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Ah, rice. The quintessential Asian grain, now consumed by billions around the world. When I was a child, my mixed-race family used to eat rice every day! Even t

Ah, rice. The quintessential Asian grain, now consumed by billions around the world. When I was a child, my mixed-race family used to eat rice every day! Even today, the subtle aroma of rice wafting up from the kitchen brings a sense of nostalgia. It's a sure sign that dinner is approaching, my favorite meal of the day... [5 pages later] 1. Put rice and water in rice cooker 2. Press "start"

sidewndr46 5y ago
Woah now, shouldn't step 1 be broken up into 2 steps. Each with their own heading and a paragraph explaining how to do that?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- AceJohnny2 5y ago
  What kind of rice? Do you rinse the rice first? How much rice? How much water? Do you salt the water?
rhizome 5y ago
and "rice cooker" is an affiliate link
- codeisawesome 5y ago
  Let’s also not forget the 55 auto-playing video ads that I need to vault over to get to Step 1. Each one determined to hijack my mouse as I scroll/hurry past and cause a click! It’s like the world’s least fun platformer game.
codeisawesome 5y ago
I got instantly annoyed by the first few words of this comment, thinking you’d gone off on some tangent about rice… until I saw the last part. Well played!
prawn 5y ago
Isn't Google one major reason that recipe sites act like this? They've long favoured sites with a lot of textual content (which authors then break up with images) and also penalised sites that people tend to reverse out of quickly? A long story fits that because the majority of people need to read down for the content rather than get their instant answer and immediately retreat. I find it annoying too, but it often feels like people ridicule the authors when they wouldn't get any traffic if it weren't for that approach. I don't think I've ever searched for a recipe and come across a barebones Gantt-chart-style engineer-thinking recipe plan.
- loa_in_ 5y ago
  It's not Google per se but a practical impossibility: it has to rank somehow, hopefully as a human knowing the answer would. They could theoretically hire humans to do it but they won't because it's obviously impossible due to how vast the dataset is, so they use software. Software is still far from human level reasoning so they use metrics. Metrics can and will be discovered and gamed, regardless of what kind they are.
  - prawn 5y ago
    As an AdSense user, if you don't use the maximum allowable number of ads (regardless of content length), Google literally emails you to suggest you add more ads. Their documentation encourages you to maintain a reasonable ratio of ads to content at risk of being shutdown, which pushes out page length. They push for unique content (so writers differentiate with personal stories), they measure time on page (longer details, pictures), etc.
- CRConrad 5y ago
  > I don't think I've ever searched for a recipe and come across a barebones Gantt-chart-style engineer-thinking recipe plan. https://clovegarden.com/recipes/index.html https://clovegarden.com/recipes/index.html
  - prawn 5y ago
    Sorry, I might not have been clear enough. I know they exist. I'm saying that I've never searched for a recipe for something and a leading result has been in that sort of format. Google has created the environment in which the maligned 'epic story and photo album finished by actual recipe' formula wins through, yet the recipe creators get the ridicule.
rsch 5y ago
tdeck 5y ago
You forgot the part where there's a pseudo-recipe after the story that catches your eye but doesn't have any measured amounts, and then the actual recipe later.
edeion 5y ago
Reminds me of Plain Old Recipe, a website that strips out fluff from big recipe websites. You provide a link to a recipe, it makes it to the point. I thought the site had closed but it's apparently still live! https://plainoldrecipe.com/ https://plainoldrecipe.com/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23648864 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23648864 (Thank you HN :))

sidewndr46 5y ago

Woah now, shouldn't step 1 be broken up into 2 steps. Each with their own heading and a paragraph explaining how to do that?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
AceJohnny2 5y ago
What kind of rice? Do you rinse the rice first? How much rice? How much water? Do you salt the water?

rhizome 5y ago

and "rice cooker" is an affiliate link

codeisawesome 5y ago
Let’s also not forget the 55 auto-playing video ads that I need to vault over to get to Step 1. Each one determined to hijack my mouse as I scroll/hurry past and cause a click! It’s like the world’s least fun platformer game.

codeisawesome 5y ago

I got instantly annoyed by the first few words of this comment, thinking you’d gone off on some tangent about rice… until I saw the last part. Well played!

prawn 5y ago

Isn't Google one major reason that recipe sites act like this? They've long favoured sites with a lot of textual content (which authors then break up with images) and also penalised sites that people tend to reverse out of quickly? A long story fits that because the majority of people need to read down for the content rather than get their instant answer and immediately retreat. I find it annoying too, but it often feels like people ridicule the authors when they wouldn't get any traffic if it weren't for that approach. I don't think I've ever searched for a recipe and come across a barebones Gantt-chart-style engineer-thinking recipe plan.

loa_in_ 5y ago
It's not Google per se but a practical impossibility: it has to rank somehow, hopefully as a human knowing the answer would. They could theoretically hire humans to do it but they won't because it's obviously impossible due to how vast the dataset is, so they use software. Software is still far from human level reasoning so they use metrics. Metrics can and will be discovered and gamed, regardless of what kind they are.
- prawn 5y ago
  As an AdSense user, if you don't use the maximum allowable number of ads (regardless of content length), Google literally emails you to suggest you add more ads. Their documentation encourages you to maintain a reasonable ratio of ads to content at risk of being shutdown, which pushes out page length. They push for unique content (so writers differentiate with personal stories), they measure time on page (longer details, pictures), etc.
CRConrad 5y ago
> I don't think I've ever searched for a recipe and come across a barebones Gantt-chart-style engineer-thinking recipe plan. https://clovegarden.com/recipes/index.html https://clovegarden.com/recipes/index.html
- prawn 5y ago
  Sorry, I might not have been clear enough. I know they exist. I'm saying that I've never searched for a recipe for something and a leading result has been in that sort of format. Google has created the environment in which the maligned 'epic story and photo album finished by actual recipe' formula wins through, yet the recipe creators get the ridicule.

rsch 5y ago

tdeck 5y ago

You forgot the part where there's a pseudo-recipe after the story that catches your eye but doesn't have any measured amounts, and then the actual recipe later.

edeion 5y ago

Reminds me of Plain Old Recipe, a website that strips out fluff from big recipe websites. You provide a link to a recipe, it makes it to the point. I thought the site had closed but it's apparently still live! https://plainoldrecipe.com/ https://plainoldrecipe.com/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23648864 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23648864 (Thank you HN :))