You should see my robots.txt file. I have told the legit ones to stay away. Every scraper and clanker that circumvents "anti-bot" technology can go straight to hell - they've been warned that I don't want them.
But your observation doesn't deal with the un-ethicality of the original article, advocating benefiting from cybercrime, and ignoring the explicit wishes of web sites that use "anti-bot" technology.
True, but also need to know the basics well of what constitutes good code and how it should scale vs just working code. Too many people relying on LLMs to produce stuff which just about works but give users a terrible experience as it bearly works.
Nice concept. I've definitely seen this play out in practice.
A lot of sites aren't impossible to scrape, but they're steadily getting more expensive. We're having to lean more on residential proxies, headless browsers etc just to get the same data that used to be straightforward...
Obviously, but that just doesn’t seem to be doable for a huge chunk of the world, so these pills are a way out of the hell that is obesity and diabetes.
>> Better off just exercising and eating as clean as you can!
I'm sure the morbidly obese are unaware of this.
For what it's worth, I'm an ex-smoker and quitting smoking was easy compared to trying to deny myself unhealthy amounts of food. The vast majority of obese people hate it and don't want to be that way - but they're addicted to food. GLP-1's pretty much stop their cravings. Using them to get to a healthy weight and then trying to manage cravings when they are healthier and happier seems like a good solution. Especially given the side-effects of extreme obesity are severe and well known - better to worry about that than 'unintended side effects' that are at this point hypothetical.
All medication is choosing between the effects of what you are treating the the side effects of the medication.
For a lot of people it isn't that easy. There is a reason weight loss surgery has been a thing for a long time. I could easily see using this as a jumping off point along with making choices about what you eat and increased exercise.
There is a psychological aspect to this, you start making those changes along with something like this so you start seeing the changes you are hoping for and feeling better so you keep with it.
Whether you use a pill or jab or neither, exercise exercise exercise! It will increase quality of life and reduce risk factors for lots of causes of death as you get older.
Exercise is great and I wish more people could find the time to do it, but exercise won’t lead to weight loss if people don’t change the horrible diets that got us here in the first place.
Weight loss shouldn't be the end goal. Health and fitness are what make life longer and more enjoyable. But it happens that excess weight inhibits health and fitness too. A skinny person can be unhealthy and unfit too.
That's a common perspective, but it oversimplifies a complex biological reality many people face.
The body has sophisticated signaling pathways that regulate hunger and defend fat stores. In some people, dysregulation in pathways like mTORC1 essentially keeps their "hunger volume" turned up regardless of their actual energy needs, increasing hunger-promoting neuropeptides (NPY, AgRP) while decreasing satiety signals (POMC, CART).
When someone with this dysregulation tries to lose weight, the body deploys additional defenses: reduced non-exercise activity thermogenesis (less fidgeting, less spontaneous movement), increased energy efficiency, and even induced lethargy after intentional exercise to preserve fat stores. This isn't laziness - it's sophisticated biological adaptation.
This creates a crucial matrix that determines weight outcomes:
* High willpower + Low hunger signaling: Naturally fit with minimal effort
* Low willpower + Low hunger signaling: Generally maintains healthy weight without struggle
* High willpower + High hunger signaling: Might maintain weight with constant effort
* Low willpower + High hunger signaling: Almost inevitably leads to obesity
Keep in mind willpower itself has significant genetic and epigenetic components - it's not simply a matter of character. Variations in dopamine and serotonin regulation genes directly affect impulse control and reward processing.
GLP-1/GIP medications work by intervening in these pathways. They activate receptors in the hypothalamus that can override or bypass the defective mTORC1 signaling. They directly inhibit AgRP/NPY neurons while activating POMC neurons, essentially normalizing the hunger signals. They also slow gastric emptying and modulate the brain's reward system to reduce food's hedonic value. In other words, they take willpower out of the equation. If you aren't hungry, you don't have to fight the urge to eat.
I'm not just speaking to the science here - I have direct experience. Despite years of disciplined efforts with trainers, various diets, calorie counting I went from 150lbs in my 20s to 315lbs by my 40s. With Zepbound, I've lost 55 pounds in six months without the constant battle. I will have to take this medication for the rest of my life, but I will probably live much longer as a result, and I'm already reaping the rewards in terms of energy, focus, sleep quality, et cetera.
