Keurig 2.0 DRM Freedom Clip | Hacker News Reader

Keurig 2.0 DRM Freedom Clip

gourmet-coffee.com

131 pointsmattstrayer72 comments

While I applaud the spirit of the Freedom Clip, I have a better idea if you object to the DRM in Keurig's new product: Don't buy Keurig. There are plenty of alternatives. Why participate in the ecosystem at all if it means buying a product from a company whose products you object to? Buy a Mr Coffee if you have to have a K-Cup brewer.

I agree. This story is becoming timeless, but its understandable. From XBox mod-chips to BitTorrent, people love subversion over protest. I can't blame them really. I've been on both sides. Building and distributing a DRM break is a thrilling experience; one of my most memorable engineering projects. And consuming pirated games and music as a kid was a form of empowering rebellion. The satisfaction of subverting what is perceived as an immovable market is immediate. Whereas protesting, simply not participating in the ecosystem, is not at all satisfying. We know its the reasonable and smart thing to do, but it doesn't have the same emotional satisfaction associated with it.

So, I don't think we'll ever see an end to it.

Or go to your local coffee retailer and aquire a french press and a grinder and start making better coffee.

There are about 80 better ways to make coffee than a keurig machine; you just need to figure out the two things keurig does adequately; delivering a measured amount of water that is hot but not too hot and a measured amount of properly ground coffee.

And really, does keurig have the faintest idea as to what you consider good coffee?

> a measured amount of properly ground coffee.

And it's not even doing this well. More accurate to call it "a measured amount of ground coffee, 'aged' 8 months in a warehouse."

I think the Keurig type of product is good for one area -- having a coffee service for your waiting customers. That way you can have a variety of flavors, and you don't have to have someone constantly making a fresh pot of coffee.

Alternatively, the companies that have products with DRM could be honest in their advertisements and call them what they are: leased products.

If someone rented a Keurig and then went to add modifications, no one here would cheer it on. It's Keurig's machine after all, and private property law dictate the social rules. Renting and buying therefore have different social rules, laws, and morality attached and companies that try to blur the lines should rightfully be ignored.

I had an older version Keurig and when it failed they sent me the new DRM Keurig. But I definitely agree with your opinion and when this one fails and is out of warranty, I'm definitely going to look into other brands.

Keurigs are the new printers... subsidised hardware but crazy expensive cartridges.

Subsidized? You can get inkjet printers for as low as free. Keurig machines cost $100 and up, for something equivalent to a $20 coffee brewer.

I've a dolce gusto machine I got as a present, and the capsules are 4 pounds for 16, which is expensive if you compare to buying ground beans. But consider that if I choose to make two coffees instead of having a Starbucks/local shop on my way to work, it's been worth it. Seems reasonable to me, especially as it's consistent quality and i don't drink enough coffee (maybe one a day at home, probably another in the office using the office machine) to warrant buying a full bag and letting it go stale.

If these machines are subsidized and they expect to recoup the cost from selling the cartridges, wouldn't it be better to buy them, since it would mean Keurig would lose a bunch of money on you?

They have a high enough price point that I don't think they are subsidized.

Nothing to do with subsidization, it's (attempting) to ensure a continuing revenue stream and lock in the ecosystem.

The place I work has a brewer.

I have a single-serve French press that I bought off of Amazon for about $20. I use the Keurig machine as a source of hot water occasionally (don't put in the k-cup). But there are other sources of hot water if they take that away. And I discovered that, perhaps ironically, German coffee tastes absolutely delicious when brewed in a French press.

My work does as well. However, I roast, grind, and brew my own coffee all at home instead. Immediately upon finishing the brew, the coffee is poured into a 12-cup Thermos vacuum flask, the kind with a nice button pressure spout. With this, I get the benefit of drinking a cup or two before work, and the rest sits on my desk throughout the day, still piping hot when I'm ready for a cup.

Not growing and strip picking your own beans?! Might as well be drinking gas station coffee!

