If you look at what he's doing from an art perspective, he's engaging in Generative art, art that is created by process outside the control of the artist: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_art" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_art</a><p>I usually think of John Cage when I think of generative art, and the way he let the environment or random events become part of his music.<p>One of the coolest things I've learned about recently in this realm is Joseph Nechvatal's Viral Symphony, a musical work composed by a C++ program that seems similar to Conway's Game of Life: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_symphOny" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_symphOny</a>
You know what would be really cool? Write a mini-me program, with enough money that hosting can be funded on interest, with a little left over for gifts.<p>Then, you die (painlessly, after a long and happy life, etc. etc.)<p>The program keeps running, tracking your descendants over time and gives them little random, appropriate gifts from the ghost of great^n grandpa or grandma.<p>I wrote about this in 2007 (<a href="https://tubelite.wordpress.com/2007/09/10/autonomous-software-agents-as-trustees/" rel="nofollow">https://tubelite.wordpress.com/2007/09/10/autonomous-softwar...</a>). Perhaps Facebook is in the best position to do this, help people plan and create their ghosts.
This was done a few years back as the result of an XKCD, the original article is gone, but there's a few articles about it: <a href="http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-11/09/xkcd-packages-script" rel="nofollow">http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-11/09/xkcd-packages...</a> <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20022153-1.html" rel="nofollow">http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20022153-1.html</a> it's a cool idea.<p>Not sure if I'm imagining it, but I think that someone built this into a web service that you could subscribe to and it would buy things for you every day. Does anyone remember this? I can't find anything via HN search, but I'm sure it was a show HN at some point.
I normally don't like when someone posts an xkcd link, but this was the first thing that came in my mind <a href="http://xkcd.com/576/" rel="nofollow">http://xkcd.com/576/</a>
Off topic: I'm wondering when HN users will figure out how to get permalink of a Tumblr post. Everybody is linking to blog home except companies hosting their blogs on Tumblr.
Being a native Swede very much into electronic music I was very interested in learning about Ákos Rózmann! He was a complete stranger to me until now. Thank you very much.
This is a really cool idea - and it shouldn't be too hard to get it to talk to recommendations, personalisation & wishlist if those APIs still accessible as a web service? However, I haven't used the E-commerce service for a long time and I think it might have been turned off or replaced with something more advertising-oriented.
How is he actually completing the amazon purchase solely via a bot? I know there is no API to automagically buy an item from Amazon.<p>Would love to see a write up of how this is accomplished.<p>EDIT: Noticed he is using PhantomJS and running the process through a browser. Very interesting.
dxRoulette uses an non automated, but similar approach. Although you have to manually buy, it still very fun to sort the item wait for it to arrive in a random date since the product comes from china.
<a href="http://www.dxroulette.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.dxroulette.com/</a>
you have no respect for the value of money, time and our planet. You better use your spare time write a bot to feed 80 human beings in poor country. :\ disappointed how this can get so high on HN. Srsly, you guys are loosing it.