I just read this from Nokia's blog of all places[1]:

> A fresh U.S. residential IP address (especially one behind carrier-grade NAT and harder to block individually) is “gold.” Customers pay up to $95 to lease a single U.S. residential IP address for 2 weeks (versus $0.30 for an Eastern European IP).

That's bananas. The place I found a link to that story was jwz's blog, a site that is actively getting hammered by one of the many Rube-Goldberg machines behind these scrapers.

I take your point wrt, say, recommendation engines. But this is a bizarre and fascinating period we're living through right now. I don't plan to stop reading blogs and news any time soon.

1: https://www.nokia.com/blog/one-year-later-the-residential-pr...

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tuesdaynight 6 hours ago | parent [-]

I feel like your last paragraph could be said about any time in the last 10 years. That was my biggest wake-up call to stop following mainstream news. Whatever shows here or in my social circle are enough to be informed as much as needed (YMMV)

	▲	jancsika 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Did you read the paragraph before that about paying ninety-five dollars just for two weeks of proxying through a single U.S. IP? There's nothing in the last 10 years even remotely as economically bizarre as that. You'd have to go back over 20 years to Bittorrent where-- for the first time I know of-- an increase in demand for a resource caused a decrease in the time to get that resource. If I'm wrong give me another case that isn't a crypto scam and I'll read up on it.