5 ms·

YesNotice

184 points by surprisetalk 1y ago

felipelalli 11mo ago
Nice idea.
gregsadetsky 11mo ago
This is 5% off topic, but just to say that Zack (the person behind this service + Infinite Digits) is (also) a super prolific (and extremely kind) developer/maker/hacker with a ton of exquisite software+hardware musical projects: - check out https://infinitedigits.co/docs/products/zeptocore/ https://infinitedigits.co/docs/products/zeptocore/ if you're into sample-y, jungle/breakcore-y audio mangling/button mashing - and his https://infinitedigits.co/docs/software/collidertracker/ https://infinitedigits.co/docs/software/collidertracker/ terminal-based tracker Signed, an honorary member of the Zack Fan Club :-) haha
- qrv3w 11mo ago
  Such kind words! I really appreciate it. Thanks for making the internet a more positive (and springy!) space! -Zack
  - amypetrik8 11mo ago
    2nd hotest zach on the planet behind zachary ty bryan. still waiting for zachary ty bryan to have his 2nd big breakout hollywood superstar event, actually haven't heard much from him recently and don't know what he's up too. cool guy though
- smusamashah 11mo ago
  Oh! The maker of croc too https://infinitedigits.co/docs/software/croc/ https://infinitedigits.co/docs/software/croc/ Used it a few times to send files from A to B
- pwenzel 11mo ago
  His contributions to the Monome Norns ecosystem are impressive as well! Barcode (https://infinitedigits.co/docs/software/norns-scripts/barcode/ https://infinitedigits.co/docs/software/norns-scripts/barcod...) is a classic and I still rock it.
VikingCoder 11mo ago
Very much reminded of "Daemon" by Daniel Suarez, where the system is watching the news to find out when people were dead, etc.
martypitt 11mo ago
Cool idea. Just a heads-up that the Demo link at the bottom of the page leads to a 403.
bbstats 11mo ago
hug of death?
notatoad 11mo ago
>How it works # YesNotice works by periodically checking the status of the item you care about okay, but how does it work? how does it check the status of things?
- meindnoch 11mo ago
  From a database!
- esafak 11mo ago
  You just curl the site or use its API, if it has one? Then you store the result in a database and see if its value has flipped. I don't get the question; this is trivial.
  - dylanowen 11mo ago
    That's if the website you're querying is a static html file but the web is much more dynamic and varied. Some of the questions I have: does yesnotice execute js, does it handle an answer appearing on a different page, does it handle ambiguous launch language. In essence: how does it work?
  - zahlman 11mo ago
    > YesNotice works by periodically checking the status of the item you care about (e.g., product stock, website availability, domain status) and comparing it to the previous status. When it detects a change from no to yes, it sends you a notification via email. How does it generalize arbitrary indications of status into yes/no? How does it know how to use arbitrary APIs to obtain arbitrary indications of status?
  - scubbo 11mo ago
    > Additionally, YesNotice will provide an estimated availability timeline for the question, so you can have some information about when to expect the change. How is that trivial in the general case?
    - esafak 11mo ago
meindnoch 11mo ago
>Notifications are sent via email or SMS, depending on your preference. This would be a perfect use case for RSS.
- barbazoo 11mo ago
  And then a service on top that checks the feed and notifies you when there’s a new item.
  - etskinner 11mo ago
    I presume most mobile RSS readers do this already. With the added bonus that users can set their own settings of how often to refresh their feed rather than writing a service to do it
- jauntywundrkind 11mo ago
  This would also be one excellent use case for web notifications! One I'd gladly use!!! https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Notifications_API https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Notificatio...
denysvitali 11mo ago
Can't wait for the collab with https://www.istheinternetonfire.com/ https://www.istheinternetonfire.com/
victorbuilds 11mo ago
The "yes/no" framing is a nice constraint that makes this actually useful vs generic "page changed" monitors. Do you rate-limit the checks to avoid hammering sources?
zhouzhao 11mo ago
[flagged]
deanebarker 11mo ago
Take a look at these posts -- https://deanebarker.net/tech/blog/let-me-know/ https://deanebarker.net/tech/blog/let-me-know/ https://deanebarker.net/tech/blog/notify-one-time/ https://deanebarker.net/tech/blog/notify-one-time/ I'm glad someone finally did something here. I wish you every success.
- qrv3w 11mo ago
  Thanks! Had pretty much the same thought process as you, so I made this little tool (yesnotice) to do pretty much that. Its not perfect, but I've been using it a lot and its working great for me (mostly to get notified when certain new packages are updated and TV shows come out...then I don't have to remember so many things!)
marysminefnuf 11mo ago
Love this idea
CGMthrowaway 11mo ago
It's IFTTT all over again!
ChrisMarshallNY 11mo ago
Pretty cool. I suspect it's an AI implementation. Reminds me of this classic: http://isabevigodadead.com http://isabevigodadead.com
