HN is very focused on interesting topics and polite discussions. I'm constantly learning new little things here, also I already bought ~10 books based on local recommendations. I don't view HN as a waste of time at all
Which books if you dont mind?
Ask HN: Do you consider Hacker News to be a positive/useful use of your time?
81–90 of 105 posts
Re: Ask HN: Do you consider Hacker News to be a positive/useful use of your time?
#82Yes. The signal does come with some noise, but I've found HN incredibly valuable for my professional and career development. I spend quite some time here but I think it's worth it. HN pretty frequently has posts from senior engineers or senior managers sharing things they've learned over long careers, which I feel has given me a shortcut into many of these insights. Without HN, I would not have been as aware of how h…
I’m in the same boat, starting a new job next week.
I did the same thing OP did, limited my phone to hackernews, blind and linkedin.
I find hackernews and blind invaluable in terms of career growth and networking.
Re: Ask HN: Do you consider Hacker News to be a positive/useful use of your time?
#83It's a bit of a mixed bag, but overall I think it's been a positive influence. I've tried to mitigate the negatives by assiduously avoiding threads I know will have meaningless flame wars or absurd overreactions in the comments - anything on Apple, or the culture war, or cryptocurrencies and associated tech, or (to some extent) Mozilla. Over time I've found that there's a few repeating patterns to HN comment threads…
Good point. Lately I've found myself opening a thread starting a reply, then thinking do I really care much about this topic? and closing the tab. Time to take it one step further and not open the thread.
Re: Ask HN: Do you consider Hacker News to be a positive/useful use of your time?
#84HN is very focused on interesting topics and polite discussions. I'm constantly learning new little things here, also I already bought ~10 books based on local recommendations. I don't view HN as a waste of time at all
Which books if you dont mind?
Not the GP but you can refer to books referred to across HN comments at https://hackernewsbooks.com/
Re: Ask HN: Do you consider Hacker News to be a positive/useful use of your time?
#85Personaly I would appreciate more articles focused on art (cinema, culture, photography...) and pholosophy but still curated agenda is much more educative than any other social media algorithm.
Actually HN is my last and only curated feed. I use 70% RSS, 30% HN.
Re: Ask HN: Do you consider Hacker News to be a positive/useful use of your time?
#86I did once.
Then I noticed a suspicious rise of articles in my top 120 (my arbitrary limit) that were “uniquely targeted to me”.
That bothered me. I felt gamed.
Now HN is throwaway central. I'm not disrespectful, but this has affected how much of myself I put into my participation. Make me think even for a second that I'm responding to a bot, balrog will appear!
This continues to this day, and worse is that some comments are clearly bot-generated detritus. I've seen a lengthy, almost persuasive comments that are clearly GPT-3 boilerplate crap, so now I'm forced to ask the question: Is the person behind the comment to which I'm responding even a person? Yeah, HN kinda' feels like it's AI doped with juicy articles suspiciously trailored oft much these days.
I do know, however, how difficult this is to police. It's like playing wackamole. I dealt with this with malware and phishing and it was non-stop wackamole!
Re: Ask HN: Do you consider Hacker News to be a positive/useful use of your time?
#87I did once. Then I noticed a suspicious rise of articles in my top 120 (my arbitrary limit) that were “uniquely targeted to me”. That bothered me. I felt gamed. Now HN is throwaway central. I'm not disrespectful, but this has affected how much of myself I put into my participation. Make me think even for a second that I'm responding to a bot, balrog will appear! This continues to this day, and worse is that some comm…
I also a dislike the continued appearance of link bait science articles sites. You all know the ones I'm talking about, where every article about quantum physics starts with a description of quantum mechanics 101 (nay, 001).
Re: Ask HN: Do you consider Hacker News to be a positive/useful use of your time?
#88I did once. Then I noticed a suspicious rise of articles in my top 120 (my arbitrary limit) that were “uniquely targeted to me”. That bothered me. I felt gamed. Now HN is throwaway central. I'm not disrespectful, but this has affected how much of myself I put into my participation. Make me think even for a second that I'm responding to a bot, balrog will appear! This continues to this day, and worse is that some comm…
I also a dislike the continued appearance of link bait science articles sites. You all know the ones I'm talking about, where every article about quantum physics starts with a description of quantum mechanics 101 (nay, 001).
I really like the quality responses. That's the goldmine here.
Also, it does kind of feel like we are one of the b**** detectors at the forefront of the b****.
Re: Ask HN: Do you consider Hacker News to be a positive/useful use of your time?
#89I have made friends, interviewed for jobs, connected up with a few people in person afterward, helped others find jobs, learned all sorts of fascinating facts for whenever I am forced to make idle small talk, found ways to sleep better, learned why my past company had a doomed model, gotten all sorts of free tech goodies, discovered tools to make work easier, and had some great debates. I tend to have a lot of meetin…
This is very intriguing. How do you connect with people on HN? Do you send them emails after reading their comments / submissions?
Re: Ask HN: Do you consider Hacker News to be a positive/useful use of your time?
#90Yes. The signal does come with some noise, but I've found HN incredibly valuable for my professional and career development. I spend quite some time here but I think it's worth it. HN pretty frequently has posts from senior engineers or senior managers sharing things they've learned over long careers, which I feel has given me a shortcut into many of these insights. Without HN, I would not have been as aware of how h…
I’m in the same boat, starting a new job next week. I did the same thing OP did, limited my phone to hackernews, blind and linkedin. I find hackernews and blind invaluable in terms of career growth and networking.
What is blind? Would you please provide a link?