Awesome TV Remote Mutes Most Annoying Celebs

Sadly, creator has no plans to sell them
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 12, 2011 9:56 AM CDT
Awesome TV Remote Mutes Most Annoying Celebs
In this March 30, 2011 file photo, reality television star Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi participates in a Wrestlemania XXVII news conference at the Hard Rock Cafe in New York.   (AP Photo/Evan Agostini, File)

If you just can’t take any more Snooki, we have good news for you: Video producer Matt Richardson has come up with an ingenious way to mute her automatically. Richardson hacked a remote control, making it possible to automatically mute the TV whenever a certain word—in this example, "Snooki"—appears in the closed captioning. The best part? The remote can be programmed to automatically ignore anyone you deem distasteful, be it Snooki, Donald Trump, or Kim Kardashian, CNN reports.

Richardson’s hack, which he will debut this weekend at New York’s Maker Faire, automatically mutes the TV for 30 seconds every time the offending word appears—and continues to do so as long as the word keeps popping up. Of course, it’s not a perfect system, as closed captioning isn’t always real-time—but the first time Richardson got it to work, he experienced “silent bliss for that 30 seconds I didn’t have to hear about Kim Kardashian.” He has no plans to commercialize the remote, which cost about $70 and took about a week to make, but you can check out the code he posted here. (More celebrity stories.)

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