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Comment by bonsai_spool | Hacker News Reader

Why not have local DNS at your router and do a block there? It can even be per-client with adguardhome

I did that, but my router doesn't offer a documented API (or even a ssh access) that I can use to reprogram DNS blocks dynamically. I wanted to stop YouTube only during homework hours, so enabling/disabling it a few times per day quickly became tiresome.

Your router almost certainly lets you assign a DNS instead of using whatever your ISP sends down so you set it to an internal device running your DNS.

Your DNS mostly passes lookup requests but during homework time, when there's a request for the ip for "www.youtube.com" it returns the ip of your choice instead of the actual one. The domain's TTL is 5 minutes.

Or don't, technical solutions to social problems are of limited value.

Any solution based on this sounds monstruously more complicated than my browser addon.

And technical bandaids to hyperactivity, however imperfect, are damn useful.

A browser add-on wouldn't do the job. The use case was a parent controlling a child's behavior, not someone controlling their own.

Yes, my kid has ADHD. The browser add-on does the job at slowing down the impulse of going to YouTube (and a few online gaming sites) during homework hours.

I've deployed the same one for me, but setup for Reddit during work hours.

Both of us know how to get around the add-on. It's not particularly hard. But since Firefox is the primary browser for both of us, it does the trick.

For those that don't want to build their own addon, Cold turkey Blocker works quite well. It supports multiple browsers and can block apps too.

I'm not affiliated with them, but it has helped me when I really need to focus.

https://getcoldturkey.com/

I think dnsmasq plus a cron on a server of your choice will do this pretty easily. With an LLM you could set this up in less than 15 minutes if you already have a server somewhere (even one in the home).

Thanks for the tip.

In this case, I don't have a server I can conveniently use as DNS. Plus I wanted to also control the launching of some binaries, so that would considerably complicate the architecture.

Maybe next time :)

Makes sense! Keeping your home tech simple definitely a recipe for a happier life when you have kids haha

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