TabBoo – add random jumpscares to websites you're trying to avoid
137 comments
·January 22, 2025bbx
eieio
I was a tester for this game! Testing it with a small group was hilarious; I was super motivated to try to win (although I rarely won) since I knew everyone else playing and the notifications came all the time because Justin was doing lots of testing. It absolutely ruined me (which is the point!)
gond
This is a gold mine, too:
https://www.unoptimal.com/automated-ragequit
Love it! Now needed more than ever.
lucb1e
Only shows a link for iOS and it also says "concluded" so it sounds like even if I had an Apple device, it has been shut down?
If so, I'm very tempted to make a variant that uses email since I'll run an email server with cronjobs forever anyway (for my other million projects). Will shoot the author a (you guessed it) email to check if they're okay with that when due credits are given!
codazoda
The app is still available on iOS but if you open it the screen only shows "THE END" and a winner is announced. It also says, "Stay tuned for hte next game.". So, maybe it is dead now.
joshdavham
ChatGPT Youtube Player is also hilarious: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/chatgpt-youtube-pla...
It plays a youtube video while you wait for chatGPT to finish responding to your prompt lmao!
madeofpalk
As much as this is the complete opposite of what I consider to be a healthy way to use computers, this is really neat.
vrighter
I unintentionally made something that had a similar effect once.
I wrote an application (back when android phones still had notification leds) that allowed us employees to notify each other whether our boss was in the building or not. A state change could be triggered by anyone from their phone (there was some "debouncing" server side), which then popped up a silent notification on everyone's phone telling them who updated the status, as well as switched the color of the notification LED (green meant the boss had left the office, red meant that he was in).
It got pretty funny watching everyone scramble for their phones as soon as our boss closed the door, each time he had to leave. And of course, they competed to see whose name would show up in the notification.
gunian
as if my life isn't gameified for entertainment already lol
ancientstraits
This is a very unexpected way to try combatting addiction. I don't know how well it will work, but I will consider it.
mordechai9000
Negative reinforcement. There's a strategy for smoking where you put a wad of hair in your cigarettes. I used nicotine patches myself, so I can't speak to the efficacy.
3PS
Nit: that's not what negative reinforcement means. Negative reinforcement is about removing a negative stimulus, like inducing someone to go to a desirable website by improving their initially bad text contrast whenever they go there.
In this case, jumpscaring yourself would just be considered punishment (or "positive punishment").
Terr_
To re-frame it as a list of combinations:
* Positive reinforcement: [Adding] something so that entity does the action [more]
* Negative reinforcement: [Removing] something so that entity does the action [more]
* Positive punishment: [Adding] something so that entity does the action [less]
* Negative punishment: [Removing] something so that entity does the action [less]
P.S.: Note that this intentionally avoids diving into exactly how the Entity judges the Something. It's not always clear, even if in many cases you can guess.
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spoonfeeder006
There's also Allen Carr's books about treating addiction, and they don't use negative reinforcement, at least the ones I've read
Rather it helps you learn to recognize the fallacies behind the addictive cravings themselves, and to thus resolve the core of why you turn to that in the first place
Still have to make the decision to recall those in the moment, but when you do you do neutralize the cravings
His first book was Easy Way to Stop Smoking
For digital addiction there's Smart Phone, Dumb Phone
For internet porn there's easypeasymethod.org (based on EasyWay to Stop Smoking)
epolanski
I know two people that quit with that book, both more than 20 years ago. One restarted few years ago, the other one never smoked again.
kazinator
I put wads of toenail clippings like ))))) in my Lisp code.
Didn't work; still at it, 25 years and counting.
sebastiennight
I'll admit that I went quite far in your comment history to figure out if maybe those 5 closing parentheses were matching some long-lost post of yours, and as a Lisp addict you couldn't resist the temptation.
Alas, I am disappointed to inform you that your comment history will no longer compile :(
:)
fourg
I genuinely hope you find a way to quit. you made me do an audible gag sound.
robertlagrant
> toenail clippings like ))))) in my Lisp code
I smell a custom font opportunity.
rjmill
Yeah, counting parens! Dohohoho!
thfuran
As someone who has smelled burning hair, it at least sounds plausible. On the other hand, cigarette smoke already doesn't smell good.
yapyap
people who smoke on the daily have already tuned out cigarette smoke mentally, the burning hair however is rancid to anyone.
danielbln
Cigarette smoke is vile, but burned hair is another level.
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corobo
> where you put a wad of hair in your cigarettes
Oh god I almost gagged just thinking about it. If negative reinforcement works, that'd do it haha
drumdance
SNRIs like Wellbutrin do this. They make cigarettes taste gross.
larodi
It is hilarious that page shows how one replaces FB with HN... which is precisely what I did in 2019, and now I'm a total HN addict, spending more than a few minutes on it at least 5 times a day.
screwt
In case you don't already know - set noprocrast in your HN profile to limit the time you spend on this site.
larodi
in case you don't know this only has limited effect, cause you can open it again in a private browser. besides the search works with the procast setting, and we're not talking external constraints, people, us, me,... lack at this point internal mental defenses against the negative impact of social media.
throwup238
I really hope that the demo video on the frontpage uses the referrer (referer?) HTTP header to select the URL!
I bet you can do that with Chrome’s puppeteer and cache the domain to optimize it. You won’t get the personalized pages of Facebook et al but it would be really fun.
