[HN Gopher] Why should I put my website to sleep?
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       Why should I put my website to sleep?
        
       Author : tobr
       Score  : 51 points
       Date   : 2021-05-10 20:04 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.nightnight.xn--q9jyb4c)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.nightnight.xn--q9jyb4c)
        
       | simonblack wrote:
       | Bedtime? Where in the world is it bedtime at this moment?
       | 
       | This policy is only workable if your country uses a little-used
       | language and takes up only a single timezone.
       | 
       | Dumb idea. Unnecessary complexity in a website.
        
         | solox3 wrote:
         | The script uses the device time.
        
           | dheera wrote:
           | That doesn't work well for me because I use UTC as my device
           | time regardless of where I am in the world.
           | 
           | IP geolocation isn't a good idea either because I often
           | access pages through a VPN in another timezone.
           | 
           | In short, nice thought but no thanks.
        
         | sneak wrote:
         | The page mentions it uses the local clock/time zone in the
         | browser viewing the page.
        
       | jorgesborges wrote:
       | Aside from being instructed to sleep, which is a little juvenile,
       | there's something charming about the idea of a website being
       | "closed" for the day. It has the feel of a living, dynamic thing.
       | Definitely not suitable for all types of websites but it's a neat
       | idea for personal a page. I don't think I'd ever use a third-
       | party to implement something like this either.
       | 
       | I like the clean margins and typography there.
        
         | uyt wrote:
         | A lot of government websites are Monday to Friday only. I like
         | to joke that they don't even have one 9 of availability.
         | 
         | (e.g., https://www.irs.gov/payments/view-your-tax-account see
         | the "Hours of availability" section)
        
           | viraptor wrote:
           | You scared me with the Mon-Fri, but actually irs is mon
           | (morning)--sat (night) and sun (morning)--mon (unless
           | maintenance happens). Which sounds fairly reasonable.
        
         | jetpackjoe wrote:
         | B&H is a Jewish electronics store here in NY. From sundown
         | Friday until sundown Saturday you can't place any orders on
         | their site, (though you can still window shop).
         | 
         | https://www.bhphotovideo.com
        
         | simon1573 wrote:
         | Up until recently the Swedish tax office only permitted you to
         | login during extended office hours.
        
           | 542458 wrote:
           | The B&H photo video website won't accept orders or payments
           | during Shabbat and most Jewish holidays (except for
           | Hanukkah).
        
       | Baeocystin wrote:
       | I really, really dislike the 'for your own good' impetus that
       | seems to be a common current design trend.
       | 
       | We're already dealing with information-density loss and the
       | Fisher-Pricification of the GUI, and maybe this is the next step
       | in overwrought 'we know what you want to do better than you'.
       | 
       | I have no ire for the creator of this. But respect boundaries,
       | people. You are not your user's parents.
        
         | bowmessage wrote:
         | It's early... Nothing we can offer you is more important than
         | your health. Eat well, run some laps, and we will catch you in
         | the afternoon. This site will be usable after 100 push ups.
        
         | dheera wrote:
         | Exactly.
         | 
         | This page which uses device time doesn't work well for me
         | because I use UTC as my device time regardless of where I am in
         | the world.
         | 
         | IP geolocation isn't a good idea either because I often access
         | pages through a VPN in another timezone.
         | 
         | In short, nice thought but no thanks.
         | 
         | Also, great way to get your page downranked if a search engine
         | comes prowling around your website at night.
        
           | enneff wrote:
           | You're probably one of about 100 people in the world who set
           | their device time to UTC. I don't think it's reasonable for
           | any designer to cater for this use case.
        
             | easton wrote:
             | Every time I set up a server I set it to UTC, since who
             | knows where I'm accessing it from anyhow. Maybe OP thinks
             | similarly of their PC?
        
             | zestyping wrote:
             | I wonder how many people actually do this. I also set my
             | laptop and wristwatch time to UTC.
        
         | enneff wrote:
         | Honestly, I'll take designers thinking about the well-being of
         | their users, even if it comes across as condescending. The
         | common alternative is to wring as much attention out of the
         | user as possible, pushing their buttons so they keep using the
         | app until every last drop of dopamine has been exploited.
        
       | alphachloride wrote:
       | Interesting how a non-latin Top Level Domain renders in the
       | address bar(.minna) vs how the author writes it in the <script>
       | tag in his article (.xn--q9jyb4c).
        
         | tW4r wrote:
         | You can even have emojis in your domain using the same
         | technique https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punycode
        
       | deergomoo wrote:
       | It's pretty condescending to be told to go to sleep by a website.
       | It's 22:44.
        
         | itisit wrote:
         | Seriously. Many of us access sites when we can, not necessarily
         | when we want. I know there's a bypass feature, but being
         | greeted by this kind of nannying reminder can come across as
         | annoying, at the least, to a certain nocturnal group of folks
         | (ex. hospital staff, parents of newborns, security guards,
         | etc.).
        
