
The Hacker News Habit - burritofanatic
https://hackernewslater.com/posts/the-hacker-news-habit/
======
LyndsySimon
There's no doubt that I spent a lot of time on HN, but there have been at
least a few times that I've learned of things that directly impact my work
first here. Off the top of my head, I knew that Sentry had rolled out hosted
instance that were HIPAA-compliant when my team was about to install it and
host it internally. That knowledge let us outsource it to them and ultimately
save a good deal of time and money.

More often, I'll come across a problem and remember something that I've read
that's applicable well enough to at least find it later when I need it.

I consider my time on HN and similar outlets at least partially "professional
development."

~~~
breck
Agreed. I haven't quantified it but I would ballpark I come across 25+ things
per year that directly save me significant hours of work, lead me to much
better solutions to a problem, provide a lead that would help me with
investing/employment/helping a friend/etc. That in addition to the
intellectual stimulation and enjoyment from the other articles is why I don't
feel bad about spending ~30 minutes a day here everyday. Warren Buffett
supposedly has read the WSJ for decades every morning. I think to many of us
here this is our WSJ.

Finally, for years I've used HN as the fastest way to check my internet
connection. :)

~~~
throwaway413
I’m glad I’m not the only one who tests internet connectivity via HN!

~~~
kurthr
It even works through the GreatFirewall! A great tool :)

------
eddyg
Impressive that you went "Android first" even though you were already familiar
with iOS development! Kudos for that.

I often click to read the HN comments _first_ , because they are often full of
insight and interesting links. (This is also why I read HN from a custom
#newsyc channel in our work Slack that posts links once they hit 20 points: it
allows time for initial comments to accumulate, and Slack helpfully keeps
track of "new" posts.)

Simply bookmarking the article itself to read later would not be as useful to
me _personally_ , but I bet there are lots of people who would find your
approach helpful.

~~~
screaminghawk
I read the comments first as well. It's often a good indicator of whether or
not the article is worth reading. And more often than not there are better
references in the comments than the original source.

Would be really interested in that Slack bot if you have the source handy.

~~~
Swenrekcah
I read the comments because HN is a lightweight and quick site and I don’t
know how slow the target page might be.

~~~
Topgamer7
I up voted all of the ancestors of this comment because I agree with all of
them. Pretty much hit the nail on the head there. To add to the slow page load
bit, I often read the comments to get an intelligent discourse as well as find
out of the article is pay walled.

------
antoineMoPa
I scrolled some paragraphs without reading and read "Unfocused Reading is a
Terrible Thing to Do". Oops.

~~~
janee
Hahaha, how meta. Scrolled through the comments and read this. Ok I'll read
more than the article title now

~~~
keithnz
quite often I read the comments before reading the article. Often in the
comments there are insightful things on parts of the article and then when you
read the article you can pay attention to the right spots.

------
hackpert
I too had this issue of spending too much time on HN till I built a Chrome
extension that inserts random items from my todo list at the bottom of each
page, and by the time I click on "More," the incomplete todo starts bugging
me.

~~~
caseymarquis
Do you have source for that available? I'm assuming it's pretty specific to
your list, but it sounds like it'd be easy to adapt.

~~~
hackpert
I open sourced an old version of this for reddit a few years ago here, if it
helps: [https://github.com/hackpert/dooly](https://github.com/hackpert/dooly).

The one I use currently picks things from my org-mode agenda and inserts them
across various places, but that should be fairly easy to change and integrate
with any other todo list app with an API. I'll try and clean up personal
information from the code sometime this week and update the project.

------
superasn
I kicked my habit by installing a host block script in my Tomato router. Just
added reddit and HN to blacklisted hosts (I know I can undo it but it's too
much work and it disables ad blocking too).

Now anytime I want to visit HN i have to switch to slow 4G and it makes me
concious of my decision and slow internet also makes it less fun.

