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Ask HN: Do you consider Hacker News to be a positive/useful use of your time?

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31–40 of 105 posts

Re: Ask HN: Do you consider Hacker News to be a positive/useful use of your time?

#31
I'm browsing HN everyday, but only once. I look at the first page, open the titles that seem interesting in new tabs and that's it. Sometimes I go into the comments and read some opinions about some topic.

I also read the good titles I missed during the week in the newsletter on Saturday morning.

I keep up to date about new technologies and directions, I think that helps me adding context to my managerial decisions.

Re: Ask HN: Do you consider Hacker News to be a positive/useful use of your time?

#32
You get what you want out of it.

My favorite use of HN is simply to get informed discussions on the pros and cons and alternatives to specific technologies I'm kicking the tires on.

For example, if I'm looking for a good VPS host that is cheap with great support I'll pick a random one off a Google search and then restrict it to HN discussions. Bingo, a plethora of alternatives from people with some experience with them.

Re: Ask HN: Do you consider Hacker News to be a positive/useful use of your time?

#33
Before I would say so-so. I got useful links and discussion, but I also felt like spending a lot of time here. Even for my few articles making it to the front-page I would say that the traffic was a bit of vanity -- surely nice for ego, but that's it.

Since my SHOW HN submission, though, I cannot complain at all :)

Re: Ask HN: Do you consider Hacker News to be a positive/useful use of your time?

#34
If you find you are developing too much of a HN habit (visiting much too frequently). Turning on procrast in the settings to 3 hours (or greater) is a great way to train yourself to do fewer visits.

Also the 'best of/top links' is great for finding what has been popular (although it maybe too late to add your comment at this point):

https://news.ycombinator.com/front

Re: Ask HN: Do you consider Hacker News to be a positive/useful use of your time?

#36
Hard to say. Been here for 10 years. It got me into tech as a career (although programming and computers generally had already been a hobby). I've met some people through it. Launched some things. A lot of time spent arguing in comments that was probably wasted.

Reddit, twitter, and youtube fill a similar space for me.

On the whole, they're net positive I'd say. I'm more informed about a wider range of topics and opinions than ever before.

Re: Ask HN: Do you consider Hacker News to be a positive/useful use of your time?

#37
I'm pretty new here. Less than two months. I've stopped using Facebook so I was looking for some other news outlets that I could use. Now I'm using Twitter, LinkedIn and HN. HN is taking much less of mine time than Facebook. I think that this is due to lack of visual distractions.

Re: Ask HN: Do you consider Hacker News to be a positive/useful use of your time?

#39
post #37

I'm pretty new here. Less than two months. I've stopped using Facebook so I was looking for some other news outlets that I could use. Now I'm using Twitter, LinkedIn and HN. HN is taking much less of mine time than Facebook. I think that this is due to lack of visual distractions.

Those are pretty awful networks... LinkedIn? There is much to say about that crowd... :) People literally advertising themselves all day long and upvoting politically correct stuff for virtue signalling to their followers. :)

I would recommend reddit for real humans, but stay away from the front page. It's awful.

Re: Ask HN: Do you consider Hacker News to be a positive/useful use of your time?

#40

It keeps me informed but it definitely has a few negative qualities. - I seem to spend too much time on it. Obsessively checking it. Reading the comments. I recognize the behavior from when I was frequenting Slashdot back in the day. It definitely has some addictive qualities and I need to force myself to stop reading it so often. - The debate is a lot less fun than Slashdot used to be. I kind of miss the silliness.…

> HN definitely has a techbros vibe. I guess that's by design but it's not very inclusive.

What does this mean?

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