

My first (quite pointless) Ruby website - pluies
http://sowhatcouldigetatmcdonalds.com/

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ABrandt
Expand to the other major chain restaurants and source your pricing from
Mechanical Turk (except for the dollar menus of course). I'd take a few
precautions to validate the data. For example, you could put up an HIT to get
Burger King's entire menu and have 5 people complete it. Compare, lather, and
repeat. But I see that as only the first step.

Add a dietary component. First, scrape all the various nutritional values
(calories, grams of fat, etc.) from each major restaurants website. They all
publish that stuff. Then tie into people's bank transactions through something
like Yodlee or finkin(a "Show HN" project from a couple weeks ago[1]). You'll
then be able to identify when a user buys food at a given restaurant for a
given amount.

With a little tweaking, you could give people an automatic and fairly accurate
assessment of their food intake. For example, your current site is telling me
that 2 sundaes, a medium fry, and a filet-o-fish cost exactly $5.89. According
to the McDonald's site, that meal is a whopping 1420 calories and 20g of fat.
People would pay money this. Bonus points for sending customized tips on how
to quit eating so horribly based on my data.

You'll have to factor in taxes, different promotions, identical price combos,
and more to improve accuracy. I think it could have massive potential though.
I've done a little research into a concept like this so feel free to drop me a
line if it interests you.

\-- [1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1783823>

EDIT: for clarification

~~~
joevandyk
Also, you'll want to factor in availability.

Have you considered using varnish + cassandra? Take care to avoid the
thundering herd problem.

~~~
ABrandt
I looked up what the thundering herd problem is but still don't really
understand how it applies here? Could you explain further? (Sorry if thats a
dumb question, not a computer scientist here).

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adatta02
Haha awesome Easter Egg - my friend just sent me this:

(6:54:08 PM) Michelle: it told me this: $1,000,000? Seriously? A whole lot of
food. No, I won't compute that for you. That's too much. You'd become obese
and you'd die. I don't want to feel the guilt for the rest of my life. I might
be a webserver, but I'm not heartless. Unlike you after eating all that and
suffering a stroke. Your little human body is not made for that. It's a no.

~~~
ElbertF
There's more:

1,000,000,000: _Errr, a few franchises?_

1,000,000,000,000: _You could probably buy all of McDonalds stock for that
kind of money._

Oh and apparently you can buy a Sundae for as little as $.999999999999999949.

~~~
pluies
> Oh and apparently you can buy a Sundae for as little as
> $.999999999999999949.

Damn, I was sure hackers here would test the edge cases, but I thought it
would hold! :) What you describe look like a weird behaviour in Ruby's string
parsing to int (if I remember my code correctly), but I'll look into it.

~~~
ElbertF
I wouldn't worry about it, it's just how Ruby and most other languages handle
floats. Do a search on Google for "ruby float precision".

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Qz
You could put some preset numbers to choose from, like $1 $5 $10, for those of
us too lazy too type in the box.

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vaksel
Chances are you are going to get sued for having mcdonalds in your domain
name.

switch that to sowhatcouldiget.com, add in taco bell, dominos etc...and it
might make you a few hundred bucks a month

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AntiRush
In addition to the "I'm dissatisfied" button, you should consider leaving the
price in the text box so that "go" has the same effect of repeating the
search.

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hippich
I think dollar sign should be before amount, not after.

~~~
hippich
hm. for some reason, on second page it's correct =) so it's only on front page
for me.

~~~
panic
It depends on which side of the dollar sign you click. If your click falls to
the left, you'll end up with the dollar sign in the wrong position.

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aspir
I think it's pretty cool actually. If you expanded this to different
restaurants, you may have something on your hands. I can't tell you how many
times I've gone through this scenario when ordering. Not at McDonalds,
granted, but at the places I do frequent.

~~~
pluies
Yes, it might be useful providing a real dataset... The problem would be
finding the menus and making sure prices are correct, etc. That would need to
be crowdsourced, and I'm not sure that many people would be willing to
participate. :)

Thanks for the feedback!

~~~
adatta02
Could probably get it done on Mechanical Turk for a few hundred bucks. I'd
start in a single metro area and expand from there.

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jadedoto
Also, as far as your input filtering goes, I enjoy the 2001: responses. But
you're not picking up extra "$" characters for it. It gives me an answer for
"$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$4" and "$$$$$$4$$$$$$" and "$$$44$$$4$4$", for
example.

~~~
pluies
Interesting! I'll fix that. Thanks!

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plnewman
I go to McDonald's about once or twice a month. I get the same thing every
time, a 5-piece Chicken selects meal combo. I choose this item because it
requires the absolute minimal wait time. It costs $7.09 each time after tax. I
put in $7.09 and refreshed the result several times but did not get my choice.

Just thought you'd like to know.

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duck
Does pricing vary by location?

~~~
zach
"Price and participation may vary."

Yeah, there are airport locations where, for $5.00, you could get a regular
cheeseburger and a medium soda. And you'll even have 45¢ left!

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aberkowitz
The subtly humor throughout the website really makes it more enjoyable to use.
I wish more sites were this human.

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tmlee
So i tried hitting $9999999999999999999, priceless result. It actually quite
make sense!

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crazydiamond
Please put a checkbox for vegetarians.

