New York Times shut down Tor Onion service

The fact that reading the NYT requires a paid subscription takes away a lot of the value of a Tor service. (Can you even buy a subscription over Tor? I doubt it; it'd be a fraud risk.)

"https://archive.is is still the de-facto way to read NYT articles..."

It's popular on HN for sure, but archive.is only works where the NYT article is archived

Lighter weight, open source, local solutions like Bypass Paywalls Clean work on any NYT article regardless of whether archived

archive.is may be blocked for some internet subscribers in some countries

archive.is webpages are quite large and contain telemetry

For example,

   </script></div></div><img style="position:absolute" width="1" height="1" src="https://[USER-IP-ADDRESS].us.TBT3.379913754.pixel.archive.is/x.gif"><script type="text/javascript">

Is there an Onion archive.today?

Runa was a gem. Her firing was a huge blow to the company. Nobody of any note lasts very long at NYT.

> WhatsApp and Telegram are hardly replacements for Tor access. A government can block them easily.

Also, you tell a private company information that you are reading the NYT and which articles you read. If the NYT is banned or a signal of suspicion where you live, that doesn't help.

Yeah only last year a court in Spain ruled to block telegram for everyone after some minor civil law disagreement. I had to scramble to set up an MTProxy for me and my friends (which was pretty easy with docker). Fortunately it never happened because the government called them back.

Lol it is not hard to create a hidden service:

Prerequisites:

- Linux: You may need `sudo` privileges to install Tor and modify system files.

- macOS: Homebrew must be installed (`brew`) to manage Tor.

- A web server must already be running on the specified local port (e.g., 8080).

- Firewall: This function does not configure the firewall. Ensure that:

  - Tor’s default port (9050) is allowed.
  - Your web server’s port (e.g., 8080) is accessible locally.


  #!/usr/bin/env bash

  # Function to add a Tor hidden service for a local web server
  add_tor_hidden_service() {
    local local_port="${1:-8080}"  # Default to 8080 if no port is provided
    local torrc=""
    local tordir=""
    local sudo_cmd=""
    local os_type=""

    # Detect OS and set paths
    if [[ "$OSTYPE" == "linux-gnu"* ]]; then
      os_type="linux"
      torrc="/etc/tor/torrc"
      tordir="/var/lib/tor"
      sudo_cmd="sudo -n"
    elif [[ "$OSTYPE" == "darwin"* ]]; then
      os_type="macos"
      torrc="$(brew --prefix)/etc/tor/torrc"
      tordir="$(brew --prefix)/var/lib/tor"
    else
      echo "Error: Unsupported OS (Linux or macOS required)" >&2
      return 1
    fi

    # Install Tor if not already installed
    if ! command -v tor &>/dev/null; then
      echo "Installing Tor..." >&2
      if [[ "$os_type" == "linux" ]]; then
        if [ -f /etc/debian_version ]; then
          $sudo_cmd apt update && $sudo_cmd apt install -y tor
        elif [ -f /etc/redhat-release ]; then
          $sudo_cmd yum install -y tor || $sudo_cmd dnf install -y tor
        else
          echo "Error: Only Debian or RedHat-based Linux supported" >&2
          return 1
        fi
      elif [[ "$os_type" == "macos" ]]; then
        brew install tor
      fi
    fi

    # Ensure Tor is running
    if [[ "$os_type" == "linux" ]]; then
      $sudo_cmd systemctl start tor
    elif [[ "$os_type" == "macos" ]]; then
      brew services start tor
    fi

    # Configure hidden service
    local hidden_service_dir="$tordir/hidden_service_$local_port"
    local dir_line="HiddenServiceDir $hidden_service_dir"
    local port_line="HiddenServicePort 80 127.0.0.1:$local_port"

    if ! grep -qF -- "$dir_line" "$torrc"; then
      echo "Configuring Tor hidden service..." >&2
      echo "$dir_line" | $sudo_cmd tee -a "$torrc" >/dev/null
      echo "$port_line" | $sudo_cmd tee -a "$torrc" >/dev/null
    fi

    # Restart Tor to apply changes
    echo "Restarting Tor..." >&2
    if [[ "$os_type" == "linux" ]]; then
      $sudo_cmd systemctl restart tor
    elif [[ "$os_type" == "macos" ]]; then
      brew services restart tor
    fi

