this post was submitted on 28 May 2025
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Chaotic Good

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Source: https://bsky.app/profile/funnysnarkyjoke.bsky.social/post/3lmkfwebeuc27

In fact you can use your smartphone to change the channel on nearly any TV. In the comments on that post some people talk about how to do it. Basically you need a smartphone with either builtin IR or use a USB-C IR blaster or if your phone has a 3.5mm headphone jack you can also try one of those but I'm not sure if the 3.5mm ones are as commonly supported.

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[–] Psythik@lemm.ee 99 points 3 days ago (6 children)

In the early 2010s some flagship Android phones came with IR blasters built-in. You could turn off any TV anywhere, simply by pulling out your phone.

I miss the days when smartphones were fun.

[–] ZeroPoke@lemmy.ca 23 points 3 days ago (4 children)

You can still get Androids with them. My phone has one. Only a year or two old.

[–] Psythik@lemm.ee 9 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I would but I made the mistake of giving a foldable a try (got myself a used Samsung Fold 4 for $400). I got too used to having a tablet in my pocket and now I can't go back.

Problem is that foldables are still niche and a fold with an IR blaster is even more niche. Doubt that any exist but I'd love to be proven wrong.

[–] martinb@lemmy.sdf.org 7 points 3 days ago

Apparently my honour V3 fold has one. Have yet to try it though

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[–] muusemuuse@lemm.ee 6 points 3 days ago

There’s no reason we can’t make IR stuff a phone accessory. Let’s make a flipper zero phone accessory. Control it with a webUI so that Apple and Google can’t block companion apps by claiming “oh noes, teh Hakurz”

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[–] y0kai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 22 points 3 days ago (2 children)
[–] VitoRobles@lemmy.today 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Really expensive for the use case.

I considered it recently but then the flipper zero community was like "Spend $15 bucks for a universal remote man."

[–] y0kai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

haha im in the middle of switching careers into IT/CS and I figured it would be a good investment for the future or at least to tinker with. I've just had to focus on other things for certs I need, so no time to really dive into it.

[–] LordWiggle@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

I have one, for a year now or so. But haven't use dit much really. And now the flipper one is announced. So I wished I waited and bought that one instead.

[–] muusemuuse@lemm.ee 6 points 3 days ago (2 children)
[–] LordWiggle@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I'd wait a bit. The flipper one is announced.

[–] davidgro@lemmy.world 2 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Citation needed. All I can find are YouTube videos from random accounts that aren't Flipper Devices. Nothing in writing and especially not from the company.

[–] LordWiggle@lemmy.world 2 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (1 children)

Apparently it was announced but later removed from their website. See this article

[–] davidgro@lemmy.world 2 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

That article is over a year old and was itself referring to events a year before that.

[–] LordWiggle@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

YT link

If I am to believe this youtuber, the flipper zero creator shared info with him on the flipper one. I know, it's thin, but it's also not a hoax imo. It's just impossible to guess where the development currently is.

[–] y0kai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 3 days ago (2 children)

And I need to learn to use mine better. All I got is a couple of neat magic tricks like turning off TVs or scanning people's cats lol

Just been too busy learning other things lately I guess

[–] Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

scanning people's cats

... Pardon?

[–] y0kai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

haha some people have their pets microchipped so they can be scanned and returned to the owner if lost. If you run the flipper over the right spot (and in the right mode), generally between the shoulder blades, it'll tell you if they're chipped and read out some of the data.

[–] Biscuit@ani.social 6 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)
if chip == True:
    print("is cat")
else:
    print("might not be cat")
[–] LordWiggle@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

Yeah same here. Not really using it for anything other than that. Oh and opening tesla charge ports.

[–] mriswith@lemmy.world 29 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (4 children)

In fact you can use your smartphone to change the channel on nearly any TV. In the comments on that post some people talk about how to do it. Basically you need a smartphone with either builtin IR or use a USB

I don't think have seen phone with built in IR in a decade.

[–] bitwolf@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Oppo is still including them

[–] JamesBoeing737MAX@sopuli.xyz 3 points 1 day ago

And Xiaomi, Oneplus R series.

[–] Tilgare@lemmy.world 8 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I saw a video on a new budget phone recently that had IR. I think only the Chinese brands like Xiaomi, Vivo, and OnePlus are the ones carrying the torch at this point... But not even on all phones they release.

I carried around my old HTC One M7 in my laptop bag for YEARS after I had upgraded explicitly for the IR blaster. It's probably in there still right now in fact.

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[–] muusemuuse@lemm.ee 16 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I was at a hospital waiting room one night for an ex’s mother’s injury. I’m not family so I had to wait in the waiting room, which had Fox News blaring. They wouldn’t change it. I couldn’t change it. But I could unplug all the TVs.

Nurse ratchet did not like that one bit.

[–] BoycottPro@lemm.ee 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I sometimes (jokingly) wonder if Hospitals show Fox News to try to get repeat business, and I don't mean repeat business due to people who enjoy Fox coming back, I mean due to health complications caused by the stress of watching it.

[–] Bytemeister@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Watching fox news does not cause you stress. It causes stress for all the people around you.

My grandpa got a dose of fox news for a while, and it took a long conversation to convince him that there is not a county in Michigan that is more that 50% Somali immigrants.

