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Ask HN: What Happened to Outline.com?

87 points by giuliomagnifico 5y ago

www outline.com is offline/unreachable since about 10 days. It is/was(?) a very useful service to make some webpages more readable and (in some case) avoid the paywall. I also used it a lot of time to extract the "reader view" of some article to send it via email. But since 7-10 the website is down but domain looks okay. I'm also using a recursive DNS resolver so it's not blocked via DNS from my ISP. Someone know what's going on? I haven't found other info. Thanks

frontman1988 5y ago
12ft.io works
- giuliomagnifico 5y ago
  Yes, I know but it doesn’t work on all the websites. I’m not asking for an alternative, I know a lot of alternatives, I’m just curious to know what happened to outline.com =)
  - i67vw3 5y ago
    Can you list the alternatives you know? So, I could check them later on.
    - giuliomagnifico 5y ago
      I use the most https://archive.is https://archive.is and https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome/blob/master/README.md https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome/blob/ma...
    - john-doe 5y ago
      https://txtify.it https://txtify.it
peapicker 5y ago
Archive.is (etc) did it better?
- giuliomagnifico 5y ago
  Archive.is is a different service, it’s indispensable but it saves the page for the future, outline.com is/was only making the article more readable by extracting only the text, and it doesn’t save anything offline, it’s also way more fast than archive.is. It is/was something like an Instapaper whiteout the login.
  - peapicker 5y ago
    In effect tho, using reader mode in the browser on archive.[a-z]* is about the same as outline.
    - mds101 5y ago
      The problem is some brilliant product manager decided that the reader mode button should not be available on all websites and should only be available on those it seems to be articles.
      - indigodaddy 5y ago
        I’ve never had reader mode not work on archive.is
        amjd 5y ago
        Which browser do you use? I've never seen it work on archive.is in Firefox. Case in point: https://archive.is/ZPvrO https://archive.is/ZPvrO
        indigodaddy 5y ago
        Specifically only speaking of iOS and Safari. Don’t have FF installed and have never found reader mode option in Chrome.
        Duetto 5y ago
        I am using Firefox 78.15.0esr (64-bit) and had no problem getting to the URL with the above link. Arrived at: https://www.economist.com/briefing/2022/03/05/vladimir-putins-invasion-of-ukraine-is-wrecking-two-countries https://www.economist.com/briefing/2022/03/05/vladimir-putin...
schnebbau 5y ago
They probably got rekt by legal takedowns.
cheeze 5y ago
Damn, I don't actually care about the paywalling, I just really liked their reader view. I've been using Firefox. Reader view is decent.
- bredren 5y ago
  Do you have any screenshots of the reader view?
  - Rastonbury 5y ago
    What do you use now, Chrome? If so, I strongly suggest just try Firefox, cares more about privacy, no constantly pushing to link your browser to an account, addons like multi-containers, built in fingerprint resistance (experimental).
    - bredren 5y ago
      I use FF for my daily driver. I misread and thought you were describing a reader view of this service.
tartoran 5y ago
RIP, it did a pretty good job at keeping reading distraction free. Hope it will make a comeback one day
godmode2019 5y ago
Don't read the news it's bad for your health.
- giuliomagnifico 5y ago
  Ahah, yeah, but it could be worse if there's a nuclear explosion at 1000km from my home and I don't know anything about it =) (PS: I live in north-italy, quite near to Ukraine)
  - kyriakos 5y ago
    You will find out if that happens. One doesn't have to be glued to every little news update to know what's going on around the world. People right now unfortunately (not saying you are doing that) are seeing every world crisis (pandemic, Ukraine etc) as entertainment.
  - godmode2019 5y ago
    My friend trust me, if it's bad enough you will find out. Your friends will tell you. Add all news sites and social media to your hosts.txt on your android device. If it's not bad enough you will have saved weeks of worrying, spend time with your family.
    - sofixa 5y ago
      > Your friends will tell you Not unless they follow the same advice.
- Hard_Space 5y ago
