The high volume of posts (and corresponding lower signal quality) cured me. Now I visit see a handful of stories that I didn't need to read. Occasionally worthwhile so still visit but not frequently like I used to.
I have had some pet projects in my notebooks for years. I made the mistake of moving to the boondocks, where people seem to extend their fear of "over the river and through the woods" even to electronic communication, which is the best way NOT to collaborate on new ideas.
I joined HN, besides lurking, to build "cred" and to improve my communication skills.
I honestly use an auto-pager to save each day's entire HN in a SeaMonkey composer page. As I rapidly page through, some items stand out, and I read them on the spot and save as pdf's.
Any big ones I miss show up on "best" [0]
I am an infovore, and this limits my HN time. Like an addict treating themself. I am still mostly sane.
New developments I find WILL make their way into those ideas, or I'll just hand them to my son in law.
If you have a good time then it's not wasted, and if it helps you get useful info or inspiration for new projects then it's even better.
Honestly I go here for drama in the comments. And for the feeling that I know something before all my friends do. But the main thing is sometimes you can find a great article that pushes you forward as a developer (or even better as a person) and I don't want to miss it.
This site is filled with jaded millionaire nerds who believe the world can't ever get better. I'm the exact opposite of that but I stay here because sometimes you can find people who really know what they're talking about, and that makes it worth every minute.
Seeing experts in the field or oftentimes the literal developer / author themselves come into the comments is always so interesting, as somebody who has nothing to do with development and just likes to keep up on tech news.
Information addiction is information addiction. No matter if it is instagram, YouTube or hacker news. Generally better for your mental health to just consume less information and be more mindful of what you give your attention
The piece also mentions this, but Hacker News has a "No Procrastination" feature you can enable in your profile.
You can set the maximum number of minutes you're allowed to visit Hacker News for, and the minimum number of minutes you need to be away before the site will let you return.
There's other software that can help too, to block you from websites for a period of time. Years ago my favourite was Concentrate on the Mac, but that is discontinued. It seems Focus is another replacement - I haven't tried it, but link as an example of what is available:
OP here, I wished to write about this in the blog post but I also use a block-site[0] thing (ironically it still is open and I just press one minute or 5 minute etc.)
I think that the issue with that is that atleast with the block extenstion that I currently use, its really easy to just open it up for 1 minute or 5 minute etc. and this then goes into the issue that I have tried to talk about in the article.
To give you a meta example of this issue, I still wanted to see how my blog post is doing and uh, I opened it up for 1 minute but then saw your comment and have started commenting.
> You can set the maximum number of minutes you're allowed to visit Hacker News for, and the minimum number of minutes you need to be away before the site will let you return.
The min. no of minutes part is a lot more interesting part for me as with that extension, there isn't really that concept.
> There's other software that can help too, to block you from websites for a period of time. Years ago my favourite was Concentrate on the Mac, but that is discontinued. It seems Focus is another replacement.
I will try that out! Basically what I want is where if I am studying, I can decide for how long my studying is and then when opening up hackernews (as I just press n, press enter and its so subconscious), instead of having a button which can make me unblock it, It will just literally have no option (period) to unblock in that time. I think this is what you are suggesting with this app, so I will try that out!
Also thanks for commenting, Time to go back to studying for me, please wish me luck and have a nice day :-D
> I think that, many of us are addicted to HN and believe that this form of addiction is better than other forms of addictions towards say instagram reels/shorts etc.
Maybe until the breakthrough of LLMs this year. But since then, the discussions here took a nose-dive and I feel like losing my sanity.
The high volume of posts (and corresponding lower signal quality) cured me. Now I visit see a handful of stories that I didn't need to read. Occasionally worthwhile so still visit but not frequently like I used to.
I have had some pet projects in my notebooks for years. I made the mistake of moving to the boondocks, where people seem to extend their fear of "over the river and through the woods" even to electronic communication, which is the best way NOT to collaborate on new ideas.
I joined HN, besides lurking, to build "cred" and to improve my communication skills.
I honestly use an auto-pager to save each day's entire HN in a SeaMonkey composer page. As I rapidly page through, some items stand out, and I read them on the spot and save as pdf's.
Any big ones I miss show up on "best" [0]
I am an infovore, and this limits my HN time. Like an addict treating themself. I am still mostly sane.
New developments I find WILL make their way into those ideas, or I'll just hand them to my son in law.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/best
If you have a good time then it's not wasted, and if it helps you get useful info or inspiration for new projects then it's even better.
Honestly I go here for drama in the comments. And for the feeling that I know something before all my friends do. But the main thing is sometimes you can find a great article that pushes you forward as a developer (or even better as a person) and I don't want to miss it.
This site is filled with jaded millionaire nerds who believe the world can't ever get better. I'm the exact opposite of that but I stay here because sometimes you can find people who really know what they're talking about, and that makes it worth every minute.
Seeing experts in the field or oftentimes the literal developer / author themselves come into the comments is always so interesting, as somebody who has nothing to do with development and just likes to keep up on tech news.
Information addiction is information addiction. No matter if it is instagram, YouTube or hacker news. Generally better for your mental health to just consume less information and be more mindful of what you give your attention
The piece also mentions this, but Hacker News has a "No Procrastination" feature you can enable in your profile.
You can set the maximum number of minutes you're allowed to visit Hacker News for, and the minimum number of minutes you need to be away before the site will let you return.
There's other software that can help too, to block you from websites for a period of time. Years ago my favourite was Concentrate on the Mac, but that is discontinued. It seems Focus is another replacement - I haven't tried it, but link as an example of what is available:
https://heyfocus.com/
OP here, I wished to write about this in the blog post but I also use a block-site[0] thing (ironically it still is open and I just press one minute or 5 minute etc.)
I think that the issue with that is that atleast with the block extenstion that I currently use, its really easy to just open it up for 1 minute or 5 minute etc. and this then goes into the issue that I have tried to talk about in the article.
To give you a meta example of this issue, I still wanted to see how my blog post is doing and uh, I opened it up for 1 minute but then saw your comment and have started commenting.
> You can set the maximum number of minutes you're allowed to visit Hacker News for, and the minimum number of minutes you need to be away before the site will let you return.
The min. no of minutes part is a lot more interesting part for me as with that extension, there isn't really that concept.
> There's other software that can help too, to block you from websites for a period of time. Years ago my favourite was Concentrate on the Mac, but that is discontinued. It seems Focus is another replacement.
I will try that out! Basically what I want is where if I am studying, I can decide for how long my studying is and then when opening up hackernews (as I just press n, press enter and its so subconscious), instead of having a button which can make me unblock it, It will just literally have no option (period) to unblock in that time. I think this is what you are suggesting with this app, so I will try that out!
Also thanks for commenting, Time to go back to studying for me, please wish me luck and have a nice day :-D
[0]: https://webextension.org/listing/block-site.html
Good blog post and I can tell it's from the heart.
At the other end of the spectrum though, stopping to take in other peoples' articles and comments can amount to taking a simple mundane break.
Depends on what you need a break from ;)
I didn't know about the no procrastination feature. Thanks for letting me know :)
> I think that, many of us are addicted to HN and believe that this form of addiction is better than other forms of addictions towards say instagram reels/shorts etc.
Maybe until the breakthrough of LLMs this year. But since then, the discussions here took a nose-dive and I feel like losing my sanity.