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I built a platform for discovering and sharing Chrome extension collections

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Re: I built a platform for discovering and sharing Chrome extension collections

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha exactly! Except I didnt bother to publish mine on chromewebstore, it's just on gitlab: https://gitlab.com/natural_aliens/geminiwrap_plugin ...it makes Gemini-Chat voice dictation a bit more useful. My other one, the remove-youtube-shorts, is almost an one-liner, so I didnt even publish it it's too trivial I think. Everyone just make your own!

I'm gonna need the remove youtube shorts one

You can do it natively inside ublock origin if you don't want to install an extra extension (often the case for a surprising number of simple extensions, actually).

I used to block it myself with my own filter, but after YouTube changed things up and broke it I've just been using someone else's filterlist and it works the same.

https://github.com/gijsdev/ublock-hide-yt-shorts

Re: I built a platform for discovering and sharing Chrome extension collections

#52
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm too scared to download extensions, so I use bookmarklets (on Firefox). But I like your suggestion of using ChatGPT to write extensions.

Tampermonkey scripts with chatgpt is even faster. Adding a functionality to a website just by pasting the site's html in chatgpt and in 2min I get what I need.

Making a simple tool for a site or two is the perfect use case for a userscript manager like TamperMonkey/ViolentMonkey (FOSS alternative), I think making your own extension is somewhat overkill

Easier to share with others, too

Re: I built a platform for discovering and sharing Chrome extension collections

#53
post #2

I found it more trustworthy to code my own extensions via ChatGPT. These are the last 2 ones. I pretty much dont care if people use them, as the mostly fulfill my own usecases. https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/comparative-chatgpt... https://thisismy.franzai.com/ The cost of (small) software is fast approaching 0, and it can be faster now to code your own solution, instead of looking for one that nearly mostly…

Haha exactly! Except I didnt bother to publish mine on chromewebstore, it's just on gitlab: https://gitlab.com/natural_aliens/geminiwrap_plugin ...it makes Gemini-Chat voice dictation a bit more useful. My other one, the remove-youtube-shorts, is almost an one-liner, so I didnt even publish it it's too trivial I think. Everyone just make your own!

But did you "code" them with chatgpt also?

Re: I built a platform for discovering and sharing Chrome extension collections

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which of your single use extensions was causing you to like things on Facebook?

Not the GP, but just last week Google automatically removed a single use extension ( https://readermode.io ) from my browser after flagging it as malware (as I recall the extension updated itself a day before the removal). The extension has also been taken down from the Chrome web store ( https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/reader-mode/llimhhc... ) though Google hasn't provided any details about what it was doin…

[deleted]

Re: I built a platform for discovering and sharing Chrome extension collections

#55
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the GP, but just last week Google automatically removed a single use extension ( https://readermode.io ) from my browser after flagging it as malware (as I recall the extension updated itself a day before the removal). The extension has also been taken down from the Chrome web store ( https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/reader-mode/llimhhc... ) though Google hasn't provided any details about what it was doin…

I think the asymmetry in payoffs explains this, since a bad actor who baits and switches their extension could do massive damage to users. So google try to catch this behaviour and inevitably have some false positives (extensions labelled malware that actually aren't). The cost of a false positive is annoyance. The cost of real malware getting through could be your bank balance.

Automatic extension updates is a stupid practice. The attack surface for a legit extension is minimal, while being huge for a malware update. I'm against almost all automatic software updates in general, but browser extensions take the cake for having an obscene cost/benefit ratio. Chrome won't even let you turn it off. Personally I extract and load all my extensions in developer mode.

Re: I built a platform for discovering and sharing Chrome extension collections

#56
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sigh, and I was just thinking about installing it. Time to find another one, or perhaps it will also fall to Goodhart’s Law.

I’d really like to know what exactly you are looking for? There is no such thing as “free” and no browser extension will give you something for free. You are paying, one way or the other…

My thoughts as well. Given their business model, any Honey replacement will be engaging in the same sort of behavior. Never seemed worth it to me.

Re: I built a platform for discovering and sharing Chrome extension collections

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha exactly! Except I didnt bother to publish mine on chromewebstore, it's just on gitlab: https://gitlab.com/natural_aliens/geminiwrap_plugin ...it makes Gemini-Chat voice dictation a bit more useful. My other one, the remove-youtube-shorts, is almost an one-liner, so I didnt even publish it it's too trivial I think. Everyone just make your own!

I'm gonna need the remove youtube shorts one

An extension doesn't make sense for a simple DOM manipulation - I'd recommend installing Tampermonkey then finding a script like the following:

https://github.com/hallzy/remove-youtube-shorts/blob/master/...

Re: I built a platform for discovering and sharing Chrome extension collections

#59
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the GP, but just last week Google automatically removed a single use extension ( https://readermode.io ) from my browser after flagging it as malware (as I recall the extension updated itself a day before the removal). The extension has also been taken down from the Chrome web store ( https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/reader-mode/llimhhc... ) though Google hasn't provided any details about what it was doin…

I heard (on HN) that often an extension changes owners just before turning bad. Curious if that was the case here.

Correct! That's why I use "Under new management" https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/under-new-managemen...

Re: I built a platform for discovering and sharing Chrome extension collections

#60

For what it's worth, if you create a new profile for Chrome extensions, they won't have access to your regular browser profile. I do this for web developer extensions that typically need a lot of powerful permissions. So I have a Chrome profile that's full of web developer extensions, so they're isolated from private and security sensitive stuff like email and banking. Similarly, you can do this by installing Chrome…

I've often wondered what chrome extensions have access to. Is it completely safe to install untrustworthy extensions so long as the user profile is a new one?

Also, I have a wonderful one-liner [1] aliased in ~/.zshrc (opens chrome with a new user profile with one command)

    open -n -a "Google Chrome" --args --user-data-dir=$(mktemp -d)

[1] https://superuser.com/a/1652648/928461
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