Same here. HN is addictive, but also insanely useful in some cases which makes it hard to leave like any other mentioned site there.

I literally owe many of my succesful professional decisions to researches that initally started here. I find some interesting article, read the comments first, then the article, then the comments again. In the middle of this flow, I decide whether it is worthy to save to my Pocket account. Those things in my Pocket quite often become kickstarters for things that I eventually adopt using or learning. I see no way of giving up such opportunity. Why would anyone do that? (That is a serious question that I really wish there exists a convincing answer)

Have you checked if the articles in your Pocket share something, for example upvotes or number of comments? Because then you could browse the top posts only once per week. Either via Hckrnews [1] or use the curated Hacker Newsletter [2].

[1]: http://hckrnews.com/

[2]: http://www.hackernewsletter.com/

Thanks for mentioning Hacker Newsletter! I hear from several subscribers a week (currently have almost 40k) that mention it has helped them cure/control their HN addiction. :)

I'm getting an access denied error when trying to subscribe

Sorry to hear that. It seems to be working fine based on the couple hundred others that have signed up this evening, so maybe try again? If that doesn't work, hit me up via email (listed in my profile) and I'll see what I can do!

Problem for me: the most popular ones are usually the least interesting ones. To get to the actual hacking and critical thinking I usually have to wade through through first page business talk and VC news, or get my hands dirty in the "new" section.

This doesn't help because the rush comes from typing and news.ycombinator.com looking for getting early into stories that are trending! :)

I'm subscribed through HNDigest http://hndigest.com

Just enough distraction for my work day.

Hacker News is actually a high quality medium and I God it pretty information dense. Facebook, on the other hand, gives me lots of videos of stuff that is utterly useless, and often just makes you feel angry about the world. I'm using it less and less.

Twitter I don't use at all. I don't even read it.

Twitter really depends on who you follow. I don't follow friends, but thought leaders I respect. I get r of the best ideas and all my news from there

One thing that HN has done is make my comments look ridiculous when I type them out on an iPhone.

I use the Panda extension for Chrome in part to keep track of what's trending on HN each day. If something piques my interest I'll usually check it out when I want to take a short break from work. This is a simple rule that helps limit how frequently I click through and I've found it to be very effective.

How much does it cost to go pro on (Panda)? I couldn't find out without kind of "going through".

I don't have a clue! I just use the free version of their extension.

I utilize their 2-feed layout option with HN (set to "Trending" posts) on the left and "visual inspiration" sites on the right (default is Dribbble, but I have Lapa, ffffound, Design Inspiration, etc. in the list, too).

I'm trying to use HN & reddit mostly as a pull-based source of information, instead of something that pushes an endless stream of things into my brain and needs to be followed constantly.

It's quite simple, when I'm looking for something, I do a google-based site-specific search to HN. I often find very old threads with really good value.

I still follow things every few days to stay on top of trends. I haven't discovered how to catch up with those without frequent visits, though. Perhaps the solution lies in NLP summary technology.

As someone else recently pointed out, you do know there is an awesome instant search feature right here on hn, https://hn.algolia.com. Don't need to power up The Google.

Thanks, I didn't know.

You've just given a good justification for staying up to date with trade news.

I've recently made a Zapier 'zap' that sends me a daily digest of @newsyc100 by e-mail. I realised that that account was the biggest reason I was still scrolling through my Twitter feed all the time. Ever since I've only checked Twitter once every few days, when I explicitly wanted to.

In the case of Facebook I found that just removing it from my bookmarks bar helped loads. Prevents me from just clicking on it half-dazed and starting to scroll.

Same here. Although I never got pulled in by Facebook and only a little with Twitter, I did with Reddit and especially Hacker News.

HN is the one where I find myself checking several times/day and I constantly have 20+ HN tabs. The pattern is something like this:

1) "Oh, interesting topic!"

2) Open in a tab

3) Read existing comments & the link (I don't always do the latter, admittedly)

4) Come back N hours later, read new comments

5) Repeat #4 over a day or two

6) Close tab unless I haven't read the link yet. If I haven't, then they tend to stick around until I do or send it off into OneTab for ultimate procrastination.

