Bot written to buy random things each month from Amazon | Hacker News Reader

Bot written to buy random things each month from Amazon

randomshopper.tumblr.com

219 pointsdmarinoc95 comments

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: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_art

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.

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: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_symphOny

"If you look at what he's doing from an art perspective"

What exactly is an art perspective? I buy stuff every month from Amazon to serve different purposes, so that they are pseudo-random if looked from outside without context. That doesn't make me an artist, at least not in my book.

I don't want to start a modern art flame fest, but where do we draw the line? I mean, it seems like nowadays anything is or can be art. And if I say that I don't get it, well, then it is my problem for not looking at it from the right perspective.

> but where do we draw the line?

Somewhere around "If you have to explain to people that it's art, it's not."

Seems like a fuzzy line still. What if the artist doesn't really "explain" that it is art so much as he tells someone it is art? If, as a classic example, you submit a urinal on it's side to an exhibit, I don't think the act of submission would necessarily be an act of explanation.

Of course you can go the other direction, and wonder who this explanation has to be directed to in order to disqualify something as art. If I am a particularly dense person and ask what the point of the Sistine Chapel is, that certainly does not disqualify the chapel's ceiling from being art.

Is there perhaps a threshold percentage of the population that has to understand something as art for it to be art?

Yes. An unfuzzy line would imply an objective definition, and I think it's clear a such doesn't exist.

But what I meant by "explain" was more the other way around - if the intended observer can't independently identify it as art, it's not. Mostly, really, I just tend to get a little upset over the pompousness of declaring something fairly trivial you've done "art", because you can construct some platitudes about it being a commentary on some social issue.

"if the intended observer can't independently identify it as art, it's not"

Then what makes you think that you're always the intended observer for a particular piece?

I guess the question is: Why draw a line?

Art for the artist's sake. No need to explain it to anyone. :) Regardless of any artistic intent, this still sounds like a fun idea.

(And thank goodness for a generally good return policy)

Subsidies.

LOL! Genius.

(and, sadly, true)

We draw the line at everything is art when viewed from the perspective of art.

It is like asking when a coffee cup becomes a jerry can, or vice versa, and the answer is always: it depends on how it's used.

It's not that you don't get it, it's that it means something different, possibly nothing, to you than to others. It's only a problem if you want to appreciate it from the same perspective as others.

Art is in the eye of the buyer. If the buyer thinks it's art then it is art.

I define "art" as something I (the proverbial unskilled layman) couldn't do in a weekend.

I was in a Syndey art museum recently, and there are a lot of beautiful art paintings I couldn't create in a thousand years. There are a few proudly displayed "things" that I could create in a couple hours with zero skill. I have no idea what people see in those "things".

Art has always been a fuzzy term. My personal interpretation, today at least, is that what you're referring to is "craft", the ability to skillfully manipulate materials to either create something attractive or a piece of art. "Art" on the other hand is the act of creating something with the intent of provoking thought through a new perspective. (I realise you could use that definition to describe a report ;) but that's the best I got...)

>I define "art" as something I (the proverbial unskilled layman) couldn't do in a weekend.

Art is also about context. Look at prehistoric cave paintings: I have no technical skill as an artist, but I could easily recreate the paintings myself. But does that mean they're not art? Of course not. To take another example, how about the hasty sketches of a soldier in the trenches in the First World War?

I only use such a stark example to prove the point that technical skill isn't all that makes art art. If you don't know what people see in these "things" then perhaps you just need to look a little more carefully. A lot of modern art is taking the mundane, that which we are used to, and challenging our assumptions about it. Assumptions that we didn't even know we had.

I'm not commenting on this post in particular, but all too often I see this dismissive attitude towards modern art, and I think it's unfair and deserves more careful consideration.

Consider a painting I saw on TV a while back that is suspected of being done by da Vinci. If the experts concur, it would be worth millions. If they do not concur, it would be worth $20,000 because it's old. If joe starving artist down the street painted it, it would be worth $500 at best.

The exact same painting.

>I define "art" as something I (the proverbial unskilled layman) couldn't do in a weekend.

This doesn't seem a very robust definition. Do you think things like aircraft carriers and landfills are art?

