6 ms·

Show HN: Find HN threads about the page you're browsing

260 points by achairapart 6y ago

alexpi 6y ago
Simple and great! I consume lot of content from HN and bookmark posted links often. As everyone here knows hn comments sometimes contribute more to the topic than article itself (so I add them to favorites). Now both of them linked. Thanks
zingermc 6y ago
I feel compelled to point out that this extension sends the URLs of all open tabs to algolia.com when you click the extension (at least on Chrome). I would much prefer if it only looked up the current tab. A more private design might fetch the top N results from algolia.com and only search through them locally. That being said, this is cool! Thanks for sharing.
- jasonjayr 6y ago
  Maybe a bloom filter would help if we could get a dump of the urls from HN?
- achairapart 6y ago
  >I feel compelled to point out that this extension sends the URLs of all open tabs to algolia.com when you click the extension (at least on Chrome). Wait, how's that possible? The extension doesn't even have permission to get urls from tabs that are not the active one...
  - zingermc 6y ago
    Your comment made me dig in a little more. I was wrong, it is only fetching the current tab, although it wouldn't need more permissions to see all the tabs. In popup.js[1]: chrome.tabs.query({active:true,currentWindow:true}, function(tabs){ ... }) These `active` and `currentWindow` parameters to query() [2] restrict the results to the current tab. If I remove those parameters and run in DevTools, I seem to get a full tab listing. [1]: https://github.com/pinoceniccola/what-hn-says-webext/blob/master/popup.js#L104 https://github.com/pinoceniccola/what-hn-says-webext/blob/ma... [2]: https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/tabs#method-query https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/tabs#method-query
    - achairapart 6y ago
      Even without `active` and `currentWindow` parameters the extension cannot get urls and titles from other tabs because it has only the `activeTab`[1] permission declared in the manifest. You need more powerful permission for that. I think with the `activeTab` permission you still get the an object for every tab other the active one, but without access to `url`, `title` and `faviconUrl` properties. Thanks for checking out anyway. I built this tool especially because all of the others already available were a privacy nightmare. [1]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/WebExtensions/manifest.json/permissions#activeTab_permission https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web...
joshstrange 6y ago
Love the idea, I have thought about this before and the main issue is training my self to click an extension to check. If an icon flashed when there was a HN submission (ideally only if I didn't come directly from HN since I already know) it would be way more useful. That said we all know the big issue with that is privacy. I don't want an extension sending every url I visit to any service (directly to the API or through some third-party). I've mulled over this issue before and I'm not sure how much space it would take up to store a list of urls that have been submitted to HN (Maybe keep 1 month plus all submissions that got over 100 upvotes or something) and check against that local list. Then, and only then, when you get a match you can call out to the Algolia API to get the HN url (or store that as well depending on size). I have no idea, off the top of my head, what the storage requirements for this look like but I don't think they would be huge. The other issue (which I want to look into the source to see how this handles it) is the stupid social/ads tracking params that are added to URLs. Maybe there is a good list of these that you can remove (from both the current URL and the HN submission) so you can see if it's the same base URL.
- Jarwain 6y ago
  Comparing hashes would help a bit on both anonymity and size concerns. I also think, in a majority of cases, one could remove all of the query parameters from a URL and still have the same page. I'm not 100% confident about this though
  - joshstrange 6y ago
    Yeah, I thought about that but there are still a number of blogs that use something like https://mysite.com/post.php?id=123 But it would work for a lot of sites to strip the query.
- relate 6y ago
  You could allow for errors and use a bloom filter to avoid the space issue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom_filter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom_filter
  - 6y ago
maxbaines 6y ago
Also think it would be great to see an indicator of whether or not there are hits, perhaps not a flash as thats pretty invasive but a number of hits, kinda like SMS or email count on icons. The privacy thing is also making me flinch, an idea could be to disable unless clicked, when I find an interesting page, product or application I often wonder if its featured on HN
kioleanu 6y ago
Haha, I had the exact same idea a few weeks ago: https://github.com/viorelsfetea/commenter https://github.com/viorelsfetea/commenter Your design is much nicer tho
- nishparadox 6y ago
  Hey. I've been using the commenter for a month now. Thanks for such a handy extension. I use it on daily basis... Appreciate it.
SilasX 6y ago
Love it! One suggestion, at risk of promoting feature creep/visual bloat: maybe go into those thread and pull the top comments (ideally, the top comments over all discussions), and have those pop us as the first thing I see on the drop-down, instead of just links to the discussions?
XCSme 6y ago
That's a really cool idea! I added it. I am mostly curious to learn more about sites using HN as a way to market their products or to know more about the context in which a product is discussed.
arendtio 6y ago
'Looped in' is a very similar extension and a few years older: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16316374 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16316374 https://github.com/jdormit/looped-in https://github.com/jdormit/looped-in
johnnujler 6y ago
