Unemployment + exploration is what enabled me to find out about HN. A job with a routine span of hours can really gouge out a lot of opportunities to find out a

Unemployment + exploration is what enabled me to find out about HN. A job with a routine span of hours can really gouge out a lot of opportunities to find out about many interesting things going on in the world. However, when having a much more limited amount of time to explore, it helps prioritize what to explore. Both circumstances have their benefits and undesirables. I think another issue is the idea of having a range-rating system versus a 1 point up & 1 point down system. Another idea is to be able to turn off seeing the point system altogether until you are done reading what you want to read. Perhaps this can be accomplished somehow with the firebug firefox add-on. I like the idea of being able to customize & edit the entire Web as an add-on feature (not permanent/censorship) :)