Live data from Hacker News

I Add 3-25 Seconds of Latency to Every Site I Visit

howonlee.github.io

41–50 of 448 posts

Re: I Add 3-25 Seconds of Latency to Every Site I Visit

#42
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure we do. These are our small-scale desires. Then you might think that on a larger scale this is not really what you want- but try to deny the right of people to desire ordering food from home, or buying online, or going where they want as fast as it's possible, or being cured from pneumonia or cancer.

Really curious why you are being downvoted. The pyramid of needs is at work here, when your basic needs are satisfied it becomes easier to work on higher level issues. Is one a better philosopher when they are starving? I don't know. I would rather be a well fed philosopher than a starving one.

The stoics for example have a practice where they deliberately deprive themselves of basic things like food and warmth in order to appreciate those things more when they do have them.

Re: I Add 3-25 Seconds of Latency to Every Site I Visit

#44
post #33

This is brilliant! I've been suffering from work related anxiety for years which I've learned to douse with Youtube, Reddit or HN. This became a huge problem for me recently and so I had to try to break my habit loops (Cue -> Action -> Reward). I cannot quit cold-turkey because all the methods that I can think of to block the websites I can undo in the mania of anxiety. Youtube always gives you an option to look for…

I do this exact kind of blocking. On Reddit I blocked the entire bar at the top of other subreddit suggestions.

YouTube, I got rid of suggestions on the side, at the end of the video, and at pause.

Call me crazy but I even got rid of typing suggestions in the Firefox address bar.

On Android, I like the Niagra launcher because I can customize my entire home screen and hide everything else so that I only see it when I'm looking for it. No recommendations!

Re: I Add 3-25 Seconds of Latency to Every Site I Visit

#45
post #37

Another suggestion: Limit your browser use to only one tab at a time. Or, allow yourself multiple windows but only one tab each. If it takes 8 seconds to load a website I could see someone just opening a bunch of tabs and coming back to them later. This suggestion avoids that (among other accomplishments).

I had this exact thought. I often use the middle click button to open a bunch of tabs from the reddit front page and get back to them later.

Re: I Add 3-25 Seconds of Latency to Every Site I Visit

#46

This is a funny and particularly well written post that touches on a serious topic. Tech addiction and attention seeking are not yet being self-moderated. We are living out a massive social experiment of sorts because of the rapid advancement of the internet. I believe it is a certain net-positive on society, but we need to pay more attention to the cons.

Life is a massive social experiment!

Re: I Add 3-25 Seconds of Latency to Every Site I Visit

#47
post #33

This is brilliant! I've been suffering from work related anxiety for years which I've learned to douse with Youtube, Reddit or HN. This became a huge problem for me recently and so I had to try to break my habit loops (Cue -> Action -> Reward). I cannot quit cold-turkey because all the methods that I can think of to block the websites I can undo in the mania of anxiety. Youtube always gives you an option to look for…

HN has a no-procrastination mode that might be useful. On the settings page, turn on `noprocrast` and then configure `maxvisit` and `mindelay` - HN will force you to wait `mindelay` minutes whenever you have been on there longer than `maxvisit` minutes.

Maybe you knew about this already, but posting this anyway as it might be useful to someone else.

Re: I Add 3-25 Seconds of Latency to Every Site I Visit

#50
See also https://www.xkcd.com/862/ 's alt text

> After years of trying various methods, I broke this habit by pitting my impatience against my laziness. I decoupled the action and the neurological reward by setting up a simple 30-second delay I had to wait through, in which I couldn't do anything else, before any new page or chat client would load (and only allowed one to run at once). The urge to check all those sites magically vanished--and my 'productive' computer use was unaffected.

And: https://blog.xkcd.com/2011/02/18/distraction-affliction-corr...

>At various times, I thought of doing it with an X modification, Firefox extension, a Chrome add-on, an irssi script, etc—but none of them worked too well (or involved a lot of sustained undistracted effort, which was sort of a Catch-22). Then I hit on a much simpler solution:

>I made it a rule that as soon as I finished any task, or got bored with it, I had to power off my computer.

Post reply on HN