[–] Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca 63 points 3 days ago (1 children)

The middle school that I went to had a ~14" crt tv hanging from a sturdy ceiling mount in every classroom.

Displayed things like school bulletins and daily morning announcements, there was a couple educational channels, and a vcr input. Every now and again there'd be some sort of presentation instead of hauling everyone into the gym for a school assembly.

Anyway; it didn't take me very long to figure out the universal remote that came with the satellite receiver at home could be programmed to the school TVs. I'd mess with the one in class, or skip classes and mess with the ones in my friends classrooms through the windows; cranking up the volume and blasting Bill Nye or the announcement channels awful elevator music. Weekends, I'd do a lap of the school turning on all the TVs I could reach from outside and maxing the volume for whoever opens on Monday, or just turning them off again so it blares at whoever turns it on next.

[–] DoGeeseSeeGod@lemmy.blahaj.zone 29 points 3 days ago (9 children)

You fucking menace. I love the chaotic energy lol. You pull any more stunts like that one?

[–] Scubus@sh.itjust.works 12 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Stick a piece of tape on the bottom of laser mice. It stops them from being able to detect motion.

Screenshot your buddies desktop, then save that image to the desktop. Set it as the desktop background. Now right click, select "view" i think, and click "show desktop icons". In theory, nothing should noticably change. But now you can no longer actually click on the icons on the desktop. To take it further, open task manager. Find "explorer.exe" and kill it. Now, you cant even right click to reshow desktop icons.

Easy fix to that is to reboot the computer, but you can also just reopen task manager, start a new process "explorer.exe", and then reshow desktop icons.

You can find a website that has fake versions of windows update screens. Load one of those, hit f11 to fullscreen your page, and enjoy as your friend waits for three hours at a bar that has only gone up 2%.

Open task scheduler. Add a new task. Set it to run every day at like 2 pm. Have it set volume to 3/4, then open firefox with the extra command "https://www.youtube.com/watch/dQw...." and you will have a great time.

For a more malicious prank, get a syringe. Fill it with raw egg. Inject this into the seats of some assholes car. Within two days, their car is not able to be sat in without the windows down, and even then it is horrible. They cannot figure out where the smell is coming from, and even if they do, they have to replace the seat. Optionally you can just throw a dead fish into their gutter, they wont find it for a couple days at least, and it will permanantly make their entire yard smell.

[–] Oaksey@lemmy.world 4 points 3 days ago

Now rotate the screenshot of the desktop 180 degrees before setting as thd desktop, then rotate the display output 180 degrees. Now the mouse also appears to go backwards. If they step away after having a go, add a screenshot of display settings to the background image so they click all over that when they get back.

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[–] Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world 33 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

...isn't there a 3.5mm jack silencer you can buy? Searching now and I can't find it, but I could have sworn when I was in highschool (y'know, like 25 thousand years ago) you could order a bag of like 50 of them for like $10.

It was just a 3.5mm audio plug with matte black plastic cap on the end, so you'd plug it into a TV's headphone jack and some models of TVs would be permanently silenced until someone unplugged the cap, because it was sending its audio to the 'speakers' that were just plugged in. And once plugged in, it just looked like a screw cover cap - nothing protruding. But also didn't damage anything, so you couldn't get in any real trouble for doing it.

...am I just imagining shit? If anyone knows what I'm talking about and figure out the magic search terms to actually pull it up, please drop a link to a product that can be ordered.

Edit - for visibility, I posted this comment as its own thread over on Ask.

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[–] gabereal@sopuli.xyz 12 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Instead of the TV-B-Gone, there should be a TV-1-Channel-Up device that just changes the channel. If the TV in the doctor's office turns off, it will get noticed by the reception desk and probably be turned back on in a few minutes. If the TV is on a different channel, the desk is much less likely to notice any time soon (at least not before you've been called back into the exam room).

TVs at my local doctors office took the prescription commercials to a new level and now just run an ad feed all day.

[–] LandedGentry@lemmy.zip 25 points 3 days ago (6 children)

There is this place I unfortunately have to go to a lot that always has Fox News on really loud and a bunch of white dude boomers watching it. April was glorious. They had the weather channel on lmao but it’s back now

[–] Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

If you work someplace with public-facing tv's, the weather channel is a fucking godsend. If it's on a news station, entitled boomers will want it on their news station. If it's on weather, well, it's just the weather.

[–] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Oh you mean the woke channel that keeps insisting that this year is hotter than it was when I was growing up‽ Global warming is a socialist conspiracy and the weather channel is in on it! /s

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[–] idiomaddict@lemmy.world 10 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Wait, what happened in April and has changed again since?

[–] LandedGentry@lemmy.zip 35 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Stock market looked like complete shit and no amount of spin control could hide it, to the point where one day Fox literally removed their stock ticker for the first time in decades

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[–] Anomalocaris@lemm.ee 7 points 3 days ago

my universal remote ✂️

[–] Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 20 points 3 days ago (2 children)

This is the second best thing I do with my Flipper Zero after reading pet RFID chips

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[–] ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 points 3 days ago

Me too, I call it a flipper 0. I can also skip songs on the jukebox at the bar, fear me.

[–] CrayonDevourer@lemmy.world 13 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (3 children)

I use the kit-built one of these: https://www.tvbgone.com/shop/ -- They gave a bunch of them away at the end of a makefaire I was a part of years ago.

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