To me HN Algolia has been a one-stop shop for everything related to search in HN. I always have a browser tab that has HN Algolia opened up for any kind of research. I’d love if this extension could be extended to include HN Algolia too.
ekzy 6y ago
Your extension looks good! I made a similar extension with clojurescript 4 years ago, using algolia api too. It's not intrusive and only look up when you click. Check out the code here: https://github.com/jazzytomato/hnlookup https://github.com/jazzytomato/hnlookup https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-lookup/ekfmfhhfalhmiacchemmhapffjaolffo https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-lookup...
yalooze 6y ago
I use Kiwi Conversations[0] for this which allows you to check HN, Reddit and others if you want. The design of What Hacker News Says is really nice though. [0] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kiwi-conversations/pkifhlefpamigmobjmjjjnjglpebflhp https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kiwi-conversations...
- cmbailey 6y ago
  Thanks! Sadly their Firefox extension appears to have been removed/blocked. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/kiwi-conversations/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/kiwi-conversa...
adenozine 6y ago
I'd like something like this in reverse. Downvote if you will, all the same, I find most HN discussions to be of relatively low-value, and also it's not easy to vet whether or not someone's credentials align with what they're writing. I come across interesting links on HN all the time, and I wish I could have something to tell me "Oh, there's a LtU user with hundreds of posts discussing this with links to papers and proofs." My personal perspective is just that way, I don't see myself coming across anything and thinking "Gee, I wonder what HN thinks about this." I love the idea though. I wish browsers didn't suck so much. I wish Opera had won more, and maybe we'd have lots of different browsers, infinitely configurable like emacs/vim, with my whole little customized universal browsing tool. Extensions are an adequate compromise, it's just that the kind of person who thinks this stuff up, could so much MORE if browsers weren't so limited.
- localcdn 6y ago
  >there's a LtU user What is LtU?
  - summitsummit 6y ago
    long time user
  - jaen 6y ago
    http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/ http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/
- summitsummit 6y ago
  I've been thinking of the same. I spend a lot of my time in forums and would like to be able to discriminate users based on certain parameters. I envision it as some sort of extension that analyzes the users on the current discussion thread, visits their profiles, analyzes it (post history, stats, etc) and decorates the users handle on my current page. Performance shouldn't be too bad using caching and prioritization. What value adds were you envisioning specifically?
  - 6y ago
ivan_ah 6y ago
Here is a similar web extension for reddit discussions https://thredd.io/ https://thredd.io/
swyx 6y ago
relatedly - a browser extension that shows you twitter convos about the page you are browsing https://github.com/round/Twitter-Links-beta https://github.com/round/Twitter-Links-beta
KenanSulayman 6y ago
This is great! I'm also using [0] which displays mentions of a site on reddit. (And while you're at it, one [1] that replaces youtube comments with reddits comments from the subreddit threads where a video was posted to.) [0] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/reddit-check/mllceaiaedaingchlgolnfiibippgkmj https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/reddit-check/mllce... [1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/karamel-view-reddit-comme/halllmdjninjohpckldgkaolbhgkfnpe https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/karamel-view-reddi...
lukeplato 6y ago
off-topic: even if it's not necessary for a blog, someone needs to hook up Paul Graham with an SSL certificate.
coffeemug 6y ago
This is awesome. I really love this idea, and love the implementation. Works great and I think will be really useful or at least interesting (can't tell yet). One piece of feedback-- I'd love a mode where the extension notifies me there are HN threads that pass a certain threshold (e.g. number of upvotes, number of comments, etc.) for every page I visit. This is less privacy preserving, but I'd be willing to make that trade-off in exchange for useful information being surfaced to me opportunistically. Thanks for making it!!
llimos 6y ago
I made a bookmarklet for Firefox that opens the HN discussion in a new tab (if there is one) and offers to submit if there isn't. It's very quick and dirty but it does the trick. It opens the first result from the search API, can be modified to open all of them if you want. javascript:(()=>{const w=window.open();fetch(`https://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/search?tags=story&query=${encodeURIComponent(window.location.href)}`).then(a => a.json()).then(a=>{const c=a.hits.filter(b=>b.url===window.location.href)[0];if(c){w.location.replace(`https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=${c.objectID}`)}else{w.confirm('Not on HN. Submit?') ? w.location.replace(`https://news.ycombinator.com/submitlink?u=${encodeURIComponent(document.location)}&t=${encodeURIComponent(document.title)}`):w.close();}})})() Interestingly I had to open the tab before getting the search results, it seems there is an exemption to the popup blocker for bookmarklets but only synchronously. Edit: It seems the backticks mess something up in HN formatting. Code here: https://gist.github.com/llimos/ee818bcb3060adc8469f4978c654a184 https://gist.github.com/llimos/ee818bcb3060adc8469f4978c654a...
eatonphil 6y ago
One weird thing to me about this extension and Kiwi Conversations is that it doesn't search comments, only submissions.
ikedaosushi 6y ago
I'm using a similar extension which allow to see comments and threads. https://github.com/doublemarket/hnpopup https://github.com/doublemarket/hnpopup
commonturtle 6y ago
Nice, I've wanted something like this for a while. HN often has substantive comments on writing in the internet, so I often find myself checking if something interesting I read has been submitted to HN before.

