[passivepinetree]

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! :)

[ethanpil]

What about your prize bot violated Twitter policy?

[TheGrumpyBrit]

Most likely rate limits

[nyuszika7h]

Automated liking/retweeting is not allowed.

[dplgk]

So why expose it via the API?

[detaro]

So apps can do it in reaction to user input.

[yunruse]

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.

[passivepinetree]

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!

[Ralith]

Missed opportunity to render pixel art in the calendar display.

[londons_explore]

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

[nchelluri]

cool. very cool.

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