I'm 35 and couldn't finish reading articles anymore, so I built this
Hey HN, the full story is on the page, but here's the TL;DR: I'm 35 and somewhere along the way I lost the ability to finish reading articles. I'd open them, read 2-3 paragraphs, get distracted, and close the tab feeling like a failure. My "Read Later" list became a graveyard of 2,000+ unread articles. I tried everything – focus apps, reader modes, blocking extensions. Nothing worked. Then I realized. 'maybe the problem isn't me'. Modern web articles are designed for engagement metrics, not comprehension. Sidebars, popups, related articles, comment sections – everything is optimized to pull…
What it does
In the maker’s words, at launch
Hey HN, the full story is on the page, but here's the TL;DR: I'm 35 and somewhere along the way I lost the ability to finish reading articles. I'd open them, read 2-3 paragraphs, get distracted, and close the tab feeling like a failure. My "Read Later" list became a graveyard of 2,000+ unread articles. I tried everything – focus apps, reader modes, blocking extensions. Nothing worked. Then I realized. 'maybe the problem isn't me'. Modern web articles are designed for engagement metrics, not comprehension. Sidebars, popups, related articles, comment sections – everything is optimized to pull your attention away. So I built Parsely. It shows one paragraph at a time, blurs everything else. Stupidly simple. But it worked. I'm finally finishing articles again. Tech stack: WXT framework, TypeScript, Mozilla Readability (same as Firefox Reader View), Shadow DOM for style isolation. Code is MIT licensed: https://github.com/TeamOliveCode/parsely Happy to answer questions about the implementation or commiserate about our collective attention spans!
Does the same job
all alternatives →- TYTurn your “read later” folder into a physical book2020 · ▲204
Hi HN! Being locked down with plenty of time in my hands, I clearly noticed a problem that I faced and also felt passionate about tackling. - Excessive screen time in our day-to-day - Diminishing attention spans It was consistently tough to properly read quality longform content online. From screen related tiredness to having ads and notifications pop up and demand a share of my attention, my focus was compromised. Long story short, I wanted to read longform content that lives online (and there is a ton of high quality out there), in an inherent offline medium, paper :p Fast forward 5…
- BMBecause most of us suffer from AD(H)D, here is too-long-didnt-read.com2011 · ▲7
Hey HN crowd! Two days ago I realized I'm almost unable to read a book or a long article without getting distracted by Twitter/HN/Reddit/Work. The situation is so terrible, I'm even getting afraid of big articles, and my ReadItLater list is getting pretty long (shameful I know) ... and I'm pretty sure most of you are in this situation :) Being used to TL;DRs on long reddit posts, I thought it would be great to have these for everything, so I quickly hacked this website: http://www.too-long-didnt-read.com/ Here is an example of TL;DR: http://www.too-long-didnt-read.com/5tropy I would love to…
- IMI made a better interface for Google Tasks and I can't go back2011 · gtasker.com · ▲122
I recently decided to try out Google Tasks as my only task management system, and while I find some things about the interface great, it really isn't suited for someone like me who has multiple lists with lots of elements on each. So, I whipped this together real fast and I can't imagine using Google Tasks without it anymore. I realized you might want it too, so I put it on the web. Enjoy :)
More life & fun this month
the category →- TL
Life & fun · 10d ago · louisabraham.github.io
Photosynthesis fires two of your iPhone
Life & fun · 29d ago · photosynthesis.camera
SoloUno▲310Take control of hair pulling, nail biting & skin picking
Life & fun · 28d ago · solouno.io
Scroll through all 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 reachable Rubik's Cube permutations.
Life & fun · 27d ago · everycube.alen.is
Hi HN, I built Eigendrum, a web tool that solves the 2D wave equation for arbitrary shapes so you can hear what they sound like as drums. How it works: * Solves -∇²u = λu using finite element analysis (Kφ = λMφ) on a triangle mesh. * Validated to <0.1% error against closed-form solutions for circles (Bessel zeros) and rectangles. * Sound model factors in strike location, Rayleigh damping, and mallet width. * Includes Kac drums I & II to demonstrate identical sound spectra from different geometries. * No frameworks, build steps, or dependencies. Repo and tests:…
Life & fun · 27d ago · baselashraf81.github.io
Launched alongside, January 2026
the whole month →- IN
Hey HN! I wanted to share something I built over the last few weeks: isometric.nyc is a massive isometric pixel art map of NYC, built with nano banana and coding agents. I didn't write a single line of code. Of course no-code doesn't mean no-engineering. This project took a lot more manual labor than I'd hoped! I wrote a deep dive on the workflow and some thoughts about the future of AI coding and creativity: http://cannoneyed.com/projects/isometric-nyc
AI · Jan 2026 · cannoneyed.com
Automatic AI-powered code reviews the moment you open a PR
Dev tools · Jan 2026 · kilo.ai
