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Show HN: HN Replies – Get notified of replies to your comments
- dangrossman 11y agoHi everyone. There used to be a site that did this, but it disappeared a few months ago, so I made HN Replies last night to fill the void. I check HN's API for new comments every 10 minutes, and send an e-mail notification when a new reply to one of your comments shows up. This is what the notification mail will look like: http://i.imgur.com/f8jaAm8.png http://i.imgur.com/f8jaAm8.png
- kenrick95 11y agoIt will be good to have e-mail verification. (i.e. check if the one signing up is really the e-mail owner)
- dangrossman 11y agoProbably a good idea, so I've added e-mail verification.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- enraged_camel 11y agoThanks! I was thinking of creating this exact thing, and now I can take it off my to-do list. :)
- Mithaldu 11y agoAny chance we could get RSS feeds instead? :)
- captn3m0 11y agoThis would be awesome. I currently use Slack as an RSS reader (Have a dedicated channel) and it works mostly nice.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- cmrx64 11y agoIt'd be neat if you implemented PGP encryption of messages to a designated keyid.
- krapp 11y agoThe comments are public, and it's public knowledge which account they're replying to. What would be accomplished by encrypting them?
- cmrx64 11y agoaccount -> email mapping isn't necessarily public, the email hosts transiting the email don't need that information leaked. it's about preventing info flow.
- krapp 11y agoIt doesn't look like you need to use the email associated with your account, though.
- marvy 11y agoYes, but even if HN knows you by me@example.com, and this fact does not leak, something else does: someone (probably you) is interested at getting replies to your comments at krapp@example.com. Deduction: that is one of your email addresses.
- krapp 11y agoBut email addresses aren't meant to be private, so even if that deduction is true, everything it appears to leak is still public knowledge.
- mintplant 11y ago> There used to be a site that did this, but it disappeared a few months ago I was just about to link HN Notify for this, but sure enough, it's gone. Thanks for the replacement!
- JoshTriplett 11y ago> Hi everyone. There used to be a site that did this, but it disappeared a few months ago, so I made HN Replies last night to fill the void. Huh; HN Notify does seem to have gone missing. Anyone know what happened to it?
- swah 11y agoI wonder if it works?
- koralatov 11y agoWhat does the plain-text notification look like? I'd guess that Hacker News probably has a pretty high proportion of users whose MUA of choice is mutt or Emacs+something.
- dangrossman 11y agohttp://i.imgur.com/nKgL5hh.png http://i.imgur.com/nKgL5hh.png
- koralatov 11y agoIt doesn't seem to parse links correctly in the body of the comment, but I appreciate what works so far. It's pretty much exactly what I want, and fills one of the few missing points of Hacker News. https://imgur.com/6LRulGi https://imgur.com/6LRulGi Two pretty trivial suggestions: - Number the links in square brackets, so they're easier to follow when passed to urlview - Quotation marks around the topic subject in the body of the email
- dangrossman 11y agoYeah, that's pretty ugly. That's what the HN API returns as the comment text... super HTML-encoded for some reason. I'll try to undo more of it.
- autotune 11y agoWouldn't this just have the same problem as the previous site? The functionality for this tool seems better implemented as a Chromium or Firefox plugin rather than a service.
- kbenson 11y agoWhat were the problems with the previous site? I used it without major problems. Wouldn't a browser plugin require you to actively be using HN, or at least have a tab open? Getting an email notification four hours later that someone replied to you on HN, so you may want to take a look is nice (if you don't want to be a slave to HN, don't check your email as often or don't deal immediately with this email). Additionally, in a browser extension, there's then a lot of people grabbing the comment history rather than a single program, which necessarily puts a higher load on HN.
- gavinflud 11y agoWell in a browser extension, you wouldn't necessarily have a lot of people grabbing the comment history. The program could still run as it does, calling the HN API every ten minutes for new replies. The browser extension could just call the service to see if it has found any new replies for you particularly.
