GreyCoder

greycoder.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2012

GreyCoder, a blog on online privacy, VPN reviews, Usenet, and password managers, plus a list of text-only news sites.

What HN saysHN mostly links its list of text-only news sites; commenters call it useful for finding sources they did not know, and the author recommends Bitwarden.
25HN people shared it
18linked it in comments
51stories submitted
108story points
10 months agolast shared
2012people per year2026

Most-shared posts

  1. 1
    A list of text only new sites
    14 people · first shared 2020
  2. 2
    The Best VPNs Of 2013 (Independent Review)
    4 people · 6 points · first shared 2013 · discussion on HN
  3. 3
  4. 4
    Using VPNs For Privacy While Downloading
    2 people · 12 points · first shared 2014 · discussion on HN
  5. 5
    The Best VPN For Android In 2013
    2 people · 4 points · first shared 2013 · 2 comments on HN
  6. 6
  7. 7
    Usenet: It's Like The Internet...But Better
    2 people · 2 points · first shared 2013 · discussion on HN
  8. 8
    When to Use SmartDNS Instead of VPN?
    2 people · 2 points · first shared 2014 · discussion on HN
  9. 9
    The Best VPN Services Of 2012
    2 people · 1 points · first shared 2012 · discussion on HN
  10. 10
    The Best Anonymous VPNs For 2013
    1 people · 21 points · first shared 2013 · 8 comments on HN
  11. 11
    Linux Distributions Built For Anonymity
    1 people · 3 points · first shared 2013 · discussion on HN
  12. 12
  13. 13
    How To Delete Your Personal Info From The Internet
    1 people · 3 points · first shared 2013 · 1 comments on HN
  14. 14
    The Best VPN Routers Of 2014
    1 people · 3 points · first shared 2014 · discussion on HN
  15. 15
    How To Be Anonymous On The Internet
    1 people · 3 points · first shared 2012 · 4 comments on HN

What HN people wrote when they linked it

treesknees · 2026-01-05
Several news sites offer text only versions. https://lite.cnn.com/ https://text.npr.org/ https://wttr.in/ More listed at https://greycoder.com/a-list-of-text-only-new-sites It’d be great if there was some standard that allowed these to be easily found, and supported on the local news sites.
pwg · 2023-12-15
These two wikipedia articles are a start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nntp As for "why pay separate provider" -- that would be because circa 2000 most ISP's dropped offering Usenet access for their customers as part of the deal, which created a market for the paid providers. But, you don't /have/ to pay: https://greycoder.com/best-free-usenet-servers/
O1111OOO · 2023-03-26
> There's also 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/ 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
xylia · 2018-02-28
I suggest using Bitwarden (open source) instead. See my article: https://greycoder.com/bitwarden-excellent-free-password-manager/
greyone · 2015-08-27
Yes, I dig Gray Code. It's not at all related to my site http://GreyCoder.Com
greytwo · 2014-01-20
Cool, but please make sure you torrent safely: http://www.greycoder.com/?p=5799
dredmorbius · 2025-03-09
Distantly. I'll scan headlines a few times per day, and read the odd story. One problem I'm encountering with websites, aside from the ads and annoyances, is that much of the news seems curiously irrelevant. There's a list of text-only news sites which ... slightly ... improves the situation, but only just, as few media outlets bother to organise their text-only offerings. What's generated is typically an unordered jumble of clickbaitish headlines. That said, the listing: <https://greycoder.com/a-list-of-text-only-new-sites/> Of those I'll hit NPR, CNN, and the Christian Science Monitor most often. CNN annoyed me so much that I looked under the hood ... and found that the URLs encode both a news topic and date along with a title, e.g., from current headlines: https://lite.cnn.com/2025/03/08/us/long-island-fire-suffolk-county/ind… Link: <https://lite.cnn.com/2025/03/08/us/long-island-fire-suffolk-county/ind… So, that's an 8 Mar 2025 article in US News about fires on Long Island. Turns out that it's a SMOP[1] to extract URLs and headlines from the published Web page, and regenerate a far more useful page grouped by subject heading. Another interesting side effect is that I've accumulated an archive of > 4,400 stories published since mid-December 2024 and can easily run statistics on the story distribution. There are 30 sections, which I've aggregated to a smaller set of five, represented as follows: US: 1298 (29.29%) World: 917…
prmoustache · 2024-04-29
I think there is a thing about starting to boycott overly heavy websites. There are some useful resources: https://greycoder.com/a-list-of-text-only-new-sites/ There are also some tricks to have a lighter web browsing by default: - try websites with netsurf, links or w3m first - using a local web to gemini proxy to browse many websites with a lightweight gemini browser. And you can go a long way by using an adblocker and/or disabling javascript by default using an extension with a toggle.
RajT88 · 2024-02-04
If not for the slant, I would read CNN lite exclusively. I used to actually, but I am trying to keep my news diet roughly centrist. Some other text only news sites: https://greycoder.com/a-list-of-text-only-new-sites/
captn3m0 · 2023-10-14
I mention it in the about page, it’s based on a recent Indian news shorts app called Beatroot (“be true”). I haven’t looked at other regions, but there’s already some good plain text news websites for US/UK - https://greycoder.com/a-list-of-text-only-new-sites/ I don’t wanna add a summary, or in general host older news - the more news there is to read, the more time you’ll spend. I don’t want that. It’s like a newspaper, if something important enough happened this week that you missed - the news will still be reporting on it.
Trouble_007 · 2022-08-18
OT: I wish there were more text News sites. A List Of Text-Only News Sites : https://greycoder.com/a-list-of-text-only-new-sites/
dublinben · 2020-11-19
This site has a list with several others: https://greycoder.com/a-list-of-text-only-new-sites/
al_borland · 2024-10-17
I would say notifications on replies would be the only thing I'd really want. But I think that helps avoid never-ending replies and bloated comments. At some point it's too much to go through and I move on with my life, which is probably good. > I think if every website has an HN/Craigslist mode it'd be so awesome I think this is why old.reddit keeps living on. It's simply a better experience than their "modern" UX refresh. I'd say the new UI also encourages a different kind of content which changes how people use the site for the worse. I've seen other posts on HN asking for 'lite' versions of websites and there are some out there. Here are a couple examples. - https://lite.cnn.com - https://text.npr.org There are some directories of more, here are a couple of those. - https://www.leanternet.com - https://greycoder.com/a-list-of-text-only-new-sites/ I should probably go through and replace most of my bookmarks with these versions where it makes sense.

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