This is like saying, "I'm not addicted to smoking, I'm addicted to the happiness cigarettes give me." Addiction is a harmful dependency you pursue to achieve some desired outcome. The harmful dependency is the endless browsing, scrolling, and searching you engage in to obtain it, all the time wasted doing it and doing it in a way that consumes a significant amount of time that could be spent acquiring that same information in a more productive manner.
My grandma always had the morning paper delivered. When I stayed with her during the summer I’d start in the top left corner of the first page and read all the way to the bottom right corner of the last and everything in between. What a 10 year old kid got out of the grain report? I’m not sure. But I was amped up on her homemade cinnamon rolls and multiple glasses of orange juice. It was wonderful. These days I’m more selective about what information I take in!
I remember reading the newspaper in the break room and at lunch. About 2013 or so. That's all their was. Well, for me, because I was a late smartphone adopter.
I kind of lump in "internet" (late 90s) with "internet in everyone's pockets at all times". But there was a fairly large gap there. Especially when you consider the limits of 3 and even 4g.
Do you subscribe now? I’ve toyed with the idea — I think I’d be more aware of local news / serendipitous things I normally wouldn’t seek out.
I’ve been considering subscribing to some high quality signal / low to no ad type written publications. Asterisk, IEEE spectrum, NOEMA. Make getting mail fun again.
If you zoom in its actually 3 fonts. It looks line one of those Lain fan sites.
I actually like the font even though my eyes hate it. Its a short read so no biggie. Maybe remove the transparency for a sharper look and make the spacing of the 3 fonts slightly closer to each other.
I doubt you are addicted to information. I highly suspect like many users of digital technology who are able to consume near infinite streams of said, that you are like a wasteful software program "polling" these data sources hoping that something really important will surface or that some underlying truth will be revealed through identifying patterns in the information.
I dont think you would need someone to publish that your hair was on fire on the web before you would believe it.
The wasteful part is that repeating the behavior (addiction or not) can become self-repeating even in the absence of the fix. Also one has to realize that at least in the case of news there is very little every day and most of what is distributed is rehash, or ancillary, or bloated and repeated to sell ads. You can go without watching or consuming news on the internet and not miss much for a pretty long time.
As far as tech goes, it moves very slow you can take a couple years off a software eng job and come back and not much has changed with very few exceptions. (Yes LLMs were one)
When you are done staring at your phone/computer at the end of the day reflect on whether or not you got anything really worthwhile out of it and put it in perspective. The signal vs noise ratio is not in your favor and getting less so every day.
I personally stare at my phone alot for the same reason as many people do. Im bored. But I dont do it at the expense of anything else Id rather do.
People are complaining at that font should take another look.
I think there's something maybe special going on there.
Probably unintentional ... but I swear reading 'word at a time' the words are in a way clearer, like your mind is able to abstract them out of the background.
Wild!
And yes, information is 'the thing' but it depends on how it's presented obviously.
I think I'm similar. But why didn't people talk about newspaper addiction back then? Sometimes I wonder—even before smartphones, people spent that time reading books, looking up information, and reading newspapers. That kind of addiction was seen as "positive." But in reality, it was probably disrupting daily life too, in its own way.
When I see things like this, it sometimes occurs to me that the people who create "addiction" are the ones in power. Come to think of it, it makes me wonder why there was never any such thing as newspaper addiction.
But when I think about it, communities like HN don't exactly have only the taste I want either, do they?
That's always the case, really. There are people whose daily lives fall apart because they read too many books, but that usually isn't categorized as a form of addiction. So sometimes I wonder how addiction is actually defined.
For how addiction is defined, google ICD-11, it's: Impaired control over the behavior, the behavior taking increasing priority over other interests and daily activities, and continuation or escalation despite negative consequences, plus distress or functional impairment.. (I'm an alcoholic, 5 years sober)
I don't think I've seen a less accessible *font* in my life, including all the dark grey on black and yellow on white ones. Those are hard to read, but this one makes my eyes hurt, they actually started to hurt after I tried reading it despite discomfort. How come? Reading random text for 10 seconds can cause people physical pain? I wear glasses for near-sightedness and slight astigmatism, I wonder if it's related, and if people with 20/20 vision experience it differently.
I know this because the first thing I did when I got to the page was hit F12 to bring up the debugging tools and turn these styles off so I could read it. :)
I thought it was me, I literally think there are things that should no longer be acceptable and this font is one of them. It serves no purpose and I would like to ask medical professionals if it is potentially harmful.
