5 ms·

Is there a workaround for this paywall?

Miner49er 5y ago
Disable javascript.
arberx 5y ago
Pay for a subscription. Good luck getting unbiased non-clickbait news when journalists only source of revenue is directly tied to advertisment in an article.
- B4CKlash 5y ago
  Paywalls with workarounds are the only type of paywalls allowed on HN. Asking for a workaround is an acceptable practice. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=paywalls%20by:dang&dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?query=paywalls%20by:dang&dateRange=a...
  - arberx 5y ago
    Cool-doesn't mean it's right.
    - B4CKlash 5y ago
      You realize Tyler Cowen posted three quarters of this piece on his website: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2021/06/what-crypto-people-get-wrong.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2021/06/wh... I will happily pay for quality content - Bloomberg is not one of those sources. You're defending a company that will happily use it's monopolistic edge to charge 24,000 a year for an API. Get off your high horse.
      - walltowall 5y ago
        You're still increasing demand by reading the article, posting links to it, discussing it, upvoting the post, etc. Don't consume and promote the content. You don't want to compromise the ethical stance you've taken against their monopoly do you?!
  - walltowall 5y ago
    Featuring one of dang's most nuanced arguments > Yes, this sucks, but the loss of many substantive articles would suck worse. Yes, me using open-source code without the author's permission, license, or attribution sucks, but the loss of the software I make with it would "suck worse." So I'm using your code for free, you put it on the internet anyway silly!
- madsbuch 5y ago
  I would be super interested in truly unbiased news and I am willing to pay quite a fortune for it -- through I am quite sure it wouldn't, philosophically, be possible to find.
- beervirus 5y ago
  Good luck getting unbiased news at any price.
marcus_holmes 5y ago
I just spent a couple of minutes in dev tools deleting about 50 script, iframe and div tags that didn't contain the actual text. Then remove the "overflow:hidden" css style on the top div. Utterly miserable waste of everyone's bandwidth. But that's media for you...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- lamestream 5y ago
  Right?! They seem desperate for income, I can't figure out why. Oh here's a link to skip paying them for a subscription btw.
  - marcus_holmes 5y ago
    It's not the business model I object to. Though they'll probably need to do something different to actually make it work: you can't write clickbaity shite that optimises for ad revenue and then expect people to pay for it. It's the horrible inefficiency and ineffectiveness of their markup that I object to. Megabytes of script and tags that achieves nothing except using up bandwidth and cpu cycles. Why are there 3 iframes (iirc) in there? Why are there so many script tags? Can't they use a packer? It's all so badly done.
    - lamestream 5y ago
      Yeah, why optimize for ad revenue when they have a paywall?! Sounds like you went through a lot of work to read that "clickbaity shite." It's not worth paying for, surely it's not worth the time you spent doing that?
      - marcus_holmes 5y ago
        I used to run a newspaper. The business model question is very hard. There's basically a choice: You can write clickbaity ad-revenue-optimised shite, which draws people in, gets them to open the article (and get served the ads). But once they've done that then there's no point in getting them engaged further - from a business point of view there's nothing gained by getting them to read stuff once the ads have been served. So you target the journos for 5 articles a day, minimum, knowing that that's not enough time for them to write decent articles, and get your editors to make the headers clickbaity. Job done. Except ad revenue is declining year-on-year and you're trashing your reputation for journalism. Or you can do "proper" journalism, which involves paying journalists for good articles, investigative journalism, Pulitzer prize stuff. It costs a fortune. It's not worth doing for ad revenue because the clickbaity stuff actually earns more money. But it does increase your reputation. And if you get your reputation high enough, people will start paying to access the stuff you're writing. At least that's the theory. No-one (as far as I'm aware) has actually made a profit from either model since about 2000. The Guardian has done very well out of the Wikipedia model, but all the opinions I hear is that that's probably not sustainable, and is anyway very specific to them because they cater to a niche that is very politically aware and fairly well-off. i.e. they have money to spare to support the Grauniad, and identify with its political stance. So, yes, optimising for ad revenue when you have a paywall is stupid - people who are drawn there by the clickbait header won't pay the paywall. And people who have paid for the paywall will be annoyed if the article is optimised for clickbait (ad-revenue). I hope that makes sense? Let me know if not and I can explain it again. I'm a geek, I enjoy messing with this stuff. The enjoyment of the technical challenge of "hacking" their paywall was more than worth the time it took. The article was probably not. Not sure I'd do it again.
brodouevencode 5y ago
Incognito mode works most times.
xaduha 5y ago
Use a browser with a "stop loading" button and press it before overlay obscures the page. Esc works too. I guess it helps if your internet isn't blazing fast, it depends on the site and needs a bit of practice, but on this one it works just fine.
Syzygies 5y ago
I recently switched to the Brave browser, and had no issues reading the article. It would nevertheless be wonderful if HN readers could manage whitelists or blacklists related to paywalls, so by choice we could never see posts for content we can't read. Publishers shouldn't get the publicity for articles they won't share.

