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by henryackerman 2025 days ago
Buy a mouse wiggler, problem solved.
4 comments

I don't think it's that simple. From my experience, if you are in certain non-Microsoft applications and the mouse is moving it will still set you as Away and won't set your status to Available until you click into an application it recognizes.
> I don't think it's that simple. From my experience, if you are in certain non-Microsoft applications and the mouse is moving it will still set you as Away and won't set your status to Available until you click into an application it recognizes.

Is it just ignoring mouse movement, or actually monitoring interaction with the app it recognizes?

This mouse jiggler is programmable, and lets you insert keypresses and stuff into the script: https://www.amazon.com/WiebeTech-Programmable-Mouse-Jiggler-...

I'm no netsec expert but this type of programable usb devices sounds like a security risk specially on a company machine with access to an internal network.
IMHO, it's not any more of a security risk than a keyboard and mouse, which is literally what it is.
Reminds me of a story I read - some company had a batch job that ran for hours and for some reason if the computer went to screen saver, the batch job crashed and had to be restarted. Rather than actually find the root of the problem (of course), or disable screensaver (not allowed per security policy), they just assigned somebody to move the mouse every few minutes to keep the screensaver from activating.

So one day, the guy brings in a vibrating baby bouncer, puts the mouse in the baby bouncer, and kicks back for the rest of the day.

Both of the solution seems dumb to me. Can't you play a 24 hour video? AFAIK most media players prevent the computer from going to sleep. Or even better write a program that does it for you: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/34836406/how-to-prevent-...
The entire situation is dumb.
Many (most?) companies that care to track your productivity in invasive ways will have security policies locking out USB devices.

Even plugging in a charging cable at my company will get you a visit from the IT Security department.

I've found having a youtube video, like 10 hours of black-screen open prevents my laptop from logging out. Not sure if that applies here though.