5 ms·

Show HN: HN to E-Book – Read HN on your E-Reader

I read HN on my kindle as I find it useful for reading under sun(while walking in a controlled environment) and taking notes. I was running hntokindle.com to offer this as a service for others. But Amazon has recently made sending bulk emails to the Kindle impossible by requiring 2FA over registered Amazon email address for each item sent to the Kindle. Hence I've stripped down HN to Kindle code to enable local transfer to any e-book reader which supports .mobi format and made the project open-source.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
DiggyJohnson 5y ago
Very cool, I might extend it to send to Remarkable. Thanks for sharing this project
- Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
  That's the goal, Thanks. Are there any quirks for local transfer of .mobi files to Remarkable? hntoebook just requires a path to put the files, I haven't implemented any USB mass storage protocol. Do let me know if HN To E-Book works out, when you find some time for it. Edit: I previously mentioned Kindle taking its own time to show the files after transfer, It was my bad (I had a filter set to show docs). Files are shown instantaneous and the new Kindle OS is very responsive.
  - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
    I thought reMarkable only takes ePub and PDF?
    - captn3m0 5y ago
      You can read mobi using Koreader.
  - sharikous 5y ago
    Remarkable has only experimental and clunky USB support. It wants to connect to the cloud via wifi but it is also possible to connect to it via wifi in a local network not connected to the internet. From there you connect via ssh/scp (and you have root access) As a person who skimmed over this, has a Remarkable and is interested, I'd just convert the mobi to epub (e.g. open-source Calibre has a way to fo it) and then send the files via scp to Remarkable. It doesn't seem to difficult to do for someone who knows their way around. Maybe it's difficult to automate, especially the sending part
    - Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
      That's unfortunate, Although converting to epub shouldn't be an issue with hntoebook as I already use calibre. TBH Kindle still allowing files to be transferred like any flash storage is surprising, expected it go iTuney way long back. I hope reMarkable gets USB storage done soon.
    - freetanga 5y ago
      I believe someone ran syncthing on a Remarkable. That could be used to move files from local/server to RM. I would send PDF. I believe epubs are actually converted to pdf on device.
theowenyoung 5y ago
Cool, Glad to see this as a service. I did basically the same thing, but to send the pdf, glad to see that you converted the pdf to mobi, the reading experience is better! I use a tool Denoflow [0] I developed to this thing, this is my workflow file [1]. [0]: https://github.com/denoflow/denoflow https://github.com/denoflow/denoflow [1]: https://github.com/theowenyoung/personal-flow/blob/main/workflows/hn-to-pdf.yml https://github.com/theowenyoung/personal-flow/blob/main/work...
- Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
  Very minimal, Just the way I like it! Amazon has enabled 2FA(even from approved email address) for sending to kindle after the 'KindleDrip' vulnerability disclosure[1], So you might need local transfer as well. [1] https://medium.com/realmodelabs/kindledrip-from-your-kindles-email-address-to-using-your-credit-card-bb93dbfb2a08 https://medium.com/realmodelabs/kindledrip-from-your-kindles...
auraham 5y ago
Really interesting project! I actually gave it a try and got some mobi files. However, I got this issue when converting to mobi on Ubuntu 18.04: Output saved to /home/auraham/Kindle/hn30357788.mobi panic: runtime error: invalid memory address or nil pointer dereference [signal SIGSEGV: segmentation violation code=0x1 addr=0x0 pc=0x6918d4] goroutine 1 [running]: hntoebook/stories/operations.PDFToMobiGenerator(0x0, 0xc00040a080, 0x0, 0xc0001a3c48, 0x11, 0xc0001a3c28, 0x17) /home/auraham/git/hntoebook/stories/operations/mobi.go:73 +0x2f4 hntoebook/stories/operations.HTMLtoPDFGenerator(0x0, 0xc00040a080, 0x0, 0xc0001a3c48, 0x11, 0xc0001a3c28, 0x17) /home/auraham/git/hntoebook/stories/operations/pdf.go:78 +0x377 main.main() /home/auraham/git/hntoebook/main.go:104 +0x9eb exit status 2
- Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
  Thanks for checking out! It's likely that the trailing slash wasn't included in the .mobi path set by you. Can you try this? ./hntoebook -c /home/auraham/Kindle/hn/ If you still receive any error, Deleting the 'db' folder can help. If it didn't I'd be happy to receive a bug report over GitHub.
  - Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
    I've updated(v0.0.3) the database to from bitcask to badger for lesser CGO dependencies, This should result in lesser cross-platform quirks if any. Please delete the db folder before trying the new version.
quickthrower2 5y ago
Even if amazon makes it impossible, having this as a service might be useful for other readers, simply as a download. Some people may pay for it too.
- Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
  You mean like general 'Send to your E-Reader' type service or 'HN To E-Reader' type service? For the former, Each E-reader have a service of their own (or from community) and for the latter I think local file transfer enables better value for an general HN user even if just for the offline reading.
L0in 5y ago
Somewhat related: It would be really cool for the existence of a script where it gathers all the most liked and most retweeted tweets from your timeline and outputs it to a pdf document for a later read. It wasn't my idea, but i really like it.
- Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
