Yeah it probably is an optimal strategy (and certainly relative to return on investment).

I didn't mean disappointment that the tech hadn't advanced, I meant that my expectations were set really high by the grandparent comment ("Neural networks? In 2006? Surely not! But it must be something really fancy, judging by all these flowcharts!" [0]) and by how they kept hyping up the "prediction algorithm" for half the article, when it's just

1. take the data you already had

2. (there is no step 2)

[0]: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cV0fY8e_SC1hIFF5E1rT8XRVRzP...