I welcome the change and think it is a good solution.

I'm surprised this hasn't been mentioned yet, especially for the HN crowd, but it's relatively easy for any developer to write a bot to auto-register them-self. One could even use Selenium.

There is a very popular Google Developer's MeetUp and space for 200+ runs out in less than 5 minutes of unannounced meetings opening up for registration. I am 100% sure that a lot of bots can and do register for these events.