
Daytripper - omarchowdhury
https://github.com/dekuNukem/daytripper
======
kempbellt
If 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.

~~~
derefr
Why 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?

~~~
cgriswald
True 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...

------
martin-adams
This reminds me of the old boss key:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boss_key](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boss_key)

~~~
allenu
Exactly 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?

~~~
jedberg
It was useful when my parents walked by and thought I was doing homework.
Being in the DOS prompt was at least slightly more legit than playing a game.

~~~
867-5309
nice use of 'slightly', i.e. kids do actually play games for homework nowadays
:)

------
Touche
Dave was fired because every time his boss walked by his desk he was staring
at his desktop.

~~~
the_watcher
At his next job, Dave tried the custom setup and his boss now thinks he's
always writing emails.

~~~
arnarbi
Dave didn't read [https://lifehacker.com/look-busy-with-a-fake-desktop-
backgro...](https://lifehacker.com/look-busy-with-a-fake-desktop-
background-212236)

------
hn_throwaway_99
Looks 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
There is also [https://github.com/michael-
lazar/rtv](https://github.com/michael-lazar/rtv) which lets you browse reddit
from a terminal

~~~
aexl
Which is unfortunately not maintained anymore: [https://github.com/michael-
lazar/rtv/issues/696](https://github.com/michael-lazar/rtv/issues/696)

~~~
Seirdy
`rtv` is now `tuir` [0].

[0]: [https://gitlab.com/ajak/tuir](https://gitlab.com/ajak/tuir)

------
papln
Why is there a receiver, instead of running an app on the receiving system to
listen for bluetooth/http/etc messages?

~~~
adrianmonk
Maybe 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
You 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.

------
djsumdog
If you have a web camera and use Windows, you can use this thing I wrote
forever ago:

[https://rearviewmirror.cc/](https://rearviewmirror.cc/)

------
nf8nnfufuu
Do 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
Well, 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
Interesting - can you provide [1] and [2] please?

~~~
jaifraic
Yikes, it was a bit too late in my timezone, sorry.

[1]:
[https://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/shijiapa/documentations/Hotm...](https://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/shijiapa/documentations/Hotmobile2015_Footstep_project.pdf)

[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geophone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geophone)

------
imgabe
I applaud the amount of effort that went in to being this lazy.

------
the_watcher
A 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.

~~~
smacktoward
USBKill
([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.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
This would just result in my yanking my laptop off the desk every time I got
up.

~~~
andai
I think with a short USB extension cord it could work. Moving away would angle
the cord at just the right angle to pull the device out (from the end closer
to you -- the other end would be at an angle and stay inside from friction).

------
gibolt
The 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)

------
mises
He'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
He's also playing Broken Reality, a silly game parodying the internet. It's
pretty good.

------
crimsonalucard
I 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
Level 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
Level 5 = create a startup that does this as a service.

~~~
crimsonalucard
Level 6 = Outsource the creation of this startup to management in China.

~~~
quickthrower2
1st Dan = Single handedly start a tech bubble investing in this kind of
startup and startups that provide services to it.

------
tripzilch
Is 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?

------
javajosh
Okay, that's neat. Now someone needs to figure out how to detect someone
walking by using fluctuations in the wifi signal strength.

~~~
gricardo99
Or use the monitor camera and opencv to detect faces/eyeballs in the
background lurking or peering at your monitor.

~~~
nostrebored
Spinning this up with a bounding box facial detection algorithm and triggering
Amazon Recognition against a constrained data set of authorized users is day-
projectable :)

------
nategri
Oh hey. I just used some SPI-based Nixie tube drivers that this same tindie
user made. I've been super impressed!

~~~
retSava
Came 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.

------
fencepost
I 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
From 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.

------
adrianmonk
I 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
Last 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.

------
WrtCdEvrydy
Reminds me of Uplink's Motion Sensor.

~~~
voldacar
Such a great game. I still listen to the soundtrack every once in a while, it
just nails that y2k atmosphere so well

------
hinkley
I could use this going the other way:

Put one of these near an information radiator to kick it out of doze mode.

~~~
fragmede
USB jiggler is designed for this use case.

~~~
hinkley
If 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.

------
keithwhor
This 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
Adding to your metacomment, "Daytripper" is an excellent name, and a great nod
to the Beatles track.

------
imranq
A job is simply the key to the building, what you do after is up to you

------
foxhop
I forgot what it feels like to have to hide my screwing around. I've been
working from home for the last 6 years.

------
IshKebab
Nice. Should really use BLE though so you don't need the receiver - nRF52 or
ESP32 are the best options.

~~~
retSava
With 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.

------
hoytech
[https://www.buzzfeed.com/erikmalinowski/the-evolution-of-
the...](https://www.buzzfeed.com/erikmalinowski/the-evolution-of-the-march-
madness-boss-button)

------
navyad
There 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
Not as a consultant though, never a dull day/hour in the day.

------
microcolonel
Anyone 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.

