5 ms·
TIL I have a "open Hacker News" hand reflex
by manbitesdog 9mo ago
TIL I have a "open Hacker News" hand reflex
- cbracketdash 9mo agoThere is a noprocrast feature in your settings to specify how long you can stay on for a single session and the frequency at which you can view HN. Super helpful!
- kevin061 9mo agoI did not know how addicted I was to HN until today lol
- jstummbillig 9mo agoI say. Vibe coded 4 apps once I got past that, on my way to half a billion in ARR already.
- thesurlydev 9mo agoSame! Right there with "every day must begin with coffee"
- AndrewKemendo 9mo agoIt just reinforces for me that addiction is a human problem not a problem with technology I know dang basically works tirelessly to not change the format in order to not induce those addictive patterns but yet here we all are
- chistev 9mo agoIt's a website with the smartest people in the world. The level of conversations here are unrivaled in internet communities. It's understandable to be addicted. Lol. I visit this place multiple times a day.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- fwip 9mo agoIt's really not 'the smartest people.' It's people interested in tech, and often in making-a-lot-of-money-in-tech. It does have a lot of people with significant industry experience, which is cool.
- worksonmine 9mo ago> It's really not 'the smartest people.' This was especially obvious during Covid, I even stopped visiting because the comment section was so crazy.
- the_af 9mo ago> It's a website with the smartest people in the world. Nice joke! At least, I hope it was a joke...
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- phantasmish 9mo ago99% of social science or political topics and 50% of technical topics here do not… read as smart, and you’d be much better off spending the same time reading the first chapter of a relevant 101-level college textbook.
- seizethecheese 9mo agoIt's entirely possible that this is the smartest place on the internet, but also often dumb. In fact, it seems likely. More of an indictment of the rest of the places on the internet.
- squeefers 9mo ago> It's entirely possible that this is the smartest place on the internet, i cant find the link, but there was a post about how to "be nice" and it was a revelation to a worrying amount of "geniuses" on here. bare in mind the sum total of the advice was "be nice, dont be rude"
- seizethecheese 9mo ago1. niceness and genius are orthogonal 2. your characterization of the article sounds uncharitable 3. my point isn't exactly that this is necessarily the smartest place
- squeefers 9mo ago1. but social skills and genius are 2. im still staggered at how elementary it was 3. ok?
- ssdspoimdsjvv 9mo agoIntelligence has many dimensions.
- the_af 9mo ago> It's entirely possible that this is the smartest place on the internet, but also often dumb. In fact, it seems likely. More of an indictment of the rest of the places on the internet. Almost every (non-troll) online community that is relatively peaceful and has some semblance of moderation to remove flamewars thinks of itself as "the best community". Usually as compared to reddit, though if it's on reddit they will compare themselves to some other (hated) sub. It's a fact of the internet. Every online community thinks of itself as the smartest, more thoughtful, more civilized. HN is no exception. It goes without saying HN is not the smartest or more thoughtful online community. It's just... ok. Not the worst, not the best. Certainly NOT the place with the smartest people, though some smart people frequent it. As a regular, you can soon figure out HN's unspoken rules, blindspots, and areas where the group opinion is more likely to be accurate.
- linhns 9mo agoAlso the level of flak is unrivaled.
- steve_adams_86 9mo ago> the smartest people in the world But also, people like me. Be careful what you choose to believe on this website
- andrepd 9mo agoPoe's Law for a parody of the self-important sv techbro
- the_af 9mo agoIt's a testament to Poe's Law that I genuinely cannot tell if the OP was being funny or not.
- mrguyorama 9mo agoThere's a reason why HN of all places has such a terrible record of handling actual sarcasm and telling it apart from genuine belief and that reason is NOT that "HN is really smart" lol
- the_af 9mo agoAgreed! I think HN is average, and its userbase think themselves smarter than they really are. ... but I still cannot tell if the original commenter was sarcastic or not! ;)
- krapp 9mo agoAny professional forum or technical subreddit with good moderation and gatekeeping blows Hacker News out of the water any day of the week.