  Like daily digest of tweets? If you could articulate it into a problem statement i.e. Like why you needed it, Why current solutions don't work for you etc. Then you can post it at https://needgap.com https://needgap.com (My problem validation platform) and if there's enough interest then some one would pick it up for a side-project.
  - L0in 5y ago
    Done. I hope someone will pick it up because i really need it!
octoberfranklin 5y ago
Am I the only one who uses a separate e-reader device specifically to get away from low-attention-requirement stuff like HN? Putting HN, or any news-ish site, on my e-reader makes me recoil in horror.
- dotancohen 5y ago
  I use the Nook for it's terrific screen. It is an absolute pleasure to read on. I even installed Anki on it (Ankidroid) to study. Though I happen to be self-disciplined enough to concentrate on the task at hand, I recognize that not everybody is.
- freetanga 5y ago
  For me is not so much for news reading, but to store a deeper discussion or thread where new ideas or aspects I want to investigate further are stored. It’s halfway between reading news and reading books. But It does require leisurely reading to take notes. Then I delete them.
- culopatin 5y ago
  I don’t know if recoil in horror but yes, I do like that it’s hard to get to the Internet in my kindle. My brain is not thinking of using it for anything else other than reading. Sometimes even having a big library is distracting so I keep only a few books in there
JuanJakobo 5y ago
I have a similar HN reading modus. I created an app for my ebook reader (Pocketbook HD 3) that enables me to read all my RSS feeds saved to my miniflux instance[0]. The app displays all current articles, I mark the once that are interesting to me, download them as HTML and the HN comments to an database and then I am able to read the article + all hn comments offline. If I cannot read an article (sometimes miniflux failes to fetch the content), I send them to Pocket as I created an small app to read Pocket items on the ebook reader also. [1] As both apps download the content I just sync the things that are interesting to me and then read everything in the train or wherever I am. [0]: https://github.com/JuanJakobo/Pocketbook-Miniflux-Reader https://github.com/JuanJakobo/Pocketbook-Miniflux-Reader [1]: https://github.com/JuanJakobo/Pocketbook-Read-offline https://github.com/JuanJakobo/Pocketbook-Read-offline
- Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
  > I am able to read the article + all hn comments offline Very nice! I didn't scrap articles when I was running hntokindle.com(It opens in Kindle browser) because of copyright concerns, But now since hntoebook is individual liability I'm thinking of implementing scrapping articles too and perhaps attach as a chapter with hyperlink to the title?
  - JuanJakobo 5y ago
    Well, the best part about HN are the comments. I find myself often reading the comments first and then, if recommended, the article. So I guess only with the comments you are already helping a lot of readers. :)
    - Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
      Absolutely! HN comments often serve as a high quality comprehension of the article and useful for deciding whether it's worth a ready. I've saved lot of time since I've started reading HN on Kindle.
denysvitali 5y ago
I love the Kindle but I hate its software. The fact that you have to come up with these hacks to workaround these issues...
- dewey 5y ago
  > I love the Kindle but I hate its software That the Kindle is slow to use and doesn't have "apps" and other distractions is a feature (at least for me). The only actions I want to perform are: - Selecting a book - Turn the page
  - Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
    Did you try Kindle SW update(> v.5.13.7)? When last time someone said the same during discussion on related topic[1], I asked the same and they confirmed that the experience is much better after the update. It's day and night difference from previous versions and even browser is out of experimental. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29225964 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29225964
dhc02 5y ago
This is going to sound crazy to a lot of kindle lovers, but after much trepidation I could not be happier with my Onyx Boox Nova 3 (other than the name), which is a kindle-size e-ink tablet that runs android apps. Reading hacker news and rss feeds on an eye-pleasing display is something that used to be a pain and require workarounds like this script, but now is just as easy as doing it on my phone. I worried that having apps on my e-reader would lead to too much distraction, but I've found that I naturally use it for reading-heavy things, but am not tempted by the real productivity sinks such as YouTube and games, neither of which are very fun on an e-ink display. As a bonus, it's also replaced my moleskine for note taking.
- Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
  What browser are you using on Onyx, What's the default browser based on?
  - blamestross 5y ago
    einkbro is the best browser for eink android tablets. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=info.plateaukao.einkbro&hl=en_US&gl=US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=info.plateauka...
    - Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
      Interesting, Is it just a chromeview with CSS filtering?
lsferreira42 5y ago
I use my wallabag instance + some python scripting to put articles on my kindle, if i put the tag "upload-k" my script will download the mobi generated from wallabag and send to my kindle by email!
- Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
  Is Wallabag a self-hosted pocket alternative?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