260 points by achairapart 6y ago

Simple and great! I consume lot of content from HN and bookmark posted links often. As everyone here knows hn comments sometimes contribute more to the topic than article itself (so I add them to favorites). Now both of them linked. Thanks

zingermc 6y ago

I feel compelled to point out that this extension sends the URLs of all open tabs to algolia.com when you click the extension (at least on Chrome). I would much prefer if it only looked up the current tab. A more private design might fetch the top N results from algolia.com and only search through them locally. That being said, this is cool! Thanks for sharing.

jasonjayr 6y ago
Maybe a bloom filter would help if we could get a dump of the urls from HN?
achairapart 6y ago
>I feel compelled to point out that this extension sends the URLs of all open tabs to algolia.com when you click the extension (at least on Chrome). Wait, how's that possible? The extension doesn't even have permission to get urls from tabs that are not the active one...
- zingermc 6y ago
  Your comment made me dig in a little more. I was wrong, it is only fetching the current tab, although it wouldn't need more permissions to see all the tabs. In popup.js[1]: chrome.tabs.query({active:true,currentWindow:true}, function(tabs){ ... }) These `active` and `currentWindow` parameters to query() [2] restrict the results to the current tab. If I remove those parameters and run in DevTools, I seem to get a full tab listing. [1]: https://github.com/pinoceniccola/what-hn-says-webext/blob/master/popup.js#L104 https://github.com/pinoceniccola/what-hn-says-webext/blob/ma... [2]: https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/tabs#method-query https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/tabs#method-query
  - achairapart 6y ago
    Even without `active` and `currentWindow` parameters the extension cannot get urls and titles from other tabs because it has only the `activeTab`[1] permission declared in the manifest. You need more powerful permission for that. I think with the `activeTab` permission you still get the an object for every tab other the active one, but without access to `url`, `title` and `faviconUrl` properties. Thanks for checking out anyway. I built this tool especially because all of the others already available were a privacy nightmare. [1]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/WebExtensions/manifest.json/permissions#activeTab_permission https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web...

