TabBoo – add random jumpscares to websites you're trying to avoid
45 comments
·January 22, 2025ancientstraits
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.
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)
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").
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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.
duxup
The animation on the home page does a great job giving you all you want to know.
Granted it's a simple app but I wish other apps were as easy to understand.
jmkd
I have absolutely no use for this, but the name oh my god!
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.
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.
taeric
I haven't laughed so hard at a story headline in a long time. Kudos and thanks for that!
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
ashton314
I love that the example video shows someone adding HN to the jump-scare list. I should probably do that…
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.
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.
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.
moralestapia
Easy solution. Don't install it.
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”.
Willingham
Also works great for low blood pressure issues
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.