How One Hacker Used Amazon Dash To Order Pizza

When it comes to pizza, fast is never fast enough. Every step cut from the ordering process shaves precious seconds from the wait for the pie to hit one’s doorstep, deliveryperson in tow.

[bctt tweet=”When it comes to pizza, fast is never fast enough.”]

So, on the very same day we discover that Mars has water and the Red Planet perhaps can harbor life, the news comes that a pizza hack is here — one that truly makes the case that we humans must be counted as the galaxy’s superior beings.

As The Verge reported on Monday (Sept. 28), Amazon’s Dash buttons can be used to configure “a big white button” to order pizza, using the technology that is encapsulated in the $5 devices that typically are used to order household items.

The Verge reports that the hack takes its genesis from engineer Ted Benson, who had turned his own Dash button into a monitor to track his baby’s, um, schedule of food elimination. In contrast, another engineer, Brody Berson, has commandeered the button to help bring food in, not out, so to speak. In his own hack, the site reported, the pie-er of choice was Domino’s, and Brody employed an API that allowed for direct payment to the pizza company. The order, programmed into the Dash button, was not tied to the engineer’s Amazon account.

As had been reported earlier this year, Amazon’s Dash debuted as a way to stimulate commerce with the literal touch of a button and to help boost Amazon Prime use and membership rolls. The buttons, which feature adhesive, have been targeted for use in order to stimulate refill orders of, say, detergent or coffee.

As far as the pizza hack goes, let’s just view it as one more example of technology in the service of mankind, shall we?

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