If you’re on Firefox on desktop/laptop, check out Bypass Paywall [0]. It was removed from the firefox add-on store due to a DMCA claim [1], but can be manually installed (and auto updates) from gitlab. The dev even provides instructions on how to add custom filters to uBlock Origin [2], so you don’t have to add another extension but still get some benefit.
Yes, it’s been on my roadmap for a while. I also created a pull request several months ago to enter the repo but it was never accepted (it’s also my fault because I didn’t follow the verification process properly).
It amazes me that all it takes is just changing user agent to Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 6.0.1; Nexus 5X Build/MMB29P) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/W.X.Y.Z Mobile Safari/537.36 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html) and it can bypass paywalls on many sites? I thought those sites would try harder (e.g. checking if the ip address is truly belong to google), but apparently not.
Same. I thought there would be more stuff happening in the background but when I saw it’s just hijacking the google bot headers to display the html i was a bit disappointed it’s so stupidly easy.
Checking ip ownership is a moving target more likely to result in outcomes these sites don’t want (accidentally blocking google bots and preventing results from appearing on google).
Checking useragent is cheap, easier, unlikely to break (for this purpose, anyway) and the percentage of folks who know how to bypass this check is relatively slim, with a pretty small financial impact.
Google literally has an official list of IP ranges for their crawlers, complete with an API that returns the current IP ranges that you can use to automate a check. Hardly a moving target, and even if it is, it doesn’t matter if you know exactly where the target is at all times.
That has nothing to do with the topic, you’re right, I could’ve put it more nicely. I’m just tired of “compile it yourself” to people without computers being considered an appropriate answer for a criticism of bad distribution. This app seems wonderfully useful and could have huge popularity, but it’s being artificially gatekept by the creator.
Damn FOSS Android Auto development is starting the new year off strong! First grapheneOS successfully implementing it on a non-stock OS and now this too. Too bad I got rid of my vehicles last year and no longer have a use for it on my ebike.
While at the same time closing all PRs indiscriminately, even the ones that are just trying to update the repo from its decades old JavaScript syntax (and get support in the comments)
I hate adware and nagware, but I respect it here. From the get-go you know this is a space where this person gets paid. This is just an extension of that.
I was about to pay for simphonium app because was the best looking app for navidrome. Thanks for this amazing app , it looks great , it is super fast and responsive. Really great work where I can donate to it?
It has the potential to be the fediverse app, allowing users to curate content from any other ActivityPub platform in one app only. Do you want to see and interact with communities from Lemmy and photos from PixelFeed? Do you want only Mastodon and PixelFeed? Or Lemmy and PeerTube?
I know you can do that with other platforms, but they maintain their own content visualization, like viewing a Lemmy post in Mastodon looks odd.
I like the idea of separate tabs to see different content the right way.
Also, it’s easier to install. I remember the old days when Friendica used to be in Softaculous and other auto installers used in shared hostings.
Before it gets more love I think it probably needs a flagship instance. Friendica’s one of a handful of older fediverse projects where it is legitimately difficult to find an instance to sign up on.
Peertube as far as i can tell does not have a flagship instance, and seems to be doing fairly well, venera.social works better for me then another instance i tried which had random log offs and seems fairly popular.
Peertube absolutely also has this problem but I’m not sure general peertube instances really make sense at this point anyhow. There are a couple of hobby instances but if you’re not into that there’s not a whole lot you can do.
I remember when I could install Friendika (yes, that long ago) on a low spec web host. Probably 15 years ago, and it didn’t last.
Like you say, it ought to be the easily self hosted alternative to Facebook. The one you could suggest to your non-techie relative as a Fediverse gateway. Yet after a couple decades of development, it’s still esoteric and awkward.
I met the main developer at the CCC congress two days ago, and we talked about it a bit. The problem is that he is only a backend developer, and the front ends for Friendica are a really old and messy codebase.
I think the best option for Friendica would be to fork one of the available alternative front ends for Mastodon and adapt it for the additional functionality of Friendica. But they need a frontend dev to help out with that.
Friendica is a Facebook-like app? Which means you use your real identity and connect to real life friends. This also means all that data gets passed around to any instance that wants it via activity pub. Given the potential for abuse there that is just inherent to the app, I don’t think I would ever be interested in a service like Friendica.
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