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You really need to start using an ad blocker. I don't see any ads at all, anywhere on the Internet. It boggles my mind that someone who reads HN does not use an

• lukan 8mo ago
  Oh there are still ads as some are baked into the content, but I can live with those. How people can live with the normal amount of ads - no idea.
  • diacritical 8mo ago
    I had a friend years ago with laser focus. He was read an article on his laptop and I was behind him. I asked him how he tolerating the flashing chumbox ad. "Why don't you install Adblock Plus (the ad blocker of the day)?". He had to look around his screen for a second to find it. He said he didn't even register it before I told him about it. Even a single dead pixel would seriously distract me but he didn't even notice the gif of some disgusting medical scam ad showing elbows or knees or whatever. He could also fall asleep seconds after hitting the bed. I need at least 10 minutes - at least. Sometimes an hour. Maybe it's a related phenomenon. Some people just seem to ignore external stimuli better than others. Whether ads whose purpose is brand recognition work on them subconsciously, idk.
    • JoshTriplett 8mo ago
      One aspect of that is people who have learned to ignore ads. One aspect of that is that many people do not perceive their entire screen at once. I tend to catch almost everything on the screen when I'm taking it in, and if someone asks me about something on the screen I can generally find it in a small fraction of a second; I don't take in every last detail (e.g word of text) simultaneously, but I have every major UI element in mind. I have observed that many people are focused specifically on one thing and don't notice a thing I call attention to without searching the screen for multiple seconds.
      • sfRattan 8mo ago
        I'm with you on that intuitive feeling of perceiving the whole screen, but I suspect something is going on for us that is closely related to human sight: just like the eye is constantly moving to account for the optic nerve blindspot and our brain seamlessly stitches things together, we're probably using our latent understanding of the functions on every part of the screen to stitch together an image/awareness-sense while our eyes actually focus on one part at a time. When introducing non-computer people to a new application, I find it helps (or is sometimes necessary) to walk them through each part of the screen, explaining what it is for and how it relates to the others. If someone doesn't or can't retain that explanation, usually nothing will help them. But if they do/can retain it, I find even non-computer people are much quicker in noticing particular updates to the application's or OS's GUI.
        • JoshTriplett 8mo ago
          I don't think that's entirely accurate, because this can also apply to perceiving entirely new UIs you've never seen before. Familiarity helps, but I don't think it's entirely that.
          • sfRattan 8mo ago
            > perceiving entirely new UIs I think this experience is now rare if you are computer-adept, though it was more common even just a few decades ago. But the first thing I do when I see a totally unfamiliar UI is stare at it for a bit until I think I understand the information hierarchy. And then try to verify that understanding by clicking things. Eventually I acquire that "perceiving the screen as a whole feeling", but I still suspect that it's something resembling the human vision process generally, under the hood of conscious perception.
            • JoshTriplett 8mo ago
              (To be clear, obviously the process is based on human vision; the main distinction I'm making is between the need for a focused search vs a quick whole-screen glance.)
• cozzyd 8mo ago
  every once in a while I click on the google feed on my phone, which instead of opening in firefox like it should opens in some chrome webview with no ublock. It is truly atrocious (and... if you don't have unlimited data, expensive too).
  • johanyc 8mo ago
    Turn off open web pages in the app