Argonne National Laboratory is blocking Boing Boing (or maybe not, see update)

An employee at Argonne National Laboratory says: "I'm at a big US federal site, 3500 employees, never blocked you before. There is an option where I can request that a domain be reconsidered if there's cause. I'll keep my eyes open."

If you are stuck behind a Boing Boing-proof firewall, you might be able to access Boing Boing using this link:

http://www.google.com/translate?langpair=en|en&u=www.boingboing.net

This clever little trick from Google Hacks allows you to access restricted web sites using Google language tools service as a proxy.

Reader comment: Adjam says:

I used that 'Google proxy' method to bypass our sysadmin's paranoid web restrictions all the time two years ago!

He would block it though, so instead of using google.co.uk /translate?langpair=en|en&u=www.somthing.com i would use google.co.jp or google.co.fr. And he was so incompetent that every now and then he'd just reset all the web restrictions without realizing it and I could use .co.uk again.

Reader comment: Charles says:

I'm not sure who said boingboing is blocked from Argonne, but I know I check your site daily and it's not blocked. It's a big lab – maybe someone's department has a local firewall setup. It's definitely not labwide.

Reader comment: Scott says:

I think my app Bitty should be able to get through to blocked
content, for example here's boingboing.

I just released a new version. Here's boingboing in Bitty as a Google personalized home page module:

1) Go to: http://www.google.com/ig/

2) Click "Add Content" in the top-left corner

3) Look for "Create a Section" at the bottom of the new left-hand sidebar,
and copy/paste this URL

4) Click OK at the prompt

Reader comment: Brian says:

Don't know if this is just a coincidence but.. BoingBoing was blocked at Prudential starting today. Noticed this morning when I went for my daily fix!

Reader comment:A reader says:

Regarding the bypass of firewalls you suggested to be able to read Boingboing if it is blocked…

I thought you should know this method is very popular here in China to bypass government filters. Google Translate doesn't work, but lesser-known translators (like, say, http://www.worldlingo.com) work perfectly. It doesn't work for Google Translate and Babelfish, though… I think the Chinese government is wise to this and banned these sites.