Netflix project lets you mind-control its interface
Netflix’s developers are at it again, using the company’s annual Hack Day to come up with clever, if sometimes wild, ideas on how to improve the streaming service. This year’s crop of hacks mostly focus on intriguing Stranger Things integrations, but the most interesting result is one named MindFlix, that lets you navigate and control Netflix with your mind.
In a video demonstrating MindFlix, the team showed how you can, with a Muse EEG-detecting headband strapped on, move your head up and down or side to side to scroll vertically and horizontally through Netflix’s interface. Then, when you’ve landed on a title you like, just think of the word or action “Play.” This worked in the clip, with the test subject happily proclaiming that he never had to move again. Of course, whether it works as well in real life can’t be determined, but if it does, it could make Netflix binging far more enjoyable.
Other Hack Day Winter 2017 projects run the gamut from noble to somewhat sinister. Netflix For Good lets viewers donate to related or well-known charity organizations after watching a socially conscious video, while Picture-in-Picture lets you monitor what other profiles in your account are watching at the same time.
There doesn’t appear to be plans to make these implementations widely available. In fact, Netflix states in a blog post that “they may never become part of the Netflix product, internal infrastructure, or otherwise be used beyond Hack Day.” Still, though, we can always hope that Netflix puts out the instructions on how to make these real, as it did for the sleep-detecting socks that pause your videos for you.
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