
Did You Hear We Got Osama? - choxi
http://roshfu.com/2012/02/17/did-you-hear-we-got-osama.html
======
peterwwillis
It is really, really, really, really, really hard for me to find a good
temporary distraction nowadays. The noise is so monotonous, so repetitive, so
completely devoid of intellectual stimulation that I go between four websites
in a loop looking for something interesting to read.

HN has maybe one article every two hours that pops up to the top that I find
worth reading, and maybe half the time worth upvoting. And that's the only
good source of noise I have. Everything else is shit.

I don't care about politics. I don't care about the tech scene, or gadgets, or
games, or celebrities, or sports, or this quarter's fiscal projections for a
multinational corporation. You name a "news" story and I probably would hate
to read about it. Even if I want to read it, it has almost no background
information or anything more than the re-cutting of a press release with a
paragraph describing why the press release was released. Regurgitated stock
information with nothing of value.

Here's some choice excerpts from Google News, which I guess is supposed to be
some representation of what's happening in journalism today:

    
    
      * Microsoft unveils new, more window-like logo for Windows 8
      * Robin Thicke Arrested for Pot Possession
      * The mostly good and sometimes bad Top 10 moments of Tim Wakefield's Red Sox career
      * [John] Glenn worries the US is ceding its space leadership
      * Ohio AG DeWine switches from Romney to Santorum
      * Identity Theft Tops IRS's 2012 "Dirty Dozen" Tax Scams
      * GOP candidates fighting over Michigan
      * Anthony Shadid, New York Times foreign correspondent, dies at 43
      * FDA Still Wary of Diet Pill's Side Effects
    

I don't want noise, but sometimes I _need_ noise. And when I want it, I want
it to be worth while. It seems like nothing on the internet ever is.

~~~
mediaman
Frequency and quality are negatively correlated when it comes to news.

I would recommend Instapaper's curated list of articles, which tend to be
long-form and more interesting than most, as well as The Browser ("Writing
Worth Reading") for curated quality content. <http://www.thebrowser.com>

But you're not going to find quality content many times a day, no matter where
you look.

~~~
peterwwillis
I'm sure you're right. There's just not enough people writing to explain
random complex subjects to people that don't study that field. And i'm
correlating the concept of "news" with interesting information, when news
reporting is basically repeating that which happens every single day. Thank
you for the link, that may be just what I was looking for.

------
wheels
This is a topic that I've thought some on in that my company is in the
recommendations space, and some thoughts on what make news recommendations
difficult:

 _The function of news is to facilitate smalltalk._

I am reasonably convinced of this. News, as such, is mostly just something
that you're supposed to have read so that you can get by in usual social
interactions. What we read (and are supposed to have read) is very tied to our
place in the social hierarchy. Most folks don't actually want news to be _too_
personalized because then it loses its social function.

I stopped reading the news at one point -- for a couple years -- because of
its persistent lack of depth. I realized that reading 100 BBC articles on the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict would leave me knowing virtually _nothing_ about
it, other than some factoids, whereas the same time spent reading books would
be worthwhile.

There's an interesting problem to be solved here -- one that's been on my
mental back-burner for a while. I'm not sure if Pandora's box can be resealed
and we can work our way back to mediums with more depth and less distraction,
but I both hope we can, and have much interest in the mechanism for such.

~~~
chancho
Why is there not a service that tracks news stories and algorithmically
relates them into the narrative of history, driven by the singular question of
"why?"? Something in between google news and quora/stack exchange (anonymized
to avoid embarrassment of dumb questions like "what are Israel and Palestine
fighting over anyway?" but with a points/voting system to propagate quality
answers.) Whoever makes this, please Tell HN so I can sign up for your beta.

~~~
espeed
I am working on this very thing, and in fact it's called Whybase
(<http://whybase.com>).

~~~
whimsy
Got invites for HNers?

~~~
espeed
Hi Will. Sure, you can use the standard invite form on the home page now, and
we'll post a special HN sign-up form when we make the official announcement in
the upcoming months.

------
Tossrock
Reminds me of the classic Sherlock Holmes quote:

"His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature,
philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing. Upon my quoting
Thomas Carlyle, he inquired in the naivest way who he might be and what he had
done. My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he
was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar
System. That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not
be aware that the earth travelled round the sun appeared to be to me such an
extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it.

“You appear to be astonished,” he said, smiling at my expression of surprise.
“Now that I do know it I shall do my best to forget it.”

“To forget it!”

“You see,” he explained, “I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a
little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you
choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so
that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best
is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying
his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what
he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may
help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in
the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has
elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time
when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew
before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts
elbowing out the useful ones.”

“But the Solar System!” I protested.

“What the deuce is it to me?” he interrupted impatiently; “you say that we go
round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of
difference to me or to my work.”

~~~
SkyMarshal
I love that excerpt. The Holmes books were among my favorites growing up, read
all of them several times, and that was one of the most memorable exchanges.

I'm a big believer that what is easy to produce (blog posts, daily news
articles) is generally less valuable than what is hard to produce (books,
journal articles, working code). If you want to fill your 'empty attic' with
high-value information, focus on the latter as much as possible.

~~~
tomflack
> I'm a big believer that what is easy to produce (blog posts, daily news
> articles) is generally less valuable than what is hard to produce (books,
> journal articles, working code).

I agree with you, especially in light of your "generally" caveat, but taking
the lesson from the Holmes quote above... there are contexts in which the
easily accessible approach of a blog post is far more valuable than a journal
article on the same topic, along with the ability to provide prompt updates
when the situation changes.

Context, my dear Watson.

