[HN Gopher] Using an $8 smart outlet to avoid brainrot
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Using an $8 smart outlet to avoid brainrot
Author : NWChen
Score : 84 points
Date : 2025-06-22 12:43 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.neilchen.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.neilchen.co)
| bertwagner wrote:
| I've never thought of using a smart plug button as a switch to
| run a script - pretty neat idea I might use for some other
| projects.
|
| I hope you have more luck than me with sticking with the switch
| instead of just editing /etc/hosts.
| montroser wrote:
| I rigged up one of these so my wife could go push the button
| and her phone would play an alarm sound so she could find it
| when it goes missing.
|
| Was a good hack for a bit, but then the children figured out
| they could actually use the same button to _find their mom_,
| since the she was usually colocated with the phone!
| prideout wrote:
| Did you need to write an app for the phone?
| montroser wrote:
| I had the script call the phone, and set the phone to
| "emergency bypass" for that incoming number and set the
| ringtone to alarm bells
| whacko_quacko wrote:
| Love the idea! And thanks for sharing the script =)
| ozim wrote:
| I can imagine that could be nice feature on a router. Trigger fw
| blocking automatically but to unlock you have to go to the router
| and press physical button.
|
| I guess I can implement that on raspberry pi.
| teddyh wrote:
| I also hear that a rubber band on your wrist is useful for
| addiction.
| rob_c wrote:
| It's better than "I have to get off my arse" as it provides
| some real negative stimuli rather than appealling to sloth.
| noman-land wrote:
| How does this work?
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| A timer seems appropriate so it resets itself automatically.
| netsharc wrote:
| My anti-distraction setup uses multiple dnsmasqs, one of them has
| a long list of blocked (ad-)domains, and DNS tags, something like
| this (1).
|
| So the devices with the "black" tag have a different DNS server
| (it's the same computer, but it has 2 IPs), and has DNS-level ad-
| blocking (convenient for phones) and can't access reddit,
| Twitter, etc. One device doesn't have blocks, in case the
| aggressive blocking breaks something. I guess it'd be great to
| use a slow laptop to browse brainrot sites to discourage me from
| doing so.
|
| (1) https://stackoverflow.com/questions/22467430/dnsmasq-tags-
| an...
| AstroBen wrote:
| my problem with things like this is that it's trivially easy to
| just.. stop the script. What's the point when it adds so little
| friction?
| sokoloff wrote:
| For a lot of behavioral things, tiny nudges are just enough
| friction. At one point, I wrote a bit of CSS in stylus to hide
| the downvote button on HN to see how often I thought a downvote
| was really earned (not that often). It was trivial to undo [or
| use another browser], but gave just that small amount of
| friction to drive my own awareness.
| quitit wrote:
| The reason why social media and similar websites now have
| infinite scroll is because the _next page_ button provided you
| with a circuit breaker to stop and reconsider if you actually
| wanted to continue or if you were just mindlessly scrolling.
|
| So if you have a genuine intention not to use certain websites
| at particular times (e.g. work time), then having any kind of
| forced interruption can be useful for changing that behaviour.
|
| If you're looking to create genuine change, then making those
| websites load slowly is even more effective than going cold
| turkey (because it minimises the dopamingeric effects.)
| AstroBen wrote:
| Having tried that many times, it just doesn't work for me
|
| Maybe others have better luck
| layer8 wrote:
| The friction makes me want to disable the measure before it
| makes me want to stop the activity. And unlike paging in
| forums, I _can_ disable it. That's why these measures never
| work for me.
| amiga-workbench wrote:
| If you're getting to the point where you have to open a
| terminal, elevate to root and edit your hosts file, that's
| beyond a bored impulse. You know exactly what you're doing and
| you can stop yourself. That tiny bit of friction is enough to
| defeat the ingrained impulses and make you think.
| AstroBen wrote:
| > That tiny bit of friction is enough to defeat the ingrained
| impulses
|
| I don't know how people can keep saying this when I have
| first hand experience with it not being enough
| Aerbil313 wrote:
| People exist on a wide continuum of impulsivity. I have
| ADHD and nothing short of truly unbypassable restrictions
| on all my devices are enough. Mail me if interested.
