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

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

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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.

Open articleView on HN

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 [1]: https://github.com/JuanJakobo/Pocketbook-Read-offline

> 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?

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. :)

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.

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.

What browser are you using on Onyx, What's the default browser based on?

einkbro is the best browser for eink android tablets. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=info.plateauka...

Interesting, Is it just a chromeview with CSS filtering?

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

[1]: https://github.com/theowenyoung/personal-flow/blob/main/work...

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...

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Very cool, I might extend it to send to Remarkable.

Thanks for sharing this project

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.

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

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.

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.

I thought reMarkable only takes ePub and PDF?

You can read mobi using Koreader.

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!

Is Wallabag a self-hosted pocket alternative?

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.

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 (My problem validation platform) and if there's enough interest then some one would pick it up for a side-project.

Done. I hope someone will pick it up because i really need it!

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.

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.

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

> 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

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

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