Einar Egilsson is a developer who wrote the Redirector browser extension and the CardGames.io site, and blogs about his projects.
HN commenters mostly recommend his Redirector extension for rewriting URLs, such as sending Twitter links to Nitter, and mention CardGames.io after his death.
This is one of those moments where I realize other folks on HN have almost exactly the same Firefox setup as me. Nice list of add-on recommendations!
I would add in a couple more, for anyone tempted to switch away from Chrome or Safari:
- Redirector: https://www.einaregilsson.com/redirector/ Very helpful for redirecting "new" reddit to old.reddit.com, AMP links to normal links, Twitter to Nitter, etc.
- RES (Reddit Enhancement Suite): https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/reddit-enhancement-suite/ Provides built-in image preview and lots of other subtle goodies for old.reddit.com. I have a very hard time browsing reddit without it!
- Sponsorblock for Youtube: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sponsorblock/ If you watch any amount of YouTube on channels with lots of sponsors, this is a great way to keep your sanity. Works just like sponsor skipping in the Overcast podcast client.
Reposting from another thread earlier.
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I still have a few accounts I glance at from time to time. Hockey, Game Devs, Artists, etc. who haven't migrated away despite everything, so this is kinda obnoxious.
I created some Redirector (https://einaregilsson.com/redirector/) rules to redirect Tweet and Twitter Profile URLs to their HTML embed equivalents.
Should be able to just import the rules and it seems to work alright with some caveats.
* I have no idea if this will continue to function.
* I've only tested some random links from my Discord and Slack groups.
* Profile links only show the most recent 20 tweets.
* Tweets will show quote-tweets, but no replies (though maybe that's a good thing).
* Obviously won't work for mobile.
Rules are at https://gist.github.com/robotblake/a0f020381c1a919cf9720f9ae09b3093
Edit: And just realized /u/justnotworthit posted the link earlier too.
What happens to me is that sometime I do not realize I am sharing a link that I can see while my friends cannot (maybe because I always clean cookies at every Firefox start, so websites think I am a new user, so I am allowed to see something for awhile?)
Anyhow, you are more then right!
Btw: a great trick somebody published in HN some years ago still works well for many websites: just add a dot (".") at the end of the domain (not the end of the URL), and the website treats you like an anonymous (so it often lets you see content and bypass the pay wall): I do it with the Guardian, all the time, so
https://www.theguardian.com./international
instead of
https://www.theguardian.com/international
(you can even use this https://einaregilsson.com/redirector/ plugin to automatically rewrite some urls by adding that dot at the end)
Sadly late 2021 the original dev passed away. Someone has taken over stewardship of the project but it is currently moving slowly and they are seeking more contributors (javascript skills are a plus).
He was a bit of a hn user and seemed good natured and pleasant. Though I didn't know him I was sad to hear he'd passed both as a Redirector user and a fan of good people doing good things. I know he'd mentioned being happy to get recognition on here. https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=einaregilsson
I really enjoyed the original devs write up on creating an easter egg specifically targeting Mark Hamills avatar in game. https://einaregilsson.com/an-easter-egg-for-one-user-luke-skywalker/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30715746
I use the Redirector extension to mitigate the problem of "getting into the habit" by automation: https://einaregilsson.com/redirector/
It redirects all my googling to Startpage so I don't have to change my habits at all.
I recently discovered Privacy Redirect which apparently took the idea a step further by providing presets that redirect visits to popular web services to their privacy friendly alternatives by default and thus mitigates the need to set up a redirector extension yourself:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/privacy-redirect/
I use a Firefox extension to do it - https://einaregilsson.com/redirector/. You might be able to do some local DNS with a wildcard shenanigans, but this is much easier to set up.
I actually don't redirect my Reddit requests, since once in a blue moon I will want to comment on something, which libreddit doesn't support. However Invidious does have the option to let you follow certain channels, and since I don't comment on YouTube videos, it covers all of my use cases, so I redirect all Youtube traffic to it.