When life hands you lemons, you make lemonade, right? What about when life hands you annoyingly intrusive work-from-home policies that require you to physically stay at your computer even though you really, REALLY need to go to the bathroom, but can’t be trusted to act like a responsible adult who won’t get diverted by TV or the fridge on the way back? In that case, you build something like the Mouse Whisperer — because malicious compliance is the best kind of compliance.
To be fair, [andrey.malyshenko] does list other plausible use cases for what amounts to an automatic mouse wiggler. Like many of us, [andrey] isn’t a fan of logging back in from screen locks, and recognizes that not absolutely every minute of work requires staring at one’s screen. There’s also the need for bio-breaks, of course, and the Mouse Whisperer is designed to accommodate these use cases and more.
The design is quite compact, occupying barely more space than a wireless mouse dongle. Plugged into a USB port, the ATtiny85 mostly sits idle, waiting to detect the touch of a finger on an exposed pad via a TTP223. The dongle then goes into a routine that traces lazy circles with the mouse pointer, plus flashes an RGB LEB on the board, because blinkenlights are cool. The mouse wiggling continues until you come back from your Very Important Business and touch the pad again.
Now, if anyone is actually monitoring you remotely, the circling mouse pointer is going to look a wee bit sus. Fear not, though — the code uses a *.h file to define the circle, so other patterns should be possible. Either way, the Mouse Whisperer is a nice solution, and it’s considerably more compact and integrated than some of the alternatives we’ve seen.
I actually made one in order to prevent automatic screen lock when I’m working from home.
It’s made with a ‘bad USB’ board. An ATMega32u4 on a tiny usb-connector shaped board.
It moves the mouse by 2 pixels every 5min.
This is the way. Alternate which direction every other time and the net effect is null.
Can’t one just disable automatic screen lock? I’m confused by this usecase.
Not always, user may not have admin rights on work laptop
Oh I didn’t know you need admin permissions to change that.
I just use an autohotkey script to move my mouse by one pixel every 4.5 minutes :)
Alternatively you could play a long YouTube video in the background and the machine would not sleep (depending on the prevent sleep when playing video power setting)
Depends on the company policy, at my job you can’t even change the wallpaper.
You can just open desktop 2 (win + tab) then launch full screen looped PowerPoint, then switch back to desktop 1
Disables screen timeout while active
YW
Finally a reason to use multiple desktops in Windows
This is awesome
I put the mouse on my chair messager
A lot of the same big corporations who check your lock screen status in the first place already have their systems set up to lock you out of a lot of useful features.
I have an employer who literally CHANGES the lock screen time day to day. I have no idea why that is but some days it’s just two minutes, other days it’s over 20. Either way, the screensaver/lockout time is completely out of my control, and somehow I can’t even see what they’ve set it to say to day without literally watching my PC to see how long it takes before it tries to lock. I’d happily set this to 30 seconds and be done with it.
Yeah, way better and easier solution than to just create a tiny VBS script that clicks scroll lock every 3 minutes right? I’m sure creating that USB only took you a few minutes like I did with my script
Anywhere with proper security measures would block VBS scripts.
and USB :)
Many high security workplaces do indeed have USB blocking policies… but these usually specifically restrict USB _data_transfer_ protocols whilst allowing HID* protocols. *HID = Human Interface/Interaction Device.
i.e. in these cases, a USB flash drive or network interface won’t work, but a mouse/keyboard/headset (or dongle for wireless mouse/keyboard/headset*) will.
*as long as it’s a dedicated HID dongle, such as a Logitech universal, since to the OS these again present as a HID device, not a dongle at all.
BlueTooth-based adapters will typically be blocked if they rely on a software HID stack (such locked-down systems won’t usually allow the installation of the required software, even if the BT dongle itself is recognised, which it usually isn’t. But BT dongles *can* work if the HID stack is integrated on the dongle itself such that the dongle again presents itself to the OS as a HID rather than a BT adapter (relatively uncommon).
But for preventing screen-locks, PowerPoint is much more straightforward (and has the added benefit of reflecting your status in MS Teams as “presenting”, if your org insists on installing such spyware, ahem, I mean.. “collaboration software”).
