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In a growing number of online activities, bots are the main means of interaction. Online shopping is increasingly one of those areas. Vice has an interview with someone who built their own bot in order to compete against the other bots when buying online, just to have a chance at making a purchase for sought after items.
A tool for beating others to buying the items you want consists of three main components, finalphoenix explained. A monitoring bot, which scouts the target websites for new items; an account creation part, which will make a load of accounts on the site so you have a higher chance of pushing through the crowd as you control more of it; and a purchase bot, the part that actually orders and pays for your item. Users will also need to get some server space to run their bots.
Hiding from the clothes websites that you're using a bot is a bit more complicated; companies will likely ban you if they suspect you're scraping their website. Here, buyers need to use different accounts, proxies to route their traffic, and other technical means as workarounds.
Earlier on SN:
Facebook and CMU's AI Poker Bot Beat Five Pros at Once
TrickBot Malware Learns How to Spam -- Ensnares 250M Email Addresses
How Much of the Internet Is Fake? Turns Out, a Lot of It, Actually
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 28 2019, @10:11PM (5 children)
Why not to learn something about sewing and/or knitting and make yourself your own unique cloth? Better fits to FOSS philosophy of sharing patterns too.
(Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Wednesday August 28 2019, @10:28PM (1 child)
Why, you have quite a gall! What will you say next, that Gimp is as fit for the purpose as Photoshop? (grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 28 2019, @11:06PM
Obviously Gimp it isn't fit for purpose. It needs to use 4GB more memory, 5 more windows, 18 more nested sub-menus to access commonly used functions, and be restricted no online-only cloud based access on a subscription model. Then it might start to be able to start competing with Photoshop.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday August 28 2019, @10:34PM
It's not about the object or even aestetics, it doesn't have anything to do with FOSS or the making of the object, the bot herd doesn't make any of those choices.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 29 2019, @01:53AM (1 child)
Because no one will pay a massive markup to buy your unique clothing. Much easier to help buy up all the exclusive inventory then re-sell it at a higher price along will the other online re-sellers doing the same thing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 29 2019, @02:45AM
I do not sell my own hand-made cloth, I am wearing it.