           | geoah wrote:
           | I don't think this is meant for such sites but I can def see
           | a benefit for social, news, or other "addictive" sites that
           | might be detrimental to people's mental health.
           | 
           | IOS, Android, and at least Macos have the ability to help
           | users restrict the time they spend on an application, but
           | doing so on the web is not as simple. In chrome I'm using
           | "Intention" which is a nice extension that does something
           | similar but for only the sites I've added to a list.
           | 
           | As long as the site has a way to allow me to still browse the
           | site or even give me 15m more or something and then fade to
           | black again I'd welcome this from many sites.
        
             | itisit wrote:
             | And I'd equally welcome the browser extension that bypasses
             | this sort of thing. :)
             | 
             | It's good in theory, but thankfully lacks the contextual
             | information it would need to be appropriately enabled for a
             | given user's sleep schedule.
        
       | jokocide wrote:
       | This is dumb. If any site does this to me I'll immediately move
       | to a competitor or just stop using it entirely.
        
       | edoceo wrote:
       | This isn't a new trick. Some US Gov sites have hours of
       | operation. From memory the IRS has one, and recently I noticed
       | one of the gov sites for LA had "hours" for some parts, so I
       | could only do forms when they were open.
        
       | chrismorgan wrote:
       | A remark for JavaScript developers: for injecting its content
       | into the body, this script creates a dummy div (it has no
       | attributes and is targeted by no styles), sets its innerHTML,
       | then appends it to the body. That dummy div is actually
       | unnecessary: Element.insertAdjacentHTML lets you achieve the same
       | effect without it:
       | document.body.insertAdjacentHTML('beforeend', '<div
       | class="nightnight">...</div>');
       | 
       | Browser support is universal. (Firefox was last to the game,
       | getting it in Firefox 8, 91/2 years ago. IE introduced it, in
       | version 4.)
       | 
       | I have more remarks I could make, but I'll leave it at that one.
       | It's the most interesting.
        
       | neckardt wrote:
       | Unfortunately I use Firefox with privacy.resistFingerprinting set
       | to true. This disables leaking time zone information, so when
       | javascript tries to query the time of day it gets a time 7 hours
       | ahead of my actual time zone.
       | 
       | In other words, this function would break websites for me, the
       | demo thinks it's night even though I haven't even had dinner yet.
        
         | hexane360 wrote:
         | I love resistFingerprinting, but I really wish it had a
         | whitelist for certain data on certain sites. Maybe I want my
         | calendar app to know what time zone I'm in!
        
         | throwawayfb996 wrote:
         | I think the demo always thinks it's night though, by design,
         | because that's the demo.
        
       | paxys wrote:
       | Trying to define or prescribe a standard sleep schedule for
       | everyone is pointless. There are people sleeping 9pm-5am and
       | others 2am-10am, sometimes in the same household. Some people
       | sleep fewer hours at night and take naps during the day. No
       | single habit is "correct".
       | 
       | Semi-related - I have had so many frustrating experiences with
       | government websites which only operate during business hours.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | ShakataGaNai wrote:
       | No. Just no.
       | 
       | Don't make assumptions about your users. Maybe it's important to
       | them. Maybe they have insomnia. Maybe they are staying up late.
       | Maybe they work early/late in concert with someone elsewhere in
       | the world. Maybe they're sleep schedule is different from yours
       | 
       | Or maybe they just work the night shift.
        
         | sodality2 wrote:
         | There is a "I'll sleep later, I really need to use this site
         | right now -" button, by the way.
        
       | lainga wrote:
       | Compare to HN's sentiment the last time this was posted!
       | 
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11777562
        
       | new299 wrote:
       | I'm a bit confused by the name, what's the Japan connection?
       | 
       | The developer seems to be called Masamichi Souzou (Zheng Dao
       | Xiang Xiang ) but doesn't seem to have any connection to Japan?
       | Is there something I've missed? Just seems odd to me.
        
         | krisroadruck wrote:
         | Culture fetishization.
        
       | tkiolp4 wrote:
       | I thought that the webserver would be actually in sleep mode,
       | like a laptop. That would be interesting though.
        
         | busymom0 wrote:
         | That won't work as visitors from many other time zones still
         | need to see it.
        
       | rozab wrote:
       | Apparently the DVLA got this memo. They've disabled all their web
       | forms outside of working hours.
        
       | chapium wrote:
       | This should be opt-in.
        
       | Breefield wrote:
       | No!
        
       | dimva wrote:
       | If anyone is motivated to do this for some weird reason, please
       | self-host the code instead of exposing your users to potential
       | hacking.
        
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       (page generated 2021-05-10 23:00 UTC)