These medications do have side effects worth considering, but they need to be weighed against the severe health consequences of obesity. Obesity significantly increases risk of heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, sleep apnea, certain cancers, and premature death. For men specifically, obesity increases sex hormone-binding globulin which reduces free testosterone levels, leading to fatigue, reduced muscle mass, decreased libido, and even depression. The most common side effects of GLP-1 medications (nausea, constipation, diarrhea) are typically mild, manageable, and often diminish over time. While there are theoretical concerns about more serious effects like pancreatitis based on animal studies, clinical data in humans hasn't supported these concerns. Regardless, these potential risks must be balanced against the near-certainty of health complications from remaining morbidly obese.
For people with dysregulated hunger signaling, these medications aren't just cosmetic interventions—they're addressing a fundamental biological dysfunction that otherwise creates persistent obstacles to maintaining a healthy weight. The risk-benefit analysis strongly favors treatment for those who need it. They make sustainable lifestyle changes possible by removing the constant neurobiological opposition to weight loss.
> Better off just exercising and eating as clean as you can!
Let me guess…you have never had a weight problem. As someone who has lost over 170lbs via diet and exercise and battles like hell every fucking day even eight years later to try and keep it all off, it’s laughable to see some people think it’s so simple.
If my presumption was off base, I take it back. But achieving weight loss isn’t simple and it isn’t easy. It’s not simple because even though CICO seems to be a simple equation on its face, getting the “CI” portion of that equation doesn’t work the same way for everyone. So sloganeering and minimizing it misses the greater complexity.
That is what I felt like the person I replied to had done.
My comment is not a criticism in their prescribed process but in the notion that if a person has difficulty sticking to that process that they shouldn’t look for alternatives. The goal is to lose weight because an unhealthy weight is definitely detrimental to your health in a myriad of ways. If a medication can facilitate weight loss, even at the cost of some side effects, the net gain is still likely better.
I lost my weight with a low carb, high fat diet. That worked for me but it’s controversial. I heard plenty of criticism about how it was going to damage my kidneys. My attitude was and is that if I live to see kidney damage in my late 70s…that’s better than a massive heart attack or stroke taking me out at 55.
Because of how tough it was and continues to be if there was an injection, pill, or otherwise that could make it easier—I would take it. Also despite my success without it, I’d suggest any obese person who needs to lose weight but have not had much success, take the medicine, lose the weight you can.
Instead of focusing solely on the "market boom" and technological advancements, we should be having a serious conversation about the societal implications and the long-term sustainability of this scraping free-for-all.
The "higher stakes" mentioned aren't just about cost and effort; they're about the potential erosion of online privacy, the destabilization of websites reliant on ad revenue, and the ethical responsibility of data practitioners.
It would be interesting to explore ways of profit sharing to cover loss of ad revenue, better caching to reduce the cost on websites themselves, and simple ways to opt in or opt out of personal information being used online!
Looks great! I've had the same issue as you with many projects - so many people leave the marketing till the end so don't beat yourself up about it now. (Hopefully you will have learned a lesson haha!)
Lets look at what you could do:
- Start in one local area - ideally one near you or one that you know. Make it work there and then expand.
- See if you can engage any local groups which might engage with the idea - I could see local city/town facebook groups liking this. Or maybe on nextdoor.com.
- Check out the book "The cold start problem" by Andrew Chen. He goes into many examples of lots of companies that had this issue and how they over came the issue and got their first customers - http://andrewchen.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/ColdStartPr...
Meetup really could be a 10x better platform.
As someone who's run a group on it having to pay to then put in the work to run a group on top of that is just crazy.
They could have monetised the platform in so many other different ways which could have helped the community instead of just going for the easy pickings of charging the event organisers.
Why not charge a percentage on top of any payments take?
Create/integrate with a room booking system in cities to help organisers book? (and take a fee on this)
The only thing Meetup does well is discovery - the domain name is amazing for the type of site it is and it is easy enough to search for groups in your city and find what you want. Everything else is pretty terrible.
I don't know how you could justify having more than 3 dev's working on this site the way it is at the moment. It just screams lazy...
Travel between countries in Europe is improving every year too. Next week I'll be traveling from Bordeaux to Berlin (over 1,600km) - it's faster than the car (16 hours by car vs 12 hours by train), and cheaper than flying, in the summer at least (150 euro by train, vs 300 euro by plane - booking 6 weeks before).
That will improve next year too with the direct Paris Berlin train that should only take 7 hours.
