131–140 of 320 posts
Browser Extension for Hacker News written in Rust WASM:
https://github.com/drakerossman/hackernews-userscript
It has filtering capabilities (filter in title, link, text, or username via regex) and softhide (hide all the items on a page without pulling others from the next page).
Is there a way to use browser extensions safely? Any extension that looks interesting needs access to everything I see on the screen (and even modify it), which to me seems a huge security risk. My understanding is that random extension is able to read and send somewhere almost all my data when I read my email, do online banking, etc. Do I understand correctly the situation?
It's possible to extract the extensions source, save it locally, and then manually install it. That insulates you from the risk of a malicious update. (You could also audit the extension for complete safety, but TBH I'm usually too lazy to do that, and I assume that the risk of an extension currently being malicious is far lower than the risk of an extension later being updated to become malicious)
It also insulates you from critical security updates. Managing your own security is not without its risks.
Just the framing of "browser extensions" is extremely problematic in the year 2024. Most browser extensions by weight are Google Chrome extensions. Google Chrome is unambiguously demonstrating that no API is safe in its quest to juice revenues. Anybody who builds extensions using Chrome's APIs should be very aware that they're quite possibly putting effort into something a juggernaut will stomp away without a second…
Forget all that. 1. They increase the attack surface of the browser 2. They have routinely been transferred to (for money) or taken over by malicious entities 3. Often they subtly break things in ways that are fine for expert users but which result in support reach out by others The whole extension thing is a mess.
1. They increase the attack surface of the operating system 2. They have routinely been transferred to (for money) or taken over by malicious entities 3. Often they subtly break things in ways that are fine for expert users but which result in support reach out by others
The whole web browser thing is a mess.
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It is very annoying to try and follow through minified code. I've tried to view the source and see what some extensions are doing but it can be a bit of a painful process. You can at least sometimes figure out what kind of GET/POST requests the extension may be making, but it's much more time consuming to try and ensure everything is safe. The other problem is that the extensions can update. You typically get zero no…
There is a button to format the code for minified files.
I wanted to build an internal company extension, but for that (chrome) you still need to go through the review process with Google and it is even worse than Apple’s App Store reviews.
Would it be too much friction to host internally and require your users to "load unpacked"?
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Actually hilarious that we have people here defending removing extensions, as if they didn't live through the days of Internet explorer. Well, maybe they didn't I hope they enjoy the eventual return of popups.
They never left they're just called modals now.
I really like this final comment. As a non expert in computing, I also often think about how young is this field, and I fantasize about how it will evolve, hopefully towards a more accessible and open ecosistem.
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Replace browser with operating system or computer and expand extensions to user installable programs and it mostly still rings true. I believe users should be empowered to modify their installed applications as they see fit.
It doesn't ring true for installed software anymore — "virus scanners" have gotten to the point where they just work for most people, desktop software is more difficult develop (for your average hacker wannabe), more difficult to get users to install, and has far less valuable data to go after. I actually very much like Apple's approach to browser extensions forcing them to be truly installed software and in the purv…