7 ms·

Pay- or registration-walled, alas.

by kmfrk 12y ago

MrBuddyCasino 12y ago
"Open in incognito window" did the trick for me.
- kmfrk 12y ago
  Did the trick. Thanks.
davidw 12y ago
FWIW, The Economist is a pretty good magazine (err, I mean "newspaper"), worth subscribing to.
- bellerocky 12y ago
  I get that it might be, but if I subscribed to all these news sites, the nytimes, the wsj, the economist, the information, the financial times, I'd be out a lot of money each month for what is basically an "I don't know how to use the icognito tab on my browser"-tax. I want to support these sites but they are too expensive, and it's too easy to circumvent their paywall. I actually subscribed to the nytimes for a month and I felt stupid for it, which is a weird feeling to have about it. The Information has a real pay wall, and it's actually the most expensive out of this list, but if I subscribed to it, at least I wouldn't feel like a jackass for doing so. These companies want the Google crawling and the subscription fees, but it seems like you can only have one.
  - ghshephard 12y ago
    So, you are saying, if the NYT did not allow casual use, then you would be fine paying for it, but the fact that it allows you to check out the site 5-10 times/month for free, means that you are not okay paying for it. Have you considered that if you are reading the site so often that you need to keep killing your cookies, that you perhaps might be getting some value from the site, and it wouldn't be unreasonable for you to to reward the creators of such great content?
    - bellerocky 12y ago
      > So, you are saying, if the NYT did not allow casual use The NyTimes is not doing that for "casual use" they are doing it to allow Google's crawler access to the site so it can be indexed and show up on search engine result pages. This is why the incognito trick works on so many news websites. > that you need to keep killing your cookies I don't kill my cookies, I just cmd+shift+n to open incognito. As for supporting sites I value, I visit so many of these sites, and read them, that I would potentially face financial ruin if I had to pay for them all. I get it, I want to support them, but I cannot, not at those prices, not when I can just open my incognito window, and not when even though I pay for the site I still have to deal with ads that roll down content as I'm trying to read it. And I imagine you might have adblock enabled while you're sitting there judging me about not giving them cash for accessing the site. ;)
      - chc 12y ago
        The incognito trick has nothing to do with the Googlebot. Sites can definitively know the Googlebot by its IP, and Google doesn't care about if other visitors with no referrer see a paywall. The probably reason the New York Times doesn't use a more comprehensive paywall is that those generally have failure modes like accidentally blocking humans who haven't been on your site before. Sites like the New York Times have weak paywalls to be user-friendly, not because it's required by Google.
        foobarqux 12y ago
        It doesn't have anything to do with Googlebot, it has to do with Google's "ghosting" rules: You can't have inaccessible pages be indexed, you need to permit visitors X views free per day/month.
        chc 12y ago
        Only when the referrer is a Google-owned domain. This has nothing to do with opening a link in an incognito window.
      - 12y ago
  - k-mcgrady 12y ago
