7 ms·

I agree with the sentiment that there are use cases for web scraping where an agent is preferable to a cron job, but I think your particular example can certain

by jwilber 6mo ago

I agree with the sentiment that there are use cases for web scraping where an agent is preferable to a cron job, but I think your particular example can certainly be achieved with a cron job and a basic parser script. Just have Claude write it.

BeetleB 6mo ago
I didn't say it's not doable. I'm not even saying it's hard. But nothing beats telling Claw to do it for me while I'm in the middle of groceries. Put another way: If it can do it (reliably), why on Earth would I babysit Claude to write it? The whole point is this: When AI coding became a thing, many folks rediscovered the joy of programming, because now they could use Claude to code up stuff they wouldn't have bothered to. The barrier to entry went down. OpenClaw is simply that taken to the next level. And as an aside, let's just dispense with parsing altogether! If I were writing this as a script, I would simply fetch the text of the page, and have the script send it to an LLM instead of parsing. Why worry about parsing bugs on a one-off script?
- Kye 6mo ago
  Scripts fail. Agents exfiltrate your data because someone hacked the school's website with prompt injections. Make sure it's a choice and not ignorance of the risks.
  - BeetleB 6mo ago
    > Scripts fail. Which is totally fine for the majority of tasks. > Agents exfiltrate your data They can only exfiltrate the data you give them. What's the worst that prompt injection attack will give them?
    - Kye 6mo ago
      Container security is an entire subfield of infosec. For example: https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-w235-x559-36mg https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-w235-x559-36mg People on both sides are just getting started finding all the ways to abuse or protect you from security assumptions with these tools. RSS is the right tool for this problem and I would be surprised if their CMS doesn't produce a feed on its own.
      - BeetleB 6mo ago
        I don't use a container. I use a VM. I'm not totally naive. I had the VM fairly hardened originally, but it proved to be inconvenient. I relaxed it so that processes on the VM can see other devices on the network. There's definitely some risk to that.
        Kye 6mo ago
        Okay. You have sensible escape prevention. Now this tool spreads. You help everyone get it set up. Someone hacks the site, injects a prompt lying about some event, maybe Drag Queen Story Hour in a place with lots of people enraged about it. Now there's chaos and confusion. Corrections chase the spread of misinformation.
        BeetleB 6mo ago
        > Now this tool spreads. You help everyone get it set up. Someone hacks the site You sound like my dad in the 90's, when it came to modems. Same tool. Good uses. Bad uses. The bad doesn't negate the good (c.f. Bittorrent).
        bigfishrunning 6mo ago
        I could make that same argument about giving my 9 year old a chainsaw and telling her to cut some wood In the best case, some wood gets cut. There are many many worse things that can happen But hey, same tool. Good uses. Bad uses.
        defrost 6mo ago
        The trick is to give them a tree pruning chain saw, one intended for climbing tree loppers to use one handed - it's an ideal weight for nine years old to use two handed. And to supervise. As tested on my children and grand children. Also, if you happen to have a furnace with a large pot of molten glass, five year olds are capable (given a stand) of making marbles from the furnance and will do that for hours if you can spare the time to let them.
- jwilber 6mo ago
  Fair point, I just think that example is better off running on a cron job than using compute from llm inference, (though that will become negligible over time, anyways).

by jwilber 6mo ago

BeetleB 6mo ago

I didn't say it's not doable. I'm not even saying it's hard. But nothing beats telling Claw to do it for me while I'm in the middle of groceries. Put another way: If it can do it (reliably), why on Earth would I babysit Claude to write it? The whole point is this: When AI coding became a thing, many folks rediscovered the joy of programming, because now they could use Claude to code up stuff they wouldn't have bothered to. The barrier to entry went down. OpenClaw is simply that taken to the next level. And as an aside, let's just dispense with parsing altogether! If I were writing this as a script, I would simply fetch the text of the page, and have the script send it to an LLM instead of parsing. Why worry about parsing bugs on a one-off script?

Kye 6mo ago
Scripts fail. Agents exfiltrate your data because someone hacked the school's website with prompt injections. Make sure it's a choice and not ignorance of the risks.
- BeetleB 6mo ago
  > Scripts fail. Which is totally fine for the majority of tasks. > Agents exfiltrate your data They can only exfiltrate the data you give them. What's the worst that prompt injection attack will give them?
  - Kye 6mo ago
    Container security is an entire subfield of infosec. For example: https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-w235-x559-36mg https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-w235-x559-36mg People on both sides are just getting started finding all the ways to abuse or protect you from security assumptions with these tools. RSS is the right tool for this problem and I would be surprised if their CMS doesn't produce a feed on its own.
    - BeetleB 6mo ago
      I don't use a container. I use a VM. I'm not totally naive. I had the VM fairly hardened originally, but it proved to be inconvenient. I relaxed it so that processes on the VM can see other devices on the network. There's definitely some risk to that.
      - Kye 6mo ago
        Okay. You have sensible escape prevention. Now this tool spreads. You help everyone get it set up. Someone hacks the site, injects a prompt lying about some event, maybe Drag Queen Story Hour in a place with lots of people enraged about it. Now there's chaos and confusion. Corrections chase the spread of misinformation.
        BeetleB 6mo ago
        > Now this tool spreads. You help everyone get it set up. Someone hacks the site You sound like my dad in the 90's, when it came to modems. Same tool. Good uses. Bad uses. The bad doesn't negate the good (c.f. Bittorrent).
        bigfishrunning 6mo ago
        I could make that same argument about giving my 9 year old a chainsaw and telling her to cut some wood In the best case, some wood gets cut. There are many many worse things that can happen But hey, same tool. Good uses. Bad uses.
        defrost 6mo ago
        The trick is to give them a tree pruning chain saw, one intended for climbing tree loppers to use one handed - it's an ideal weight for nine years old to use two handed. And to supervise. As tested on my children and grand children. Also, if you happen to have a furnace with a large pot of molten glass, five year olds are capable (given a stand) of making marbles from the furnance and will do that for hours if you can spare the time to let them.
jwilber 6mo ago
Fair point, I just think that example is better off running on a cron job than using compute from llm inference, (though that will become negligible over time, anyways).