6 ms·

Neuters: Lightweight front end to Reuters News

135 points by walterbell 2y ago

rickcarlino 2y ago
Something similar for the Gemini Protocol (“modern gopher”): https://github.com/acidus99/NewsWaffle https://github.com/acidus99/NewsWaffle
rattray 2y ago
Wish there was an example link on the project homepage. Or better yet, links to a few of the top current articles from the Reuters homepage.
- anakaiti 2y ago
  It's literally on the home page: https://neuters.de https://neuters.de
  - thunderbong 2y ago
    I agree with the parent comment, though - it wasn't obvious to me that this is the 'About' page of the site. Also, the link to go to the Home page is in footer right at the bottom.
    - otteromkram 2y ago
      Sorry you were having such trouble. On a positive note, the next time you land on a similar page, you'll know two more methods of finding a solution: 1. Check the URL. 2. Check the footer.
      - szszrk 2y ago
        Web pages have hyperlinks for us to use. Why would you ignore that? Going back to home page should be built in and easy. I had the same issue, mobile browsers don't even show uri properly or hide menu, so manually editing address is not exactly my first thought on how to navigate a web page.
    - oneeyedpigeon 2y ago
      > it wasn't obvious to me that this is the 'About' page of the site What kind of browser are you using? Aside from the url ending "/about", the first thing I see on the page is a big bold heading that reads "About".
      - rattray 2y ago
        I was using a mobile browser; on many mobile browsers it's hard to see/edit the URL, unfortunately.
vivzkestrel 2y ago
wouldn't that be straight up illegal? just asking
- HideousKojima 2y ago
  Why would it be?
  - mongol 2y ago
    Copyright infringment. But to be fair, perhaps the texts are licensed from Reuters to publish this way. It is unclear to me.
throwaway81523 2y ago
I did one of these some years back and used it for a while. It stopped working and I didn't bother trying to fix it. I can post the code someplace if anyone wants it. A page or two of Python.
- jingojango2 2y ago
  currently doing something similar with python, I'd love to deepdive your code, would github work?
  - throwaway81523 2y ago
    There's not much depth to dive into but I could pastebin it maybe? I don't use github.
palmfacehn 2y ago
Ads don't offend me categorically. If publishers had text links, plain banners or any combination of content that added up to around 100kb sans images, I would probably consume more of their content and occasionally click an ad. Video interstitials, paywalls or modal dialogs asking me to allow megabytes of tracking requests are a deal breaker. Anything that annoys or slows me down is more expensive than the value of the content, which I typically want to skim. The content is rarely worth it. As it concerns Reuters, the same content will be parroted and recycled elsewhere. Legacy media is tone deaf from editorial policy to the nuts and bolts of how content is displayed.
kristopolous 2y ago
From all evidence, this is probably pretty accessible for the blind. Thanks
brokegrammer 2y ago
That's how news websites are supposed to look like. It's not good for revenue though, because there's no way to trick the user into clicking ads, nor dive into mindless scrolling. I wonder if it would be possible to align revenue generation with user experience, instead of both goals being incompatible with each other.
- usr1106 2y ago
  Possible yes, users would need to pay with money. Successful much less. Most users happily open bloat sites and pay with their privacy and being manipulated.
  - oneeyedpigeon 2y ago
    I would argue it's "begrudgingly" rather than "happily".
  - bachmeier 2y ago
    > Most users happily open bloat sites and pay with their privacy and being manipulated. You can use bloat sites and pay with your privacy and be manipulated for free or you can pay for the experience, but you'll be using bloat sites and pay with your privacy and be manipulated no matter what.
- ahmedfromtunis 2y ago
  > That's how news websites are supposed to look like. No, news websites don't have to be this sterile. I think NYT is a prime example of how to merge classic text-based articles with multimedia content in a way that's beneficial to the consumer.
  - anthk 2y ago
    Use either Dillo or Netsurf with NYT and then we well talk. JS and ad bloat made HTML5 video and audio tags rendered null with no actual usage IRL.
    - 2y ago
l3x 2y ago
Similar (official): - lite.cnn.com - text.npr.org Unofficial: - 68k.news - skinnyguardian.xyz ... I'm sure there are plenty more!
- anthk 2y ago
  Sadly https://68k.news https://68k.news it's broken. But you can alwyas either use gopher://magical.fish/1/news under Lynx or Dillo with the Gopher plugin or head to http://portal.mozz.us/gopher/magical.fish/1/news http://portal.mozz.us/gopher/magical.fish/1/news under any browser, even the ancient ones from the Netscape 4 era.
- sitzkrieg 2y ago
  https://brutalist.report/ https://brutalist.report/ combines many sites
- dublinben 2y ago
  Also CBC.ca/lite as well.
shikck200 2y ago
Some issues with pagination. I would recommend a non limit offset combo. Right now i get an error: "You tried to access /world/" when manually change the offset.