"I define "art" as something I (the proverbial unskilled layman) couldn't do in a weekend."

Your definition is somewhat myopic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outsider_art

Couldn't _replicate_ in a weekend, or couldn't have _created_ in a weekend (including conceiving of it in the first place)?

Any fast typist could retype any of the great works of literature in a weekend. That's not the same as being able to write them.

>where do we draw the line?

All that's needed to cross this "line" is for the creator to say "Yes, this is art" and the question is answered. The creator's intent is enough to make this distinction because art can be so varied and unique that holding preconceptions is self-defeating.

I believe what lies at the core of this point is really the question: "Is this good art?" This is an entirely different discussion that can be answered with some objectivity by judging things such as: "Is this work original or derivative?", "Is it thought-provoking or banal?", "Does it try to expand or otherwise enhance the chosen medium?"

Regarding the bot creator - I'm unable to see a post where he explicitly says that he's an artist or his bit is an art project or that he's creating art. However, if he were to do so then I'd whole-heartily agree and then proceed to explore his creation from an art perspective.

He does actually, in his "Address a criticism" post, he explicitly says he considers the budget for the bot's purchases as money for "art supplies".

He isn't claiming it's art. He's saying that we wouldn't criticize the guy spending $50 a month on art supplies to spread on a canvas with their feet, so what's wrong with his hobby?

I read this sentence:

I am operating from a position of privilege where I can afford to spend money to make art.

As being exactly such a claim by the author of the script.

Exactly.

It would be difficult for me to defend the statement "random consumerism isn't art" and quite easy to say "random consumerism is shitty narcissistic art"

I think the art/artists subject came up from this post on the blog: http://randomshopper.tumblr.com/post/36593869254/addressing-...

> where do we draw the line?

That's a question art philosophy has been tackling for a few thousand years, without a conclusive answer :)

And yes, anything can be art, given the right circumstances. And it's not necessarily a "problem" that it is not art to you. Art is defined by the viewer as much as the artist. (And the critic, and the gallerist, ...)

I remember reading something that had a funny perspective on this.

The main idea was that the joke used to be on the art critics that couldn't determine the difference between what was good art and what was just garbage. You could hang up paintings and then hang up the rag you used to clean the brushes and the critics would swoon over both.

At some point the artists themselves began mistaking the nonsense as art which is how you wind up with this: http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/im-sick-of-pretending-i-dont-...

IMO, Art exists for the sake of itself. It serves no other purpose. It has no intrinsic value. Whether you like it as is or not is a different question.

So, while anyone call anything art, If the random shopper is doing to have a surprise gift every month, it is not exactly art. But, he is doing to this to show the world how random materialism looks like, I guess he has a point. :)

The answer is very simple, and I wish I could tell everyone this:

When most people argue over what is "art", they actually intend to be arguing over what is good art. "Art" is just a descriptor that can be given to any noun at the discretion of any observer. The state of being "art" is not an elevation of status, it's not something that necessarily needs to be honored or revered, and it does not necessarily mean that something is particularly valuable, impressive, or creative. It's just a category that means that some observer (not necessarily the creator) has intended that said piece of art is to be experienced with a point of view that is focused on some particular concepts intended by the observer. These concepts can be (but does not have to be) aesthetics, craftsmanship, creative expression, communication of ideas, etc.

Art can be bad. It's time we stop arguing if something is art or not, and instead discussing if the subject in question successfully achieves the creative goals intended by either the creator or observer (whoever decided to look at it as art).

TLDR: Art is anything anyone wants something to be. What we actually care about is if the art is good or bad.

> When most people argue over what is "art", they actually intend to be arguing over what is good art.

No. When I argue over what "art" means, I intend to argue about what "art" means.

> "Art" is just a descriptor that can be given to any noun at the discretion of any observer.

According to you.

My definition is much closer to the dictionary definition:

the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance.

I'm not a hater; I like lots of modern art, conceptual stuff, etc.

...but that doesn't mean that there are just two positions here: hidebound classicists and utterly-loosey-goosey "the manner in which I took a shower this morning was ART" hippies.

