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Comment by afarrell | Hacker News Reader

I know folks who consume food to relieve stress. When I was at MIT, I would do the same with international news until discovering http://selfcontrolapp.com/, which was the reason I switched from Linux to OS X.

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But that App just adds redirects to your /etc/hosts file... Its pretty easy to replicate that behavior on Linux. I like OS X as much as the next guy, but that particular feature isn't really unique.

My problem is I have so little self control I just end up editing the hosts file. I need something with the same functionality that I don't know how it works so I can't circumvent it.

I just tried out SelfControl.app, and it's actually really effective! If you edit /etc/hosts while it's running, it replaces the entries immediately. And somehow I couldn't get any blocked websites to load even after quitting the app and then editing /etc/hosts. I'm not sure how it's doing it, but to be honest, it would be far less effective if I figured it out!

EDIT: I couldn't help myself :/ Turns out that it also adds some ipfw rules: http://www.joshuakehn.com/2010/10/25/Defeating-SelfControl.h...

Why tell us that?! :(

Why did I start this thread?

Same here, heck I'll usually just fire up a virtual machine and browse within it.

I haven't done too much research but I imagine the best option is a filter that runs on the router and locks itself down for a time period.

I've just switched the LeechBlock Firefox extension because you can delay the page loading (thus making you think why you went there in the first place).

Yes! A 10-second delay is enough to make me think, "Do I really want to spend time on this?" But not enough to make me circumvent the filter. I also really like its lockdown mode, so that I can say, "For the next 2 hours, no distractions."

I've been using Morphine for Chrome[1] for some time. It sorta gamifies the whole thing.

[1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/morphine/fbnpehpbo...

There's also a Linux version https://github.com/SelfControlApp/selfcontrol/wiki/FAQ

I made a similar Chrome plugin. It would allow you to go to a site, but would ask you if you're sure you need to see it.

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