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I only run a small one for kicks: it updates my github page with a dummy commit each day. They got rid of streaks, but I still leave it running out of some misplaced sense of sentimentality.

A few years ago, a friend and I built one that would scan twitter for tweets in the vein of “like to win $ITEM” or “RT to win $ITEM.” Our bot would automatically perform the requested action, and then text me (via twilio) for each DM and mention we got (so I could manually respond and claim the prize). We didn’t disguise it well, and were shut down after about 4 weeks, but it was fun while it lasted! :)



What about your prize bot violated Twitter policy?


Most likely rate limits


Automated liking/retweeting is not allowed.


So why expose it via the API?


So apps can do it in reaction to user input.


If there’s one thing that always annoyed me about the Github commit display it’s that… well, it displays commits, and not a much better (if not perfect) metric such as LoC. Depending on the feature or volatility of the branch my own commits can vary wildly in how granular they are.


Definitely. It's not indicative of any sort of quality, which naturally makes it fun to game! I randomized the amount of commits on each day so my graph has varying shades of color!


Missed opportunity to render pixel art in the calendar display.


I'm pretty sure you can just backdate commits for the same effect...


cool. very cool.

(i know this is a "low content" post for hackernews, but this is a new thread with no posts, so ymmv.)




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