Using Home Assistant, adguard home and an $8 smart outlet to avoid brain rot

Summary

Preamble#The internet is the bane of my existence. Ads, distractions, sponsored content, bad news, bad ideas, more ads, social media, antisocial media, even more ads.Also, I’m a software developer, so the internet is basically indispensable for me, a central pillar of my income and a convenient way to communicate with friends, family, loved ones, associates, acquaintances, people from my sports club, superpositions of all previous groups and enemies alike. And I think my company runs ads, so in a way ads pay for my clothing and food and stuff. So I guess my current stance towards the internet would be somewhat neutral-ish, but that may still change.But I can try to reduce or at least moderate some of the negative aspects of the internet, especially those that keep me hooked like some sad addict: social media. I’ve tried completely blocking it via my networks’ ad blocker, but the animal in me circumvented that blockage by turning off wifi on the cell phone and thus doom scrolling galore on my cell plan. Also, my wife needs some social media for work or research (and of course guilty pleasure) at least some of the time, but she’s as bad in moderation as me. So completely blocking is not viable, but allowing unrestricted internet access to two reasonable adults is somehow also out of the question.So the problem remained mathematically unsolvable.Until today, when Neil Chen posted a simply genius idea to hacker news. Neil describes how a smart plug is used to dynamically rewrite some ublock Origin lists to allow unfetted access to all content distracting. The idea is fantastic, but the implementation not practical for my/our scenario, so I’m adapting it here.Building Blocks#I’m already using an network wide ad blocker via my gli.net router called “Adblock Home”. And for a smart home without internet access (see preamble) I’m using Home Assistant.So we have:A gli.net router with Adguard HomeHome AssistantCopious amounts of Zigbee SwitchesSome spare timeSurely there must ...