[HN Gopher] I wired up my bike's GPS to order me pizza during a ...
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       I wired up my bike's GPS to order me pizza during a gravel race
        
       Author : nxten
       Score  : 250 points
       Date   : 2023-09-10 11:12 UTC (11 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (steele.blue)
 (TXT) w3m dump (steele.blue)
        
       | thrdbndndn wrote:
       | Sorry for being kinda off-topic, but what's going on with these
       | small(-ish) businesses configuring their websites to block users
       | randomly through Cloudflare nowadays? I've seen this happened at
       | least 5 times this week clicking random links, they are all local
       | business websites.
       | 
       | I'm talking about https://www.caseys.com in this article, which
       | gives me                   Access denied         Error code 1020
       | You do not have access to www.caseys.com.              The site
       | owner may have set restrictions that prevent you from accessing
       | the site."
       | 
       | Is this a GDPR measure (but My IP is in Japan, not EU), anti-
       | proxy measure (I do use one), or cost-saving measure?
        
         | evrimoztamur wrote:
         | This, I believe, is the free DDoS guard that people opt into
         | because it's free.
        
         | weekay wrote:
         | This really is a hard stop being applied on Cloudflare WAF
         | rules to stop any traffic from geo locations a sys admin
         | believes would stop threats and also reduce their bandwidth
         | utilisation. If companies don't have business interest outside
         | or their territory/ country the new trend seems to be just geo
         | block that domain. While https://investor.caseys.com/ is
         | accessible from Europe for eg., the main site isn't . This
         | isn't a GDPR thing just a playbook some of the cyber security
         | and ops team seem to be applying across various retail
         | companies now a days .
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | foooobaba wrote:
         | Well, Casey's is not actually smallish, it's a fortune 500
         | company publicly traded on NASDAQ (CASY) and has a market cap
         | of over 9 billion.
        
           | thrdbndndn wrote:
           | I guess that makes it even worse. Large companies surely want
           | people around the world to visit their websites for brand
           | recognition even if they don't operate in their regions.
        
       | throwaway413 wrote:
       | Software, cycling and pizza. Some of my favorite things in life.
       | This project and write-up was thoroughly enjoyed, and has
       | inspired some of my own similar ideas now! Cheers
        
         | tomglynch wrote:
         | Hi, these are also my favourite things. OP, yourself and myself
         | should start a club.
        
       | terminous wrote:
       | The lengths people these days will go to in order to not make a
       | phone call...
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | hardware2win wrote:
       | >My going theory is that the Lambda had terminated processing as
       | soon as the final form.submit()
       | 
       | Kinda odd behaviour
        
         | devit wrote:
         | That's because the author apparently neglected to parse the
         | resulting page to ensure that the submission succeeded.
         | 
         | If you terminate the system right after sending a form there is
         | no guarantee that the data even left the local buffers for the
         | network.
        
           | frankthedog wrote:
           | This is the right answer. He's immediately closing the
           | browser after clicking the button. He should wait for a
           | success UI or at least that the resulting network call
           | finishes with success or a failure to retry on. Not lambdas
           | fault, it's performing as coded.
        
         | _joel wrote:
         | Isn't that the point of serverless though?
        
           | isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote:
           | It wouldn't have worked regardless of what they ran it on,
           | it's the runtime that terminates.
        
             | marvin wrote:
             | This wasn't obvious to me just looking at the problem from
             | a distance, but thankfully testing reduces the level of
             | skill required to get something right :)
        
       | fullspectrumdev wrote:
       | This is pretty neat not gonna lie. I wonder now if something
       | similar can be done with Deliveroo or similar - on day X if
       | certain conditions are met (eg: working late), have preprogrammed
       | order Y submitted when approximately Z distance from house.
        
         | willcipriano wrote:
         | Wire it up to a fitness tracker and only have enough pizza
         | delivered to keep you at a calorie deficit so that you lose
         | weight.
        
           | netrus wrote:
           | Add enough pizza alternatives to make it a somewhat plausible
           | diet and that's an actually great idea - for the crowd that
           | can afford a fully delivery-based diet.
        
         | whywhywouldyou wrote:
         | Why would you lie about this being pretty neat? Seems like a
         | weird thing to clarify.
        
           | tbrownaw wrote:
           | It's usually spelled "ngl" and seems to be a stock phrase
           | that's used more-or-less as an opposite of "/s".
        
         | wanderingstan wrote:
         | Yes, it's seems like food ordering services should have good
         | APIs for this--why not make it easy for people to integrate
         | food ordering (and paying!) into IFTTT-style hacks?!
        
