Bush News

third-party commentary overlay for Hacker News profiles

what is this

Ever been browsing Hacker News and thought "I wish I could tag this user with a note to self"? Bush News lets you attach commentary and a custom color to any HN username. Your commentary follows them across the whole site — every comment, every post, every profile.

In the example above, dang is colored green and george is colored orange — the same colors they'll show everywhere on HN for anyone running the userscript.

how it works

1. Install the userscript in your browser (Tampermonkey / Greasemonkey / Violentmonkey).
2. The Bush News server is already running at bushnews.georgebush.dev — the userscript is pre-configured.
3. Visit any HN profile — a Bush News panel appears where you can set a color and write commentary.
4. Every username on HN with saved data gets colored and shows a tooltip on hover.

get the userscript

download bush-news.user.js

Install in Tampermonkey, Greasemonkey, or Violentmonkey and you're half way there.

run the server

The server is a dead-simple Node.js Express app with JSON file storage. Zero external database, zero config.

# clone / copy the server:
cd /opt
git clone <your-repo> bushnews
cd bushnews/server
npm install
node index.js

# listens on http://0.0.0.0:3456

The userscript points at https://bushnews.georgebush.dev/api. Change API_BASE at the top of the userscript if you want to point it at your own server.

GET  /api/users              → all users + colors
GET  /api/users/:username    → single entry
POST /api/users/:username    → set { color, commentary }
     (color must be hex: #ff6600)
DELETE /api/users/:username  → remove entry

run your own

Want to self-host? Throw it behind Caddy or nginx with basic auth. No authentication built in — you have been warned. Set DATA_FILE=/path/to/data.json to control where data is stored.

why "bush news"

Because the Bush family has a rich tradition of delivering important information to the public, and this is clearly the most important thing to ever happen to Hacker News.

Also bushnews.georgebush.dev was available.

building from source

The whole thing is three files:

bush-news.user.js   ← userscript (install in Tampermonkey)
server/package.json  ← npm dependencies (express + cors)
server/index.js      ← the API server

Userscript — no build step. Just edit and reload in Tampermonkey.

Server — npm install && node index.js. The data file is data/comments.json, created automatically.