One Minute Man, python 3 - timer

Question

Well, i have this code that is supposed to check if the html is changed by first checking and downloading the html into a string, then checking again every two seconds and printing html if it has changed. The problem is that the script says it has changed all the time, and keeps giving me the same html code back.
#!/usr/bin/env python
import time
start = time.time()
from urllib.request import urlopen
data = str
html = str
def firstcheck():
url = 'http://www.hacker.org/challenge/misc/minuteman.php'
hogniergay = urlopen(url)
data = hogniergay.read()
hogniergay.close()
html = data
def secondcheck():
url = 'http://www.hacker.org/challenge/misc/minuteman.php'
hogniergay = urlopen(url)
data = hogniergay.read()
hogniergay.close()
if not html == data:
print(data)
while True:
secondcheck()
time.sleep(2)
print ("it took", time.time() - start, "seconds.")
Thanks in advance;)

Answer 1

You need to tell the interpreter to set the global html variable in the firstcheck() function.
def firstcheck():
url = 'http://www.hacker.org/challenge/misc/minuteman.php'
hogniergay = urlopen(url)
data = hogniergay.read()
hogniergay.close()
global html
html = data
Right now the secondcheck() function is checking against the html value "str".

Answer 2

It doesn't look like you are calling firstcheck at all, so html is always going to be str. You could make it work by replacing the block inside the while True with:
while True:
firstcheck()
secondcheck()
but it would be cleaner to have a script that looked something like this
while True:
hogniergay = urlopen(url)
result = hogniergay.read()
hogniergay.close()
if result != current:
print (result)
current = result
time.sleep(2)