- ikeboy 11y agoReddit companion extension alerts you for new replies, with no requirement to keep a reddit tab open.
- autotune 11y agoMajor problem with it going offline, hence this new tool, which may or may not go offline at some point again. I am sure you could build an extension that polls the HN API every couple of seconds or so to check for replies and have it show a popup when you get a notification as well as send an email. https://github.com/HackerNews/API https://github.com/HackerNews/API
- kbenson 11y ago
- gravypod 11y agoIs this open source? I'd like to see how your finding replies for a single user.
- kbenson 11y agoYou just check the comments feed occasionally, and make sure you follow it back far enough until you've found a comment you've previously seen (or a time prior to the last seen comment). Of those comments, if any are for users that have requested notification, shoot off an email to their supplied notification email address with the relevant info. It's really not that complicated, and a great starter/hobby project. I imagine the only reason there wasn't a replacement out sooner for the prior site that stopped working is that a lot of us weren't really aware it had stopped, or weren't aware it was dead and not suspended (is it?), or hadn't yet gotten off our buts to make a replacement once we determined the prior site was gone. It's the kind of small scope and easily defined project that's great for learning a new language.
- nickpsecurity 11y agoCome on now. I'm sure the commenter knew you could search the subscriber list when new comments come in. I think the real interest was in how Grossman may have optimized it for CPU or memory efficiency. I was curious myself given it's easier to keep sites like this up if they take almost no resources to run. Some low-power, disposable box or extra CPU cycles on an existing server. "It's the kind of small scope and easily defined project that's great for learning a new language." I totally agree with that. Matter of fact, I was planning on implementing that exact project to learn Rust or Go. :) Might still do it as it remains a good learning experience, esp for stuff you use 80% of the time.
- kbenson 11y ago> Come on now. I'm sure the commenter knew you could search the subscriber list when new comments come in. Well, that may have been obvious to you, but I didn't want to assume anything about the asker, and while it appears the majority of users here are developers at times, there are still people that frequent that have little or no practical software engineering experience. In any case, it's easy to overlook features of a site you never or rarely use. I've clicked on the comments feed maybe 3-4 times in a few years, if I hadn't thought about this issue previously (as obviously you have as well), I might or might not have immediately thought about the comments link, and how it's really a feed.
- glifchits 11y agoI was looking for a service like this just days ago. Kudos!
- glifchits 11y agoI was looking for a service like this just days ago. Kudos!
- shostack 11y agoYou rock Dan! I just posted to Ask HN recently asking if there was a replacement when I noticed it go down and got crickets. Thanks for taking the initiative. You should let Jacques know so he can update his HN FAQ. On a side note, any idea why YC doesn't bake this into the HN site itself? Dang, any comment?
- larryb 11y agoI don't have a link handy for this, but I remember reading some blog post somewhere that said the feature of emailing people when there's a reply decreases engagement. From what I remember, people tune out expecting an email.
- Chris911 11y agoNice. I built a similar service for HN comments, Github stars and other small things like that a while (still running). Is your code open-source?
- bootload 11y agoprobably won't see that, html isn't processed on my client. Any chance of a text version?
- dangrossman 11y agoIt's a multipart message with both HTML and text versions. http://i.imgur.com/nKgL5hh.png http://i.imgur.com/nKgL5hh.png
- bootload 11y agoThx @Dan, confirmed this via the email.
- joshschreuder 11y agoThanks for putting this together! I too was sad that the old site went down.
- Mz 11y agoThanks! I hate missing replies and I really am glad to see a replacement.
- nickpsecurity 11y agoThanks for writing it. I seriously was getting tired of looking for replies. I was about to write one myself within the week. Might still do it to experiment with a new language. Thanks still.
- baudehlo 11y agoQuick fix: set the type= of the email box to "email". This makes it easier on mobile.
