Ask HN: Websites / Apps that aren't a waste of time? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Websites / Apps that aren't a waste of time?

11 pointsChilledTonic19 comments

With X, formerly Twitter, going the way it has, I find myself lacking spaces on the internet to scroll and learn things at the same time (besides this one.)

Where does HN spend their downtime on the internet?

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I've found very niche groups in Reddit to be huge sources of information, not even interrogating LLMs can possibly provide as much value. Though you will keep fighting Reddit's recommendations all day, every day.

Quora isn't horrible, but sadly it seems it's kind of intrusive from a privacy perspective. Still it has interesting insights on psychology and personal experiences, with people who enjoy writing. It's like an organized Q and A blog.

Quora is so bad that it’s the only site that I specifically block to make sure I don’t go by there by mistake

When you find interesting blog posts on HN, skim the other articles on the blog and if they seem interesting, subscribe to their RSS feeds.

For the Mac/iOS I use NetNewsWire. It syncs over iCloud and it’s free and open source.

I deleted my Reddit account last year after 8 years.

Is there a windows or android NetNewsWire-equivalent?

You could try the Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link:

  https://www.well.com
  https://www.well.com/about-2/
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_WELL

> to scroll and learn things

Maybe you can approach this a bit differently, it sounds like you are looking for another place to waste your time without learning anything.

Learning doesn't happen by scrolling.

Counterpoint: you don't know what you don't know.

When scrolling Hackernews, intriguing topics abound that I never thought about before, much less even asked myself the question about. And I read the comments and become interested in a new area.

Counter-counterpoint: attention moves to something else before much learning was performed...

I would use the term "reading" than "scrolling" though. Scrolling implies that you don't really care much about anything and just mindlessly consume content.

Agreed. There's value in being attuned to what's there. It's breadth-first learning.

> aren't a waste of time

> spaces on the internet to scroll

These 2 are mutually exclusive ;)

“Scroll and learn” sounds like oxymoron.

Scrolling is OK if there is an end. Like a blog post!

Literally nothing public, unfortunately. I just got some private chats and slack groups where i interact in once in awhile.

Have you tried joining any relevant discord groups?

Read newspapers. Read about Philisophy and society. Look up data on national/local trends (national/local government usually have databasen). Educate yourself.

Lord knows the world need more of that in the coming years.

Setup an RSS feed.

* Worldle

* Sedecordle

* Jellyfin

Reddit is unusable

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