I haven't visited reddit in almost 6 months now (used to refresh it every
hour). HN too is 10% compared to what it was before. As other users have
commented the reason I still check it 3 4 times a day is because there is
often news that relates directly to my business (launch of Google wavenet for
example) and benefits me.

~~~
m_ke
I also keep them blocked on my computer and only check them on my phone. I
keep my phone in grayscale mode so it's much less engaging.

Another thing that worked for me was writing a custom js script to filter out
posts I hid without loading other content to replace it. That way I could
filter things down so that there's only 1 or 2 threads left that I'm
interested in and there's no need to keep scanning the same headlines over and
over.

~~~
drb91
Who is engaged with their phone for colors rather than content? If anything,
text seems MORE engaging in greyscale.

This entire concept seems to allow phone providers to not implement real
controls over eg actually providing access to a host file or concerted network
blocking software.

------
goshx
I believe Chrome's auto-complete has a lot to do with how many times I check
HN and other websites. It's automatic... I open a new tab and three key
strokes and I'm here.

Does anyone know of an existing way to disable auto-complete just for some
websites? I still need it for work related stuff, but I bet that if I had to
type everything all the time it would be easier to prevent constant checks.

~~~
smichel17
On Firefox, I disable autocompletion from browser history, but keep it enabled
for bookmarks. __So __much easier to avoid unwanted side-tracks.

~~~
taneq
But Firefox's 'awesome bar' autocomplete is how I find things in my history.

"I went to a web page sometime in... February? Or November? It was something
about widgets... _types in 'wid'_ Oh there it is."

~~~
zaarn
Firefox is smart enough by now to manage it in almost 1 keystroke on average.

Even more fun, when I type "you", Firefox not only suggests youtube but also
the github page for a small script that extracts the rss feed link from
youtube channels and playlists. I use that maybe once every few months. It's
amazing really.

~~~
reitanqild
Firefox awesome bar took a lot of (unfair IMO) criticism back a few years
back.

I have the same experience as you guys, and on one occasion I think it saved
me days of work by helping me recover a certain _almost_ ungooglable resource
I knew I had seen at some point.

------
sarreph
> While on the site, within a span of five minutes, I typically attempt to
> skim everything I’ve marked with interest. Afterward, I return to my work
> not feeling like I’ve read anything substantive, and by the end of the day,
> I forget about the links I’ve opened up, including the ones I meant to
> revisit.

This is so on-the-mark for me it’s unreal! :) I feel I’m in a sizeable segment
of the HN population in that I spend more time in the comments than on
articles, so something that helps provide wholesome access to more article
content is a great initiative.

Thanks for creating something that attempts to solve this ‘problem’. Kudos to
you for shipping an Android build!

------
eibrahim
I fixed my addiction by simply signing up at
[https://www.hndigest.com/](https://www.hndigest.com/) and setting to only
send 5 links daily. I usually end up just reading 1 or 2 of those if they
interest me.

PS: no affiliation with that website. Just a happy user.

~~~
davidverhasselt
Hey, developer of hndigest here, thanks for being a happy user, and great to
hear that it's helping you :)

Anything I can do to make it even better?

~~~
eibrahim
Not sure. I Haven’t given it much thought. I guess it’s work well enough :)

~~~
davidverhasselt
Hehe, good news I guess! Just hit reply on the digest if/when anything comes
to mind :)

------
orf
Interesting idea, and I think I suffer from the same thing. I just save
stories to Pocket and read them later, I'm not sure if this email based
delivery has many advantages over that?

------
onemoresoop
I'm in the same boat and I don't think it's a waste, I learned quite a bit in
the last couple of months from HN. And it's the comments that make it hard to
close a tab for a few days, there is a lot of wisdom here. I want to thank all
for your contribution.

------
t1o5
I made 'lesshn' to filter out the feeds containing certain words that I am not
interested in. You can create your own filters(via REST API) and bookmark it.
[https://lesshn.microapps.xyz](https://lesshn.microapps.xyz)

------
duck
Great idea! I guess I'll throw out a shameless plug for my side-project,
[https://hackernewsletter.com](https://hackernewsletter.com), which is a
weekly newsletter filled with the posts I thought were worth a read.

------
nkg
I learn a lot from HN, and I believe every profession should have its own HN.

