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iFixit Tears Down McDonald's McFlurry Machine, Petitions Government for Right to Hack Them
(www.404media.co)
this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2023
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There's already a link to the vid talking about the utter bullshit and corruption surrounding the McD's ice cream machines posted in this thread, but here's a resource I haven't seen posted yet: an online tracker to find out if your local McD's ice cream machine is working or broken right now.
https://mcbroken.com/
(love the domain name)
I swear that site makes green dots smaller until they disappear when you zoom out. Still pretty cool though, our nearest McDonalds has a broken ice cream machine
Funny, the one nearest to me and where I grew up are broken. This is such a neat tool!
Holy hell! Look at UK.
What I don't know is whether the UK has to comply with the same BS exclusive service contracts for their ice cream machines as the US does, or if it's a similar arrangement only with different companies and manufacturers.
The McD closest to my house is almost always unable to sell ice cream products - it's down more often that it's working.
How do they get the data?
They reverse engineered the ordering API (that the app uses) and try to add a McSundae to an online order. If the ice cream machine is broken, it won't let you add that item to an order for the specific location. If the McSundae machine is working, it will let you add that item to the order for the designated location.
It updates each location every 30 minutes, so is very up to date.
More details about it here: https://hypebeast.com/2020/10/mcbroken-site-mcdonalds-ice-cream-machines-working-tracker-info
If its the one I know, it sends an online ice cream request through the API, and then cancels the successful ones before they reach the stores. The unsuccessful ones are broken machines, essentially.
iirc it used to get it through a reverse engineering of the McDonald's app api. Not sure about now tho
Why is there some countries without thoses (e.g. Spain, France, Italy...) ?
Some regions/countries use a region/country-specific version of the app. Just a guess, but I would speculate that those countries that use a different app might also be using a different API implementation that hasn't been reverse engineered yet.
The way that site gets its data is they leverage the reverse-engineered ordering API that the app uses, and try to place an order for a McSundae and then wait to see if the online order is rejected (because the ice cream machine is down).