I think people are missing one of the points of the article. It's not just that agents are hammering the site, it's that there might be lurking vulnerabilities that allow malicious usage, which is why it went down, then came back up with a fraction of the data and a reduced design.

The article says (speculates?) that malicious users are trying to get privileged access for an edge in prediction market betting. From the article:

> If you could see The Numbers data before everyone else, every single week, you would have a significant edge over all the other traders - learning the answers slightly ahead of publication would allow you to front-run the trades.