  There's something to this. Over the past few weeks I built up live RSS feeds that sucked in the latest submissions to apposite subReddits, and a collection of other feeds and sources. Two days ago I deleted all that, as it was making me sick and crazy. I think maybe what we need is 'slow news', and to rely on anything we really need to know percolating through the misinformation and speculation. What stressed me most was the unexpected extent of polarized alarmism all over Reddit, and (to a lesser extent) even here on HN. There's no logical reason why I couldn't have expected that to happen; I guess I just didn't map it out internally in the calm before the storm.
amelius 5y ago
How would one build such a service in a way that is resilient against legal takedowns?
- dsr_ 5y ago
  Make it a browser extension.
  - amelius 5y ago
    I don't like browser extensions because of the security model. Also, it has to get its data from somewhere, and this source can still be taken down, I suppose. Perhaps you can hash the original url, use that as a key and upload the ascii text of the article as a torrent.
    - dsr_ 5y ago
      Why would it need to get data from anything except the page you are looking at?
      - bubblethink 5y ago
        I think the parent is thinking of a proxy type model which would be more robust in the long run since bypassing paywalls is cat and mouse. Rather than do everything client side, which would eventually stop working anyway, one could proxy the requests to a server that would deliver the contents. This is not too different from the existing outline.com model, but the servers can be shuffled around more easily.
- funerr 5y ago
  Open sourcing it?
- 2ICofafireteam 5y ago
  For western takedowns, until recently, host it in Russia?
- deleted 5y ago
dewey 5y ago
It's a high value domain, maybe they sold it and it's in the process of being transferred?
- moralestapia 5y ago
  5 figures? 6 figures?
kilroy123 5y ago
What I do is use "_Bypass Paywalls Clean_" for Firefox, on my desktop. [1] Then on my iPhone (safari), I use a handy little iOS shortcut that routes the page to archive.is and then shows the reader mode version. [2] I used to use a cool shortcut for apple news that would also parse the URL, find the original article, and show it reader mode. Sadly, apple disabled sharing of News+ articles. [1] https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-firefox-clean https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-firefox-clea... [2] https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/81c670b532e340e38a35cc62e3e9397d https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/81c670b532e340e38a35cc62e3e...
- evanreichard 5y ago
  Hey! That shortcut gave me an idea. I just wrote a quick UserScript that will basically do the same, only completely automatically [0]. Maybe I'll add something that will popup and ask if you want to be redirected. [0] https://gist.github.com/evanreichard/83467a4775f1672756140fc9719eb9be https://gist.github.com/evanreichard/83467a4775f1672756140fc...
- croutonwagon 5y ago
  That iCloud shortcut was great. Took a bit of fiddling to get it to work. And I often have to be the first to cache a page from my RSS reader, miniflux, it’s still pretty great and definitely a huge quality of life improvement. Thanks a bunch!
Zondor3000 5y ago
If you want to save a clean copy of a webpage, https://www.printfriendly.com/ https://www.printfriendly.com/ works nicely, but some URLs are not supported. But sometimes, you can use https://tinyurl.com/ https://tinyurl.com/ to create an spoof link which will process. Another good one is: https://pdf.fivefilters.org/ https://pdf.fivefilters.org/ And of course, you should be reading the news with Firefox browser, so you can invoke the "Reader View" feature (very easy). This Firefox solution is the best, easiest fix to replace outline.com https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-reader-view-clutter-free-web-pages https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-reader-view-clu...
reddon1000 5y ago
I would pay for this service. I follow articles all over the place, and it would be crazy to subscribe to each source as if I'm a specialist in that field. But I recognize that content was not created at no cost, and it's fair to pay something for it.
ChrisArchitect 5y ago
The OP is a question about what happened not looking for the hundred alternatives and add-ons there are out there. What happened?
dserodio 5y ago
The domain does not look okay. There are no A or CNAME records, only NS (AWS) and MX (Google) records