Hacker News Reader

Comment by raffraffraff | Hacker News Reader

Advice to myself (a while back when I wondered the same thing)... put the phone down once you've reached the end of page 1, and the first page of new submissions. Life is for living, tech is for 'doing', and anything more than 20 minutes online is procrastination.

You're a different person with different requirements, but I thought I'd just throw in my 2c.

PS: I rarely keep it to 20 minutes a day but I try

View on HN

Well said. I've been thinking about my "information diet" a lot recently, and I've been wondering what I've gotten out of it. I spend so much time on HN, Twitter, YouTube, and Reddit--to the tune of well over ten thousand hours over the past few years, and that's a conservative estimate.

After all of that, I still want more and more, but I'm not sure what exactly I want more of and I don't know if I've gained anything from it in the first place. I don't even feel particularly satisfied visiting any of these sites--usually some mixture of frustration, anxiousness, or some other negative emotion. Occasionally I'll find an interesting thread here, a funny Reddit thread, or an informative Youtube video, but the "hit" goes away relatively quickly, I forget all about it, and minutes--sometimes seconds!--later I'm craving the next hit.

That's my long way of saying: Yes, I agree with you and with this advice. Put the phone down after hitting the end of Page 1. Don't refresh the page every few minutes. Don't aimlessly open tab after tab with articles and videos you'll "eventually" get to (I have over five hundred tabs open right now on this laptop). There's no end in sight, and the road itself hasn't been too satisfying either.

> so much time on HN, Twitter, YouTube, and Reddit--to the tune of well over ten thousand hours

Well, at least then you'll probably be really good at it.

I wonder if you put down a book after 20 minutes, too, because life is for living, and reading is for...?

I'm not sure this is an apt comparison.

If reading from paper and reading from a screen are materially different to you, could you outline the difference?

They aren't actually. The comparison isn't apt because we aren't debating the differences or merits of reading on a screen versus reading on paper. That's a false dilemma. There are a multitude of ways to waste time at a computer and the posts you are responding to provided a few of examples of them, including watching videos on YouTube and surfing Reddit.

If those activities are the same to you as reading a book could outline the reasons why?

I think about this too regarding being a producer vs. consumer

Still I get to the point where I can't think/function anymore, and then find something to do/surf something/get those points

Something to keep in mind is that this is a balance, like everything else in life.

As humans we are integration machines. We need to take in novel information in order to combine it and produce new novel information. HN definitely helps with that, as the bullshit here is at a minimum with interesting technical information all over the place. Its honestly a gold mine, similar to what Slashdot was in yesteryear.

I have a similar question to OP: when HN dies like Slashdot, what's next?

Honestly my guess is that I won't get a solid answer in this thread, but some time after HN dies I'll just find myself on the next thing just like I found HN years after I left Slashdot

I'm curious is Techmeme in the ballpark or no?

Hackaday was already listed, that's nuts so much creativity on there.

IEEE video friday's is good imo regarding robotics stuff.

Wait, there's a 'new' button?

You're right, there is also Twitter

Reply on news.ycombinator.com