My understanding is from the article that night owls are not doomed to die early in the literal sense, but not being able to work, eat and exercise in the "proper time" still makes them susceptible to diabetes, neurological, respiratory and cardiovascular problems, etc.
It truly is fascinating. I'd recommend anyone to read this, as he also talks about the evolutionary benefits of morning larks versus night owls. It was, perhaps, the most influential book I read last year.
I've started turning 'Do Not Disturb' mode on my phone much earlier, and plugging it into charge (facedown) at the same time. Even with a blue light filter, there was still a lot of exposure that would keep me awake. I try (and often fail, admittedly) to shut off my computer earlier too, but I use f.lux which helps mitigate it some.
I also have changed out my light bulbs and use a lamp at night that doesn't emit as much blue light; I'm even considering getting some of the color changing ones and programming them to change for me throughout the day (as well as come on and turn off at a set time, which could be great).
On top of all that, I try to follow a consistent schedule. It's difficult, but if I've been on it a few days, I notice it when I'm off and am quite miserable.
I still could do more, especially wearing a sleep mask. I've noticed that when I sleep in windowless rooms, I sleep a lot better; the same is true with cool rooms (unfortunately, one of my roommates is always cold and refuses to believe we sleep better cool so our house rarely gets below 72 during the summer, and only that cool at night because I turn it down after he goes to sleep).
But, really, mitigating blue light and understanding the importance of sleep are the two main things it's taught me.
> one of my roommates is always cold and refuses to believe we sleep better cool
I don't think this is universal, although it is often stated as such. I too sleep best when the room is between 24 and 25 degrees Celsius (during the winter, too).
You know, back in Mexico, we had school in two shifts, rite? It was a morning shift & afternoon shift. It was a way to fix the problem of "too many students and not enough time".
I always took the afternoons. It was great. Life made sense. I wonder if we can ever pressure the bosses to make overlapping shifts? Or is that even possible? A 6-hour workday sounds like an opium dream to me at this point in our timeline.
We don't have set hours at our office and about half the people come in early around 8-10am and the other half come in around 1pm. There's enough overlap for afternoon meetings and plenty of time when the office is quieter because half as many people are there.
> It wasn’t the conclusion of the study, or its researchers. But in the bombastic world of science reporting, it didn’t really matter.
This right here is the crux of the whole thing. Science reporting biases towards clicks and shares instead of accuracy. There is still some good science reporting out there, but it doesn't sell like the sensational headlines.
Alternative hypothsis: People who stay up late have a higher probability of going out, enjoy more occasional drinks, are more probable to smoking or take recreational drugs and have more sexual partners and generally enjoy more riskier lifestyle choices, all of which contributes to the statistics showing a shorter life expectation.
Because no one ever found a sense of community from their morning bike ride or running group or being monogamous and having a family... The idea that sexual promiscuity and doing drugs and drinking to lower social inhibition are what creates a sense of community is pretty misguided.
Not what Im advocating. just providing a counterpoint to the argument that the only outcome to staying up late is that you are making choices that shorten life. Staying out late certainly can contribute to the OPs theory, but that isn't the only outcome. Reduction of stress, finding a community/partner/etc is definitely something that hanging out late can provide. the time of day you feel most awake doesn't mean your default is self destruction.
I suspect the issue isn't the time you wake up, it's if you're artificially waking up.
(Ex: if you stay up late on weekends then struggle on Monday due to lack of sleep vs simply choosing to wake at 10am daily because you have a flexible work schedule and sometimes like to go to events that are in the evening.)
Well if you're going to lawyer it, it's worth noting that it doesn't say what you claimed, it says "don't complain about paywalls". The parent didn't complain about paywalls, he complained about us posting articles that are hidden behind paywalls when the information is, presumably, available from open sources.
That rule also mentions that it's fine to post them as long as there is a workaround and intimates strongly that the workaround should be provided.
So, it seems when posting a paywalled article the poster should comment the workaround to stay within the spirit of the rules.
Exactly, this was the point I was (trying) to get too.
Ultimately I believe that _the majority_ of stories that will be of interest to the HN community will either be:
1. niche posts from free sources
2. More wide spread news that will be covered by every major news site, some of which are "paywalled" sites
When the latter of these two happen, where a non-niche story is published, instead of users submitting a paywalled version of the article they could instead reference one that seems to not have this issue (like this forbes article https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2018/04/21/dont-worry-... ) that covers the same content or reference the original paper with it's given flaws.
I am aware that this is by no means a perfect solution, but simply suggesting that you can use work arounds for every instance is a cure for the issue, instead of a preventative measure that I believe would be more beneficial and one we should be taking as a community.
P.S.
Just to be clear, I'm not gunning for the OP of this article, but was simply my trigger for the topic. As I said before it is an interesting article.
> instead of users submitting a paywalled version of the article they could instead reference one that seems to not have this issue
People often do this when the site is known to have an impenetrable paywall, e.g., WSJ.
But the NYT's paywall is quite easy to bypass. It usually only appears if you've accessed more than the monthly limit's worth of articles, and after that you can just use a clean browser instance.
Bear in mind that the NYT is generally regarded as among the premier news sources in the world. (This is not to say that it's to my personal taste. It often isn't, but that's a separate issue.) But its articles, particularly those with an opiniative or analytical flavour, will often be preferred due to this brand perception that the NYT has built.
