I wired up my bike's GPS to order me pizza during a gravel race (opens in new tab)

(steele.blue)

309 pointsnxten2y ago98 comments

98 comments

mhb2y ago

Colin will make you a pizza while he's delivering it: https://youtu.be/YjyJRTM0knE?si=fes2lbRntUlciPSH

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-...

siva72y ago

I'm pretty sure that was a money-laundering scheme disguised as some silicon valley-esque startup to not trigger alarm bells with institutions

cultofmetatron2y ago

> 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...

smabie2y ago

I'm pretty sure it was not: there's much more effective ways to launder money than a high profile startup

2 more replies

ParanoidShroom2y ago

I don't see how one would do that. Mind expanding? You won't turn out dividends and salary sounds highly taxed

FanaHOVA2y ago

It's really not that deep

arlort2y ago

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%...

kbutler2y ago

Seems like you could install pretty good motion isolation systems in the trucks with that kind of money...

asimpleusecase2y ago

Should have pivoted to calzones.

lostlogin2y ago

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.

mschuster912y ago

To illustrate just how capable that tech was even back in 1986, look at 1:45 of this Bundeswehr video demonstrating a Leopard tank carry a keg of beer and not lose a drop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2mcO6l-0cY

1 more reply

HWR_142y ago

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.

1 more reply

bipop50002y ago

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.

p1necone2y ago

Neapolitan pizza needs to cook for like 3 minutes tops, but getting an oven hot enough for that on the back of a truck would probably be a challenge.

1 more reply

heavenlyblue2y ago

They didn't raise half a billion dollars, they were valued at half a billion.

d3vmax2y ago

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.

1 more reply

heavyset_go2y ago

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

mortureb2y ago

Should have had the oven on shock absorbers.

franky472y ago

That's what happens when you remove the GIL.

Edit: the video was the best laugh I had on YouTube this year, thanks!

Waterluvian2y ago

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.

sureglymop2y ago

Another one if you want to see some real recklessness is "I did a thing".

gibolt2y ago

Seconded! Here's the channel link

https://youtube.com/@Ididathing

sublinear2y ago

It's an act, but I wouldn't call it fake. He has more in common with photonicinduction than electroboom.

OrsonSmelles2y ago

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".

wayfinder2y ago

What’s something that Colin did that was reckless? Everything he does looks pretty run of the mill for a workshop, but cool.

mhb2y ago

Maybe:

https://youtu.be/soxxPyaAT1k?si=-LPT22_aPrOx9xyT

https://youtu.be/fzMi6yf1Roc?si=v6s9QcCX5ughgnlk

LegitShady2y ago

they're just playing characters

hayleox2y ago

Omg my entire Sunday evening gone. Just watched this man build a tunnel from his house to his shed for 2.5 hours. What a fun channel.

DryLabRebel2y ago

Colin's channel is just a treasure trove.

CalChris2y ago

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.

MuffinFlavored2y ago

> if you ask nicely

how much does that cost if a normal pizza delivery can cost $5-$10 extra?

CalChris2y ago

You'd have to call+ask. It was a thing circa 2012. It's been awhile but the woman who ran Waypoint was a racer on the America3 team. It was more of a courtesy to other racers than an Uber Eats thing. Dunno if she's still there or if they still do it.

rcarr2y ago

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...

nathancahill2y ago

Endurance running is really just eating.

cjmcqueen2y ago

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.

MuffinFlavored2y ago

how does your body not have a hard time processing cheese/sauce/butter/fat/grease while running?

grayclhn2y ago

It does. Getting your stomach good at that (and figuring out what food you can personally tolerate best) is a nontrivial part of training for longer ultramarathons.

2 more replies

nhance2y ago

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

internetter2y ago

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?

rendall2y ago

I was curious about this myself. Perhaps the pizza request is arcane or buried in lots of other requests?

avg_dev2y ago

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).

tesin2y ago

Hm. I thoroughly disliked it - 100 layers of abstraction, glue and duct tape in the cloud to construct a rube Goldberg machine that doesn't work. It felt like everything wrong with modern tech.

fullspectrumdev2y ago

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.

whywhywouldyou2y ago

Why would you lie about this being pretty neat? Seems like a weird thing to clarify.

tbrownaw2y ago

It's usually spelled "ngl" and seems to be a stock phrase that's used more-or-less as an opposite of "/s".

