And horror stories like this: https://www.vice.com/en/article/why-repair-techs-are-hacking-ventilators-with-diy-dongles-from-poland/?ref=404media.co or https://www.404media.co/the-walls-are-closing-in-on-john-deeres-tractor-repair-monopoly/

Have inspired me to look around for something akin to a github repo or PDF with various technical workarounds for fixing McFlurry machines and other hilariously overprotected commercial hardware. Lo and behold though, I've found nothing of the sort short of more news articles on the topic. All of this is to say I'd be extremely interested in finding out what resources for bypassing DRM to essential repairs on commercial equipment folks HN might know about to perhaps start compiling it. Maybe I missed that something like this exists already, in which case I'd be very happy to avoid reinventing the wheel and check it out haha.

Funny enough I'm not a technician myself or anything. Personally, I'm thinking more along the lines of how handy it would be to not need to worry about a DRM hold-up on the one intact piece of industrial food processing equipment at the frozen pizza factory me and the other survivors are held up at (fortunately one of the survivors was actually a line worker here) surrounded by the zombie horde (or whatever massive societal collapse you wanna imagine that terminates your ability to call tech support). You better believe DRM will still be enforced long after the breakdown of any legal system built to enforce it. As far as the technical protection measures in this place go, it really doesn't matter whether us survivors starve or not XD