Show HN: Comntr, a browser extension to leave comments on any website

6 points by comntr 7y ago ↗ HN

It's a simple extension that can add comments to SHA1 of the current tab URL. Comments are stored on a $5/mo VPS in the /<sha1(url)>/<sha1(comment)=text form. See https://github.com/comntr/webext/. I I thought it would be cool to have reddit-like discussions for any URL, so here we go. For now the extension is available only on Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/comntr/. The reason I haven't published its Chrome version is that the Chrome Web Store now requires a phone number and a credit card, which is the same thing as asking for ID. The extension can be installed manually, though: this is how I test it. P.S. I know that giving a random extension access to tab URLs is a questionable idea, but unfortunately I can't write in manifest.json that the extension only needs SHA1 of the URL. And you can always compute the SHA1 yourself and use https://comntr.github.io#<sha1> :)

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subarp 7y ago ↗

If comments in the database are encrypted, it'll be possible to have secret discussions that nobody, even the DB admin, can read unless they know the original URL. And this can be done: just encrypt comments with SHA256(URL+salt). The admin will see that something is going on under a specific SHA1, but since there is no way to restore the URL, the admin will have no clue how to read the comments. It'll be pretty cool I think.