
Show HN: HN Notify.xyz – Subscribe to Your HN Replies - jermaustin1
https://hnnotify.xyz/
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udkl
At this point it feels like notifications for reply activity should be a
default feature of HN.

Not having notifications causes abrupt ends of discussions because the author
didn't realize a reply was posted.

Reply notifications furthers the goal of HN as a discussion forum.

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demarq
Nah, I think that it's important that people don't get to invested into their
comments. That's how flamewars keep going.

I care mostly about the general conversation here than that one comment I made
yesterday afternoon

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helpPeople
I'm the other way. I don't trust the users here to be real or not vote manip.
Top comments are most dangerous.

The heart of discussion can be found in the details, not the surface.

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jermaustin1
Just add your email (or a fake one, I don't care, just not one that bounces
please), and a username you want to follow the replies for (yours, mine, pg,
dang, it doesn't matter, and I don't care!).

This is a complete rewrite of the previous service I built for this. I had
started this rewrite over a year ago, but due to family troubles I had to put
it on hold.

I wrote the original HNNotify.xyz to once an hour crawl the API for your
replies and email you if it found any. This was a terrible approach and led to
a lot of issues. But that is how it has been running for well, ever.

This rewrite uses a database I feed with my API crawler. It's a lot more
stable, and the query to find replies takes milliseconds instead of minutes.

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plibither8
A service like this already exists:
[https://hnreplies.com/](https://hnreplies.com/) and I've been using it for
quite some time now - no issues faced till now.

The only difference is that hnnotify.xyz notifies you on comments to your
_submissions_ too.

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goblin89
I’ve been using HN Replies for years and have nothing to say against it.
Clean, only minimal functionality, delivery is prompt—kudos to maintainer.

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Amorymeltzer
That's dangrossman[1] and indeed, it's perfect.

1:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=dangrossman](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=dangrossman)

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crisbal_
Beware, since your main div has the "newsletter-subscribe" class, it gets
gidden by uBlock Origin and the website is unusable.

~~~
jermaustin1
Well that's no good. I will have to fix that when I get home this afternoon.

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azhenley
I’ve been using the old version since you first posted it on Show HN over a
year (two years?) ago.

Thanks! I especially like the new email formatting.

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jermaustin1
Thanks buddy. Also thanks for being my beta tester!

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pgt
In “Building Communities with Software” (2004), Spolsky writes:

“Q. Could you make a feature where I check a box that says “email me if
somebody replies to my post?”

A. This one feature, so easy to implement and thus so tempting to programmers,
is the best way to kill dead any young forum. Implement this feature and you
may never get to critical mass. Philip Greenspun’s LUSENET has this feature
and you can watch it sapping the life out of young discussion groups.”

[https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2003/03/03/building-
communiti...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2003/03/03/building-communities-
with-software/)

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azhenley
His rationale as to _why_ :

“If you offer the “notify me” checkbox, these people will post their question,
check the box, and never come back. They’ll just read the replies in their
mailbox. The end. If you eliminate the checkbox, people are left with no
choice but to check back every once in a while. And while they’re checking
back, they might read another post which looks interesting. And they might
have something to contribute to that post.”

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gremlinsinc
Have a browser push notification that truncates the message...so they still
get a notification but have to visit to see the full reply.

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kbumsik
Since it's Show HN it will be nice if there is any technical details provided.
So how is it implemented, does it use APIs from HN?

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jermaustin1
It's an ASP.net core website. I have a 3 droplets powering it $5 for web, $5
for utilities, and a $25 droplet for the HN Api crawler.

My API crawler is an C# console app that just increments the last crawled item
until it gets a 404 then sleeps for 60 seconds. I currently have just over 3GB
of data from the API.

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rapfaria
Are you crawling firebase or algolia?

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jermaustin1
Firebase

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rapfaria
Than you could crawl up to the maxitem instead of relying on 404

[https://hacker-
news.firebaseio.com/v0/maxitem.json?print=pre...](https://hacker-
news.firebaseio.com/v0/maxitem.json?print=pretty)

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franciscop
> We will only email you notifications about your HN profile and new features.

AFAIK I should need to have a checkbox for that (IANAL). Is there a working
"Unsubscribe" button in the emails? I'm very interested on this, but more
interested in keeping my inbox clean-ish

Edit: tone

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jermaustin1
Every email has an unsubscribe, but you are literally signing up for
notifications. If you don't check it, you'd get no notification.

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franciscop
Oh yeah, notifications about new comments are fine (the whole point). I'm
curious about new features emails. Once every 6-12 months would be totally
fine, weekly updates not really :)

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jermaustin1
I can tell you. In 2 years of running the previous version of this, i emailed
the hundreds of users a total of 0 times.

I will email the old users for the first time later today once I migrate their
accounts to the new platform.

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shubidubi
nice! i had this idea in mind for a while but didn't see how to monetize it :)
glad someone did it.

> We collect every new submission and comment from Hacker News, and once every
> 5 minutes or so (assuming I don't break something).

nit - you should decide if your tone is "we" or "I".

edit: another idea would be to add notifications for upvote/downvote you get.
it's harder to implement so maybe just when your score changes...

edit2: why downvote? ️

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jermaustin1
We is my company. I is me, the developer. I realize it might be confusing,
I'll have my editor look at it.

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thescribbblr
This is what I was thinking to build today. Awesome to see it has been built
by @jermaustin.nice concept!

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vzaliva
It should be an RSS feed.

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jermaustin1
That's an idea. And cheaper than sending emails.

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HNLurker2
Testing, testing

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udkl
Test.

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azhenley
Test! Looks like notification emails have a ~10 minute delay and are done in
batches.

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udkl
Hnreplies is faster.... within a minute or two ...

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azhenley
I would prefer it be even slower. I was going to suggest making it
configurable per user. I don't want my email blowing up or for it to turn into
FB or Discord notifications (i.e., constant).

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gremlinsinc
Would be nice if HNReplies did a daily digest or something.