------
jowiar
John Irving nailed it in A Prayer for Owen Meany:

"Newspapers are a bad habit, the reading equivalent of junk food. What happens
to me is that I seize upon an issue in the news—the issue is the
moral/philosophical, political/intellectual equivalent of a cheeseburger with
everything on it; but for the duration of my interest in it, all my other
interests are consumed by it, and whatever appetites and capacities I may have
had for detachment and reflection are suddenly subordinate to this
cheeseburger in my life! I offer this as self-criticism; but what it means to
be "political" is that you welcome these obsessions with cheeseburgers—at
great cost to the rest of your life."

~~~
mostlyListening
Most of what's in a newspaper is junk food, but there are very worthy parts: I
find columns in NYT by Krugman, Brooks and Douthat to be thought-provoking
even if I don't agree. And I find feature pieces of social or economic trends
to be enlightening and helpful in terms of understanding people and the
workings of our world.

You might not find such understanding of people and of the world to be worthy
goal in itself, but even so such an understanding is useful as a framing
device or an anology store for general reasonsing. In the same way that a
mastery of philosophy has value as a reasoning device.

And, there is the value as source of inspiration: pointers towards topics to
read up on or ideas to incorporate into one's life/work

~~~
jowiar
I think what Irving was going for was less about news being worthless in the
sense of the content being garbage, but rather that the distractions
introduced into ones life by caring about national/world affairs of which we
as individuals have little impact come at a great cost to our reserve of
emotional energy.

That said... I work in politics.

------
mvkel
Well put. My only counterpoint: sure, if you want to be 100% productive 100%
of the time, don't succumb to distractions.

If you see coworkers chatting over a coffee, do you think, "wow, they're being
totally unproductive. They don't need those coffees, they should be working!"?
Of course not.

Consuming _and discussing_ news is a social activity. If your life is your
work and nothing else, you'd be a very boring person.

Consuming information by choice allows us to express ourselves later with our
opinions. Everyone should make an effort to learn about their surroundings to
be an informed, contributing member of a democratic society. People say
politicians are out of touch, but compared to a lot of Americans who willingly
cut off their exposure to news, are they really?

It's actually funny reading your post, because you sound exactly like me when
I was your age. As you get older, I think you'll learn to appreciate
relationships with people more. The 18+ hour startup days lose their appeal.

~~~
kiba
_Consuming information by choice allows us to express ourselves later with our
opinions. Everyone should make an effort to learn about their surroundings to
be an informed, contributing member of a democratic society. People say
politicians are out of touch, but compared to a lot of Americans who willingly
cut off their exposure to news, are they really?_

If you are not an expert on a political issue. You are uninformed, period. You
don't have time to write papers, do extensive research, email scientists. The
reality of being humans is that we don't know most of everything and we can't.
We specialize, not have uber intelligent men decide the fate of humanity.

This is the problem with politics. It's not that we are stupid, it's just that
our brain can't store and think through the vast amount of knowledge needed to
decide on multiple complex issues. To believe that we can build our society
with informed voters in democracies is extremely naive.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
"It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all
the others that have been tried."

\- Sir Winston Churchill

~~~
epaga
"the best argument against democracy is a ten minute conversation with the
average voter" - reportedly Churchill as well

~~~
ryanwaggoner
Yeah, that's the point. Democracy sucks. But what's the alternative?

~~~
tomhoward
I was wondering just that a few weeks ago. I found this perspective
interesting to think about, even if it's impractical...
<http://www.see.org/garcia/e02.htm>

------
vnorby
If you work in a tech startup, obviously you don't have to read every
political story but I believe you absolutely should be aware about the Path
situation, Kickstarter, and all other trends and most companies in our
industry.

If you're not aware of these things, your boss is, and they are going to ask
you to implement a screen that informs the user you are uploading their
address book. If you've seen a large breadth of products and companies like
Kickstarter, you will easily pick up on macro trends like UI/UX paradigms and
significant technologies.

If you had some sophisticated filtering like a user has in another popular HN
post today to get rid of things you don't like, you might miss out on trends
like NoSQL or Node or Redis or Clojure, or you might upload a user's address
book without permission and get caught.

If you are not up-to-date with your industry, I think in reality you will
always be an employee of or a laggard to the person who knows about those
things.

~~~
sskates
I think the author's is people make mistakes way too much more on the other
end of the spectrum where they read news while deceiving themselves into
thinking it's a productive activity. I know I'm guilty.

It might be worth it to push the boundaries in the other direction until you
get too little information and miss out. You might be surprised how far that
boundary is. It was certainly true in the author's case. Until you try, you
don't know and you won't be able to calibrate your system correctly.

------
Zirro
Wow. This really hit me in the face. This is exactly my situation, my issues
right now (and I am also a college/university freshman). I am spending so much
time consuming information that I am behind on essentially everything I should
and could be doing. I think I needed to read this.

"What followed were the most productive three years of my life."

It's become an addiction for sure, but I have had enough. Seeing someone else
with the exact same issue, stating the above about productive years, is
inspiring. I'm done, it's time to do things, get my life back on track. I
don't need to know "everything", and I shouldn't try to build my world around
that.

Thank you for making me realize it.

~~~
farnsworth
You sound like me 3 years ago. I used to go into zombie-mode for long periods
of time just reading every single link on Reddit, Google Reader, random news
sites, etc. and afterwards I'd hardly be able to remember any of it. I still
do this on occasion, but it's much less of a problem now. I had to take a
tough approach with myself to build some better habits, but it worked.

I decided was that if I was going to take the time to read something, I would
get something out of it. I would only read things that were genuinely useful,
interesting, or valuable in some way. I had to come up with a way to force
myself to think about what I was reading a little, so I kept a text file on my
desktop with a record of every single article I had read. I started with just
copying the URL and writing a 1-3 sentence summary, and even this was enough
to make me think twice before opening links - "Is this article worth the
effort to think about it enough to write a summary?" That was still pretty
quick, so I added two more requirements- a 1-3 sentence critique of the
article- just what I thought about it, whether I thought the author was
incorrect/lying/exaggerating, etc. - and something interesting in the article-
the kind of thing I might bring up if I was telling somebody about it.

