For the past two years, millions of information freeloaders like me have been bypassing the New York Times Internet paywall with a simple URL hack: Just delete everything in the browser address field starting with the "?" character, and reload the page. But thanks to a new and improved paywall that went live today, that hack suddenly stopped working.

Media and tech blogs are chattering with various other workarounds, but after a couple minutes of URL hacking, I've devised the simplest one yet: Just select everything in the browser address field starting with the "?" character, replace the string with a "/" character, and reload. Voila: Free NY Times!

Not that you should bypass the NY Times paywall, what with newspapers being the lifeblood of democracy and all, but, you know, you're welcome.