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Oct. 27, 2017, 11:26 a.m.
LINK: open.nytimes.com  ➚   |   Posted by: Shan Wang   |   October 27, 2017

If you’re in a situation where reading The New York Times online might get you in trouble, or you’re somewhere where the Times is blocked, or you’re serious about maintaining digital privacy, take note: The Times site is now being offered as a Tor Onion service, Runa Sandvik, director of information security for the Times, announced on Friday.

(You need to use a Tor browser like Onion Browser to access it.)

The Times’s onion site is still being tweaked, and for now won’t allow things like commenting:

The New York Times’ Onion Service is both experimental and under development. This means that certain features, such as logins and comments, are disabled until the next phase of our implementation. We will be fine-tuning site performance, so there may be occasional outages while we make improvements to the service. Our goal is to match the features currently available on the main New York Times website.

Over time, we plan to share the lessons that we have learned — and will learn — about scaling and running an Onion Service. We welcome constructive feedback and bug reports via email to onion@nytimes.com.

Sandvik also gave a nod to Facebook and ProPublica, both of which have onion sites (or a “Tor hidden service” or an “onion service” — a site with a domain ending in .onion only accessible via Tor).

ProPublica also has a useful step-by-step here for anyone interested in setting up a hidden service for their own sites.

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Journalists fight digital decay
“Physical deterioration, outdated formats, publications disappearing, and the relentless advance of technology leave archives vulnerable.”
A generation of journalists moves on
“Instead of rewarding these things with fair pay, job security and moral support, journalism as an industry exploits their love of the craft.”
Prediction markets go mainstream
“If all of this sounds like a libertarian fever dream, I hear you. But as these markets rise, legacy media will continue to slide into irrelevance.”