Three criticisms, in descending order of importance:

1) The length of these excerpts goes a bit beyond what is typically considered fair use. You're pretty much reprinting the entire articles. So you may run into copyright infringement claims.

2) It looks like you're scraping the content, and your scraper isn't up to the task. One of the excerpts reads: "Your email has been sent. An error has occured and your email has not been sent. Please try again. • You can't enter more than 20 emails. • You must enter the verification code below to send. • Invalid entry: Please type the verification code again."

3) Borrowing the multicolumn text layout predominant in print is great when the columns all fit on the screen, but I found myself having to constantly scroll up-down-up-down-up-down to read these.

So, in sum, you're only presenting the top stories successfully some of the time; when you are successful, you're infringing on copyrights; and the layout is not actually cleaned for readability.

Interesting idea, http://www.hntext.com/#543c2fd8ba03530200000008 has "broken" special characters though.

I'm having this problem as well. I took a screenshot just in case op sees it normally and doesn't know what we're talking about: http://i.imgur.com/0GlHrlc.png

Aside from that, looks like an interesting service, though!

Speaking of readability, have you heard of https://www.readability.com/ ? Works wonders on all but the most stubborn webpages.

http://www.diffbot.com/ offers this service as an API

This is absolutely horrible and shows complete lack of respect for copyright. It should be taken down immediately.

This isn't qualitatively different than readability or numerous other extensions. The only difference is he is doing it server side.

> The only difference is he is doing it server side

Ah, but from a legal perspective, this makes all the difference. It is, I'm sorry to say, copyright infringement and goes beyond what fair use permits.

Yes I understand that, I said it isn't qualitatively different. If the web page somehow distributed javascript that would do the same thing client side, the website would appear exactly the same, yet would be perfectly legal.

The comment I was replying to wasn't arguing that it was illegal, but actually wrong and "lacking respect". I was just pointing out that he should have the same opinion towards things like readability.

Also I think readability did do it server side, and so do other things like RSS readers.

Without taking a position on Readability, there's more to the calculation than client side vs. server side. For more see my post here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8455648

You're right, but I wonder where the line is drawn with things like online RSS readers. They're basically doing the same thing, but just behind a username/password.

>line is drawn with things like online RSS readers

For starters, I'd look at the Supreme Court's opinion in Grokster. Here it is in HN-suitable pseudocode. :)

  IF $distributing_product_used_by_others_to_infringe == FALSE THEN
    FIND_NO_LIABILITY ( "None found" )
  ELSEIF $distributing_with_object_of_promoting_infringement == TRUE THEN
    FIND_LIABILITY ( "You're inducing infringement ")
  ELSE
    IF $actual_knowledge_of_infringements == TRUE and $failed_to_block == TRUE THEN
      FIND_LIABILITY ( "You're a contributory infringer ")
    ELSE
      IF $capable_of_substantial_noninfringing_uses == TRUE THEN
        FIND_NO_LIABILITY ( "None found" )
      ELSE
        FIND_LIABILITY ( "You're a contributory infringer ")
      END
    END
  END

How this applies to online RSS readers is left as an exercise for the reader...

UPDATE: A copyright lawyer friend points out via email that I neglected to include vicarious liability. I'll leave the above pseudocode as-is and note vicarious liability here as a bugfix/todo.

My first thought was how these articles were in no way more readable than the originals.

Does anyone prefer a multi-column layout?

Multicolumn is fine as long as the vertical height is less than the browser window. For long text this is really hard to make work in the browser unless you take over the pagination with javascript. This is not a good example of using multicolumn text.

For those wondering about the usefulness of this. It should be great for those who commute on the tube or somewhere else where there is no phone signal. This lets you load a single lightweight page before boarding, and then be able to browse hn easily. Would be ideal if it was sent out in an email though so you don't have to remember to load the page every time.

http://getpocket.com do this "cleanse for readability" to the saved links but I think they got closer to readable than you did. If you get to avoid copyright infringement, and get rid of this multi-column layout, I'm sure it would be better.

The generated podcast is also presumably a violation of copyright (i.e. it creates a derivative work).

Neat idea, I'm sure you are violating fair use - but it is a neat little mashup of scrapers and text-to-speech.

I won't ever use it though. I have a bookmark for cleaning up pages.

I think a script that does this, but puts in your Pocket with an HN label would be even better - you keep track of what's read and what's not as a bonus.

Cleaned for readability, eh? - http://i.imgur.com/faqQrQi.png