I follow a very similar pattern here on HN. One thing I've been thinking about lately is that I always read the comments first and only sometimes visit the link. The links act as topics that allow for discussion more than an end/reward in and of themselves (like on reddit for example). I'm always interested in hearing domain expertise, anecdotes, opinions, etc from the HN crowd which is, admittedly, much different than my active social circle.

Spot on. That's a good way of looking at it - that the links act as topics. The comments are definitely the main value proposition (and addiction) for me.

This was true with Slashdot as well, now that I think about it. Back in the day it had the same draw for the same reasons. Though I think HN is a better version, since it doesn't have a few editors driving it like /. did, which was often frustrating.

I don't think I'm as addicted to HN. I use to be pretty bad with facebook and ...oh god..sigh..myspace..but I think there was a point sometime in 2009 where I just felt my use had to be curtailed. Reddit naturally replaced facebook and I was pretty addicted to that as well. Reddit was probably the most difficult to curtail mainly because as I was earning my phd I belonged to some subs on the specific topics I was studying and found the stuff being posted to be relative to what I was studying. Post-PhD and what not, I use a new account there and don't really post much. I prefer to check in later in the day along with HN to catch some of the interesting reads and read up on the responses in the comments. But usually that's only after I've taken my lunesta and am winding down for bed.

I think all SM has good and bad parts. It's all addictive to some degree or another or it wouldn't be widely used. I think the addiction in hn is not the articles but the comments

> I think all SM has good and bad parts.

Correct. But like Professor Ted Kaczynski stated in his "Technology Manifesto"

> The bad parts of technology cannot be separated from the good parts.

This here is pretty much applicable to everything online, not just SM. Example: FaceBook and Twitter are used to organize protests, break news, reconnect with lost loved ones. The same technology sites are also used to recruit terr_ists, phish and spam seniors and unsuspecting people, troll and commit felony crimes etc...

I have replaced (2) with Shift-Click, which is Add to Reading List on a story link in Safari. It works better to preserve attention for me. I end up not reading 90%+ of what sounded interesting from the front page on first glance.

Similar pattern but on mobile. Now chrome doesn't bother with the tab count, just a ':D'

If I'm honest, I'm exactly the same: I'm on HN right now to avoid my matlab coursework. While HN doesn't feel like it's designed for distraction in the same way FB and Twitter are, it does seem to have the same effect: there's a reliable, constant stream of content that's vaguely stimulating. I think this is the combination that's so addictive. It feels as though your brain enters a lower energy state where content is being fed into it with minimum effort. Something about the lack of required energy to find and consume content seems to be what makes it powerful.

HN also has the noprocrast settings. I've set the parameters to enforce an optional habit of reading HN once a day (usually after work). It works quite well.

How?

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html, under noprocrast

For this reason, I always end up reading HN and Reddit after work. I'm usually mentally exhausted and need half an hour or so of nothing mentally taxing to recover. I imagine other things might fill this role for different people.

I can relate to that and part of it is probably because we don't want to be left out, we don't want to miss the latest technology that will make us obsolete, etc.

1) Reading HN all the time creates a false sense that things are moving much faster than they really are.

2) I'd suggesting reading "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck" and it'll remind you your time is finite

https://www.amazon.com/Subtle-Art-Not-Giving-Counterintuitiv...

Absolutely no need to buy the book. Just read his original blog post that is more or less a TLDR; version of this bloated Amazon book. It made a huge difference in my work life. Everytime I found myself in a dumb user or arrogant dev or inept manager type situation (in meetings or emails or face-2-face), I would think back to this blog post and instantly feel better.

Mark Manson "THE SUBTLE ART OF NOT GIVING A F_CK" (12 minute read) => https://markmanson.net/not-giving-a-fuck

Thanks for the TLDR!

I couldn't help but see an irony in the Amazon description for this book considering the subject being discussed :)

"In this generation-defining self-help guide, a superstar blogger cuts through the crap to show us how to stop trying to be "positive" all the time so that we can truly become better, happier people."

That being said this looks interesting and I am going to give this a read. Thanks for the tip!

Indeed. The book is really good in the first half. The second half is a mishmash of common sense advice, but I still found it useful.

The art of not giving a fuck link was actually pretty good read

Also may give the false impression that you are becoming smarter though contact with constant flow of info

I've blocked HN in my /etc/hosts on my laptop. I also recently blocked it on my phone. I can still read it in a VM on my laptop but at least I have to make a conscious decision to view it where as before I blocked them I'd literally type `n` and chrome would auto complete to `news.ycombinator.com` and I'd be 20-30 minutes in before I realized I never consciously decided to start reading.