Any sort of script based solution is very easily detected by your security teams software. Maybe if you are a developer with lots of code on your computer you could pull it off but if push came to shove I’ve seen people Asked to explain the reason and use for any non standard apps running on their PC. Every company is different t. Imo if they care that much you don’t belong there.
I used to have a windows automated task that would go to a website, scrape the site as text, and save it to a file every 50 minutes (I would merge the files, and remove duplicates with excel, and get a full station Playlist after a couple weeks).
If the tasks prevent sleeping, using that to monitor downtime, or grab a feed might be a valid use for doing that.
That’s why I just got a box that has a rotating circular pad that I put my mouse on. Simply cannot be detected because it’s not connected to the computer.
This won’t work anyway. They expect some idle time and if you are always showing activity (compared to others) then they’ll know something is fishy. Often the time considered “idle” varies, and likely isn’t made known to the end user.
A ‘bad usb’ board [why did they market it that way???] …. at first I was thinking it was the thing that fries whatever it is plugged into.
Why do you need a screen lock at home in the first place?
corporate policy forced on work provided computers
Definitely cool, but a silicone nurses watch works very well too.
This can actually only be bought by a mac user. Linux and windows users use their brain, and install caffeine, a lightweight tool that does just the same. You can hover over any application, and tell ot to click LMB every 60 seconds, for example.
You’re obviously not of the brains-using kind. If you were, you’d knew there are environments in which you can’t install caffeine or any other software without a approval system admin.
I set my mouse on top of an analog watch. The second hand would pass over the optic and move the cursor every 60 seconds.
Exactly my thought… The most simple solution.
I use a YouTube video, you can find amazing mouse jigglers anywhere from 2-9 hours long. I just keep my ipad charging, play the video and place the mouse over it. Lol, surprisingly it works, I’ve done it for a whole 8 hour shift.
I just wrote three line script that switch num lock on and off every 5 minutes ;)
this is the best. it keeps screens & apps active & awake https://www.mousejiggle.org/
If your employer has such draconian rules and monitors your computer remotely to enforce compliance, change employers.
Not necessarily the best option. If the job pays well, and compliance is easier than actually working, then it’s not a bad gig.
Indeed. Employers must provide for biological needs, not to mention the dangers of uninterrupted desk/computer time that can lead to several disorders. Even if you aren’t at the office.
Most people using Office at work are using Teams.
It’s status shows when you are away from the computer.
Reliability of Teams “activity” status is highly questionable.
True, and you can set your availability. I have one employee who appears to be in and working 24/7.
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.windowslatest.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2020%2F10%2FMicrosoft-Teams-offline-status.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=7b4083aa964313ed52aebb60679843a1ccb6b385c817deb649fb1c4059219a06&ipo=images
Lol I do the exact opposite on teams, I set it to “I’m never available” 😂
When has reliability ever stopped a bored middle mangler from deciding you’re slacking?
Bored middle managers are the most fun to troll. If you take it far enough you can eventually get them demoted, transferred to the basement, or fired.
I have no sympathy for micromanagers with nothing better to do than to interrupt my workflow to ask me why I’m not working. May they suffer eternally.
Teams status isn’t reliable at all… Several times it turns my status to away while i am in a meeting even while moving mouse around…
Yeah. This is not sufficient rebellion. It’s like stinging your tongue out at the hangman or something. If you need one of these things, you are already so owned that it’s fully over for you
Ha ha ha ha ha
AWESOME reply!! 😎👍
If they don’t give you admin rights, often times you also can’t plug anything into the USB ports
Not true. Companies have to still allow keyboard and mouse for usb to work… And this product is identifying itself as a mouse probably.
>>is identifying itself as a mouse
He/him/she/her/them/they?
Definitely want to be un-retired and about 24 when I read this. I love a good challenge to authority.
not funny didn’t laugh
True, many times a company computer will not allow any file transfers from external devices or will have certain file restrictions. That’s why I just use a YouTube video as a mouse jiggler… A 9 hour video on my charging phone, start it at the 1 hour countdown and leave the optical mouse the company gave me on top of it 😆 and it even logs me off from inactivity after the video ends lol
This was one of the big reasons I spent months looking for work earlier this year -trying to avoid this sort of monitoring made the search take a lot longer than it should have.
