Mildly Infuriating

I like the customizable LEDs on my razer mouse mat, except when my PC (2021 15.6-inch razer laptop) decides that since I just went 6 hours without installing what are now almost daily win10 patches, it’s time to fuck up my drivers- and then it exits sleep mode despite the lid being closed and there being nothing wrong with my power settings, causing my fans to jet-engine, the logo led thing to come on and the mouse mat to shine brighter than a sun with its default color-cycle thing. And for bonus points, sometimes it even tries to address the problem by actually auto-updating at the time I told it to (1 AM or something), so I get startled by the “du dun, duh dun doooooo” which always seems louder at night.

And I dare not switch to linux, as razer laptops are not a common laptop choice and therefore it’s unclear how I’d be able to keep all its complicated and already-buggy drivers and proprietary software up to date so they don’t make it overheat within the first week, especially since the odds of me finding any help online for converting such an exotic rig to ubuntu are minimal to none.

I built my first PC in a Bitfenix Prodigy. The blue LEDs they used for the power and HDD activity lights were brighter than a thousand suns. I ended up disconnecting them.

I agree it sucks.

Buy a paint pen to darken how bright they are or just use a tiny piece of electrical tape. I too hate that every goddamn thing these days has a light, but the only indication if a feature on a device is on or off is by looking at the lights, so they are unfortunately an important thing.

I bought a snowball microphone. It has the brightest goddamned red led on the front. It juts out like some rectangular boil and it's annoying as it is ugly.

So I had to cut off some black electric tape to cover it. The light is ALWAYS on. Maybe it's to let you know it could be recording, but since it's always on no matter what I'm doing, being always off is the same thing.

What someone needs to do is go retro

I want an appliance with an analog clock, an alarm, a red power on light, a blue LED light, Bluetooth, and an app. Preference for ones that get easily hacked by Russia do they can harass women journalists and subvert democracy.

Andy Rooney would be proud.

Yah agree with your rant but black electric tape was my solution too.

I mean, you don't don't compare a bit before you buy? My clock only lights up on sound or if i tap it.

Some weeks ago I purchased a new keyboard and did'nt realized that there is a ridiculously bright charging LED in top that shines right in your eyes.

In the end in my lazy manner I fixed it with electrical tape. It even shines trough the black tape.

my steam deck has this annoying retina burning white led that turns on while its charging, shit lights up my entire room, and i have a huge room, thankfully it can be turned off in its bios

my monitor also has this feature to turn it off... i hope more companies put in a feature to turn it off

It's also difficult to buy a power strip without a light nowadays. The ones without a switch+light are even more expensive, if you can find it....

FOR REAL
I can't find a WiFi light switch without an led on the buttons that you can't disable, it's so frustrating

it's like living in Tron. it's not as cool as I thought it would be when I was a kid.

I installed a heated/lighted medicine cabinet in my master bathroom without realizing the blue LED touch controls would be bright enough to light up the bathroom and bedroom. Now I regret spending so much money on it.

I was actually complaining about the exact same thing yesterday! I had to use a putty-like adhesive to cover a lot of those bright af LEDs. It’s indeed infuriating.

i agree. tho the blue light thing is blown a bit out of proportion. The luminance just isnt high enough considering how much blue light the sun emits.

The thing that helps the most with sleep is turning down the brightness of your phone to minimum for when u in the dark and trying to sleep. Or just dont use it lol.

I also get frustrated with how ubiquitous they've become. I want darkness in my house at night, I don't like LEDs winking at me from all over the place and I hate placing electrical tape over them but there are few options that aren't permanently damaging.

For what it's worth, I have a fan that lets you turn off the LED lights, even from the remote control for the fan. /shrug

My computer lighting is powered by incandescent bulbs. Lots of replacing, heat and landfll usage but its worth it to not have any of those woke leds in there.

To piggyback on this... so many people have added permanent LED lights to the outside of their houses (at least in our area). It used to be fun to see a house or two lit up with current holiday colors, or sports team colors. But now there are several on each block, and they have become much brighter. On the 4th we were up on a hill watching fireworks and there was a lot of competition from the LED houses.

I put electrical tape over all of them. They're unnecessary, they're annoying.

I tried my best to build a new computer without any LEDs and I couldn't. So now I just keep a piece of cardboard in front of my glass case side so I don't have to look at that bullshit.

Yeah, yeah, it probably causes it to run hotter. I'll take a little more heat, less performance, and possibly shorter overall component life over having to deal with those stupid lights.