douchebag's recent activity

  1. Comment on Am I alone in thinking that we're bouncing back from a highly technological future? in ~life

    douchebag
    Link
    For me it's less a feeling of having "strained Earth a little too much", but rather that pretty much every new release of products is a downgrade in quality with an increase in cash-grabbing. I...

    For me it's less a feeling of having "strained Earth a little too much", but rather that pretty much every new release of products is a downgrade in quality with an increase in cash-grabbing. I hate this trend so much, as do many people. At least that's my impression.

    What goes hand in hand with this trend is my urge to reject new technology. I have seen how bad Facebook, Insta, LinkedIn, and all the other social media platforms have been for society, and it seems to be getting worse by the day, with no bottom in sight. It's tiring. It's a waste of time.

    So I'm short: I've observed pretty much the same trend you are describing, but for different reasons. (Albeit pretty similar ones)

    7 votes

  2. How are you dealing with inflation regarding everyday enjoyment?

    ~life Ask (survey)
    I was wondering how people are currently dealing with inflation in everyday life. Since quite a while now, I found that I have fallen into a habit of excessively looking for discount deals for...

    I was wondering how people are currently dealing with inflation in everyday life. Since quite a while now, I found that I have fallen into a habit of excessively looking for discount deals for pretty much everything I buy. I feel pressured every day because prices have ballooned so much.

    At first, I only refrained from buying "unnecessary" goods like unhealthy snacks, and instead just go for basic staples and vitamin-rich vegetables. Then I started to cut down on meat consumption due to the high prices, and forced myself to only buy meat that is put on discount at the end of the day as it's about to spoil. And now, I even do the same thing for regular staples like rice or potatoes. It feels imprisoning, distracting and depressing.

    So I'm wondering, how are you dealing with inflation? Are you affected in a different way? Or not at all? Any advice on how I could realistically get out of this seemingly endlessly depressing spiral?

    In case anyone's interested why I decided to post today: I saw McDonald's popping up in the news these days, as apparently customers don't go there anyone due to their price increases far beyond inflation since 2019. Then, I passed a McDonald's billboard today thst advertised 2 Big Mac Menus + a happy meal for a whopping 30 EUR. The regular prices used to be a fraction of that... Now it's apparently a good deal...

    38 votes

  3. Comment on Chrome/Firefox Plugin to locally scrape data from multiple URLs in ~tech

    douchebag
    Link Parent
    That's a smart suggestion! I'll look into this. After a quick test it seems quite promising!

    webscraper.io
    To do multiple URLs I create a spreadsheet on Google Sheets with multiple URLs and publish it and use it as a source to feed the scraper.

    That's a smart suggestion! I'll look into this. After a quick test it seems quite promising!

    1 vote

  4. Comment on Chrome/Firefox Plugin to locally scrape data from multiple URLs in ~tech

    douchebag
    Link Parent
    This is a helpful input, thank you for taking the time to test it out and sharing your results. I was guessing the extra loading of pages may be a core issue, but I wasn't aware it was caused by...

    This is a helpful input, thank you for taking the time to test it out and sharing your results.

    I was guessing the extra loading of pages may be a core issue, but I wasn't aware it was caused by the HTML format.

    1 vote

  5. Comment on Chrome/Firefox Plugin to locally scrape data from multiple URLs in ~tech

    douchebag
    Link Parent
    Cheers for this reply. I think I'll put in the effort to try and figure things out using scrappy and/or another python based solution. I was rather just hoping there might be someone who had come...

    Cheers for this reply. I think I'll put in the effort to try and figure things out using scrappy and/or another python based solution. I was rather just hoping there might be someone who had come across a tool that may already suit the need.

    As for you other question(s): I usually delete my comments and/or posts several times per week and only leave them there if they are related to some sort of technical solution or advice that may help someone down the road.

    As for the scraping: I am putting together an overview of # of businesses in a certain sector and found that the online phone book would give a good indictor of this. However this only works by searching for specific keywords and later cleansing the data for duplicates, false entries, irrelevant entries etc. There's also other sources out there that I'll use for my statistic, but they are partially quite imprecise in other ways (industry reports, association reports etc.)

    Hope that answers the questions :)

    4 votes

  6. Chrome/Firefox Plugin to locally scrape data from multiple URLs

    ~tech Ask (recommendations)
    As the title suggests, I am looking for a free chrome or firefox plugin that can locally scrape data from multiple URLs. To be a bit more precise, what I mean by it: A free chrome or firefox...

    As the title suggests, I am looking for a free chrome or firefox plugin that can locally scrape data from multiple URLs. To be a bit more precise, what I mean by it:

    • A free chrome or firefox plugin
    • Local scraping: it runs in the browser itself. No cloud computing or "credits" required to run
    • Scrape data: Collects predefined data from certain data fields within a website such as https://www.dastelefonbuch.de/Suche/Test
    • Infinite scroll: to load data that only loads once the browser scrolls down (kind of like in the page I linked above)

    I am not looking into programming my own scraper using python or anything similar. I have found plugins that "kind of" do what I am describing above, and about two weeks ago I found one that pretty much perfectly does what is described ("DataGrab"), but it starts asking to buy credits after running it a few times.

    My own list:

    • DataGrab: Excellent, apart from asking to buy credits after a while
    • SimpleScraper: Excellent, but asks to buy credits pretty much immediately
    • Easy Scraper: Works well for single pages, but no possibility to feed in multiple URLs to crawl
    • Instant Data Scraper: Works well for single pages and infinite scroll pages, but no possibility to feed in multiple URLs to crawl
    • "Data Scraper - Easy Web Scraping" / dataminer.io: Doesn't work well
    • Scrapy.org: Too much programming, but looks quite neat and well documented

    Any suggestions are highly welcome!

    Edit: A locally run executable or cmd-line based program would be fine too, as long as it just needs to be configured (e.g., creating a list of URLs stored in a .txt or .csv file) instead of coded (e.g., coding an infinite scroll function from scratch).

    8 votes