from Hacker News

Ask HN: Best Sites to Procrastinate

by robsun on 5/12/21, 9:47 AM with 22 comments

I don't use any social media. After reading "Mindf*ck" I decided to quit all of them. Surprisingly if you cut off all facebooks, instagrams and reddits, it turns out the Internet is quite boring place.

What are your favourite sites where you procrastinate? Sites without political trolls are preferred.

  • by maxbaines on 5/12/21, 10:10 AM

    https://news.ycombinator.com/ but guess you know that.

  • by codingdave on 5/12/21, 10:55 AM

    Wikipedia. You can go down some fun rabbit-holes there, and when a topic intrigues you, search engines will take you even farther.

  • by mikewarot on 5/12/21, 11:47 AM

    Newspapers.com is fascinating if you get the full membership for 6 months, you'll never run out of things to read.

    It is amazing how everyone's address was part of the story until about 1970. The stories of people who lived in our house before us would bring you to tears, along with joy.

    If you're into genealogy, it is a good resource to tie threads together with. Turns out my grandparents were the first ones married in a new church, back in the day, for example.

  • by 600frogs on 5/12/21, 12:02 PM

    Agreed with matt_s - if you're looking to be distracted, just accept that and do something genuinely entertaining e.g. video games, YouTube, rather than finding some other forum with half-baked opinions to idly browse. And yes, I'm being hypocritical by posting here, but I count HN as part of my keeping-up-to-date-with-tech diet, which makes me feel a bit better about myself.

  • by BlameKaneda on 5/12/21, 8:19 PM

    Depends on what you're into.

    Articles: - This site - https://sadlunchbreak.com/

    Quizzes: - Sporcle: https://www.sporcle.com/ - Geoguessr: https://www.geoguessr.com/ (1 quiz per day if you're on the free tier)

    Wikis and rabbit holes: - Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page - TVTropes: https://tvtropes.org/

    YouTube: - Search "documentary, long" in the searchbar and see what turns up. The "long" part will find videos that are longer than 20 minutes.

  • by emmap21 on 5/12/21, 2:17 PM

    Immersed in the physical world. However, it is not the best option now. You might want to write or play some thing new. Language, Music, Art, Math, etc. This used to work for me though I look very un-fancy on the internet.

  • by hackermailman on 5/15/21, 8:43 PM

    This guy is a bush pilot in PG, he records all his flights and provides simulator data to try it yourself. https://youtube.com/channel/UCt0m3zjCj_oC6d-kUkk6zmw

    Sort of learning video game procrastination I guess trying not to crash on those crazy runways in your spare time he even does intl flights somehow in that ac

  • by spamalot159 on 5/12/21, 9:55 AM

    As a kid I killed all my time with random flash games. Even though flash is gone you can still access virtually every good flash game with flashpoint - https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/

  • by matt_s on 5/12/21, 11:12 AM

    If your goal is procrastination, lean into it and open up Netflix and watch something. Or Youtube.

  • by anongoesprivate on 5/16/21, 3:49 AM

  • by tldrthelaw on 5/15/21, 7:45 PM

    HistoricAerials.com -- look up satellite photos of your area, or any area of interest, as far back as the 30s.

  • by crazypython on 5/14/21, 11:46 AM

  • by ElectricMind on 5/12/21, 10:53 AM

    //reading "Mindf*ck"//

    Could you tell more. Maybe gist of the book. Thanks

  • by Srisha on 5/17/21, 6:11 AM

    Youtube, github, 4chan

  • by markus_zhang on 5/13/21, 3:37 PM

    CRPG Addict

  • by cpach on 5/12/21, 1:02 PM

    Hacker News :-p

    The Economist. (I prefer to read it on paper though.)

    Metafilter is also quite good.

    Or subscribe to one or more newspapers.