Comment by x3blah

"It's text, just send the damn text."

They only send what the user requests.

Using a software program that makes automatic requests that you are not easily in control of, e.g., a popular web browser, might give the impression that they control what is sent.

They do not control what is sent. The user does.^1

The user makes a request and they send a response.

One of the requests a fully-automatic web browser makes to NYT is to static01.nyt.com

Personally, as a user who prefers text-only, this is the only request I need to make. As such I don't really need a heavily marketed, fully-automatic, graphical, ad-blocking web browser to make a single request for some text.^2

    #! /bin/sh

    case $1 in
    world        |w*)  x=world       # shortcut: w
    ;;us         |u*)  x=us          # shortcut: u
    ;;politics   |p*)  x=politics    # shortcut: p
    ;;nyregion   |n*)  x=nyregion    # shortcut: n
    ;;business   |bu*) x=business    # shortcut: bu
    ;;opinion    |o*)  x=opinion     # shortcut: o
    ;;technology |te*) x=technology  # shortcut: te
    ;;science    |sc*) x=science     # shortcut: sc
    ;;health     |h*)  x=health      # shortcut: h
    ;;sports     |sp*) x=sports      # shortcut: sp
    ;;arts       |a*)  x=arts        # shortcut: a
    ;;books      |bo*) x=books       # shortcut: bo
    ;;style      |st*) x=style       # shortcut: st
    ;;food       |f*)  x=food        # shortcut: f
    ;;travel     |tr*) x=travel      # shortcut: tr
    ;;magazine   |m*)  x=magazine    # shortcut: m
    ;;t-magazine |t-*) x=t-magazine  # shortcut: t-
    ;;realestate |r*)  x=realestate  # shortcut: r
    ;;*)
    echo usage: $0 section
    exec sed -n '/x=/!d;s/.*x=//;/sed/!p' $0
    esac

    curl -s https://static01.nyt.com/services/json/sectionfronts/$x/index.jsonp

   Example: Make simple page of titles, article urls and captions, where above script is named "nyt".

    nyt tr |  sed '/\"headline\": \"/{s//<p>/;s/\".*/<\/p>/;p};/\"full\": \"/{s//<p>/;s/..$/<\/p>/;p};/\"link\": \"/{s///;s/ *//;s/\".*//;s|.*|<a href=&>&</a>|;p}' > travel.html

    firefox ./travel.html

Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22125882

The truth is that they are just sending the damn text. However you are voluntarily choosing to use a software program that is automatically making requests for things other than the text of the article, i.e., "cruft".

1. The Google-sponsored HTTP/[23] protocol is seeking to change this dynamic, so if websites sending stuff to you without you requesting it first bothers you, you might want to think about how online advertisers and the companies that enable them might use these new protocols.

2. However I might use one for for viewing images, watching video, reading PDFs, etc., offline. Web browsers are useful programs for consuming media. It is in the simple task of making HTTP requests that their utility has diminished over time. The user is not really in control.