    >> "I want to support these sites but they are too expensive" I've been thinking about this a bit recently. Back before these sites were free online we picked the publication we liked and purchased it. We didn't need to read every publication and someone who chose to read the NYT was informed on the same world events as someone who read the WSJ. Then the internet came along and we read bits of everything for free. Now we have to go back to the old model it feels strange - but it shouldn't. Whether you chose to subscribe to and read the NYT or WSJ doesn't matter. You'll get the same information each with it's own slant. Same as before. You aren't going to miss anything. The publications need to convince consumers that this is ok and they don't need to be checking 10 different publications each day. Whether they can do that or not is another thing (short attention spans appear to be a big and growing problem) but I've definitely tried to pare down the number of sites I read and subscribe to and I've tried to focus on the best sources rather than 10 almost identical stories with slight variations. I've found it freeing.
    - bitJericho 12y ago
      What we need is like a spotify for news. Anybody can put their news in and if a reader reads an article that news company gets part of the subscription fees. I don't know if that would be better or worse though!
      - k-mcgrady 12y ago
        I like that idea. Although I have to say switching from lots of sources to a few good ones has increased my productivity (less time wasted reading similar articles). There are some things that I think people like NYT need to sort out with their subscriptions. Charging for web access separate from mobile access is a joke. Charge one fee ($20 per month) to read on any electronic device. I can't see how their current fragmented pricing model doesn't seriously hurt their conversion rate.
        bitJericho 12y ago
        Well users could sort out by publisher so they can read news only from their local newspaper and/or the NYT or something else or if they'd rather read all tech news, a place like HN can be integrated somehow to allow for the dynamic community sorted news.
- kmfrk 12y ago
  I'm subscribed to three newspaper already, so I feel like I've hit my quota. :)
- smackfu 12y ago
  Very expensive though. A lot of the time you can use frequent flyer miles to subscribe though, which is much more reasonable.
- throwaway27237 12y ago
  I've been a subscriber to the print magazine for a few years now, and honestly I think it's been going downhill, at least when it comes to political news. Where they used to have pretty thoughtful commentary, I now get the feeling I'm mostly reading western propaganda with little regards to the facts. I guess their business section is still okay, and their technology quarterlies are often interesting.
chucknelson 12y ago
Weird, no pay wall for me. I had ad-block installed in Chrome, so I'm not sure if that is doing something.
- SuperChihuahua 12y ago
  It depends on how many articles you've read! Read X articles for free - then paywall
coder23 12y ago
What, are, you doing? Don't risk your safety and sanity, install a javascript blocker.
- rbinv 12y ago
  Not really feasible nowadays. Too many sites fully rely on JS.
  - coder23 12y ago
    I disagree. It is completely possible with just a little effort. Here are very simple guidelines for using NoScript: Automatically block everything, if you trust a site, add it to a whitelist. Most sites work without js, if they don't, then selectively enable scripts you need and keep others, you don't trust disabled. Enabling scripts( or all of them ) for the current site requires a single click. You can keep a js disabled and only enable parts of the site with clicking on blocked elements.
    - EpicEng 12y ago
      I did exactly this... for a while. It just ends up being a huge pain in the ass. It's fine if you only ever go to the same sites, but it really becomes onerous when you use sites like, well, HN, which has you clicking on links to addresses that you've never visited before. Not worth the hassle imo.
BenoitP 12y ago
(In Chrome) 1. F12 2. Resources 3. Cookies 4. right click www.economist.com, clear 5. F5