The name is genius.
joshdavham
Any chance this gets open sourced? I understand that you can just look at the code of your installed extensions in chrome's directory on your computer, but it would be cool to look at the code, if you're willing to share.
insin
CRX Viewer is handy for peeking without installing:
https://robwu.nl/crxviewer/?crx=https%3A%2F%2Fchromewebstore...
doix
Oh wow, I expected it to be minimized, obfuscated JS, but it's completely readable! I wish more extensions were like this...
joshdavham
I regret clicking on that first image lol. Super scary!
IncreasePosts
A fun idea, but I am so hesitant to install extensions that have access to any URL. I don't know who this developer is, so how can I know they won't accept $10k to sell their extension to some malware group that will try to exfil all of my banking credentials after updating this extension?
CobrastanJorji
It's worse. Even if you DO know and trust the developer, in a year or two, they're probably going to get an email from a nice man who will want to buy their extension for $10,000, and they've long gotten bored of it, so why not?
ok_dad
I would hope that these days the popular extension devs would know about this type of attack and would guard against it by perhaps selling the extension code but shutting down the original extension page under their control so users have to choose to install the new company's extension. As a matter of fact, why won't Google/Mozilla prevent this by making an extension and a person's account inseparable, and have legal language in the ToS that says they can't sell the extension as-is with the install base to a new company? It would prevent so much.
stavros
The offer would be $10k for the extension page, or $10 for just the code.
Google/mozilla don't add legal language because legal language doesn't make something illegal. They can say "we'll remove your extension if we find out you've sold it", but they way they'd find out would be that the extension now serves malware anyway.
CobrastanJorji
That'd be interesting, but imagine how poorly it'd work given how often medium/large companies change hands. Heck, when Google itself became a subsidiary of Alphabet, it didn't require everyone to create new "Alphabet" accounts and replace Google Chrome with Alphabet Chrome.
Although...I'm not necessarily opposed to that. Companies can change names and ownership a little too easily. Making it painful might help some things.
alasarmas
I remember reading somewhere that, in times long past, if a company name was of the form “Johnson and Sons” (for example), it would be considered fraud to sell that company outside of the named family.
I personally think you’re on to something with tying companies to the reputation of specific natural persons, but I don’t think that is where we are going anytime soon.
jaredsohn
>why won't Google/Mozilla prevent this by making an extension and a person's account inseparable
This can be gotten around easily by making a separate Google account for the extension. It would require using gmail rather GSuite (without transferring over the entire GSuite domain.)
jslakro
That would be the right thing but browsers are not interested in adding friction to an ecosystem that already has its own rules. Extensions offer a lot of value to users witjout any effort from the browser companies
lucb1e
Could turn off automatic updates so it won't matter who buys it
scotty79
Can't you pin the extension version so it doesn't auto-update?
e44858
An extension like this should be relatively small. Download the source code, read it to make sure nothing bad is happening, then install it from source so it doesn't get automatically updated.
patrickhogan1
This is a good point and I haven’t read the manifest as I’m in a bit of a rush. Chrome did do a lot of work improving the manifest for conditions like this in v3. I know with webRequest you have to specify urls but not sure if there is a separation of duties here in terms of
1. Permission to operate on any url page loaded locally and being able to modify the html/insert html like the clown image
2. Being able to webRequest http outbound to <any_url> where you could exfiltrate data.
I thought there was a way to insert html into any loaded page without having access to send outbound network requests.
If that is the case that it’s separate if the chrome extension were to be sold and the manifest were changed to allow nefarious behavior you would know.
renewiltord
This is quite the problem with the chrome extension ecosystem. It is rife with malware. How does someone build an extension that can promise better behaviour. There doesn’t seem to be a way to restrict oneself.
Even manifest changes aren’t “scary enough”.
HWR_14
Why would this extension ever need to be updated?
moralestapia
Easy solution. Don't install it.
marcodiego
I really wonder how well averse conditioning works... maybe I'll try it if it works on firefox and is open source.
Something I've done on some periods I was fighting my procrastination was to use pomodoro timers and mantras: "Just for today" and "one day at a time". Interestingly, these simple tools worked very very well.
y33t
> "Just for today"
This is great at getting me to justify procrastination.
iammrpayments
Combat addiction with PTSD
chrislongss
I know this is a joke, but iirc there used to be certain procedures that would surgically implant something physically harmful into an addicts arm to scare them into soberness. Like a capsule maybe?.. Can't remember the details. And if the person were to start drinking alcohol again, the capsule would break down and release a chemical into their bloodstream.
ioblomov
Suspect you may be thinking of this…
> Disulfiram (Antabuse) changes the way your body breaks down alcohol. If you drink while taking it, you get sick.
https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/addiction/features/fight...
331c8c71
i looked it up. disulfiram subdermal implants. just proves i need this extension for firefox %(
mariopt
Not really, MeatSpin is missing
telesilla
Oh warning please! I got a demo jumpscare and almost had a household of very upset kids from the scream and my almost-heart attack reaction. Well done!
For those with stronger stomachs this is a fantastic idea.
ashton314
I love that the example video shows someone adding HN to the jump-scare list. I should probably do that…
_nivlac_
You might be interested in the noprocrast settings!
jmkd
I have absolutely no use for this, but the name oh my god!
Willingham
Also works great for low blood pressure issues
I just had a look at the creators's other project and this one his hilarious! https://www.unoptimal.com/push-off
Two friends receive a notification and the first one to tap it wins!