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On Feb 27, 2020, at 12:32 PM, Frank Reed <NoReply_FrankReed@fer3.com> wrote:

"Most major newspaper obituaries seem to fade out after the first paragraph unless you’re a subscription payer"

I am quite skilled at saving money these days. Two days ago, I pulled my own tooth (*)! And I almost never pay for online news. I subscribe to zero newspapers, yet I read all the major online editions most every day. There's a trick to it, and it's not like pulling teeth!

Nearly all online newspapers and similar have a teaser arrangement. If it's the first time you have visited their website, first ever or maybe first in three months or so, then they let you read one article. Some online newspapers still even allow three to five for free. But after that they start rationing. They usually do this with that simplest of internet technologies: cookies. These are small data files that record visit details on websites in your default internet browser. You can get around these cookies by deleting them, but that's a lot of work, and some systems are cleverly designed to circumvent that trick. The trick that defeats almost all of them is a separate browser installed on your device. I use Firefox for this task (which is an excellent browser in its own right). You can set it to delete cookies every time on exit in standard settings. That way when you launch the brower, it has no record that it has ever visited any websites before.

So let's you see an article you want to read while browsing in your normal browser (which is Google Chrome for most people). Copy the link. Then open Firefox. Paste the link and you can then almost always read the entire article. See another article you want to read while browing the first? Copy the link. Then quickly exit and re-launch Firefox. Paste again, and off you go. There are exceptions, but I find that this trick works effectively in over 95% of news websites that ration content in this way.

Frank Reed

* So after I got sick of this tooth that was ready to go, and not being inclined to pay the ante to visit a dentist, I finally ripped the darn thing out on Tuesday. Took a suprising amount of force, but it didn't hurt much... Later that night I remembered I wanted to see the analemma scene in "Cast Away" (Tom Hanks surviving on a deserted island, etc.). Someone had mentioned it in class in Boston on Saturday when I was talking about the analemma, and I planned then to watch it this week. So I started the movie in the background while doing other work. l looked up occasionally, and then I remembered. The castaway pulls his own tooth in this movie! I remembered this four hours after I pulled my own tooth. What are the odds? Ha.