I generally do not connect to web sites from my own machine, aside from a few sites I have some special relationship with. I usually fetch web pages from other sites by sending mail to a program (see https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/womb/hacks.git) that fetches them, much like wget, and then mails them back to me. Then I look at them using a web browser, unless it is easy to see the text in the HTML page directly. I usually try lynx first, then a graphical browser if the page needs it.

parses HTML with regex

This is really what brings the meme together, it’s just so… chef’s kiss

Scraping is a public service at this point with companies going bonkers and trying to monetize too aggressively because they over-borrowed and now can’t even hope to pay back their massive investor backlog because they didn’t attempt to monetize soon enough.

Bankruptcy is coming for these companies Soon^TM

We the user, the consumer will severely punish you stupid silicon valley companies for suddenly demanding payment for an API or service that was always historically free before. ESPECIALLY WHEN THAT MOVE DAMAGES EXISTING COMMUNITIES!

If you are a C-Level executive in a tech company pay heed; Users WILL PUNISH behavior that they consider to be destructive to their communities. No. Your company will not survive it. Your company will be bled to death by a thousand cuts.

“parses HTML with regex”

I used to do Chad scraping as a side hustle. Had trouble networking to find buyers for scraped data and got a different job :/

I’m happy they at least wrote “scraping” instead of “scrapping.” I saw a damn BBC article reference the practice as “scrapping.” My faith in humanity wanes