theanonymousone 2y ago
Does anyone know about the legal implications of building such a "fronted"? Doesn't Reuters own the copyright zo the contents of their news articles? Can't they send a Cease & Desist (or worse) to the developer, given they are potentially losing some ad revenue? Or they can and simply don't bother?
- cbg0 2y ago
  If your alternative becomes popular they will sic their lawyers on you.
- donohoe 2y ago
  Yes, it’s copyright infringement. Yes, they can send a C&D to whomever is hosting the copies of their content. Yes, they are losing some minor potential ad income. They will likely bother if their legal department notices and thinks it rises to a level they must contend with. My guess is that it won’t.
  - theanonymousone 2y ago
    Thanks. Is there some rule of thumb about how much should the article change so that the copyright doesn't apply any more? These points come to my mind: - There is a whole category of software called "news aggregators". Are they all infringers? How can they operate, apart from praying that the news outlet doesn't care? - News outlets quote each other, e.g. "According to Reuters", etc. Does that solve the copyright issue? Is it only the 100% verbatim copy that is copyrighted? Many thanks already for the insights.
    - manfre 2y ago
      Aggregators are references to content. Frontends are copies. You can't sidestep copyright with a "according to Reuters" preamble for the entire article text.
    - layer8 2y ago
      The rules are country-specific. For the US, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use#U.S._fair_use_factors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use#U.S._fair_use_factors. There is no simple rule of thumb.
wgx 2y ago
Is there a viable way for me to make every site load like this (iOS)? And optimally toggle back to the “full site” if I want to.
- sunshadow 2y ago
  I can make this in couple of weeks, but I need an incentive other than just having fun
- szszrk 2y ago
  Firefox reading mode? It won't work with all sites, though. A lot of large sites are insanely broken, so Firefox doesn't propose reading mode at all, or nothing loads. Honestly, I have only one way with dealing with those: not using those sites.
- walterbell 2y ago
  For individual websites on iOS, click the "aA" icon: Website Settings > Show Reader Automatically For every website on iOS: Settings > Safari > Settings for Websites > Reader > Other Websites
sunshadow 2y ago
What made you use caddy in front of tiny-http? I guess tiny-http should be still fine on its own. genuinely curious
- lemagedurage 2y ago
  Likely for its letsencrypt integration, maybe for HTTP/2 or HTTP/3
anthk 2y ago
What I'd love it's either a public Web Rendering Proxy or Browservice.
casey2 2y ago
Awesome site, but it just made me realize that Reuters can't capture my mind share. Most of these articles can't even be used for small talk Also I clicked on a few 301s in a row
oneeyedpigeon 2y ago
No feed?
HelloUsername 2y ago
Related: "Libredirect" Addon to redirect certain websites to privacy friendly front ends https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32916318 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32916318 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32288732 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32288732 Also "Redirector" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29665373 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29665373 On Safari iOS you could try "Stop The Madness" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31625804 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31625804
uncomplexity_ 2y ago
man i love the cleanliness sounded like a vasectomy site though haha
klibertp 2y ago
TIL: Reuters has a REST API: https://www.reuters.com/pf/api/v3/content/fetch/articles-by-search-v2 https://www.reuters.com/pf/api/v3/content/fetch/articles-by-... But I can't find any reference for it, somehow. How did the author know how to write this https://github.com/HookedBehemoth/neuters/tree/master/src/api https://github.com/HookedBehemoth/neuters/tree/master/src/ap... ?
- insin 2y ago
  You can see calls to it in the dev tools Network tab when browsing Reuters.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
quinncom 2y ago
Very cool! I’ve added the following as a redirect in Kagi: ^https://(www\.)?reuters\.com|https://neuters.de https://(www\.)?reuters\.com|https://neuters.de
mzd348 2y ago
Looks like you've basically created an RSS frontend for reuters.com. Which is useful since they seem to have got rid of their own feeds. Would be nice if you could add your own feed so that neuters is actually readable via RSS.
efxhoy 2y ago
Reuters really broke the site for me when they did what looked like a rewrite about a year ago. Glad to see this as I hardly read it anymore. bbc news is going downhill too, another prime candidate for a project like this.
nobodywillobsrv 2y ago
"News"
weMadeThat 2y ago
nice, are there extensions/userscripts that replace strings? "Syria this, France that" should turn into "Gov. this, Gov. that", for example
sigio 2y ago
Seems to be dead/down at the moment... noticed because my browser still showed me the same news as 2 days ago ;)