           | gdprrrr wrote:
           | They might fear abuse or trolls
        
             | tough wrote:
             | Also not being able to put ads down your throat via API
        
       | Gelob wrote:
       | If they take phone orders you could just play a pre recorded
       | messages and call them using twillo. I've done this in the past
       | to call many stores and check inventory of an item
        
         | tqkxzugoaupvwqr wrote:
         | How does this work with a conversation? Did you ask them to
         | press 1 if the item is in stock, or send you an email to a
         | provided address?
        
           | callalex wrote:
           | Twilio has different verbs you can use to quickly and easily
           | throw together a small voice controlled phone tree with basic
           | conversational understanding.
        
           | sahkopoyta wrote:
           | You could start the message by explaining your situation. But
           | yeah still lots of edge cases this doesn't catch.
        
       | mhb wrote:
       | Colin will make you a pizza while he's delivering it:
       | https://youtu.be/YjyJRTM0knE?si=fes2lbRntUlciPSH
        
         | Waterluvian wrote:
         | Is Colin's recklessness a fake act, like Electroboom, or is he
         | really as reckless as it seems? I'm not sure I've ever really
         | figured it out, and for some reason it makes it hard for me to
         | watch. I guess obviously they wouldn't publish a video where
         | something goes horribly wrong, though.
        
           | sublinear wrote:
           | It's an act, but I wouldn't call it fake. He has more in
           | common with photonicinduction than electroboom.
        
             | OrsonSmelles wrote:
             | I think I'm slightly more worried that photonicinduction
             | has _actually died_ when he goes silent for a while,
             | though. I know it 's mostly down to career/relationship
             | ups-and-downs, but there's always a chance it's "got turned
             | inside out by a flying washing machine drum".
        
           | LegitShady wrote:
           | they're just playing characters
        
           | sureglymop wrote:
           | Another one if you want to see some real recklessness is "I
           | did a thing".
        
             | gibolt wrote:
             | Seconded! Here's the channel link
             | 
             | https://youtube.com/@Ididathing
        
           | wayfinder wrote:
           | What's something that Colin did that was reckless? Everything
           | he does looks pretty run of the mill for a workshop, but
           | cool.
        
         | franky47 wrote:
         | That's what happens when you remove the GIL.
         | 
         | Edit: the video was the best laugh I had on YouTube this year,
         | thanks!
        
         | rafram wrote:
         | You laugh, but the concept of this funny YouTube video was the
         | actual business model of a SoftBank-backed startup that raised
         | half a billion dollars [1]. The crucial flaw in their otherwise
         | ironclad plan was that the pizza had a tendency to fly around
         | and lose all its toppings when the truck went over a bump in
         | the road.
         | 
         | [1]: https://gizmodo.com/zume-softbank-ai-pizza-delivery-
         | stellar-...
        
           | asimpleusecase wrote:
           | Should have pivoted to calzones.
        
           | siva7 wrote:
           | I'm pretty sure that was a money-laundering scheme disguised
           | as some silicon valley-esque startup to not trigger alarm
           | bells with institutions
        
             | FanaHOVA wrote:
             | It's really not that deep
        
             | cultofmetatron wrote:
             | > I'm pretty sure that was a money-laundering scheme
             | disguised as some silicon valley-esque startup
             | 
             | considering some of the half baked shenanigans I've seen
             | conducted in SF that actually raised funding back when I
             | was there. this would explain a LOT...
        
             | smabie wrote:
             | I'm pretty sure it was not: there's much more effective
             | ways to launder money than a high profile startup
        
               | siva7 wrote:
               | That would be a perfect cover up considering it's not
               | that unheard of with their investor:
               | https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/c4d82a
        
             | ParanoidShroom wrote:
             | I don't see how one would do that. Mind expanding? You
             | won't turn out dividends and salary sounds highly taxed
        
           | lostlogin wrote:
           | They need that tech tanks use to keep their gun level, that
           | multi axis gyroscope thing. This is the sort of tech
           | crossover that could make military spending more acceptable.
        
             | HWR_14 wrote:
             | His cellphone uses GPS and connects to other computers over
             | the internet using TCP/IP, but I guess you're waiting on
             | pizza gyroscopes to see any valuable tech crossover
             | relative to this project.
        
               | gregoryl wrote:
               | Imagine the things achieved if the money being spent
               | wasn't focused on military applications.
        
           | mortureb wrote:
           | Should have had the oven on shock absorbers.
        
           | arlort wrote:
           | That's fun, this was also the premise of a Donald Duck story
           | in the italian mickey mouse weekly
           | 
           | https://inducks.org/story.php?c=I+TL+2629-3&search=paperino%.
           | ..
        
           | heavyset_go wrote:
           | Here's the thread that debuted this on HN in 2016 titled
           | "Zume, a new startup trying to make a more profitable pizza
           | through robotics"[1].
           | 
           | [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11980694
        
           | bipop5000 wrote:
           | Seems like it would have been a better option to do the final
           | cooking which is around 7-8 min in the oven at the delivery
           | doorstep.
        