DiggyJohnson 5y ago

Very cool, I might extend it to send to Remarkable. Thanks for sharing this project

Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
That's the goal, Thanks. Are there any quirks for local transfer of .mobi files to Remarkable? hntoebook just requires a path to put the files, I haven't implemented any USB mass storage protocol. Do let me know if HN To E-Book works out, when you find some time for it. Edit: I previously mentioned Kindle taking its own time to show the files after transfer, It was my bad (I had a filter set to show docs). Files are shown instantaneous and the new Kindle OS is very responsive.
- bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  I thought reMarkable only takes ePub and PDF?
  - captn3m0 5y ago
    You can read mobi using Koreader.
- sharikous 5y ago
  Remarkable has only experimental and clunky USB support. It wants to connect to the cloud via wifi but it is also possible to connect to it via wifi in a local network not connected to the internet. From there you connect via ssh/scp (and you have root access) As a person who skimmed over this, has a Remarkable and is interested, I'd just convert the mobi to epub (e.g. open-source Calibre has a way to fo it) and then send the files via scp to Remarkable. It doesn't seem to difficult to do for someone who knows their way around. Maybe it's difficult to automate, especially the sending part
  - Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
    That's unfortunate, Although converting to epub shouldn't be an issue with hntoebook as I already use calibre. TBH Kindle still allowing files to be transferred like any flash storage is surprising, expected it go iTuney way long back. I hope reMarkable gets USB storage done soon.
  - freetanga 5y ago
    I believe someone ran syncthing on a Remarkable. That could be used to move files from local/server to RM. I would send PDF. I believe epubs are actually converted to pdf on device.

theowenyoung 5y ago

Cool, Glad to see this as a service. I did basically the same thing, but to send the pdf, glad to see that you converted the pdf to mobi, the reading experience is better! I use a tool Denoflow [0] I developed to this thing, this is my workflow file [1]. [0]: https://github.com/denoflow/denoflow https://github.com/denoflow/denoflow [1]: https://github.com/theowenyoung/personal-flow/blob/main/workflows/hn-to-pdf.yml https://github.com/theowenyoung/personal-flow/blob/main/work...

Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
Very minimal, Just the way I like it! Amazon has enabled 2FA(even from approved email address) for sending to kindle after the 'KindleDrip' vulnerability disclosure[1], So you might need local transfer as well. [1] https://medium.com/realmodelabs/kindledrip-from-your-kindles-email-address-to-using-your-credit-card-bb93dbfb2a08 https://medium.com/realmodelabs/kindledrip-from-your-kindles...

auraham 5y ago

Really interesting project! I actually gave it a try and got some mobi files. However, I got this issue when converting to mobi on Ubuntu 18.04: Output saved to /home/auraham/Kindle/hn30357788.mobi panic: runtime error: invalid memory address or nil pointer dereference [signal SIGSEGV: segmentation violation code=0x1 addr=0x0 pc=0x6918d4] goroutine 1 [running]: hntoebook/stories/operations.PDFToMobiGenerator(0x0, 0xc00040a080, 0x0, 0xc0001a3c48, 0x11, 0xc0001a3c28, 0x17) /home/auraham/git/hntoebook/stories/operations/mobi.go:73 +0x2f4 hntoebook/stories/operations.HTMLtoPDFGenerator(0x0, 0xc00040a080, 0x0, 0xc0001a3c48, 0x11, 0xc0001a3c28, 0x17) /home/auraham/git/hntoebook/stories/operations/pdf.go:78 +0x377 main.main() /home/auraham/git/hntoebook/main.go:104 +0x9eb exit status 2

Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
Thanks for checking out! It's likely that the trailing slash wasn't included in the .mobi path set by you. Can you try this? ./hntoebook -c /home/auraham/Kindle/hn/ If you still receive any error, Deleting the 'db' folder can help. If it didn't I'd be happy to receive a bug report over GitHub.
- Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
  I've updated(v0.0.3) the database to from bitcask to badger for lesser CGO dependencies, This should result in lesser cross-platform quirks if any. Please delete the db folder before trying the new version.

quickthrower2 5y ago

Even if amazon makes it impossible, having this as a service might be useful for other readers, simply as a download. Some people may pay for it too.

Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
You mean like general 'Send to your E-Reader' type service or 'HN To E-Reader' type service? For the former, Each E-reader have a service of their own (or from community) and for the latter I think local file transfer enables better value for an general HN user even if just for the offline reading.

