7 ms·

Text only news websites (2022)

197 points by michaelrkn 3y ago

hoppyhoppy2 3y ago
There's also http://text.npr.org/ http://text.npr.org/
- FunnyLookinHat 3y ago
  This was a lifeline for me when we were on an unstable DSL line for a year!
- mananaysiempre 3y ago
  Which I find intensely funny, because it’s forced on all EU IP addresses as an ostensible downgrade, but since they’ve added a decent CSS snippet to limit the line width I actually find it superior to the “full” version.
- js2 3y ago
  It's mentioned in the article under "Other Sites".
- O1111OOO 3y ago
  > There's also http://text.npr.org/ http://text.npr.org/ Lots of great sources in the link below. I already had my own list of the usual players but this link covers many more I didn't know existed: https://greycoder.com/a-list-of-text-only-new-sites/ https://greycoder.com/a-list-of-text-only-new-sites/ The only site that I rarely see mentioned (or included in the link above) is : http://www.dailymail.co.uk/textbased/channel-561/index.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/textbased/channel-561/index.html
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
freediverx 3y ago
Not sure of the premise behind this, so maybe I’m missing the point, but why not curate quality news sources and access them via an rss news reader like NetNewsWire?
- reaperducer 3y ago
  I can think of a couple of reasons: - He sees no point in adding another layer of abstraction and complexity to something simple. - he's into retro computing, and old machines can't handle NNW. - Fewer and fewer web sites support RSS, so using NNW limits his options. - Sometimes you want to read the news from a particular web site, and not graze at a buffet.
  - palata 3y ago
    Do fewer and fewer websites support RSS? All blog frameworks have support by default...
    - hammyhavoc 3y ago
      No, people just assume that they don't have one due to no RSS icon. `/feed` slug is standard for finding feeds these days. Equally, why not just use one of the many FOSS tools to scrape sites that don't offer RSS feeds and DIY your own? This is a long-solved problem; RSS remains wonderful.
      - palata 3y ago
        I love RSS. I actually believe that it may become more relevant in the future, now that AI is so good at producing noise. It will be more and more difficult to make a Google/DDG/Kagi search and spot the autogenerated crap. So maybe it will be time to manually select blogs/websites we like and trust. And RSS is amazing for that.
        hammyhavoc 3y ago
        100% my thoughts, mate. I definitely see it becoming the go-to tool for many in the future. It's got a lot going for it, including authenticated access to premium feeds, ergo people can monetize and allow their content to be consumed in a way that makes sense to the end user. Still one of my favourite things to emerge on the net. Especially being able to filter through feeds!
croisillon 3y ago
axios.com has almost only text, other than that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events is really good
halotrope 3y ago
Check out https://markets.sh https://markets.sh news. They are actually text only, from many different sources, clustered and summarized. It is really good to get a gist of what’s currently important without having to “read news” with the known nuisances that come with it. Edit, thank you for the feedback. Some clarifications: - we launched the news feature literally yesterday, it is MVP level so expect inaccuracies especially in the summaries. We are using our own models and are in the process of tuning and refining them. Clicking on the cluster will give you the actual headline, titles and sources for each cluster. - the ordering of the feed is super simple right now. We will improve the weighting based on recency, magnitude of the story, coverage, parties involved etc. - This is not text-only like text.npr.org but in the sense of not being stuffed with ads, autoplay videos and images. Both a real text-only statically rendered page and RSS feed are in the works.
- uxcolumbo 3y ago
  Nice. Did you build this? If so, what's the tech stack you used? I like the interface - compact and fast.
  - halotrope 3y ago
    Thanks! Yeah, I’m one of the founders. It’s Nextjs on Supabase. We launched the news clustering just yesterday so I thought it would be nice to get some stealth HN feedback for it. We are planning to launch an API (rss style) for the news next week where you can get temporal clusters and everything. Imagine having full access to all of Twitter trending but across all news sources. We are trying to filter clickbait, SEO spam as effectively as possible while keeping nuance to the dataset. Please sign up for an account or follow us on twitter if you would like to stay in the loop.
    - SpaghettiX 3y ago
      Genuine question: I wonder why you didn't think to disclose your relationship with the product? I notice this a lot, and it ruins my perspective of the product. Haven't you seen people start their comments with "full disclosure, I made this" type sentences.
k1m 3y ago
I run an experimental service to turn web articles into plain text (No HTML) by prefixing the URL with 'txtifiy.it/'. Doesn't work on all articles: https://txtify.it https://txtify.it
- codazoda 3y ago
  Suggestion… Assume “https” if it’s not explicitly entered.
defrost 3y ago