I have similar problems with the net in general. This happens to me all too often. I decide to do something like take a shower. I walk to the shower and turn it on letting it heat up. I remember something that I want to remind myself to do. I walk over to the computer to type in a reminder. Before I even start typing the reminder something on the screen distracts me. 5-15 minutes go by. I go back to the shower and just before getting in I realize I never typed the reminder. So, I walk over to the computer to type the reminder and the same thing happens again. This type of thing has happened on more than one occasion. For example I'm walking out of the house, at the door I remember something tiny I want to do on the computer (send a mail, write a reminder, ...) same things happen as above.

To me, this loss of control looks like a very classic addiction pattern. As a suggestion, try to get in touch with a Internet/computer addiction specialist.

Not sure why the downvotes. It was an opinion, and actually not a disinformed one due to experience in my circle of friends. I did not want to sounds paternalistic in any way.

Thank you for the concern. You might be right. I guess I assume addition means I can't go without without withdrawals but I know I can go without just fine (long vacations) etc.. so at least at the moment I just look at it as being distracted easily (like a child ;P)

Your welcome. I just thought I give a comment - does not hurt, after all. As you mentioned, if you accomplish your life goals as planned there should not be reason to worry.

I have the same problem. I found editing my hosts files helps.

  127.0.0.1 news.ycombinator.com

When or if I try to go to HN I get an error in my browser and instantly reminded. Then I get back to work. One time I went 6 months without visiting HN.

HN offers this functionality itself. Go to your profile, enable 'noprocrast' and customize the intervals.

Didn't know this. Thanks a ton for this. Awesome I just enabled it.

Oh funny thing I found I was wrong about showdead setting there... I had assumed if I wanted myself to be declared dead/offline I could set my profile to show dead.. lol

> Oh funny thing I found I was wrong about showdead setting there... I had assumed if I wanted myself to be declared dead/offline I could set my profile to show dead.. lol

What's its functionality?

It shows posts from dead users, those who have been silently banned and still post.

Thanks!

When showdead is on, you see killed comments. Mostly spam and trolls. Only recommended for moderators.

Everyone's a moderator after gaining a bit of karma, since you can update and vouch for comments. It seems to be getting better, but there's still a few people getting hellbanned by what I can only consider a mistake.

Is it useful to report these potential mistakes? I have showdead on, and quite often I'll see decent comments. When I look at the user's history, sometimes there will be over 1000 karma for that user, decent posting record, and then at some point you see all their comments as dead (with no obvious troll comments that could have triggered it).

I wouldn't mind reporting on these, or vouching for the good ones, but it would be nice to have a channel where I could get feedback -- such as "this use was banned for reason xyz on these 10 comments".

> Is it useful to report these potential mistakes?

The "vouch" feature was recently added exactly for the purpose of correcting those mistakes as we spot them - so I'd say it is useful. Moderators are just people and have finite time too.

For individual submissions/comments there is always the "vouch" button. And the mods have been extremely friendly when I've mailed them about what looked to me like a new user which got caught in a spam filter by accident (which was then fixed, and the user asked to resubmit their "lost" submission)

showdead can also be be useful if you're new to participating so you can see what types of comments get banned and determine what the community generally finds unacceptable.

Just set it to 20min visit, 8640min break. My goal is to just read /beat and /bestcomments. Won't be able to comment myself very well this way though. Wish me luck :)

You mean /best instead of /beat?

This only works if I am logged in though. Thanks for pointing it out though as I completely forgot about it.

I had a little cron job that swapped in a hosts file with entries like that at 8 am and then swapped it back out at 5 pm. Helped me break the habit of going on reddit during downtime during work hours.

I wish, I could do that with reddit, but I reddit isn't just for news and trending shit. For many things I am trying to find a reddit discussion first.

I can only block the whole domain, right?

I imagine a proxy with a whitelist/blacklist setup should be easy to throw together in quick fashion, then set your browser to use that. TLS sites become a little more problematic, unless you feel like MITM'ing your traffic there as well.