L0in 5y ago

Somewhat related: It would be really cool for the existence of a script where it gathers all the most liked and most retweeted tweets from your timeline and outputs it to a pdf document for a later read. It wasn't my idea, but i really like it.

Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
Like daily digest of tweets? If you could articulate it into a problem statement i.e. Like why you needed it, Why current solutions don't work for you etc. Then you can post it at https://needgap.com https://needgap.com (My problem validation platform) and if there's enough interest then some one would pick it up for a side-project.
- L0in 5y ago
  Done. I hope someone will pick it up because i really need it!

octoberfranklin 5y ago

Am I the only one who uses a separate e-reader device specifically to get away from low-attention-requirement stuff like HN? Putting HN, or any news-ish site, on my e-reader makes me recoil in horror.

dotancohen 5y ago
I use the Nook for it's terrific screen. It is an absolute pleasure to read on. I even installed Anki on it (Ankidroid) to study. Though I happen to be self-disciplined enough to concentrate on the task at hand, I recognize that not everybody is.
freetanga 5y ago
For me is not so much for news reading, but to store a deeper discussion or thread where new ideas or aspects I want to investigate further are stored. It’s halfway between reading news and reading books. But It does require leisurely reading to take notes. Then I delete them.
culopatin 5y ago
I don’t know if recoil in horror but yes, I do like that it’s hard to get to the Internet in my kindle. My brain is not thinking of using it for anything else other than reading. Sometimes even having a big library is distracting so I keep only a few books in there

JuanJakobo 5y ago

I have a similar HN reading modus. I created an app for my ebook reader (Pocketbook HD 3) that enables me to read all my RSS feeds saved to my miniflux instance[0]. The app displays all current articles, I mark the once that are interesting to me, download them as HTML and the HN comments to an database and then I am able to read the article + all hn comments offline. If I cannot read an article (sometimes miniflux failes to fetch the content), I send them to Pocket as I created an small app to read Pocket items on the ebook reader also. [1] As both apps download the content I just sync the things that are interesting to me and then read everything in the train or wherever I am. [0]: https://github.com/JuanJakobo/Pocketbook-Miniflux-Reader https://github.com/JuanJakobo/Pocketbook-Miniflux-Reader [1]: https://github.com/JuanJakobo/Pocketbook-Read-offline https://github.com/JuanJakobo/Pocketbook-Read-offline

Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
> I am able to read the article + all hn comments offline Very nice! I didn't scrap articles when I was running hntokindle.com(It opens in Kindle browser) because of copyright concerns, But now since hntoebook is individual liability I'm thinking of implementing scrapping articles too and perhaps attach as a chapter with hyperlink to the title?
- JuanJakobo 5y ago
  Well, the best part about HN are the comments. I find myself often reading the comments first and then, if recommended, the article. So I guess only with the comments you are already helping a lot of readers. :)
  - Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
    Absolutely! HN comments often serve as a high quality comprehension of the article and useful for deciding whether it's worth a ready. I've saved lot of time since I've started reading HN on Kindle.

denysvitali 5y ago

I love the Kindle but I hate its software. The fact that you have to come up with these hacks to workaround these issues...

dewey 5y ago
> I love the Kindle but I hate its software That the Kindle is slow to use and doesn't have "apps" and other distractions is a feature (at least for me). The only actions I want to perform are: - Selecting a book - Turn the page
- Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
  Did you try Kindle SW update(> v.5.13.7)? When last time someone said the same during discussion on related topic[1], I asked the same and they confirmed that the experience is much better after the update. It's day and night difference from previous versions and even browser is out of experimental. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29225964 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29225964

dhc02 5y ago

This is going to sound crazy to a lot of kindle lovers, but after much trepidation I could not be happier with my Onyx Boox Nova 3 (other than the name), which is a kindle-size e-ink tablet that runs android apps. Reading hacker news and rss feeds on an eye-pleasing display is something that used to be a pain and require workarounds like this script, but now is just as easy as doing it on my phone. I worried that having apps on my e-reader would lead to too much distraction, but I've found that I naturally use it for reading-heavy things, but am not tempted by the real productivity sinks such as YouTube and games, neither of which are very fun on an e-ink display. As a bonus, it's also replaced my moleskine for note taking.

Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
What browser are you using on Onyx, What's the default browser based on?
- blamestross 5y ago
  einkbro is the best browser for eink android tablets. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=info.plateaukao.einkbro&hl=en_US&gl=US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=info.plateauka...
  - Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
    Interesting, Is it just a chromeview with CSS filtering?

lsferreira42 5y ago

I use my wallabag instance + some python scripting to put articles on my kindle, if i put the tag "upload-k" my script will download the mobi generated from wallabag and send to my kindle by email!

Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
Is Wallabag a self-hosted pocket alternative?