4 ms·

You can tape a touch simulator to it (or use a fake mouse, afaik that's nowadays supported) and monitor the screen with a camera. If it requires FaceID or Touch

by detaro 5y ago

You can tape a touch simulator to it (or use a fake mouse, afaik that's nowadays supported) and monitor the screen with a camera. If it requires FaceID or TouchID it's getting trickier, but even that's probably doable in an environment you control.

ChuckNorris89 5y ago
Or...you can take all that time and energy you'd invest building this complex Rube Goldberg machine that just proves you're present 9-5, and instead, invest it in finding a job that's not so toxic. Seems more healthy for your mental wellbeing in the long run, as toxic policies in workplaces rarely come alone but tend to come sequentially one after another as time goes on if the terror managers don't change or enough employee don't jump ship simultaneously to trigger a management change.
- detaro 5y ago
  Sure, but I'd apply that at the point of the original posters setup already.
- xeromal 5y ago
  You seem to take this seriously but putting something together like this is exactly what makes programming/engineering fun. lol. I love putting together weird crap like this.
  - justinlloyd 5y ago
    I build a lot of things that like that. From putting a space invaders game on my digital resume website, to an autonomous R/C car that can evade a pursuing dog that jinks left and right like a rabbit, to an internet controlled robot arm used as a cat toy, to a touch screen cat toy that exhibits predator/prey response from the feline interacting with it that results in a paper about improper toe bean rejection because there are not enough science papers written about cats interacting with touch screens, to figuring out which way up a piece of material has been loaded in to a CNC, to "open the pod bay doors" that will open my garage door, to an interactive smart home screen that monitors where my cats, phone, wallet and amazon packages are (and also displays the weather), to a multi-camera streaming setup that is voice activated "Hey producer, roll VT" that talks to me like Cortana from Halo, to a computer vision system for recognizing electronic components and sorting them into appropriate piles, to a remote operated cat litter cleaning robot arm, to cataloguing every book read, science paper digested, class attended, movie watched and album listened too since 1984. And then there is the weird stuff.
- albrewer 5y ago
  > [...] instead, invest it in finding a job that's not so toxic. Nobody's saying they're not doing that. Depending on life circumstances and where you live, it can take months to find a new job that's actually better than the one you're in, even when actively looking.
- justinlloyd 5y ago
  You've assumed an awful lot about me based on a few flippant comments I've made on social media. Perhaps that time would be better spent finding a different outlet for your frustration. It appears that these days people on HN jump to the "find another job" solution as fast as people on Reddit jump to the "get divorced" solution.
bredren 5y ago
Can biometric auth be required on iOS? I had thought iOS treated these as convenience alternatives to device pin.
- HWR_14 5y ago
  By default in a standard iOS installation, it's a convenience (one only unlocked after a PIN is input on rebooting). Individual apps may request access to FaceID/TouchID (not the raw data, but the iPhone's verification of biometric identity.) The user must whitelist the apps to use that permission, but a company could easily make their app not function if that permission is denied.
  - justinlloyd 5y ago
    I've already circumvented a variety of biometric requirements in various devices in my personal research and just for funsies. FaceID is fooled by a 3D print, and also if you never enroll your face in FaceID but instead use something else that is face-like, the system doesn't care. FaceID is dumb, insecure and doesn't care. TouchID similarly - it just wants to see a squishy thing pressed against it that vaguely resembles a human finger to enroll. It's security theatre. Consumer grade biometric security is as useless as consumer grade paper shredders.
    - HWR_14 5y ago
      > Consumer grade biometric security is as useless as consumer grade paper shredders. IIRC, consumer grade paper shredders got pretty good in the past few years. And your examples both rely on the person setting up the security circumventing it by supplying bad training/enrolling. Which makes it bad if you want to guarantee a person is behind it, but fine if you want to treat it as something that belongs to the person doing the enrolling.
      - justinlloyd 5y ago
        You're not wrong, but anything up to DIN P-4 is a couple of evenings of work to defeat with an automated computer vision algorithm. Ask me how I know. Most consumer grade shredders on the market are DIN P-2 and DIN P-5 is where it starts to get really tricky but is still possible to work with. And I have found that most corporate security, especially in the biometric arena, is sub-par, usually because of the human component doing the enrolling. I am not saying it isn't workable, but that there is a vast landscape between people's perceived utility/functionality of the security and the actual security envelope it provides. Fortunately for me, security is very difficult to get right.