I imagine there is some software where you can block the entire domain but whitelist certain subreddits - I do not think the hosts file affords that level of granularity however.

Avoiding HN entirely doesn't really solve the problem though.

The problem with hn is that it's likely to get past your primary defenses and justify itself by telling you the information provided is useful and relevant. Also, the conversations are likely to engage you at a higher level and the many of the arguments require laying out your case like a legal team to be taken seriously.

It is useful and relevant. However, just because something is good for you doesn't mean it can't be used as a distraction from another task.

Absolutely. There are lots of good, interesting, and useful things to spend time on, but that doesn't mean they are always the right use of my time right now.

That's exactly the problem. If I'm in "work mode" I'm after the thrill of tackling a meaty challenge. Then I don't procrastinate. But when I'm dealing with some tedious dependency hell/build glitches/other slow boring BS, I go looking for my intellectual thrill and before I know it, hello HN.

No argument here, hence my constaclicking.

The actual inventor of Hacker News, Paul Graham, hasn't commented for over a year:

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pg

Considering that he was very very active on HN in the past (karma 155077), I wonder what his reasoning is to cut back?

He was active, but the reason his karma is so high is that everyone has an upvote spasm when they see PG comment.

He has small kids. I stopped being active for a few years when my kids were born. It's natural.

Well, the quality of the discussions on HN have taken a dive dramatically since about a year and a half. So maybe he just doesn't feel theres much to comment these days.

From my perspective, from a very humble position, the content on this site seems to skew toward the "harder" science problems lately, a far cry from when 5 out of the top 10 stories were RoR related and many other stories were related to pushing CSS and JS to the extreme with a smattering of stories about startups and people hitting it big or failing.

I think we have since learned about the influence of survivor bias, that you can really accomplish the same things in any programming language and that since YC itself is now focusing on larger problems, some with sociological and political leanings, that it is best to move on from looking at things at the code level and instead look at the bigger picture.

A year and a half? Hmm, I think that's about the time I've been more active on HN. Sorry about that.

People have been saying that for the entire 6 years I've been reading HN.

Perhaps that is because it has been declining for the entire 6 year period.

If you fit the curve, HN was perfect about 14 months before it was created.

Those were the days!

Isn't that true of all software?

Concern over the decline of HN reached a head ~5.5 years ago.

Has it? I've seen comments such as this for a few years now, but I didn't notice the decline myself.

Some of the political arguments would -never- have been tolerated in the early years. Users and moderators would have quickly suppressed them...but they seem to have infested the forum since then.

100 times this. There needs to be a coordinated effort to stamp out all political material on HN so we can focus on actual Hacker News and not the Silicon Valley political sphere.

I was away for awhile...came back and was shocked at the level of political bickering and posts that were allowed to stay. A lot of the old members have moved on, it's a different place these days. Such is life.

Forums tend to become fragmented over time because as the number of active users increases, the diversity of the opinions of the community increases. Such increased diversity results in an increase in opposing viewpoints, which drives users away and increases the frequency of political in-fighting.

There are no moderation tools at present which can prevent this sort of in-fighting with blatant censorship.

In the absence of such tools, the only viable solution is a fragmentation of the community. This is most apparent to HN readers with the rise of lobste.rs

I think around the election it was pretty political, and some of the discussion was pretty, uh, heated. It's calmed down again.

They said that a year and a half ago.

I would wager that he wanted to distance himself from the increasingly negative / toxic "community".

Hacker News isn't social networking. Look, you have no friend list. No private message box. No feeds are pouring into your account. If you post something inane, you're punished by anonymous strangers.

Not quite. It's mostly not social media but there are similarities. There's a friends list here for sure where certain topics or people attract either similar or the same people. A small community effect happens there in the sub-threads. There's no private messaging but anyone posting an email or contact option will get messages if their posts are worthwhile. Anyone with HN Replies commenting a lot will have a pile of posts in their inbox on topics of interest. The last requirement mostly doesn't apply to decent members of the community but the sketchy ones dodge with with throwaways on a regular basis.

So, a bit closer to underlying mechanics of social networking in practice than it would seem on surface. Enough to get a similar participation high. That's on top of the knowledge expansion we use to justify the other high coming from the fact that we just enjoy reading this stuff. ;)

An I alone in never looking at usernames? I only read the content of each comment. I only look at the username to track a back-and-forth between two users and even then it's pretty much an opaque token to me. Might as well be a random string.

