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Show HN: Ladder, open source alternative to 12ft.io and 1ft.io

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Re: Show HN: Ladder, open source alternative to 12ft.io and 1ft.io

#101

Post by ComputerGuru »

withinboredom wrote: post #28
2cpu1container wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did try 13ft. But it misses several points. The ladder applies custom rules to inject code. It basically modifies the origin website to remove the Paywall. It rewrites (most of) the links and assets in the origins HTML to avoid CORS Errors by routing thru the local proxy. The ladder uses Golangs fiber/fasthttp, which is significantly faster than Python (biased opinion) . Several small features like basic auth ...

> The ladder uses Golangs fiber/fasthttp, which is significantly faster than Python I have a feeling that this performance difference is practically imperceptible to regular humans. It's like optimizing CPU performance when the bottleneck is the database.

Not for any publicly hosted instance, it’s not. We’re not talking about the time it takes to perform one request but the scalability it affords a small vm to handle so many requests in parallel when it is being used by the general public.

Re: Show HN: Ladder, open source alternative to 12ft.io and 1ft.io

#102

Post by ComputerGuru »

Fnoord wrote: post #72
janejeon wrote: post #24

Really dummy question: how do services like this work? As in, how do they bypass these paywalls? The obvious thing is to mock Googlebot, but site owners can check that the request isn't coming from a Google-published IP and see that it's a fake, right?

Some possible clues: > https://github.com/kubero-dev/ladder#environment-variables > USER_AGENT User agent to emulate Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; + http://www.google.com/bot.html ) > X_FORWARDED_FOR IP forwarder address 66.249.66.1 > RULESET URL to a ruleset file https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kubero-dev/ladder/main/rul... or /path/to/my/rules.yaml

I don’t know of any off-the-shelf product that respects X_FORWARDED_FOR unless the current request ip originates from a whitelisted (or lan) address.

Re: Show HN: Ladder, open source alternative to 12ft.io and 1ft.io

#103

Post by ComputerGuru »

matsemann wrote: post #47
calflegal wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

related: If this is how they work, why doesn't google offer a private service to allow publishers to have content indexed while still protected?

It used to be against guidelines to serve different content to google vs what users would see. Not sure if still the case, but I don't think it's in google's interest to give a result that the user actually can't access.

I’m not aware that this policy has changed. What has changed is that Google will rank results it can’t (officially) index without showing their content. I’m guessing they do shadow index them but use the whole “if you outwardly can’t tell they did then it’s as if they didn’t” C++ compilers use to get away with insane optimizations.

Re: Show HN: Ladder, open source alternative to 12ft.io and 1ft.io

#104

Post by QkPrsMizkYvt »

mejthemage wrote: post #80
donohoe wrote: post #71

I use services like this as I often skip news site paywalls because I just can't afford, nor is it practical, to have so many subscriptions. That said, I work in news media (and have been involved in building paywalls at different orgs - NYT and New Yorker). I know how money for these directly support journalism - salaries and the costs with associated with any story. If you are skipping paywalls a lot, I would encou…

There's a huge need for subscription bundles. I'd gladly pay $20/mo for access to a bunch of big names, even if I'm limited to like 60 articles per month combined across those sources. Instead I just don't pay anyone, turn back when I encounter a paywall and look for someone's summary if I'm really interested.

There used to be an app called scroll (https://twitter.com/tryscroll?lang=en), which got bought by Twitter, which is now part of subscription, but only for the top articles. Informed.so is doing something similar but different: https://www.informed.so/

The problem creating such a service is that most media houses believe that their content is the best thing since sliced bread and thus they often don't want to partner. Even though most of their content isn't that unique. Of course, some publications do have unique content, e.g. nyt, bloomberg.

I could see artifact being an interesting company to tackle this though (https://artifact.news/). They are already sending traffic to news sites and only serving what the user wants. If they now let me bypass paywalls for $20 that would be nice.