Loocid2y ago

Its just an expression, dont overthink it.

willcipriano2y ago

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.

netrus2y ago

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.

wanderingstan2y ago

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?!

gdprrrr2y ago

They might fear abuse or trolls

tough2y ago

Also not being able to put ads down your throat via API

zschuessler2y ago

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.

ecommerceguy2y ago

Extra grease? The breakfast pizza is the best err, usually after a night of drinking busch lights.

weekay2y ago

https://investor.caseys.com/press-releases/press-release-det...

This might surprise some people . Pizza for breakfast . Not left over pizza from previous night

loeg2y ago

Oof, and it didn't work. That's pretty rough to find out at mile 200!

throwaway4132y ago

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

tomglynch2y ago

Hi, these are also my favourite things. OP, yourself and myself should start a club.

stevage2y ago

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?

fullstackchris2y ago

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!

hardware2win2y ago

>My going theory is that the Lambda had terminated processing as soon as the final form.submit()

Kinda odd behaviour

devit2y ago

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.

frankthedog2y ago

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.

_joel2y ago

Isn't that the point of serverless though?

isbvhodnvemrwvn2y ago

It wouldn't have worked regardless of what they ran it on, it's the runtime that terminates.

marvin2y ago

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 :)

Gelob2y ago

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

tqkxzugoaupvwqr2y ago

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?

sahkopoyta2y ago

You could start the message by explaining your situation. But yeah still lots of edge cases this doesn't catch.

callalex2y ago

Twilio has different verbs you can use to quickly and easily throw together a small voice controlled phone tree with basic conversational understanding.

sambalbadjak2y ago

that was a fun read! hope you get your fresh pizza next race

exabrial2y ago

Ok let’s fix one thing: Casey’s pizza is not great, despite the cult following :)

Source: Missouri resident

perebas2y ago

LOL this guy is amazing and does amazing things. I would never think of something like that.

bilekas2y ago

There's a great way to get motivated for the last leg of the race!

weirdkid2y ago

But… Hawaiian pizza?

cultofmetatron2y ago

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.

terminous2y ago

The lengths people these days will go to in order to not make a phone call...

Theodores2y ago

Exactly. Personally I like making calls whilst riding my bicycle, in part to make motorists go mad because we all know that texts, calls and such phone activity causes accidents. But, on a bike you are not going to kill anyone.

dools2y ago

> 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.

1 more reply

thrdbndndn2y ago

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?

foooobaba2y ago

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.

thrdbndndn2y ago

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.

weekay2y ago

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 .

evrimoztamur2y ago

This, I believe, is the free DDoS guard that people opt into because it's free.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

98 comments

mhb2y ago

Colin will make you a pizza while he's delivering it: https://youtu.be/YjyJRTM0knE?si=fes2lbRntUlciPSH

rafram2y ago

[1]: https://gizmodo.com/zume-softbank-ai-pizza-delivery-stellar-...

siva72y ago

I'm pretty sure that was a money-laundering scheme disguised as some silicon valley-esque startup to not trigger alarm bells with institutions

cultofmetatron2y ago

> 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...

smabie2y ago

I'm pretty sure it was not: there's much more effective ways to launder money than a high profile startup

2 more replies

ParanoidShroom2y ago

I don't see how one would do that. Mind expanding? You won't turn out dividends and salary sounds highly taxed

FanaHOVA2y ago

It's really not that deep

arlort2y ago

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%...

kbutler2y ago

Seems like you could install pretty good motion isolation systems in the trucks with that kind of money...

asimpleusecase2y ago

Should have pivoted to calzones.

lostlogin2y ago

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.

mschuster912y ago

1 more reply

HWR_142y ago

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.

1 more reply

bipop50002y ago

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.

p1necone2y ago

Neapolitan pizza needs to cook for like 3 minutes tops, but getting an oven hot enough for that on the back of a truck would probably be a challenge.

1 more reply

heavenlyblue2y ago

They didn't raise half a billion dollars, they were valued at half a billion.

d3vmax2y ago

From the article:

///

They actually nearly raised half a bil.

1 more reply

heavyset_go2y ago

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

mortureb2y ago

Should have had the oven on shock absorbers.

franky472y ago

That's what happens when you remove the GIL.

Edit: the video was the best laugh I had on YouTube this year, thanks!

Waterluvian2y ago

sureglymop2y ago

Another one if you want to see some real recklessness is "I did a thing".

gibolt2y ago

Seconded! Here's the channel link

https://youtube.com/@Ididathing

sublinear2y ago

It's an act, but I wouldn't call it fake. He has more in common with photonicinduction than electroboom.