Writing these things for every article started to feel a little like English
class, but it worked. I got in the habit of pausing to think about whether I
should click a link or continue reading, I started reading closely and
critically, rather than just skimming half of it and moving on, I started
paying attention to which news sites, blogs, and domains had worthwhile
content and which had garbage, and most importantly, I would actually remember
what I had read, and could talk or think intelligibly about it. Also, even
though I was only 'requiring' myself to write a few sentences about each
article, I found that I often didn't mind writing more, and trying to put some
simple structure into my written thoughts would lead to new insights.

I've stopped regularly keeping the journal, but the habit of thinking about
what I'm doing while surfing sites like HN has stayed with me.

I've been thinking about this since I read the blog post, and it might be time
to take it up another notch. Instead of focusing on important articles, maybe
I should focus on important _topics_ , and do more of my own research, rather
than just reading whatever comes up here. For example, I might read an article
here about weird Javascript tricks, find the topic interesting, then read
whatever I can find about the Javascript type system, closures, prototype-
based programming, until I feel that I have a solid understanding of the
topic, or my interest has been satiated. Maybe this takes a few days and I
skip HN entirely in the meantime.

I think some people probably do this naturally but I've found that I tend
toward zombie-mode.

~~~
jskopek
Fantastic idea!

I've recently taken to discarding my bookmarks and relying on other methods to
save interesting links. If I want to save something for later use, I'll tweet
about it, write a tiny blog post about it, or jot it down in a notebook. I'm
not terribly diligent about it, but it's made a huge impact towards helping me
filter what is truly important.

------
rsinger9
How do you responsibly participate in a democracy when you ignore world news?

For example, how can you judge two presidential candidates' positions on
foreign policy when you don't know what other nations have been up to?

The OP doesn't discriminate between junk news, entertainment news, and knowing
what is going on in the world.

~~~
celoyd
Argument #1: Presidential candidates _are_ noise. Unless you live in Ohio or
Florida, your vote is foregone. If you want to be a good citizen, your time is
probably best spent on convincing your friends to vote in local races. Or
doing not-explicitly-political work that contributes to justice, peace and
prosperity. A small career choice can do a lot more than the most forceful
checkmark on a ballot.

Argument #2: You probably need something like ten kilobytes of information to
make a reasonable decision about which presidential candidate to vote for.
This is way less than the amount of information that news-oriented people
spend their time and attention to absorb on a single day.

(If you want to overkill, on November 1st you could read the election issue of
_The Economist_ cover to cover, whatever political posts are on the front page
of HN, and the Wikipedia pages for the major issues. Then sit and think
carefully for an hour. This would take about five hours, and I’ll bet $1 you’d
vote for the same candidate you would have if you’d read five hours of
political news per day for the last year.)

~~~
Karunamon
>Unless you live in Ohio or Florida, your vote is foregone.

One could make a good argument that this kind of faulty thinking is the reason
third party candidates can never get any footing, and also the reason that we
get such downright evil people elected.

Your vote is not "foregone" unless you choose not to vote. Period.

~~~
celoyd
Oh? What’s the fault in the thinking?

I think it’s not a problem in the utility equation for an individual voter,
it’s a problem in the system. By definition, a vote in a non-swing state is
insignificant.

Empirically, a good showing for a third-party candidate has no significant
effect on the political discourse, and your individual share of giving that
candidate a strong showing is negligible.

Voting in the US is badly broken. I strongly favor equal representation, a
multiparty system, and other reforms. Part of getting to them is admitting
things like my vote, for one, being foregone.

~~~
anigbrowl
_By definition, a vote in a non-swing state is insignificant._

This is only true in the context of a single election. Over multiple election
cycles, small movements in voting patterns can announce the start of a trend.
Saying your vote doesn't count is an abdication of responsibility - 'somebody
ought to do something about it, but 'they' would never allow it, hurf durf.'

~~~
celoyd
As I said, empirically, those announcements are not important. Look at Perot,
Nader, Paul – those votes might have been half an epsilon further from wasted
than a vote for Obama or McCain, but they were still vastly less effective
than any of a dozen other political actions using equal time and effort. And
your importance to any trend is inversely proportional to its importance.

As prodigal_erik points out in a sibling comment, this is a systemic problem
with our electoral system. It has nothing to do with hurf durf.

Seriously, saying the median American’s vote doesn’t count is a statistically
founded observation, not an ethical action. In terms of ethical actions, I’m
advocating for the _opposite_ of laziness-posing-as-cynicism. I want a kind of
intellectual vigor about politics where we care enough to spend our resources
where they’ll do the most good. We should care about school boards and our own
jobs, not the essentially symbolic presidential vote.

Voting is like buying a spatula with a pink handle. Refusing to work with a
company that donates to an irresponsible county commissioner is like
convincing a bright student to work in cancer research. It’s way less cool and
way more important.

The best way out of this is the (virtual) abolition of the Electoral College
or the adoption of true electoral reform. These are more realistic goals than
they might seem.

------
kevinalexbrown
What helps me get off the news pipeline:

 _No one is remembered for being well read._ \- some blog post I've lost, but
the quote is still written on my chalkboard, luckily.

 _when you don't create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than
ability. your tastes only narrow & exclude people. so create._ _why

EDIT: I know it's ironic that these came from online sources. I guess the
point is about balance and focused, purposeful consumption you later use.

~~~
SonicSoul
lots of people are remembered for being well read. Take someone like Noam
Chomsky. He has written many books based on facts he has read, remembered, and
used to support his point of view. his opinion is included, but it is always
supported by countless examples and recitation of facts. I have friends that
read everything and know a lot on most subjects that intrest me. I admire that
a lot, and it is always refreshing to converse with them and learn new things.
Some people have the skill of great memory and ability to conjure up
information at the right time to create powerful statements.

~~~
akamaka
First of all Chomsky is still alive, and secondly, I'm almost certain that he
won't be remembered for his poltical writings, but for his scientific
contributions.

