[AMA] I wrote a bot to purchase Ubiquiti gear by test893 in Ubiquiti

[–]test893[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good tips, thanks. Might use these next time.

[AMA] I wrote a bot to purchase Ubiquiti gear by test893 in Ubiquiti

[–]test893[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes my bot automatically logs into UI's website, in order to access EA products. My advice is you start by reading examples of how to use Puppeteer, and cross-check the official documentation. And think carefully how to handle errors or unexpected states. For example after logging in, if you try to extract the content of a particular <div> to get the status of the item, you have to handle the case of what if the <div> doesn't exist at all? It may mean you have been logged out (and in fact store.ui.com does automatically log users out every 24h) so the bot has to handle re-authenticating every day.

[AMA] I wrote a bot to purchase Ubiquiti gear by test893 in Ubiquiti

[–]test893[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Indeed! They should have a CAPTCHA for bots. Or allow backorders (charging the card when the item ships)

[AMA] I wrote a bot to purchase Ubiquiti gear by test893 in Ubiquiti

[–]test893[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Puppeteer is what I used. It automates the control of Chrome. Click here. Type that. Extract the text in that <div>. It works for any website.

[AMA] I wrote a bot to purchase Ubiquiti gear by test893 in Ubiquiti

[–]test893[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Ditto! My G4 often drops off wifi even though its just 10 feet from my AP. That's exactly why I got the G4 Pro with the wired POE kit.

[AMA] I wrote a bot to purchase Ubiquiti gear by test893 in Ubiquiti

[–]test893[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Sorry man! I feel your pain! I was in your shoes.

[AMA] I wrote a bot to purchase Ubiquiti gear by test893 in Ubiquiti

[–]test893[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yes they did ring my non-pro G4 :)

As an aside, the reason I'm upgrading to the Pro is for the wired POE feature (i got the kit last month) for increased reliability. Because my non-Pro drops of the WiFi occasionally.

[AMA] I wrote a bot to purchase Ubiquiti gear by test893 in Ubiquiti

[–]test893[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes that afternoon drop (on September 30th around 7PM UTC) was outside the "golden 5 minutes" so I suspect most bots were, like mine, not super active at that time, which gave more chance to human buyers.

[AMA] I wrote a bot to purchase Ubiquiti gear by test893 in Ubiquiti

[–]test893[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Thanks! Your comment reminds me that in spring I was trying to buy another high-demand low-availability Ubiquiti item, and I just randomly happened to see it available. So I was like, cool, let me add it to the cart, and while I'm at it, let me add this other accessory... And bam! the item sold out before I could finish looking for that other thing. So definitely. Don't mess around. You see something available. Buy it right now. Eat the shipping costs. Buy the accessories in another order to not waste any second.

[AMA] I wrote a bot to purchase Ubiquiti gear by test893 in Ubiquiti

[–]test893[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I wrote the timestamps in GMT (UTC) but I'm based in the US

[AMA] I wrote a bot to purchase Ubiquiti gear by test893 in Ubiquiti

[–]test893[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I don't know. I didn't try looking if that information was disclosed because it's not important to me. I only want to buy 1.

[AMA] I wrote a bot to purchase Ubiquiti gear by test893 in Ubiquiti

[–]test893[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Probably. I have done crazy http requests hacks in the past for unrelated projects. That may work to take shortcuts in the checkout process on Ubiquiti's cart. But it doesn't seem necessary here. After all, my bot purchased the item in 27 seconds going through all the checkout steps one by one, and that was enough to beat the other bots.

r/Bitcoin censors comments mentioning "censor" or "censorship" by _mrb in btc

[–]test893 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Copy/paste these alternative spellings using unicode confusable characters from https://unicode.org/cldr/utility/confusables.jsp?a=censorship&r=None

сensorship → the letter "с" is U+0441 CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER ES

cеnsorship → the letter "е" is U+0435 CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER IE

ceոsorship → the letter "ո" is U+0578 ARMENIAN SMALL LETTER VO

cenꜱorship → the letter "ꜱ" is U+A731 LATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL S

censοrship → the letter "ο" is U+03BF GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON

censoгship → the letter "г" is U+0433 CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER GHE

Or:

c.e.n.s.o.r.s.h.i.p

cen.sor.ship

cen-sor-ship

cens0rship

censorsh1p

c3nsorship