(2020) !! .. and already dated wrt Thomson Reuters Foundation Trust link ( news.trust.org ) which is now archived and replaced by https://www.context.news/ https://www.context.news/
agumonkey 3y ago
We should make an 'awesome-text-only' github repo with all these.
- yasenn 3y ago
  There is `chubin/awesome-console-services`[0] Btw, Igor Chubin is the author of great CLI services such as: cheat.sh[1], late.nz[2], QRenco.de[3],rate.sx[4] [0] https://github.com/chubin/awesome-console-services https://github.com/chubin/awesome-console-services [1] https://github.com/chubin/cheat.sh https://github.com/chubin/cheat.sh [2] https://github.com/chubin/late.nz https://github.com/chubin/late.nz [3] https://github.com/chubin/qrenco.de https://github.com/chubin/qrenco.de [4] https://github.com/chubin/rate.sx https://github.com/chubin/rate.sx
- yosito 3y ago
  Ok. Courtesy of ChatGPT: https://github.com/localjo/awesome-text-only-news https://github.com/localjo/awesome-text-only-news
  - agumonkey 3y ago
    bookmarked
thazework 3y ago
Until a few days ago the best solution for text only + no ads + offline reading was a kindle subscription to whichever periodical you fancy. This is gone now. Nook still has a newstand store (for now?) but I haven't used it so can't comment on the formatting and UX.
- antiframe 3y ago
  I still subscribe to text (and images, but no video), no ads, offline reading news sites on my Kindle. Not through the Kindle subscription but through a local downloader (Calibre).
dreen 3y ago
One issue is that news sites article content is written to maximise ad impressions. Ads inject between paragraphs typically so you need lots of paragraphs. You start with perhaps two paragraphs of actual information, then break it down into 4 or more and add more information about related topics. Add some opinions, maybe weave in links to related articles on your site, and you end up with 10 or so paragraphs insterspersed with ads and pictures. You can remove the ads and pictures but you can't remove the bullshit. We need a good AI tldr machine.
- Dalewyn 3y ago
  I don't need an automatic TL;DR machine to tell me news articles aren't worth reading.
- dredmorbius 3y ago
  I've counted upwards of ten advertising insertions in WaPo articles. Between paragraphs. On desktop, I'll nuke any interstitial element (including "related stories" and the like) on sites. The calming factor between post- and pre-edited sites is ... somewhat nuts. One of my faves was old-school Buzzfeed, where I nuked anything but the actual headline and feature story, which I'd called "Unbuzzed". (And yes, "Buzzfeed" itself is mostly trash, "Buzzfeed News" was/is actually somewhat respectable. I generally didn't seek out the sites, but occasionally clicked through on links from elswewhere.)
rpgbr 3y ago
https://www.textonly.website/ https://www.textonly.website/
bertman 3y ago
There's also https://neuters.de https://neuters.de, a Nitter-like alternative frontend for Reuters.
genericacct 3y ago
Commenting to save in my history, this is right up my alley
js2 3y ago
> If you’re a Facebook user… > mbasic.facebook.com > Ideal if you’re the kind of person who just quickly needs to check the feed and go away again. There’s no javascript so it feels (and definitely is) faster and less bloated. The design is nicely old fashioned. I've been using this site for years but it's increasingly bit rotting and regularly serves broken links.
crop_rotation 3y ago
https://lite.cnn.com https://lite.cnn.com is my go to source. Extremely minimal and can look at all headlines so quickly.
byyll 3y ago
Dutch: https://noslite.nl https://noslite.nl
brador 3y ago
Try https://skimfeed.com https://skimfeed.com , it's my daily for tech news and how I got here.
CodeIsTheEnd 3y ago
For sports, ESPN does have http://www.espn.com/nba/lite/scoreboard http://www.espn.com/nba/lite/scoreboard, but most of the links go back to the normal website. It may have been been more robust in the past, but I don't imagine anyone works on it anymore. It seems like the developer listed in the credits (http://www.espn.com/espn/lite/credits http://www.espn.com/espn/lite/credits) last worked there in 2002!! So if you're looking for a sports alternative, https://plaintextsports.com https://plaintextsports.com (which I made) works great! All the scores, play-by-play, box scores, standings, and schedules, but just no news stories. Blazing fast. (No, it's not technically "Content-Type: text/plain", it uses HTML and CSS. Yes, I know it's not necessarily easier to read; it's an aesthetic. Yes, this is shameless self-promotion.)
- abudabi123 3y ago
  Can you include the MMA leagues: UFC, PFL, ONE?
- rafael-mosca 3y ago
  What a good experience is checking NBA info on your site!
Findecanor 3y ago
I get most of my daily news from ... Teletext [1]. I'm lucky to be in a country that still has it. I much prefer that format over news sites on the web: Headlines are often laid out in a list one entry below the other, which is easy to read through without having to scroll. Because pages are limited to 40 columns × 24 rows, every article is short and to the point. I don't usually read it on TV though but on a web-site [2] which has transformed page numbers into hyperlinks, and given multi-pages a tab-like interface. There are still no images, no ads ... and especially no auto-playing videos. Perfect! Recently though, I've spent a lot of time in a hospital bed and it has been easier for me then to use the TV remote with one hand to check teletext than to use the tablet or smartphone. [1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletext https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletext> [2] <https://texttv.nu/ https://texttv.nu/> (Swedish SVT Text)
