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That doesn't require strong AI, firefox reader view achieves that without strong AI. It even preserves article images nicely.

amelius 10y ago
Reader view isn't perfect yet, which is probably why (useful as it is) most people don't use it. Also, as more readers use it, the ad industry will try to circumvent it, e.g, by tricks like turning part of the text into images, et cetera. Eventually, you will probably be better off by OCR'ing the rendered webpage (i.e., as the user sees it), and using AI to only keep the relevant text and images.
- throwawayReply 10y ago
  Don't let perfect be the enemy of the good. It's not perfect so people don't use it? No, people don't use it because it has poor discover-ability and it isn't in other browsers, further reducing discover-ability.
  - amelius 10y ago
    > It's not perfect so people don't use it? Unfortunately, I think this is the case. Look at DuckDuckGo. It works for 90% of searches, but for that last 10% you really need Google. As a result, people use Google for all their searches.
    - ThatGeoGuy 10y ago
      I think this is another case of poor discover-ability. If you "discover" and understand how the bang syntax works, you can easily use DDG for your 90% of searches and only dispatch to Google when you need to. (e.g. "!gi dogs"). DuckDuckGo is great, but unlike Google which has immense brand momentum and recognition, it lacks the marketing to drive users to the service.
      - amelius 10y ago
        Not sure if that's how it works. I guess users would start to use "!g" syntax on more and more of their searches (as a habit).
zokier 10y ago
See also: Readability, a project first discussed on HN some 8 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=501970 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=501970
- amelius 10y ago
  Does it perform OCR? Because if not, then the content industry will circumvent it by rendering the text as images.
  - zokier 10y ago
    Content industry doesn't really care that much about few nerds scraping the content for themselves as long as it remains small enough minority. And if they do something, it'll most likely follow the tracks of other anti-adblock tech instead of doing something as stupid as prerendering text.

amelius 10y ago

Reader view isn't perfect yet, which is probably why (useful as it is) most people don't use it. Also, as more readers use it, the ad industry will try to circumvent it, e.g, by tricks like turning part of the text into images, et cetera. Eventually, you will probably be better off by OCR'ing the rendered webpage (i.e., as the user sees it), and using AI to only keep the relevant text and images.

throwawayReply 10y ago
Don't let perfect be the enemy of the good. It's not perfect so people don't use it? No, people don't use it because it has poor discover-ability and it isn't in other browsers, further reducing discover-ability.
- amelius 10y ago
  > It's not perfect so people don't use it? Unfortunately, I think this is the case. Look at DuckDuckGo. It works for 90% of searches, but for that last 10% you really need Google. As a result, people use Google for all their searches.
  - ThatGeoGuy 10y ago
    I think this is another case of poor discover-ability. If you "discover" and understand how the bang syntax works, you can easily use DDG for your 90% of searches and only dispatch to Google when you need to. (e.g. "!gi dogs"). DuckDuckGo is great, but unlike Google which has immense brand momentum and recognition, it lacks the marketing to drive users to the service.
    - amelius 10y ago
      Not sure if that's how it works. I guess users would start to use "!g" syntax on more and more of their searches (as a habit).

zokier 10y ago

See also: Readability, a project first discussed on HN some 8 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=501970 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=501970

amelius 10y ago
Does it perform OCR? Because if not, then the content industry will circumvent it by rendering the text as images.
- zokier 10y ago
  Content industry doesn't really care that much about few nerds scraping the content for themselves as long as it remains small enough minority. And if they do something, it'll most likely follow the tracks of other anti-adblock tech instead of doing something as stupid as prerendering text.