

Awesome Netflix/Fitbit Hack Detects When You’ve Fallen Asleep, Auto-Pauses Movie - prateekj
http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/27/netflix-fitbit-hack/

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adambom
Wouldn't want to miss any of that movie that put me to sleep.

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waterlesscloud
I never let episodes in a series autoplay on netflix, but the other night I
did and it paused a few minutes in to make me click to continue.

I assumed this was to protect their bandwidth. They don't want users streaming
a whole series while they sleep (or aren't in the room for that matter).

I did wonder if the interruption was based on time of day, since it was late
at night.

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bcrescimanno
No, it's contractual. Netflix cannot act as a "broadcast" service due to the
way they license content. It means that there is a limit to how many pieces of
content they can play without any user interaction (a user-interaction will
classify the play as "on-demand" as opposed to "broadcast").

(Yes, I'm a former employee who worked on the auto-play feature).

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weaksauce
Please tell me there is a way to stop it... I fall asleep and wake up with no
idea where I fell asleep watching....

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m_ram
[https://www.netflix.com/YourAccount](https://www.netflix.com/YourAccount)

"Playback settings" > uncheck "Play next episode automatically"

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Pewpewarrows
Does a setting like this also work for the iPad app? That's typically what I
watch Netflix on while falling asleep.

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weaksauce
Not sure if you are going to get this but yeah it works for all forms of
netflix.

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Pewpewarrows
Oh awesome, thanks!

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EpicEng
Seems trivial because the user has to be wearing a device which monitors your
vitals. Well, yeah, probably not too difficult to guess if someone is asleep
or not. Do it without forcing me to buy a device to wear and I will be
thoroughly impressed.

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glimcat
Well, I could do it with a Kinect if you'd prefer. Or probably with a phone
accelerometer - if you actually keep that in your pocket while you're sitting
on the couch for an hour! But at some point the data has to come from
somewhere.

If you're using a Fitbit anyway, an on-body sensor is going to be more
accurate than not, and it's there.

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EpicEng
I understand the problem, I'm just saying, when you have a stream of data like
this coming in then it's not a difficult thing to do. Nor would I see it ever
having any practical application since, well, I doubt people will be hooking
up to a fitbit so that netflix can pause their movie when they fall asleep.

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rblatz
I don't have a fitbit,but I've considered getting one. This might be a feature
that would push me over the edge.

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Jack000
I wish there was a way to hack the fitbit at the phone level. They do have a
public api, but only for getting exercise/sleep data at 15 min intervals. I
think the real exciting applications are sending custom
alerts/text/vibrations, but this doesn't seem possible.

Personally I hardly use the fitness features on my fitbit. All I really wanted
was a minimalist smart watch - a clock function and call/sms alerts, and
something that's low profile on my wrist.

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TrainedMonkey
Falling asleep while watching a movie does not sound like a particularly
healthy habit.

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navs
Yea I guess not. I fall asleep watching videos. To this day it's very
difficult for me to fall asleep unless there's some tv show playing in the
background be it on an actual tv or a computer monitor.

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patrikj
Falling asleep in an office chair in front of a computer sounds even less
healthy

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navs
Oh it is. You'll start having constant neck and back pains. Maybe a nicer
chair would help. The worst thing is falling asleep in the office with those
damn fluorescent lights on. I'm glad I stopped doing that.

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pradn
While cool, technically, I've never seen a more first-world-problem hack. :)

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Crito
Netflix itself? What does it solve, the pressing "having to drive to
blockbuster" problem? And Netflix streaming solves the "having to wait a few
days for a Netflix movie" problem. And Wikipedia solves the "having to go to a
library" problem...

The "first world problem" meme is excruciatingly irritating. If it's not
starvation, or malaria, chances are it's a "first world problem".

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ssully
While I agree that it can be annoying, pradn was using it in a very
lighthearted manner. I think it is grating when people use it to shutdown a
discussion don't find worthwhile.

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coderdude
It'd be nice to see a solution to this problem for Hulu. It seems like they
accomplish this already by failing to load ads. On my Wii there's a good
chance that ads won't load and it forces me to go back to the menu or hit
'retry'. At first it was annoying but now I've come to rely on ads failing so
that I don't skip too many episodes after falling asleep. Though you probably
can't get me to wear something that monitors my vitals.

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akbar501
This would actually wake me up. I sometimes start a 2 start movie so I can
zone out and drift off.

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hnriot
wow - 1st world problems :) It doesn't say much for the things people are
watching if they are falling asleep watching them. Maybe a night or two
without tv would be a good idea.

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alphakappa
Why is this a first world problem? Netflix (or streaming Internet television)
may not be available in every country, but you'd be hard pressed to find a
place where people don't have easy access to some form of Television. Is it
not interesting that there's a hack that someone might adapt to regular
television (and probably save power) some day?

In any case, just because people are doing interesting things that may be
relevant only in the first world doesn't make them any less interesting. This
is after all, Hacker News, not Solve-Only-Global-Problems News.

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hnriot
that's not the point - the difficulty of closing the laptop after a hard night
of watching netflix is the first world problem. Do you really think anyone but
a handful of geeks who watch too much tv care about this "problem"

