I wonder if there is any way to cache this data. As it stands, every web page the user browses to results in a hit to HN's search. That is the deciding factor in me not using this extension. First, there is just the common courtesy of not repeatedly hitting hn.algolia.com and costing Y Combinator money. But there is also the more selfish concern about algolia and Y Combinator having a complete picture of my browsing history.

These are 2 valid concerns. Using localStorage to cache the URL already looked up would help for the pages you visit the most (gmail.com, twitter, etc). Having a whitelist/blacklist of site {not,} to lookup might also help. Let me know if you think these 2 features would actually help. I could implement them.

Thanks for your comment!

Those would be a start. Although maybe a better possibility is to add an option to switch the extension from always checking to only check when a user hits the page action button. That would certainly earn my install.

Thanks. I added these as issues on github[1]. Feel free to watch/star the project to be notified of their implementation.

1: https://github.com/nepsilon/hn-comments

Done. Thanks for being responsive to feedback.