McDonald's app bug let people order for free in France • Hacker News Board

Re: McDonald's app bug let people order for free in France

#21

Post by thoughtstheseus » Sat, Feb 08, 2020, 8:21 PM UTC

criddell wrote: post #20

Deimorz wrote: post #17

It's always interesting to me that so many people seem to completely lose all compunction about stealing once technology is involved. If they were ordering from a cashier at McDonald's and the cashier got distracted for a minute and somehow forgot to charge them before finishing the order, most of the people that abuse a bug like this would tell them about the mistake. I've been in similar situations plenty of times,…

Is this stealing or just taking advantage of a loophole? When tech companies funnel revenue to Ireland or other places to avoid taxes, is that stealing?

Stealing would imply deceit. McDonalds decided it would be best to use software to engage in these transactions.

Re: McDonald's app bug let people order for free in France

#22

Post by brmgb » Sat, Feb 08, 2020, 8:22 PM UTC

Deimorz wrote: post #17

It's always interesting to me that so many people seem to completely lose all compunction about stealing once technology is involved. If they were ordering from a cashier at McDonald's and the cashier got distracted for a minute and somehow forgot to charge them before finishing the order, most of the people that abuse a bug like this would tell them about the mistake. I've been in similar situations plenty of times,…

That's because both situation have absolutely nothing in common.

People tell cashiers when they make a mistake not out of a desire to avoid "stealing" (stealing is taking something without permission or right by the way so neither case is actually stealing by the way) but because they empathize with an actual human being making mistakes like they sometimes do and want to be helpful.

Corporations can't at the same time replace people with machines to optimise their bottom line and expect their customers to remain empathetic. Once you put in place automatic system you have to owe them. You can't win on both side.

If Amazon gives huge reductions by mistake, well, too bad for Amazon, the reductions are still there. It has absolutely nothing to do with shoplifting.

Re: McDonald's app bug let people order for free in France

#23

Post by orf » Sat, Feb 08, 2020, 8:26 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #19

thrower123 wrote: post #8

There was another one I saw where you could order a dollar burger, then order another ten burgers without the burger, and because of how the kiosk software calculated the "no burger" modifier, the total came out to $0. https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2019/04/08/11-free-burge...

> There was another one I saw where you could order a dollar burger, then order another ten burgers without the burger, and because of how the kiosk software calculated the "no burger" modifier, the total came out to $0. This looks like the software was missing some internal sanity checks. For example, it was hammered into us at Caltech that any answers we derive need to be sane. If an energy value turned out to be n…

> Software should have the same sort of checks. It's called "contract programming", the simplest manifestation of which are asserts.

A wrong answer is wrong, but the correct response isn't always to fail. Imagine you added this and that caused 0.01% of orders to fail for 10 days while you debug the issue. Perhaps your assert is only stopping a 1 cent deviation from the correct order total - is it better to prevent 0.01% of orders in their entirety or have the absolute correct order total?

Also a value of $0 is a perfectly valid cost for food - maybe they are using a voucher, or some loyalty points, or something else. The Uber eats integration with McDonalds seems to print an order that costs £0.

Re: McDonald's app bug let people order for free in France

#24

Post by dnautics » Sat, Feb 08, 2020, 8:27 PM UTC

Deimorz wrote: post #17

It's always interesting to me that so many people seem to completely lose all compunction about stealing once technology is involved. If they were ordering from a cashier at McDonald's and the cashier got distracted for a minute and somehow forgot to charge them before finishing the order, most of the people that abuse a bug like this would tell them about the mistake. I've been in similar situations plenty of times,…

Can you please explain concretely what your definition of stealing is?

To most sane people, it is not stealing when a transaction price is set, and that price is paid.

If you buy a car and complete the transaction and as you're driving off the lot the dealership says, sorry, that car is 200,000 not 20,000; would that be stealing? Why or why not?