cyanydeez 11mo ago
Ok, I'll only accept this use of AI if YesNotice can figure out how much their computer cycles cost to do whatever it's doing.
xnx 11mo ago
Good enhancement to existing services like Website Watcher, changedetection, etc.
amarant 11mo ago
Neat! Now I don't have to remember to Google for new vaccine updates every week!
mempko 11mo ago
This is really cool! I always believed one valuable use case for AI is to take unstructured data and structure it. I am building ThetaEdge (https://thetaedge.ai https://thetaedge.ai) which is in Beta now. We built a similar feature but specific to investing and markets. You get notified when certain market things you care about happen like 'Alert me when nvidia releases a new product' or 'tell me when a 20 delta call for Apple is more than $1'. The challenge of building something like this is consistency and accuracy which is important in finance. Awesome to see a clean focused product like YesNotice with a very clear utility.
- IncreasePosts 11mo ago
  I agree about the importance of that use case, but how do you confirm that the AI doesn't modify the data in some unwarranted manner during the process?
  - mempko 11mo ago
    Great question! Don't use AI to process the data, especially when a computer can do the work :-). AI is good at taking unstructured data and structuring it. Computers are great at computing. Here is an example of Google's AI failing https://www.google.com/search?q=is+2026+next+year https://www.google.com/search?q=is+2026+next+year Google screenshot: https://imgur.com/a/FOT4aDF https://imgur.com/a/FOT4aDF ChatGPT also fails: https://imgur.com/a/mb3rRgZ https://imgur.com/a/mb3rRgZ and here is the ThetaEdge result: https://imgur.com/a/ZAZZgiR https://imgur.com/a/ZAZZgiR
    - IncreasePosts 11mo ago
      Sure - I guess what I was asking is how to make sure everything is okay in the unstructured -> structured conversion. "My name is John and I'm 40 years old" -> {name:"John", age:40} How can you gain confidence that the AI doesn't spit out {name:"John", age:41} The only thing I do currently is have a massive test suite to gain some statistical confidence it works, but I worry about situations like a person having a rare unicode character in their name (not to even speak of people intentionally trying to trick the system)
knowaveragejoe 11mo ago
The sign up link leads to a 403, just fyi.
thehamkercat 11mo ago
This is amazing, beat me to it, I had this in my TODO since last year. I wanted to call it "Remind-me-when" for example: "remind me when Weapons movie has less than 7 days to be released" or "remind me when the site something.com goes down"
hamasho 11mo ago
This post is not related to this, but as a fellow live coding fun, it makes me happy to find a new terminal based instrument like this found in the website ( https://infinitedigits.co/docs/software/collidertracker/ https://infinitedigits.co/docs/software/collidertracker/ ). Especially there is another hot post about Strudel right now (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46052478 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46052478 ).
cyberclimb 11mo ago
Is it possible to track a given URL without that URL becoming public knowledge as a posted question for anyone to see?
samteeeee 11mo ago
I made a free product out of one of the use cases for YesNotice "Get notified when a new movie or TV show is released". It's here: https://www.premierepal.com/ https://www.premierepal.com/
tyilo 11mo ago
I got a 403 Forbidden error when trying to register a user.
data-ottawa 11mo ago
Nitpick: "Is the next Game of Thrones book out yet?" This is always "No", because the latest book can never be the next book.
michalpleban 11mo ago
I entered the question: > Has my girlfriend agreed to marry me? It says: > Answer: No > Estimated availability: Unknown I am heartbroken.
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
01HNNWZ0MV43FF 11mo ago
Reminds me of "The Missing Protocol: Let Me Know" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44881287 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44881287 except instead of being the protocol and a client, it's just a SaaS that scrapes for you and sends SMS / email. Darn.
VerifiedReports 11mo ago
Is what?
creatonez 11mo ago
If it's googling repeatedly (every 15 minutes!) and then processing the results with LLMs, how does it avoid hallucinations? The problem with these models is that even extremely marginal hallucinations become inevitable with enough samples, so I'm skeptical that this wouldn't cause a ton of false positives.
- hairofadog 11mo ago
  I just got a 'yesnotice' that DJT was dead. It does not appear to be true. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/aboxwithrocksinit/test-bucket/refs/heads/main/is-djt-dead.png https://raw.githubusercontent.com/aboxwithrocksinit/test-buc...
xnx 11mo ago
This is one of the features of the Harpa.ai extension: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/harpa-ai-ai-automation-ag/eanggfilgoajaocelnaflolkadkeghjp https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/harpa-ai-ai-automat...