You're obviously poking fun, but for anyone who hasn't looked into it, roasting beans is surprisingly easy. I use an air popcorn popper ($20 at your favorite supermarket) and buy green (unroasted) beans for ~$6/pound, or ~1/4 the cost of comparable roasted beans. And they're guaranteed fresh!

I order my beans from Sweet Maria's, roasted with a Whirley-Pop on the stove. It's relaxing; the various aromas throughout the roasting process fill the entire house. The whole process takes about fifteen minutes, and the coffee is the best I've ever had.

I've been cold brewing my coffee. I dump a bunch of grounds in a big jar and pour water over them. After a couple of days I pour it through the funnel-filter I use for home brewing. Each day for the next few days I mix the 1/3 dark coffee with 2/3 water, pop it in the microwave for 3 minutes and enjoy.

Cold brew is much lower acid and less bitter than hot brewed, and much less "plastic" flavored than the Keurig at work.

I used to roast my beans in a skillet on my charcoal grill. It gave them a nice smoky flavor. I haven't done that in a while. (Too much effort.)

I forgo the coffee machine at work and brew my own as well, but just brew a fresh cup on demand, hobo style. Keep grinder, beans and vacuum sealer in an unused kitchen drawer. I never had much luck with thermoses. They seem to "cook" the coffee and give it a burnt, unfresh flavor after a while. Do you run into that?

I haven't experienced that, at least not that I'm aware of. My coffee only really tastes "cooked" when left in the pot on the hot plate too long.

Nobody should be promoting this inferior, environmentally disastrous product on this site, really. Makes terrible coffee, the pod design is not recyclable, and hot water + plastic is a bad equation both for coffee quality and for human health.

Edit to add: I do of course concede that DRM is evil regardless of context and must be defeated.

Sure they should. I have 3 and they make pretty good coffee. I grind my own beans in a burr-mill grinder, fill a little paper filter that fits in an EZ-cup cup, and presto, a good cup of coffee that pops into the trash. It allows me to have a maker upstairs in my den and at my desk in the office.

I want a tasty bit of convenient caffeine. I'm not looking to be a coffee snob, and the environmental impact is no net carbon greater than any other method. It's actually significantly better than Starbucks, which would be the alternative where I work.

Are you going to come clean the office coffee pot when it's been left stewing for 16 hours?

You might want to read about the really nasty bacterial films that grow inside Keurig machines, and which can't be removed.

The office coffee pot can at least be cleaned. And so can all the various hipster drip systems that are en vogue right now.

When I had a Keurig, there were two little blue LEDs under the water tank. Every once in a while, I would notice some little green bits of algae (or something) would grow on the bottom of the tank, directly above the lights. They kept coming back even after I would thoroughly clean it.

Inferior to what?

What's wrong with the biodegradable pods used as an example?

It'll be inferior to any closely fresh (brewed within a week of grinding, let alone same day) coffee with normal tap water in a standard issue glass press pot (French press).

These pods still take energy to extract, produce, ship, decompose/recycle this waste of convenience. The coffee inside will be more oxidized, less fresh, brewed at incorrect time and temperature. The point of coffee is the flavor, but all too often it's merely a delivery system for caffeine.

Inferior to basically any other method of brewing coffee. Even among pod systems, for instance, it's markedly inferior in quality and environmental impact to, say, Nespresso, which uses all-aluminum pods which are fully recyclable (Nespresso even composts the coffee inside the pods).

Nothing's wrong with the biodegradable pods, although those aren't going to be ideal for quality either, and those are a tiny slice of the market.

The simple fact is that this is an awful product that is doing vast amounts of environmental damage. Read up a bit yourself and you will see what I mean.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_K-Cups

I have a Keurig at home, and I exclusively use the reusable metal mesh filters you can find right next to the machines themselves at the supermarket. The only thing that gets "thrown out" when using those are old coffee grounds, and I don't throw those away, they get added to my garden soil for extra nutrients[1].

I realize that I'm probably in the minority among Keurig owners, and I certainly wish the company itself would be more responsible and make 100% recyclable pods. The way I see it though, the machines themselves are nearly loss-leaders; Green Mountain (parent company of Keurig) makes almost all of its money on the throwaway pods, and they aren't getting a dime out of me.