Based on Glassdoor reports, it looks like this is a majority of big corporations doing remote work today. And it seems to be growing, because it only takes one member of upper management to hatch the idea.
Once it’s in place, it’s not the sort of thing that tends to just go away, because somebody will always defend having it as a tool.
I am so glad my employer actually monitors nothing. We use teams and all but i sometimes don’t even start up my work laptop cause i like to think things through withoutany device. They don’t ask questions and are very empowering which in turn motivates me and my colleagues to put all our effort in. I think the kind of Surveillance everyone here is describing isn’t even legal in my country. We have very strict privacy laws.
You guys should fight for better work regulations at your places.
Yes work at McDonald’s or another place where they don’t expect you to have a strong work ethic and you can goof off when you feel like it.
I made one similar for my IT work.
It looks intentional ugly, so no user wont dare to plug it in.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CQozNcYsi91/
It’s for those not remote scenarios where user need to be logged in to install something in his space, but it takes long time to install.
It has LED and BUZZER to remind every few minutes that is plugged in.
Inside is: digispark+LED+resistor+buzzer
Before I really knew what I was doing with circuits, I used one of those 555 timer circuit kits (which I’d bought years earlier for another project), and just wired it into the right mouse button of an old mouse:
https://youtu.be/H6IccgLMmr0
Worked really well on a super-locked down secure laptop that was very fussy about what USB devices it liked.
PS. “like, subscribe, and hit the bell!” 😜
555 :)) nice and simple solution !
You have now 427 subscribers ;)
431 now :)
Putting the hack into hackaday :)
Guess ppl nowadays don’t have analog wristwatches anymore
Indeed.
Amusing aside, I have a smartwatch, but my 8yo is positively in love with his mechanical watch. First thing he does every morning is wind it and sync the time.
Awesome, hopefully that stays with him. I love analog watches as well.
Some time ago I needed something similar, just not as elaborated. In specified intervals it moves the mouse pointer by one pixel. It can be running all the time even when you work as you certainly don’t notice 1px movement. Just change the interval as you need, compile and run. And don’t worry about Java. It isnt’/wasn’t that bad in its time. Runs everywhere, even on Le Mac! B-)
/*
* Simple prog. to keep the computer awake ;)
*/
import java.awt.*;
import java.util.*;
public class MouseMove {
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception{
Robot hal = new Robot();
while(true){
hal.delay(1000 * 30);
Point loc = MouseInfo.getPointerInfo().getLocation();
hal.mouseMove(loc.x-1, loc.y-1);
}
}
}
save into MouseMove.java, then call once ‘javac MouseMove.java’
and every time you start your computer just ‘java MouseMove’
That doesn’t always works. I tried something like that from software, the OS would lock itself anyways.
I needed to go to the physical layer.
There is a vbscript that simply presses any key you specify in a specific interval called noSleep.vbs and it has served me well:
set wsc = CreateObject(“WScript.Shell”)
Do
‘Five minutes
WScript.Sleep(5*60*1000)
wsc.SendKeys(“{NUMLOCK}”)
Loop
I used a small Python for mine. Toggles the key every 5 minutes. I have two workstations at my desk and it was very irritating to work on one and turn around and the other has the screen locked. Problem solved. Software solution is best when possible.
… small Python application …
I guess a trained Python could do the job for you.
assuming you can get python installed
Some ~20 years ago for a brief period one could actually earn real money by installing an add banner bar software on windows – I got 10€ once ;-). It constantly displayed a new banner add every few moments~minutes on your desktop.
When they became aware of GhostMouse 2.0[1] I took an old mechanical mouse and built LEGO Technics around it so my “LEGO TECHNIC Control Center” could steer the cursor anywhere with two motors.
[1] http://www2.pcix.com/~donath from 1997 but even Aarchive.org’s 1999 copy of that site isn’t old enough…
But the software still works today.
Chump change! When I was in undergrad, my roommate and I signed up for one of those programs, put our newfangled optical mouse on top of a face up analog clock with a piece of paper taped to the second hand, and made enough points to get a pretty nice graphics card out of the deal.
I just wrote a simple VB script that presses Num Lock every 10 seconds or so. Unless this device shows up as a mouse, I’m betting our Endpoint Security would pick it up as an unapproved device.
