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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

#71

Post by donohoe »

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 encourage you to pay for a subscription to at least one or two news sites you respect - bonus points if its a small or medium local newsroom that benefits!

For me that has been; NYTimes, New Yorker, Wired, Teen Vogue, and my wife's hometown paper in Illinois.

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

#72

Post by Fnoord »

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

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

#74

Post by paulgb »

flutas wrote: post #50
hombre_fatal wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 12ft guy doesn’t look so great in that thread. He admits to ignoring the email (gosh I was busy mmkay?) and then argues that Vercel is lying about the extra work they had to do.

> gosh I was busy mmkay? Mischaracterization much? He was on Vacation. How many of us read every email for personal projects that comes in when you're half way across the world and supposed to be relaxing.

Sure, but if you go on vacation and don't check your email for two weeks, you can't really claim “no warning”. If two weeks isn’t sufficient notice because of vacation it’s fine to say so, but it’s not the same thing as “no warning” just because you’re not checking email.

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

#75

Post by janejeon »

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

Oh wow... I'm surprised that's enough. When I was researching scraping protection bypass, you had to do some real crazy stuff with the browser instance + using residential IPs at a minimum...

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

#76

Post by m-p-3 »

sva_ wrote: post #34
radlad wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a Firefox version?

https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-firefox-clea... It used to be in mozillas addon store, but they removed it, so have to install via dev mode

Or you can load this uBO filterlist, which should basically do the same thing as the extension

    https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-clean-filters/-/raw/main/bpc-paywall-filter.txt

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

#77

Post by lxe »

abofh wrote: post #16
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

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.

Very disappointing that this was the path Vercel chose to take. This is something I would expect from Google or Amazon, but not a developer darling like Vercel. Seems like all companies shed their values is service of growth and capitalism at some point or another. A shame.

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

#78

Post by penguin_booze »

sva_ wrote: post #34
radlad wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a Firefox version?

https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-firefox-clea... It used to be in mozillas addon store, but they removed it, so have to install via dev mode

No need for dev mode - signed XPIs are avaiable from releases: https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-firefox-clea....

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

#79

Post by explaininjs »

orphea wrote: post #68
JCharante wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They just had a big outage. What’s the probability of having another so soon?

If outages don't depend on each other, the probability is the same.

Why would you assume independence? I'd expect an outage to put people "on edge" for a period of time following the outage, during which changes are scrutinized to a higher degree, and/or a greater engineering focus/budget is dedicated to reliability to reflect the changed business/image requirements.

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

#80

Post by mejthemage »

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.

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