- BuckRogers 11y agoThis is pretty cool for those who would use it. I for one, do not want more notifications in my life. :) Even my iPhone doesn't notify me on anything besides calls and texts. Everything else is at my convenience.
- johnchristopher 11y agoYou don't have mail set up on your iPhone ?
- jchendy 11y agoI'm not OP, but I have mail on my phone with notifications turned off. I get emails constantly and don't want to be bothered every time one comes in.
- johnchristopher 11y agoI am confused because if only text and calls notifications are allowed then an HN mail for a comment shouldn't be a problem. Unless the mail box is `clear' from notifications as well and GP wants to keep it that way.
- BuckRogers 11y agoI use the Gmail app on my phone, but it's blocked from notifying me. I open it up when I want to see my emails. Which I check often enough each day anyway, but I get to do it without interruption and no downtime. The OPs screenshot[0] wasn't clear to me if that was a native browser notification or email popup. I check for new responses whenever I click on a new interesting HN post in my Firefox bookmarks toolbar RSS feed. While another email sitting there waiting defeats the purpose for me. In general my philosophy is lazy eval over eager eval, so to speak. [0]http://i.imgur.com/f8jaAm8.png http://i.imgur.com/f8jaAm8.png
- johnchristopher 11y ago
- jchendy 11y agoThanks, this definitely sounds useful! I think it would also really help to have some kind of notification in the HN header.
- amalag 11y agoI think the way reddit does it is great. A red number in the header if you have replies and then an unread page where you can see them and click for context.
- jchendy 11y agoYeah, it would be awesome if HN implemented the reddit inbox.
- sotojuan 11y agoThat's funny. The reason I comment here more than Reddit is because I get no notifications. On Reddit I click `disable Inbox replies` as much as possible, but sometimes forget. I like being able to look at my comments when I want to reply.
- philh 11y agoIf you don't mind losing private messages (I get ~0 of those), presumably you could add the reddit mail icon to your adblocker or something? For me though, notifications are much more important on reddit than here. Here I can see replies directly on my user page (and replies to them, which I also like to follow), there I'd have to click through to each of my recent comments to check.
- mistermann 11y agoAnd collapsible comments, and I'd really like the ability to hide my username from the prying eyes of coworkers as RES allows on reddit.
- johnchristopher 11y agoI wonder. Considering it would be easy for HN maintainer to implement this feature I came to the conclusion they considered it and chose not to go with it. Maybe because that would somehow degrade the HN experience. Maybe that would shape a `quick-reply-on-the-spot' tendency instead of people getting back to the comments a few hours later to check out if the conversation brought new insights. A mean to keep some kind of posters from over posting.
- stuart78 11y agoThanks! I feel so narcissistic when I load up my profile to see if I've got any replies ;)
- supersan 11y agoHi, is there a link to your email privacy policy?
- logicallee 11y agoThere are multiple people in this thread asking about email privacy policy. One asks about what assures that the list won't be sold. But one just asks what should happen if you get too many genuine replies. I think it's pretty crazy that GMail, from my main account, doesn't let me just make a high-entropy word (buffalowafflesloth) and a tag, so that that email is instantly associated with the tag on my end. It should take me literally 2 clicks to write "hackernews notificaitn" and receive "buffalowafflesloth" in response, meaning anything sent to "buffalowafflesloth" gets to my main email with the "hackernews notificaitn" tag. (And I would give this service "buffalowafflesloth@gmail.com") Google: if you're reading this do this. Let us give out emails that get a tag, so that later we can redirect it. You already kind-of do this with +SOMETHING but the +SOMETHING part can be removed to get the original email.
- joshmanders 11y agoI think you overestimate the desire to screen email addresses and remove any "tags" that are on them. Most spammers and even companies don't even care WHAT the email is, as long as it doesn't bounce.
