15 ms·
Daytripper
- keithwhor 7y agoThis is amazing, and I also would like to make a meta comment about how creative "dekuNukem" is as a screen name. Re: custom script, can I plug the receiver into, say, a RP0 and fire off an arbitrary webhook?
- joenot443 7y agoAdding to your metacomment, "Daytripper" is an excellent name, and a great nod to the Beatles track.
- oiasdjfoiasd 7y agogreat stuff, lol
- MaupitiBlue 7y agoHandy! Why not Bluetooth?
- WrtCdEvrydy 7y agoReminds me of Uplink's Motion Sensor.
- voldacar 7y agoSuch a great game. I still listen to the soundtrack every once in a while, it just nails that y2k atmosphere so well
- Touche 7y agoDave was fired because every time his boss walked by his desk he was staring at his desktop.
- the_watcher 7y agoAt his next job, Dave tried the custom setup and his boss now thinks he's always writing emails.
- arnarbi 7y agoDave didn't read https://lifehacker.com/look-busy-with-a-fake-desktop-background-212236 https://lifehacker.com/look-busy-with-a-fake-desktop-backgro...
- rolltiide 7y ago> Execute a custom script an option
- Razengan 7y agoWhat good are all those pretty wallpapers if we don't take a moment to appreciate them?
- buildzr 7y agoThis is why I built a custom tool to automatically hide all "marked" windows as soon as I switch off of them. Could be integrated with something like this pretty easily.
- risubramanian 7y agoI'd use a separate virtual desktop for off-topic tasks, then just switch to that. Simple command in Linux, probably also in Windows
- buildzr 7y agoI tried this but found the shift between desktops far more jarring, people would definitely know you were up to sow thing if all of a sudden multiple monitors jump to a whole different set of windows, compared to just hiding one or two small ones.
- jonas21 7y agoI bet Ross Ulbricht wishes he had this. (context) https://www.businessinsider.com/the-arrest-of-silk-road-mastermind-ross-ulbricht-2015-1 https://www.businessinsider.com/the-arrest-of-silk-road-mast...
- jszymborski 7y ago> * Execute a custom script rm -rf /*
- solotronics 7y agoI have always been curious.. is there a better way of accomplishing this?
- jszymborski 7y agoI suspect you can leverage GNU Parallel to get this faster EDIT: Yup, looks like a clever person figured this out https://serverfault.com/questions/46852/doing-an-rm-rf-on-a-massive-directory-tree-takes-hours/107366#107366 https://serverfault.com/questions/46852/doing-an-rm-rf-on-a-...
- smacktoward 7y agoI suppose you could try wiring the receiver up to a USB killer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_Killer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_Killer)... Though if you do that, you'll want to be extremely diligent about minding where you step :-D
- javajosh 7y agoOkay, that's neat. Now someone needs to figure out how to detect someone walking by using fluctuations in the wifi signal strength.
- gricardo99 7y agoOr use the monitor camera and opencv to detect faces/eyeballs in the background lurking or peering at your monitor.
- nostrebored 7y agoSpinning this up with a bounding box facial detection algorithm and triggering Amazon Recognition against a constrained data set of authorized users is day-projectable :)
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- oarabbus_ 7y agoIt's been done, at least something tangentially close. http://news.mit.edu/2018/artificial-intelligence-senses-people-through-walls-0612 http://news.mit.edu/2018/artificial-intelligence-senses-peop...
- the_watcher 7y agoA version of this that's somehow aware of whether or not I'm at my desk, then puts the machine to sleep anytime anyone else touches a key would be kind of cool. Maybe some kind of proximity sensor that you could stick to a badge or in your wallet? It would need to still allow you to login and perhaps offer a password to disable in case you forgot your sensor, but seems vaguely plausible? EDIT: Read more of the usage guide, seems even more plausible now, although I guess it all depends on the reliability of the proximity sensor.
- solotronics 7y agoProbably an RFID would be better. There are some articles about doing pub/priv key auth using an RFID device, this would be good because nobody could snoop your RFID signal and replay it.
