Last week, the New York Times issued a correction to an article written by Justin Bank about President Trump. This was no ordinary correction, however:
Because of an editing error involving a satirical text-swapping web browser extension, an earlier version of this article misquoted a passage from an article by the Times reporter Jim Tankersley. The sentence referred to America’s narrowing trade deficit during “the Great Recession,” not during “the Time of Shedding and Cold Rocks.” (Pro tip: Disable your “Millennials to Snake People” extension when copying and pasting.)
Social networks went crazy over it. 😂
The person responsible has written an excellent follow-up article about the joys of browser extensions:
Browser extensions, when used properly and sensibly, can make your internet experience more productive and efficient. They can make thesaurus recommendations, more accessible, create to-do lists in new tabs, or change the color scheme of web pages to make them more readable.
The examples given by the author are all for the Chrome web browser, but all modern browsers have extensions:
Unfortunately — if somewhat comically — my use of that extension last week was far from joyful or efficient. But, despite my embarrassment to have distracted from the good work of my colleagues, I still passionately recommend the subversive, web-altering extensions you can find in a category the Chrome Web Store lists as “fun“.
Here’s my three favourite of the ones he lists in the article (which, as ever, I suggest you check out in full):
I’m particularly pleased to have come across the Word Replacer (Chrome) extension which allows you to effectively make your own extension. But as the author notes, be careful of the consequences when copy/pasting…
Source: The New York Times