Pay- or registration-walled, alas.

by kmfrk 12y ago

Pay- or registration-walled, alas.

MrBuddyCasino 12y ago

"Open in incognito window" did the trick for me.

kmfrk 12y ago
Did the trick. Thanks.

davidw 12y ago

FWIW, The Economist is a pretty good magazine (err, I mean "newspaper"), worth subscribing to.

bellerocky 12y ago
I get that it might be, but if I subscribed to all these news sites, the nytimes, the wsj, the economist, the information, the financial times, I'd be out a lot of money each month for what is basically an "I don't know how to use the icognito tab on my browser"-tax. I want to support these sites but they are too expensive, and it's too easy to circumvent their paywall. I actually subscribed to the nytimes for a month and I felt stupid for it, which is a weird feeling to have about it. The Information has a real pay wall, and it's actually the most expensive out of this list, but if I subscribed to it, at least I wouldn't feel like a jackass for doing so. These companies want the Google crawling and the subscription fees, but it seems like you can only have one.
- ghshephard 12y ago
  So, you are saying, if the NYT did not allow casual use, then you would be fine paying for it, but the fact that it allows you to check out the site 5-10 times/month for free, means that you are not okay paying for it. Have you considered that if you are reading the site so often that you need to keep killing your cookies, that you perhaps might be getting some value from the site, and it wouldn't be unreasonable for you to to reward the creators of such great content?
  - bellerocky 12y ago
    > So, you are saying, if the NYT did not allow casual use The NyTimes is not doing that for "casual use" they are doing it to allow Google's crawler access to the site so it can be indexed and show up on search engine result pages. This is why the incognito trick works on so many news websites. > that you need to keep killing your cookies I don't kill my cookies, I just cmd+shift+n to open incognito. As for supporting sites I value, I visit so many of these sites, and read them, that I would potentially face financial ruin if I had to pay for them all. I get it, I want to support them, but I cannot, not at those prices, not when I can just open my incognito window, and not when even though I pay for the site I still have to deal with ads that roll down content as I'm trying to read it. And I imagine you might have adblock enabled while you're sitting there judging me about not giving them cash for accessing the site. ;)
    - chc 12y ago
      The incognito trick has nothing to do with the Googlebot. Sites can definitively know the Googlebot by its IP, and Google doesn't care about if other visitors with no referrer see a paywall. The probably reason the New York Times doesn't use a more comprehensive paywall is that those generally have failure modes like accidentally blocking humans who haven't been on your site before. Sites like the New York Times have weak paywalls to be user-friendly, not because it's required by Google.
      - foobarqux 12y ago
        It doesn't have anything to do with Googlebot, it has to do with Google's "ghosting" rules: You can't have inaccessible pages be indexed, you need to permit visitors X views free per day/month.
        chc 12y ago
        Only when the referrer is a Google-owned domain. This has nothing to do with opening a link in an incognito window.
    - 12y ago
- k-mcgrady 12y ago
  >> "I want to support these sites but they are too expensive" I've been thinking about this a bit recently. Back before these sites were free online we picked the publication we liked and purchased it. We didn't need to read every publication and someone who chose to read the NYT was informed on the same world events as someone who read the WSJ. Then the internet came along and we read bits of everything for free. Now we have to go back to the old model it feels strange - but it shouldn't. Whether you chose to subscribe to and read the NYT or WSJ doesn't matter. You'll get the same information each with it's own slant. Same as before. You aren't going to miss anything. The publications need to convince consumers that this is ok and they don't need to be checking 10 different publications each day. Whether they can do that or not is another thing (short attention spans appear to be a big and growing problem) but I've definitely tried to pare down the number of sites I read and subscribe to and I've tried to focus on the best sources rather than 10 almost identical stories with slight variations. I've found it freeing.
  - bitJericho 12y ago
    What we need is like a spotify for news. Anybody can put their news in and if a reader reads an article that news company gets part of the subscription fees. I don't know if that would be better or worse though!
    - k-mcgrady 12y ago
      I like that idea. Although I have to say switching from lots of sources to a few good ones has increased my productivity (less time wasted reading similar articles). There are some things that I think people like NYT need to sort out with their subscriptions. Charging for web access separate from mobile access is a joke. Charge one fee ($20 per month) to read on any electronic device. I can't see how their current fragmented pricing model doesn't seriously hurt their conversion rate.
      - bitJericho 12y ago
        Well users could sort out by publisher so they can read news only from their local newspaper and/or the NYT or something else or if they'd rather read all tech news, a place like HN can be integrated somehow to allow for the dynamic community sorted news.
kmfrk 12y ago
I'm subscribed to three newspaper already, so I feel like I've hit my quota. :)
smackfu 12y ago
Very expensive though. A lot of the time you can use frequent flyer miles to subscribe though, which is much more reasonable.
throwaway27237 12y ago
I've been a subscriber to the print magazine for a few years now, and honestly I think it's been going downhill, at least when it comes to political news. Where they used to have pretty thoughtful commentary, I now get the feeling I'm mostly reading western propaganda with little regards to the facts. I guess their business section is still okay, and their technology quarterlies are often interesting.

chucknelson 12y ago

Weird, no pay wall for me. I had ad-block installed in Chrome, so I'm not sure if that is doing something.

SuperChihuahua 12y ago
It depends on how many articles you've read! Read X articles for free - then paywall

coder23 12y ago

What, are, you doing? Don't risk your safety and sanity, install a javascript blocker.

rbinv 12y ago
Not really feasible nowadays. Too many sites fully rely on JS.
- coder23 12y ago
  I disagree. It is completely possible with just a little effort. Here are very simple guidelines for using NoScript: Automatically block everything, if you trust a site, add it to a whitelist. Most sites work without js, if they don't, then selectively enable scripts you need and keep others, you don't trust disabled. Enabling scripts( or all of them ) for the current site requires a single click. You can keep a js disabled and only enable parts of the site with clicking on blocked elements.
  - EpicEng 12y ago
    I did exactly this... for a while. It just ends up being a huge pain in the ass. It's fine if you only ever go to the same sites, but it really becomes onerous when you use sites like, well, HN, which has you clicking on links to addresses that you've never visited before. Not worth the hassle imo.

BenoitP 12y ago

(In Chrome) 1. F12 2. Resources 3. Cookies 4. right click www.economist.com, clear 5. F5