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Oh man if they think YouTube and Instagram are addicting they should see what Roblox does lol

As someone who maybe fired about Roblox once like three years ago, what does Roblox do that is way more addicting than YouTube and Instagram, and also I guess they're ignoring reports showing the harm even more than YouTube and Instagram, if I understand you correctly?

It's an interactive world - where games can be built by anyone (I personally know/met some of the devs) and all the games have some randomization/gambling mechanics involved. Lootboxes is just one tiny example. Infinite novely - there's literally infinite number of games one can play.

I don't have time right now to provide a full/quality answer with more examples - you can do a bit of seraching online to learn more.

Also from personal expeirence as well (from family and friends). When their kids comeover they have tiktok on their phone and roblox on their laptop


Right, but that sounds like a bunch of video games. Question is, is Roblox specifically designed to be addictive, like Facebook/Instagram/TikTok? And if they are, did the companies willfully ignore reports about how dangerous it was?

If the answer is just "No" to both of those questions, then it sounds like a regular video game that can be addictive (like everything else), but it wasn't specifically designed to be addictive, like some social networks are designed.


Aside from daily login rewards, loot boxes, gamifying gambling behaviors and FOMO designed micro purchases? Roblox is bad and many times if your nearby is absolutely not appropriate for kids and I’m quite liberal on what’s appropriate beyond normalizing emotional damage.

https://pure.psu.edu/en/publications/the-system-is-made-to-i...

The funniest one? The 10-k discussing legal issues as risk regarding addiction

Hardwick et al. (2025) “They’re Scamming Me”: How Children Experience and Conceptualize Harm in Game Monetization https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/5164006.pdf?abstra...

Kou, Hernandez, Gui (2025) “The System is Made to Inherently Push Child Gambling in my Opinion”: Child Safety, Monetization, and Moderation on Roblox https://pure.psu.edu/en/publications/the-system-is-made-to-i...

Song et al. (2025) How Predatory Monetization Designs Manifest in Child-Directed Online Games (SOUPS 2025) https://www.usenix.org/system/files/soups2025-song.pdf

Kou & Gui (2023) Harmful Design in the Metaverse and How to Mitigate It: A Case Study of User-Generated Virtual Worlds on Roblox https://sites.psu.edu/healthandplay/files/2023/05/Harmful-De...

Tunca et al. (2025) Navigating parental concerns in children’s engagement with Roblox https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12821821/

Roblox Corporation (2024 Form 10-K) https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1315098/000131509825... I find this hilarious.

Not all games are created equal, I loved Zelda tears of the kingdom and the sounds and rewarding game were in my opinion addictive however they are not in the same league as roblox

The best part is when you get a cohort of a few families to go camping and teenage daughter forced dad to drive 45 minutes each way for cell service to avoid breaking the daily login chain.

I don’t think people appreciate how these mechanisms impact society as a whole


There's also Prodigy which schools push on kids to practice math has the same thing including pay to win mechanics.

> Should you focus on SEO in the early days of your startup? Probably not

I would completely disagree with this (product dependent).

If your product is a consumer app - I would highly prioritize and understand SEO before even having a product complete. Develop a good understanding of SEO around your product domain and niche.

If it’s a B2B - then yes, I would agree.


Any advice for (mostly edu) non profit SEO?


Some of these sites - wow. I literally can’t fall asleep right now (reading this in bed) scrolling through all these. So many good resources. Thank you for sharing. This is why I love HN


TypeQuicker (https://typequicker.com) - personalized and engaging typing application.

Anyone can learn to type fast - I think it just takes the right tools to make it interesting enough for the users to use daily


I really want someone to build this:

Using a webcam, monitor finger movements and find mistakes (using some sort of AI video analysis) to help user figure out how to improve. It's a hard thing to build but if you build it there is going to be paying customers. You can even sell hardware and subscriptions with it. Lots of schools want this!


I liked your onboarding on /welcome, but the plan feels weird for me:

- 1 Month instead of "Monthly" as it's a subscription and you're not really purchasing a "one month pass", correct?

- the same for the other plans


Thank!

> 1 Month instead of "Monthly" as it's a subscription and you're not really purchasing a "one month pass", correct?

Goo point - I have monthly/annually below but it might be confusing still. I’ll update to clarify. Thanks


Cool! I found your solution a while ago while searching for something similar, do you plan to support other locales and/or keyboard layouts in the future?


Absolutely!

Focusing on just English for now but hoping to add Spanish, French and a few other locales.

Regarding layouts: we already support;

- QWERTZ (German layout) - Qwerty - Dvorak - Colemak

This includes the visual guide and the hand positioning.

Adding more soon! But these have been the most requested


Really pretty keyboard widget, though it did slightly confuse me that is showing the next key, not what I actually typed.


Thanks!

Good point - yeah, the idea is that it can help users stop looking down at the keyboards. It serves as a visual guide for how to position there hands correctly using the standard “touch typing” positioning.

Thanks for mentioning it was confusing - I’ll add a short Driver.js walkthrough that explains what it’s for


I share this sentiment.

In general - I don’t know if it’s a coincidence but here on HN for example, I’ve noticed an increasing amount of comments and posts emphasizing the narrative of how “well- intended” Anthropic is.


Feel free to judge them by their actions rather than intentions. This situation being an example.


Oh there’s a popular Portuguese song call Saudede:

https://youtu.be/eQul-rkcGPQ


This is also the title and theme of a song by Porno Graffiti. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzsB4eKPdJI


The German press called the song a Weltschmerz-ballad.


Exactly


Building https://typequicker.com

We’re aiming to build the best typing application; personalized to every users typing habits.

Typing is one of the most important hard skills today and yet most education systems skip it.

Most of our customers are adults who always wanted to type but can’t find the time. We make it faster to learn and improve by focusing around the user’s weak points (with our features like SmartPractice and TargetPractice)


Building TypeQuicker: https://typequicker.com

Started as a side project but has become my full time focus since leaving a FAANG job ~6months ago

So far we've added:

- Code typing practice with any language: https://typequicker.com/code-typing-practice - SmartPractice: analyzes your history stats to find weak areas and generates exercises for them: https://typequicker.com/app/text - TargetPractice: lets you interact with any of your stats; for example, clicking on a certain bigram that you typed slowly will create a natural practice text that targets that two character sequence - TypeAnything: let you create a typing exercise about anything; AI for typing pretty much - Advanced stas: we measure every character, 2,3 charcter sequences (delay to click in ms), every word, and even breakdown speed/accuracy per finger - Real-time hand/finger indicators: show you exactly where to place your fingers to type based on standard touch typing practices - Keyboards supported: QWERTY, QWERTZ (German keyboard) ISO, British ISO (adding Dvorak and Colemak soo).


This is the second time I’m hearing of Nushell.

I wanted to try it the first time I heard about it but completely slipped my mind so this is a good reminder.


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