Today was ... interesting. If you followed me for the past months over on the shitbird site, you might have seen a bunch of angry German words, lots of graphs, and the occassional news paper, radio, or TV snippet with yours truely. Let me explain.
In Austria, inflation is way above the EU average. There's no end in sight. This is especially true for basic needs like energy and food.
Our government stated in May that they'd build a food price database together with the big grocery chains. But..
It would be nice to be able to bring to light the price gouging that is taking place in Canada with regards to grocery stores.
Even without an API it should be possible, in theory, to just parse the data directly from their websites.
This also gives the grocery stores less of a leg to stand on in terms of legal or practical recourse. They chose to create a publicly browsable database of their prices; all you’re doing is browsing it.
Huh. Now you’ve got me wondering… Could you leave a device hidden in store that receives the IR signals that program the tags, capture that information, then parse it out later? You could literally log prices changes at the shelves, in real time.
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With the advent of e-ink price tags, it wouldn’t be surprising to me if something similar goes on with the prices of generic and medium tier items.
We’d have to see if an API is available somewhere first.
Even without an API it should be possible, in theory, to just parse the data directly from their websites.
This also gives the grocery stores less of a leg to stand on in terms of legal or practical recourse. They chose to create a publicly browsable database of their prices; all you’re doing is browsing it.
Huh. Now you’ve got me wondering… Could you leave a device hidden in store that receives the IR signals that program the tags, capture that information, then parse it out later? You could literally log prices changes at the shelves, in real time.
I don’t think they’re IR. Something similar to wifi. Surely encrypted.
Looks like there are two varieties - IR or Bluetooth Low-Energy (BLE).