    # Wait for onion address to be generated
    local onion_address=""
    for attempt in {1..30}; do
      if [[ -f "$hidden_service_dir/hostname" ]]; then
        onion_address=$($sudo_cmd cat "$hidden_service_dir/hostname")
        break
      fi
      sleep 1
    done

    if [[ -z "$onion_address" ]]; then
      echo "Error: Failed to generate onion address" >&2
      return 1
    fi

    echo "Success! Your web server is now available on the Tor network." >&2
    echo "Onion address: $onion_address" >&2
    echo "$onion_address"
  }

  # Example usage
  # serve -p 8080
  # add_tor_hidden_service 8080
  add_tor_hidden_service "$@"

Mining for a nice vanity hostname might be more difficult tho! How would that be done?

… or just walk right into the central Shanghai library and read the paper copy.

This is possible and I have done it many times.

The service itself isn’t available in China either anyway, I think.

https://www.carlbernstein.com/the-cia-and-the-media-rolling-...

“The Agency’s relationship with the Times was by far its most valuable among newspapers, according to CIA officials. From 1950 to 1966, about ten CIA employees were provided Times cover under arrangements approved by the newspaper’s late publisher, Arthur Hays Sulzberger. The cover arrangements were part of a general Times policy—set by Sulzberger—to provide assistance to the CIA whenever possible.”

Disclaimer I worked at NYT but this is just unsubstantiated garbage. Say what you will about the company and journalism as a whole but you’d be hard pressed to find a better group of truth-seekers out there. waves hands at every other “news” outlet

> they knew the NSA was spying on us but never ran the story

They did run the story; they withheld it for awhile.

> to protect GW's chances at reelection

Is there evidence of that? I've never heard it and I promise that no Republican thinks the NY Times actively helping them.

The answer is ad revenue. If you go against what your subscribers believe in, you lose money. If you lose money, you might lose your job. If you lose your job, you can't pay your mortgage.

If you went back to 2004 and told people the NYT was trying to help re-elect George W Bush they would nervously back away slowly from you.

Consider that technology may have moved on, and there are other better ways to communicate with journalists: https://www.nytimes.com/tips e.g. Signal and to read NYTimes e.g. high quality VPN.

Your post is nonsense. NYT has endorsed a democrat for every election in recent history. Why would they "protect" GW's chances at reelection???

Endorsements

    2024: Kamala Harris (Democrat)
    2020: Joe Biden (Democrat)   
    2016: Hillary Clinton (Democrat)   
    2012: Barack Obama (Democrat)   
    2008: Barack Obama (Democrat)   
    2004: John Kerry (Democrat)   
    2000: Al Gore (Democrat)   
    1996: Bill Clinton (Democrat)   
    1992: Bill Clinton (Democrat)

I definitely see it as a mouthpiece for the establishment and three letter agencies, my interest and trust in it is pretty much 0.

Assuming your adversary is a state with access to certificates, a malicious or compromised exit node could lead to your de-anonymization and access to information you may want to keep confidential or hidden.

Your connection to an onion service is end-to-end encrypted and authenticated, as well, which means no MitM can trick you or sniff your traffic.

I don't know if there's any benefit for the end user, but I think it helps with the reliability of the Tor network because onion sites are accessed by normal Tor nodes, not exit nodes[1]. This means that if you access the onion version of a site you're "relieving" the exit nodes from the extra traffic, which is good because exit nodes already have to handle a massive amount of traffic from all the requests to the surface web.

[1] https://community.torproject.org/onion-services/overview/

[1.5] http://xmrhfasfg5suueegrnc4gsgyi2tyclcy5oz7f5drnrodmdtob6t2i...

Kind of, it depends. In my experience so far, Reddit blocks Tor nodes about 20% of the times or so. More specifically, it seems to return a 429, probably because someone tried to abuse Reddit from the same node and Reddit banned the IP. In my experience, this is just as likely to happen with the onion site or the www address.

That being said, I only lurk so I don't know if there are any additional restrictions when trying to log in.

Is that the same issue you have or is it something else?

In fact it's quite the opposite. If you need to do something to save your life and youre weighing the decision of take no action vs take action via tor; you and anyone else would take the risk with tor.

Why is that?