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Comment by hnick | Hacker News Reader

When I changed ISPs I also changed my modem, which is in the closet in our master bedroom. It's brighter than a disco so I bought some light dimmer stickers. It's still too bright so once I remember where I put them, I'm going to add another layer. It's ridiculous. The only upside is that they are green instead of blue, thankfully.

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The Asus RT-AC1900 router (and probably others) has a button on the back to turn all the LEDs on or off. Would be nice if everything had that. I'm sure it's caused some customer confusion at some point but it resets to the lights being on when it's rebooted.

My router (an Archer, can't recall the model) has a "night mode" configurable where the LEDs are disabled during a given time range.

I haven't bothered to turn it on since it lives in the hallway, but at least the option is available.

Thanks for sharing this. I checked my router config and found the option to turn off LED lights except power. A more elegant solution than electrical tape I had been using before.

Modern TVs often have an on-screen menu option to turn off annoying LEDs.

interestingly, the human eye is most sensitive to green light, in the sense of perceived-brightness-per-lumen.

I didn't know that! Maybe that's why it's so annoying. My reference to blue was the common belief (fact?) that blue light messes with wakefulness hormones and isn't a good idea around bedtime (hence f.lux).

A lumen is already a measure of perceived brightness.

You can have a 10 watt UV light, but you can't have a 10 lumen UV light for example.

oops, I meant radiant flux instead of lumens.

Notably, while green LED's exist, we haven't yet managed to make an efficient green LED.

If we had, then illuminating streets etc. with green LED's would save a lot of electricity for the same perceived brightness.

It is good then that we have not. Green light is the most ugliest kind in my opinion.

Black car touch up paint is what I usually use. Either that or nail polish.

It's hard to go wrong with electrical tape. I haven't found an LED that could shine through it yet.

Same here. Black electrical tape. Also useful on laptop/monitor/tablet/phone webcams and mics. :)

Electrical tape turns to goop after a few months(years), black duct tape lasts slightly longer

Electrical tape was useless on my ASUS router with its blinding blue LEDs. Three layers didn't even get rid of the problem, because the lights are so bright that they shine through the white plastic casing of the router. It's incredibly annoying. I finally placed the router inside a cereal box.

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