HN Explorer

Ask HN: Do you visit HN on a daily basis?

7 points by adrianthedev ↗ HN
I usually do. Whenever I feel the urge to procrastinate or I'm waiting after a time-intensive task, I find myself opening a new tab and typing "news". The browser auto-completes the rest and I hit Return.

I think I get to scan most of the content on HN that way. It's not my objective, but it happens.

Does anyone else do that?

15 comments

[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 57.5 ms ] thread
ElSinchi
Daily? Hahahaha

More like every hour

codevark
Yep, but I just keep reloading "new", as well as slashdot, alternet, wunderground, coinbase, twatter, urbandead, pardus, nationstates, and butterchat.
sn0w_crash
I refresh HN new stories at least once every 30 minutes
withinboredom
I'm on a sabbatical atm and basically live here.
themodelplumber
Sure, at least a few times a day, switching between new and main.

A few years back I measured the times (mapped on a schedule) I spent surfing HN, and the numbers showed it's more like rest than procrastination.

At the time I was trying to put a finger on a really difficult workaholism -> exhaustion tendency. I thought I was probably wasting time here, being inefficient, maybe even addicted in some way, but by the numbers it was better described as a recovery function.

And like a lot of recovery-related functions, being here is almost never the objective I have in mind. Like you, I mindlessly type it in. Recovery is the objective my body seems to have in mind, and places like this can be really effective means, for example when they generally support my preferred ways of looking at things. A lot of other places do not do that quite as well.

(A weird topic by itself, given the echo chamber effect, but as long as you know about it...)

livinglist
Visiting HN quite often recently because I’m working on a HN client lol
timoteostewart
Just checked out the GH page. Very nice! Comment management and notification particularly impressive.

Feel free to check out my HN reader: https://www.thnr.net . (Red question mark in upper left corner is the “about” page.)

livinglist
Looks neat! Is it open sourced btw?
timoteostewart
Thanks for checking it out! Yep, that’s the plan. It’s private for now so there’s one less cat to juggle. Hmu at email in my profile if you want to talk shop about HN interfaces!
markus_zhang
Yeah it's basically a social media site wrapped with the "I can learn some interesting stuffs" mindset/excuse to me.
mikewarot
I'm temporarily (and I'm very thankfull it's only temporary!) trapped in a situation where I can only see about the distance to my monitor, and not well at that. HN and YouTube are about the only thing that I have to keep me distracted at this point.
muzani
Often. I force a break every now and then. HN is the friendliest and smartest social network I know of, but stick around long enough and you see the cracks.
d--b
Responses in the comments are going to be heavily biased…
night-rider
It depends on my mood. The tech scene can be depressing and overwhelming if you browse it with a heavy heart. HN can mirror back your own mood, so if I’m calm and positive, in good spirits and mentally fit to browse this site then I will. If I’m not in the right mood, depressed, heavy heart etc then I avoid it.
taubek
I visit it daily but I read maybe 5 to 10 stories. I try to post few stories every day.