userscripts VS Killed by Google

Hi, I'm Will. I'm 24, autistic, and have OCD tendencies. I'm learning to code and this is my first public project. I’d really appreciate your feedback and encouragement!

This project lets me solve some of my OCD problems online. There are a couple of parts of the forums that I visit – Space Battles, Sufficient Velocity, and Questionable Questing – that I want to remove. Specifically, I hate seeing indicators of how much is left in a forum thread, because I keep thinking about how much content is left. It stops me from immersing myself in the story. It stressed me out. Before I learned to code, I'd use my hand to block the total chapter count so I could read the blurb and see the word count. I would do my best to ignore the page navigation bar except for the next page button, but I usually ended up failing. One of the reasons I always read in full-screen Safari is that I didn't have to see the tab name that always had the page number. I learned not to hover my cursor over the window because it would tell me the page number.

This project is a series of userscripts that hide those indicators. I coded the userscripts in JavaScript, and I'm using [userscripts](https://github.com/quoid/userscripts) as the system. Despite the fact I didn't know what a userscript was until I started coding them, AI assistance allowed me to code them with minimal help from my brother, Stevie. Khanmigo helped me plan, write, and debug code. ChatGPT taught me the theory. Part of the reason I coded a lot faster with the later userscripts is I knew enough to realize when AI was talking about something irrelevant and redirect it. One cool moment was when I correctly predicted I didn't need to code different userscripts for SpaceBattles and Sufficient Velocity because Sufficient Velocity used to be part of SpaceBattles.

I find it relaxing not to have to worry about accidentally seeing the chapter count or the final page number. Maybe they’ll help one of you!

You can use userscripts [1] which is a safari extension which allows you to add userscripts, and the author of this work have an userscript [2] that you can use with safari (or any other browser)

[1] https://github.com/quoid/userscripts

[2] https://github.com/imdj/HNRelevant/blob/main/HNRelevant.user...

That Safari also supports UserScripts and Extensions also somewhat mutes some of Arc's benefits, so it will be interesting to see how/if Arc responds.

UserScripts (More explanation on Github)

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In Safari, using Userscripts extension: https://github.com/quoid/userscripts#userscripts-safari

You might want to take a look at this Safari Extension for userscripts on iOS.

https://github.com/quoid/userscripts

Try this userscript. In Safari you can install userscripts via free extension

Strict Mode wrapper prevents @require libs from working (1.3.2)

Something like https://github.com/quoid/userscripts seems like what you want.

Ask the developer on GitHub: https://github.com/quoid/userscripts/issues

I was already starting to feel a little cornered in the whole Google ecosystem and a bit limited with stuff like backups, vendor lock in, etc. (and you always have the obvious hanging over your head) and ultimately, I think I just find the mental model of a SQL database more intuitive compared to a NoSQL database. So I thought to myself; "the longer I leave it, the harder it'll be to make the switch".

https://killedbygoogle.com/

Their reputation is deserved. Google domains was killed only last year!

And this isn't even the first time I've been burned by Google's decisions. If you're familiar at all with the Google Graveyard, you'll know that Google has a long history of killing off products and services that people have come to rely on. This has happened to me a number of times, in both a personal and professional capacity, and frankly it's getting old.

Just because Google has a couple of decent services that you're willing to pay for doesn't detract from the fact that most of their products have a worse life expectancy than a victorian child in the 1800s. https://killedbygoogle.com

They ruined every single opportunity to be more than an advertising company since Orkut. With scrapped attempts, starts and lack of intention for most of the 2010s to even during the early half of the Pixel Era, they seemingly haven't learnt to stick to something and iterate on it well.

And the fact that over 50% of their revenues come from search and by extension, advertising.

The fact' that til this day, they still haven't evolved from the "throwing shit at the wall then at the fan" strat which explains how they have fumbled so much so quickly.

Yeah. The Google Graveyard really shows how far this can go.

https://killedbygoogle.com

The punchline is that in addition to hundreds of failed hobby projects, their stock is doing great. Monopoly power is a helluva drug.

To me Gemini is just sort of generic and uninteresting. There has to be hundreds or thousands of products and companies based on the name "Gemini" - "Bard" was at least interesting, different and distinct.

I've no idea about the quality of the product itself, I have never had a reason to use it. It's long past cliché now but I wouldn't get too attached to a Google product that is definitely costing a lot of money but which has no clear pathway to turning a profit. I think they will keep it ticking over until the hype train moves on from Chatbots/LLMs, and then it'll join the Google Graveyard @ https://killedbygoogle.com

We're not talking about reliability, we're talking about Google's penchant for killing established products that people use. https://killedbygoogle.com