Cannot load pickled object

You need to either read the file first (as binary bytes) and use pickle.loads(), or pass an open file object to the pickle.load() command. The latter is preferable:

with open('out/cache/' +hashed_url, 'rb') as pickle_file:
    content = pickle.load(pickle_file)

Neither method supports loading a pickle from a filename.

If you happen to be porting python2 to 3 and run into this error, python2 and 3 handle bytes different leading to the requirement to open your file handle with the 'b' option. For instance in python2 open(file, 'r') as f: my_list = pickle.load(f) works , but not in python3. Instead you must open with open(file, 'rb') as f: my_list = pickle.load(f)