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I reverse engineered McDonalds’ internal API

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Re: I reverse engineered McDonalds’ internal API

#301
post #150

Original author here: the phrasing placing an order was probably wrong - mcdonald's lists the products they're currently out in their api. I'm just querying for those. No ice cream was harmed in doing this.

> I'm currently placing an order worth $18,752 every minute Do you have to have a cart in order query for broken machines? If not, why was it mentioned in the tweet?

yeah you have to actually put the order into the cart in order to get the availability of the product

Re: I reverse engineered McDonalds’ internal API

#302
post #150

Original author here: the phrasing placing an order was probably wrong - mcdonald's lists the products they're currently out in their api. I'm just querying for those. No ice cream was harmed in doing this.

I appreciate the amusement and humor, but you might want to be careful with phrasing on something like this.

I think researchers and people who implement interoperation on the Web don't want to run afoul of federal law, nor accidentally give misleading guidance to people new to their kind of work, nor invite new rules that could be overly restrictive.

Re: I reverse engineered McDonalds’ internal API

#303
post #49

Just a note, the machines are not broken, they have shut themselves down for sanitary reasons. Ice cream, as a food that is very close to neutral in pH and without much in the way of preservatives, is a common source of listeria bacteria. To prevent serious health issues, the machine must be sanitized regularly. As I understand it, the process is involved, and any given McDonalds may not have a person with the time a…

Here's some detail, as someone that has worked with those machines before (internally and externally). In the good old days the soft serve and shake machines were taken apart every night and every piece was washed and bleach-sanitized by hand. Then it was reassembled in the morning. This would leave a lot of room for error and possible contamination in the process. And the sight of a shake machine hitting full pressu…

A manager is doing it by hand. Their POS system has the ability to lock out individual items, and this information is available in real time to the server backing the mobile app (GMA).

The machines that I've seen don't have real-time telemetry, and are not networked.

Re: I reverse engineered McDonalds’ internal API

#304
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, the OP is literally right - ice cream + milk in a blender results in a better milkshake. Try it sometime. That's how milkshakes are made at a lot of the other restaurants.

MCD optimise for speed and throughout though.

Throughput of a broken shake machine is zero.

Re: I reverse engineered McDonalds’ internal API

#305
post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling fast food workers monkeys won't make you look any smarter.

I'm not. It's a very common business phrase about cheap labor, even here on HN. The fact that you equate the two says more about you than me.

I've not heard that term used, and its bad. You shouldn't dehumanize people for being "cheap labor". Honestly, that guy flipping burgers is doing more real good for people than any number of highly paid software devs working on VC funded projects that will mostly end up in the trash.

Re: I reverse engineered McDonalds’ internal API

#306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A standalone GPS NTP server is $750 retail. Commercial soft serve ice cream machines are at least $4000. Just building the machines with an autonomous GPS clock that doesn't need to be set, would double the revenue but only increase the upfront cost by 18%.

Since they need internet connectivity to phone home status to McCloud, I don't know why they wouldn't just run an NTP client to keep their time synchronized and accurate? Moreover the $750 you reference must be a commercial product since you can do GPS on a Raspberry Pi for < $50 easily? Which product are you thinking works for this scenario? Think I've seen everything from $300 to $13000 solutions for this over the…

I doubt these machines are internet-connected. Most likely is that the store manager notices the machine has gone into its cleaning cycle and manually marks the item on the menu as unavailable.

Re: I reverse engineered McDonalds’ internal API

#307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> McCloud That’s an awesome way to name their cloud computing stuff that fits the brand really well. Is this an official/semiofficial name?

Imagine McDonalds had invented AWS and called it McCloud.

Imagine KFC had invented it and called it Kentucky Fried Cloud

Re: I reverse engineered McDonalds’ internal API

#309
post #49

Just a note, the machines are not broken, they have shut themselves down for sanitary reasons. Ice cream, as a food that is very close to neutral in pH and without much in the way of preservatives, is a common source of listeria bacteria. To prevent serious health issues, the machine must be sanitized regularly. As I understand it, the process is involved, and any given McDonalds may not have a person with the time a…

[deleted]

Re: I reverse engineered McDonalds’ internal API

#310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's some detail, as someone that has worked with those machines before (internally and externally). In the good old days the soft serve and shake machines were taken apart every night and every piece was washed and bleach-sanitized by hand. Then it was reassembled in the morning. This would leave a lot of room for error and possible contamination in the process. And the sight of a shake machine hitting full pressu…

Four to five hours, so let's say that happens daily and machines are out of commission 20% of the time. Currently it's early afternoon and the site says that over 8% are out. That's about halfway between "all overnight" and "all at completely random times". Are almost half of the clocks set wrong? Assuming that the actual number of broken machines is relatively small.

They need to load balance them so the world can have HA soft-serve. Run them in a Kubernetes cluster.
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