I used to put an animated GIF image of a “Time Tunnel” (white and black spiral) on screen an lean my mouse against the LCD of my laptop. Can be finicky, but it worked!
“Move Mouse is a simple piece of software that is designed to simulate user activity.”
https://sites.google.com/a/windandkite.co.uk/movemouse/home?pli=1
https://twitter.com/movemouse
assuming you can access the windows store. Many orgs block the whole store
Similar outcome, different reasons. I needed my computer to not sleep/hibernate so I could have some processes running overnight without interruption. AutoHotKey routine to move the mouse by one pixel every couple minutes.
I use a a mouse jiggler. https://github.com/arkane-systems/mousejiggler. I mostly use it when I’m running long database utilities or installs and don’t want the screen to go to sleep.
Adafruit’s Trinkey boards and a little CircuitPython make building things like this trivial. Plus they have status LEDs and controls that you can use to change modes easily.
This is the way. My wife and her friends work as phone reps and are constantly asking for me to make them trinkey’s.
I am a dentist and we use Epic medical records system at work. The IT policy here is that all computers that access Epic time out after 5 minutes and the screen locks requiring you to re log-in. The idea is to reduce the potential for HIPAA violations. I tried to get them to shut that off in my operatory- the last thing I want to do when I’m extracting teeth and need to see X-rays is to stop and re log-in to the computer. No way, no how, they won’t do it! I looked for a dongle like this for a while and eventually gave up. I was going to make a small stand for the mouse that would just wiggle something under the optical sensor until I found software called Mouse Jiggler that does the job for me. It wiggles the mouse every 60 seconds to keep the computer unlocked and showing me the X-rays that I need to see when I’m working on a patient.
You’d think patient safety would trump (there has to be a better word…) potential HIPAA violations…
Same exact here. Epic and their constant downgrades at the request of no one, and the subsequent unintended consequences, are the devil.
5 Minutes is a bit quick, we have ours set at 10 minutes and the screen gradually darkens to indicate that inactivity lock is going to kick in. By the way, it’s not to reduce the risk of HIPAA violations, it’s to reduce the risk that unauthorized access to confidential content or unauthorized modifications to PHI. These are serious risks and HIPAA and other healthcare security standards rightfully help steer towards the right measures. Finding the right balance between being able to do you work (in the patients interest) and security can be tricky, but circumventing security measures is never the best cause of action, always start a dialogue with your security staff.
Mouse jiggler. Right here. Looks like common mouse to the computer. https://www.amazon.com/Undetectable-Computer-Simulate-Movement-Entering/dp/B097ZXZLVR
Well, if we’re just posting ads to ready-made devices, at least point to an open-source design: https://www.tindie.com/products/nickwest/afkfix-mouse-jiggler-mouse-mover/
It waits a random period and moves the mouse by less than one pixel, then moves it back again. So you can leave it plugged in all day and go about your business. Some users here have suggested keeping the computer awake by playing a video on loop, which is a good idea but I found that it really killed my laptop battery life.
Happy to read that you resolved the issue using mouse jiggler. And YES, I find myself angered on an almost daily basis that I can no longer use the word “trump” in its previously understood context. GRRR!
Second attempt…
The IT policy where I work has all computers that access Epic medical records time out after 5 minutes to reduce the possibility of a HIPAA violation. That’s great but when I’m doing oral surgery and need to see X-rays, the last thing I want to do is stop and log into the computer again. I tried to get the IT folks to disable the timer on the computer in my operatory but they wouldn’t do it. To my mind, patient safety is more important than potential HIPAA violations…
This device would work fine, but it would need to be packaged so I can disinfect it. I found software called Mouse Jiggler that bumps the mouse one pixel every 60 seconds and keeps the computer alive. It has been working well for me for about 2 years now. Don’t tell the IT department!
One hack I’ve seen to prevent the screen saver was to put the optical mouse senser over an analog watch, and the cursor will be constantly moving.
Years ago when I was writing mouse firmware, we used a display turntable with a black and white pattern on it to provide pseudorandom movements for testing
The grunts in IT don’t care. They’re not the policy makers, and they’d likely agree with you that said policy regarding timeout is dumb, at least in your specific situation. I say this as a grunt in IT at a Federal hospital with similar timeout rules.
