Ask HN: Best Sites to Procrastinate

[robsun]

I don't use any social media. After reading "Mindf*ck" I decided to quit all of them. Surprisingly if you cut off all facebooks, instagrams and reddits, it turns out the Internet is quite boring place.

What are your favourite sites where you procrastinate? Sites without political trolls are preferred.

[maxbaines]

https://news.ycombinator.com/ but guess you know that.

[codingdave]

Wikipedia. You can go down some fun rabbit-holes there, and when a topic intrigues you, search engines will take you even farther.

[pknerd → codingdave]

How to find interesting wiki links? I am interested in science and philosophy.

[jmiskovic → pknerd]

Wikipedia Portals were built for this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Science

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Philosophy

[mikewarot]

Newspapers.com is fascinating if you get the full membership for 6 months, you'll never run out of things to read.

It is amazing how everyone's address was part of the story until about 1970. The stories of people who lived in our house before us would bring you to tears, along with joy.

If you're into genealogy, it is a good resource to tie threads together with. Turns out my grandparents were the first ones married in a new church, back in the day, for example.

[600frogs]

Agreed with matt_s - if you're looking to be distracted, just accept that and do something genuinely entertaining e.g. video games, YouTube, rather than finding some other forum with half-baked opinions to idly browse. And yes, I'm being hypocritical by posting here, but I count HN as part of my keeping-up-to-date-with-tech diet, which makes me feel a bit better about myself.

[BlameKaneda]

Depends on what you're into.

Articles: - This site - https://sadlunchbreak.com/

Quizzes: - Sporcle: https://www.sporcle.com/ - Geoguessr: https://www.geoguessr.com/ (1 quiz per day if you're on the free tier)

Wikis and rabbit holes: - Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page - TVTropes: https://tvtropes.org/

YouTube: - Search "documentary, long" in the searchbar and see what turns up. The "long" part will find videos that are longer than 20 minutes.

[radicalriddler → BlameKaneda]

Wow Geoguessr limits to 1 go for free these days. Google really killed off that game by increasing their prices.

[emmap21]

Immersed in the physical world. However, it is not the best option now. You might want to write or play some thing new. Language, Music, Art, Math, etc. This used to work for me though I look very un-fancy on the internet.

[hackermailman]

This guy is a bush pilot in PG, he records all his flights and provides simulator data to try it yourself. https://youtube.com/channel/UCt0m3zjCj_oC6d-kUkk6zmw

Sort of learning video game procrastination I guess trying not to crash on those crazy runways in your spare time he even does intl flights somehow in that ac

[spamalot159]

As a kid I killed all my time with random flash games. Even though flash is gone you can still access virtually every good flash game with flashpoint - https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/

[matt_s]

If your goal is procrastination, lean into it and open up Netflix and watch something. Or Youtube.

[anongoesprivate]

https://devrant.com/feed/top/all

[tldrthelaw]

HistoricAerials.com -- look up satellite photos of your area, or any area of interest, as far back as the 30s.

[crazypython]

https://vnav.io

[ElectricMind]

//reading "Mindf*ck"//

Could you tell more. Maybe gist of the book. Thanks

[robsun → ElectricMind]

Sure. Here is a link to GoodReads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52269471-mindf-ck

The story tells story of Cambridge Analytica. Author describes how it all started, how they gathered data and influenced people. Also he describes how it affected politics. It is very well written and feels like really good political-fiction. Unfortunately his descriptions match how last two political campaigns run in my country. Same approaches were used to get people votes. I rarely used my social media accounts but after reading this piece I decided it is the right time to leave all of them.

[Srisha]

Youtube, github, 4chan

[markus_zhang]

CRPG Addict

[cpach]

Hacker News :-p

The Economist. (I prefer to read it on paper though.)

Metafilter is also quite good.

Or subscribe to one or more newspapers.

[tailspin2019 → cpach]

> The Economist

I wish they’d bring out a monthly edition. I too like the paper based format but I just can’t keep up with weekly editions.

I have subscribed and then cancelled a couple of subscriptions with them over the years as I’d just end up with a stack of unread issues each time.

[cpach → tailspin2019]

It’s a very dense publication indeed.

I have also canceled my subscription. These days I just go to the newsstand from time to time and get an issue when I feel like it.