# Auto-Mute Snookie, The Donald, or whoever?



## SayWhat? (Jun 7, 2009)

> "A while ago it was Charlie Sheen. And then it was Sarah Palin. And then it was Donald Trump," said Richardson, who is a video producer for Make Magazine. "And after a while I realized there's sort of always someone who I don't really want to hear about."
> 
> Like any good hacker, Richardson decided to come up with a fix: He developed a do-it-yourself TV remote control that will automatically mute the television when certain celebrity names are mentioned.





> The DIY gadget reads the closed-captioning transcript as it's aired and then automatically mutes the television for 30 seconds when it picks up certain words. That list of unspeakables can be re-programmed





> As long as that person's name keeps coming up, the remote keeps muting the TV. The first time he got it to work, Richardson said he "was in silent bliss for that 30 seconds I didn't have to hear about Kim Kardashian."


http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/innovation/09/07/closed.caption.hack.maker/index.html?hpt=hp_bn6

Interesting concept, but I can see a few flaws.


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## Marlin Guy (Apr 8, 2009)

Beautiful! :joy:


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## scooper (Apr 22, 2002)

30 secs is usually too long - I'd start with 10 myself


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## naijai (Aug 19, 2006)

i wonder if it can be used to automaically mute any bickering on tv between congress.
I do see alot of non celebrities that it will be very useful towards


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## Nick (Apr 23, 2002)

With a few tweaks, it should work on your spouse and noisy kiddos. 

What? They already did that?

Nevermind.


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## paulman182 (Aug 4, 2006)

I never watch anything that mentions any of those people anyway.


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## bidger (Nov 19, 2005)

paulman182 said:


> I never watch anything that mentions any of those people anyway.


Works for me too. Well, except when they're on E!s "The Soup" where they get skewered.


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