Hacker News

points by kulahan 2 days ago | 0 comments

Just to be clear, they've named the subreddit after a mental disorder, which I think sorta proves his point :P

Maybe hoarding is the name of a mental disorder, but it's also a verb.

In defence of data-hoarding, it's relatively benign apart from maybe costing time and money, but then so do a lot of hobbies. Hoarding seems to be celebrated when it's billionaires hoarding wealth, even though the billionaires typically use their wealth in the most harmful and damaging way possible.

[–] JKCalhoun 2 days ago

To be sure, I am probably more like a casual data hoarder—only hoarding files I will revisit (I have a TV app I wrote that plays these videos on a schedule—a lot like these "HN TV" sites we've been seeing vibe-coded lately).

But it does take a non-zero amount of time to copy/paste a URL and then move the files to external storage when my laptop gets heavy with data.

And while it does feel a bit like a mental sickness (really, sickness?) I have other behaviors like spending too much time on YouTube in general that unfortunately would persist whether I was hoarding or not.

I do try to walk away from the browser more these days—limit it to a few hours in the morning and then when I am eating lunch or whatever during the day.

[–] ndsipa_pomu 2 days ago

I don't think that really counts as hoarding.

Hoarding is more getting hold of data/films/tv/music that you're not expecting to get around to watching, but feel like you want a copy or that it is of cultural relevance.

e.g. I grabbed a copy of Sátántangó due to it's fame/importance, but I'm unlikely to sit through 7 hours of it.

Or more recently, I grabbed a better quality copy of the original Green Hornet series that I'm not going to bother watching.