184 points by surprisetalk 1y ago

Nice idea.

This is 5% off topic, but just to say that Zack (the person behind this service + Infinite Digits) is (also) a super prolific (and extremely kind) developer/maker/hacker with a ton of exquisite software+hardware musical projects: - check out https://infinitedigits.co/docs/products/zeptocore/ https://infinitedigits.co/docs/products/zeptocore/ if you're into sample-y, jungle/breakcore-y audio mangling/button mashing - and his https://infinitedigits.co/docs/software/collidertracker/ https://infinitedigits.co/docs/software/collidertracker/ terminal-based tracker Signed, an honorary member of the Zack Fan Club :-) haha

qrv3w 11mo ago
Such kind words! I really appreciate it. Thanks for making the internet a more positive (and springy!) space! -Zack
- amypetrik8 11mo ago
  2nd hotest zach on the planet behind zachary ty bryan. still waiting for zachary ty bryan to have his 2nd big breakout hollywood superstar event, actually haven't heard much from him recently and don't know what he's up too. cool guy though
smusamashah 11mo ago
Oh! The maker of croc too https://infinitedigits.co/docs/software/croc/ https://infinitedigits.co/docs/software/croc/ Used it a few times to send files from A to B
pwenzel 11mo ago
His contributions to the Monome Norns ecosystem are impressive as well! Barcode (https://infinitedigits.co/docs/software/norns-scripts/barcode/ https://infinitedigits.co/docs/software/norns-scripts/barcod...) is a classic and I still rock it.

VikingCoder 11mo ago

Very much reminded of "Daemon" by Daniel Suarez, where the system is watching the news to find out when people were dead, etc.

martypitt 11mo ago

Cool idea. Just a heads-up that the Demo link at the bottom of the page leads to a 403.

bbstats 11mo ago

hug of death?

notatoad 11mo ago

>How it works # YesNotice works by periodically checking the status of the item you care about okay, but how does it work? how does it check the status of things?

meindnoch 11mo ago
From a database!
esafak 11mo ago
You just curl the site or use its API, if it has one? Then you store the result in a database and see if its value has flipped. I don't get the question; this is trivial.
- dylanowen 11mo ago
  That's if the website you're querying is a static html file but the web is much more dynamic and varied. Some of the questions I have: does yesnotice execute js, does it handle an answer appearing on a different page, does it handle ambiguous launch language. In essence: how does it work?
- zahlman 11mo ago
  > YesNotice works by periodically checking the status of the item you care about (e.g., product stock, website availability, domain status) and comparing it to the previous status. When it detects a change from no to yes, it sends you a notification via email. How does it generalize arbitrary indications of status into yes/no? How does it know how to use arbitrary APIs to obtain arbitrary indications of status?
- scubbo 11mo ago
  > Additionally, YesNotice will provide an estimated availability timeline for the question, so you can have some information about when to expect the change. How is that trivial in the general case?
  - esafak 11mo ago

meindnoch 11mo ago

>Notifications are sent via email or SMS, depending on your preference. This would be a perfect use case for RSS.

barbazoo 11mo ago
And then a service on top that checks the feed and notifies you when there’s a new item.
- etskinner 11mo ago
  I presume most mobile RSS readers do this already. With the added bonus that users can set their own settings of how often to refresh their feed rather than writing a service to do it
jauntywundrkind 11mo ago
This would also be one excellent use case for web notifications! One I'd gladly use!!! https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Notifications_API https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Notificatio...

denysvitali 11mo ago

Can't wait for the collab with https://www.istheinternetonfire.com/ https://www.istheinternetonfire.com/

victorbuilds 11mo ago

The "yes/no" framing is a nice constraint that makes this actually useful vs generic "page changed" monitors. Do you rate-limit the checks to avoid hammering sources?

zhouzhao 11mo ago

[flagged]

deanebarker 11mo ago

Take a look at these posts -- https://deanebarker.net/tech/blog/let-me-know/ https://deanebarker.net/tech/blog/let-me-know/ https://deanebarker.net/tech/blog/notify-one-time/ https://deanebarker.net/tech/blog/notify-one-time/ I'm glad someone finally did something here. I wish you every success.

qrv3w 11mo ago
Thanks! Had pretty much the same thought process as you, so I made this little tool (yesnotice) to do pretty much that. Its not perfect, but I've been using it a lot and its working great for me (mostly to get notified when certain new packages are updated and TV shows come out...then I don't have to remember so many things!)

marysminefnuf 11mo ago

Love this idea

CGMthrowaway 11mo ago

It's IFTTT all over again!

