I created a similar website which got lots of interest in my city. I scrape even app and websites data using a single server at Linode with 2GB of RAM with 5 IPv4 and 1000 IPv6 (which is free) and every single product is scraped at most 40 minutes interval, never more than that with avg time of 25 minutes. I use curl impersonate and scrape JSON as much as possible because 90% of markets provide prices from Ajax calls and the other 10% I use regex to easily parse the HTML. You can check it at https://www.economizafloripa.com.br
And then try to sell it back to businesses, even suggesting they use the data to train AI. You also make it sound like there’s a team manually doing all the work.
That whole page makes my view of the project go from “helpful tool for the people, to wrestle back control from corporations selling basic necessities” to “just another attempt to make money”. Which is your prerogative, I was just expecting something different and more ethically driven when I read the homepage.
Where does this lack ethics? It seems that they are providing a useful service, that they created with their hard work. People are allowed to make money with their work.
I didn’t say it lacked ethics, I said I expected it to be driven by ethics. There’s a world of difference. I just mean it initially sounded like this was a protest project “for the people”, done in a way to take back power from big corporations, and was saddened to see it’s another generic commercial endeavour.
> People are allowed to make money with their work.
Which is why I said it’s their prerogative.
If you’re going to reply, please strive to address the points made, what was said, not what you imagine the other person said. Don’t default to thinking the other person is being dismissive or malicious.
- a big part of the discussion is in the context of inflation and price gouging
- pricewatcher presents its data publicly for all consumers to see and use, it is clearly intended as a tool for consumers to combat price gouging strategies
- 'pricewatcher.gr is an independent site which is not endorsed by any shop', nothing suggests this website is making money off consumers
- the 'similar website' however is offering exclusive access to data to businesses, at a price, in order for those business to undercut the competition and become more profitable
So the goals are almost opposite. One is to help consumers combat price gouging of supermarkets, the other is to help supermarkets become (even) more profitable. It is similar in the sense that it is also scraping data, but it's not strange to think being similar would mean they would have the same goal, which they don't.
> It just seems a little strange when you then go on to say “strive to address… what was said, not what you imagine the other person said”.
It’s not strange at all if you pay attention to the words. I did not mischaracterise the author or their goals, I explained what I expected and what I felt regarding what I experienced reading the post and then the website.
In other words, I’m not attacking or criticising the author. I’m offering one data point, one description of an outside view which they’re free to ignore or think about. That’s it.
Don’t take every reply as an explicit agreement or disagreement. Points can be nuanced, you just have to make a genuine effort to understand. Default to not assuming the other person is a complete dolt. Or don’t. It’s also anyone’s prerogative to be immediately reactive. That’s becoming ever more prevalent (online and offline), and in my view it’s a negative way to live.
I would argue that you imagined something that the other person said - in this context, the other website. This is why your "strive to address... what was said, not what you imagine the other person said" comment sits uneasily for me.
I'm not sure if your highly condescending and somewhat reactive tone is intended or not, perhaps it's satirical, but in case you are unaware, your tone is highly condescending. Saying things like "if you pay attention to the words" and "you just have to make a genuine effort to understand" and your didactic "default to this" comes across rather badly.
Respectfully, I don’t relish the idea of wasting more time failing to impart the difference between criticism and expressing personal disappointment. It is possible to dislike something without thinking that thing or its author are bad. Not everything is about taking a side. We used to be able to understand that.
My tone did succumb to the frustration of having the point be repeatedly strawmanned (you’ll have to turn on show dead to see every instance), which is worryingly becoming more common on HN. I accept and thank you for calling that out. While in general I appreciate HN’s simple interface, it makes it easy to miss when the person we’re talking to on a new reply is not the same as before, so I apologise for any negativity you felt from me.
I may still see your reply to this (no promises) but forgive me if I don’t reply further.
A good few people cant imagine doing anything for any other reason. The fascinating aspect is that (combined with endless rent seeking) everything gets more expensive and eventually people wont have time to do anything for free. What is also fascinating is that by [excessively] not accounting for things done for free people shall take them for granted. We are surrounded by useful things done for us by generations long gone.
I started thinking about this when looking at startup micro nations. Having to build everything from scratch turns out to be very expensive and a whole lot of work.
Meanwhile we are looking to find ways to sell the price label separately. haha
When I worked at a supermarket I often proposed to rearrange the shelves into a maze. One can replace the parking lot with a hedge maze with many entrances an exits from the building. Special doorways on timers and remote control so that you need only one checkout. Add some extra floors, mirrors and glass walls.
There are countless possibilities, you could also have different entrances and different exits with different fees, doorways that only open if you have all varieties of a product in your basket, crawling tunnels, cage fights for discounts, double or nothing buttons, slot machines to win coupons.
That was not the argument. Please don’t strawman. Saying “I was just expecting something different” does not mean “what you are doing is wrong”.
I also expected replies to be done in good faith. That they would cover what I said, not that the reader would inject their own worst misconceptions and reply to those. I generally expect better from this website. I am also disappointed when that isn’t the case.
