Why is a browser extension required to access research papers?

67 points

4 years ago

There are a series of subreddits concerned with machine learning topics. In those subreddits there is an organization named CatalyzeX that is constantly promoting their browser plugin to access the latest ML papers, code, etc.

Here is one such post of theirs: https://old.reddit.com/r/LatestInML/comments/s2l10i/given_a_single_video_of_a_human_performing_an/

My question: why a browser extension? This really smells fishy, because a browser extension bypasses any browser security one may have, and has access to one's entire computer. What valid reasoning could there be to justify a browser extension for this purpose?

21 comments