Comment by 1vuio0pswjnm7
3 months ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20260220191245if_/https://arstec...
archive.today is very popular on HN; the opaque, shortened URLs are promoted on HN every day
I can't use archive.today. I tried but gave up. Too many hassles. I might be in the minority but I know I'm not the only one. As it happens. I have not found any site that I cannot access without it
The most important issue with archive.today though is the person running it, their past and present behaviour. It speaks for itself
Whomever it is, they have lot of info about HN users' reading habits given that archive.today URLs are so heavily promoted by HN submitters, commenters and moderators
Archive.today wants/needs EDNS subnet
"Geolocation" as a justication is ambiguous
Why a need for geolocation
Geolocation can be used for multiple purposes
"DNS performance" is only one purpose
Other purposes might offer the user no benefit, and might even be undesirable for users
As a result, some users don't send EDNS subnet. It's always been optional to send it
Even public resolvers, third party DNS services, like Cloudflare, recognise the tradeoffs for users and allow users to avoid sending it. Popular DNS software makes compiling support for EDNS subnet optional
Archive.today wants/needs EDNS subnet so bad it tries to gather it using a tracking pixel or it tries to block users who dont send it, e.g., Cloudflare users
Thus, before one even considers all the other behaviour of this website operator, some of which is mentioned in this thread, there is a huge red flag for anyone who pays attention to EDNS subnet
As with almost all websites repeated DNS lookups are not an absolute requirement for successful HTTP requests
There are some IP addresses for archive.{today,is,md,ph,li,...} that have continued to work for years
I use archive.today all the time. How do you access pages, like for instance on the economist, without it?
With the paywall blocker so good it got banned! You can also get it on Android.
https://gitflic.ru/project/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-fire...
A Russian domain git website hosting just a readme.md and a copy of the MIT license but no source code? Just the extension files?
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For me, all archive.* links just present an endless captcha loop. I am not using CF DNS or any proxy/VPN, but even if I do try those things, it still doesn't work.
Years ago I used some other workaround that no longer works, maybe something like amp.economist.com. AMP with text-only browser was a useful workaround for many sites
Workarounds usually don't last forever. Websites change from time to time. This one will stop working at some point
There are some people who for various reasons cannot use archive.today
Which utility, extension, tool or language is that?
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for instance on the economist: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46060487
If dang and tomhow enforce a policy against paywalled content would garner less interest in accessing those pages via third parties. Most news gets reported by multiple outlets in general, so the same discussions would still surface.
> Whomever it is, they have lot of info about HN users' reading habits given that archive.today URLs are so heavily promoted by HN submitters, commenters and moderators
Anyone interested in the reading habits of HN users can just take a look at news.ycombinator.com ;)
> Whomever it is, they have lot of info about HN users' reading habits given that archive.today URLs are so heavily promoted by HN submitters, commenters and moderators
It's not promoted, it's just used as a paywall bypass so everyone can read the linked article.
you can change the tld of any archive.today link if .today doesn't work. for example archive.ph, archive.is, archive.md, etc
There's a DNS issue between Archive Today and some ISPs which causes their domains not to resolve properly, which is why some people have a lot of trouble using it.
Its not "a DNS issue" they are banned in many countries and there are ongoing court cases, so various enforcement mechanisms are used.
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The fact is i cant have a discussion about a paywalled article without reading it. Archive.today is popular as a paywall bypass because nobody wants HN to devolve into debate based on a headline where nobody has rtfa.
"archive.today" as used here means the collection of archive.tld domains, where .tld could be ".is", ".md", ".ph", etc.
"promoted" as used here means placing an archive.tld URL at the top of an HN thread so that many HN readers will follow it, or placing these URLs elsewhere in threads
>I can't use archive.today. I tried but gave up. Too many hassles.
What hassles have you experienced?
I use the Archive Page[0] extension which is really easy to use.
The only thing that annoys me about it is the repeated requests (starting about eight or nine months ago) to complete CAPTCHAs.
[0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/archive-page/
"The only thing that annoys me about it is the repeated requests (starting about eight or nine months ago) to complete CAPTCHAs"
What does this annoy you
>What does this annoy you
Prior to that I was rarely prompted with a CAPTCHA. Now it's every. single. time. I archive something or open an AT link.
Why doesn't that annoy you?
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