joshstrange 6y ago

Love the idea, I have thought about this before and the main issue is training my self to click an extension to check. If an icon flashed when there was a HN submission (ideally only if I didn't come directly from HN since I already know) it would be way more useful. That said we all know the big issue with that is privacy. I don't want an extension sending every url I visit to any service (directly to the API or through some third-party). I've mulled over this issue before and I'm not sure how much space it would take up to store a list of urls that have been submitted to HN (Maybe keep 1 month plus all submissions that got over 100 upvotes or something) and check against that local list. Then, and only then, when you get a match you can call out to the Algolia API to get the HN url (or store that as well depending on size). I have no idea, off the top of my head, what the storage requirements for this look like but I don't think they would be huge. The other issue (which I want to look into the source to see how this handles it) is the stupid social/ads tracking params that are added to URLs. Maybe there is a good list of these that you can remove (from both the current URL and the HN submission) so you can see if it's the same base URL.

Jarwain 6y ago
Comparing hashes would help a bit on both anonymity and size concerns. I also think, in a majority of cases, one could remove all of the query parameters from a URL and still have the same page. I'm not 100% confident about this though
- joshstrange 6y ago
  Yeah, I thought about that but there are still a number of blogs that use something like https://mysite.com/post.php?id=123 But it would work for a lot of sites to strip the query.
relate 6y ago
You could allow for errors and use a bloom filter to avoid the space issue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom_filter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom_filter
- 6y ago

maxbaines 6y ago

Also think it would be great to see an indicator of whether or not there are hits, perhaps not a flash as thats pretty invasive but a number of hits, kinda like SMS or email count on icons. The privacy thing is also making me flinch, an idea could be to disable unless clicked, when I find an interesting page, product or application I often wonder if its featured on HN

kioleanu 6y ago

Haha, I had the exact same idea a few weeks ago: https://github.com/viorelsfetea/commenter https://github.com/viorelsfetea/commenter Your design is much nicer tho

nishparadox 6y ago
Hey. I've been using the commenter for a month now. Thanks for such a handy extension. I use it on daily basis... Appreciate it.

SilasX 6y ago

Love it! One suggestion, at risk of promoting feature creep/visual bloat: maybe go into those thread and pull the top comments (ideally, the top comments over all discussions), and have those pop us as the first thing I see on the drop-down, instead of just links to the discussions?

XCSme 6y ago

That's a really cool idea! I added it. I am mostly curious to learn more about sites using HN as a way to market their products or to know more about the context in which a product is discussed.

arendtio 6y ago

'Looped in' is a very similar extension and a few years older: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16316374 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16316374 https://github.com/jdormit/looped-in https://github.com/jdormit/looped-in

johnnujler 6y ago

To me HN Algolia has been a one-stop shop for everything related to search in HN. I always have a browser tab that has HN Algolia opened up for any kind of research. I’d love if this extension could be extended to include HN Algolia too.

ekzy 6y ago

Your extension looks good! I made a similar extension with clojurescript 4 years ago, using algolia api too. It's not intrusive and only look up when you click. Check out the code here: https://github.com/jazzytomato/hnlookup https://github.com/jazzytomato/hnlookup https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-lookup/ekfmfhhfalhmiacchemmhapffjaolffo https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-lookup...

yalooze 6y ago

I use Kiwi Conversations[0] for this which allows you to check HN, Reddit and others if you want. The design of What Hacker News Says is really nice though. [0] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kiwi-conversations/pkifhlefpamigmobjmjjjnjglpebflhp https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kiwi-conversations...

cmbailey 6y ago
Thanks! Sadly their Firefox extension appears to have been removed/blocked. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/kiwi-conversations/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/kiwi-conversa...