If you were paying me to secure your computers, I’d have a problem with a computer that hasn’t been locked in the past two years. Auto lock can be a problem during surgery, but who’s going to take the time to manually lock the screen after each surgery (nobody). At least have it shutdown each night after hours and require a login on startup.
Which is why I said in his specific case. I’m sure you could implement some kind of policy, either on that machine, or for that user, to extend the timeout period past 5 minutes. I wouldn’t outright remove the timeout, because let’s face it, people don’t like even the slightest inconvenience, and they’d never lock their computer if it were possible to do so.
” At least have it shutdown each night after hours and require a login on startup.”
Hell no, desperate life saving surgeries end when they end, not when the IT guy says. That’s not even straight Asimov laws of Robotics compliant, and there are much more nuanced circumstances now that we now regard them as inadequate for.
I work through midnight at least 1-2x a week. This is exactly the kind of mentality that led to the dumb lockouts anyway. In any case, 95% of the computers that can access the medical records are not in public areas anyway. They are at nursing stations and in ORs and stuff where there is zero need for stations to self-log out and the downsides of this policy are enumerated above and below. My computer in my key-control access office does not need to log out when I get up to take a leak.
I got a mouse jiggler.
Yet we’re still forced to install certain pieces of software that can actually block the use of mouse jigglers :( just as a heads up as I haven’t seen it mentioned here (yes, there are ways to detect the presence of any mouse jigglers that are connected to the computer even after changing the VID/PID of the USB descriptor)
Lol which software please tell me? As an IT admin we have no way to stop mouse physical mouse jigglers or input devices that mimic a mouse
Attach a feather to the edge of your display and have your cat stand on the keyboard and play with it.
Is that what they told you at your work?
The AutoIt scripting language http://www.autoitscript.com will generate a windows executable and after our work PCs were configured to lock the screen after a 10-15 min of inactivity for security it became inconvenient for monitoring long running maintenance jobs at home after hours so I wrote a script that moved the cursor back and forth by one pixel.
Later on work started monitoring the software running on our laptops for security so I stopped running my AutoIt exe and looked around for a hardware solution. There are commercial versions available that are very compact but at around AU$44 seem a little overpriced.
There are several projects posted that use an AU$9 digispark ATtiny85 board and V-USB but I was looking for something that doesn’t stick out quite so far as the digispark boards and found this project that sitcks out of the USB port by not much more than the length of the SOIC8 ATtiny https://fabiobaltieri.com/2011/10/19/fun-with-attiny-and-v-usb/
PyAutoGUI.
There’s a software called caffeine. Works great.
this is doable with robot-js and node. no hardware required
My company monitors everything, including any devices connected to it, so any USB device is a no go. Software, keystrokes are also monitored. So, I just rubberbanded my tiny, remote controlled Wevibe vibrator to the mouse and let it run around my desk. Thoroughly cleaned before and after, of course! ;-)
Nice. I wrote a small Windows EXE that, in a nutshell, tells the system that I’m watching a video and not to enable the screen saver. Have been using it for 3+ years. Our “AI” security system has yet to flag it and management has never asked why I watch so many videos. A simpler solution may be to go to YouTube, find a sufficiently long video, and play it in the background. Although if they’re monitoring your network activity…
Love the watch and mouse solution. It triggered my “why didn’t I think of that” head-slapping subroutine.
If they are monitoring your network activity just put on those 3hr relaxation music to study videos or stream the beats to study girl YouTube stream, you can mute the audio of course but it will be plausable why it’s running for so long.
Damn that’s really cool, out of the box *and* off the wall…
Why though when there’s software solution “move mouse” for this prupose?
Many companies prevent you from installing or running unauthorized software or using non-company hardware, my partner’s company laptop will refuse to mount USB sticks.
I have used a more basic setup in my past when doing data loads from a local machine, it has never failed me.
https://youtu.be/F_LS_sxbiqk
When AI is incorporated into sysadmin, these devices will be found and corrective actions taken. Let’s call them Loud Leavers?
AA-sized battery on the shift key is enough…
I would turn my laptop sideways and have a fan hit the space bar
Or just start a PowerPoint presentation. It will use the relevant Windows API to keep the computer ‘busy’.