- logicallee 11y agoThis is an insecure solution that doesn't scale, and only works because nobody uses it. I don't need to lock my door either, but that kind of security doesn't scale. I either use mailinator for throwaway email signups, or I have a spam gmail account. But I'm not going to give out my main account+marker if I expect to want to be able to undo sharing my email in the future at some point that I try to follow an unsubscribe link and it doesn't work, or because my email might get sold: that's just downright silly. You think the kind of people that would sell email lists wouldn't run a regex to strip +spam markers from gmail accounts? You literally have to apply a one-line regex to do that. It's security by obscurity. Anyone working at google should understand that.
- zwischenzug 11y agoDoes the API have a request limit? Shameless plug for a similar service that notifies when a word is mentioned: http://hnalert.tk http://hnalert.tk
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- dijit 11y agothis service sounds like it's biggest use is brigading. (unless you're looking for someone mentioning your product.)
- zwischenzug 11y agoThat's not a use case I'd considered, but I suppose it could. It grew out of wanting to be informed about any links related to a book I was writing (on 'docker'). Friends have used it eg to be informed about any 'rust' related posts.
- s_dev 11y agoI've been looking for a service like this for a long time. I've set it up there to look for any keywords on "Ireland" or "Irish" as I can relate to that news a bit more because thats where I live.
- TeMPOraL 11y agoThanks! I missed HN Notify. Notifications about replies really help the conversation going, even after any given topic falls from the HN front page.
- jonalmeida 11y agoI don't see an option to remove the notifications if it gets too spammy.
- dangrossman 11y agoThere's an unsubscribe link in each mail.
- jonalmeida 11y agoOddly enough, I didn't get an email about your reply back to my comment. Just saw it now by luck.
- dangrossman 11y agoHN's API was on the fritz in the first hour or so after I posted, leading to a bunch of missed comments that weren't alerted or tracked for replies. Seems to be working great since. 475 notifications sent so far, and you should get one for this comment.
- jonalmeida 11y agoBeauty! Thanks Dan!
- protomyth 11y agoVery nice. I do hope you'll put some wording about not selling out our addresses to everyone :) On that note, it would actually be rather interesting to see if you could actually sell classified text ads (no tracking images) to send with the e-mails. It might be a nice little way to pay for the service in a pretty basic manner.
- dangrossman 11y agoI'm not going to do anything with the e-mails except send reply notifications. I don't need to make any money from this, it doesn't cost anything to run.
- protomyth 11y agoWell, it does take your time and that's valuable. Very nice and thanks for using that time to make a useful site.
- lobster_johnson 11y agoThanks for creating this! I, too, was using HN Notify until it suddenly just stopped working. It came back briefly before it disappeared again. I wish this functionality ought to be built into HN, though. A lot of discussions seem to be die off very quickly, and my hypothesis is that many commenters just don't bother/remember to check back for replies.
- glifchits 11y agoIt would be kinda nice if this was built into HN, but I also kind of like how minimal HN is. Maybe the best solution is to centralize all of the myriad extensions that people have made for HN, so that anyone can easily find the features they want to add to their HN experience.
- lobster_johnson 11y agoI think comment notifications is sufficiently core that it should be an official feature. Letting the community solve thing externally to HN is well and good, but results in exactly this situation, where a lot of users relied on one user's system when it was abruptly taken offline. It provided a convenience that, in my case, significantly improved my HN experience (and others', too, since it kept certain conversations alive that otherwise would have faded earlier), an improvement which was then equally subtracted when the service disappeared. I'd love HN to be community-extensible, though. Current browser extensions are great (I use this [1], which adds thread collapsing and highlights unread comments), but need to be maintained across browsers and typically don't work on mobile. A better solution would be to allow users to add scripts to their account, which could then be copied into a static location (so the author can't change the code to something disruptive) and inserted into the page body. Then a nice little ecosystem could grow where users shared useful extensions. As an example of a personal need currenty unfulfilled: I recognize a few HN names, but most I just forget. Each thread is full of anonymous people who I've surely read, and maybe replied to, before. It'd be wonderful to get something (Gravatar icons, expand to full name, unique colorization, "previously replied to person" or "previously upvoted" indicator) for each name to make them easier to remember and recognize, even within a single thread. It's also be great to show company names next to user names. [1] http://hckrnews.com/about.html#extensions http://hckrnews.com/about.html#extensions
- harel 11y agoI didn't know about HN Notify, but I welocme this. I missed so many comment replies because I simply didn't bother to check. Now I'll sit by the email machine like a teenager and wait for a reply to test this thing out :)
- farresito 11y agoSweet! I just realized that HN Notify hasn't been working since november. Thanks for your work.