I can be open-minded about art and still think that " "Art" is just a descriptor that can be given to any noun at the discretion of any observer. " is nonsense.

I think most people do actually intend to argue about what is "good" art. When a layperson says, "Look at that plain white canvas in this museum, how can that be art?", they're not claiming that they think this particular artifact is a different medium of creative expression than the other paintings. What they are saying is: "I don't feel this work effectively embodies the principles of what I consider to be good art." Whether that thought is justified or not is another story.

An amateur filmmaker with poor taste can create a horrible movie with no sense of design or understanding of the medium. But it's still an artistic work - it's just a poor one. Asking, "How is this movie art?" is like saying, "How is this movie a movie?" If the creator intended it to be art, then it's art, good or bad. Of course, a creator can intend something not to be art, and it's not, until it's intentionally presented or experienced as art by another observer.

Is a toilet art? What if an artist put one in a museum? Is an advertisement art? What if it was placed in a museum? These things have happened, and it's all been accepted as art. It's really about context and how an artists intends it to be. If someone has artistic intention, then they can create art, regardless of the medium or artifact.

It sounds like perhaps you may be arguing that for something to be art, it needs to meet a minimum threshold of quality. I guess that's fair, but at that point it seems futile to argue over those bounds. My definition of art is that those bounds are very low, and yours is that they should be high. Past that threshold, we're still left with bad art and good art.

I personally don't see the need to distinguish between things that are below that threshold ("art" so bad it's not even art), and things that are just above it (art so bad it's barely art). That's why I think it's best to keep that quality threshold at zero, because what we actually care about is determining that value of quality, not whether or not it's above some subjective threshold.

"I can be open-minded about art and still think that " "Art" is just a descriptor that can be given to any noun at the discretion of any observer. " is nonsense."

Declaring that your subjective, value-laden opinion is objective fact is rarely the best way to be open-minded.

People are trying to make normative statements regarding art. Being sick of the semantic dispute, I favor your positivist description. Let's drop the A-word completely.

My criterion (which is no more valid than anyone's) is that it's art if it elicits emotion. This clearly does. I'm fairly confident that this has already intellectually/emotionally stimulated the human race more than, say, some stodgy Renaissance portrait of some figure of minor royalty.

As for the people complaining about this being a waste of money, please, give it a rest. I assume you don't have cable TV, or a car, and live like Gandhi, if you feel you have the right to complain about how this guy spends his money.

My criterion (which is no more valid than anyone's)

Isn't that sort of begging the question?

It's also wildly presumptuous to declare that no one else could have a more valid understanding of what makes something art.

As for complaining about people complaining ...

"pseudo-random if looked from outside without context. That doesn't make me an artist, at least not in my book"

Context (explicit, implied, or ambiguous) often separates "art" from "seemingly random pile of crap".

Check out Wayne McGregor's Random Dance. http://ias.umn.edu/2009/09/10/mcgregor-wayne/

Generative? I think a better term, in this case, would be Consumption Art. I wouldn't consider buying something to be "generation" of anything.

I think the potential for art lies in the restrictions he could place on himself on receiving the items. At the moment he's just kind of enjoying the items and the process (wow, cool, a nice book.. some weird music heh heh..) , but if he perhaps made the item somehow central to his lifestyle - eg. he must tell everyone about what he receives / become an unquestioning advocate of whatever the robot chose for him to everyone around him - it would be more of a statement - how much do we let what we buy based on arbitrary values affect the way we present ourselves? or something like that...

It reminds me of an extreme Japanese TV show which used to be on, where a guy called Nasubi (after his long face - eggplant) - was locked naked in an apartment and could only live on what he gained from filling out thousands of "lucky draw" postcards. He gradually built up quite a system, gained bags of rice, a playstation..

人は懸賞だけで生きていけるか? - Can a person survive on sweepstakes?

The term "Generative" in "Generative art" has a pretty well-defined meaning.

Your comment is like saying that you don't think PHP arrays should be called "arrays" because element indices aren't necessarily strictly increasing. You can think that, and there's some sense to it, but it's still called "array". Similarly, you can't change the meaning of a commonly accepted term just because someone buys something at Amazon.

Assuming the OP's project can be called art, it's definitely generative. The artist does not choose which item is purchased.

