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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. I check HN's API for
by dangrossman 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.
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.