adenozine 6y ago

I'd like something like this in reverse. Downvote if you will, all the same, I find most HN discussions to be of relatively low-value, and also it's not easy to vet whether or not someone's credentials align with what they're writing. I come across interesting links on HN all the time, and I wish I could have something to tell me "Oh, there's a LtU user with hundreds of posts discussing this with links to papers and proofs." My personal perspective is just that way, I don't see myself coming across anything and thinking "Gee, I wonder what HN thinks about this." I love the idea though. I wish browsers didn't suck so much. I wish Opera had won more, and maybe we'd have lots of different browsers, infinitely configurable like emacs/vim, with my whole little customized universal browsing tool. Extensions are an adequate compromise, it's just that the kind of person who thinks this stuff up, could so much MORE if browsers weren't so limited.

localcdn 6y ago
>there's a LtU user What is LtU?
- summitsummit 6y ago
  long time user
- jaen 6y ago
  http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/ http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/
summitsummit 6y ago
I've been thinking of the same. I spend a lot of my time in forums and would like to be able to discriminate users based on certain parameters. I envision it as some sort of extension that analyzes the users on the current discussion thread, visits their profiles, analyzes it (post history, stats, etc) and decorates the users handle on my current page. Performance shouldn't be too bad using caching and prioritization. What value adds were you envisioning specifically?
- 6y ago

ivan_ah 6y ago

Here is a similar web extension for reddit discussions https://thredd.io/ https://thredd.io/

swyx 6y ago

relatedly - a browser extension that shows you twitter convos about the page you are browsing https://github.com/round/Twitter-Links-beta https://github.com/round/Twitter-Links-beta

KenanSulayman 6y ago

This is great! I'm also using [0] which displays mentions of a site on reddit. (And while you're at it, one [1] that replaces youtube comments with reddits comments from the subreddit threads where a video was posted to.) [0] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/reddit-check/mllceaiaedaingchlgolnfiibippgkmj https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/reddit-check/mllce... [1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/karamel-view-reddit-comme/halllmdjninjohpckldgkaolbhgkfnpe https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/karamel-view-reddi...

lukeplato 6y ago

off-topic: even if it's not necessary for a blog, someone needs to hook up Paul Graham with an SSL certificate.

coffeemug 6y ago

This is awesome. I really love this idea, and love the implementation. Works great and I think will be really useful or at least interesting (can't tell yet). One piece of feedback-- I'd love a mode where the extension notifies me there are HN threads that pass a certain threshold (e.g. number of upvotes, number of comments, etc.) for every page I visit. This is less privacy preserving, but I'd be willing to make that trade-off in exchange for useful information being surfaced to me opportunistically. Thanks for making it!!

llimos 6y ago

I made a bookmarklet for Firefox that opens the HN discussion in a new tab (if there is one) and offers to submit if there isn't. It's very quick and dirty but it does the trick. It opens the first result from the search API, can be modified to open all of them if you want. javascript:(()=>{const w=window.open();fetch(`https://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/search?tags=story&query=${encodeURIComponent(window.location.href)}`).then(a => a.json()).then(a=>{const c=a.hits.filter(b=>b.url===window.location.href)[0];if(c){w.location.replace(`https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=${c.objectID}`)}else{w.confirm('Not on HN. Submit?') ? w.location.replace(`https://news.ycombinator.com/submitlink?u=${encodeURIComponent(document.location)}&t=${encodeURIComponent(document.title)}`):w.close();}})})() Interestingly I had to open the tab before getting the search results, it seems there is an exemption to the popup blocker for bookmarklets but only synchronously. Edit: It seems the backticks mess something up in HN formatting. Code here: https://gist.github.com/llimos/ee818bcb3060adc8469f4978c654a184 https://gist.github.com/llimos/ee818bcb3060adc8469f4978c654a...

eatonphil 6y ago

One weird thing to me about this extension and Kiwi Conversations is that it doesn't search comments, only submissions.

ikedaosushi 6y ago

I'm using a similar extension which allow to see comments and threads. https://github.com/doublemarket/hnpopup https://github.com/doublemarket/hnpopup

commonturtle 6y ago

Nice, I've wanted something like this for a while. HN often has substantive comments on writing in the internet, so I often find myself checking if something interesting I read has been submitted to HN before.