverer mice.

Not sure about this, but from reading the article the answer is probably no. I hope of course that there will be a workaround, as you say even very sophisticated DRM schemes eventually get cracked, it just makes me sad to see that instead of building technology that empowers the end user, these companies deliberately choose to cripple their products for the sake of higher profit.

Bonaverde changed their approach, and removed the DRM from the machine (thankfully!) From their update email: "It will also open access to the machine so that you can use whichever green beans you want."

That's great to hear actually, glad they changed their policy. I just hope they will follow through with this and deliver the product.

Anyone else waiting for the Arist? https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/236195807/arist-brews-c...

I have a feeling if it's successful, it's going to give Keurig some headaches.

Why?

The Arist makes espresso drinks and will cost at least $400 whereas the Keurig costs less than $150 and makes drip coffee.

The Arist looks great, but there is probably very little crossover between the two sets of customers.

There's no way they'll be able to fit so many features at in a $300 product.

There's already a pretty competitive bean-to-cup coffee machine market, and $300 price point usually gets you a machine that grinds, brews, dispenses and sometimes froths - very poorly, and requires maintenance.

Heck, even a good, “real” espresso machine and grinder (like a Rancilio Silvia and Bartza Vario, entry level coffee geek favourites) combo will set you back around $1k.

It's a pipe dream.

This sounded real familiar, so I went and dug up the last one of these I heard of.

The ZPM Nocturn was supposed to be a $400 espresso machine that used a fancy thermoblock instead of a boiler to save costs (cheap espresso machines use thermoblocks, but the kickstarter claimed that their design was better enough to compete with a boiler).

This is straight from their kickstarter page: [1]

> There are basically two kinds of home espresso machines on the market today. The affordable models have no good mechanism of temperature or pressure control. These machines can’t pull consistent shots. So if you're serious about espresso, you’ll need one of the higher-end machines - they make great coffee, but they also start around $700.

> [...]

> Our machine will retail for around $400, but it's available to you guys on Kickstarter for only $200!

That was in 2012. Today, they still seem to be at the preorder stage, but their machine is now $800. [2]

[1] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zpmespresso/pid-control...

[2] http://store.zpmespresso.com/collections/frontpage/products/...

Not siding with Keurig, but just out of curiosity, how would you to create a DRM scheme that can't be bypassed with this replay attack? Apparently [0] the DRM works by shining a light on an ink marking and registering the wavelength of the light reflected back.

I figure one simple scheme would be to 'burn' the key after it is read. i.e. physically disable the DRM ink by heat/perforation/other ink, so that once used, the signature ink cannot be reused. Curious what other HN-ers would come up with. And hoping Keurig doesn't get any ideas from this. ;)

[0] http://www.theverge.com/2014/6/30/5857030/keurig-digital-rig...

In England there used to be "holographic" telephone cards to be used in public payphones.

A laser would burn part of a strip for each credit used.

http://technologyandarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/how-bt-p...

(There must be better descriptions of them out there).

I'll bite.

Cut power to the heat source/declaw the perforator/plug up the ink jet. I have physical access, after all.

Keurig is in the position that they can attach a number to each one of their coffee cups, and the machine will refuse to brew if the number doesn't prove the cup is authentic. If they give all the cups the same number, as they apparently have chosen here, than all anyone has to do is present that number again, and voila, the coffeemaker will execute whatever cup they feed it.

Maybe they get smart and give each and every cup a different password. Of course the machines have to recognize these passwords, so they have to start with a known list of length N, where N is the total number coffee cups they ever expect to sell for this line of machines. They put all these passwords through their favorite one-way function, stuff the hashes in a newline-delimited text file, and hope it fits in a few gigabytes. Now once the machine encounters a matching password, it brews one cup, but "crosses off" that password and won't brew for it again.

Nice, this should work. Although you missed the part where it uploads the crossed off password to the cloud so you can't give your used cups to your buddy.

Then it checks the number as you go to brew it. "Can't brew my coffee because the internet is down."

Instead of starting with each machine having the entire list of numbers, wouldn't it just be easier to read each number it encounters, store it and then check future numbers against the stored list? There are sooo many more numbers my machine will never see. Why keep them all stored in all machines? And if they are concerned about running out of numbers and repeating them, there could be a timestamp attached to each locally stored number and have them expire from the list after X months. The chances that a person would save a bunch of K-cup tops to use to bypass the DRM 6 months later is pretty slim.