------
beatgammit
Couldn'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
The idea is to put the tripwire on the path to your approach. That’s the
reason a send and receive is needed.

------
dpflan
Does anyone know of components to DIY this type of project? I like the idea
and its size, mainly the laser tripwire.

~~~
IshKebab
Almost certainly using a ToF (Time of Flight) sensor. They became available
about 5 years ago for use as smartphone proximity sensors, but they have a
range of around 1m.

[https://www.adafruit.com/product/3317](https://www.adafruit.com/product/3317)

~~~
dpflan
Thanks for the info!

------
foobiekr
I would really like one of these that did some level of face/gaze detection;
open workspaces...

------
spacedog11
[Boss Walks in] [Dave intensely staring at the desktop] Boss: empty
deskopt...not suspicious at all.

------
thomasfl
An iPhone X, or other similar phones, could probably be used as a motion
detector as well?

------
Rebelgecko
what'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
And 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).

------
dandigangi
I wish I could upvote this multiple times. Lmao - amazing!

------
lanius
Good luck if you're in an open office!

------
XCSme
Very cool product, but I think $60 for something that looks like max $10 parts
is way too expensive.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
BoM is only part of the story, though.

~~~
XCSme
I 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.

------
spacedog11
The 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
See 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.

~~~
chaostheory
I 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
If 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.

~~~
chaostheory
I agree. I'm just questioning the management logic of being "expected to be
busy at all times even without much to do". I remember some papers linking
boredom and leisure activity with creativity. Creativity is important for
programming.

~~~
Aloha
I'm expected to appear busy ;-)

------
jonas21
I bet Ross Ulbricht wishes he had this.

(context) [https://www.businessinsider.com/the-arrest-of-silk-road-
mast...](https://www.businessinsider.com/the-arrest-of-silk-road-mastermind-
ross-ulbricht-2015-1)

~~~
jszymborski
> * Execute a custom script
    
    
      rm -rf /*

~~~
solotronics
I have always been curious.. is there a better way of accomplishing this?

~~~
tptacek
Start by not relying on Full Disk Encryption, which you should absolutely have
enabled but should probably, from an OPSEC perspective, pretend does not
exist.

On modern operating systems you can generally mount and unmount virtual
encrypted volumes that are open (ideally) only when you're actually using them
to do work with their contents. There used to be a great macOS tool, called
Knox, that did this graphically.

~~~
Fnoord
> On modern operating systems you can generally mount and unmount virtual
> encrypted volumes that are open (ideally) only when you're actually using
> them to do work with their contents. There used to be a great macOS tool,
> called Knox, that did this graphically.

Cryptomator [1], cross-platform as well.

[1] [https://cryptomator.org/](https://cryptomator.org/)

~~~
tptacek
The nice thing about Knox is that it just wrapped macOS's built in XTS
support. XTS sucks, but you didn't have to think much about what Knox itself
was doing. Cryptomator implemented their own FUSE filesystem, and it's a
strange collection of SIV, CTR, HMAC, and scrypt. I should like it a lot
because I generally like filesystem encryption, but I'd have to actually read
it carefully before using it.

There's a Cure53 "audit" of it, like for everything else, but to give a sense
of how reliable it was, they flagged ECB mode... in the project's
implementation of SIV mode.

------
mikewhy
off-topic, but Daytripper is also the name of a very good graphic novel.

~~~
asveikau
And Beatles song.

~~~
mellosouls
Double 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
Thanks for this comment. It reminds me that somehow, I discovered some of
those before sitting down with Rubber Soul or Revolver.

------
oiasdjfoiasd
great stuff, lol

------
MaupitiBlue
Handy!

Why not Bluetooth?

------
momokoko
It 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
I screw around at least 25% of the time as a dev

~~~
momokoko
If 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.

~~~
snazz
A lot of jobs (even as developers) in large companies have a positive
correlation between butt in seat time and the perception of getting work done,
but there usually isn’t enough work to do to fill the entire time. Most people
work jobs that they aren’t truly passionate about.

~~~
momokoko
But again, why lie about it?

~~~
jacobush
To not embarrass everybody else who are also doing it, not least your boss.

~~~
momokoko
Why would it be embarrassing to state "I currently have nothing to do right
now, is there anything available I can help with." if you cannot figure out
anything productive you could be doing on your own.

Are people's managers actually saying to them, "Yes, there is nothing you can
do right now, just sit in your seat and do nothing until I come get you"? I've
never had that experience, and is why I'm asking about it.

~~~
snazz
If you don’t enjoy your job, then it might be better to get done what is
expected of you and enjoy the rest of the time you have to spend butt-in-chair
doing something else, instead of intentionally piling more unenjoyable work on
your platter. Especially if the manager isn’t technical: just don’t tell them
you’re done and spend that time doing something else.

Of course it completely depends on your work situation and the relationship
with your manager, as well as how socially acceptable it is in your
organization. I think lots of the people doing it had slacked off in high
school and college and gotten away with it.

Your relationship with your work and your time is probably much healthier, so
I wouldn’t start screwing around during work hours now.