135 points by walterbell 2y ago

Something similar for the Gemini Protocol (“modern gopher”): https://github.com/acidus99/NewsWaffle https://github.com/acidus99/NewsWaffle

rattray 2y ago

Wish there was an example link on the project homepage. Or better yet, links to a few of the top current articles from the Reuters homepage.

anakaiti 2y ago
It's literally on the home page: https://neuters.de https://neuters.de
- thunderbong 2y ago
  I agree with the parent comment, though - it wasn't obvious to me that this is the 'About' page of the site. Also, the link to go to the Home page is in footer right at the bottom.
  - otteromkram 2y ago
    Sorry you were having such trouble. On a positive note, the next time you land on a similar page, you'll know two more methods of finding a solution: 1. Check the URL. 2. Check the footer.
    - szszrk 2y ago
      Web pages have hyperlinks for us to use. Why would you ignore that? Going back to home page should be built in and easy. I had the same issue, mobile browsers don't even show uri properly or hide menu, so manually editing address is not exactly my first thought on how to navigate a web page.
  - oneeyedpigeon 2y ago
    > it wasn't obvious to me that this is the 'About' page of the site What kind of browser are you using? Aside from the url ending "/about", the first thing I see on the page is a big bold heading that reads "About".
    - rattray 2y ago
      I was using a mobile browser; on many mobile browsers it's hard to see/edit the URL, unfortunately.

vivzkestrel 2y ago

wouldn't that be straight up illegal? just asking

HideousKojima 2y ago
Why would it be?
- mongol 2y ago
  Copyright infringment. But to be fair, perhaps the texts are licensed from Reuters to publish this way. It is unclear to me.

throwaway81523 2y ago

I did one of these some years back and used it for a while. It stopped working and I didn't bother trying to fix it. I can post the code someplace if anyone wants it. A page or two of Python.

jingojango2 2y ago
currently doing something similar with python, I'd love to deepdive your code, would github work?
- throwaway81523 2y ago
  There's not much depth to dive into but I could pastebin it maybe? I don't use github.

palmfacehn 2y ago

Ads don't offend me categorically. If publishers had text links, plain banners or any combination of content that added up to around 100kb sans images, I would probably consume more of their content and occasionally click an ad. Video interstitials, paywalls or modal dialogs asking me to allow megabytes of tracking requests are a deal breaker. Anything that annoys or slows me down is more expensive than the value of the content, which I typically want to skim. The content is rarely worth it. As it concerns Reuters, the same content will be parroted and recycled elsewhere. Legacy media is tone deaf from editorial policy to the nuts and bolts of how content is displayed.

kristopolous 2y ago

From all evidence, this is probably pretty accessible for the blind. Thanks

brokegrammer 2y ago

That's how news websites are supposed to look like. It's not good for revenue though, because there's no way to trick the user into clicking ads, nor dive into mindless scrolling. I wonder if it would be possible to align revenue generation with user experience, instead of both goals being incompatible with each other.

usr1106 2y ago
Possible yes, users would need to pay with money. Successful much less. Most users happily open bloat sites and pay with their privacy and being manipulated.
- oneeyedpigeon 2y ago
  I would argue it's "begrudgingly" rather than "happily".
- bachmeier 2y ago
  > Most users happily open bloat sites and pay with their privacy and being manipulated. You can use bloat sites and pay with your privacy and be manipulated for free or you can pay for the experience, but you'll be using bloat sites and pay with your privacy and be manipulated no matter what.
ahmedfromtunis 2y ago
> That's how news websites are supposed to look like. No, news websites don't have to be this sterile. I think NYT is a prime example of how to merge classic text-based articles with multimedia content in a way that's beneficial to the consumer.
- anthk 2y ago
  Use either Dillo or Netsurf with NYT and then we well talk. JS and ad bloat made HTML5 video and audio tags rendered null with no actual usage IRL.
  - 2y ago

l3x 2y ago

Similar (official): - lite.cnn.com - text.npr.org Unofficial: - 68k.news - skinnyguardian.xyz ... I'm sure there are plenty more!

anthk 2y ago
Sadly https://68k.news https://68k.news it's broken. But you can alwyas either use gopher://magical.fish/1/news under Lynx or Dillo with the Gopher plugin or head to http://portal.mozz.us/gopher/magical.fish/1/news http://portal.mozz.us/gopher/magical.fish/1/news under any browser, even the ancient ones from the Netscape 4 era.
sitzkrieg 2y ago
https://brutalist.report/ https://brutalist.report/ combines many sites
dublinben 2y ago
Also CBC.ca/lite as well.

