Originally published at: Website prevents computer falling asleep | Boing Boing
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Pair that site with an cursed image to burn into a screen and you got the perfect revenge tool for disgruntled IT workers who have to work a 4 to 5 day weekend.
Blocked by corporate web filtering in 3…2…1
I can’t speak for The Man generally; but in my capacity as a corporate IT minion we hate the tendency of computers to go to sleep when they ought not to (looking at you the entire transition from good, honest, S3 to ‘modern standby’); and would just tell everything to run in full ecological murder mode 24/7 if that were an option.
Things like patch management get vastly lousier when systems just start dropping off the grid the moment people aren’t using them; but the people using them still resent getting a facefull of updates or a forced reboot when they are using them.
This can be configured as a setting at least on all the (mostly linux) computers I’ve used. But, I guess this applies to windows machines that are locked down administratively to not be able to set that setting?
We got around this (well, locking, not sleeping) by putting the machines in question into a special group that allows staying unlocked, and then using an alternate login (where some other string goes in “username hint”). In our case it’s where we have an event count and/or map that needs to stay running for several hours.
ETA: Saw the headline and thought, “is it this one?”
“Where this API isn’t supported, an empty silent video is played”
I suspect that video is Beastie Boy’s “No Sleep Till Brooklyn”.
Likely scaled to 1 pixel high and monochrome.
When I need to stop my computer from sleeping, I use a windows app called caffeine. It doesn’t need to be installed, you simply drop the .exe on your desktop and click on it to start. I never had any problems with corporate controls, maybe because it didn’t go through an install procedure.
For MacOS users, a free app called Caffeine achieves this outcome from your OS status tray. I set it to 45 minutes and toggle the coffee mug when presenting.
I was about to question whether the page still works in the 718.
Nice!
I worked for several years for one company as an on-site tech — for another company, both of which required me to use their stupidly locked-down corporate laptops. While these machines may have worked well enough for rank-and-file spreadsheet jockeys, they locked after a frustratingly short period of inactivity as I bounced back-and-forth between ten or so computers.
My solution was a tiny homebrew Caffeine workalike which slept quietly in the background most of the time. occasionally waking up to either move the mouse pointer just one pixel, or to “press” a normally unused/unavailable/unassigned function key like F24.
(For my own work, which required software that neither corporate bureaucracy supported, I brought in my own netbook to avoid jumping through two sets of corporate IT hoops. My office was generally left alone, so I kept my machine off company networks and all was good, or at least productive.)
For MacOS, I’ve had no-sleep success with Amphetamine (also free).
blocked, heck: Use this at most companies to bypass the automatic screen lock and you’ll be fired.
I too use Caffeine. It’s simple and it works.
just discovered today that microsoft’s power toys also includes a system tray helper to control sleep
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