People don't even read his very early political works much anymore. His new
material is what gets most consumed and keeps his name in people's minds.

~~~
msutherl
Chomsky's writings are still standard reading for people in various activist
communities. He will most likely be remembered for both, and for the fact that
he contributed both.

------
pooriaazimi
I changed my habits a few months ago after reading
<http://www.marco.org/2011/09/04/sane-rss-usage>. I'm _really_ happy I did
that.

    
    
        "RSS is best for following a large number of infrequently updated sites"
    

I have 6-7 feeds in my Reeder.app and check them weekly.

(Edit) related HN submission and comments:
news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2959928

~~~
spindritf
I don't read newspapers, or watch news, or follow current events at all,
except for hn, and I agree that most if not all news is of completely no
consequence to my life but I do have ~130 feeds in my rss reader and derive a
lot of value from them.

From 10 or so comics that are pure distraction (but great to steal jokes
from), through blogs on fashion and style (at least I now know when I'm
terribly dressed) to life-changing, paradigm-shifting feeds like Overcoming
Bias (it's about signalling), The Last Psychiatrist (we're all narcissists) or
Barking up the wrong tree (science delivered in tabloid style).

So instead of turning the noise down, this advice allows you to pick your kind
of noise.

~~~
pooriaazimi
I think you're using RSS very well (unlike what I used to do).

I like Apple products and use/write for them. I used to have MacRumors,
9to5mac, Cult of Mac, TUAW, The Apple Blog, TC, and a dozen more Apple-related
feeds in my RSS (among other feeds). When there was a keynote or a new product
announcement, all those websites would publish essentially the same thing over
and over again, and I had to 'mark all as read'. I was using RSS wrong, and
I'm glad I changed my bad habit. You're using it right and I'm sure you derive
value from such a diverse collection of blogs!

------
tristan_louis
Let me be the contrarian here. If you limit yourself to a few content sources,
you won't be able to make the leaps that come out of having access to
information outside those sources and will eventually fall prey to group-
think.

Might work for you for a bit but if you want to change the world, you have to
be aware of it.

~~~
unimpressive
In my experience, a good book about the _past_ is worth a thousand news
articles. (And then some.)

History repeats itself more often than we think.

Prime example:

One of the first hacks for the TX-0 was Peter Samson's music compiler, even
though the TX-0 was not designed to have such capabilities and to most people
the thought was ridiculous.

The first hack for the Altair was Steve Dompier's rendition of "Fool on the
hill" using the Altairs radio interference. The Altair wasn't designed for
this purpose either.

For some reason, two different people from different decades looking at
similar (But very different) machines decided to do the same thing with them,
without any prompting.

There are universal concepts that humans try to implement, improve, and expand
upon. Keeping these in mind while trying to do cool stuff will go further than
most news pieces. (Even the ones about other people doing cool stuff.)

------
Rariel
If you have zero interest in the news I think there is something wrong with
you not the news. If you don't educate yourself about the issues going on in
the world you're contributing to the ignorance of the American (and global)
public. Would your life be virtually unchanged if you didn't know about SOPA?
Saying that politics doesn't interest you is like saying you don't care about
your society and those around you. Imagine if people hadn't
watched/read/listened to some form of "the news" during Arab spring, during
Prop 8, during the Civil Rights movement, during the height of the fight for
women's rights, during apartheid? I guess you would just go on living right?
This really reeks of a super young person (which the author outed himself as).
I'm all for finding alternative sources of information rather than traditional
media (which is biased no matter what source you use). In UG I took a course
called "making the news" and learned some very valuable information, namely
don't trust what you read--you've got to dig deeper and find several sources
in order to truly understand an issue and the various bias of content
producers--authors, publications and even geographic regions.

------
BoppreH
That's why I love <http://daytome.com>

About 4 paragraphs of international news every day, saving you both your time
and social dignity.

------
fshaun
I agree that removing noise and consumption for the sake of distraction is a
fine goal, but we cannot pretend there are no consequences from going to one
extreme to the other. It's tempting to look at an isolated event like Osama
Bin Laden's death and think "who cares? doesn't affect me" but these events
form the fabric of the world.

Democracy requires and educated and informed electorate [Jefferson], and if
you don't know what the dots are, you can't connect them. Sure, willful
ignorance will give you more time to be productive, but when society at large
chooses this route, don't be surprised when things go downhill.

------
Jun8
"But this post isn’t about politics, it’s about noise."

No! It _is_ about politics. Note that most of the examples given are related
to political events.

The OP does have a great point (I waste too much time on HN, perhaps);
however, the kind of political aloofness desc/prescribed in the post is what,
I think, is the root of the biggest political problem (not just in the US,
everywhere): the best people who should be involved in politics are not. It is
a common adage that the word _idiot_ was used in Ancient Greek for a person
who was not interested in politics (unless of course you were a woman, slave,
or farmer).

------
kylemaxwell
I fundamentally disagree with the author, and yet agree with him at the same
time. I don't have MPD, but he makes two different points.

On the one hand: no, my life would be considerably less richer if I did not
pay attention to the world around me. This includes knowing who the President
is and understanding why that matters, particularly in the case of the US's
first black President. I grew up in Texas, and it matters to me to know that
he and my father (or his predecessor) would not have even been allowed to
attend school together. Regardless of one's political affiliation or outlook,
the issues at that level matter, and our opinion matters. To 'embrace embraced
not knowing anything about current events and the world at large' is _willful
ignorance_ , and that's a value I find distasteful.

That said: of course one should manage one's intake of information. Of course
one should counterbalance that with productivity. Of course one should be a
source of value and not merely a sink for the news-as-entertainment complex
that has gripped our society. RSS and other technologies should enable us to
get control of those things for ourselves rather than watch Walter Cronkite
for half an hour every night along with the rest of the nation and then go off
and do whatever the party bosses say.

I agree with the problem, but the proposed solution makes things worse.
Education - formal _and_ informal - has value in making better citizens of all
nations.

~~~
Turing_Machine
"I grew up in Texas, and it matters to me to know that he and my father (or
his predecessor) would not have even been allowed to attend school together."

Brown v. Board was in 1954. Obama didn't start school until 1967.