[1] http://www.sunset.com/garden/earth-friendly/starbucks-coffee...

At that point, why do you use a Keurig at all? What's the benefit besides the convenience of the pre-measured, pre-ground pods?

Instant hot. You can buy a instant hot water dispenser for your sink, and decades ago they were really cool and lasted for a decade, but the modern ones are all precision engineered for maximum profit to fail in less than a year, requiring plumbing work to replace. There are desktop hot water dispenser products but they cost about as much as a loss leader k-cup machine.

Also my wife has one of those re-usable coffee grounds things but sometimes you just want a quick cup and don't want to fool around. Today I'm running late and if I had an extra 5 minutes I'd stop at starbucks and blow $5 instead of 0.50 on this disposable cup or $0.005 on home ground. I drink black tea and I have an emergency stash of tea kcups. I think it slightly inferior but not that bad. It is much more bitter than my looseleaf home brewed. Obviously my kcup tea always tastes kinda coffee-ish which is a little gross.

I only drink one cup of coffee a day at most and my wife hates coffee, so rather than brewing even a small 4-cup pot, I'd rather not waste anything and just do the one cup at a time that my Keurig offers.

In other words, not only am I being environmentally responsible by not using throwaway pods, I'm also not wasting a bunch of coffee and paper filters using a traditional drip machine just to get my one cup every morning.

It's so inferior and awful that it represents a quarter of the market in the U.S. and growing. The convenience and pretty good taste for non coffee snobs makes for a successful product.

Inferior except in convenience. All of your other points are still completely valid.

Nespresso pods are aluminum and they have a recycling program in place if you don't feel like going to the aluminum recycling depot yourself.

I agree, but wanted to point out that "hot water + plastic" is not necessarily "a bad equation for coffee quality": the aeropress is polypropylene and produces very good coffee.

Next, I hope somebody hacks the Tesla Model S low-battery-capacity model to provide full battery capacity without having to pay for it. After all Tesla is using evil DRM to force people to pay a premium to use what they already have.

Edit: I see they don't offer that option anymore. Problem solved :)

I can definitely taste the plastic from the hot water on those cups. I started drinking from the barista in our office even though it meant walking a couple flights of stairs and waiting in line, but it's definitely worth it.

You do understand this site sell Biodegradable Cups that are not authorized by Kuerig thus the need for the Freedom Clip

As someone who is not a heavy coffee drinker can anyone explain what the attraction of Keurig is without ranting about something dumb like "Everyone's a sheeple!" or "Because the masses don't care about flavor!"?

Is it because it's quick? Or just hassle-free? According to some comments here their coffee pods also aren't recyclable, which seems like it wouldn't mesh well with coffee drinkers in SF.

In our office it is popular because we have 3 or 4 different kinds of coffee. Everyone can get a fresh cup of their favorite flavor. No one has to "make the coffee" before everyone can get some. Instead everyone makes their own cup on demand. You don't have to wonder whether you should make a fresh pot at 5PM on Friday if you need more coffee to finish up a project. You don't find half-full pots of cold coffee on Monday mornings. It is a low mess, quick and convenient alternative to the old fashioned bulk coffee pot.

Others have pointed out virtues of convenience, but, one more thing to point out: there's no cleanup. You simply eject the spent cartridge, throw it in the trash, and you're done. No filters to clean or replace. No wet, sticky coffee grounds to wash out of the reusable filter. No need to wash the filter housing.

I understand the environmental impact, and it's not that I'm lazy to do any of these things (I prefer a French press at home and boy, cleanup there is unavoidable) but my office doesn't have a conveniently located sink and running water. I imagine there are tons of people who find themselves in a similar situation.

Quick AND hassle free. I don't have time in the morning to prepare coffee - the kids have to get to school. The literal two button push to get coffee is a lifesaver.

Why not just take caffeine pills then?

Nice! Now if only we could finish reverse engineering the Tassimo barcodes..

https://reverseengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/3919/...

