conuly | This is a fun little timewaster

You're viewing

conuly's journal
Create a Dreamwidth Account Learn More

Reload page in style: site light

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

moem

It may just be me, but I don't click on links if I can't see where they're going. Since this is your journal, feel free to ignore!

From:

sonia

Seconded. I really appreciate your links and I assume there's a reason you're using bitly.

At the same time, I've been wanting to request that you leave the original links visible, or at least say what site they're going to, so I don't use up my NY Times or Washington Post articles on things I'm only vaguely curious about.

From:

conuly

When a link is from the Washington Post or the NY Times, the bitly link typically will read wa.po/whatever or nyti.ms/whatever. The LA Times is lat.ms/whatever.

Although when it comes to that, I find the Post paywall to be utterly laughable - you can delete cookies and bypass it or, if you don't want to, stop a page from loading halfway through and bypass it that way. And I think you can still bypass the NY Times paywall by just googling the article title and clicking through that way.

(Though right now I've just downloaded an extension that bypasses most paywalls for me, so I don't even have to do that.)

From:

sonia

Huh, useful to know about that extension, thanks! I wondered if you had a LOT of subscriptions.

From:

conuly

Lol, no.

There's also the old standby of opening up paywalled articles in a different browser.

From:

marahmarie

Let me point you in the right direction (for Firefox but you can check for Chrome store equivalents): https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/bypasspaywalls/

Some websites also have annoying "sign up for our newsletter" or "disable adblocker" interstitials; to zap them there's this: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/disable-javascript/

For reading on the phone: Firefox works on Android and supports all the same add-ons as the desktop version.

And the MSN News app lets you read as many WaPo or NYT links as they publish without hitting paywalls, unlike Google News and some others. The SmartNews app lets you read as many as they publish using their SmartView feature, which downloads all the articles for offline viewing once you open the app.

From:

sonia

Thanks for the info! I had found that extension for Firefox once I knew it existed, and look forward to enjoying it.

From:

marahmarie

Cool, you're welcome. :)

From:

conuly

And the MSN News app lets you read as many WaPo or NYT links as they publish without hitting paywalls, unlike Google News and some others. The SmartNews app lets you read as many as they publish using their SmartView feature, which downloads all the articles for offline viewing once you open the app.

Nifty!

From:

marahmarie

Oh yeah. It's the only way I can read material that's kind of, how do you say, above my pay grade, I guess. :)

From:

conuly

It's easier for me to keep the links short for other reasons, and I like being able to see that 500 people (or whatever) clicked on my links on any given day.

I typically take the text directly from the title or, sometimes, from the first paragraph, so you can google the title if it's really interesting, or you can ask me if you want. Then I diabolically can laugh at getting more comments too.