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Comment by gonzo41 | Hacker News Reader

Second laptop. I know it's expensive, but if your working from home, don't do it from your own computer. do it from a computer work provides. Or at least, create a second account called work and do everything from that. Also make the theme, colors and everything you can different so there's a context shift between the two activities.

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We all know Synergy and for basic setups it gets the job done. I paid for the v2 Pro license to support them and will keep doing so.

I have moved over though to using Barrier, a synergy-core fork. You get ssl crypto for free, and it fixes some simple but long standing bugs that really annoyed me. Have only used on Mac + Linux for now.

https://github.com/debauchee/barrier

Same setup, except three laptops: personal, company-provided, client/project-provided.

You would think it would be unmanageable and you'd be right we're it not for Synergy (https://symless.com/synergy). I've got two laptops docked and connected to external monitors. Synergy lets me use just one keyboard and mouse for all three at the same time. Makes it feel like they're just three adjacent screens on one PC. But because they're not I can maintain strict separation between personal and work, and between internal/corporate and client data.

Then, like others have said, I have a fair amount of filtering on the network level.

I’ve thought about this but I assumed it would be too hard to get Synergy installed on employer or client-provided computers. It sounds like you’ve used this setup with multiple clients – is it normal in your field of work to get local admin rights on corporate devices?

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10...

Why not use the First party equivalent? Microsoft's Mouse Without Borders claims to do exactly this.

Because my personal machine runs Linux, my corporate machine runs macOS, and my client machine runs Windows.

If they were all Windows this might be nice as it claims to support some edge cases Synergy doesn't (primarily logon/UAC).

It's not ideal, but you can run the Synergy client executable (synergyc.exe) without admin rights. You lose the conveniences of having it auto-start and using the GUI configuration, but you still get all the functionality. You also can't use the installer, but you can just copy the Synergy directory from a working machine. You also need a MS C++ runtime DLL, but you can copy that too. I'm not in front of my computer at the moment. I'll edit/reply to this comment with details

For example, on my client/project-specific machine (where I don't have admin rights), I have a batch file (start-synergy.bat) that lives on my desktop with:

  C:\Users\jdbernard\Synergy-1.12.0\synergyc.exe -name client-pc 192.168.1.120

I imagine if the work laptop is 24/7 connected to a VPN, then this tool doesn't work.

Depends on the network filtering done by the company.

I have my router setup with port-forwarding for the Synergy protocol. Combined with stable IP addresses internally on my network and dynamic DNS pointing to my home network, I am able to use this tool even when the client machine is on VPN.

Of course, it's important to realize that by doing this you are sending keystrokes across the internet, so it's important to enable the option in Synergy to encrypt the traffic.

> your working from home, don't do it from your own computer. do it from a computer work provides

Wait, is this something that needs even saying?! Are people relly BYODing personal laptops too? Why? It would not even cross my mind to use personal computer to touch work stuff with ten foot pole.

This won't work at most companies of any size, because you need to use a VPN, and the VPN client enforces policies - checking you are using a company machine, that you have their AV installed and updated, that you have their DLP (Data Loss Prevention) installed, that you have their endpoint protection system installed...

I am using a second account, configured differently, like you recommend, as this is the simplest solution.

For even better isolation, a virtual machine could be used, instead of a second computer.

But that's a good strategy regardless of Corona, you don't want you kid to download stuff into your work environment or watch NSFW stuff on a work related computer.

Good advise - I know people who got fired because all of a sudden during a zoom session on their personal device some content showed up that would not have been on a work computer.

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