Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

HN is up again

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 390 posts

Re: HN is up again

#241

Post by autoexec »

cheesewhizemacs wrote: post #213
joshstrange wrote: post #34

I don't think I had ever fully internalized how often I open this site throughout the day. Finish a task? HN. Got frustrated/stuck on a problem? HN break. Waiting for something to install/upload/compile/etc? HN. Needless to say I opened a new tab, typed "n", and hit enter countless times today before my brain caught up with my muscle memory.

> Needless to say I opened a new tab, typed "n", and hit enter countless times today before my brain caught up with my muscle memory. I do this too, and it's because this site is an addictive slot machine just like every other social networking site. I actually really hate this website, but I'm here almost every day, because I can't seem to break the habit. Neat. It's probably because I have a common impulse control…

> I actually really hate this website

Why hate this site? Because it contains interesting/useful content often enough to make you come back? That'd be a weird reason to hate the site. I too have a common impulse control/executive functioning disorder, but I don't hate the things that it makes me vulnerable to. If I were feeling resentful, I'd have to put the blame on my condition.

I don't have to ask why you hate reddit, the valid reasons for hating reddit are myriad

Re: HN is up again

#242

Post by bbkane »

cheesewhizemacs wrote: post #213
joshstrange wrote: post #34

I don't think I had ever fully internalized how often I open this site throughout the day. Finish a task? HN. Got frustrated/stuck on a problem? HN break. Waiting for something to install/upload/compile/etc? HN. Needless to say I opened a new tab, typed "n", and hit enter countless times today before my brain caught up with my muscle memory.

> Needless to say I opened a new tab, typed "n", and hit enter countless times today before my brain caught up with my muscle memory. I do this too, and it's because this site is an addictive slot machine just like every other social networking site. I actually really hate this website, but I'm here almost every day, because I can't seem to break the habit. Neat. It's probably because I have a common impulse control…

Others have mentioned browser add-ons / DNS providers who can limit/blacklist sites. Maybe try one of those? The thing that's worked best for me though is leaving my phone in another room for a while or taking a walk without it.

Re: HN is up again

#243

Post by bbkane »

geoffeg wrote: post #173
rr808 wrote: post #92

Whenever I get frustrated by cloud complexity I wonder if its all worth it, as HN, stackoverflow, camelx3 etc are still on real servers. Maybe it is worth it after all.

I've wondered about this a lot recently as I've spent a lot of time recently fighting with Terraform, Atlantis, CircleCI, github and AWS. The first half of my career was deploying code to various UNIX machines. When there was a problem I could login to that machine and use various (common) tools to diagnose the issue. I may not have had root but I was at least able to gain insight into what was likely the culprit. Th…

Oh my goodness yes. I had the "great" idea to use Azure Functions to do a task at work. It's **ing insane how difficult it is to specify an Azure Function all in code with reasonable CI/CD, AD permissions, logging, and dev/prod instances. I wrote about what it takes at https://www.bbkane.com/blog/azure-functions-with-terraform/ but the experience really soured me on cloud services.

Re: HN is up again

#246

Post by LoveMortuus »

joshstrange wrote: post #34

I don't think I had ever fully internalized how often I open this site throughout the day. Finish a task? HN. Got frustrated/stuck on a problem? HN break. Waiting for something to install/upload/compile/etc? HN. Needless to say I opened a new tab, typed "n", and hit enter countless times today before my brain caught up with my muscle memory.

Ohh... I thought my phone was just being weird because I use an AdBlock that works through VPN and it sometimes breaks stuff...

Re: HN is up again

#247

Post by msrenee »

cheesewhizemacs wrote: post #213
joshstrange wrote: post #34

I don't think I had ever fully internalized how often I open this site throughout the day. Finish a task? HN. Got frustrated/stuck on a problem? HN break. Waiting for something to install/upload/compile/etc? HN. Needless to say I opened a new tab, typed "n", and hit enter countless times today before my brain caught up with my muscle memory.

> Needless to say I opened a new tab, typed "n", and hit enter countless times today before my brain caught up with my muscle memory. I do this too, and it's because this site is an addictive slot machine just like every other social networking site. I actually really hate this website, but I'm here almost every day, because I can't seem to break the habit. Neat. It's probably because I have a common impulse control…

If it helps, I wouldn't say it's a disorder since it appears that basically everyone has a habit like this. It's probably a byproduct of some kind of adaptive advantage, but I don't have it in me to speculate exactly what at the moment. The only variable is what exactly you do automatically. Nowadays, everyone has their app or web page. Before smartphones and the internet being available everywhere, I remember my mentor talking about quitting cigarettes. This was shortly after the non-smoking section of the restaurant became the whole restaurant. She said that part of why it was so hard to quit was that even when she meant to cut back, she'd still find herself a third of the way through a cigarette before she realized that she'd lit one. I tear at the skin next to my fingernails in addition to opening HN (which was what I switched to when it became painfully obvious that Reddit was both bad for me and run by bad people). I moved my ebook app to the first screen on my phone and moved this app to a spot where I wasn't used to finding it. I figured it might get me to read more. What actually happened is that I started absent-mindedly swiping to the second screen and opening up the app.

It's a pretty universal issue. Companies are just getting better at using it to their advantage.

Re: HN is up again

#248

Post by bane »

Echoing lots of comments here, HN being down is a real bummer to my day. I feel less informed, less engaged, and frankly bored without it in my life.

True appreciation to the team who works to keep it up, high-quality, and impactful.

Re: HN is up again

#249

Post by taylodl »

joshstrange wrote: post #34

I don't think I had ever fully internalized how often I open this site throughout the day. Finish a task? HN. Got frustrated/stuck on a problem? HN break. Waiting for something to install/upload/compile/etc? HN. Needless to say I opened a new tab, typed "n", and hit enter countless times today before my brain caught up with my muscle memory.

Yeah. HN has become an important part of my workflow. Glad to know I'm not the only one!

Re: HN is up again

#250

Post by autoexec »

haswell wrote: post #35

This downtime made me realize (again) how much I appreciate the kind of interesting topics that show up here, the depth of discussion, and a general attitude of good faith that (most) engage with here. I realized how little of this I find elsewhere in my life - whether through Reddit or even my IRL friend circles. This realization saddens me - I feel like I shouldn’t have to rely on HN so much to scratch this particu…

I don't know about this "going out", but a few other useful websites like this one would be nice. It really does seem bad to not have a couple alternatives on hand.
Post reply on HN