~~~
kylemaxwell
You may want to look into the school segregation lawsuits of the 70s, not to
mention much of the civil rights movement of the 60s with a particular focus
on education. The Supreme Court decision didn't automatically mean integrated
schools, which is why my daughter (in an inner-ring suburb of Dallas) attends
a magnet school created as part of our desegregation court order. Come to
think of it, so did I (though it's, erm, been a while).

~~~
Turing_Machine
"You may want to look into the school segregation lawsuits of the 70s"

I'm quite familiar with the subject, thanks.

Those lawsuits dealt with de facto segregation based on neighborhoods, not de
jure segregation based on race. It had a similar effect on the large scale,
hence the lawsuits, but that doesn't mean that Obama himself wouldn't have
been allowed to attend. Obama didn't live in the 'hood. His grandparents, with
whom he lived in Hawaii, were white and well-to-do, and he attended an
expensive private school (current tuition: $18,450/year, not including fees).

------
clebio
To me this is the crux of the breadth/depth issue. Matt Might deftly distills
the problem in his visual description of a PhD program [1]. The SEALs getting
Osama, or knowing what the company Path does, or seeing Christopher Hitchens
and William F. Buckley sit down together [2] won't affect most people's daily
lives, but for someone working in the intelligence, startup, or political
criticism arenas, respectively, missing these events could potentially be
career suicide.

I struggle with this a lot, as active filtering takes work [3] (and I'm
clearly not the only one [4]). Curated news aggregators and preferential
browsing suggestion (StumbleUpon) try to address the problem. Mostly I think
it's a matter of dedication and of degrees. To what extent do you maintain a
laser focus (but are boring to hang out with) versus being a worldly-wise
life-of-the-party type (but spread to thin to innovate on any one thing)?

[1]: <http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/> [2]:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0LR2mxqMNM> [3]:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3470282> [4]:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3602407>

------
djacobs
Isn't not caring about current political issues the basis for the dystopia
that underlies Brave New World?

------
forgot_username
Not only does too much information create boredom but it can also interfere
with your day to day life if you're not careful.

This habit of information snacking totally screwed up my sleeping schedule as
well. It got so bad that sometimes I used to stay up till 5:00 in the morning
checking one board after another and then sleeping till 12:00 pm next day.

While it did not affect my business, it did take a toll on my health (my lower
back) and also because of this I used to find nothing of interest any longer
because my brain had started picking up patterns in stories, funnies, and
everything else i could find online. Worst part was I could see that what I
was doing was not good for me but like every addiction I really didn't have
enough motivation to stop it on my own.

Anyway, last year I had to shift my house. And for some reason the only ISP in
that area took over a month and a half to install the damn internet connection
(some legal issues over digging with the gas pipeline company). On top of that
the 3G sucked so bad that even opening Gmail took 3-4 minutes to open.

Long story short, call it a forced rehab but because of that one month of life
without internet my life totally got back on track. My sleeping schedule was
fixed. I found my old guitar again, and now I spend time on a tonne of other
interesting stuff instead of hitting F5 one random sites.

------
zipdog
News might entertain us but its chief goal is to sell advertising space.
Advertising ultimately pays for almost all news* (esp. newspapers) and so news
media focus on getting your attention today, and tomorrow, and using whatever
techniques they can to achieve this. Entertainment is just one of these
techniques. Disquiet (some might say fear) is another - the sense that things
aren't quite right and the associated need to know what isn't quite right.

*BBC (UK taxpayer) and Economist (subscription) are among the exceptions.

Here's a 2008 article pointing out that news' focus on the moment is also a
significant failing: <http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/03/against-news.html>

This 2008 article also points out the social function of news: as a common
topic for discussion, particularly for determining compatibility with others
(whether of belief, intellectual interest, etc)

The HN article makes a great point about how much this info effects you. If
news media let their audience know that nothing happening right now was likely
to effect their lives in any way for at least a week (at best, more likely
never), then audience would only tune in once a week, which drops viewing
figures by 86%. Also, only checking news once a week lets the information
settle, and often key details emerge which negate previous reports.

Another useful trick, if cold turkey is too much, is to put a one-day or one-
week delay on all incoming news (ie waiting a week to read newspapers). If
nothing much is lost by a weeks delay, then its easier to go cold turkey.

------
AtTheLast
I find myself venturing off to all my favorite online outlets when I'm doing a
task I'm not particularly interested in. I guess I should step back and ask
myself why I'm really doing something. If it plays an important part in
helping my start up be succeed, then I should be stoked that I get to make my
company better. If I can't find a good reason to be doing it, then I should
move on to something of value and importance.

------
chipsy
I use a combination of IRC(active) and Twitter/Tweetdeck(passive) for most of
my online "reading" these days. It tracks the most social things: people,
global topics, and "meeting places," rather than "bloggers", "pop news", or
"discussion forums", which have a service/task-oriented feel to them. It is
addictive, of course, so I do have to turn it off occasionally, but on
balance, I get a lot of benefit out of it, since it's low-maintenance and
fairly high-signal, albeit a bit prone to "what i ate for dinner" type spam.

I still go on web sites, obviously, but increasingly I see them as less
relevant. Forum-style discussion in particular, whether it uses flat or
hierarchical threads, encourages a combination of pedantry and the lowest-
common-denominator. OTOH real time - or near real time - communication tends
to motivate a link to useful long form content instead of a bad attempt to
replicate it in context. This post is a great example of such. It should be
done up as a full article and then linked around. As a comment, it'll probably
be "lost" forever within a few days.

------
SlipperySlope
I think a balance is necessary ...

I budget between one and two hours of my self-directed workday to skimming
various tech and business blogs. I save HN for last and scan every new title
line. I usually read about 15 - 30 articles during this period.

Furthermore, while I'm waiting for a build, or for a test to reach the point
where my interaction is required, I go back to HN and check the page or two of
new title lines.

I consider myself a productive Java programmer, writing about 30K lines of
