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Comment by dorkwood | Hacker News Reader

This is one of my main pet peeves with modern life. I've never seen it discussed before, and no one I've brought it up with seems to share my annoyance.

It's currently the middle of the day, and my microphone has a visibly bright blue LED that I can't disable without dismantling it or unplugging it.

When I turn my monitor off at night, it has a flashing white LED, presumably to assure me that it is in standby for when I wake back up and decide to turn my computer on again. A note for any readers: to disable this LED, you need to turn the monitor off by navigating through the menu and choosing 'monitor off', and not by hitting the power button itself.

My router and modem light up the other side of my apartment with red and blue flashing lights.

The solution seems to be to cover everything up with unsightly black tape. That will solve everything except for the microphone, which has its LED buried deep within its bowels somewhere.

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I use black tape too. It is getting worse and worse. Now that we have USB-C cables with electronics in them they just cannot resist adding a LED light. But Why?

I especially hate getting a hotel room late at night and discovering that it is full of LEDs at odd places where you cannot just socks over them.

A simple solution and less obvious than tape is to paint over the LED (dob it) with nail varnish. Depending on the applied thickness, the LED can be blanked out completely or simply just attenuated to your desired amount. (The tiny brush that comes with the varnish is just ideal for the purpose.)

The nail varnish can be diluted with varnish remover or when necessary just removed by it. HOWEVER BE CAREFUL - TEST AN INCONSPICUOUS PART OF THE SURFACE OF YOUR APPLIANCE WITH BOTH THE VARNISH AND REMOVER AS BOTH CONTAIN ACETONE WHICH CAN SOFTEN, MARK OR DISSOLVE PLASTIC.

Incidentally, I keep a range of nail varnishes of various colors in the workshop, they're very useful for locking the position of coil slugs and potentiometers, and the varnish can be snap-broken without damage to the components (and nail varnish is usually easier to obtain than coil dope).

ANOTHER WARNING — BUY YOUR OWN (DON'T STEAL IT FROM YOUR BETTER HALF OR YOU'LL BE IN DEEP YOU-KNOW-WHAT (I KNOW FROM EXPERIENCE)).

Back in the day, I'd use nail polish/varnish to color over the windows of EEPROMS that I didn't want to erase. And we used to use red polish on EEPROMS with classified/secret data on it for military contracts.

And also, back in the day, we'd sit in the lab and paint our nails with the red polish while we were waiting 30 minutes for the Data General Nova to compile our code.

I really do relate: I have put pieces of electric insulation black tape on all the LEDs everywhere I can't turn off!

Best devices have an option to turn lights off though, which makes me happy when I find it.

The only thing in my apartment that has power overnight or when I'm out are the fridge and the internet router. Everything else is turned off and physically disconnected from the power grid. No blinking LEDs, no coil whine from power supplies and my power bill is ridiculously low compared to my friends'.

Some manufacturers noticed this anti-LED trend, though. My work monitors have a nice feature where I can disable the power LED permanently even when it's on.

Don't the blinking clocks on the oven and microwave bother you? :)

I have my microwave and toaster oven plugged into a power bar that I only turn on when I need to use them. Also disassembled my microwave to disconnect the beeper.

I have an oven and a microwave without digital timer. The perks of buying cheaper appliances!

Likewise. Mine is years old and was expensive when I bought it. It uses a rotary timer which is much easier and quicker to use. As I've mentioned elsewhere in these posts, ergonomics is important, and in this instance the simplest is also the easiest to use.

Try https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffsb&q=3M+Aluminum+tape&ia=shoppin... instead?

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