ChrisMarshallNY 11mo ago

Pretty cool. I suspect it's an AI implementation. Reminds me of this classic: http://isabevigodadead.com http://isabevigodadead.com

cyanydeez 11mo ago

Ok, I'll only accept this use of AI if YesNotice can figure out how much their computer cycles cost to do whatever it's doing.

xnx 11mo ago

Good enhancement to existing services like Website Watcher, changedetection, etc.

amarant 11mo ago

Neat! Now I don't have to remember to Google for new vaccine updates every week!

mempko 11mo ago

This is really cool! I always believed one valuable use case for AI is to take unstructured data and structure it. I am building ThetaEdge (https://thetaedge.ai https://thetaedge.ai) which is in Beta now. We built a similar feature but specific to investing and markets. You get notified when certain market things you care about happen like 'Alert me when nvidia releases a new product' or 'tell me when a 20 delta call for Apple is more than $1'. The challenge of building something like this is consistency and accuracy which is important in finance. Awesome to see a clean focused product like YesNotice with a very clear utility.

IncreasePosts 11mo ago
I agree about the importance of that use case, but how do you confirm that the AI doesn't modify the data in some unwarranted manner during the process?
- mempko 11mo ago
  Great question! Don't use AI to process the data, especially when a computer can do the work :-). AI is good at taking unstructured data and structuring it. Computers are great at computing. Here is an example of Google's AI failing https://www.google.com/search?q=is+2026+next+year https://www.google.com/search?q=is+2026+next+year Google screenshot: https://imgur.com/a/FOT4aDF https://imgur.com/a/FOT4aDF ChatGPT also fails: https://imgur.com/a/mb3rRgZ https://imgur.com/a/mb3rRgZ and here is the ThetaEdge result: https://imgur.com/a/ZAZZgiR https://imgur.com/a/ZAZZgiR
  - IncreasePosts 11mo ago
    Sure - I guess what I was asking is how to make sure everything is okay in the unstructured -> structured conversion. "My name is John and I'm 40 years old" -> {name:"John", age:40} How can you gain confidence that the AI doesn't spit out {name:"John", age:41} The only thing I do currently is have a massive test suite to gain some statistical confidence it works, but I worry about situations like a person having a rare unicode character in their name (not to even speak of people intentionally trying to trick the system)

knowaveragejoe 11mo ago

The sign up link leads to a 403, just fyi.

thehamkercat 11mo ago

This is amazing, beat me to it, I had this in my TODO since last year. I wanted to call it "Remind-me-when" for example: "remind me when Weapons movie has less than 7 days to be released" or "remind me when the site something.com goes down"

hamasho 11mo ago

This post is not related to this, but as a fellow live coding fun, it makes me happy to find a new terminal based instrument like this found in the website ( https://infinitedigits.co/docs/software/collidertracker/ https://infinitedigits.co/docs/software/collidertracker/ ). Especially there is another hot post about Strudel right now (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46052478 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46052478 ).

cyberclimb 11mo ago

Is it possible to track a given URL without that URL becoming public knowledge as a posted question for anyone to see?

samteeeee 11mo ago

I made a free product out of one of the use cases for YesNotice "Get notified when a new movie or TV show is released". It's here: https://www.premierepal.com/ https://www.premierepal.com/

tyilo 11mo ago

I got a 403 Forbidden error when trying to register a user.

data-ottawa 11mo ago

Nitpick: "Is the next Game of Thrones book out yet?" This is always "No", because the latest book can never be the next book.

michalpleban 11mo ago

I entered the question: > Has my girlfriend agreed to marry me? It says: > Answer: No > Estimated availability: Unknown I am heartbroken.

deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]

01HNNWZ0MV43FF 11mo ago

Reminds me of "The Missing Protocol: Let Me Know" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44881287 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44881287 except instead of being the protocol and a client, it's just a SaaS that scrapes for you and sends SMS / email. Darn.

VerifiedReports 11mo ago

Is what?

creatonez 11mo ago

If it's googling repeatedly (every 15 minutes!) and then processing the results with LLMs, how does it avoid hallucinations? The problem with these models is that even extremely marginal hallucinations become inevitable with enough samples, so I'm skeptical that this wouldn't cause a ton of false positives.

hairofadog 11mo ago
I just got a 'yesnotice' that DJT was dead. It does not appear to be true. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/aboxwithrocksinit/test-bucket/refs/heads/main/is-djt-dead.png https://raw.githubusercontent.com/aboxwithrocksinit/test-buc...

xnx 11mo ago

This is one of the features of the Harpa.ai extension: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/harpa-ai-ai-automation-ag/eanggfilgoajaocelnaflolkadkeghjp https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/harpa-ai-ai-automat...