in my (admittedly limited) at-home test, the above hack actually worked.

'(Lol) (Unverified)'Īnd guess what reader. 'I think that if you put an optical mouse on the smartphone video, it will move irregularly,' reads the below tweet (opens in a new tab) (again translated by Twitter). And that's OK, because if you have a smartphone and an optical mouse, then another Twitter user suggests you already have all you need to fool Slack and your (micro) manager. That's because there is general system activity of the mouse moving around (even if not specific browser activity).Ī fan with some pens taped to it could conceivably serve a similar purpose.īut not all of us have toy trains or extra fans sitting around ready to be repurposed. If a work-from-home employee had their desktop Slack app open - say, for example, to the Direct Message channel with Slackbot (opens in a new tab) - then the above contraption should keep their Slack bubble green for up to 30 minutes after the train stops moving. 'We created a device that seems to always operate the mouse, because the environment in which the sleep or operation of the PC is remote to the administrator when working remotely,' reads the tweet (opens in a new tab) translated (albeit poorly) by Twitter. Take, for example, this ingenious individual who, it appears, hooked their wireless mouse up to a toy train.

But that doesn't mean there aren't ways to trick the system into thinking you are active. 'Note,' cautions Slack (opens in a new tab) in bold type, 'There is no way to set yourself as permanently active.'

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