I like what they are doing. But my response to DRM coffee machines is basically this:

http://www.amazon.com/Bodum-Brazil-French-Press-Coffee/dp/B0...

I agree. I switch between using a bodum or my aeropress. The convenience and taste of an aeropress is hard to top.

http://www.aeropress.ca/

My coffee-drinking life got so much better when a friend gave me one of these a couple years ago. Easier and better-tasting than the alternatives (a "normal" coffee pot on the one hand, and Keurig-type machines on the other).

Note to anyone considering these: make sure you get coarse-ground coffee if you use a French press. It makes a big difference.

The next step is to get a burr grinder and grind the beans to the right coarseness just before you use them.

I bought a french press a couple years back and I can't believe anyone would make coffee any other way. No filters to replace and cleanup's as simple as just rinsing it under the faucet for a few seconds.

Most people I know replace their keurigs or coffee makers every year or so. My french press will keep working until it shatters. Additionally, as someone who doesn't quite feel comfortable with near boiling water going through a plastic device, french presses are the only thing I'll use anymore.

Every time this is mentioned, the discussion devolves into coffee aficionados saying this and that method of coffee delivery is far superior and it exasperates me.

Love that this is by the Rogers Family. I but their coffee is k-cups at Costco - at first out of curiosity and price, but now because I've found that it's pleasant and helps bring clean water and education in their growing regions. Much like 3 Avocados, except for 3 Avocados doesn't do K-cups.

Will be happy to replace my taped-on version with this in a few weeks. The fact that this is the company I already buy all my coffee from is quite satisfying.

This makes me so happy. If they get a C&D, I'm sure/hope the schematics are leaked for a 3d printed version.

In the long run, you can't stop the signal, Mal.

Aren't there different brewing temps/times? Shouldn't this have a little jog wheel on the side to select the possibilities?

Why does it brew in the absence of the DRM code? Why would you ever design the null test be equivalent to the success case?!

The "DRM" seems to be a small led/sensor combination that tests to see id the lid of the K-cup fluoresces in a particular way. The clip obscures the sensor, and provided a surface with the right kind of fluorescence.

It's not the null test. The clip puts the minimal success case in front of the sensor 24/7.

If you are getting your coffee from a pod, then DRM is the very least of your problems.

The holier than thou coffee aficionados on this site are hilarious. I wish I was in the K-cup coffee business and they were my non-K-cup competitors, since they do not seem to understand why so many people like K-cups.

Wait, why can't you cover it with tape?

According to the article, the machine reads a special ink from the lids of the cups. My assumption is that the orange dot on this clip contains that ink so as to fool the machine, not just block the reader.

Fair enough, cover it with a discarded cup+tape?

That's what these guys [1] did.

[1] http://www.keurighack.com/

There's a special ink on the cups that the brewer can detect - I can't remember the specifics.

Awesome

Wait gourmet-coffee.com is touting a means to deliver coffee from a pod machine?

ripped-abs.com shows how to make load pennies into their satchel-socks

turbro-touring.com shows you how to adhere inlet vent stickers to your fenders

There is nothing gourmet about the brownness that comes out of a Keurig

I don't think I'm alone in think the only way I would use a Keurig system is if it was given away on Craigslist. I would then buy this devise that mimics their special ink, and buy a reusable cup. (I do see those little cups everywhere, along with plastic tooth picks. I know both products have a biodegradable units, but the ones I see are not biodegradable. Edit--I don't know why I see the used Keurig cups. Maybe, I'm mistaken? I do see the Dentek tooth picks everywhere, and Jonny you should be ashamed. I guess that sailboat in high school wasen't enough? Oh yea, I never see the biodegradable picks--because they are more expensive. Lower the price, and do the environment a favor, before government steps in and bans your product--like Pull Tabs? Inside rant!

I actually saw a woman driving her car with one of those flosser things in her mouth today. First time I've ever seen one in the hands of a person outside of a house or store. I'm certain it's now free of captivity and back in its natural habitat of the street.

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