code per year for my startup project. I could create more LOC if I did not
read the tech news, but I would face two issues: (1) burnout, and (2) the need
to stay current with the technology.

My project is heavily leveraged with open source Java /JavaScript libraries,
nearly all discovered from tech blogs. For example: Jenkins, JQuery, JSON,
JavaCV, OpenChord, Netty, Sesame, the Chrome web browser, Lubuntu, etc. I
build my own development & server machines so I need to keep up with hardware.

Additionally, I have steered away from possible infrastructure dead ends by
observing trends, such as the move to mobile HTML5 apps.

------
commenting123
I don't know. I guess this is like swimming in a lake. Your head is down in
the water most of the time, but every once in a while you lift your head to
see what's around you and if you're swimming in the right direction. Swimming
with your head down is like doing your work and being productive. Lifting your
head up is like reading the news and know what's happening around you. I only
read about 10 minutes of news each day, but that's enough to avoid trying to
go through a wall blindly while not being aware of the door 2m away.

For example, I changed career because I read about how Banks screw people over
and how Big Data is becoming important. Also, I decided not to work for a
company, because I read it in the news how it's basically slave work and how
the owners have it exceptionally good. So now I'm starting my own company,
doing machine learning in finance.

------
ricky_rozay
I can relate, i've been on both extremes of the news comsumption spectrum at
various phases in my life. As a political writer, i try to read the op ed of a
national paper every day. After that, i like to skim the wsj fro t page, the
nyt biz section on mondays ("media mondays"), nyt science section on tuesdays,
and the nyt magazine on sundays. I am from a family of newspaper editors so i
look at it somewhat critically, but i save online reading & gossip mags for
certain days/moments when i want to zone out and not read critically. The la
times is a fantastic paper these days, website still a tad wonky on mobile but
no paywall & amazing writers/content on every level. If i read nothing else i
read their op ed. Also for entrepenuers i have heard anecdotally that reading
a financial paper daily is a must.

------
dr_
My own personal primary source for news has become twitter. I've realized I
don't need to always the know the full details of what has happened. I just
need to know that it has in fact happened. Let's say I follow different
personalities: tech journalist, celebrity, personal friend, random person
living in my town, CNN or NYTimes or WSJ - just by quickly scrolling through
my feed I get a pretty good idea about what is going on. And I also get a
sense of how important it is: if all the people I follow, who come from
different career paths, are reporting on the same piece of news, it's probably
something fairly important.

It's relatively quick and keeps me informed. I don't watch any of the cable
news channels and don't listen to talk radio. And since I've stopped watching
CNBC, my stock portfolio has been doing better as well.

------
pinaceae
well, what do you want to be? a narrow-minded, ignorant human or civilized
man?

seriously.

the world, life, is much more than work, work, work. understanding broader
contexts, understanding where we are going and why is important. even as a
founder, to come back to this extremely narrow narrative within these halls.

how do you understand you market, your consumers, your customers? a
contracting economy bears different potential than an expanding one. how will
you know where we are if you do not inform yourself?

how about reading a book or two, not the daily babble? you mention you've read
the news but didn't understand anything. if you do not inform yourself, you
will repeat the mistakes of others.

you sound like one of those pretentious fucks that don't watch tv, don't
listen to current music and are proud of it. it bears of ignorance, of
disregard of the output of other human beings.

------
MichaelApproved
Sure, knowing that Osama was killed isn't a life or death piece of information
but staying informed is important to many people. It doesn't have to be binary
- read it all or read nothing. You can quickly stay informed if you pick news
sources that respect your time.

IMO, reading several short summaries of current events is a better solution
than limiting yourself to 1 or 2 stories a day. That's exactly why I created a
website[1] that crowd sources summaries of news articles. People come in, read
the news, and get on with their day.

[1] <http://skimthat.com> \- Crowd sourced news summaries.

Another source for news summaries is <http://www.newser.com> and if you like
videos you can try <http://www.newsy.com/>

------
baby
He didn't seem that much addicted. He seems to read a short amount of RSS
compared to, well people like me, didn't even vote. And now he's reading 2
posts/day on HN? I don't think it's even possible, if you were really addicted
to RSS to shrug it down to that small amount.

Back in the days I was writing for a news blog so I used to subscribe to 100+
blogs and news website, in french or english, I was alerted of a post more
than twice a minute.

My day was, literally, to sit in front of my computer and read, filter,
subscribe, unsubscribe.

The only way I found to stop this addiction after a year of up and down was
just to stop using NetNewsWire and Google Reader (don't ask me why I was using
two of them, more filters...).

3-4 years after, I just check reddit, HN, couple of french websites and know
more about american politic than my country's politic.

------
mdc
This echoes a lot of the ideas from Clay Johnson's book "Information Diet: a
case for conscious consumption". That book has a few good actionable ideas
about how to modify your sources and methods of getting news so you get better
information and learn to identify bias.

------
dorian-graph
I lived in the Philippines for two years and aside from emailing my family
once a week, usually, I was completely ignorant of the outside world.

Someone mentioned in passing that Michael Jackson had died and I thought they
were just teasing our lack of worldly knowledge.

I liked this post and I think a concept at play here is that people are afraid
of the quiet as they're afraid of themselves. I experimented with different
teaching methods and that while I was over in the Philippines and using
silence and good questions were the most effective methods I came across
outside of having genuine understanding of the person/group.

Silence.

------
joedev
In "The Four Hour Work Week", Timothy Ferriss claims to not have read a
newspaper for years. It's all about maximum output. Minimizing input is one
great way to free up time and energy to drastically increase output.

------
jasonpurdy
I disagree with your fundamental point that all news sources are not trying to
educate or inform you, but are instead trying to entertain you in some bias
way. Of course nearly all of them are in order to make a profit (Fox News for
instance), but I'm frustrated that you don't see the value that organizations
like The Associated Press offer to a free society. The AP is a non-profit, un-
biased organization that provides a service that our constitution guarantees.
I hope see this is powerful and important and try out AP Mobile.