- dustingetz 11y agoAKA reddit flamewar generator
- eecks 11y agoNeeds to be built in to HN really
- creack 11y agoNice :). Missing from hnwatcher.com
- msravi 11y agoWould it also be possible to post a reply to the email as a comment? Does the HN API allow for something like that to be built (with proper authentication)?
- imakesnowflakes 11y agoI had created a SPA for doing this using javascript in browser itself. Anyone can use it directly from browser. This is actually a part of an angular app I made sometime back. It has watchers for an HN thread, a reddit post or comment and it can even watch multiple reddit inboxes if you run a small python script locally. Here [1], just enter the thread id to watch for any replies under that thread [1] http://z-petal.com/ceasium/#/hackerNews http://z-petal.com/ceasium/#/hackerNews [2] http://z-petal.com/ng-ceasium/ceasium-html5-angularjs-app-for-freelancers.html http://z-petal.com/ng-ceasium/ceasium-html5-angularjs-app-fo...
- Afforess 11y agoNever, ever, ever reply to replies. It's a no-win. Your reply, no matter how eloquently written, no matter how correct, can not change anyone's opinions. At best, you spend a lot of time writing an essay in reply to comments which will be ignored. At worst, the community decides you are wrong and pummels your opinion into the ground, damaging your reputation or worse. So replies have at best, near zero or worse, negative value. Top-level comments are okay, but they should be written well enough to stand on it's own, without further clarification. It's not worth the time, mental energy and stress to reply for the tiny value comment replies offer. If someone has a serious question, private forums (email, chat) are universally better. Comment chains lose all context and worse, stick around forever.
- mattbettinson 11y agoI disagree.
- dang 11y agoHN threads are supposed to be conversations. It wouldn't be much of a conversation if people never replied to each other.
- krapp 11y agoI think you've seriously misjudged what the actual purpose of a forum is.
- m6w6 11y agoAt least it seems that they follow their own principles ;-)
- bliti 11y agoNice. Thanks for doing this. Do you mind open sourcing that contact form? Its really simple and nice. :)
- finnn 11y agoThank you! I realized the old one disappeared silently a while ago, and I guess i was just sort of hoping one would re-appear. I have two somewhat small gripes: - No https - Loading hnreplies.com causes my browser to load (and leak data to) 5 3rd party domains for various JS and stuff. None of that JS appears to be required for operation of the site (I had it all blocked and it seems to have subscribed me just fine)
- striking 11y agoNothing's being transacted besides public information, so it's not that bad.
- Kinnard 11y agoNice! If only you had used arc . . .
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- jcoffland 11y agoThis is a smart way to build a list of HN users and their email addresses. My question is what will you do with this information? The sign up page makes no promises that it won't be sold or used for marketing.
- biot 11y agoI could sign up to get email notifications for replies to your HN account or any other. Though it's a good point that in the majority of cases, it'll be the account owner signing up.
- jcoffland 11y agoThat's public information anyway. I'm more interested in what happens with the list of email addresses.
- dangrossman 11y agoI'm not going to do anything with the e-mails except send reply notifications.
- jcoffland 11y agoI believe you but you should put a statement to that effect on the site.
- cyphar 11y agoIs it free software? If so, can you add a link to GitHub or whatever so people can download it and run it on their own server.
- alxndr 11y agoDoes this support email addresses with plus signs in them?