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darkxanthos commented on eBay explicitly bans AI "buy for me" agents in user agreement update   valueaddedresource.net/eb... · Posted by u/bdcravens
__jonas · 2 months ago
Interesting, I’m not big on AI but I have thought often it would be nice to have an ‘agent’ that monitors ebay or other classifieds sites for items based on a natural language description.

Something like “I want an old mini PC to use as a home server, it should have roughly these specs and cost under this amount”, and then an LLM would run some searches every day, parse the results and send me a message if something comes up.

It’s pretty easy to get alerts for when items are available for a certain price if you know the exact item you want, but on eBay and classifieds sites, I usually just want something in a rough ballpark, and the best way to find that is come back and check every day looking through searches.

I don’t really see any value in having the AI do the purchase itself though.

darkxanthos · 2 months ago
The purchasing itself can important for it to jump on a great price. Maybe it finds what you're looking for at 1a while you're sleeping for example. Also if this were a business and you were going to resell it the AI could also create the listing as soon as the item is purchased.
darkxanthos commented on Thesis: Interesting work is less amenable to the use of AI   remark.ing/rob/rob/Thesis... · Posted by u/koch
darkxanthos · 8 months ago
It's definitely real that a lot of smart productive people don't get good results when they use AI to write software.

It's also definitely real that a lot of other smart productive people are more productive when they use it.

These sort of articles and comments here seem to be saying I'm proof it can't be done. When really there's enough proof it can be that you're just proving you'll be left behind.

darkxanthos commented on AI agents get office tasks wrong around 70% of time, and many aren't AI at all   theregister.com/2025/06/2... · Posted by u/rntn
darkxanthos · 9 months ago
I agree with the idea that true agentic AI is far from perfect and is overused in a lot of low or negative ROI contexts... I'm not convinced that where the ROI is there, even if the error rate is high, that it isn't still worthwhile.

Augmented coding as Kent beck puts it is filled with errors but more and more people are starting to find to be a 2x+ improvement for most cases.

People are spending too much time arguing that the the extreme hype is extremely hyped and what can't be done and aren't looking at the massive progress in terms of what can be done.

Also no one I know uses any of the models in the article at this point. They called out a 50% improvement in models spaced 6 months apart... that's also where some of the hype comes from.

darkxanthos commented on Agentic Coding Recommendations   lucumr.pocoo.org/2025/6/1... · Posted by u/rednafi
darkxanthos · 9 months ago
I stumbled into Agentic Coding in VS Code Nightlys with co-pilot using Claude Sonnet 4 and I've been silly productive. Even when half my day is meetings, you wouldn't be able to tell from my git history.

My thinking now is removed from the gory details and is a step or two up. How can I validate the changes are working? Can I understand this code? How should it be structured so I can better understand it? Is there more we can add to the AI conventions markdown in the repo to guide the Agent to make fewer mistaken assumptions?

Last night I had a file with 38 mypy errors. I turned it over to the agent and went and had a conversation with my wife for 15 minutes. I came back, it summarized the changes it made and why, I debated one of the changes with it but ultimately decided it was right.

Mypy passed. Good to go.

I'm currently trying to get my team to really understand the power here. There's a lot of skeptics and the AI still isn't perfect and people who are against the AI era will latch onto that as validation but it's exactly opposite the correct reaction. It's really validation because as a friend of mine says

"Today is the worst day you will have with this technology for the rest of your life."

darkxanthos commented on Show HN: I used OpenAI's new image API for a personalized coloring book service   clevercoloringbook.com/... · Posted by u/darajava
darkxanthos · a year ago
Wow a lot of criticism. I'm considering a similar business. I think this is too expensive when printing this is so easy these days. But charging some small about per printable coloring book would be very attractive.
darkxanthos commented on ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Officially Erased From Canon   giantfreakinrobot.com/ent... · Posted by u/taubek
lupusreal · a year ago
"Canon" makes sense in the context of religious documents where adherents believe some documents to represent reality and others not. But in the context of works recognized by all who care to be fiction, its just a senseless thing for internet quibbling. "This fiction is more valid than that fiction, because the legal entity presently holding the copyright says so." Get a grip.
darkxanthos · a year ago
Not all fiction is equivalent. When you are actively world building making explicit revisions is useful for those trying to follow along. If you'd prefer a different word you should say so.
darkxanthos commented on Developing Inside a Container (2022)   code.visualstudio.com/doc... · Posted by u/tosh
darkxanthos · 2 years ago
We've been using this where I work for over a year and I'm never going back.
darkxanthos commented on Why Steam Deck Is One of the Most Significant PC Gaming Moments in Years   techspot.com/article/2620... · Posted by u/thunderbong
evo_9 · 3 years ago
I've been blown away by my Steam Deck. It arrived about 5 days before my long sought after PS5 and basically the PS5 has sat collecting dust. I pre-ordered the Deck thinking I'd sell or trade it for the PS5, that was basically my interest in the device.

But after a few days it was clear this was something special. Why? For me it's my 'forever console'. Access to my full Steam Library was one thing, but having basically every retro console at my disposal is unreal. Just last night I played a game of M.U.L.E. and StarRaiders on my Atari800 emulator. That was after a couple of rounds of MarioKart on SNES, then Pilot Wings on 64 and then some Resident Evil 4 on GameCube.

I also love that so many older PC games just work on it. I recently replayed the entire Mass Effect Trilogy on it (absolutely the best experience playing that game, something about the controls, the screen and it on my lap was just too fun). Ditto on Dark Souls 1 and 2 which I also just replayed (and yes Eldin Ring runs unreal on it, somehow).

The only real surprise is that Dead Space doesn't run on it, I have a hutch they'll get it sorted out (sorta like they did working with FromSoftware on Eldin Ring).

Lastly, the other major advantage for me is the ability to return games. This is an unheralded Steam feature that's a really great. I buy games I wouldn't even consider on PS-whatever/Xbox because you're screwed if you don't like it. Hell my 2 year old son managed to buy the new COD on PS5 by mashing the controller unsupervised for a few minutes and there is no way to return it, at least not easily; I tried for about 20 minutes before giving up.

Long/short - SteamDeck is something special, it plays a ton of modern games flawlessly including Eldin Ring, and is a retro-gaming dream-machine, plus Steam has a great library and the ability to return games after trying them is the final cherry on-top.

PS: Anyone want to buy a PS5?

darkxanthos · 3 years ago
My friend has been playing Dead Space on it for the last few days and has been quite happy. I think they released a patch recently. Give it another go if you’re interested!
darkxanthos commented on Pinterest to price IPO below last valuation   spglobal.com/marketintell... · Posted by u/donohoe
darkxanthos · 7 years ago
This isn’t actually the title of the article. Should this be renamed?

u/darkxanthos

KarmaCake day1675March 8, 2008
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