mewtwo on Nostr: I don’t understand how the New York Times is in business. I mean, I do, but… Let ...
I don’t understand how the New York Times is in business. I mean, I do, but… Let me explain.
Here’s how their web application works.
You click on an article.
Your browser sends a request for the article content, and receives from the NYT server the entire content of the article. (!!!)
THEN, your browser automatically sends another request that checks if you have permission to view that article. If you don’t, then the application runs code to put a blocker in front of the article, so you can’t physically see it.
In case you haven’t caught it… This means the ENTIRE ARTICLE is sent to your computer BEFORE it checks if you’re a paid subscriber.
we have to change the way we think about computers and the internet
In this case, you (and the New York Times, apparently) need to realize that you can actually control every request that is, or is NOT, sent from your computer.
In a typical browser, everything happens automatically. So, if you’re interacting with a web application, you might click something that triggers several requests to send one after the other.
But, you’re perfectly capable of sending these requests one at a time, manually. You might not be familiar with how to technically do that, and to you, it might be a major pain. Set that aside for now, and know that it is 100% factual that this is possible.
That means you can simply send request 1 and stop there. That’s why I put (!!!) next to it.
Yes. With the way the NYT website is set up, you can view any NYT article for free. It sends you the entire article before it checks whether or not you should have permission to read it.
I don’t understand how every single NYT article isn’t immediately distributed throughout the internet for free the moment it’s posted.
But I do. It’s all about speed and convenience. It’s too inconvenient for most of NYT’s paid subscribers to learn how to do this. Let me tell you - this would be a really simple thing to learn. It could take most people 10 minutes. But most people don’t know where to look to learn something like that, and, if I had to guess, they wouldn’t take the time anyway.
See, there’s no way the NYT doesn’t actually know about this flaw. I’m 1000% certain that dozens if not hundreds or thousands of ethical hackers have reported this to them. Technology has advanced at such a pace that even though NYT’s entire platform could be undermined with a simple browser plugin, they haven’t taken the time to rearrange the order of two requests to prevent this from happening because… They don’t need to. People don’t know how anything works. People don’t know how broken things are.
This kind of thing is all over the internet. Bitcoin is already changing how people think about the internet. Pessimistically, I think this will have a limited effect. We’ll see how this place does. Maybe one day web applications be built in a sane way.
That is all, carry on.
Here’s how their web application works.
You click on an article.
Your browser sends a request for the article content, and receives from the NYT server the entire content of the article. (!!!)
THEN, your browser automatically sends another request that checks if you have permission to view that article. If you don’t, then the application runs code to put a blocker in front of the article, so you can’t physically see it.
In case you haven’t caught it… This means the ENTIRE ARTICLE is sent to your computer BEFORE it checks if you’re a paid subscriber.
we have to change the way we think about computers and the internet
In this case, you (and the New York Times, apparently) need to realize that you can actually control every request that is, or is NOT, sent from your computer.
In a typical browser, everything happens automatically. So, if you’re interacting with a web application, you might click something that triggers several requests to send one after the other.
But, you’re perfectly capable of sending these requests one at a time, manually. You might not be familiar with how to technically do that, and to you, it might be a major pain. Set that aside for now, and know that it is 100% factual that this is possible.
That means you can simply send request 1 and stop there. That’s why I put (!!!) next to it.
Yes. With the way the NYT website is set up, you can view any NYT article for free. It sends you the entire article before it checks whether or not you should have permission to read it.
I don’t understand how every single NYT article isn’t immediately distributed throughout the internet for free the moment it’s posted.
But I do. It’s all about speed and convenience. It’s too inconvenient for most of NYT’s paid subscribers to learn how to do this. Let me tell you - this would be a really simple thing to learn. It could take most people 10 minutes. But most people don’t know where to look to learn something like that, and, if I had to guess, they wouldn’t take the time anyway.
See, there’s no way the NYT doesn’t actually know about this flaw. I’m 1000% certain that dozens if not hundreds or thousands of ethical hackers have reported this to them. Technology has advanced at such a pace that even though NYT’s entire platform could be undermined with a simple browser plugin, they haven’t taken the time to rearrange the order of two requests to prevent this from happening because… They don’t need to. People don’t know how anything works. People don’t know how broken things are.
This kind of thing is all over the internet. Bitcoin is already changing how people think about the internet. Pessimistically, I think this will have a limited effect. We’ll see how this place does. Maybe one day web applications be built in a sane way.
That is all, carry on.