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.

Then, you die (painlessly, after a long and happy life, etc. etc.)

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.

I wrote about this in 2007 (https://tubelite.wordpress.com/2007/09/10/autonomous-softwar...). Perhaps Facebook is in the best position to do this, help people plan and create their ghosts.

Let's say that you save 10'000 $ in an account with 5% interest, then you'll have 500 $ a year to spend on presents. If every child has two children the amount children in a generation is 2^n. When they grow up we stop giving them presents for mathematical simplicity. Then it's possible to give every child in the 9th generation a $1 gift a year. Which is quite neat. If we have a generation length of between 25 and 30 years this will be between 225 and 270 years in the future.

In the long run, it is highly likely that you will either be an ancestor of every single human, or none of them. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19331938) You don't need to give every single one of your descendants a gift. Give 2-5 gifts a year, randomized after filtering out undesirables using a naughty/nice algorithm.

Assuming total population remains roughly the same, if enough people did this, it would actually work. Most kids would get gifts from grand^n Santa.

Nice idea and an interesting article. If the goal is to be remembered for as long as possible giving more presents is obviously better. After 9 generations only a small part

But some might feel that a enormous list of children with ratings of their behavior would be questionable.

However, the site will never keep the API's the same. The mini-program may stop functioning a few years after the person's death, and there will be nobody to change it

True. The specific APIs will go out of date. That is why the intent has to be captured at a higher level, while the implementation of the intent can be swapped out and replaced as APIs change. Many aspects of human behaviour have basically remained the same in hundreds of years - giving a gift, helping out in a good cause, though the specific mechanism of searching and giving of gifts has changed.

Organizations, trusts and even countries have been running for hundreds of years, based on a limited set of rules written in a programming language called LEGALESE, updated from time to time. One way to look at the mini-me program is as a "software trustee", whose parameters are monitored once in a while by a programmer-lawyer human. This approach yields the same scale-out/low cost/automation benefits of the cloud, letting a single programmer-lawyer maintain hundreds of trusts, in much the same way as a single admin can manage hundreds of instances in the cloud. It reduces the cost of creating and administering a trust to the point where such options are available beyond the top 1%.

Think of virtualization, emulators of old video game machines... they haven't been manufactured in ages, and yet, we find a way to faithfully run them inside emulators. I think we'll find a way to translate the Amazon APIs while remaining faithful to the original human's intent.

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: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-11/09/xkcd-packages... http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20022153-1.html it's a cool idea.

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'm the guy who built the original XKCD-inspired bot -- the original blog post is still around at http://bieh.net/wordpress/2010/11/08/xkcd-576/, though the images have since broken.

Possibly the web service you mean is http://www.eachdayisagift.com/ ?

Yes, that's it! Thanks. Here's the related show HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3825524

re: blog post, the wired article (http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-11/09/xkcd-packages...) links to http://bieh.net/2010/11/08/xkcd-576/ which is broken (missing the wordpress I think)

Yeah, I phased out the blog a year or so back, hence why it's not on http://bieh.net any more. I wish I'd worked a bit harder not to break the links now :)

Can you put a mod_rewrite rule "^/(20[01][0-9]/.*) => /wordpress/$1" in a .htaccess somewhere?

Does anything like that exist in the states? I think that'd be an amazing and fun thing to have in my life:)

bieh's had a pretty good run when it was live!

I wrote eachdayisagift.com and it was funny to see all this come back on HN today. I had to freeze mine as it was buying a lot of stuff from Hong Kong that Australian customs classed as 'weapons' (laser pointers, throwing stars), that got me a stern letter from the government.

Wait - what? You actually wrote a bot as in http://xkcd.com/576/ and actually had the problem in the comic?

I normally don't like when someone posts an xkcd link, but this was the first thing that came in my mind http://xkcd.com/576/

Cool. You could use this to set up a "Random Amazon Purchase of the Month Club" and have a decent side business.

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.

Just to be clear, this is off topic because here the intention probably was to link to the entire blog (all of which is about the bot in the submission title), right?

As the OP, I can confirm the intention :)

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.

I hope the bot buys an ebook about horses.

