by remuskaos on 6/22/25, 8:26 PM with 197 comments
by userbinator on 6/22/25, 10:04 PM
by polivier on 6/22/25, 10:42 PM
Many years ago we gave our then-toddler an old digital camera to play with. Some time later, we looked at the pictures he took. We were horrified to find out that he took pictures of the outside of the house at night. As in, our toddler would unlock and open the front door, go outside (at night!), take pictures of the house, go back in, close and lock the door, and go back into his bed. I bought some wireless door sensors and created an automation where if the sensors are triggered between 10pm and 6am, the lights in our room would turn on to wake us up.
I expanded this later and today we have sensors on all doors/windows that kids can use to leave the house (we have 4 young kids). As it happens, these are the same doors/windows that burglars can use to enter the house, so this doubles as an alarm system (that we can activate when we leave the house and will notify us remotely if the sensors are triggered).
The best part is that with Home Assistant you are not locked into an app/ecosystem. Our door/window sensors are of a different brand than our lightbulbs, and we control everything from a single app.
by AdieuToLogic on 6/23/25, 2:48 AM
1 - on an off day, with no reason to require phone use,
put your phone in a dresser drawer for the day and
do not use or look at it.
2 - on an off day, with no reason to require phone use,
put your phone in a dresser drawer for the day and
leave your residence for at least one hour.
3 - leave your phone at home when either meeting friends,
getting lunch, or going to the grocery store.
4 - leave your phone at home when going into the office
for one day.
5 - leave your phone in a dresser drawer for an entire
weekend.
6 - leave your phone at home when traveling for more
than a day (vacation, visiting family, etc.).by tmhrtly on 6/22/25, 11:02 PM
The only downside is that the Safari extension is granted full access to my web browsing in order to facilitate the website blocking. They say they don’t capture any data and at this point do trust them (you may feel differently). For blocking apps, no private data sharing is required.
by gerdesj on 6/22/25, 11:20 PM
If it is important, then if wifi/ethernet out then it should still work. So my doorbell used to have a link to a mechanical chime (Doorbird), the current Reolink jobbie does not but it is PoE and all my switches have UPS. The Reolink does have a separate chime that plugs into a power socket and a way better camera.
Oh and none of my home things ever get unfettered access to the internet. I have two VLANs for IoT: things is for most devices and sewer is for those that scare me somewhat.
I treat the whole thing the same way I do corporate IT and I do point Nessus at it. I have several Home Assistants that I look after - home and work and several customer ones too.
The OP's choice of smart plug is clearly designed to be mildly inconvenient to get at but also reliable. I'll put money on there being a monitoring function too.
That's a nerd that does things "proper like".
by hydrogen7800 on 6/23/25, 12:39 PM
by alkonaut on 6/23/25, 6:29 AM
by stavros on 6/22/25, 9:40 PM
by remuskaos on 6/22/25, 8:26 PM
I've used his idea and make a home assistant automation that temporarily disables adguard home to do the same thing.
by rlue on 6/23/25, 5:06 PM
"I've leveraged my home automation system to limit my access to social media to 15 minutes at a time, no more than once an hour. Using the built-in adblock feature, my router black-holes DNS queries to social media by default—which I can now disable temporarily by pushing the button on any one of several smart outlets around my house."
by ricardobeat on 6/22/25, 11:22 PM
by weq on 6/23/25, 3:02 AM
I quite tech at home when i started working as a software engineer over 20yrs ago. Hobbies are a great way to break free, and quitting news fullstop is another good way to avoid social media. You dont even need to delete your accounts, just turn off all notifications of every app and avoid coupling your life to them in any way.
by urbandw311er on 6/22/25, 9:41 PM
by FrankPetrilli on 6/22/25, 9:37 PM
by varenc on 6/22/25, 11:17 PM
Quite easy, but doesn't help anyone but me. Though I like that it only disables blocking on my device and not my entire network.
by baggachipz on 6/23/25, 12:13 PM
[1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pi-hole-remote/id1515445551
by neurostimulant on 6/23/25, 1:19 PM
by guluarte on 6/23/25, 7:24 PM
by suprjami on 6/22/25, 9:49 PM
Their routers are OpenWrt compatible by design, the factory firmware is based on owrt or you can flash upstream for a "pure" image. I've used them for many years and they're great.
by BrandoElFollito on 6/23/25, 6:11 PM
by cess11 on 6/23/25, 9:20 AM
Shame has a better and longer track record.
by awaymazdacx5 on 6/22/25, 10:52 PM
by jz10 on 6/22/25, 11:49 PM
by orsenthil on 6/23/25, 1:36 PM
by cdg007 on 6/23/25, 3:33 AM
by roscas on 6/23/25, 10:35 AM
by p1necone on 6/22/25, 9:50 PM
Drop the idea that short form content like youtube shorts or tik toks or whatever is somehow ignoble and worthy of scorn. Recognize it's just a fun way to kill some time.
Internalized that? Cool.
Now find a comfy place to sit or lie down and binge that shit. For hours. Do it for as long as it brings you joy. Had your fill? Cool.
Keep doing this, whenever you've got some free time and there isn't something else you want to do more binge that short form "brainrot" content. Do not let the thought that you're somehow "wasting" your time enter your mind. You're having fun, and that's all that matters.
If you're anything like me once you've internalized the idea that it's just dumb short videos for fun and you've watched hours of them, you'll just get bored of it. Maybe you'll spend 20 minutes scrolling occasionally but your brain aint gonna rot.