by detaro 5y ago

ChuckNorris89 5y ago

Or...you can take all that time and energy you'd invest building this complex Rube Goldberg machine that just proves you're present 9-5, and instead, invest it in finding a job that's not so toxic. Seems more healthy for your mental wellbeing in the long run, as toxic policies in workplaces rarely come alone but tend to come sequentially one after another as time goes on if the terror managers don't change or enough employee don't jump ship simultaneously to trigger a management change.

detaro 5y ago
Sure, but I'd apply that at the point of the original posters setup already.
xeromal 5y ago
You seem to take this seriously but putting something together like this is exactly what makes programming/engineering fun. lol. I love putting together weird crap like this.
- justinlloyd 5y ago
  I build a lot of things that like that. From putting a space invaders game on my digital resume website, to an autonomous R/C car that can evade a pursuing dog that jinks left and right like a rabbit, to an internet controlled robot arm used as a cat toy, to a touch screen cat toy that exhibits predator/prey response from the feline interacting with it that results in a paper about improper toe bean rejection because there are not enough science papers written about cats interacting with touch screens, to figuring out which way up a piece of material has been loaded in to a CNC, to "open the pod bay doors" that will open my garage door, to an interactive smart home screen that monitors where my cats, phone, wallet and amazon packages are (and also displays the weather), to a multi-camera streaming setup that is voice activated "Hey producer, roll VT" that talks to me like Cortana from Halo, to a computer vision system for recognizing electronic components and sorting them into appropriate piles, to a remote operated cat litter cleaning robot arm, to cataloguing every book read, science paper digested, class attended, movie watched and album listened too since 1984. And then there is the weird stuff.
albrewer 5y ago
> [...] instead, invest it in finding a job that's not so toxic. Nobody's saying they're not doing that. Depending on life circumstances and where you live, it can take months to find a new job that's actually better than the one you're in, even when actively looking.
justinlloyd 5y ago
You've assumed an awful lot about me based on a few flippant comments I've made on social media. Perhaps that time would be better spent finding a different outlet for your frustration. It appears that these days people on HN jump to the "find another job" solution as fast as people on Reddit jump to the "get divorced" solution.

bredren 5y ago

Can biometric auth be required on iOS? I had thought iOS treated these as convenience alternatives to device pin.

HWR_14 5y ago
By default in a standard iOS installation, it's a convenience (one only unlocked after a PIN is input on rebooting). Individual apps may request access to FaceID/TouchID (not the raw data, but the iPhone's verification of biometric identity.) The user must whitelist the apps to use that permission, but a company could easily make their app not function if that permission is denied.
- justinlloyd 5y ago
  I've already circumvented a variety of biometric requirements in various devices in my personal research and just for funsies. FaceID is fooled by a 3D print, and also if you never enroll your face in FaceID but instead use something else that is face-like, the system doesn't care. FaceID is dumb, insecure and doesn't care. TouchID similarly - it just wants to see a squishy thing pressed against it that vaguely resembles a human finger to enroll. It's security theatre. Consumer grade biometric security is as useless as consumer grade paper shredders.
  - HWR_14 5y ago
    > Consumer grade biometric security is as useless as consumer grade paper shredders. IIRC, consumer grade paper shredders got pretty good in the past few years. And your examples both rely on the person setting up the security circumventing it by supplying bad training/enrolling. Which makes it bad if you want to guarantee a person is behind it, but fine if you want to treat it as something that belongs to the person doing the enrolling.
    - justinlloyd 5y ago
      You're not wrong, but anything up to DIN P-4 is a couple of evenings of work to defeat with an automated computer vision algorithm. Ask me how I know. Most consumer grade shredders on the market are DIN P-2 and DIN P-5 is where it starts to get really tricky but is still possible to work with. And I have found that most corporate security, especially in the biometric arena, is sub-par, usually because of the human component doing the enrolling. I am not saying it isn't workable, but that there is a vast landscape between people's perceived utility/functionality of the security and the actual security envelope it provides. Fortunately for me, security is very difficult to get right.