Your unconscious mind will see them. I don't know how much effect that has. I did consider helping people eliminate bias by creating a HN client that replaces the names with random ones on a per-thread basis. Any replies get substituted with real name when sent to actual site. Also some filtering options.

It is a sorta social networking though. A pull instead of push one, yes, but you do have feeds for people. Also, I recognize you and 'nickpsecurity by names already, by the very virtue of being a frequent visitor (and commenter), so it's not like totally anonymous - you get to talk to the same people over many discussion threads :).

Here's a friendly reminder that the "noprocrast" options in your profile exist. From the FAQ at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html:

> If you turn it on you'll only be allowed to visit the site for maxvisit minutes at a time, with gaps of minaway minutes in between. The defaults are 20 and 180, which would let you view the site for 20 minutes at a time, and then not allow you back in for 3 hours.

You can set it to something more extreme, like maxvisit=60 minaway=720, and then it'll only allow you a one-hour session every twelve hours, which in practice usually means you can only go here once per day. Doing this turns HN from a distraction to something you have to consciously choose to visit.

It worked for me, until I got a smartphone ;)

I just simply changed my bookmarks to point to https://news.ycombinator.com/over?points=280 - which gets shaken up by a couple of new stories per day, but doesn't actually change enough to justify visiting every hour.

It's not impossible. I went from a hourly checker to only checking it twice a week. You just need to practice self control and realize most tech news aren't interesting or useful to know.

Interested to know how long your twice a week sessions are and how far you go back in the pages? I come twice a day for 10 mins and then once a week going back to article 90. Total time for the week is just under 3 hours, but I feel I've learned something.

About half an hour on Sunday mornings and 10~ mins the second session, but I'm slowly making that as close to 0 as possible.

One thing that's helping is Lobsters. Lobsters is super slow so if I do make a full switch from HN to that I only need to check it a handful of times a week.

But to me, it's not so much about how much time I spend on the time but rather the why. I simply don't get as much value out of HN as I think I do. Most news are irrelevant and unimportant, and I haven't really learned anything too insightful like others said they have (sadly). Simply put, tech news boards apparently just aren't for me.

What is Lobsters? I'm curious about the thing that's helped you wean yourself off tech news, but googling it hasn't helped.

I'm on both. HN has a more diverse community and array of content. There's just a ton of stuff on here. That can up the noise for many people but one must simply filter it in their head more effectively. I only click on a few links on the front page with occasionally looking at New and 2nd-3rd pages to see if readers and I would benefit from me bumping one up.

Now, Lobste.rs is different. They're a small community with a narrower focus on mostly tech stuff. They have relatively low noise with a preference for deeper insight on tech. You'll see more writeups on algorithms than product releases for instance. They also have an open-source website and open moderation log. A bit radical on occasion like where owner JCS just got rid of downvotes to experiment if upvote-only would keep quality without total censorship.

Definitely check out the articles over there on top of the ones here. The comments especially as people often say something there that someone here overlooked or vice versa.

Most forums ban obvious spam - viagra, porn, etc. But HN bans people for being overly critical, for not agreeing with the groupthink, or perhaps not having enough tact or politeness.

That's not true. I don't like to leave such statements unanswered—the community has a right to know that we don't do these things.

It would be helpful to see the specific links that you're basing this view on, so we could clear them up.

Maybe they did in the past. I haven't seen it since I've been here. The bans I saw made sense. I countered it with detail on Barnacl.es:

https://barnacl.es/c/91kcev

If someone has an invite, may I have one? No worries if not. (Sorry for the off-topic spam.)

I can no longer edit my post, but wanted to comment that I just received an invite. Thanks! :)

Sent. If anyone else needs one, ping me @GuiAmbros.

Cheers!

It's dangerous to go alone. Take this: https://news.ycombinator.com/best

It's hilarious that HN conflates popularity with "best".

So even at HN, the most addictive content is considered to have the highest value. Seems…topical.

The way this usually works, at least in comment threads, is that usually upvotes end up being stronger than downvotes. So the most popular thought in the community ends up at the top of the page... and then usually, the most popular counter-argument is its highest child.

It's interesting to see HN debate itself. The asymmetrical karma allocation can be a really interesting factor.