~~~
ryeguy_24
I totally agree. All I know is datatau.com for data science but nowhere near
as active as HN. I guess other professions may not be sitting in front of
their computers all day (e.g. doctors).

------
lazysheepherd
I personally use two Chrome extensions for this;

1- Reading List[1]: Allows you to save current tab to your reading list, later
from which you can search and mark as read. A nice bonus is you keep your
article history at the same time.

2- Tab Snooze[2]: This extension closes current tab and prompts you with
options on when to pop it back in the future.

[1]: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/reading-
list/llocc...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/reading-
list/lloccabjgblebdmncjndmiibianflabo)

[2]:[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tab-
snooze/pdiebia...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tab-
snooze/pdiebiamhaleloakpcgmpnenggpjbcbm)

------
lunulata
I think this is more the author's remaining twitter habit dying hard than a
hacker news related habit. I like hacker news because it gives decent posts
for focused reading rather than the twitter no-focus skimming or the reddit
meme fest.

------
comboy
I'd love an alternative frontpage view with different time weight. Something
that you could visit weekly without losing any big news.

~~~
kukabynd
Have you tried [https://hckrnews.com](https://hckrnews.com)?

~~~
krysp
I never use the true HN site other than for comments now, the hckrnews.com
interface is just so good!

------
nobrains
I love your mechanism to fund your app (or at least how I understood it), by
letting people by credits to let them break rules.

You could tweak it so that every user can set their own amount per credit (so
that the app plays fair to all income groups) and this way the user is
satisfied and understands that the payment is both a donation to your app
_and_ a penalty for their instant gratification.

More apps should try this model. The key is to also let the user set their own
penalty otherwise it will not work.

------
keithnz
just for peoples FYI, there are multiple ways to consume HN, quite a few
people have built various tools for getting the best out of HN, I've been
tryin to keep track of various ones here
[https://github.com/keithn/HackerNewsCommunity](https://github.com/keithn/HackerNewsCommunity)
( also updated with ones linked to in the comments here )

~~~
scns
you could add the Android app Materialistic

------
kodablah
> To note, I did use coroutines, which as of Kotlin 1.1 is still an
> experimental feature.

Mostly unrelated to the post at large, but coming up in 1.3 they are no longer
experimental: [https://blog.jetbrains.com/kotlin/2018/07/see-whats-
coming-i...](https://blog.jetbrains.com/kotlin/2018/07/see-whats-coming-in-
kotlin-1-3-m1/)

------
mobilehnuser
I've been working on an Addiction Blocker for this site and many others. It's
not ready for primetime yet but I offer it as a preview to the addicted
participants of this thread

[https://github.com/a13o/disengaged](https://github.com/a13o/disengaged)

~~~
leetbulb
Really cool that Kenney designed the logo. I've been learning game development
lately and have found his asset packs very useful. Small world!

~~~
mobilehnuser
It wasn't designed for the plugin I just used to do a lot of game jams and
used his art packs so they're my goto for placeholder art. Before I officially
launch the plugin I'll get something more customized

------
ransom1538
To cure your HN problem on a macbook, open a terminal:

$ sudo su;

$ echo "127.0.0.1 news.ycombinator.com" >> /etc/hosts

~~~
unit91
I've tried this. The problem is I also know

$ sudo vim /etc/hosts

Gdd:wq

~~~
chongli
GddZZ

Saves a few keystrokes!

------
mesozoic
I handle it by saving all the articles into pocket then never actually reading
them. One Day.

------
vinc
It's a good idea, being more mindful of the content we consume is the key.

Last year I made a little website to control how much time I want to spend on
HN. For instance I have one page where the 10 most upvoted items for the week
are listed, and I hide them as I read them. When the list is empty it means
I'm done for now.

[https://news.vinc.cc/search?q=hn+sort:top+time:week+limit:10](https://news.vinc.cc/search?q=hn+sort:top+time:week+limit:10)

(open sourced here:
[https://github.com/vinc/news.vinc.cc](https://github.com/vinc/news.vinc.cc))

Also work for Reddit.

------
arikrak
> At the moment, a user can’t read the items on the app unless they penalize
> themselves by buying credits. Although the app is about breaking the bad
> habit of reading the items immediately..

I think there can also be an issue with always saving things to read later. I
often end up saving more articles to pocket than I actually end up reading. It
may be a good idea to reduce overall "unfocused" browse-and-click time too...

------
zeristor
You can like a story, and then look at your upvoted submissions from your
admin page.

You can write an app if you want though, but I like simple.

