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Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated?

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Re: Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated?

#561

Post by jcun4128 »

amelius wrote: post #556
jcun4128 wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you deal with the legality of scraping? I was hired to scrape some economic related pages and build an excel file and email it, I got that done but not sure if I should try to host this and turn it into a service or just set it up for the client and let them deal with it. It's just personal use on their part.

> How do you deal with the legality of scraping? How did Google deal with it, when they started their search engine business?

My counter to this is, without Google's "algorithm" the search results would not be great/find what you want. And in this case websites want to volunteer/agree to index their site for visibility but then you still have to visit the site because conveniently The site summary ends before the content that you want. I don't know how I would find websites unless referred on some website.

I kinda felt the same way about how Netflix started out but I think they probably had a deal to pay a portion of revenue from dvd's that they rented out.

Re: Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated?

#562

Post by jcun4128 »

jcun4128 wrote: post #524

I wrote a bot to read the top article titles and comments (10 articles at a time) on Hacker News and it just runs every hour. Plays out loud on my speakers. Uses a rapsberry pi, python and AWS Polly, I put the code up on github if anyone is interested. The voice kind of gets monotonous but I've found Kendra's voice to be the best IMO. Last edit: since the free tier has a 5 million character per month limit (AWS Polly…

Video of it working skip to 23 seconds

https://youtu.be/fWfatVYML9o

Re: Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated?

#563

Post by jackweirdy »

mysterypie wrote: post #510

Many of automation ideas here bring an edge to one person at the expense of everyone else. The ideas fail completely if too many people start doing the same thing. Actual examples from people on this list: - User pokes immigration website repeatedly to submit his application as soon as the site starts accepting. Obviously if everyone did the same thing, no one would benefit. The thing that needs fixing is an immigrat…

The end result of the immigration one is just the H1B system, where loads of checks turn up at the state departments door one day

Re: Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated?

#564

Post by richev »

zeristor wrote: post #484
richev wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://visualping.io/ can do this, although it sends email alerts rather than SMS messages. I used it to notify me of new Hololens events, listed on this page https://www.microsoftevents.com/profile/web/index.cfm?PKwebI...

No Hololens events in London, is that by design?

Wait a while...it took about six months for one to happen here in Sydney. Well worth the wait - half an hour of exclusive use of a Hololens. All the while being recorded for market research purposes, but that seemed like a fair trade.

Re: Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated?

#565

Post by mijoharas »

travbrack wrote: post #550
_tsz4 wrote: post #87

Passive learning. Whenever I come across something cool or interesting, I put it into a chrome extension I made called "Harvest". It sends me email reminders of what I've added on a spaced repetition schedule (1, 7, 17, 35 days into the future) for optimal retention https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/harvest-grow-your-...

Thanks for sharing. I tried it out and it looks great. I had a couple issues. Firstly it has me sign into my Google account on a browser window with no address bar. The only way I could actually verify that it wasn't a fishing site was to use the dev tools. After that it signed me out after a few hours. Hope this helps.

How do you pop the dev tools up on that window?

I tried but can't (same thoughts as you, without verifying it myself, not gonna sign in...)

Hitting F12 or Ctrl+Shift+C on the popup page do nothing.

EDIT: chrome on linux Version 59.0.3071.86 (Official Build) (64-bit)

Re: Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated?

#567

Post by j_s »

tylerjaywood wrote: post #141

I have a house plant that is watered automatically, but not based on any pre-determined schedule. I have the plant's livestream and its moisture level available publicly on pleasetakecareofmyplant.com and the decision to water is crowd sourced on reddit.com/r/takecareofmyplant by way of a daily vote.

Associated HN discussion currently on the front page:

Please take care of my plant | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15453974 (100+ comments)

And the link: http://www.pleasetakecareofmyplant.com/

Re: Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated?

#569

Post by tome »

jmkni wrote: post #191

I have toiletries delivered to me once per month (from Amazon). These being: * New Toothbrush * New Floss (I recently had a friend stay over, and asked me where I got the floss, as it was the best he had ever used) * Toilet roll * Mouthwash * Shampoo/Conditioner * Facecloth's * Deodorant They all just show up on my doorstep once per month, I don't even have to think about it!

What is this wonderful floss of which you speak?

Re: Ask HN: What non-work task have you automated?

#570

Post by grenoire »

mysterypie wrote: post #510

Many of automation ideas here bring an edge to one person at the expense of everyone else. The ideas fail completely if too many people start doing the same thing. Actual examples from people on this list: - User pokes immigration website repeatedly to submit his application as soon as the site starts accepting. Obviously if everyone did the same thing, no one would benefit. The thing that needs fixing is an immigrat…

Well, this is exactly how financial markets function and why it's so hard to beat the market. I think these people deserve the benefits if they can come up with these solutions; none of them are inherently malicious after all.
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