- anthk 3y ago
  We have teletext in Spain too, (several of them) but as a "Computer" alternative I use EFE's (state news agency) RSS under sfeed+uxterm with the Unifont font. Pretty close to our different Teletext services.
- Svip 3y ago
  Also available in Denmark (DR): https://www.dr.dk/cgi-bin/fttv1.exe/110 https://www.dr.dk/cgi-bin/fttv1.exe/110
  - teknico 3y ago
    In Italy too. Text-only version: https://www.servizitelevideo.rai.it/televideo/pub/solotesto.jsp https://www.servizitelevideo.rai.it/televideo/pub/solotesto....
- oidar 3y ago
  What a dream. I wish this was available in english.
- moritz 3y ago
  Austria: <https://teletext.orf.at/ https://teletext.orf.at/>
yosito 3y ago
I'm surprised this didn't mention Wikipedia's Current Events Portal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events I also use teddit.net which is essentially a plaintext reddit https://teddit.net/r/worldnews https://teddit.net/r/worldnews
- gibspaulding 3y ago
  This has become my main source of news for the past couple of years. I highly recommend it. There's a GitHub repository floating around somewhere with code for an rss feed of it which works great for getting it on mobile.
- anthk 3y ago
  In my case, gopher://gopherddit.com under Lynx. As for the config -file: cp /etc/lynx.cfg $HOME/.lynx.cfg export LYNX_CFG=$HOME/.lynx.cfg At lynx.cfg: VIEWER:application/postscript:fbgs %s VIEWER:image/gif:sxiv -a %s VIEWER:image/x-xbm:sxiv -a %s VIEWER:image/png:sxiv -a %s VIEWER:image/tiff:sxiv -a %s VIEWER:image/jpeg:sxiv -a %s VIEWER:video/mpeg:mpv %s VIEWER:video/mp4:mpv %s Install sxiv and mpv, of course.
mproud 3y ago
I’m sure CNN has offices and studios in New York, but it is certainly still headquartered in Atlanta.
marpstar 3y ago
Someone on here shared https://brutalist.report/ https://brutalist.report/ a few months back and I’ve been using that. Dead simple, no bullshit.
- UberFly 3y ago
  So comprehensive my overload alarms start going off. Still though, good suggestion.
westcort 3y ago
If you are in the US, this weather and news broadcast application is a good resource: https://www.locserendipity.com/Start.html https://www.locserendipity.com/Start.html
billyhoffman 3y ago
I too was using text-only versions of sites like CNN, Reuters, or Christian Science Monitor[1], and they were fine. But what I really wanted was to turn any news website into a text-only website. So I build NewsWaffle, which for any website: https://github.com/acidus99/NewsWaffle https://github.com/acidus99/NewsWaffle * Automatically builds a list of news stores, separate from the navigational hyperlinks. * Detects RSS/Atom feeds to provide a more accurate list of news stories. * Uses Readability to show only article content on article pages. * Uses meta data like OpenGraph or Twitter cards to provide richer formatting, and to determine page type. It regularly converts 900 KB home pages or 1.2 MB news articles into into 3KB for links to news stories and 5K of text It does this by: * Using semantic tags like <header>, <footer>, and <nav> to determines which hyperlinks are navigational and which ones are likely links to news articles. * OpenGraph meta data to determine page type news stories and extra metadata. * A Aggressive HTML parser that strips out a ton of tags, CSS, JS, etc * Readability library to extract out the text of news articles I built this as a service in Gemini, so if you have a gemini browser you can try it. Otherwise, here is a HTTP-to-gemini proxy showing you what a NYT article looks like: Gemini link: gemini://gemi.dev/cgi-bin/waffle.cgi/ NYT Homepage: https://portal.mozz.us/gemini/gemi.dev/cgi-bin/waffle.cgi/links%3Fhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.nytimes.com%252F https://portal.mozz.us/gemini/gemi.dev/cgi-bin/waffle.cgi/li... NYT Article: https://portal.mozz.us/gemini/gemi.dev/cgi-bin/waffle.cgi/article%3Fhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.nytimes.com%252F2023%252F03%252F25%252Fworld%252Fasia%252Fasia-china-military-war.html https://portal.mozz.us/gemini/gemi.dev/cgi-bin/waffle.cgi/ar... [1] https://www.csmonitor.com/text_edition https://www.csmonitor.com/text_edition
- basch 3y ago
  Pretty amazing. I tested aldaily.com and had trouble navigating to get to the articles. Allsides.com worked. Techmeme.com did not work. gemini://gemi.dev/cgi-bin/waffle.cgi/links?https%3A%2F%2Fallsides.com%2F https://portal.mozz.us/gemini/gemi.dev/cgi-bin/waffle.cgi/links%3Fhttps%253A%252F%252Fallsides.com%252F https://portal.mozz.us/gemini/gemi.dev/cgi-bin/waffle.cgi/li...
  - billyhoffman 3y ago
    Thanks for letting me know. aldaily works great in raw mode: gemini://gemi.dev/cgi-bin/waffle.cgi/raw?https%3A%2F%2Fwww.aldaily.com%2F Clicking on the "more" links which take you to the news articles also works properly as well. (you can get to raw mode by clicking "Force article view" and then "raw mode." I should probably expose that in other places) NewsWaffle tries to determine the type of page. Articles get displayed with content run through readability, and then the HTML is stripped down. If its a "links" page, like the home or section page on a news site, it using HTML elements to try and find links to news stories vs navigational links to other parts of the site. Part of that is looking for links with longer text, since link text to news stories tend to be a few words. This helps sort "About Us" from "New Fusion Experiment a Success"). I'll check into why aldaily isn't working properly Sorry I can't seem to reproduce the Techmeme issue. It works for me: gemini://gemi.dev/cgi-bin/waffle.cgi/view?https%3A%2F%2Fwww.techmeme.com