- dzink 9mo agoThis one is at least healthy-ish for the mind. I’d much rather hacker news than any other news. Social Media is an emotional rage-bait cesspool these days. If it’s not for Hacker News those of us who abstain from the rest would be living in the dark.
- PurpleRamen 9mo agoBut, would the addiction become worse if HN changed, or would there be a point where they could cure it?
- ZuoCen_Liu 9mo agoPerhaps this is the role of HN - at least it still allows us to reflect.
- ChrisMarshallNY 9mo agoSo do I, but it was such a shock that I just passed out, and when I woke up, it was back up.
- ZuoCen_Liu 9mo agoAdmirable~
- ectospheno 9mo agoI learn more reading the comments here than anywhere else. Thanks everyone for my addiction.
- wincy 9mo agoI’ve turned on no procrast mode and set it to ten minutes per hour. Helped me a lot!
- HanClinto 9mo agoWhat are you using to control this?
- randallsquared 9mo agoIt's a setting available on the page you get from clicking on your own username.
- HanClinto 9mo agoWhoa. A website that cares about its users enough to _easily support limiting access to itself_? That's so refreshing in terms of being a user-focused feature, and yet it stands in sharp contrast against today's engagement-hyperfocused climate. I never would have thought to look on a website's own settings page to limit my access to that same website. I love it, thank you for pointing me to this!
- bee_rider 9mo agoIt is on your profile, the “noprocrast” dropdown.
- 1shooner 9mo agoIf you're looking to put the brakes on that, I've used LeechBlock to add a 5-second timer to opening a new HN window (along with other block schedules). The timer even fails if it loses focus, so it really helps slow you down. https://www.proginosko.com/leechblock/ https://www.proginosko.com/leechblock/
- squeefers 9mo agoso youve got the willpower to do something about it but not enough to just stop doing it?
- dwedge 9mo agoHave you never suffered from habitual reflexes? I blocked twitter for a while in my hosts file and a dozen times over those first few days I instinctively opened a new tab and typed twitter in
- squeefers 9mo ago> I blocked twitter for a while in my hosts file and a dozen times over those first few days I instinctively opened a new tab and typed twitter in? youd go through that effort when you could have just stopped though.
- frikk 9mo agoWe all admire your absolute mastery of your own habitual reflexes and mind. For the rest of us, there is a daily battle of wits, desires, weakness, and habit. If I could snap my fingers and break toxic habits and patterns, I would have done so decades ago :)
- sunrunner 9mo agoI deleted the YouTube mobile app a few months ago and I still reflexively reach for the app icon every now and then. Thanks YouTube Shorts.
- 9mo ago
- selectnull 9mo agoI already knew that. :)
- numpad0 9mo agoobligatory: https://xkcd.com/477/ https://xkcd.com/477/
- lysace 9mo ago⌘-T, N, <RET> Did it like 5 times during that 1h-ish outage. :(
- directmusic 9mo agoI'm glad I'm not the only one. If I type 'n' into any browser it autocompletes to HN.
- embedding-shape 9mo agoSave typing hundreds of letters per day, and replace about:newtab with news.ycombinator.com, now you can just do CTRL+T :)
- tom1337 9mo agoat that moment my productivity would drop to zero
- Imustaskforhelp 9mo agomine already has and I dont even have hackernews as my new tab :) On all fairness though, mine is same for the original comment where just pressing n autocompletes it to https://news.ycombinator.com/ https://news.ycombinator.com/
- geocrasher 9mo agoI had the same thing for Slashdot.org for many, many years. Both the reflex and the browser autocomplete. I still miss the old /. It was like HN + Hackaday + Usenet.
- neom 9mo agodigg too, till they ruined it...still can't believe they ruined digg.
- nottorp 9mo agoWhat? You mean you ... close the HN tab?
- ErroneousBosh 9mo agoDo you log into things and reflexively type "ls", too?
- yigithan 9mo agoI stopped using google.com for Internet access check, I now use HN.
- locknitpicker 9mo ago> TIL I have a "open Hacker News" hand reflex You mean it's not your homepage?