[jstrieb]

If you use Firefox (and will pardon me plugging my own project), you might be interested in a version of this I made a while ago as a browser extension:

https://github.com/jstrieb/hackernews-button

My project is somewhat different from the userscript in that mine uses Bloom filters to check whether a link has been submitted, whereas this userscript sends every page you visit to the Algolia search API. Using Bloom filters means that there are no external requests unless you actually press the button. My project also doesn't show the comments in a sidebar.

Having a link to past discussions, whether using this userscript or my extension, is useful not only to read the comments for a page you're browsing, but also to find good sites that haven't been submitted yet!

[jeremyjh]

I like the bloom filter idea - I agree I don't want every URL I visit to be sent to Algolia. I really like this project's UI though - automatically opening it in a pane so I don't have to leave the site to see comments is really nice.

[avadodin]

I don't understand what the Bloom filter is supposed to achieve here. Can you elaborate?

[danbruc]

Not the author, but this prevents leaking all URLs you are visiting to agolia. Instead of asking Was this URL submitted to Hacker News? you ask Which URLs have been submitted to Hecker News?, store that in a Bloom filter, and then use the Bloom filter to answer the question Was this URL [likely] submitted to Hacker News?