AFAIK, the original reason for the DRM was to prevent other companies from selling K-cups, so it would need a way to validate each cup, not just prevent reuse.

Doh! I totally forgot about that part. LOL

One shouldn't waste time on idiocy like DRM where there are more worthy things to think about ;)

They could put the DRM ink marking over the part of the tinfoil that gets punctured - voila, one-use DRM.

When I was drinking coffee, I would usually brew through a K-cup twice in a row to get a larger cup of coffee. My v1.0 machine makes me open the lid and close it again to brew the second time. I guess that method would not work with your idea. That would anger me even more than this DRM already would.

They could have used thermo-sensitive ink (using same technology that fax paper used some time ago), on a hot cup it would have automatically destroyed itself. However, they very likely don't care about the replay hack.

The authentication scheme is there to prevent mass-manufacturing counterfeit cups. Hipsters who modify devices are below noise level on their bottom line (them bragging about sticking it to the Man is free advertisement for the brand so even if there were a loss on a machine it's hard to tell if there is a net loss or profit).

And hoping Keurig doesn't get any ideas from this.

If Keurig wanted to they could get plenty of ideas from the consumer printer industry, where cartridges have embedded chips in them. Apparently the latest models include some form of crypto too; the older ones were just an EEPROM and were fairly easy to defeat (http://eddiem.com/photo/CIS/inkchip/chip.html) But they should also keep in mind that despite all these countermeasures, plenty of refill kits/aftermarket cartridges/chip resetters/etc. continue to be available, so they're fighting a losing war.

Does anyone use such junk after they introduced DRM? Such companies deserve oblivion.

You know what's better than using a Keurig? Get an Aeropress. It's easy, awesome, and tastes better than Keurig.

Also, Aeropress doesn't have all that not so eco friendly waste that Keurig's K-Cups have.

There is no DRM on Aeropress.

They are officially labeling us as "attackers" on seclists now:

http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2014/Dec/37

Who do you mean by 'they' and 'us' there?

That's pretty clearly satire...

"Since no fix is currently available, owners of Keurig 2.0 systems may wish to take additional steps to secure the device, such as keeping the device in a locked cabinet, or using a cable lock to prevent the device from being plugged in when not being used by an authorized user."

Love it

I type "LOL" at a lot of things without actually laughing out loud, but I can't put into words how hysterical this sentence is:

"Step 5: Attacker closes the Keurig, and is able to brew coffee using the non-genuine K-Cup."

THE ATTACKER IS BREWING COFFEE.

Approaching this from the perspective of someone who drinks perhaps 250 mL of coffee per year, I am utterly mystified that the commodity coffee beverage product can still support so many niche businesses.

In this very discussion, I have seen people describe the way they make their own coffee, and it is almost identical to the way U.S.A.-C.S.A. civil war soldiers made theirs in camp. And I have seen people describe their heavily-modded robotic coffee makers, using consumables pre-processed in bulk by industrial-scale machinery to provide a more consistent product.

And this makes me think that Keurig is not just pissing into the wind, but directing their little stream against a waterfall. The coffee market is huge, and more ancient by far than most other product markets. It is also thoroughly commoditized. There is simply no way for any company to enjoy pricing power in it without an improbably vast cartel or some strictly policed patents and trademarks.

Why should the collective society of coffee-drinkers indulge Keurig's attempt to achieve economic profits (positive returns when considering opportunity cost) by allowing them to differentiate their sub-market to the point where they enjoy pricing power in it? Is their coffee that much better than all available alternatives? I have similar questions about Starbucks. How do they manage to charge more than the basic commodity price?

It almost seems as though the coffee itself is not the whole product, but it also includes the ritual and ceremony of preparing it. It also looks quite a bit like the market for wines and beers, where the price that the market will bear is determined mostly by the printing on the label.

Given those assumptions, my analysis is that Keurig is approaching their problem from the worst possible angle. Inserting technical countermeasures into the hardware will never work (as repeatedly demonstrated by pwn-your-own-device hackers). They should instead pour that cash into advertising and reward-based psychology. Institute some form of intermittent reward system for using genuine, trademark-branded consumables.

You cannot ever employ enough clever engineers to defeat the legion of people with physical possession of the item and a desire to make it do what its owner desires, instead of obeying its pre-programmed manufacturer directives. Annoying your customers simply does not add value to your product.

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:

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.

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.