shikck200 2y ago

Some issues with pagination. I would recommend a non limit offset combo. Right now i get an error: "You tried to access /world/" when manually change the offset.

theanonymousone 2y ago

Does anyone know about the legal implications of building such a "fronted"? Doesn't Reuters own the copyright zo the contents of their news articles? Can't they send a Cease & Desist (or worse) to the developer, given they are potentially losing some ad revenue? Or they can and simply don't bother?

cbg0 2y ago
If your alternative becomes popular they will sic their lawyers on you.
donohoe 2y ago
Yes, it’s copyright infringement. Yes, they can send a C&D to whomever is hosting the copies of their content. Yes, they are losing some minor potential ad income. They will likely bother if their legal department notices and thinks it rises to a level they must contend with. My guess is that it won’t.
- theanonymousone 2y ago
  Thanks. Is there some rule of thumb about how much should the article change so that the copyright doesn't apply any more? These points come to my mind: - There is a whole category of software called "news aggregators". Are they all infringers? How can they operate, apart from praying that the news outlet doesn't care? - News outlets quote each other, e.g. "According to Reuters", etc. Does that solve the copyright issue? Is it only the 100% verbatim copy that is copyrighted? Many thanks already for the insights.
  - manfre 2y ago
    Aggregators are references to content. Frontends are copies. You can't sidestep copyright with a "according to Reuters" preamble for the entire article text.
  - layer8 2y ago
    The rules are country-specific. For the US, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use#U.S._fair_use_factors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use#U.S._fair_use_factors. There is no simple rule of thumb.

wgx 2y ago

Is there a viable way for me to make every site load like this (iOS)? And optimally toggle back to the “full site” if I want to.

sunshadow 2y ago
I can make this in couple of weeks, but I need an incentive other than just having fun
szszrk 2y ago
Firefox reading mode? It won't work with all sites, though. A lot of large sites are insanely broken, so Firefox doesn't propose reading mode at all, or nothing loads. Honestly, I have only one way with dealing with those: not using those sites.
walterbell 2y ago
For individual websites on iOS, click the "aA" icon: Website Settings > Show Reader Automatically For every website on iOS: Settings > Safari > Settings for Websites > Reader > Other Websites

sunshadow 2y ago

What made you use caddy in front of tiny-http? I guess tiny-http should be still fine on its own. genuinely curious

lemagedurage 2y ago
Likely for its letsencrypt integration, maybe for HTTP/2 or HTTP/3

anthk 2y ago

What I'd love it's either a public Web Rendering Proxy or Browservice.

casey2 2y ago

Awesome site, but it just made me realize that Reuters can't capture my mind share. Most of these articles can't even be used for small talk Also I clicked on a few 301s in a row

oneeyedpigeon 2y ago

No feed?

HelloUsername 2y ago

Related: "Libredirect" Addon to redirect certain websites to privacy friendly front ends https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32916318 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32916318 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32288732 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32288732 Also "Redirector" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29665373 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29665373 On Safari iOS you could try "Stop The Madness" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31625804 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31625804

uncomplexity_ 2y ago

man i love the cleanliness sounded like a vasectomy site though haha

klibertp 2y ago

TIL: Reuters has a REST API: https://www.reuters.com/pf/api/v3/content/fetch/articles-by-search-v2 https://www.reuters.com/pf/api/v3/content/fetch/articles-by-... But I can't find any reference for it, somehow. How did the author know how to write this https://github.com/HookedBehemoth/neuters/tree/master/src/api https://github.com/HookedBehemoth/neuters/tree/master/src/ap... ?

insin 2y ago
You can see calls to it in the dev tools Network tab when browsing Reuters.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

quinncom 2y ago

Very cool! I’ve added the following as a redirect in Kagi: ^https://(www\.)?reuters\.com|https://neuters.de https://(www\.)?reuters\.com|https://neuters.de

mzd348 2y ago

Looks like you've basically created an RSS frontend for reuters.com. Which is useful since they seem to have got rid of their own feeds. Would be nice if you could add your own feed so that neuters is actually readable via RSS.

efxhoy 2y ago

Reuters really broke the site for me when they did what looked like a rewrite about a year ago. Glad to see this as I hardly read it anymore. bbc news is going downhill too, another prime candidate for a project like this.

nobodywillobsrv 2y ago

"News"

weMadeThat 2y ago

nice, are there extensions/userscripts that replace strings? "Syria this, France that" should turn into "Gov. this, Gov. that", for example

sigio 2y ago

Seems to be dead/down at the moment... noticed because my browser still showed me the same news as 2 days ago ;)