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Why is a browser extension required to access research papers?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Why is a browser extension required to access research papers?

#11

Post by horsawlarway »

martin_a wrote: post #10
horsawlarway wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It means they can view/modify the DOM of those sites. Lots of harmless reasons to want to do that (ex: adding a link/button) but yes, it also means they can grab the text content of the site (read your data) and change the site DOM or your text nodes (change your data). Just because they can doesn't mean they do, though (but it also doesn't mean they don't... shrug ). Again - the problem here is there's absolutely no…

> It means they can view/modify the DOM of those sites. Not really into this topic (extensions), but could this capability be used by an extension to create fake (invisible) login forms, grab your login data through auto-complete and send it home?

I mean - yes, although there's no real reason to even bother with the fake login form. They could just monitor the real login form the next time you login.

That said - at least for google, login is on accounts.google.com - so they aren't asking for that here.

Additionally, these extensions do go through review by google - something as blatant as a content_script that's phoning home with login details would ideally be caught (I develop extensions for work, but haven't tried submitting something malicious for review - so I can't really comment on whether they DO actually catch it)

Re: Why is a browser extension required to access research papers?

#12

Post by qwerty456127 »

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #5

You don't need the plugin to view the paper. CatalyzeX appear to be just posting (or spamming depending on your point of view) interesting papers/videos to AI/ML subredits to publicise their chrome plugin (that "finds and shows implementation code for any... research papers"). The link to the paper is at the top of the post under "paper link" from that you can click through to the paper on arxiv.org The reason its a…

Nice explanation, nice purpose, but IMHO every browser extension should be open source unless it implements some particularly valuable know-how logic the authors understandably want to keep secret.

Re: Why is a browser extension required to access research papers?

#14

Post by floil »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #12
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #5

You don't need the plugin to view the paper. CatalyzeX appear to be just posting (or spamming depending on your point of view) interesting papers/videos to AI/ML subredits to publicise their chrome plugin (that "finds and shows implementation code for any... research papers"). The link to the paper is at the top of the post under "paper link" from that you can click through to the paper on arxiv.org The reason its a…

Nice explanation, nice purpose, but IMHO every browser extension should be open source unless it implements some particularly valuable know-how logic the authors understandably want to keep secret.

Chrome browser extensions aren't really compiled, though I suppose they can be obfuscated. If you install this extension you ought to be able to find it in your Chrome profile directory and look at the manifest and JS source.

(former longtime chrome engineer here)

Re: Why is a browser extension required to access research papers?

#15

Post by NotAWorkNick »

Ansil849 wrote: post #13

You can use sci-hub.se to access virtually any academic paper (which has been digitized) you want. No browser extension required.

Unfortunately due to an ongoing court case, Sci-Hub have paused adding any new papers

[ https://old.reddit.com/r/scihub/comments/lofj0r/announcement... ]

Further details and suggested alternatives at https://old.reddit.com/r/scihub/wiki/index

Re: Why is a browser extension required to access research papers?

#16

Post by jakub_g »

floil wrote: post #14
qwerty456127 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice explanation, nice purpose, but IMHO every browser extension should be open source unless it implements some particularly valuable know-how logic the authors understandably want to keep secret.

Chrome browser extensions aren't really compiled, though I suppose they can be obfuscated. If you install this extension you ought to be able to find it in your Chrome profile directory and look at the manifest and JS source. (former longtime chrome engineer here)

Or install an extension to view code of other extensions before installing, directly on chrome store pages

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/chrome-extension-s...

Re: Why is a browser extension required to access research papers?

#18

Post by joshuaissac »

NotAWorkNick wrote: post #15
Ansil849 wrote: post #13

You can use sci-hub.se to access virtually any academic paper (which has been digitized) you want. No browser extension required.

Unfortunately due to an ongoing court case, Sci-Hub have paused adding any new papers [ https://old.reddit.com/r/scihub/comments/lofj0r/announcement... ] Further details and suggested alternatives at https://old.reddit.com/r/scihub/wiki/index

The case is ongoing but the injunction was temporary and has now expired. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28421477

Re: Why is a browser extension required to access research papers?

#19

Post by gauku »

Other issues aside, CatalyzeX has annoyed me for a long time. The creators of the extension used to spam almost all ML/DL related social media. Maybe they still do, I don't know cos now I've stopped following all of those platforms.

Why did it annoy me so much? - They would share the popular, latest papers that most people in the ML sphere would anyways come across if they follow academia twitter or ML subreddit. That is fine in itself but no, those posts would hijack the original source (mostly arxiv or respective project page) by taking you to the CatalyzeX website which is mainly designed to drive traffic to it and has all sorts of irritating design patterns. Mostly, it just felt dishonest and a blatant shadowing of the original authors' hard work to me.

Re: Why is a browser extension required to access research papers?

#20

Post by spideyunlimited »

Hi, co-author of CatalyzeX/the extension here! Most of the comments here seem to have been addressed, just re-iterating the following:

- The extension lets you easily jump to the code for papers (the papers are all open-access on the web) - The extension code is not obfuscated so it's easy to check out the underlying code for yourself (just search online for how to view extension source code). We just haven't officially open-sourced it as of now as it still needs a fair bit of cleaning up and optimizing - What we're using the browser permissions for is to add code buttons in-line on the webpage(s) you're on. Permissions offered by Chromium browsers are unfortunately not more granular than what we're using to simply update the DOM.

Feedback is always welcome!

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