If this is based on the Attiny85 and Digispark’s DigiMouse.h, isn’t it susceptible to not working on many systems? I’ve seen lots of reports of it not working on: Windows, OSX, and Linux – all here on hackaday.
I just built a Digistump mouse jiggler last night and couldn’t get it to be recognized by my desktop, but it worked, albeit intermittently, on my old Macbook. This project solves the issue of using PCB traces as the USB port but it might still not work on many setups, and it sounds like most solutions today are built around a different microprocessor.
https://hackaday.io/project/28445-usb-cdc-robosapien-v1/log/95249-legacy-getting-started-with-digistump-clone
https://hackaday.com/2018/09/17/diy-rubber-ducky-is-as-cheap-as-its-namesake/
attiny85 was not reliable on windows when i have tried. ATMega32u4 is working well. I have added a button w/ two funtions: pw generator to align my employer **** rules wich generates pws that easy to remember (long press) and pw sending as a keyboard (short press). I use it only at home office.
Did this years ago.
First reason was to keep the online status in Lync, yeah that old, second was to randomly plug them into other peoples PC’s in the office to mess with their heads.
Waveshare has a very nice (and cheap) raspberry pi pico board: https://www.waveshare.com/rp2040-one.htm which plugs into your computer straight away. The Pico does USB HID much better than the ATTiny and there a plenty code examples for a mouse jiggler running on the pico.
There’s 100 free ways to do this with software and as such, you’d have to be one of the least intelligent / capable humans on the planet to pay money for this. I weep for humanity when this is news
I imagine you need to weep all the time if you weep over human stupidity. Id smoke something to make yourself happier, but smoking is stupid, so it might make you feel even sadder.
you’d be surprised. I can run caffeine just fine, that keeps my machine awake.
However, there is then evidence of that software running on the machine
Also, Team still for some reason stops sending notifications after a set amount of time… so if I step away to do something else, I come back to a whole bunch of notifications as soon as I do something manual on the PC
Or you can do one of a hundred other things.. Even in Windows.
https://paste.pics/24a6ebfc76ba3f14f352d41a35414bff
So many fun hacks in true spirit of hackaday.! Makes me nostalgic for the much maligned “Golden age’ of web app design cir pre 2001 where you and a few friends had a successful business and were just months away from your IPO lol.
My solution when i wasnt at office or all happy hour was simple as well. We used AIM (aol intent messenger for the young) and there seemed no way to get around the “inactive for x minutes” status, regardless of PC sheep settings etc, even keyboard input. Solution: turn optical mouse upside down and place under a pendulum clock… All sorts of random cursor movement! Then turn your chat volume notification way up, head to your couch to sleep off the hangover and finish your coding that night like a respectable slacker.
Intelligent employers really don’t care if you’re sitting at the computer or not. All that matters is at the end of the week, did the work that was assigned to the employee get completed well. Was the employee available when you really needed them. What else really matters?
Windows sets the sleep time on a new install and tends to fall asleep when doing updates. Really annoying when you refurbish several computers a week and have to keep waking them up. I bought a couple mouse jigglers that just emulate a mouse going back and forth and keeps the computer from going to sleep (which is easier than changing sleep settings on something that you can start the install and just come back to in 3 hours and it’s mostly done). https://www.amazon.com/Undetectable-Computer-Simulate-Movement-Entering/dp/B097ZXZLVR
Analog watch with second hand under an optical mouse. Problem solved. In my case I 3d printed a mount for the watch that holds the mouse and the watch in the correct orientation.
The ‘mouse jiggler’ is good for passive monitoring….but doesn’t help when the employer insists on webcam monitoring.
Thats when you record a half hour video of yourself and hack the webcam to display that instead of the live data.
eeew, that is getting even more toxic
Welcome to the 21st century workplace. Not all workplaces are like this (mine isn’t, yet) but some very much are and have been for years.
I’m pretty happy with my $3 solution. No USB port required!
https://www.instructables.com/3-Mouse-Jiggler-Keep-Your-Computer-Awake/
Only mac users pay for stuff a <1MB Tool does for free
Why not actually just work? After all they pay you to do it.
