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Ask HN: What you have automated with Python?

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Re: Ask HN: What you have automated with Python?

#11

Post by cmldfr »

Me and my friends often share articles on our xmpp chatroom, some of them are behind paywalls and we all of use don't have subscriptions to the same websites.

So I have a parser that checks for url of paywall articles being posted. When it happens, the python script logs to the corresponding website and rehost the content of the article on my server. Finally it posts a new link — with no paywall this time — in the chatroom.

This required asking my friends for their login information on the websites where I don't have a subscription, but it made the whole process of sharing articles way easier.

Re: Ask HN: What you have automated with Python?

#12

Post by Dowwie »

antman wrote: post #8

From reddit: My brother in law has a "habit" of going to jail. All. The. Time. My wife wants to know when it happens, so I setup a script to poll the local jail inmate rosters, and send me an email when his name shows up. It works pretty well. https://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/308ucq/how_do_you_u...

You could write something like www.isitchristmas.com :)

Re: Ask HN: What you have automated with Python?

#13

Post by wikibob »

shanecleveland wrote: post #9

The company I work for ships a lot of packages each day. Shipments that are late, even ground shipments, are eligible for a refund if it is the carrier's fault. I have a python application that tracks shipments and let's me know which might be eligible for a refund. Saves us thousands each year.

Is there a SaaS that does this for companies? Maybe charging a percentage of the refund so there's no upfront cost to the customer?

If not, is anyone interested in building it with me?

I know there's a company that does something like this for parking tickets in NYC, and another one that does it for airline tickets.

Re: Ask HN: What you have automated with Python?

#14

Post by sprkyco »

cmldfr wrote: post #11

Me and my friends often share articles on our xmpp chatroom, some of them are behind paywalls and we all of use don't have subscriptions to the same websites. So I have a parser that checks for url of paywall articles being posted. When it happens, the python script logs to the corresponding website and rehost the content of the article on my server. Finally it posts a new link — with no paywall this time — in the ch…

Common practice, but still illegal. Recommend watching https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Internet%27s_Own_Boy if you haven't. Similar use case here.

Re: Ask HN: What you have automated with Python?

#15

Post by gusmd »

Once upon a time I was writing an Android app. I wrote a simple Python script to monitor the APK file and copy it to my Dropbox when it changed so that I could easily install and test it on my phone. Uses the Win32 API, so not portable.

It's here: https://github.com/gusmd/vigil.py

Re: Ask HN: What you have automated with Python?

#16

Post by weaksauce »

wikibob wrote: post #13
shanecleveland wrote: post #9

The company I work for ships a lot of packages each day. Shipments that are late, even ground shipments, are eligible for a refund if it is the carrier's fault. I have a python application that tracks shipments and let's me know which might be eligible for a refund. Saves us thousands each year.

Is there a SaaS that does this for companies? Maybe charging a percentage of the refund so there's no upfront cost to the customer? If not, is anyone interested in building it with me? I know there's a company that does something like this for parking tickets in NYC, and another one that does it for airline tickets.

I had heard of one before this... Not sure if the tou allow it anymore.

Re: Ask HN: What you have automated with Python?

#18

Post by shanecleveland »

wikibob wrote: post #13
shanecleveland wrote: post #9

The company I work for ships a lot of packages each day. Shipments that are late, even ground shipments, are eligible for a refund if it is the carrier's fault. I have a python application that tracks shipments and let's me know which might be eligible for a refund. Saves us thousands each year.

Is there a SaaS that does this for companies? Maybe charging a percentage of the refund so there's no upfront cost to the customer? If not, is anyone interested in building it with me? I know there's a company that does something like this for parking tickets in NYC, and another one that does it for airline tickets.

There was one for a while that did this specifically. You had to give them access to your online accounts with UPS and FedEx. They would then get the refunds for you and keep/bill for 50% of the total refunded. A nice no-risk proposal.

Now, the carriers require that the shipper themselves (or whoever paid for the shipment to begin with) must claim the refund. So third party refund collections are a violation of terms of service.

There are still some very large logistics providers that claim to offer this, but I am not sure how they do this. They might actually route all shipments through them, making them the actual shipper, allowing them to collect refunds. But you have to commit to them for all logistics/shipping.

Unless you monitor it closely yourself, there is no way to get information about late shipments from the carriers. So they make it hard to get them. And not all late shipments are eligible (only if fault of carrier).

So there is value alone in being aware of what to seek refunds on. I've thought about rolling this out into a service. I'm still working on tweaking my setup.

Re: Ask HN: What you have automated with Python?

#20

Post by brianjking »

While I do not contribute code, I do contribute documentation and support what I can via issue triage & community support for Home Assistant (https://home-assistant.io/) which is a Python 3 open source Home Automation webapp with over 500 components.

You can check out my automations, configuration files & docs at GitHub https://github.com/brianjking/homeassistant-config.

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