Re: McDonald's app bug let people order for free in France

#25

Post by the8472 » Sat, Feb 08, 2020, 8:29 PM UTC

Deimorz wrote: post #17

It's always interesting to me that so many people seem to completely lose all compunction about stealing once technology is involved. If they were ordering from a cashier at McDonald's and the cashier got distracted for a minute and somehow forgot to charge them before finishing the order, most of the people that abuse a bug like this would tell them about the mistake. I've been in similar situations plenty of times,…

Consider it people providing incentives for writing secure software.

Perhaps the world would be a better place if everyone behaved honestly all the time, but that is an unstable state because it takes only a single person to deviate from the norms in such a world to exploit all the systems that weren't designed with bad actors in mind.

The cashier situation is not comparable because it's not exploitable reliably. Unless you have an easily distracted cashier that can be cheated all the time. If that were the case I could see some less scrupulous people starting to do that.

Re: McDonald's app bug let people order for free in France

#26

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Feb 08, 2020, 8:33 PM UTC

speedgoose wrote: post #9

Donald wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their franchisees bore the entire cost of giving out the free food. McDonald's corporate paid nothing except for paging someone in to fix the bug.

I don't know if McDonald's food is that expensive. I would expect that most of the costs are the employees, the building, and the equipment.

[deleted]

Re: McDonald's app bug let people order for free in France

#27

Post by lidHanteyk » Sat, Feb 08, 2020, 8:34 PM UTC

Deimorz wrote: post #17

It's always interesting to me that so many people seem to completely lose all compunction about stealing once technology is involved. If they were ordering from a cashier at McDonald's and the cashier got distracted for a minute and somehow forgot to charge them before finishing the order, most of the people that abuse a bug like this would tell them about the mistake. I've been in similar situations plenty of times,…

It's not like McDonald's exists in good faith. Remember that, to the typical person on the street, McDonald's is a system that exists adversarially, not as part of a holistic and humane society.

Edit: I don't eat at McDonald's. Do you, downvoters?

Re: McDonald's app bug let people order for free in France

#28

Post by mrleinad » Sat, Feb 08, 2020, 8:36 PM UTC

dnautics wrote: post #24

Deimorz wrote: post #17

It's always interesting to me that so many people seem to completely lose all compunction about stealing once technology is involved. If they were ordering from a cashier at McDonald's and the cashier got distracted for a minute and somehow forgot to charge them before finishing the order, most of the people that abuse a bug like this would tell them about the mistake. I've been in similar situations plenty of times,…

Can you please explain concretely what your definition of stealing is? To most sane people, it is not stealing when a transaction price is set, and that price is paid. If you buy a car and complete the transaction and as you're driving off the lot the dealership says, sorry, that car is 200,000 not 20,000; would that be stealing? Why or why not?

Could it have been obvious the price was 10 times higher than you paid? If yes, then it's stealing. If no, then no.

Re: McDonald's app bug let people order for free in France

#29

Post by beedyg » Sat, Feb 08, 2020, 8:40 PM UTC

There was one evening in a small town is England where my fellow students convinced the staff in the local McDonald's that the student offer of one free hamburger did not require a purchase. We ate a lot of free hamburgers that night. Guilt aside, dare say they were the best McDonald's I've ever tasted

Re: McDonald's app bug let people order for free in France

#30

Post by Deimorz » Sat, Feb 08, 2020, 8:45 PM UTC

brmgb wrote: post #22

Deimorz wrote: post #17

It's always interesting to me that so many people seem to completely lose all compunction about stealing once technology is involved. If they were ordering from a cashier at McDonald's and the cashier got distracted for a minute and somehow forgot to charge them before finishing the order, most of the people that abuse a bug like this would tell them about the mistake. I've been in similar situations plenty of times,…

That's because both situation have absolutely nothing in common. People tell cashiers when they make a mistake not out of a desire to avoid "stealing" (stealing is taking something without permission or right by the way so neither case is actually stealing by the way) but because they empathize with an actual human being making mistakes like they sometimes do and want to be helpful. Corporations can't at the same tim…

When a grocery store has self-service cashier stations, is it acceptable to only scan half of your items?