| lcuff wrote:
| For some "a little friction" is enough. For others, not. I keep
| less-healthy food treats in a cupboard in my garage, because
| the friction of walking out to get them is enough to reduce my
| usage to an acceptable level. Even less healthy treats I don't
| buy, because the friction of going to the grocery store to get
| them when I'm craving them is enough.
|
| It's an interesting exercise to think about how this could be
| engineered to increase the friction.
| rob_c wrote:
| Trivial to some. I think the point is that the person a)
| dislikes getting up to click a switch, b) finds making such
| changes prohibitively difficult, at least enough to prove a
| dissuasion
| neilv wrote:
| At top of my uBlock Origin "My Filters" tab, I have a list of the
| Web sites like the following, which I comment (by prefixing each
| line with `!`) and un-comment, as needed.
| ||reddit.com^$important ||ycombinator.com^$important
|
| This is sufficient to defeat whatever muscle-memory you have to
| visit the site.
|
| If your addiction/habit is stronger, you might need to invest
| that $8.
| diggan wrote:
| Another approach is adding them to /etc/hosts as 127.0.0.1,
| which makes it slightly more cumbersome to edit and also stops
| muscle-memory from going CTRL+T then press "N" then down arrow
| then enter.
|
| No, not for me personally, I'd never.
| Theodores wrote:
| How does this work?
|
| Silly question, but I don't get it. Do you have to get something
| onto the smart outlet?
|
| ELIF!!!
| Jackim wrote:
| The script on the computer checks to see if the smart plug is
| on or off. Depending on the state, the script blocks or
| unblocks the websites. The smart plug is just acting as a
| button that is connected to your WiFi.
| 65 wrote:
| Something that works well is to block websites like YouTube or
| Instagram in regular browsing but keep them unblocked in
| Incognito mode. This forces you to sign in every time you want to
| use these sites.
| jerlam wrote:
| YouTube works fine in incognito mode so what am I missing? It
| just doesn't have any history or suggestions, until you watch a
| few videos.
| karaterobot wrote:
| Mullvad VPN's client blocks that stuff as well. That filter
| prevents me from unknowingly clicking a link here on HN and
| getting twitter on me.
| rob_c wrote:
| If editing the hosts file is enough to dissuade you... I'm
| guessing your not a distributed sysadmin by trade :/
| shinycode wrote:
| Instead of adding friction, part of the work of oneself is about
| finding the root cause of why we go into those places and
| understand up to which point spending too much time on those is
| not only detrimental to society but to me personally. I mean, a
| doctor would tell me that << you have brain rot >> would freak me
| so much that I would do anything to reverse or get rid of it
| asap. Idk, maybe after +20y of wasting time online I got that
| it's a ressource I won't ever get back and I resent wasting it
| too much now, which gets me off using all the links he blocked
| without efforts.
| matt_s wrote:
| Can switches like this also detect usage, like current flowing?
| It might be a fun and healthy twist to plug a walking
| pad/treadmill into a smart plug and then either make it so
| brainrot websites are only viewable when the treadmill is being
| used or make a small app that tracks the time the treadmill is
| used and then only allows that amount of time on brainrot
| websites.
| seemaze wrote:
| I've deployed countless Sonoff S31[0] which are easily hackable
| and have current monitoring capabilies
|
| [0]https://sonoff.tech/product/smart-plugs/s31-s31lite/
| stavros wrote:
| Yes, a lot of them do. There are some $5 plugs I use that
| monitor current and work great:
|
| https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005729080838.html
|
| The price varies a lot between listings, I think the cheapest I
| got them was $20 for 4 or so.
| cardanome wrote:
| One thing that finally worked for me was using: https://one-
| sec.app/
|
| It basically forces you to do a little breathing exercise before
| you can visit the site that you have on its block list.
|
| It has been life changing. It adds enough friction for me to stop
| any impulsive visits but also is not so annoying that I would
| completely disable it in a weak moment.
|
| One Sec was developed by someone with ADHD, I think and it
| definitely shows.
|
| It is important to understand that not every solution will work
| for everyone. There can be many reasons why you struggle with
| social media addictions. Ultimately those corporations are
| spending millions and employ state of the art psychological
| manipulation tactics to keep you engaged so it is important to be
| kind to yourself. Don't give up. You might find something that
| works for you.
| bapak wrote:
| I tried it and it literally could not last one launch on my
| phone. The only action that can save me from Instagram is
| uninstalling the app. I have the web app installed but it's too
| slow to feed my addiction, so I rarely open it.