andrewfromx 3y ago
no mention of https://legiblenews.com/ https://legiblenews.com/ ?
mari1 3y ago
Text-based news pages are better because they allow readers to quickly scan through and absorb information, without being distracted by flashy graphics or autoplay videos.
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guestbest 3y ago
I’ve been getting a lot mileage out of safari’s and brave’s reader mode
- wolverine876 3y ago
  Try Firefox's, which applies to many more pages IME.
sgtnasty 3y ago
What we need are more Gemini[1] sites. [1](https://geminiquickst.art/ https://geminiquickst.art/)
- stargrazer 3y ago
  I suppose Lynx would be something similar. It is a console based web site browser, and as such, no pictures whatsoever are visible.
- wolverine876 3y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35315130 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35315130
stargrazer 3y ago
not necessarily native text, but a flowing list of news links: irc.libera.chat has ##hntop - updated as hacker news item cream rises to the top ##news - common interest international stuff ##alerts - earthquakes, electricity, ... maybe others
DeathArrow 3y ago
What about using an RSS reader? Or looking at AFP or Reuters news streams?
- forinti 3y ago
  I oversee some digital signage that uses RSS to add the day's news. We have two issues: there are fewer and fewer sources of RSS; and those that do exist frequently use meaningless titles like "Look at this!". I can't really blame the news channels, they don't get any revenue from these streams.
  - DeathArrow 3y ago
    Thanks. I didn't know this. Last time I used RSS it was a long time ago (in Google Reader) and at that time it was useful.
nickjj 3y ago
Question: When reading programming tutorials or a write up about a tech concept do you prefer if the article has a hero image or not? This would be an image loaded at the top which sums up the title of the post visually. On a related note, personally if someone has 500 blog posts I'd like to see them in a condensed bullet list so I can scan the titles super fast. I don't want to see images and have 10 loaded per page. It turns something from a 2 minute effortless quick scan to dozens of clicks and potentially 20 minutes. However, in practice having images for each post seems to get more engagement (ie. people clicking things and beginning to read your article). I never understood why in the context of programming. I understand pictures are useful for hardware or if you need to make a diagram. I'm mainly talking about the hero image here.
- stargrazer 3y ago
  Is the engagement lead to extended time engagement, or is just click engagement? I remember, I think it was intuit, their knowledge base was a matrix of pictures with very little text. That obtained no engagement from me as I was unwilling to click into each every picture to see if it was relevant or not. I guess their click rate goes up, but their duration engagement goes down.
- shostack 3y ago
  Technical marketer here. I hate fluff. I can spot it a mile away. If you have a hero image that adds no value then don't use it. If it has a related screenshot with interesting or useful information in it (like a code snippet and resulting output that the tutorial covers), that might be useful. Otherwise just... don't.
marban 3y ago
For business news: https://biztoc.com/light https://biztoc.com/light | topic-clustered: https://biztoc.com/hot https://biztoc.com/hot
- byyll 3y ago
  That's more of an aggregator, not a news website.
- donio 3y ago
  This is better than nothing but the news item links go to non-text-friendly sites. Many of the other sites mentioned also have the linked news articles in a text-friendly format.
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eimrine 3y ago
I love RMS's daily news, his PoV is very close to my one so the link [1] is a great source of political news. [1] https://www.stallman.org/archives/2023-jan-apr.html https://www.stallman.org/archives/2023-jan-apr.html
alphabet9000 3y ago
i made an automated news site that keeps an eye out for "happenings". it starts by showing the last 6 links found and automatically adds to the list if something new is found. https://news.coffee https://news.coffee
chazeon 3y ago
When GPT-4 with image recognition is available, i guess it will not difficult to build a GPT based text mode.
dredmorbius 3y ago
Whilst it's headlines only, FreshNews.org still exists (and after a scare last year has been updated to function with today's site engineering), and provides a dense presentation of (mostly tech-related) stories from 33 sites (default, customisable with a log-in): <https://freshnews.org/ https://freshnews.org/>
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justaguy37 3y ago
I quite like https://text.npr.org/ https://text.npr.org/
anthk 3y ago
Lynx web/gopher browser and if you tweak it a little, you can open the linked images with sxiv for instance: - gopher://magical.fish - gopher://gopherddit.com - gopher://mozz.us - gopher://gophernews.net

