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Comment by golfer | Hacker News Reader

This is a very clever idea. Unfortunately I dislike installing extensions, because so many of them seem to get taken over by nefarious owners. Sadly it's poisoned the whole extension platform for me.

FYI: On Youtube, the keyboard shortcut for changing the video speed is simply pressing < or >

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Note that this extension is offered on GitHub, not the Chrome Extension store, so if you load it from source it'll never be updated unless you update the code.

I do this for any extension I give big permissions. Rather than installing it from the Chrome extension store, I just download its source and 'load unpacked extension' directly. This method is just a roundabout a way to disable Chrome extension updates. (and of course I'm still trusting the extension's code quite a bit, but at least I don't have to worry about it changing)

and of course I'm still trusting the extension's code quite a bit, but at least I don't have to worry about it changing

You only need to examine and trust it once.

It's true, but for large extensions that make use of bundled 3rd party libraries, it's hard to examine the code to determine with very high confidence there's nothing malicious in it. I also tend to watch a new extension's network traffic, but of course it's not foolproof either.

I delete the third party libraries and replace them with my own clean checkouts.

This extension appears to be installed directly from the files - I don't think it would automatically update even if a nefarious owner later gained control of the repository.

Actually the shortcut for changing the video speed is typing `>` or `<`. If you simply press those keys, depending on your keyboard layout, you may only show the controls (if the video is playing) or advance forward/back a frame (if the video is paused).

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