The name of that page goes back close to ten years, when HN was created. That was a time when lots of people had more faith in social forum upvoting than they/we do now.

Hi dang, I could swear I once saw a list of front pages with different algos, but now I can't find it for the life of me. Also, is there a "most commented" or "controversial" page?

It may also be a question of how you use sites like HN. I've found that this site is useful for learning when I simply click on the headlines and ignore the comments. Yes, the comments are informative. On the other hand, I have found that reading comments is a behaviour that I have adopted to procratinate (rather than to gain deeper insight).

I primarily visit HN for the comments. My usage is as follows:

1. Scan headlines for a topic I'm interested in, say, geometric algebra.

2. Rapidly scan the comments for people linking to other media (books, blog posts, libraries, etc.) that are related to geometric algebra.

I get vastly superior pointers to useful material this way than any other approach I've tried, and I'm extremely good at research anyway.

I use Google/FB just for the IM. I rarely ever read status updates.

But when I get frustrated on a problem or am knee deep in technical debt, you can be I'll flip over to Hacker News.

I have quit FB a few times but the reality is that FB Messenger is the main IM platform for many because it works so well going from mobile and computer. I don't use or care for any other features of Facebook.

I also don't bother with Twitter anymore. I still have an account but don't ever open it. Instagram and Snapchat are rather boring for me also.

So while I like social I don't really care for the media.

You can use FB messenger even after deactivating your FB account. But there are still things that can cause you to reactivate your account e.g. accessing two factor settings.

Hacker News doesn't have the churn that means other news sites are always different when you visit them...perhaps you could call that a downside, but I actually really like that aspect.

Worryingly, every time I've checked the admin news updates threads on Reddit, users are complaining that the front page changes too slowly. It does only seem to update about once a day.

The comments are seriously addictive; I wish there was a way to hide 90% of them to make it easier to stop reading.

It barely works but the reason I built www.sagebump.com was not be distracted by a need to visit different social media sites. It also condenses the best to only a handful, so in theory one would only need to spend around 15 mins to get the best of ones own custom feeds, then spend the rest of the day coding. I have only posted this as I believe it is relevant otherwise let me know and I will remove this post. Thanks.

This has been me for ever so long. Started with /. , with me to this day in the guise of HN and others. The slightest cognitive lull then muscle memory and habit brings me back to the tech news feed.

I'm making an AI to recommend articles so you can check it once a day or get email alerts for ones you want to comment on. Downside is you have to train it.

Will it be able to do something like "send me articles about Ruby on Rails, but only if the author hates Rails"? :)

How far are you? Beta site link?

It may seem trivial, but during the US primary season I had to modify my /etc/hosts file to block several political sites for my own sanity.

Yes, I can very easily `sudo vi /etc/hosts` to undo, but I never did.

Helps that I could really pull it up on my iPhone if I needed, but this way I could focus when I needed to, and if I was on my mobile I was clearly doing other stuff.

HN is problematic because signal/noise ratio is relatively high.

My old strategy for this involved a cronjob to update my host file every five minutes, so I could edit the file and read for a few minutes when I legitimately was waiting on something to compile, but would get yanked away from the browser black hole and back to work in a reasonable amount of time.

Then I got a better job, and now I feel a lot less compulsion to sit and read the internet.

You might try setting the noprocrast flag in your profile. By default, after 20 minutes it'll enforce a 3-hour break.

I only visit https://news.ycombinator.com/best . The articles there don't change every time you press F5.

I use https://freedom.to/ to block HN on my phone and laptop when I need to.

What I found is that blocking completely works less than just delaying the page for a bit with something like https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/waitblock/kcnjfepp...

That way I have enough time to think and question whether I really want to open the page I was about to open, and I don't disable the whole thing if I actually need to visit it.

My favorite is: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/go-fucking-work/hi...

Thanks for the recommendation, but why is it a subscription service? Does it work like a vpn or something where they host servers to support this kind of traffic blocking?

Ya, that's how they are able to block websites on your phone. You go through their VPN.

+1 - Deleted everything else but HN is sooo good and I can trick myself into it being relevant because it's mostly about the future. :\

Helpfully providing us with an example of survivor bias, though!

I've rationalized somehow that HN is okay because the content is relevant, insightful, etc.