Live data from Hacker News

Ignore the news

medium.com

11–20 of 55 posts

Re: Ignore the news

#11
post #10

I've been doing this for a long while. I don't see any value in the typical "daily news". Instead I read books, or articles from a selection of sites. And of course HN. Daily news is a waste of time.

Hacker News doesn't fall under "daily news"?

Well, some might be daily. But I separate between daily mainstream news and job professional articles. I only read the latter.

Re: Ignore the news

#12
Well, ignoring the news seems like a bad idea since it makes you totally uninformed. For me I just started reading the news instead of hearing or watching it. CNN spends 72 hours on a tornado when I can learn all I really need in a few hundred words.

Re: Ignore the news

#13
There are lots of new ways of filtering and understanding the news emerging so that you don’t have to suffer the constant barrage, and yet still be informed enough to be able to understand.

You don't need technology to do that.

You can just stay informed by buying a high quality newspaper or news magazine and read that. For example, (personal choices ahead), you could read The Economist once per week. Or, since he appears to be in the UK, you could have a quality daily paper (e.g. Daily Telegraph weekdays and the Observer on Sundays).

Re: Ignore the news

#14

I remember laughing at the story about the judge who asked "Who are the Beatles?". Now I find them a very wise person indeed :)

link? If he'd said this in 1964, yeah, it might make sense. Otherwise, probably not so much.

Ahh: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1340891/Judge-James-...

Doesn't say when he said it though.

Re: Ignore the news

#15
I completely agree with the sentiment, and I further extended it to aggregators (reddit and HN). However my solution to the problem was quantizing the content into regular planned intervals. For example I use LeechBlock for reddit and HN, which allow me to access it for 1 hour a day, and I read 2-3 good weekly periodicals to keep in touch with non-tech news (economist). This broke my "refresh every 5 minutes to find something new" habit and greatly enhanced self contemplation over what I consume.

Re: Ignore the news

#16

There are lots of new ways of filtering and understanding the news emerging so that you don’t have to suffer the constant barrage, and yet still be informed enough to be able to understand. You don't need technology to do that. You can just stay informed by buying a high quality newspaper or news magazine and read that. For example, (personal choices ahead), you could read The Economist once per week. Or, since he ap…

On the subject of your personal choices: why the Telegraph/Observer combination, when both papers have more similar sister publications to cover the other days? I would imagine than Daily Telegraph + Sunday Telegraph or Guardian + Observer are much more common combinations.

Re: Ignore the news

#18
post #16

There are lots of new ways of filtering and understanding the news emerging so that you don’t have to suffer the constant barrage, and yet still be informed enough to be able to understand. You don't need technology to do that. You can just stay informed by buying a high quality newspaper or news magazine and read that. For example, (personal choices ahead), you could read The Economist once per week. Or, since he ap…

On the subject of your personal choices: why the Telegraph/Observer combination, when both papers have more similar sister publications to cover the other days? I would imagine than Daily Telegraph + Sunday Telegraph or Guardian + Observer are much more common combinations.

It brings some semblance of balance given the different politics of the papers and I prefer the Observer's 'weekend' coverage (e.g. things like their coverage of arts, travel, ...)

The Telegraph is pretty conservative and the Observer fairly liberal. The two views are interesting. I don't think I could take The Guardian every day. And given that I also have Le Monde as well that's plenty of centre-left stuff.

Re: Ignore the news

#19

I remember laughing at the story about the judge who asked "Who are the Beatles?". Now I find them a very wise person indeed :)

link? If he'd said this in 1964, yeah, it might make sense. Otherwise, probably not so much. Ahh: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1340891/Judge-James-... Doesn't say when he said it though.

One journalist in 2007 wrote "'Who are the Beatles?' is the most famous such question. I'm sure it was never asked. I have spent an inordinate proportion of my journalistic life trying to trace it. I've searched newspaper archives and, over the years, asked literally hundreds of lawyers active during the 60s if they could point to a judge who said those words." http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/may/21/uk.law

It seems that if James Pickles did ask that question, it was probably later than that, since he was a judge from 1975 to 1991 (and that Daily Mail obit. says "From the mid-1980s onwards, he became a household name for his colourful opinions and remarks").

Interesting side-notes that his sister was the actress playing the mother of Ross and Monica on Friends, and he seemed to have a rather modern view on drugs: "Cannabis never killed anybody and it's use is widespread. You can’t stop it. The law defeats itself because all the efforts to stop drugs coming in only drives up the prices and then gangsters move in to push the drugs. If they legalised there wouldn't be gangsters and huge profits..."

Post reply on HN