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I think it is dangerously engaging for me, unfortunately. The danger lies in the fact that its so easy to rationalize my time here as being good (for my career
by abstractbill 16y ago
I think it is dangerously engaging for me, unfortunately. The danger lies in the fact that its so easy to rationalize my time here as being good (for my career, for my brain, etc).
It's an extreme idea, and I don't know of any other website that does it, but I think HN might be addictive enough that the only surefire way you could keep me off it is by actually switching it off at certain times of day!
- hugh3 16y agoWell then, the solution is to make it look less like work, so your brain isn't fooled. Get rid of the tasteful orange-and-grey colour scheme, and go for a purple-and-black design inspired by videogame forums. Set the font to Comic Sans. Add user avatars, dancing hamsters, a "funny sound effect of the day" button, and rename the site from Hacker News to "Chat About Random Crap With Strangers From The Internet".
- pg 16y agoLike graphic bitrex. I don't think I could stand it.
- meric 16y agoWhat is a "graphic bitrex"? The first result for "graphic bitrex" on google is this comment.
- _delirium 16y agoBitrex is a bitter compound, used as (among other things) an additive to industrial alcohol to make it unappealing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denatonium http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denatonium
- hxr 16y agoI think user generated tags go a long way in filtering out which stories I'd like to read/explore. (I used to read Slashdot until I found HN a few weeks ago). For now I just use the number of comments as good first approximation.
- techiferous 16y agoI think these tags would be useful: [programming] [startups] [drama] [meta]
- grinich 16y agoIt wouldn't be that hard to make an auto-tagging userscript using Delicious.
- arram 16y agonews.ycombinator.com spends a lot of time in my hosts file.
- abstractbill 16y agoYes, mine too. And in my wireless router's blocked hosts list as well.
- grandalf 16y agomine too, but then I type hackerne.ws
- pg 16y agoI've considered doing that. What if we just shut down HN e.g. from 11 am to 1 pm Pacific = 2 to 4 pm Eastern? This feature wouldn't be much use for people Australia, but at least it would be helpful for some users.
- csomar 16y agoWhat about detecting IPs and switching by region?
- staunch 16y agoThere can be no way to get around it. I will use a proxy if I have to, helllllllp!
- brk 16y agoSeriously, this is a nice gesture, but like most other forms of social welfare, I don't think you can save people from themselves through things like this.
- keeptrying 16y agoThis would be like a drug dealer not dealing for certain part of his regularly scheduled day. I can only imagine that this would make it worse because your cutting off supply and thus increasing demand. You'll probably increase traffic :).
- aik 16y agoThat's a scary thought. I think the HN community is very aware of time wasting. There appears to be a constant stream of don't-waste-time encouragement. HN is a good personal investment if you don't take the "fake work" bait[1]. Any non-fiction book is the same - you can spend hours reading every word/sentence/paragraph/page, or scan and focus with a purpose. It's easy to fall into passivity. [1] Perhaps there is a better system to bring "good investment posts" to the top.
- Tycho 16y agoI'd like a 'timeslot' feature that I could set myself eg. block my account all day except between 10pm and 11pm. This actually occurred to me previously when I activated the noprocrast feature, which was good also
- kgermino 16y agoI completely agree. I've tried noprocrast but I it's too easy to shut off or work around. I do think that its a real addiction. To be fair though I am a bit of a news junkie and a horrible procrastinator in general so even without HN I'm sure I'd find other ways to waste time.