Ask HN: How are you holding up?

Re:Ask HN: How are you holding up? by mech422 on Tuesday June 23, 2020 @09:31AM (#23613655)

I actually feel a lil guilty about how well things are going for me. Its not really been any change for me, same schedule - same job. I think the key is as you said, mostly avoiding the news. Every day or two, I skim over the headlines on CNN but mostly I avoid it. I do check the stock market in the mornings - I swear the DJIA is just a yo-yo. But it's just out of curiosity as I still have 15+ years before I can retire...So not stressing about it even on bad days.

I think previously, I was just way too wrapped up in the news cycles.

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Re:Ask HN: How are you holding up? by shireboy on Tuesday June 23, 2020 @12:15PM (#23615955)

Agree 100%. I've felt a little guilty too. I started working from home full time about 4 months before covid landed in US. I'd built a nice above garage office. Kids homeschooled already. Planted a garden that's doing well, had more time for home projects, etc. I have friends not doing so well. I have donated to individuals and organizations since I feel I have an obligation to help people in need.

News is the biggest drag on my mental well being. It is important to be informed, but I genuinely feel that media is so driven by ad revenue and has optimized itself into being as negative and outrageous and _loud_ as possible, to the detriment of sane balanced information and opinion. I need to know the sides of current issues, but not loudly 24x7 with as much vitriol on all sides. I blocked several news sites and social media I habitually check in my hosts file, but somehow my browser still resolves the names. I need to fix that.

HackerNews is really one of the few sites I can expect to find calm reasoned discussion and information.

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Re:Ask HN: How are you holding up? by mech422 on Tuesday June 23, 2020 @07:25PM (#23621729)

>I blocked several news sites and social media I habitually check in my hosts file, but somehow my browser still resolves the names. I need to fix that.

DNS over HTTPS maybe ?

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Re:Ask HN: How are you holding up? by priyaranjan on Tuesday June 23, 2020 @11:26PM (#23623688)

For macOS dscacheutil --flushdns

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Re:Ask HN: How are you holding up? by remmargorp64 on Tuesday June 23, 2020 @06:06PM (#23620972)

Don't forget that you have to explicitly block every host name (including subdomains), if you are using the hosts file method.

For example:

127.0.0.1 reddit.com

127.0.0.1 www.reddit.com

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Re:Ask HN: How are you holding up? by tmaly on Tuesday June 23, 2020 @10:54AM (#23614676)

I have found that avoiding news all together has definitely had a positive impact on my days. This includes social media.

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Re:Ask HN: How are you holding up? by mech422 on Tuesday June 23, 2020 @11:23AM (#23615118)

HN is about the extent of my social media... I always found the signal-to-noise ratio of facebook, twitter, etc. to be too low to make them worthwhile.

On the other hand, I can spend hours sucked into random tech books, blogs, etc. So I guess time wise it balances out.

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Re:Ask HN: How are you holding up? by RickJWagner on Tuesday June 23, 2020 @10:07PM (#23623129)

One thing that might help is more variety in your news-scanning.

CNN will show relentlessly negative headlines until the election is over. Fox will be overly positive. There are other sources on both sides.

For your mental health-- get a variety. You don't have to agree with all of it, but get diverse inputs.

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