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Comment by mattzito | Hacker News Reader

In my startup days, we were working on a proof of concept with a really big bank. Because of their security rules, we couldn't have direct access to their systems - so if we wanted to do something remotely, we would have to start a webex, they would join and share their screen, and give us remote control.

This worked great, except if we wanted to work over the weekend, since if we left the screen alone for more than a few minutes, the screen lock would kick in and we'd lose the session.

Our solution? We purchased a small fan with an oscillation mode, and tied a mouse to it. We then had the fan drag the mouse ever so slightly back and forth whenever we wanted to step away from the remote session. Kept it going for weeks.

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I use a posh script like this when i dont want the computer to lock.

$ws = New-Object -COM wscript.shell;

while($true){ $ws.SendKeys("j"); Sleep 60;}

Ive used it for demos that way the computer doesnt lock before the demo starts, its pretty short and easy to remember. Also on windows if you spam SendKeys("{Left}") everything you type is backwards and when you hit the windows key it freezes the computer in an interesting way, pretty fun.

I used to use autohotkey to send an F13 key press every couple minutes to avoid lockout on a work computer where I wasn't allowed to increase the timeout

Wait is Function keys above F12 still addressable?

It’s Windows, so backwards compatibility mandates F13-F24 exist.

Certainly, my keyboard still has those buttons and I still use them

Which keyboard is this? I'm a keyboard-only user and would love to have an extra row of keys for shortcuts.

Can't speak for the parent, but Apple USB keyboards have F13-F19.

Try this: http://www.zhornsoftware.co.uk/caffeine/

Use it all the time when working from home/moving around and I don’t want my laptop to lock every 15.

There's also a hardware solution: https://www.amazon.com/CRU-Inc-30200-0100-0013-CRU-DataPort-...

Or a powered turntable for your mouse, if you can't plug HID devices into your machine! https://www.amazon.com/Liberty-Mouse-Mover/dp/B079P592K8/

The script is overkill, just put some plastic under your mouse.

bash/X11 equivalent:

  function mouse_around {
    while true; do
      sleep "$1"
      xdotool mousemove_relative 1 1
      xdotool mousemove_relative -- -1 -1
    done
  }
  
  mouse_around 60

Mandatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/196/

This seems to be a very common problem as evinced by the many solutions below. A friend of mine asked me solve the problem for him because he was remotely accessing a database and the company-issued laptop, VPN client, remote server and database server all had aggressive timeouts. Getting a cup of coffee meant logging in to everything again using long and complex company-issued passwords.

We used one of the common Raspberry PI Human Interface Device (HID) Python packages to send a harmless keyboard or mouse event once every 5 minutes.

On a windows machine you can start a powerpoint presentation, then minimise it. This stops the screen lock from starting.

I’ve used a blank no-audio video in Windows Media Player to achieve the same.

I've seen people strapping a watch on the back of the mouse to achieve the same effect, the constant ticking makes it like the mouse is slightly moved, preventing a screen lock.

Similar situation, except with a personal massager, a wireless mouse, and a large bowl.

There's also this [1] I found when I had to opt out of a crazy work-enforced screen lock timer. (like 3m)

[1] https://archive.codeplex.com/?p=mousejiggler

As someone who enforces screen lock timers for compliance, if I ever found someone was using any of these hacks, my solution would probably involve writing a script to automatically lock their screen every five minutes regardless of activity until they agreed to knock it off. :P

Have you ever read the following?

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/08/risk_intuitio...

I actually find people's risk intuition spectacularly bad. People seem to suspect their IT department will catch them and report them for things that their IT department doesn't care about, for example. Or expect that the IT department and/or supervisors may be watching their webcam, which is creepy, and really not something ordinary workplaces do.

Ha - amused to read this! Just built that a week ago for my partner. I used an Arduino connected to the USB as HID. The approx. 10 line script is moving the mouse back and forth every couple of seconds. Works like a charm: keeps the screen unlocked and her activity indicator busy...

I did something similar in my last job: We used a custom terminal services client to log in to our data center, and the servers would kick you off after something like five minutes of inactivity. I ended up modifying the ts client to send a shift keypress every four minutes.

I think an optical mouse placed on the reflective side of a CD achieves the same "jumping around" - effect.

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