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I reverse engineered McDonalds’ internal API

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Re: I reverse engineered McDonalds’ internal API

#151

Post by theobeers »

seanwilson wrote: post #99
wnissen wrote: 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…

> 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. How come the the high amount of sugar in ice cream doesn't help? Would it be any different if it was a non-dairy milk like soy?

That effect kicks in at higher sugar concentrations, e.g. a 2:1 sugar:water simple syrup, which can have some shelf stability. I don’t think soft-serve mix would be even close.

You need for there to be little enough water in the solution that cells with permeable membranes will be desiccated through osmosis. This can be seen in a common household science experiment, where you remove the outer shell of an egg by leaving it in vinegar for a while, then submerge it in corn syrup to watch its further transformation.

Re: I reverse engineered McDonalds’ internal API

#154

Post by sbarre »

slg wrote: post #112
_peeley wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Further down the thread he mentions that no order gets executed, he's just querying. I guess still making trouble for anyone using that data, but at least nothing's going to waste.

That just leaves me with more questions. What does he mean by "executing" an order? He used the word "placing" before. Is he placing the order and then immediately cancelling? Or is he just putting items in his cart? Why such the high dollar total on the order? Is it a single order at every store every minute? Does it really need to be that frequent? Regardless, it annoys me when I see developers abuse semi-public AP…

Like any other e-commerce store, you can add stuff to your cart, and then choose not to check out.

And it is typically during the cart-adding process that you find out if a product is actually available for purchase or not, as opposed to at checkout time.

I would assume that's what is happening here, which means it's not actually affecting any in-store operations, just (as the author says) probably messing with their analytics a bit.

Hopefully he's doing it in a way that lets the analysts easily mass-filter his activity (perhaps by IP, or by adding some filter for his very atypical "one McFlurry from each store" order configuration).

Seems reasonably harmless in my mind, if he's not making use of any non-public endpoints or keys.

Re: I reverse engineered McDonalds’ internal API

#155

Post by d23 »

joezydeco wrote: post #100
wnissen wrote: 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…

Since you and the OP are here, I have a random question: were the blizzards ever made with liquid plastic ingredients?

It probably sounds insane, but someone from a plastics company spoke at my high school and said this was the case since it was easier to ship and needed no refrigeration. Now, decades later, I'm wondering if this was just complete nonsense or had an element of truth to it. I've been able to find nothing online.

Re: I reverse engineered McDonalds’ internal API

#156

Post by ipsum2 »

fma wrote: post #128
schoolornot wrote: post #15

Not sure where this data is coming from but for months now I've been ordering ice cream through the McDonalds app only to find out when I get there that the machine is broken and that they can't cancel or refund the order, which ultimately results in a stressful cash refund. It's happened multiple times at various locations around Manhattan. Eventually I'll just use this method to get 30-day cash loans on my credit c…

Well if you keep doing this and your credit card gives like a 5% cash back on restaurant purchases...this is virtually free money?

Until the one time it does work, and you end up with 500 ice cream cones.

Re: I reverse engineered McDonalds’ internal API

#157

Post by exolymph »

corobo wrote: post #130
samtheprogram wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems the first explanation given wasn’t entirely accurate (or is at least misleading), as they continued roughly 50 minutes later: > to clarify how this works: mcdonald's keeps track which locations have a broken machine, I'm merely querying for those - no order gets executed, no ice cream is actually wasted Maybe in reality, the order is created, but not actually “placed” in order to query the above info? Or may…

Don't make joke a subcategory of clickbait, hacker news. come on now

If your "joke" is structured to sound sincere and be misleading, it's clickbait.

Re: I reverse engineered McDonalds’ internal API

#158

Post by Nicholas_C »

jandrese wrote: post #114
userbinator wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why "broken" instead of "down for scheduled maintenance"? The latter implies continuance of service, the former leaves that open.

Because the teenage wage slave at the register doesn't give a shit about your fine distinctions. When I worked that McDonalds the machine was almost always down simply because the night crew didn't give a shit and it was too much effort to clean. I worked mornings with the old folks because I was too uncool for the night shift.

Morning shifts at McDonald’s were tough, especially on Sundays with the big post-church rush.

Re: I reverse engineered McDonalds’ internal API

#159

Post by exolymph »

slg wrote: post #112
_peeley wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Further down the thread he mentions that no order gets executed, he's just querying. I guess still making trouble for anyone using that data, but at least nothing's going to waste.

That just leaves me with more questions. What does he mean by "executing" an order? He used the word "placing" before. Is he placing the order and then immediately cancelling? Or is he just putting items in his cart? Why such the high dollar total on the order? Is it a single order at every store every minute? Does it really need to be that frequent? Regardless, it annoys me when I see developers abuse semi-public AP…

He meant "if I exaggerate I will get more RTs"

Re: I reverse engineered McDonalds’ internal API

#160

Post by shadowgovt »

parliament32 wrote: post #126
markstos wrote: post #110

I ran the McBroken data through the Spatial Equity Data tool. It found McDonalds are slightly overrepresented in white areas while locations with broken ice cream machines skew Black and low-income. https://twitter.com/MarkStosberg/status/1319363954385297411

Considering that all of these machines come up/down cyclically and automatically for sanitizing (pasteurizing) purposes, as described higher ITT, you're a great example of how data can be massaged to drive whatever narrative you want.

You're assuming fleetwide homogeneity.

It's possible that there's a disproportionate number of machines in minority areas misconfigured.

It's possible that there's a disproportionate number of machines in minority areas that are old-style manual-clean.

It's possible that there's a disproportionate number of machines in minority areas disabled for some other reason (ingredient supply disruption? Demand not worth the cost of keeping the machine on all the time?).

It is, indeed, possible that there is correlation without causation.

But the real answer is "We don't know why, and huh, isn't that interesting."

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