           | kbutler wrote:
           | Seems like you could install pretty good motion isolation
           | systems in the trucks with that kind of money...
        
           | heavenlyblue wrote:
           | They didn't raise half a billion dollars, they were valued at
           | half a billion.
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | d3vmax wrote:
             | From the article:
             | 
             | ///
             | 
             | Most notably, the company enjoyed a generous infusion from
             | Japanese investment firm SoftBank, which injected a
             | whopping $375 million into the startup in 2018. By the end
             | of its lifespan, Zume had raised as much as $445 million.
             | 
             | ///
             | 
             | They actually nearly raised half a bil.
        
               | rafram wrote:
               | Yeah, the headline's wording implies valuation, but
               | that's actually the amount they raised. Who knows how
               | they managed to spend it. That's a lot of Bali offsites
               | and kombucha on tap.
        
       | avg_dev wrote:
       | i cannot tell you how much i enjoyed this article. it was very
       | funny. it had so many great elements. a fun tech problem, pizza,
       | getting me to look up what "s-tier" meant, a dash of humor (as if
       | the premise wasn't already hilarious), the mea culpa at the end
       | and the ideas as to what the bug was (his theory sounds plausible
       | to me, but idk).
        
       | loeg wrote:
       | Oof, and it didn't work. That's pretty rough to find out at mile
       | 200!
        
       | sambalbadjak wrote:
       | that was a fun read! hope you get your fresh pizza next race
        
       | rcarr wrote:
       | Dean Karnazes did this in an ultra running race minus the tech.
       | He rolled the pizza up like a burrito and ran with it:
       | 
       | https://gffmag.com/the-raw-endurance-of-ultramarathon-man-de...
        
         | nathancahill wrote:
         | Endurance running is really just eating.
        
           | cjmcqueen wrote:
           | It's literally the second hardest thing to do after the
           | biking/running/swimming/skiing itself. Fueling is the
           | operational excellence challenge of endurance sports.
        
       | stevage wrote:
       | I think I would either:
       | 
       | - just call up using hands free - have a friend do the call, and
       | message them to trigger it
       | 
       | Also he keeps referring to "delivery" but it's actually pickup,
       | no?
        
       | nhance wrote:
       | If it is a react website that would imply it has an api you could
       | just use directly. Might still need to login to get a token but
       | that's a lot more robust
        
         | internetter wrote:
         | Agreed! I always am confused when people screen scrape instead
         | of just monitoring and replaying network requests. Much cheaper
         | and much more robust. Is there anything I'm missing?
        
           | rendall wrote:
           | I was curious about this myself. Perhaps the pizza request is
           | arcane or buried in lots of other requests?
        
       | dools wrote:
       | > In other words, after having wasted an ungodly amount of money
       | trying to make pizza in the most complicated way possible, Zume
       | decided that the best course of action was to just try selling
       | boxes instead
       | 
       | Started off as a Futurama episode, finished off as a Simpsons
       | episode.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | CalChris wrote:
       | Very nice. A 21st century take on _pizzatool_.
       | 
       | https://donhopkins.medium.com/the-story-of-sun-microsystems-...
       | 
       | FWIW, there's a pizza restaurant, _Waypoint Pizza_ in Tiburon,
       | which if you ask nicely will deliver on the water in the San
       | Francisco Bay. This comes in handy during weird less serious
       | sailing races like _Three Bridge Fiasco_.
        
       | zschuessler wrote:
       | I have fond memories of growing up with Casey's pizza. I pick it
       | up any time I am back in the Midwest.
       | 
       | I can't place it, but it has its own distinct charm.
        
         | ecommerceguy wrote:
         | Extra grease? The breakfast pizza is the best err, usually
         | after a night of drinking busch lights.
        
           | weekay wrote:
           | https://investor.caseys.com/press-releases/press-release-
           | det...
           | 
           | This might surprise some people . Pizza for breakfast . Not
           | left over pizza from previous night
        
       | weirdkid wrote:
       | But... Hawaiian pizza?
        
         | cultofmetatron wrote:
         | makes sense in a weird way. if you're running. pineapple got
         | plenty of sugar in em which is exactly what you need when
         | you're running and eating at the same time.
        
       | fullstackchris wrote:
       | Great stuff! Thanks for the Playwright link and detailed Lambda
       | blog posts, I had a similar project I was working on trying to
       | convert text into animated (typed) code videos (on visual studio
       | code) - trying to get anything non trivial in lambda to run is
       | indeed an _interesting_ endeavour to say the least!
        
       | perebas wrote:
       | LOL this guy is amazing and does amazing things. I would never
       | think of something like that.
        
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       (page generated 2023-09-10 23:00 UTC)