- ComputerGuru 7y agoSomewhat related, Windows 10 allows you to pair it to a phone with Bluetooth support. When you log into or unlock the device with that phone in proximity then walk away with the device on your person, your PC/laptop will lock immediately.
- icebraining 7y agoSame on Linux using blueproximity, which has been around for over a decade. Any paired device works, including BT headphones and such.
- smacktoward 7y agoUSBKill (https://github.com/hephaest0s/usbkill https://github.com/hephaest0s/usbkill) lists one approach to solving that problem in its README: - Set USBKill to watch the status of a particular USB port - Attach a lanyard to a USB key - Wear the lanyard on your wrist - Plug the USB key you're wearing into the port USBKill is watching Then anytime you step away from the machine, USBKill would notice the removal of the key and shut it down.
- 7y ago
- Rebelgecko 7y agowhat's the advantage of using two laser sensors vs a single IR sensor for the motion detection? (other than the badass Mission Impossible factor) edit: I'll leave this comment for posterity, but I previously misunderstood the meanings of the Tx and Rx sensors
- beering 7y agoAnd to help anyone else who might be confused, the device comes in two parts, a "transmitter" and a "receiver". But the transmitter detects motion by itself without needing another piece placed on the other side of the door, and the receiver is what plugs into the computer to know when to hide the windows (or execute the custom command).
- mikewhy 7y agooff-topic, but Daytripper is also the name of a very good graphic novel.
- asveikau 7y agoAnd Beatles song.
- mellosouls 7y agoDouble A side with We Can Work it Out. Immediately preceded and followed depending on territory by stuff like Yesterday, Nowhere Man, Paperback Writer etc. Extraordinary. On reflection they probably would have had no need for a device like this...
- asveikau 7y agoThanks for this comment. It reminds me that somehow, I discovered some of those before sitting down with Rubber Soul or Revolver.
- hoytech 7y agohttps://www.buzzfeed.com/erikmalinowski/the-evolution-of-the-march-madness-boss-button https://www.buzzfeed.com/erikmalinowski/the-evolution-of-the...
- mises 7y agoHe's watching Technology Connections on you tube, which is an excellent choice. Highly recommended. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCy0tKL1T7wFoYcxCe0xjN6Q https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCy0tKL1T7wFoYcxCe0xjN6Q
- jperry 7y agoHe's also playing Broken Reality, a silly game parodying the internet. It's pretty good.
- papln 7y agoWhy is there a receiver, instead of running an app on the receiving system to listen for bluetooth/http/etc messages?
- exhilaration 7y agoThis would work on a locked-down corporate PC where one couldn't install random applications.
- icebraining 7y agoExactly; it just emulates an USB keyboard and sends keypresses.
- adrianmonk 7y agoMaybe because something needs to be at each end, to shine a laser at one end and to detect it at the other. Or you could use a reflector, but that's still two objects.
- NikkiA 7y agoYou don't need a reflector in the majority of cases, shining an IR laser onto a wall/door frame a couple of meters away is usually a big enough bright spot to drive a phototransistor pointing at (nearly) the same spot.
- BoorishBears 7y agoIt's not using the TX and RX sides to form a beam, it's using a ToF distance sensor.
- rraghur 7y agoUsb dongle as keyboard send keys and I think he's using a nrf24l01+ for wireless comms
- martin-adams 7y agoThis reminds me of the old boss key: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boss_key https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boss_key
- allenu 7y agoExactly what I was thinking. I remember being so confused by it as a kid when I saw it in games. Like, why do you need a key that displays a fake DOS prompt?
- XCSme 7y agoVery cool product, but I think $60 for something that looks like max $10 parts is way too expensive.
- JustSomeNobody 7y agoBoM is only part of the story, though.
- XCSme 7y agoI know that the cost of development is not only materials, but the code is already Open Source on github, so a company could use it and sell the devices for $15. I don't know anything about the platform the device is sold on, but if you want to support the dev you could donate as much as you want, no need to pay for an overpriced product. I assume it is the premium you pay for a "handmade" product.
- momokoko 7y agoIt still amazes me, to this day, that people have jobs where they have the time to screw around on their computer all day. How do these jobs continue to exist?
- whorleater 7y agoI screw around at least 25% of the time as a dev
- momokoko 7y agoIf you don't mind me asking, how do get all of your work done? Are you standing by on-call in case something goes wrong? Are you waiting on someone to deliver assets required for your next task? Do you lie about how long it takes to complete tasks? Honestly curious as I cannot remember a time where I had the free time to just screw around for any meaningful portion of my day.
- JustSomeNobody 7y agoSo you never find yourself working on a hard problem that you can't immediately solve, decide to get up and walk around to see who else is free then start talking for a bit before returning to your desk to find that your hard problem isn't so hard and now you have the solution? Of course, my problem is I WFH, so I end up talking to the kids stuffed animals. They don't really carry on good conversations.
- momokoko 7y agoFor sure. But that is working. I'm talking about all these stories of trying to prevent their boss from catching them playing games or surfing the web etc. If I did that I would fall way behind the work that needs to get done. That's why I wonder if maybe I'm missing something about other people's work days. Because, not only is it kind of sad, it also seems like actual criminal fraud to lie to people about what you are doing while they are paying to be doing something.
- djsumdog 7y agoIf you have a web camera and use Windows, you can use this thing I wrote forever ago: https://rearviewmirror.cc/ https://rearviewmirror.cc/
- hn_throwaway_99 7y agoLooks like it doesn't work anymore, but at one point someone styled reddit to look like you were reading a Word document: https://pcottle.github.io/MSWorddit/ https://pcottle.github.io/MSWorddit/
- ActorNightly 7y agoThere is also https://github.com/michael-lazar/rtv https://github.com/michael-lazar/rtv which lets you browse reddit from a terminal
- sixstringtheory 7y agoAnd of course http://codereddit.com http://codereddit.com!
- aexl 7y agoWhich is unfortunately not maintained anymore: https://github.com/michael-lazar/rtv/issues/696 https://github.com/michael-lazar/rtv/issues/696
- Seirdy 7y ago`rtv` is now `tuir` [0]. [0]: https://gitlab.com/ajak/tuir https://gitlab.com/ajak/tuir
- zianwar 7y agoThis reminds me of https://netflixhangouts.com/ https://netflixhangouts.com/
- remlov 7y agoLooks like the site depends on yql which was sunset on Jan. 3rd, 2019: https://twitter.com/ydn/status/1079785891558653952?lang=en https://twitter.com/ydn/status/1079785891558653952?lang=en
- navane 7y agosimilar but styled as code: http://codereddit.com/ http://codereddit.com/
- spacedog11 7y ago[Boss Walks in] [Dave intensely staring at the desktop] Boss: empty deskopt...not suspicious at all.
- hinkley 7y agoI could use this going the other way: Put one of these near an information radiator to kick it out of doze mode.
- fragmede 7y agoUSB jiggler is designed for this use case.
- hinkley 7y agoIf I wanted the machine to never go to sleep I'd just change the config. USB jiggler seems to be for winning an argument with your IT team that they think they've already won.
- bonestamp2 7y agoI didn't dig through the code too much but it looks like the receiver just acts like a USB keyboard. So, you could probably modify the script to send some innocuous keyboard "input" that would knock off the screensaver (to show your radiator) instead of sending the close window and lock commands.
- spacedog11 7y agoThe best kind of "screwing around" is screwing around in plain sight. Once, I had a fresh grad in my team and I had to get him up to speed. I noticed he was taking more than the usual time to do basic tasks, yet whenever I passed by his desk, he had three terminals open and had c++ code here and there and compilation errors on another window. Two months later, he would move to a different company. Turns out that he was just practicing his programming skills, and all of this time I assumed he was working on assigned tasks. EDIT: spelling
- mellosouls 7y agoSee also: converting your current Kindle read to plain text and pasting it into your ide or email editor... We need more "plain sight slacking" tips to be on the lookout for, so we can stay vigilant.
- jfsantos 7y agoThat's me in 2003 connecting to the university Unix servers and using command line ICQ and IRC clients during work hours.
- Aloha 7y agoYup! Now I use RDP to do the same with telegram (there is no not-shitty CLI telegram client)
- chaostheory 7y agoI feel that it's easier just to have clear tasks with deadlines, using decent project management software like say Asana, Monday, or whatever. If they're meeting the deadlines and the work is good, why bother wasting time being big bro and treating them like a child? Why not just go by results? (you can check commits as well, and CI not going off will at least tell you nothing is broken)
- Aloha 7y agoIf you work in an environment where you're expected to be busy at all times even without much to do - well.. things like this come in handy.
- dpflan 7y agoDoes anyone know of components to DIY this type of project? I like the idea and its size, mainly the laser tripwire.
- kempbellt 7y agoIf you are able to slack off at work like this, is there something that you would rather be doing with your time? I am not judging. I've worked at places where I spent 75% of my day slacking off because the management and bureaucracy was terrible. After months of doing that, I started hating the job. I can only check facebook/reddit/pick your poison, for so long before I want to throw my computer out a window out of boredom.
- legulere 7y agoThere’s an entire book written about this phenomenon, called Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber
- navyad 7y agothat one is a good to read.
- derefr 7y agoWhy do nothing, when you could instead get a second (remote) job and then make 200% salary by doing your second job during your first job's working hours?
- ryanmcbride 7y agoHad someone do this at a job I used to work with. Bosses never caught on and as far as I know he's still doing it. It's a big company where 80% of the things we made wouldn't ever see the light of day, which is perfect for something like that.
- cgriswald 7y agoTrue story. When I was an overnight computer operator, the guy working the other nights had a second job working in a package shipping warehouse. He’d come in, fire off a bunch of jobs, go to his second job, return at lunch time, fire off the next batch of jobs, and then be back before any of the rest of the office came in for the day to catch up on the rest. He got caught because the timing didn’t quite work out and he was always behind in the morning. They checked cameras because of it and he admitted it when confronted. I remember thinking a simple batch script could have done that job but I was smart enough not to write it. I hadn’t thought of writing it and then just getting a second job...
- IshKebab 7y agoNice. Should really use BLE though so you don't need the receiver - nRF52 or ESP32 are the best options.
- jaifraic 7y agoThat's what I thought. With an ESP32 and a cheaper sensor (a maybe a simple ultrasonic one) you could hack together something similar for less about ten dollars.
- retSava 7y agoWith that, you'd need a client software on the computer, pairing etc. His receiver acts like a keyboard that just sends win+m when triggered. Neater, imho.
- nf8nnfufuu 7y agoDo modern notebooks still have vibration sensors? I think old ones had them in the hard drives, to protect them from damage. But SSDs wouldn't need that anymore. In any case, I wonder if detecting vibrations and recognizing the boss via machine learning wouldn't be more elegant.
- jaifraic 7y agoWell, gait is usable as a biometric identifier. While most approaches use video analysis, I found this a paper [1] that is about identifying people through footstep induced structural vibration using a geophone[2]. It would be quite interesting if it is possible to measure the structural vibration using a laptops or smartphones built in accelerometers. But I think acoustic sensors would be a better way. Or a combination of both options.
- suhlig 7y agoInteresting - can you provide [1] and [2] please?
- jaifraic 7y agoYikes, it was a bit too late in my timezone, sorry. [1]: https://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/shijiapa/documentations/Hotmobile2015_Footstep_project.pdf https://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/shijiapa/documentations/Hotm... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geophone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geophone
- cwkoss 7y agowebcam vibration changing the field of view could be a decent proxy for laptops.
- erklik 7y agoWould the vibration sensors be sensitive enough to detect vibrations from a walking person
- nategri 7y agoOh hey. I just used some SPI-based Nixie tube drivers that this same tindie user made. I've been super impressed!
- retSava 7y agoCame to say something similar - in the spirit of his/hers exixe tube thing, I made a similar one but with msp430 (since I'm very familiar with it) and cleaner layout of the transistors. Looks good and have baked a couple, but I'm not getting good results on flashing the msp430. For some reason it's flaky as hell, and I don't have the time to investigate more.
- lanius 7y agoGood luck if you're in an open office!
- adrianmonk 7y agoI wonder how far you could get at doing this with no additional hardware. Could a smart enough AI detect the boss's voice with the microphone? Some other mannerism like the way they clear their throat? Face detection with the camera? Maybe something with Bluetooth or WiFi and the boss's smart phone?
- andai 7y agoLast one sounds the most promising, if clients (rather than base stations) can be uniquely identified, and often enough to be practical. I know that base stations send a beacon out x times per second, but phones probably don't.
- beatgammit 7y agoCouldn't you do the same thing with a sonic range finder? That wouldn't require a receiver, so you could put everything onto the one USB device.
- IggleSniggle 7y agoThe idea is to put the tripwire on the path to your approach. That’s the reason a send and receive is needed.
- foobiekr 7y agoI would really like one of these that did some level of face/gaze detection; open workspaces...
- microcolonel 7y agoAnyone here know of a timing- and cryptographically-secured laser tripwire? I've tried it before, but it seems like there's some work involved in tuning these things just right.
- dandigangi 7y agoI wish I could upvote this multiple times. Lmao - amazing!
- imranq 7y agoA job is simply the key to the building, what you do after is up to you
- fencepost 7y agoI could see real uses for these, but I'd want questions answered first such as whether they're specifically paired, where the programming is stored, what data passes wirelessly, whether there could be any way the receiver could act as an open HID receiver device, what the number of triggers is, etc.
- retSava 7y agoFrom a quick glance, it's a custom radio packet using a common 2.4 GHz proprietary radio (clone of nrf 24L01), and it doesn't really need more than that. Adding complex pairing and so on would likely kill this fun passion project way long before finishing.
- crimsonalucard 7y agoI remember some guy at Verizon outsourcing his entire job to china. He was consistently getting top marks and promotions while all he was doing was looking at cat pictures all day. Daytripper is level 1. Outsourcing your job to China is level 2. Something just clicked in my head. Start up idea!
- quickthrower2 7y agoLevel 3 = Level 2 + WFH. Level 4 = Level 3 + outsource the status reporting to a local, and simply H instead of WFH. You have now achieved the goal set by Tim F, and you can replace those cat pics with a real physical cat.
- crimsonalucard 7y agoLevel 5 = create a startup that does this as a service.
- crimsonalucard 7y agoLevel 6 = Outsource the creation of this startup to management in China.
- quickthrower2 7y ago1st Dan = Single handedly start a tech bubble investing in this kind of startup and startups that provide services to it.
- foxhop 7y agoI forgot what it feels like to have to hide my screwing around. I've been working from home for the last 6 years.
- imgabe 7y agoI applaud the amount of effort that went in to being this lazy.
- gibolt 7y agoThe YouTube channel being watched in the GIF is Technology Connections. Excellent quirky technical content about old hardware. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCy0tKL1T7wFoYcxCe0xjN6Q https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCy0tKL1T7wFoYcxCe0xjN6Q
- navyad 7y agoThere always comes times when there is not much happening development is going on. In my earlier company due to the same situation, I started contributing an open-source project and build side projects.
- JacKTrocinskI 7y agoNot as a consultant though, never a dull day/hour in the day.
- thomasfl 7y agoAn iPhone X, or other similar phones, could probably be used as a motion detector as well?
- thuylun2412 7y agogood job
- tripzilch 7y agoIs this really a ubiquitous thing in the US? Office jobs were you are paid for having your body present, regardless of whether you slack off most of the time? Who pays for this? Isn't it terribly inefficient? I mean, if there's just not a lot of work to do, you could also have shorter work weeks. And you would, if your boss could trust you to not slack off every time they turn their backs? Wouldn't it be more logical to do your work and then have actual time off, instead of pretending the work takes much longer than it actually does?