It is. Then again, whenever I feel like it's just entertainment, I open up my Facebook feed and find that it's two orders of magnitude dumber. When I see what my family has on their feeds, it's an extra order of magnitude dumber still. Of all the places I could waste time on-line, HN really is one of the better ones. It's probably also why I find it so sticky - it's intermittent reward, where reward can be - and was in the past - enlightening or career-changing.

> Of all the places I could waste time on-line, HN really is one of the better ones

That's the main problem with it. Other places are obviously such nonsense that I'm not even tempted. HN has this quality where it tricks you into thinking (feeling?) that it might be worthwhile. And the worst thing is - it might be true. I have no idea, but I do know that it's by far my biggest time sink.

If I were being truthful, I might say that I get maybe one actually helpful morsel every few days, some of which end up on a reading/reference queue that I might not actually get to but I think might indeed come in handy sometime in the future. The rest is essentially intellectual puffcorn.

> HN really is one of the better ones

That's what they all say ;) It's like Blub (http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html), but for social networks.

So what would be the lisp of social networks? :)

That’s true, but I personally have read a bunch of things of big value to me here. Just yesterday, somebody commented that there will likely be a big increase in taxation for UK contractors in April 2020 - and I was just offered a long term contract position in London... Now I know that it will be worth much less than I thought.