197 points by michaelrkn 3y ago

hoppyhoppy2 3y ago

There's also http://text.npr.org/ http://text.npr.org/

FunnyLookinHat 3y ago
This was a lifeline for me when we were on an unstable DSL line for a year!
mananaysiempre 3y ago
Which I find intensely funny, because it’s forced on all EU IP addresses as an ostensible downgrade, but since they’ve added a decent CSS snippet to limit the line width I actually find it superior to the “full” version.
js2 3y ago
It's mentioned in the article under "Other Sites".
O1111OOO 3y ago
> There's also http://text.npr.org/ http://text.npr.org/ Lots of great sources in the link below. I already had my own list of the usual players but this link covers many more I didn't know existed: https://greycoder.com/a-list-of-text-only-new-sites/ https://greycoder.com/a-list-of-text-only-new-sites/ The only site that I rarely see mentioned (or included in the link above) is : http://www.dailymail.co.uk/textbased/channel-561/index.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/textbased/channel-561/index.html
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freediverx 3y ago

Not sure of the premise behind this, so maybe I’m missing the point, but why not curate quality news sources and access them via an rss news reader like NetNewsWire?

reaperducer 3y ago
I can think of a couple of reasons: - He sees no point in adding another layer of abstraction and complexity to something simple. - he's into retro computing, and old machines can't handle NNW. - Fewer and fewer web sites support RSS, so using NNW limits his options. - Sometimes you want to read the news from a particular web site, and not graze at a buffet.
- palata 3y ago
  Do fewer and fewer websites support RSS? All blog frameworks have support by default...
  - hammyhavoc 3y ago
    No, people just assume that they don't have one due to no RSS icon. `/feed` slug is standard for finding feeds these days. Equally, why not just use one of the many FOSS tools to scrape sites that don't offer RSS feeds and DIY your own? This is a long-solved problem; RSS remains wonderful.
    - palata 3y ago
      I love RSS. I actually believe that it may become more relevant in the future, now that AI is so good at producing noise. It will be more and more difficult to make a Google/DDG/Kagi search and spot the autogenerated crap. So maybe it will be time to manually select blogs/websites we like and trust. And RSS is amazing for that.
      - hammyhavoc 3y ago
        100% my thoughts, mate. I definitely see it becoming the go-to tool for many in the future. It's got a lot going for it, including authenticated access to premium feeds, ergo people can monetize and allow their content to be consumed in a way that makes sense to the end user. Still one of my favourite things to emerge on the net. Especially being able to filter through feeds!

croisillon 3y ago

axios.com has almost only text, other than that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events is really good

halotrope 3y ago

Check out https://markets.sh https://markets.sh news. They are actually text only, from many different sources, clustered and summarized. It is really good to get a gist of what’s currently important without having to “read news” with the known nuisances that come with it. Edit, thank you for the feedback. Some clarifications: - we launched the news feature literally yesterday, it is MVP level so expect inaccuracies especially in the summaries. We are using our own models and are in the process of tuning and refining them. Clicking on the cluster will give you the actual headline, titles and sources for each cluster. - the ordering of the feed is super simple right now. We will improve the weighting based on recency, magnitude of the story, coverage, parties involved etc. - This is not text-only like text.npr.org but in the sense of not being stuffed with ads, autoplay videos and images. Both a real text-only statically rendered page and RSS feed are in the works.

uxcolumbo 3y ago
Nice. Did you build this? If so, what's the tech stack you used? I like the interface - compact and fast.
- halotrope 3y ago
  Thanks! Yeah, I’m one of the founders. It’s Nextjs on Supabase. We launched the news clustering just yesterday so I thought it would be nice to get some stealth HN feedback for it. We are planning to launch an API (rss style) for the news next week where you can get temporal clusters and everything. Imagine having full access to all of Twitter trending but across all news sources. We are trying to filter clickbait, SEO spam as effectively as possible while keeping nuance to the dataset. Please sign up for an account or follow us on twitter if you would like to stay in the loop.
  - SpaghettiX 3y ago
    Genuine question: I wonder why you didn't think to disclose your relationship with the product? I notice this a lot, and it ruins my perspective of the product. Haven't you seen people start their comments with "full disclosure, I made this" type sentences.

k1m 3y ago

I run an experimental service to turn web articles into plain text (No HTML) by prefixing the URL with 'txtifiy.it/'. Doesn't work on all articles: https://txtify.it https://txtify.it

codazoda 3y ago
Suggestion… Assume “https” if it’s not explicitly entered.

defrost 3y ago

(2020) !! .. and already dated wrt Thomson Reuters Foundation Trust link ( news.trust.org ) which is now archived and replaced by https://www.context.news/ https://www.context.news/

agumonkey 3y ago

We should make an 'awesome-text-only' github repo with all these.