Disable javascript.

Pay for a subscription. Good luck getting unbiased non-clickbait news when journalists only source of revenue is directly tied to advertisment in an article.

B4CKlash 5y ago
Paywalls with workarounds are the only type of paywalls allowed on HN. Asking for a workaround is an acceptable practice. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=paywalls%20by:dang&dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?query=paywalls%20by:dang&dateRange=a...
- arberx 5y ago
  Cool-doesn't mean it's right.
  - B4CKlash 5y ago
    You realize Tyler Cowen posted three quarters of this piece on his website: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2021/06/what-crypto-people-get-wrong.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2021/06/wh... I will happily pay for quality content - Bloomberg is not one of those sources. You're defending a company that will happily use it's monopolistic edge to charge 24,000 a year for an API. Get off your high horse.
    - walltowall 5y ago
      You're still increasing demand by reading the article, posting links to it, discussing it, upvoting the post, etc. Don't consume and promote the content. You don't want to compromise the ethical stance you've taken against their monopoly do you?!
- walltowall 5y ago
  Featuring one of dang's most nuanced arguments > Yes, this sucks, but the loss of many substantive articles would suck worse. Yes, me using open-source code without the author's permission, license, or attribution sucks, but the loss of the software I make with it would "suck worse." So I'm using your code for free, you put it on the internet anyway silly!
madsbuch 5y ago
I would be super interested in truly unbiased news and I am willing to pay quite a fortune for it -- through I am quite sure it wouldn't, philosophically, be possible to find.
beervirus 5y ago
Good luck getting unbiased news at any price.

marcus_holmes 5y ago

I just spent a couple of minutes in dev tools deleting about 50 script, iframe and div tags that didn't contain the actual text. Then remove the "overflow:hidden" css style on the top div. Utterly miserable waste of everyone's bandwidth. But that's media for you...

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
lamestream 5y ago
Right?! They seem desperate for income, I can't figure out why. Oh here's a link to skip paying them for a subscription btw.
- marcus_holmes 5y ago
  It's not the business model I object to. Though they'll probably need to do something different to actually make it work: you can't write clickbaity shite that optimises for ad revenue and then expect people to pay for it. It's the horrible inefficiency and ineffectiveness of their markup that I object to. Megabytes of script and tags that achieves nothing except using up bandwidth and cpu cycles. Why are there 3 iframes (iirc) in there? Why are there so many script tags? Can't they use a packer? It's all so badly done.
  - lamestream 5y ago
    Yeah, why optimize for ad revenue when they have a paywall?! Sounds like you went through a lot of work to read that "clickbaity shite." It's not worth paying for, surely it's not worth the time you spent doing that?
    - marcus_holmes 5y ago
      I used to run a newspaper. The business model question is very hard. There's basically a choice: You can write clickbaity ad-revenue-optimised shite, which draws people in, gets them to open the article (and get served the ads). But once they've done that then there's no point in getting them engaged further - from a business point of view there's nothing gained by getting them to read stuff once the ads have been served. So you target the journos for 5 articles a day, minimum, knowing that that's not enough time for them to write decent articles, and get your editors to make the headers clickbaity. Job done. Except ad revenue is declining year-on-year and you're trashing your reputation for journalism. Or you can do "proper" journalism, which involves paying journalists for good articles, investigative journalism, Pulitzer prize stuff. It costs a fortune. It's not worth doing for ad revenue because the clickbaity stuff actually earns more money. But it does increase your reputation. And if you get your reputation high enough, people will start paying to access the stuff you're writing. At least that's the theory. No-one (as far as I'm aware) has actually made a profit from either model since about 2000. The Guardian has done very well out of the Wikipedia model, but all the opinions I hear is that that's probably not sustainable, and is anyway very specific to them because they cater to a niche that is very politically aware and fairly well-off. i.e. they have money to spare to support the Grauniad, and identify with its political stance. So, yes, optimising for ad revenue when you have a paywall is stupid - people who are drawn there by the clickbait header won't pay the paywall. And people who have paid for the paywall will be annoyed if the article is optimised for clickbait (ad-revenue). I hope that makes sense? Let me know if not and I can explain it again. I'm a geek, I enjoy messing with this stuff. The enjoyment of the technical challenge of "hacking" their paywall was more than worth the time it took. The article was probably not. Not sure I'd do it again.

brodouevencode 5y ago

Incognito mode works most times.

xaduha 5y ago

Use a browser with a "stop loading" button and press it before overlay obscures the page. Esc works too. I guess it helps if your internet isn't blazing fast, it depends on the site and needs a bit of practice, but on this one it works just fine.

Syzygies 5y ago

I recently switched to the Brave browser, and had no issues reading the article. It would nevertheless be wonderful if HN readers could manage whitelists or blacklists related to paywalls, so by choice we could never see posts for content we can't read. Publishers shouldn't get the publicity for articles they won't share.