Do not share twitter links ffs!
I reverse engineered McDonalds’ internal API
421–430 of 454 posts
Re: I reverse engineered McDonalds’ internal API
#422They must do something differently here in Poland, because I don't think that, over many years of semi-regularly buying ice cream (mostly McFlurry) in McDonalds, I've been told even once that they can't make it because the machine is broken/under maintenance.
Re: I reverse engineered McDonalds’ internal API
#423Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good info, thank you! There was an old effort a long time ago where the machines were on a powerline-networking system (LONWorks) but that is dead and buried. The next-gen effort was ramping up a few years ago and I don't really know where it is now. The predictive analytics company they bought was a big part of it.
Meanwhile, Chick-fil-a is running Kubernetes at the edge for equipment, POS telemetry, and ML. https://medium.com/@cfatechblog/bare-metal-k8s-clustering-at...
Their tech stack is far more bleeding edge than I would have envisioned. I wish they gave an idea of why they chose to use k8s at the edge. I can see how containers are useful for deployment, and the fail-over built into Kubernetes is really nice, but I'm shocked that's the simplest/best way to do it at the edge.
I would have expected some VMWare product, just because it's "enterprisey". Shame on me for judging.
Re: I reverse engineered McDonalds’ internal API
#424Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, yes, but it's also them not refunding via the original payment processor and them letting the order go through despite being unable to fulfil it. I don't want to make a point that this is the moral thing to do, but the error is with McD here.
I'm not making any moral judgement. I'm just explaining where that money is coming from, and that it's not "free". Also, issuing a refund would still likely incur fees with the processor. They may dodge fees if they are within the window to void the transaction instead. Depends on their processor and contract.
I don't think anyone was under the impression that it's 'free money' to everyone involved.
It's 'free money' to the person it happens to (original poster).
Re: I reverse engineered McDonalds’ internal API
#425Earlier quoted context omitted.
I worked there in the old days when I was in high school (late 90's), and one of the most disgusting stories I have about a job is when I went to refill the orange juice dispenser machine, and a giant swarm of flies were all over and in the top of the machine. In the orange juice, all along the sides of the inside, and flying around like a small swarm when I opened it. I yelped and stepped back. A manager rushed over…
Fruit flies or house flies? The difference matters.
Is one worse than the other for some reason?
Re: I reverse engineered McDonalds’ internal API
#426Earlier quoted context omitted.
The machines still get taken apart and washed by hand, along with some maintenance, every 14 days. So every machine will additionally be off for an afternoon every two weeks.
So it's basically a perpetual stew ice cream for 14 days? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_stew
Are perpetual stews sanitary? I'm probably misjudging, but the idea of anything being out in the open for that long makes me uneasy. I guess it's kept at a simmer, so bacteria can't grow?
Re: I reverse engineered McDonalds’ internal API
#427Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sartre believed that it was impossible to abdicate the responsibility of making choices, because to choose to do nothing is still a choice -- in other words, "nothing" is a kind of something. So one might humorously imagine that Sartre would also think that "no cream" is a kind of something that could be different from "no milk."
Excellent! I once went to a local burger place - they have a menu full of the various types of burgers, all loaded with everything. My kids are super picky, so I asked for a burger, with nothing except the burger and the bun. Server looked confused - but which burger did I want? It became apparent that while I could ask for a preset item and ask for removals, I could not actually go fully off menu. So I had to ask fo…
Like the scene from Five Easy Pieces with Jack Nicholson. He asked the waitress for an omelet with a side of toast. She says they don't have a side of toast, so he asks for a chicken salad sandwich, on toasted wheat bread, and hold the mayonnaise, the lettuce and the chicken salad.
Re: I reverse engineered McDonalds’ internal API
#428Earlier quoted context omitted.
If they can't manage to set the time what makes you think they'll connect the Wifi? (...although in fairness some of the other comments here suggest the things might already have some kind of int[er/ra]net connectivity in which case no extra hardware required)
Have them log onto the free public McDonalds WiFi on first boot, and auto-provision themselves to the correct private WiFi?
That sounds like an awful lot of work to not send NTP requests over WiFi. Then again, I'm sure someone will inevitably find a way to make these things spray ice cream everywhere over WiFi if they do. Or worse, mess with the internal temperature or cleaning settings to make them not safe to consume.
It's actually probably best they never touch the public wifi. I don't know why no one has mentioned ethernet yet, though. These machines are static, they just sit there. There's already tons of wiring going everywhere, so I would assume that it should be relatively easy to get a cable drop to the ice cream machine. Then you don't have to worry about any of this wifi security. You could do port level security, but that's probably overkill for an edge network.
I have actually been wondering lately why there isn't more of a market for some of these things that it seems like you could hack together. There has to be something I'm missing. You'll never be a unicorn, because most of these kinds of sensors have a limited scale, but it seems like a good return on investment for a small team.
Re: I reverse engineered McDonalds’ internal API
#429Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not making any moral judgement. I'm just explaining where that money is coming from, and that it's not "free". Also, issuing a refund would still likely incur fees with the processor. They may dodge fees if they are within the window to void the transaction instead. Depends on their processor and contract.
I don't think anyone was under the impression that it's 'free money' to everyone involved. It's 'free money' to the person it happens to (original poster).
Sure. But there is no actual thing as "free" money, in the sense that it all comes from somewhere. And honestly, probably nothing is truly free. Even sunlight is the result of spent nuclear potential of the Sun. Unearned is maybe a more precise adjective to use in these scenarios.
But again, the point behind my comment was to explain where the money was actually coming from. I feel like these responses keep trying to apply a moral-judgement reading to my comment where none was intended. If one didn't know the details behind merchant credit processing, they didn't know where that cash back was coming from. And the answer is that the merchant still lost money in that transaction.
Re: I reverse engineered McDonalds’ internal API
#430Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think anyone was under the impression that it's 'free money' to everyone involved. It's 'free money' to the person it happens to (original poster).
Sure. But there is no actual thing as "free" money, in the sense that it all comes from somewhere. And honestly, probably nothing is truly free. Even sunlight is the result of spent nuclear potential of the Sun. Unearned is maybe a more precise adjective to use in these scenarios. But again, the point behind my comment was to explain where the money was actually coming from. I feel like these responses keep trying to…
>But there is no actual thing as "free" money
Yeah I get that. I feel like my reply might not have properly explained itself.
Nobody is applying a moral judgement to your comment (that I've seen at least), we're pointing out that yes, we know there is no such thing as free money in a grand sense. For most people on this board merchant fees aren't some unknown thing. We know this, and obviously McDonalds takes a tiny hit for the fees every time they refund a card transaction with cash.
It's free money to the person it happens to is what the commenters were saying. McDonalds refunds my card payment with cash, I get the credit card points and my money back. It's free money. To me. McDonalds taking a hit is irrelevant to me as I did not lose anything, I only gained. Hence free money. The context is important.