Edit: While fuzzy or blurry text itself is highly unlikely to trigger an epileptic seizure it is a major cause of optical strain, headaches, and reading barriers across various accessibility needs. Given the amount of screen time we all incur in our daily lives, I do not see why this should be a "thing".
My site shows black with yellow background and white text boxes. Highly visible. Maybe you're referring to dead comments? There are options to hide those.
I have 20/20 vision and this presentation hurt my eyes. I'm glad my browser has "reader mode" to normalize things like this. I'm not trying to yuck someone else's yum. I simply appreciate the technical ability to read someone else's post in a way that doesn't cause discomfort.
I feel you. I had to brave through the font that you're using but I feel you.
Maybe try to avoid making a statement using a font which literally hurts my eyes, and possibly the eyes of many others. That's messed up.
Also information addiction should be a human "feature" I suppose, shouldn't it?
Knowledge for the sake of knowledge and so forth.
The font is actually cool but it belongs in games like Alien Isolation (and possibly others) it's just not good for blogging methinks.
This is like saying, "I'm not addicted to smoking, I'm addicted to the happiness cigarettes give me." Addiction is a harmful dependency you pursue to achieve some desired outcome. The harmful dependency is the endless browsing, scrolling, and searching you engage in to obtain it, all the time wasted doing it and doing it in a way that consumes a significant amount of time that could be spent acquiring that same information in a more productive manner.
That's the addiction, not the information.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dopamine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reward_system
My grandma always had the morning paper delivered. When I stayed with her during the summer I’d start in the top left corner of the first page and read all the way to the bottom right corner of the last and everything in between. What a 10 year old kid got out of the grain report? I’m not sure. But I was amped up on her homemade cinnamon rolls and multiple glasses of orange juice. It was wonderful. These days I’m more selective about what information I take in!
I remember reading the newspaper in the break room and at lunch. About 2013 or so. That's all their was. Well, for me, because I was a late smartphone adopter.
I kind of lump in "internet" (late 90s) with "internet in everyone's pockets at all times". But there was a fairly large gap there. Especially when you consider the limits of 3 and even 4g.
Do you subscribe now? I’ve toyed with the idea — I think I’d be more aware of local news / serendipitous things I normally wouldn’t seek out.
I’ve been considering subscribing to some high quality signal / low to no ad type written publications. Asterisk, IEEE spectrum, NOEMA. Make getting mail fun again.
If you zoom in its actually 3 fonts. It looks line one of those Lain fan sites.
I actually like the font even though my eyes hate it. Its a short read so no biggie. Maybe remove the transparency for a sharper look and make the spacing of the 3 fonts slightly closer to each other.
100%
I noticed this about myself about 25 years ago... before the internet really took off on the dopamine rollercoatser it is now.
Hey all: "Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, [etc...]. They're too common to be interesting."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I doubt you are addicted to information. I highly suspect like many users of digital technology who are able to consume near infinite streams of said, that you are like a wasteful software program "polling" these data sources hoping that something really important will surface or that some underlying truth will be revealed through identifying patterns in the information.
I dont think you would need someone to publish that your hair was on fire on the web before you would believe it.
The wasteful part is that repeating the behavior (addiction or not) can become self-repeating even in the absence of the fix. Also one has to realize that at least in the case of news there is very little every day and most of what is distributed is rehash, or ancillary, or bloated and repeated to sell ads. You can go without watching or consuming news on the internet and not miss much for a pretty long time.
As far as tech goes, it moves very slow you can take a couple years off a software eng job and come back and not much has changed with very few exceptions. (Yes LLMs were one)
When you are done staring at your phone/computer at the end of the day reflect on whether or not you got anything really worthwhile out of it and put it in perspective. The signal vs noise ratio is not in your favor and getting less so every day.
I personally stare at my phone alot for the same reason as many people do. Im bored. But I dont do it at the expense of anything else Id rather do.
>like a wasteful software program "polling" these data sources hoping that something really important will surface
This is me on eBay :)
People are complaining at that font should take another look.
I think there's something maybe special going on there.
Probably unintentional ... but I swear reading 'word at a time' the words are in a way clearer, like your mind is able to abstract them out of the background.
Wild!
And yes, information is 'the thing' but it depends on how it's presented obviously.
makes me think of https://accelareader.com/
I thought the font was great.
