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By Usama Jawad96 · Posted
Someone wrote a script to block 'brainrot' content online using an $8 smart plug by Usama Jawad Original image via Neil Chen Many people use smart plugs nowadays due to the various advantages they offer, including automation, integration with mobile software, increased home security, better energy efficiency, and compatibility with other smart products. However, a smart plug customer has gone a step further by enhancing their hardware in a way that it blocks them from viewing "brainrot" content online, or any website, for that matter. As seen in a popular thread over on Hacker News, a person known as "NWChen" has written a script that connects to the $8 Kasa Smart Wi-Fi Plug Mini and utilizes it to restrict access to websites of your choice. In essence, this plug then acts as a physical switch that you can toggle to visit certain websites. NWChen's main motivation behind this initiative was to avoid brainrot, with examples listed as X (formerly known as Twitter), Instagram, YouTube, and Reddit in their blog post. In terms of technical functionality, the smart plug connects to Wi-Fi (obviously) and hosts a physical switch that can be used to turn it on and off. NWChen's script connects to the smart plug via an API and then polls its state. If it's on, websites of your choice get restricted and you can't open them anymore, until you physically get up and turn off the plug, or remove the website from you blocklist. NWChen has recommended plugging in the hardware far away from you so there is sufficient resistance in turning off the plug. In the thread, many have praised this invention, believing that the nature of this mechanism provides enough hurdles where you'd rather just not visit the problematic websites anymore. However, some have noted that "those without self control cannot be trusted if they hold the switch". Some have also highlighted a problem where a user can simply stop the script's execution without much friction. Overall, it's a fairly interesting setup, even if it's fairly rudimentary in nature. Configuring this physical block with a Kasa smart plug is fairly easy. You can simply download the script from the laptop-brick GitHub project here, install it, get the IP address of your smart plug, and then use it when you're executing the script. You can modify the blocklist using a dedicated file present inside the GitHub project. -
By Paul1979UK · Posted
We'll probably mirror the EU rule, we've done that in many other areas, but if we don't, well we can add this as another reason why Brexit shouldn't have happened. Personally, if I started to get ads in WhatsApp, that would be a big incentive for me to want to switch to an alternative, and I doubt it will be difficult for me to get my contacts to change as well. -
By Paul1979UK · Posted
It reminds me of fossil fuels, as they try to push the price up and renewable energy continues to get better and cheaper, it's putting the squeeze on the fossil fuel industry. In this case, bringing jobs back to modern countries with higher wages would be a big incentive for corporations to remove humans from the workforce and replace them with AI and robotics, and the funny thing is about that, consumers will demand it because they want things cheaper not more expensive, also corporations will be forced to do it if they want to survive against others that go that route. At the end of the day, they didn't pick cheap labour because they wanted to do so, they did so because competition forced companies to do so, bringing jobs back to western countries would make these companies less competitive on the world stage, unless they use a lot more AI and robotics to remove a lot of humans from the workforce. With that said, bringing jobs back to more stable regions and using AI and robotics does have the benefit of reducing the risk of political trade wars and tariffs, but let's forget this idea of jobs coming back home to higher paying wages, that idea is dead in the water with the advancement of AI and robotics, and with humans, it would only end up making a lot more things more expensive. -
By Paul1979UK · Posted
Slave, assistant, companion? I think that line will blur a lot as robotics become more human like that, it wouldn't surprise me if a lot of us see them as a friend or even more. -
By Paul1979UK · Posted
It's all about flexibility, we've designed a world around humans, so having robots that can work in human like environments with the same flexibility we have, offers a lot of advantages in many areas. With that said, for specific tasks, there are better ways than human like robots, but it really depends on what task you want to do. Also, we should remember, even thought we can build human like robots, they can be built so they are stronger, faster and cheaper than we can work, so even thought that likely not as fast or as cheap as automation, it's certainly a lot more flexible and far cheaper than humans.
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