yasenn 3y ago
There is `chubin/awesome-console-services`[0] Btw, Igor Chubin is the author of great CLI services such as: cheat.sh[1], late.nz[2], QRenco.de[3],rate.sx[4] [0] https://github.com/chubin/awesome-console-services https://github.com/chubin/awesome-console-services [1] https://github.com/chubin/cheat.sh https://github.com/chubin/cheat.sh [2] https://github.com/chubin/late.nz https://github.com/chubin/late.nz [3] https://github.com/chubin/qrenco.de https://github.com/chubin/qrenco.de [4] https://github.com/chubin/rate.sx https://github.com/chubin/rate.sx
yosito 3y ago
Ok. Courtesy of ChatGPT: https://github.com/localjo/awesome-text-only-news https://github.com/localjo/awesome-text-only-news
- agumonkey 3y ago
  bookmarked

thazework 3y ago

Until a few days ago the best solution for text only + no ads + offline reading was a kindle subscription to whichever periodical you fancy. This is gone now. Nook still has a newstand store (for now?) but I haven't used it so can't comment on the formatting and UX.

antiframe 3y ago
I still subscribe to text (and images, but no video), no ads, offline reading news sites on my Kindle. Not through the Kindle subscription but through a local downloader (Calibre).

dreen 3y ago

One issue is that news sites article content is written to maximise ad impressions. Ads inject between paragraphs typically so you need lots of paragraphs. You start with perhaps two paragraphs of actual information, then break it down into 4 or more and add more information about related topics. Add some opinions, maybe weave in links to related articles on your site, and you end up with 10 or so paragraphs insterspersed with ads and pictures. You can remove the ads and pictures but you can't remove the bullshit. We need a good AI tldr machine.

Dalewyn 3y ago
I don't need an automatic TL;DR machine to tell me news articles aren't worth reading.
dredmorbius 3y ago
I've counted upwards of ten advertising insertions in WaPo articles. Between paragraphs. On desktop, I'll nuke any interstitial element (including "related stories" and the like) on sites. The calming factor between post- and pre-edited sites is ... somewhat nuts. One of my faves was old-school Buzzfeed, where I nuked anything but the actual headline and feature story, which I'd called "Unbuzzed". (And yes, "Buzzfeed" itself is mostly trash, "Buzzfeed News" was/is actually somewhat respectable. I generally didn't seek out the sites, but occasionally clicked through on links from elswewhere.)

rpgbr 3y ago

https://www.textonly.website/ https://www.textonly.website/

bertman 3y ago

There's also https://neuters.de https://neuters.de, a Nitter-like alternative frontend for Reuters.

genericacct 3y ago

Commenting to save in my history, this is right up my alley

js2 3y ago

> If you’re a Facebook user… > mbasic.facebook.com > Ideal if you’re the kind of person who just quickly needs to check the feed and go away again. There’s no javascript so it feels (and definitely is) faster and less bloated. The design is nicely old fashioned. I've been using this site for years but it's increasingly bit rotting and regularly serves broken links.

crop_rotation 3y ago

https://lite.cnn.com https://lite.cnn.com is my go to source. Extremely minimal and can look at all headlines so quickly.

byyll 3y ago

Dutch: https://noslite.nl https://noslite.nl

brador 3y ago

Try https://skimfeed.com https://skimfeed.com , it's my daily for tech news and how I got here.

CodeIsTheEnd 3y ago

For sports, ESPN does have http://www.espn.com/nba/lite/scoreboard http://www.espn.com/nba/lite/scoreboard, but most of the links go back to the normal website. It may have been been more robust in the past, but I don't imagine anyone works on it anymore. It seems like the developer listed in the credits (http://www.espn.com/espn/lite/credits http://www.espn.com/espn/lite/credits) last worked there in 2002!! So if you're looking for a sports alternative, https://plaintextsports.com https://plaintextsports.com (which I made) works great! All the scores, play-by-play, box scores, standings, and schedules, but just no news stories. Blazing fast. (No, it's not technically "Content-Type: text/plain", it uses HTML and CSS. Yes, I know it's not necessarily easier to read; it's an aesthetic. Yes, this is shameless self-promotion.)

abudabi123 3y ago
Can you include the MMA leagues: UFC, PFL, ONE?
rafael-mosca 3y ago
What a good experience is checking NBA info on your site!

Findecanor 3y ago

I get most of my daily news from ... Teletext [1]. I'm lucky to be in a country that still has it. I much prefer that format over news sites on the web: Headlines are often laid out in a list one entry below the other, which is easy to read through without having to scroll. Because pages are limited to 40 columns × 24 rows, every article is short and to the point. I don't usually read it on TV though but on a web-site [2] which has transformed page numbers into hyperlinks, and given multi-pages a tab-like interface. There are still no images, no ads ... and especially no auto-playing videos. Perfect! Recently though, I've spent a lot of time in a hospital bed and it has been easier for me then to use the TV remote with one hand to check teletext than to use the tablet or smartphone. [1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletext https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletext> [2] <https://texttv.nu/ https://texttv.nu/> (Swedish SVT Text)

