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Comment by lrossi | Hacker News Reader

Sorry to say this, but HN is a problem as well.

I’m looking for that 1% of the posts that interest me, and when I find them it’s fantastic, since it’s info I would not be able to find anywhere else. But going through the other 99% is a waste of time.

These two combined have a harmful effect on me. I don’t know if there’s a name for it, but it’s the same as the one causing addiction in gambling/bets/games. Gathering energy/motivation to do something productive instead takes effort.

Just a few days ago I was thinking of adding a dns block for it. But that 1% of the links is sweet...

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> Just a few days ago I was thinking of adding a dns block for it.

In your profile you’ll find noprocrast, maxvisit, and minaway, which you can use to limit your time on the site.

> But that 1% of the links is sweet

You can use RSS feeds to be notified of stories with over N points[1] (or another rule), lessening the desire to look at everything.

[1]: https://hnrss.github.io/#activity-parameters

I had no idea about this. Thanks, I will try it out.

Also check out this feed of the top 10 HN stories daily: https://www.daemonology.net/hn-daily/ I find it cuts out a lot of the noise

> You can use RSS feeds to be notified of stories with over N points[1] (or another rule), lessening the desire to look at everything.

Thank you for this tip! HN is one of the only websites I don’t consume via RSS. I had no idea I could customize parameters and do this.

Unfortunately, I’ll still be loading the site to find the rare links that are of high interest to but that get a low number of hits. But this will definitely help me optimize my interaction with the site. Again, thank you.

The name for this is ‘variable reward’, and yes it is the root of gambling addiction as well.

> I’m looking for that 1% of the posts that interest me, and when I find them it’s fantastic, since it’s info I would not be able to find anywhere else. But going through the other 99% is a waste of time.

Would this really help with HN addiction? I imagine it might exacerbate it since everything you see is so much more engaging (by definition), and probably count(posts that interest you) >>> count(posts that you've read).

An alternative is to stop visiting the site and sign up for Hacker Newsletter instead: https://hackernewsletter.com/

This has helped me cut down on the time I read HN: https://hckrnews.com/

Good link, thanks. But I don't find the points/comments reliable indicators of things I want to read. For example, I only read one out of the Top 10 today.

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