In this (amusing) context, I presume?

http://horseecomics.tumblr.com/

Yeah. Wow, these comics are amazing too, thank you.

Older, but my favorite set of flow of consciousness comics: http://spamusement.com

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.

I think that's what it does: http://randomshopper.tumblr.com/post/35454415921/randomized-...

It also bought him a Chomsky book on Linguistics and a electronic music CD. And if the bot did that on it's own that'd be a little too spooky.

No, the article says right there it uses search results (presumably by scraping). ECS used to be WSDL - real easy to drive from eg. PHP back in the day. I wouldn't want to be the poor sod parsing the retail website HTML (although perhaps the last redesign improved it).

"Every time I run it, I give it a set budget, say $50. It grabs a random word from the Wordnik API, then runs an Amazon search based on that word."

You're right.

I'm actually not parsing the HTML at all. Not really. I'm using PhantomJS, which is a headless web browser. Each time I load a page, I inject jQuery and just do a simple JS command like

$('#whatevertheIDisfortheform').submit();

It's the equivalent of opening up your console on each page and interacting with it via jQuery rather than a mouse and keyboard.

So something has parsed the HTML - but at least you didn't have to reinvent that wheel :)

Still, you might want to look at https://affiliate-program.amazon.co.uk/gp/advertising/api/de... - the Product Advertising API looks like the latest evolution of the E-Commerce Service API and might let you do things like stop the bot from making duplicate similar purchases, or accidentally fulfilling your wishlist.

Reminds me of: http://xkcd.com/576/

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.

Would love to see a write up of how this is accomplished.

EDIT: Noticed he is using PhantomJS and running the process through a browser. Very interesting.

Apparently http://zinc.io does provide an API for placing orders on Amazon.

Learn something new everyday on HN! Didn't know this existed and I am wondering how they actually achieve this via Amazon but that's their secret sauce.

I'm surprisingly intrigued by this. It sounds really fun!

It is until it buys "Fifty shades of grey" and a XXL baby doll.

I can see this buying spare parts for things you do not have.

Good for a conversation piece at parties, if nothing else. "Hey, you guys won't even believe what I got from my random shopper bot this week!"

Personally, I'd rather not risk having to explain why I just got 55 gallons of lube and an anatomically correct blow up donkey through the mail.

... or did the bot give you a reasonable excuse to family and friends as to why you have a 55 gallon drum of lube and an anatomically correct blow up donkey?

Hmmmmm. I sense a startup: "we hide your filthy, disgusting pornorgraphy habits from your family by hiding them amongst 'random' automated purchases. Get six days of boring things like glitter and used wing nuts and the seventh day you'll get your favorite, delicious porn. BUY NOW!"

It's set to buy only paperbacks and CDs...

Really funny idea. Are you using http://zinc.io to ship the stuff from Amazon?

Nope, I'm using PhantomJS, a headless web browser that's mostly used for test automation. I programmed it to log in to the Amazon account, fill out the various forms, and buy/ship the stuff.

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. http://www.dxroulette.com/

Hmm, no mater how many times I try, I always get a V for Vendetta mask as the result.

The two purchases are fascinating. I am curious as to what other purchases of his suggested the CD.

I will be writing a bot to buy me random things from musiciansfriend.

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.

And you spend your time commenting on work you don't respect. Why weren't you out farming?

what is the purpose of your comment?

I thought the insinuation was fairly clear.

To point out that there are more things you can be doing for others than getting outraged at a person's lost productivity, if that is your prime concern.

I'm not sure that the OP was "outraged at a person's lost productivity". It seems like badv0r may have thought that the project could have potential merit if it focused on something like "feeding 80 human beings in poor country" instead of "Buying random things from amazon each month".

To be more general, the bot currently buys:

while it could buy

Then they should offer suggestions instead of chastising.

Most persons buy unneeded things whether they can afford them or not. The OP ought to take the time and energy they squander on judging others and devote it to helping the needy. Less anger, more good.

? if anything, he is stimulating the american economy

OP's point could be that the bot could have "stimulated the american economy" in a way that fed "80 human beings in poor country", as opposed to buying him random things.

losing, not loosing

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