I've released a browser extension^{1Desktop-only, for now.}.

Links: Chrome | Firefox | GitHub

It works as a bridge to HN, letting you upvote, favorite, hide, flag, and reply using your logged-in HN account, all without leaving hcker.news.

Features:

• Do HN actions on hcker.news
• See your HN username and karma in the top-right corner of hcker.news
• From an HN thread, click the extension icon to open the corresponding page on hcker.news

To be clear, this extension performs actions on behalf of whichever account is logged into news.ycombinator.com. If you're in incognito mode or in a Firefox Multi-Account Container, it'll use the account logged into that specific context^{2In order to work with incognito and Firefox Multi-Account Containers, the extension opens a temporary HN tab in the background to execute the action.}.

I'm paranoid about browser extensions, as most of you probably are. I've made the extension minimally permissive, meaning that it only needs access to hcker.news and news.ycombinator.com. When you perform an action, it'll store a record of that in local storage so that the site can show you buttons to undo those actions. Nothing from the extension is sent to hcker.news. The source code is available for review on GitHub. The readme explains the use of permissions in more depth.

As always, feedback welcome at [email protected].

---

1. Desktop-only, for now. ↩

2. In order to work with incognito and Firefox Multi-Account Containers, the extension opens a temporary HN tab in the background to execute the action. ↩

Today I'm introducing some noise controls, starting in the comments drawer. Although HN shouldn't be approached as a popularity contest, we need the ability to protect our sanity from bots and provocateurs. It's not about popularity, it's about curation^{1A necessary sentence written with revelatory prose that's unique to me, surely.}.

First, you can see a user's average karma next to their username in the comments. This number can be a helpful signal for whether further engagement is a good use of your time.

Second, you can set two optional threshold filters: (1) min average karma and (2) min account age. Since these also filter out child comments, the pruning effect can be significant.

Take, for instance, the most commented story of the past week, the announcement of the MacBook Neo with 2300 comments. A one-karma threshold reduces that to 1,900 comments; a two-karma threshold reduces that to 900 comments. You were never going to read them all, but at least now you have a fighting chance.

This number is a pretty good proxy for a user's ability to engage in good faith. Having an avg karma < 1 is hard to do. But it's a metric, and it's imperfect^{2There are conspicuous exceptions. dang has an avg karma of 0.5. I've made mods (dang & tomhow) immune from filtering.}. Good commenters may get filtered out. It's your choice.

Happy to hear ideas on how this could be made more useful!^{3After this... maybe filtering out new-account submission spam?}

---

1. A necessary sentence written with revelatory prose that's unique to me, surely. ↩

2. There are conspicuous exceptions. dang has an avg karma of 0.5. I've made mods (dang & tomhow) immune from filtering. ↩

3. After this... maybe filtering out new-account submission spam? ↩