anthk 3y ago
We have teletext in Spain too, (several of them) but as a "Computer" alternative I use EFE's (state news agency) RSS under sfeed+uxterm with the Unifont font. Pretty close to our different Teletext services.
Svip 3y ago
Also available in Denmark (DR): https://www.dr.dk/cgi-bin/fttv1.exe/110 https://www.dr.dk/cgi-bin/fttv1.exe/110
- teknico 3y ago
  In Italy too. Text-only version: https://www.servizitelevideo.rai.it/televideo/pub/solotesto.jsp https://www.servizitelevideo.rai.it/televideo/pub/solotesto....
oidar 3y ago
What a dream. I wish this was available in english.
moritz 3y ago
Austria: <https://teletext.orf.at/ https://teletext.orf.at/>

yosito 3y ago

I'm surprised this didn't mention Wikipedia's Current Events Portal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events I also use teddit.net which is essentially a plaintext reddit https://teddit.net/r/worldnews https://teddit.net/r/worldnews

gibspaulding 3y ago
This has become my main source of news for the past couple of years. I highly recommend it. There's a GitHub repository floating around somewhere with code for an rss feed of it which works great for getting it on mobile.
anthk 3y ago
In my case, gopher://gopherddit.com under Lynx. As for the config -file: cp /etc/lynx.cfg $HOME/.lynx.cfg export LYNX_CFG=$HOME/.lynx.cfg At lynx.cfg: VIEWER:application/postscript:fbgs %s VIEWER:image/gif:sxiv -a %s VIEWER:image/x-xbm:sxiv -a %s VIEWER:image/png:sxiv -a %s VIEWER:image/tiff:sxiv -a %s VIEWER:image/jpeg:sxiv -a %s VIEWER:video/mpeg:mpv %s VIEWER:video/mp4:mpv %s Install sxiv and mpv, of course.

mproud 3y ago

I’m sure CNN has offices and studios in New York, but it is certainly still headquartered in Atlanta.

marpstar 3y ago

Someone on here shared https://brutalist.report/ https://brutalist.report/ a few months back and I’ve been using that. Dead simple, no bullshit.

UberFly 3y ago
So comprehensive my overload alarms start going off. Still though, good suggestion.

westcort 3y ago

If you are in the US, this weather and news broadcast application is a good resource: https://www.locserendipity.com/Start.html https://www.locserendipity.com/Start.html

billyhoffman 3y ago

I too was using text-only versions of sites like CNN, Reuters, or Christian Science Monitor[1], and they were fine. But what I really wanted was to turn any news website into a text-only website. So I build NewsWaffle, which for any website: https://github.com/acidus99/NewsWaffle https://github.com/acidus99/NewsWaffle * Automatically builds a list of news stores, separate from the navigational hyperlinks. * Detects RSS/Atom feeds to provide a more accurate list of news stories. * Uses Readability to show only article content on article pages. * Uses meta data like OpenGraph or Twitter cards to provide richer formatting, and to determine page type. It regularly converts 900 KB home pages or 1.2 MB news articles into into 3KB for links to news stories and 5K of text It does this by: * Using semantic tags like <header>, <footer>, and <nav> to determines which hyperlinks are navigational and which ones are likely links to news articles. * OpenGraph meta data to determine page type news stories and extra metadata. * A Aggressive HTML parser that strips out a ton of tags, CSS, JS, etc * Readability library to extract out the text of news articles I built this as a service in Gemini, so if you have a gemini browser you can try it. Otherwise, here is a HTTP-to-gemini proxy showing you what a NYT article looks like: Gemini link: gemini://gemi.dev/cgi-bin/waffle.cgi/ NYT Homepage: https://portal.mozz.us/gemini/gemi.dev/cgi-bin/waffle.cgi/links%3Fhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.nytimes.com%252F https://portal.mozz.us/gemini/gemi.dev/cgi-bin/waffle.cgi/li... NYT Article: https://portal.mozz.us/gemini/gemi.dev/cgi-bin/waffle.cgi/article%3Fhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.nytimes.com%252F2023%252F03%252F25%252Fworld%252Fasia%252Fasia-china-military-war.html https://portal.mozz.us/gemini/gemi.dev/cgi-bin/waffle.cgi/ar... [1] https://www.csmonitor.com/text_edition https://www.csmonitor.com/text_edition

