How to Preserve Ephemeral Text

Background

Viruses are too small to be seen, so we need to use a reagent kit. How does the reagent kit detect them? First, it amplifies the amount of viral nucleic acid using polymerase chain reaction. Then, it stains the viral nucleic acid with a fluorescent dye, making it bright and vibrant.
Disasters are like reagent kits, they magnify everything, making it more vivid and eye-catching. So we see unprecedented beauty and kindness, as well as incredible stupidity and ugliness. In fact, these things are always there.

This article will introduce methods for preserving sensitive information before it is "404ed".

Methods

Note: This article will demonstrate using the Chrome browser.

Install the Plugin

If you have a VPN, you can directly search for Web Clipper on the Chrome Webstore and download and install the plugin.

If you see this screen after opening the link above:
Don't worry, this is normal. We can also download the plugin from another link:
Download crx file from crx4chrome

After the plugin is downloaded, follow the instructions in the image below to open the Extensions page:

Drag the downloaded plugin here to install it.

Configuration

We will use the GitHub Issues feature to host the content.

If you don't have a GitHub account, you need to register one first: https://github.com/ (the process will not be described here)
After registration, click this link to generate an Access Token. Be sure to save the generated token, as it will be used later.
Create a repository: https://github.com/new, and choose whether it should be public or private.

Open the plugin page and bind the corresponding Access Token with the GitHub repository.

Usage

When we open any article, we can clip it and set tags. The article will be stored as an issue in the corresponding repository.
Even after the article is "404ed", we can still continue reading it here.

Conclusion

In China, there is an ancient saying: "Listen to both sides and you will be enlightened; heed only one side and you will be in the dark." This saying tells us that we need to look at things from different perspectives in order to better understand and make the right decisions. If we only believe in one side, we won't be able to distinguish right from wrong. The same applies to information.

References and Acknowledgements

This post is translated using ChatGPT, please feedback if any omissions.