OrsonSmelles2y ago

wayfinder2y ago

What’s something that Colin did that was reckless? Everything he does looks pretty run of the mill for a workshop, but cool.

mhb2y ago

Maybe:

https://youtu.be/soxxPyaAT1k?si=-LPT22_aPrOx9xyT

https://youtu.be/fzMi6yf1Roc?si=v6s9QcCX5ughgnlk

LegitShady2y ago

they're just playing characters

hayleox2y ago

Omg my entire Sunday evening gone. Just watched this man build a tunnel from his house to his shed for 2.5 hours. What a fun channel.

DryLabRebel2y ago

Colin's channel is just a treasure trove.

CalChris2y ago

Very nice. A 21st century take on pizzatool.

https://donhopkins.medium.com/the-story-of-sun-microsystems-...

MuffinFlavored2y ago

> if you ask nicely

how much does that cost if a normal pizza delivery can cost $5-$10 extra?

CalChris2y ago

rcarr2y ago

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...

nathancahill2y ago

Endurance running is really just eating.

cjmcqueen2y ago

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.

MuffinFlavored2y ago

how does your body not have a hard time processing cheese/sauce/butter/fat/grease while running?

grayclhn2y ago

It does. Getting your stomach good at that (and figuring out what food you can personally tolerate best) is a nontrivial part of training for longer ultramarathons.

2 more replies

nhance2y ago

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

internetter2y ago

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?

rendall2y ago

I was curious about this myself. Perhaps the pizza request is arcane or buried in lots of other requests?

avg_dev2y ago

tesin2y ago

Hm. I thoroughly disliked it - 100 layers of abstraction, glue and duct tape in the cloud to construct a rube Goldberg machine that doesn't work. It felt like everything wrong with modern tech.

fullspectrumdev2y ago

whywhywouldyou2y ago

Why would you lie about this being pretty neat? Seems like a weird thing to clarify.

tbrownaw2y ago

It's usually spelled "ngl" and seems to be a stock phrase that's used more-or-less as an opposite of "/s".

Loocid2y ago

Its just an expression, dont overthink it.

willcipriano2y ago

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.

netrus2y ago

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.

wanderingstan2y ago

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?!

gdprrrr2y ago

They might fear abuse or trolls

tough2y ago

Also not being able to put ads down your throat via API

zschuessler2y ago

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.

ecommerceguy2y ago

Extra grease? The breakfast pizza is the best err, usually after a night of drinking busch lights.

weekay2y ago

https://investor.caseys.com/press-releases/press-release-det...

This might surprise some people . Pizza for breakfast . Not left over pizza from previous night

loeg2y ago

Oof, and it didn't work. That's pretty rough to find out at mile 200!

throwaway4132y ago

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

tomglynch2y ago

Hi, these are also my favourite things. OP, yourself and myself should start a club.

stevage2y ago

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?

fullstackchris2y ago

hardware2win2y ago

>My going theory is that the Lambda had terminated processing as soon as the final form.submit()

Kinda odd behaviour

devit2y ago

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.

frankthedog2y ago

_joel2y ago

Isn't that the point of serverless though?

isbvhodnvemrwvn2y ago

It wouldn't have worked regardless of what they ran it on, it's the runtime that terminates.

marvin2y ago

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 :)

Gelob2y ago

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

tqkxzugoaupvwqr2y ago

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?

sahkopoyta2y ago

You could start the message by explaining your situation. But yeah still lots of edge cases this doesn't catch.

callalex2y ago

Twilio has different verbs you can use to quickly and easily throw together a small voice controlled phone tree with basic conversational understanding.

sambalbadjak2y ago

that was a fun read! hope you get your fresh pizza next race

exabrial2y ago

Ok let’s fix one thing: Casey’s pizza is not great, despite the cult following :)

Source: Missouri resident

perebas2y ago

LOL this guy is amazing and does amazing things. I would never think of something like that.

bilekas2y ago

There's a great way to get motivated for the last leg of the race!

weirdkid2y ago

But… Hawaiian pizza?

cultofmetatron2y ago

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.

terminous2y ago

The lengths people these days will go to in order to not make a phone call...

Theodores2y ago

dools2y ago

Started off as a Futurama episode, finished off as a Simpsons episode.

1 more reply

thrdbndndn2y ago

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?

foooobaba2y ago

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.

thrdbndndn2y ago

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.

weekay2y ago

evrimoztamur2y ago

This, I believe, is the free DDoS guard that people opt into because it's free.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse