When HN users recommended it
1 HN user recommended this in 2012, in one comment.
20072026
Each tall tick is one HN user's first recommendation. A short tick is the same user again. Click a tick to jump to the comment.
1 HN user recommended this in 2012, in one comment.
Each tall tick is one HN user's first recommendation. A short tick is the same user again. Click a tick to jump to the comment.
One possible change here is that agents in the 90s didn't really have anything to "agent". There's a lot more useful APIs now that might allow a much better cost/benefit tradeoff in creating an "agent" that doesn't require so much raw screen scraping and the associated (staggering and really easy to grossly underestimate) upkeep.
Like much of the rest of the 1990s Internet bubble, arguably the problem isn't that the ideas were all bad, but that they were running well in excess of what the infrastructure could support. Even the much-maligned Pets.com was really only a bad idea for this reason. Pet food delivery went from crazy-stupid idea to mundanity without much fanfare: http://www.amazon.com/Iams-Proactive-Health-Control-17-5-Pou... . Well, that and the silliness of the idea that you could or would build that infrastructure and then only use it to deliver pet-related things, rather than build an Amazon.