basch 3y ago
Pretty amazing. I tested aldaily.com and had trouble navigating to get to the articles. Allsides.com worked. Techmeme.com did not work. gemini://gemi.dev/cgi-bin/waffle.cgi/links?https%3A%2F%2Fallsides.com%2F https://portal.mozz.us/gemini/gemi.dev/cgi-bin/waffle.cgi/links%3Fhttps%253A%252F%252Fallsides.com%252F https://portal.mozz.us/gemini/gemi.dev/cgi-bin/waffle.cgi/li...
- billyhoffman 3y ago
  Thanks for letting me know. aldaily works great in raw mode: gemini://gemi.dev/cgi-bin/waffle.cgi/raw?https%3A%2F%2Fwww.aldaily.com%2F Clicking on the "more" links which take you to the news articles also works properly as well. (you can get to raw mode by clicking "Force article view" and then "raw mode." I should probably expose that in other places) NewsWaffle tries to determine the type of page. Articles get displayed with content run through readability, and then the HTML is stripped down. If its a "links" page, like the home or section page on a news site, it using HTML elements to try and find links to news stories vs navigational links to other parts of the site. Part of that is looking for links with longer text, since link text to news stories tend to be a few words. This helps sort "About Us" from "New Fusion Experiment a Success"). I'll check into why aldaily isn't working properly Sorry I can't seem to reproduce the Techmeme issue. It works for me: gemini://gemi.dev/cgi-bin/waffle.cgi/view?https%3A%2F%2Fwww.techmeme.com

andrewfromx 3y ago

no mention of https://legiblenews.com/ https://legiblenews.com/ ?

mari1 3y ago

Text-based news pages are better because they allow readers to quickly scan through and absorb information, without being distracted by flashy graphics or autoplay videos.

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guestbest 3y ago

I’ve been getting a lot mileage out of safari’s and brave’s reader mode

wolverine876 3y ago
Try Firefox's, which applies to many more pages IME.

sgtnasty 3y ago

What we need are more Gemini[1] sites. [1](https://geminiquickst.art/ https://geminiquickst.art/)

stargrazer 3y ago
I suppose Lynx would be something similar. It is a console based web site browser, and as such, no pictures whatsoever are visible.
wolverine876 3y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35315130 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35315130

stargrazer 3y ago

not necessarily native text, but a flowing list of news links: irc.libera.chat has ##hntop - updated as hacker news item cream rises to the top ##news - common interest international stuff ##alerts - earthquakes, electricity, ... maybe others

DeathArrow 3y ago

What about using an RSS reader? Or looking at AFP or Reuters news streams?

forinti 3y ago
I oversee some digital signage that uses RSS to add the day's news. We have two issues: there are fewer and fewer sources of RSS; and those that do exist frequently use meaningless titles like "Look at this!". I can't really blame the news channels, they don't get any revenue from these streams.
- DeathArrow 3y ago
  Thanks. I didn't know this. Last time I used RSS it was a long time ago (in Google Reader) and at that time it was useful.

nickjj 3y ago

Question: When reading programming tutorials or a write up about a tech concept do you prefer if the article has a hero image or not? This would be an image loaded at the top which sums up the title of the post visually. On a related note, personally if someone has 500 blog posts I'd like to see them in a condensed bullet list so I can scan the titles super fast. I don't want to see images and have 10 loaded per page. It turns something from a 2 minute effortless quick scan to dozens of clicks and potentially 20 minutes. However, in practice having images for each post seems to get more engagement (ie. people clicking things and beginning to read your article). I never understood why in the context of programming. I understand pictures are useful for hardware or if you need to make a diagram. I'm mainly talking about the hero image here.

stargrazer 3y ago
Is the engagement lead to extended time engagement, or is just click engagement? I remember, I think it was intuit, their knowledge base was a matrix of pictures with very little text. That obtained no engagement from me as I was unwilling to click into each every picture to see if it was relevant or not. I guess their click rate goes up, but their duration engagement goes down.
shostack 3y ago
Technical marketer here. I hate fluff. I can spot it a mile away. If you have a hero image that adds no value then don't use it. If it has a related screenshot with interesting or useful information in it (like a code snippet and resulting output that the tutorial covers), that might be useful. Otherwise just... don't.

marban 3y ago

For business news: https://biztoc.com/light https://biztoc.com/light | topic-clustered: https://biztoc.com/hot https://biztoc.com/hot

byyll 3y ago
That's more of an aggregator, not a news website.
donio 3y ago
This is better than nothing but the news item links go to non-text-friendly sites. Many of the other sites mentioned also have the linked news articles in a text-friendly format.

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eimrine 3y ago

I love RMS's daily news, his PoV is very close to my one so the link [1] is a great source of political news. [1] https://www.stallman.org/archives/2023-jan-apr.html https://www.stallman.org/archives/2023-jan-apr.html

alphabet9000 3y ago

i made an automated news site that keeps an eye out for "happenings". it starts by showing the last 6 links found and automatically adds to the list if something new is found. https://news.coffee https://news.coffee

chazeon 3y ago

When GPT-4 with image recognition is available, i guess it will not difficult to build a GPT based text mode.

dredmorbius 3y ago

Whilst it's headlines only, FreshNews.org still exists (and after a scare last year has been updated to function with today's site engineering), and provides a dense presentation of (mostly tech-related) stories from 33 sites (default, customisable with a log-in): <https://freshnews.org/ https://freshnews.org/>

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justaguy37 3y ago

I quite like https://text.npr.org/ https://text.npr.org/

anthk 3y ago

Lynx web/gopher browser and if you tweak it a little, you can open the linked images with sxiv for instance: - gopher://magical.fish - gopher://gopherddit.com - gopher://mozz.us - gopher://gophernews.net