~~~
soneil
Similarly, I star things in my rss reader when I’m skimming, and then consume
them when I have time to properly digest. Then unstar so they drop out the
queue.

Works well, works simple, and works for many more sources besides hn.

------
mpolsz
I follow @HNTweets on Twitter (pretty much only thing I follow) and I scroll
through it every time I have a free moment that would be wasted otherwise (bus
rides or long queues come to mind). I find it easier to follow because every
post that hit front page goes there but posts are added only once and are
ordered by time.

------
scns
I use Materialistic, an Android app on my phone. When i skim the headlines
1-30 i just swipe to save em. Has several themes, a black one which saves
energy on amoleds and solarized too. Found it via F-Droid but i am pretty sure
it is in the play store. Working and reading hn are separated that way.

------
bmc7505
If you're already familiar with iOS, you might enjoy using Kotlin Native.
KotlinConf has a demo app for iOS written in Kotlin Native:
[https://github.com/JetBrains/kotlinconf-
app](https://github.com/JetBrains/kotlinconf-app)

~~~
burritofanatic
Man, how did I miss this? I'll check this out! Thanks!

------
jani-boy
The way I've done it is schedule an IFTTT that will search for a post with X
points. This then will be served to my Pocket account so that I can read it
later.

By the end of the day, or while commuting, the Pocket app has links with X
points that I can then consume.

------
yawz
Like most of you, I come here regularly and I go to the comments first (most
of the time), but I add most of the articles that I'd like to read to Pocket
(a read-it-later tool) so that I prioritize what I want to read at a later
time when I have more time.

------
max23_
I too have the same habit of browsing HN on a daily basis. Normally I browse
through the list of articles that I might be interested in and add them as
favorite so I can revisit them later.

Anyway, good job on coming up with a solution to fix the addiction.

------
galfarragem
After trying several approaches what I found more useful is to have
thumbnails[0] to skim HN faster..

[0] [https://hnews.xyz/](https://hnews.xyz/)

------
bdcravens
Shouldn't this be prefaced with "Show HN"?

------
habosa
Anyone else here use the noprocrast setting built in to HN? Surprise not to
see it mentioned

I have my HN set up so that I need 3 hours between each 20m visit.

~~~
orn688
But it's still so easy to just clear cookies or open it in an incognito tab...

------
clircle
Cool, I use hnrss to generate an rss feed of stories with more than 30
comments. Works well on every device.

------
Kagerjay
I spend a lot of time here as well, but I find the things I gain from
hackernews to be worth it

------
resalisbury
I use an RSS aggregator, Feedly, for hackernews and many other sites. Works
like a charm.

------
bunchhieng
hehe. I always read every single link on the front page every morning. check
this out:
[https://github.com/Bunchhieng/hnreader](https://github.com/Bunchhieng/hnreader)

------
berbec
Interesting monitization strategy. The app asks for $5 to read an article now.

------
leetbulb
There are certainly worse things you could be doing with your time.

------
advanced__pizza
Here I am on hacker news, reading about my hacker news habit...

------
codewritinfool
I definitely have this.

------
microcolonel
It is a tremendous time sink, but I generally enjoy it. I don't spend a lot of
time shooting up on Facebook, Instagram, etc. so I think on balance I'm
largely okay.

------
draw_down
I don't think you can really code or tool your way out of a discipline
problem, you just need to work on the discipline directly. That being said, I
am terrible with will power/discipline/etc