Because looking busy isn’t the same as getting the job done, and management seem to perpetually value “looking busy” over getting real work done on a minutes/hours/day scale but only evaluate actual work done over week/month scale.
Juat stick a toothpick into the spacebar key.
Where are my Linux homies?
while true ;
do xdotool mousemove_relative -- 1 1 ; sleep 45 ; done
Heres 1 for the Windows homies. No need for fancy hardware:
#PS Caffeine. Press Ctrl + C to stop script
$shell = New-Object -com “Wscript.Shell”
while ($true) {
$shell.SendKeys(‘+{F15}’)
Start-Sleep -Seconds 240
}
Did we really make it this far without someome notcing the similarity with the “YT’s Mom works for the feds…” passages in Snow Crash, don’t take long enough reading a memo and they put you down as slapdash, take way too long and they think you’re incompetent or slacking, take the exact right amount of time and they think you’re a smartass, so YTs mom opts for a smidgen longer than optimal to give the impression of being thorough.
Funny story. Before the pandemic and the proliferation of this sort of compliance nonsense. A coworker and I were working graves in a SCIF where devices such as this would get you fired and potentially prosecuted. Our boss (who worked days) wanted oversight so he implemented a similar protocol on our computers.
He was concerned that we were napping during our watch hours. While, there was an (over)abundance of downtime during our shift, we were responsible employees, so this really ticked off my coworker. His lo-fi solution for malicious compliance was to bring in a large Newton’s cradle and set his mouse on the support bars underneath the device. The shock from the impact of the bearings was just enough to ‘wiggle’ his mouse.
Pointless, since we didn’t change our nightly routine, but somehow deeply satisfying!
If he was worried about it, at least one of you fell asleep at least a couple of times
If I even needed this (my employer trusts its employees), I would just put the mouse cord over the touchpad, as the induction (?) from the cable activated the touchpad and moves the pointer.
#!/usr/bin/python3
import pyautogui
import time
screenWidth, screenHeight = pyautogui.size()
counter = 0
while (True):
currentMouseX, currentMouseY = pyautogui.position()
# Check 0,0 special edge case
if currentMouseX == 0 and currentMouseY == 0:
pyautogui.FAILSAFE = False
pyautogui.moveTo(10,10)
pyautogui.FAILSAFE = True
# Check for geometry bounds
if currentMouseX >= (screenWidth – 2):
pyautogui.moveTo((screenWidth -10),currentMouseY)
elif currentMouseX = (screenHeight – 2):
pyautogui.moveTo(currentMouseX, (screenHeight – 10))
elif currentMouseY <= 2:
pyautogui.moveTo(currentMouseX, 10)
# move a pixel
if (counter%2 == 1):
pyautogui.move(-1,0)
else:
pyautogui.move(1,0)
counter+=1
time.sleep(200)
Just put a stone on your shift key.
YW
Long ago, you held the shift key during startup to disable extensions on the macintosh. Sometimes took 45 seconds from hitting reset to getting to that point. I would jam a corner of a floppy disk above the shift key to keep it down.
Get a cat to sleep on your keyboard.
A word of caution to anyone who stumbled upon this and thinks “Oh hey, I can safely use this to keep my employer from micromanaging me so much!”… I would REALLY rethink that. The way it comes configured is problematic.
If there’s a single employee in your IT department who knows anything, you’re going to be a massive red flag the moment you plug this device in. It doesn’t register as a regular generic USB mouse. It registers as DigiKey, which is red flag one for anyone who knows anything about custom hardware or hacks. If you go into the USB product details, you will also see references to it being a product of DigiStump.com -frankly no legitimate mouse would say those things, and your IT department is going to be well aware of that.
If your IT department monitors what sort of USB devices you connect to your machine (and many of them do) you can bet they’re going to see this thing a mile away, because it’s clearly non-standard and the company names on it will tell them you’re up to some questionable shit. If you’re lucky, your IT department will block the device from running on your machine, but more likely they’ll terminate you for work avoidance, etc.
I’m not hear to tell people “they should be working, not slacking off” or anything like that, not at all. But I *am* saying there are other, safer ways to achieve the same goal as this, that won’t narc you out and likely get you fired. Strongly recommend against this device for novice users, the default configuration is unsafe to your job security.