The telecommuting it has changed our lives too much. Not too long ago, the trickiest part of having to work was the process of getting out of bed and shooting for the office. Then things did not improve either, since it was time to sign, greet co-workers and finally get to work; the most entertaining part of the day, without a doubt. Once in the workplace, there were multiple tricks to waste a little time. Set up a VPN to bypass the company filters (very useful to write a little bit in the forum on duty and look at the sports press), have a couple of coffees, go to the bathroom seven times … We are all very grateful that the workers’ struggle got a working day only eight hours, but … is that eight hours is still many hours.
The pandemic came, but the tricks emerged
And all of this, of course, was screwed up with the pandemic. Now, many workers can have the laptop under the bed and do not even have to get up if they want to. Nor should you get on a stinky bus with two hundred people looking like they haven’t slept. Nor do you have to pass any card through any code reader. For not doing, you don’t even have to say hello to your fellow students. But of course, what has not been lost with teleworking is the work part.
And that’s when the picaresque, friends. What do you have to attend an online seminar with the webcam turned on? Video of my face in a loop and playing a game of FIFA 21. What do you have to be connected to the company’s server during the 8 hours? High performance PC saver so that it is not suspended and another is seen little chapter from Netflix. Teleworking? The real health.
Everything was going great until some boss began to realize these paranormal phenomena and the software to monitor employees. These programs are installed on our computers and are very varied. They have the ability to detect if we are working based on mouse movement, keystrokes, screen movements, or even facial recognition. Black mirror in real life, come on.
A new hope
Fortunately, there is a disease that affects all companies equally. They all seek to spend as little money as possible, so they also tend to scrape this control software for currelas. Cheap apps are just able to monitor mouse movement, but they realize the repeating patterns, so it is not so easy to cheat.
Today in late capitalism, apparently there is a whole product category of “mouse jigglers,” devices that generate random movement from your mouse so your WFH surveillance software thinks you’re working pic.twitter.com/Z7XlApXp4S
– Noah Veltman (@veltman) November 17, 2021
Checkmate, capitalism. Some unknown genius (who remains anonymous to preserve his physical integrity) has managed to exploit this vulnerability of our beloved economy and promises to turn telework upside down. The «mouse jiggler» is born, a device (which is already a category on Amazon) that allows us to fake the movement of the mouse so that our boss swallows that we are working. Most of those who buy it will say that they use it so that they are not logged out remotely with the company server. If they tell you that excuse, please do not contradict them. Nod your head and don’t ask questions, lest worse times come back. The mouse jiggler? The new Luke Skywalker.
