Hacker News Reader

HN does have the cryptic 'noprocrast/minaway/maxaway' settings in your profile that can help with this. I haven't tried them yet, though maybe I should.

I haven't found HN to be a particularly bad offender. The front page doesn't change quickly enough to require excessive attention.

That doesn't mean that you can't switch to it between every line of code and hit reload, just in case there is something new.

My issue lies with the content weight on hacker news - a lot of posts require 3 mins+ to read and grok, potentially explore related concepts/sites, and maybe even try out a product. I'd say about 50% of the posts on HN interest me enough to warrant this kind of attention. Then of course you have to read the comments ;) This can eat away a serious amount of time!

It also doesn't help that this time can be labelled as "productive" in my mind (as opposed to Facebook etc), when in reality there are more productive things to be doing in these moments.

Life is good with noprocrast=yes and minaway=1000 in your profile. I can read HN exactly once a day. :)

Your plan seems not to be working. :)