It's not information, it's emotion.
I think I'm similar. But why didn't people talk about newspaper addiction back then? Sometimes I wonder—even before smartphones, people spent that time reading books, looking up information, and reading newspapers. That kind of addiction was seen as "positive." But in reality, it was probably disrupting daily life too, in its own way.
When I see things like this, it sometimes occurs to me that the people who create "addiction" are the ones in power. Come to think of it, it makes me wonder why there was never any such thing as newspaper addiction.
You can read a lot of the newspaper and still finish by the end of breakfast.
It isn't personalized, so many sections aren't of much interest.
But when I think about it, communities like HN don't exactly have only the taste I want either, do they?
That's always the case, really. There are people whose daily lives fall apart because they read too many books, but that usually isn't categorized as a form of addiction. So sometimes I wonder how addiction is actually defined.
Well... https://aeon.co/essays/contagion-poison-trigger-books-have-a...
and: https://archive.org/details/americannervousn00bearuoft/page/... - one note on this, Beard blamed nervous exhaustion on steam power, the periodical press, the telegraph, the sciences, and uh... the mental activity of women... This excerpt for a tl;dr: https://english.web.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/english/doc...
For how addiction is defined, google ICD-11, it's: Impaired control over the behavior, the behavior taking increasing priority over other interests and daily activities, and continuation or escalation despite negative consequences, plus distress or functional impairment.. (I'm an alcoholic, 5 years sober)
But newspapers end and then each one cost money.
HA.Ha.Ha. Interesting
neither smartphone nor internet will help you get information these days. there is too much of it and anything there is too much of becomes worthless.
This is another way to say you have ADHD. (I say this as someone with ADHD behaviors myself)
I don't think I've seen a less accessible *font* in my life, including all the dark grey on black and yellow on white ones. Those are hard to read, but this one makes my eyes hurt, they actually started to hurt after I tried reading it despite discomfort. How come? Reading random text for 10 seconds can cause people physical pain? I wear glasses for near-sightedness and slight astigmatism, I wonder if it's related, and if people with 20/20 vision experience it differently.
Not a font. The VHS line striping is just a repeating gradient applied over the whole page:
The red glow is a red text shadow applied to every element on the page: Surprisingly, the glitchy logo is also done with CSS, with animations over two different versions of the text overlain atop one another: I know this because the first thing I did when I got to the page was hit F12 to bring up the debugging tools and turn these styles off so I could read it. :)I thought it was me, I literally think there are things that should no longer be acceptable and this font is one of them. It serves no purpose and I would like to ask medical professionals if it is potentially harmful.
Edit: While fuzzy or blurry text itself is highly unlikely to trigger an epileptic seizure it is a major cause of optical strain, headaches, and reading barriers across various accessibility needs. Given the amount of screen time we all incur in our daily lives, I do not see why this should be a "thing".
You guys are saying this on a website which puts light grey text on light grey background.
My site shows black with yellow background and white text boxes. Highly visible. Maybe you're referring to dead comments? There are options to hide those.
I'm sorry, what is your username again? I can't read it, because it's tiny light grey text on a light grey background.
Controversy shouldn't give me cataracts either.
and tiny buttons
It hurt for me too. I stopped reading it because it gave me a serious headache.
I have 20/20 vision and this presentation hurt my eyes. I'm glad my browser has "reader mode" to normalize things like this. I'm not trying to yuck someone else's yum. I simply appreciate the technical ability to read someone else's post in a way that doesn't cause discomfort.
I had to stop reading the first paragraph because of how bad it is.
this font is the stupidest thing ive seen in ages
Just a small note and I'm guessing this is an intentional aesthetic choice but the chromatic aberration makes the text very uncomfortable to read.
Literally hurt my eyes. Didn't make it past the first paragraph
As someone with keratoconus, I hardly noticed! This is what all text looks like for me.
Get some hybrid mini-scleral lenses fitted and your life will improve significantly :)
reader mode button works wonders for me
Curb cuts for the win!
That font will cure my addiction!
I imagined bad. I couldn't imagine something that bad.
It looks gorgeous as an art piece, but it's impossible to read.
Form over function to the extreme.
Thank god for reader mode to unfuck that font
Damn you beat me to it, I was going to say exactly that. What a nightmare!
If this is a marketing stunt to use such a bad font; honestly, I'm impressed.
possibly the most unreadable website I've ever seen.
duh