~~~
choxi
installed AP Mobile. I think there's still gems out there, for example I
_love_ Planet Money.

I'll give AP Mobile a try, thanks!

------
joelmichael
Once you've generally sussed out how all of the different perspectives view
issues, and thereby understand the patterns by which the world operates, the
news starts seeming repetitious.

------
jfoldi
While I agree with the idea that, "consuming has a more immediate reward than
creating," the need to be distracted isn't the only reason. We do want to be
informed and reputable media outlets, for the most part, do want to inform. It
is our inability to effective process the ever increasing amount of
information out there. Maybe we need to take on less interests or maybe we
need better filters (Google isn't cutting it?).

------
yonasb
This reminds me of that Bill Nguyen article, where he revealed he had never
even used Facebook until recently, claiming he doesn't keep up with tech. If
you're a startup founder, you can't afford to be uninformed about your
competition and the industry. The answer is not reading less, but reading
smarter. I don't know what the solution is, but it sure isn't limiting my
consumption to 1 or 2 articles.

------
albertobrandao
You actually treats the social shame as small piece into this huge puzzle, but
it's wrong.

Almost everything we do in adult life is to make social life easier. We go to
college, learn new language, we read news, we buy things. All this has an
small practical value but huge social impact. Knowing what's going on the news
is a HUGE part of our relationship with others.

------
curiousfiddler
Hmmm, some of the ideas to get rid of noise could be: 1\. to have some good,
fun books that you can pick and read (not a laptop book) when you need a
break. 2\. to have some real sport / game thing going - could be as simple as
a table tennis game or a brisk walk. 3\. to have a musical instrument around
(of course you should know how to use it).

More ideas?

------
petercooper
I've had quite a few e-mails expressing similar thoughts in regards to
programming news and my e-mail newsletters. Some people are getting sick of
the trawl around Reddit, HN, Twitter, and the various sites, and instead
prefer a curated, once weekly e-mail. It's not for everyone, of course, but it
seems some people love trimming back!

------
ithought
Like everything, it's all about moderation. It's very useful to have something
to say in social and work situations.

Spending 10-minutes a week reading pop culture or sports news, or keeping up
on what concerts, events etc are coming to your area payoff huge in meeting
new friends, dating, building relationships at work and so forth.

Nothing is frivolous except excess.

------
duncan
I've found a great way reduce the amount of news and media that you consume is
to travel.

Travel forces you to be offline most the time. You don't watch tv or see
"news" much at all. After a while you don't even miss it and actually prefer
life without it.

At least that;s what I've been doing for the last three years. Works pretty
well.

------
dnc
Borges once commented that newspapers should be printed once in 100 years, and
should only have articles about the "real" news like "Christopfer Columbus
disovered America". I couldn't agree more, but still I read them every day and
always with a feeling that I'm about to discover something new :).

------
sendos
I've been thinking about this issue for a while now. The term I like for what
we are experiencing is "information obesity" (and I've written about it here:
<http://andrewoneverything.com/information-obesity> )

------
darrikmazey
I agree that the so-called "news" is entertainment, but being completely
uninformed about current events will make you non-discerning in addition to
more productive. Perhaps it would be better to consume better information as
opposed to less information.

------
stevetursi
I had this same insight about a year ago, and while I didn't completely remove
all my news, I made a point of reducing my RSS feed count to under 100 (it had
been over 600.) I was indeed more productive, yet found myself missing knowing
what, say, the latest Apple rumors were. But, it also didn't matter what the
latest Apple rumors were. (Such rumors were wrong most of the time anyway..)

But I didn't write this comment just to agree with the OP. I wanted to add..

<i>Say that you somehow didn’t know we found and killed Osama Bin Laden last
year, I claim that your life would be virtually the same if you did.</i>

That is probably true, but let me add something that takes even more of
people's (or at the typical american male's) thought capacity and the
knowledge of it is DEFINITELY meaningless: The fact that the Giants won the
Super Bowl two weeks ago.

With the disclaimer that I am formerly a pretty big sports fan, it astounds me
how much detail people know about pro sports. They can talk endlessly, for
hours. The amount of time they spend just attaining that knowledge each season
- it's gotta be comparable to the amount of time it takes to learn and become
proficient in a new programming language. It's the same amount of time to
perhaps take and do all the work for not one but several MIT/Stanford online
learning courses. It's the same amount of time that, devoted to exercise,
would transform an overweight person into shape. Every year! Yet they spend
that time watching and reading about the NFL.. - and to what end? So they can
be knowledgeable enough about the second-string tight end on the Packers that
they can have a locker-room conversation about it?

Of course, the same can be said about entertainment in general - indeed, the
OP's point was that news, while claiming to be important, is just
entertainment. And while I didn't watch any news or football games this year,
I'd be a hypocrite not to point out that I did watch a lot of Star Trek with
my son. The consequence of this became clear to me this week - we punished him
this week for something he did by disallowing all screens - which meant the TV
didn't go on all week (and my wife and I didn't watch TV either.) Without
thinking about it, by the end of the week I had come up with an idea and was
hacking away at a whole new side-project. I haven't done that in a long time.
Feels good. Any my son? He's reading. Got into a whole new series of books he
found at the library and has set himself a goal to read every one of them.

tl;dr: if news is a waste of time, what about sports and other idle
entertainment?

------
jriley
I tend to agree but offer this quote from CNBC / Becky Quick:

"Buffett generally reads five newspapers a day -- the Journal, the Financial
Times, the New York Times, USA Today and the Omaha World-Herald. Make that six
-- he reads the American Banker every day too."

------
charlieok
“Hey my name's Roshan, I'm the Cofounder and CTO of Bloc.”

You got a high ranking hacker news story. I visited <http://www.trybloc.com/>
just now as a result of your story.

I am wondering what it is. The page didn't tell me.