Re: Show HN: Ladder, open source alternative to 12ft.io and 1ft.io

#105

Post by boplicity »

Slightly edited "Why":

Access to private property is an essential pillar of democracy and the safe proliferation of ideas. While property owners have legitimate financial interests, it is crucial to strike a balance between property and the public's right to access property. The proliferation of locks on doors raises concerns about the erosion of this fundamental freedom, and it is imperative for society to find innovative ways to preserve access to people's homes and workspaces without compromising the sustainability of property ownership.. In a world where property should be shared and not commodified, locks should be critically examined to ensure that they do not undermine the principles of an open and informed society.

Re: Show HN: Ladder, open source alternative to 12ft.io and 1ft.io

#106

Post by ensignavenger »

benjaminwootton wrote: post #64
abofh wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lovely, the Google classic "ban the world" approach -- I've been desperately trying to move my client off of vercel, this might just be the gasoline.

I followed this drama on Twitter. The author was breaking the terms of service and creating DMCA support burden for Vercel. They had proactively been in touch with him a few times to reach a solution. I think it’s quite reasonable that they blocked the account rather than the project. You wouldn’t have got that level of service from big tech.

Care to provide any links? The Twitter claim above is that their was no communication and the ban occurred on a Friday.

Re: Show HN: Ladder, open source alternative to 12ft.io and 1ft.io

#107

Post by [deleted] »

some1else wrote: post #10

Relevant: 12ft.io was banned by Vercel, taking down the developer's entire account with multiple other hosted projects & domains: https://twitter.com/thmsmlr/status/1718663563353755982 Edit: Access to other projects & domains was apparently restored some time after: https://twitter.com/thmsmlr/status/1719480558932148272

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: Ladder, open source alternative to 12ft.io and 1ft.io

#108

Post by oh_sigh »

2cpu1container wrote: post #4
SigmundurM wrote: post #2

You mention 13ft as another open source inspiration. How is Ladder improving on what 13ft does?

I did try 13ft. But it misses several points. The ladder applies custom rules to inject code. It basically modifies the origin website to remove the Paywall. It rewrites (most of) the links and assets in the origins HTML to avoid CORS Errors by routing thru the local proxy. The ladder uses Golangs fiber/fasthttp, which is significantly faster than Python (biased opinion) . Several small features like basic auth ...

If the paywall is implemented in client code, then usually just disabling javascript for the site is enough to let you view it. If it is implemented server side, then there usually isn't a way around it without an account.

Re: Show HN: Ladder, open source alternative to 12ft.io and 1ft.io

#109

Post by stetrain »

donohoe wrote: post #71

I use services like this as I often skip news site paywalls because I just can't afford, nor is it practical, to have so many subscriptions. That said, I work in news media (and have been involved in building paywalls at different orgs - NYT and New Yorker). I know how money for these directly support journalism - salaries and the costs with associated with any story. If you are skipping paywalls a lot, I would encou…

My personal experience with this has been that paying for a subscription still gets me inundated with ads and marketing (often more now that I'm on their official mailing list), is still inconvenient since I may not be logged in to every news site on every device where I may follow an article link, and leaves me to fight through dark patterns to unsubscribe, since a button to allow you to cancel online is clearly dark magic that has not yet been invented.

I do wish there was a better way for me to share an account across multiple news sites that let me properly pay for good journalism without these issues. I do subscribe to a very local news source that seems to handle this a lot better, but they also don't paywall (most) of their primary content.

In the meantime I do find it strange that so many sites wish to gain the advantage of advertising that they have put up an article on the web, without actually providing that article. I have no issue with paid content, but when that content gets listed in search engine results and social media links like a web page, but clicking on it does not behave like a web page, It feels something feels like something has broken from the idea of the linkable World Wide Web.

Re: Show HN: Ladder, open source alternative to 12ft.io and 1ft.io

#110

Post by [deleted] »

some1else wrote: post #10

Relevant: 12ft.io was banned by Vercel, taking down the developer's entire account with multiple other hosted projects & domains: https://twitter.com/thmsmlr/status/1718663563353755982 Edit: Access to other projects & domains was apparently restored some time after: https://twitter.com/thmsmlr/status/1719480558932148272

[deleted]
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