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by lxgr 888 days ago
Could it be a "read it later" type of article reader/storage service? I know of at least one that fits the bill in that it uploads locally-viewed HTML to a server which then renders that page in a headless Chrome instance for archival:

I've recently been wondering how Omnivore, unlike e.g. Pocket, is able to store paywalled content (for which I have a subscription) on iOS when saving it via the Omnivore app target in the share sheet, but not when directly pasting the target URL in the webapp or iOS app.

Turns out that sharing to an iOS app actually enables [1] the app to run JavaScript in the Safari web context of the displayed page, including cookies and everything!

If I'm skimming the client and server source code correctly, it does just that: It seems to serialize and upload the HTML of the page [2] and then invokes Puppeteer on the server [3]. Puppeteer is a scriptable/headless Chrome – that would fit the bill of "an outdated Chrome running in a data center"!

Omnivore can also be self-hosted since both client and server are open-source; that would explain you seeing multiple data center IPs.

[1] https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Ge...

[2] https://github.com/omnivore-app/omnivore/blob/main/apple/Sou...

[3] https://github.com/omnivore-app/omnivore/blob/57aca545388904...