------
tripngroove
The image in this post was stolen from "Rejected" - a short animated film by
Don Hertzfeldt.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJYxCSXjhLI#t=4m45s>

~~~
choxi
ok, added. I wasn't thinking, thanks for calling me out :)

------
deepkut
I can't tell you how many times I've explained this to friends. You hit this
spot on. Catchy title too, I clicked it probably as a result :)

------
meric
The fact that I read your post means I've lost 50% of my daily news quota.
Damn.

Good advice nonetheless.

~~~
choxi
this made me chuckle :)

------
Valdemar
I think this is the very definition of "ignorance is bliss".

------
chegra
Let me see... At first I agreed, then I said no. Even last week, I was
lamenting my 14 hour days on HN[1][2]. If I think only for that day, I lost
that day, but if I think over my time here, I'm net positive.

What I was failing to realize was I had the ability, just not the opportunity.
Your ability can only be exercise only at max. 8 hrs if you have a job, and
for the most parts it plateaus out, ie your first 100 hrs of programming
provides more benefit than your second and so on[but not a excuse not to
practice, I leave for another comment]. Your first hour of observing
opportunity is good as your 10000th.

The thing about opportunities is that they don't appear to have any meaning at
first, only when you go back and connect the dots. For instance, someone ask
me how my resume looks so good. I would say I was helping a friend with their
programming assignment who introduced me to their flat mate. Said flat mate
studied philosophy. I knew a little because I hanged with a guy[while doing my
undergrad] who had multiple degrees and he used to talk about guys like Hume
and so on. Based on that commonality, we became friends. And what do you know,
she was an expert at doing resumes, and helped me finish mines in no time
flat.

I know it just a resume, but other bigger gains follow the same pattern. You
only notice them in retrospect. Each time, I think I was goofing off, helping
people out with their assignments, sitting with some guy talking philosophy
and so on.

Sometimes, I see people and they ask for help. Why am I so different than
them. They think I'm working with a bigger brain. I tell them you need to
relax; get your head out of the book. It's non-intuitive. They tend to respond
with you don't need to study, you have an in built advantage since birth. But,
really is that the truth? If you get your head out of the book, you start
doing things you want to do. You become curious, a positive pulling emotion.

You guys know how it's done. You find something new and interesting on HN, you
research it. Then you find something from that new and interesting, and you
research it. By the time you would have finished, you would have covered
something you needed to study for, all the while remaining curious and looking
particularly like a lazy bum. The other way around, things are a drag.

You add on that, the community has common themes coming through[eg.
meditation, stoicism]. Raise your hand if you read "A Guide to the Good Life:
The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy." through solid recommendations on HN. And by
God, it was a good book. It provides a perspective on life most would never
get. With these common themes you can connect with members here, who might not
be able to help you directly but indirectly opportunities might come their way
that they might not be able to exploit and pass them onto you.

Also, it is not only about taking. It is about giving. How many times have you
read a comment that refined your perspective or perhaps you gave an insight.
What about when people ask for help on HN. Even if you just gave an up click,
that is a massive contribution if you did it in the first few minutes of a
post. If you think hard enough you will know these up clicks save/change
lives.

What I'm basically saying drinking from the firehose can seem like a waste of
time, but over the long hall it works out. Working on your ability alone means
that you are trying to create an opportunity, and in a weeks period you can
only create one opportunity if you work really hard, and it might not pan out.
On the other hand, reading one hour of HN provides you with hundreds of
opportunity, most you will not explore, but still you know they are there and
can share with friends who can thus building strong relationships.

For instance, you heard it mentioned that one of the ways to create value is
to see what opportunities can be exploit from delivering old technology in a
knew way. Before, publishing use to take longer. Now, it is short with kindle,
people can exploit that. Instead of giving their book one title they can
create the same book with different titles and layouts[is this against Amazon
policy], maybe even different content to match a different audience to scope a
bigger payout. They can now use stuff like A/B testing[looking at
paraschopra.] You see what I just did there.

It's either that or you need to tell me Chester go finish up my weekend
project and stop procrastinating. But my thoughts are I'm winning so far for
the most parts, and I never change a winning team. We observe it in
basketball, there is this one guy who doesn't seem to contribute anything, but
you are winning and when he is not there you are not winning[HN/News is that
one guy]. Some smartass might look at it and say we can do better; lets cut
this loser out, he is not contributing, then you start losing. You got too
smart for your own good, never change a winner. Some things might be so
complicated that you don't even know what is contributing to your success.

If you are on HN, and everything is going fine for the most part, don't change
it, don't lose your competitive edge you lazy bastard.[Sorry if I sound
incoherent]

[1] <https://twitter.com/#!/chegra/status/168805385447284736>

[2] <https://twitter.com/#!/chegra/status/168805177523048448>

------
billpatrianakos
I've been there, over consumed, then shut everything out for a while. The
truth is, the author still has a bit to learn, I think. Seems like he went
through a phase and is now on the complete opposite end of the spectrum he was
once on. It's definitely a good idea not to get so engrossed by all the noise
but I've actually gained a lot by reading news. I've tried and learned things
I wouldn't have had I not chose to read a bit of news each morning. The real
trick is to find balance in your life. The ancient Greeks had it right: life
is all about balance. Going too far in one direction or the other is never
good.

So I must disagree with this post. The trick is to strike a healthy balance
between consumption and creation, not to cut one or the other out almost
completely.

------
rsanchez1
"What followed were three of the most productive years of my life."

Well, normally college years are the most productive years of anyone's life up
to that point. If they're not you're doing it wrong.

Plus, if all you used RSS for is to keep up with "Bush's latest folly", then
of course you'll be more productive giving it up.

------
mthreat
I would add that the media's job isn't only to entertain you, it's also to
keep you worried. Read/watch the news, and ask yourself "what are they trying
to make me worry about today?" You'll be surprised.

------
zotz
Osama who?

~~~
AznHisoka
Wait.. wasn't the article talking about Obama?... huh? Man, you got me all
confused

~~~
zckevin
You have to read the whole article again...