[1] https://www.gourmet-coffee.com/Keurig-DRM-Freedom-Clip.html

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.

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?

This Canadian company believes the UV ink on the packaging is not protected and they can simply produce their own cups with the same ink.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/keurig-s-coffee-supremacy-ch...

Reminds me of this well thought out copy protection from a decade ago: http://archive.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2002/05/52...

> "I wonder what type of copy protection will come next?" one posting on alt.music.prince read. "Maybe they'll ban markers."

Instead, they shipped rootkits on music CDs. In hindsight, banning markers would have made too much sense.

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.

Fun that they hacked this DRM with plain tape

He's wearing a brass rat! [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_class_ring

It's the coffee equivalent of the bypasses used for certain unlicensed NES and SNES games: the game's cartridge had a bracket or port into which you would plug a licensed game, and the unlicensed game had pass-throughs for the signal lines to the system's DRM chip, allowing the unlicensed game to use the licensed game's authority.

What is funny is that it would have taken Keurig just a bit more effort to make the chip so that it has an unique signature. That way the machine will store the numbers it had already processed, and this hack would only allow you to cheat if you have more than one machine, but you'd still need to buy originals half of the time.

I have a strange need to watch Star Wars now..

Jokes aside, this is a neat hack but I wonder if it would be possible to remove the DRM check from the electronics side itself. I don't have a Keurig machine myself, so I wouldn't dare opening up one (after making a cup) to see what you could hack at.

Keurig adding DRM was equivalent to a plea to be hacked. But I was thinking, Keurig probably doesn't care about people who mod their machines as much as they want to target counterfeiters.

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.

I almost (not really) want to buy a Keurig machine JUST so I can hack it. Side question: any of you use the term "K-Cups" instead of "Keurig cups"?

K-cup® is their official name. I've never heard anyone use "Keurig cup" before. Is that a thing where you are?

I worked at Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (the owners of Keurig) around the time they were first gaining traction, and remember them briefly being called "Keurig cups" internally before the "K-cup" shorthand caught on.

I think this whole "hack the Keurig 2.0 DRM" has created more press for their coffee maker than they would have otherwise had.

I expect them to sell more because of it.

Why exactly do we need (to bypass) DRM on a coffee machine?

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.

For what it's worth I appreciate the tldr here since I'm mobile and can't watch the video but am curious none the less.

They don't just refuse to work with non-keurig k-cups, they refuse to work with version 1 k-cups from the old system.

Sucks to be anyone who bought more than a box before their machine broke.

Did the same thing a few years ago with a Tassimo.

At least there is a technical reason for that to exist - the Tassimo barcodes control the brewing process (temperature, pressure, and so on).

Same here. We accidentally bought a case of discs that's only compatible with commercial machines. We noticed that the barcodes differed for the same kind of coffee in the home machine, so we just cut the barcodes from the old coffee, reinforce with some scotch tape, and temporarily attach it to each new disc we put into the machine.

I didn't even realise there was something like this on the market, I'll notch it up as another reason I love my Aeropress.

That's a cool hack. It could be handy on the road as more hotels buy these units.

Nice solution for corporate foolishness

1) Keurig makes terrible coffee why would you ever want to use one? 2) that is all.

Is this a joke? Seems like a lot of people are falling for it...

Why would this be a joke?

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.

The real joke is using DRM to prevent competition. Printer companies have also been doing this.

Printer companies have tried doing this. IIRC, they lost in court.

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.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexmark_Int'l_v._Static_Control...

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.

You might be thinking of Lexmark v. Static Control

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 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.

No.

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.

When computer vision is used for such evil practices, I am at a loss for words. The music was PERFECT.

I wonder what Keurig 3.0 DRM will look like. Would it have some sort of chemical tagging ability which are only found in Keurig coffee? I'm surprised there isn't any public backslash over such predatory practices.

What's next? A bed that farts because you didn't buy the same brand of blankets and pillow? A toilet that won't flush because you didn't use their brand of cleaner?

Their first problem was: They bought a Keurig.

The second problem was: They didn't sell or get rid of said Keurig.

The third problem was: They tried to polish a turd. It's still a turd, just a bit now covered up.

Why use a coffee machine anyway? I never got the point of them. The coffee they make tastes bad anyway.

Just use a good old ibrik. It costs $3 to $10 depending on size and where you buy it from. The more expensive ones will probably cost $30?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2DyulKd6vw

Many bothans died to bring us this information.

It's a frap!

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