Where there is a better article on a topic, people can and do point to it here and encourage the moderators to update the URL.
But the HN community would never want a lower-quality article on a topic to be given preference due to it having no paywall. If that article is the best one on the topic, as long as the paywall can be bypassed, that is the article HN wants listed.
> People often do this when the site is known to have an impenetrable paywall, e.g., WSJ.
Not in my recent experience, which was my reason for this comment
> But the NYT's paywall is quite easy to bypass.
As I said before, why force cures on an issue instead of simply acting on preventative measures in the first instance?
More to the point, how would someone bypass this if they used an app for HN? There's no "private mode" in these and simply asking people to delete the apps cache every time they hit this problem is again a cure not a preventative measure.
> Bear in mind that the NYT is generally regarded as among the premier news sources in the world.
> But the HN community would never want a lower-quality article on a topic to be given preference due to it having no paywall.
Discussing the relative "qualities" of news outlets is a discussion in and of itself, but as I also showed there is a Forbes article that echoes many of the same points. So I don't think this piece of analysis was unique to the NYT and is of such great stature that Forbes would be arbitrarily inferior to NYT?
Are you suggesting it's better for the community, even if some can't read the article, to post a paywalled one rather than one everybody can read? I thought the point was to share news for _everybody_ on here?
The problem is that you’re conflating two issues that should be separate: paywalls vs article/source quality.
The article posted on HN should be the best generally-accessible article on that topic, end of story. In this case, if the Forbes article is better, that's the one that should be here. If the NYT version is better, that's the one that should be here. If they're about on par with one another, then the first one to be posted and upvoted should remain, as nobody would want a norm in which the moderators unilaterally change a submission to a different source from what was originally submitted and upvoted by the community.
If it has a paywall, the only question is, is there a workaround that would allow anyone to access it. In the case of the NYT, the answer seems to be yes; you just need a browser instance that hasn't exceeded the NYT's monthly limit. I haven't heard anyone ever say it's impossible for them to access NYT content. Just sometimes inconvenient, if you need to open a different browser window. For me, if I'm on mobile, that might mean switching from my usual Chrome instance to Safari or Firefox. But I've never found a case where I can't access it. It's a little inconvenient, but it's OK. Other people have different standards of convenience. E.g., some people disable all Javascript and get annoyed that a site won't render for them. So you can never meet everyone's standards.
I totally understand that you're well-intentioned and are wanting to find a solution that is best for the broader HN community.
But please understand that those of us who have been on HN a long time (12 years in my case) have seen this topic thrashed out repeatedly (sometimes multiple times per week). We've all discussed an thought about it enough that we understand that the policy the HN mods have arrived at and written into the guidelines is a variant of the old adage: the worst form of government, except for all the others.
Other policies would lead to scenarios in which there are arguments amongst the community and mods over whether an arguably-slightly-less-good-but-non-paywalled version should be favored over an arguably-slightly-better-but-weakly-paywalled version. Or alternately, any sites with paywalls, even porous ones like NYT, should be banned altogether. None of these outcomes are clearly better than the one we have.
I know imperfect solutions are hard to stomach sometimes!
I'm not really lawyering about this. Hacker News doesn't really do paywall discussions, since they're off topic. I don't have a particular opinion on this issue but I do care about minimizing off-topic discussion, hence why I felt like I could remind Browun of the FAQ.
> So, it seems when posting a paywalled article the poster should comment the workaround to stay within the spirit of the rules.
Exactly: Hacker News encourages posting a workaround rather than discussing paywalls in general. If the workaround is of suitable quality/authority I think it generally replaces the link anyways.
Okay, then I encourage everyone to flag every single paywall article posted. They are off-topic, because you cannot read them. The FAQ rule is ridiculous.
How is flagging a submission for something site rules and moderators explicitly say is acceptable on HN not misusing the flag feature, which is for things that are not acceptable?
A pay-walled submission being acceptable on a news site when people likely do not spend a lengthy amount of time and likely do not want a hassle trying to consume information seems like a bad business decision.
Well, then use bugmenot or do the 10 seconds of work to create a temporary email.
We don't need more advertising-backed or bankroll-backed journalism just to save you 10 seconds of convenience which I see HNers also complain about all the time.
Brave browser is far ahead of the game on this front. They enable you to disable scripts on a per-domain basis with a single click. Go to the site, lion icon -> click on block scripts, paywalls are gone with none of this bother with incognito modes, email generators, or other awkward work arounds. Works for NYT, WaPo, and most any site that relies on bait and switch paywalls.
Since you quoted a rule out of context I'd like to provide the full version for ironic effect:
> Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it. Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead.
That last sentence would seem to imply you've broken the rules yourself simply by commenting about another user doing so... Which ironically I'm also now guilty of.
So we're left with two options, mods delete both our comments for violations... Or maybe we relax and hear out the GP comment...
They actually brought up a very good point that I'm sure many of us on HN have noticed in regards to recent NYT articles being quite clickbaity and generally being of a lower journalistic standards.
News sites have picked it up and produced headlines on the same study with the complete opposite sentiment: https://news.sky.com/story/nocturnal-night-owls-risk-early-d...
My understanding is from the article that night owls are not doomed to die early in the literal sense, but not being able to work, eat and exercise in the "proper time" still makes them susceptible to diabetes, neurological, respiratory and cardiovascular problems, etc.
So yeah, still doomed.