| HK-NC wrote:
| Only works for one app with the free version.
| cardanome wrote:
| They have a 7 day free trial. Just cancel it immediately
| after setting it up so you don't forget it. You can still use
| the full 7 days.
|
| Though it is 14,99 Euro per YEAR, so pretty fair pricing,
| anyway.
| spacemadness wrote:
| Interesting. How does this work with iOS? It seems like
| something Apple wouldn't allow.
| elektor wrote:
| It used the Shortcuts app to essentially be a middle man
| between you and the distraction. So everyone I open Safari,
| it triggers the other app (the 5 second timer), then
| redirects me back to safari.
| orionsbelt wrote:
| I quickly adapted and this barely slowed me down. I recommend
| the following iOS apps:
|
| 1. Jomo - you can create block lists of distracting apps. Like
| OneSec, when you try to open a blocked app, it makes you wait 5
| seconds or more. More importantly, on that screen, you can
| select 5 minutes, so that it only gives you 5 minutes of
| unblocked access.
|
| 2. Brick - a physical device with an NFC tag you put somewhere.
| Block all the distracting apps on your phone. If you want to
| look at them, you need to physically scan the Brick with your
| phone to get back in.
| rr808 wrote:
| Anyone know the state of IoT buttons? Most seem to have gone out
| of production. (An outlet seems like a great alternative )
| LeSaucy wrote:
| IKEA remotes are inexpensive and work really well with a proper
| zigbee adapter and zigbee2mqtt. Home assistant you can build
| actions right from the web ui.
| layer8 wrote:
| This would work (even?) better if it wasn't a switch, but a push
| button with the unblocking automatically timing out after some
| interval. Otherwise you're prone to just letting it stay on
| unblock.
|
| The Amazon Dash buttons could be hacked to do something like
| that.
| abound wrote:
| Similarly: https://flic.io/
|
| Little programmable buttons, they're great. I've used them for
| similar habit formation stuff, in my case not ignoring my
| alarm, by making the button the only way to shut it off, and
| putting the button very far away from bed.
| layer8 wrote:
| Nice, but pretty expensive at $35 for the simplest button.
| For comparison, an IKEA smart button/dimmer is only $10.
| stavros wrote:
| Sonoff buttons are even cheaper, I think. IKEA buttons work
| well too, though.
| layer8 wrote:
| In Europe they are more expensive than the IKEA ones for
| some reason, but thanks for the tip, they look nice.
| stavros wrote:
| It depends where you get them from, I get mine from Ali
| for around $7? Locally they cost around 7 EUR as well,
| IIRC.
| layer8 wrote:
| I only see prices above 9 EUR on AliExpress, but it's
| still a good price.
| Papazsazsa wrote:
| The best investment I have ever made was buying a forever license
| from https://freedom.to/
|
| timed and customizable blocklists, multiple devices
| amelius wrote:
| What prevents you from killing the polling script and editing
| /etc/hosts back to its original state?
|
| I think a modified Pi-hole would serve this purpose better, as it
| would leave no other option than getting out of your chair and
| taking action (assuming you made it impossible to ssh into the
| device).
| Jotalea wrote:
| For some reason, I thought this switch altered the electrical
| power for the router and thus acting as a physical barrier, not
| allowing it to request those servers. I guess my imagination just
| went wild.
| warunsl wrote:
| I have been using Foqos app since a month now and it's been
| amazing on my iPhone. You can create a block list of apps and
| when you start "Foqos" those apps will be blocked. You have to
| unblock before using those apps. But here is the best part. The
| unblocking can be configured such that it does only when you tap
| on a NFC tag. I spend a lot of time on the phone as soon as I
| wake up. So I have been blocking before sleep and keeping the NFC
| tag in the garage. Amazing setup for me.
|
| This app I assume is exactly like the more mainstream Brick app
| but this app lets you configure any off the shelf NFC tags which
| you can get under $5.
| remuskaos wrote:
| This is insanely clever.
|
| I can't use ublock origin for that because I want all devices in
| my home to take advantage of this, so I've reimplemented this
| with Home Assistant, Adguard Home and the Adguard Home
| integration into Home Assistant.
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(page generated 2025-06-22 23:00 UTC)