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Bot orders $18,752 of McSundaes every 30 min. to find if machines are working:
Burgers, fries, and McNuggets are the staples of McDonald's fare. But the chain also offers soft-serve ice cream in most of its 38,000+ locations. Or at least, theoretically it does. In reality, the ice cream machines are infamously prone to breaking down, routinely disappointing anyone trying to satisfy their midnight McFlurry craving.
One enterprising software engineer, Rashiq Zahid, decided it's better to know if the ice cream machine is broken before you go. The solution? A bot to check ahead. Thus was born McBroken, which maps out all the McDonald's near you with a simple color-coded dot system: green if the ice cream machine is working and red if it's broken.
The bot basically works through McDonald's mobile app, which you can use to place an order at any McDonald's location. If you can add an ice cream order to your cart, the theory goes, the machine at that location is working. If you can't, it's not. So Zahid took that idea and scaled up.
[...] "I reverse-engineered McDonald's internal ordering API," he explained when he launched the tool, "and I'm currently placing an order worth $18,752 every minute at every McDonald's in the US to figure out which locations have a broken ice cream machine."
[...] The Verge interviewed Zahid about his project once his tweet announcing it took off.
NB: The bot does not actually place the order. It attempts to set up an order, and if it is allowed to add the item, it is assumed to be available. Taking note of that, it then exits out of the attempt. At no time is money exchanged. Also, he discovered that he had to back off to once every 30 minutes or it got blocked.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday October 27 2020, @05:32PM (1 child)
Maybe McD would find it a better use of investor's capital to connect all their stores' ice cream systems to a corporate network.
Keep track of outages.
Train an AI to lean the patterns of outages, and then modify the online order system to simulate ice cream outages, even when the machines are working.
Why is this frozen gelatineous industrial goo even called "ice cream"? Just because it's at a low temperature? Is that all that is necessary these days?
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Immerman on Tuesday October 27 2020, @06:32PM
It's icy, it's creamy, what more do you want? Heck, I've heard rumors that it even involves some dairy products!
Actually though, soft-serve uses the same ingredients as normal ice cream, but incorporates a lot more air, and the machine doesn't allow it to harden as much.