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Comment by dang | Hacker News Reader

The Information has been unlocking the occasional article for HN users for a while now. I asked if they'd do that for this one and they agreed. Thanks!

(The submitted URL was https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/06/report-magic-leaps-early-d..., which made sense while the original source was behind a hard paywall. Changed now.)

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Thanks dang! I specifically used the TechCrunch article for that reason and am glad you were able to get a hole cut in the paywall.

That's nice! I noticed a modal but I closed before reading it. I could parse (not in time to avoid closing) that it was welcoming HN users.

I am curious now what it was saying.

EDIT: Got it again, it says:

"Welcome Hacker News Readers

Before you quickly exit out of this popup, consider subscribing for $10/month for your first 3 months"

I was quicker than they expected lol

Welp, at least my copy was on point.

I'm not sure what "unlocking" the article, but assume that we should be able to see the full article. Currently, I can only see the two first paragraphs and the article ends with "with direct knowledge of the discussions" and then a "No subscription? You're missing out." ad. Seems to still be behind a paywall.

Odd, I can definitely see the full thing. You're definitely clicking through from here on HN, right?

Yup, I did! I can even see the utm_source and utm_medium query params in the URL that I guess is supposed to unlock the article. But this is what I see https://i.imgur.com/pN83qpg.png

You probably configured your browser to omit referrers. The Information looks at that to decide unlocking.

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