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Show HN: If you lose your memory, how to regain access to your computer?

eljojo.github.io

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Re: Show HN: If you lose your memory, how to regain access to your computer?

#181

Post by fragmede »

tmoertel wrote: post #134
paulgerhardt wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just went through this. Sample size one: While the fire resulted in the total loss of the house it was actually the water from the fire department not the heat that did proportionally more damage. As a mental model you shouldn’t think of it as “what if my house burns down?” so much as “what if nice strangers roll up to my windows and chainsaw through my roof and spray 50,000 gallons of water in here?” Yes everything…

> I am very anti black and yellow tubs. Would you mind sharing more about these tubs and why you are against them?

https://www.homedepot.com/p/HDX-27-Gal-Tough-Storage-Tote-in...

As to why they're against them, I don't know their reason, but there used to be only one size of tote. There there was big and small. And then, for some fxcking reason, they decided to make ones that were roughly as big as the big ones. Just enough that you have to take half a second to re-eyeball-ruler measure them. But in isolation, if you've got one in front of you, you can't know if it'll tetris properly with another one until they're side-by-side and it turns out they're not.

Dumbest decision ever.

At least they come in transparent now though

Re: Show HN: If you lose your memory, how to regain access to your computer?

#182

Post by lucb1e »

ddtaylor wrote: post #144
lucb1e wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, it both surprises me but also makes me feel justified in that I keep telling people to make backups of things they care about including something like a Spotify account (if your song lists are dear to them, at least the titles and other metadata that they could rebuild from) and other "cloud" or SaaS services. Anything one cares about, back it up! (Not to you but as a PSA) Still, it's weird that Google doesn't a…

It accepted the backup code and my correct password and then wanted to verify more stuff, which there was nothing, and just said "Sorry, we can't give you access to your account right now".

Ah, yes okay that sounds precisely like my situation as well. Not so much the backup codes not working as Google's auth gatekeeper being moody, the last thing you want from a login system

Re: Show HN: If you lose your memory, how to regain access to your computer?

#185

Post by eljojo »

kunley wrote: post #167

The idea is very noble. In am just thinking about the number of 5, who these times has really five trustable friends not just acquaintances or people bound by some specific activity perishing over time. I am afraid, for most people in the digital era this number is much lower (and I am certainly not speaking for myself now).

"who has five friends?" has been the number one comment I've received on this, by far. a bubble just popped for me

Re: Show HN: If you lose your memory, how to regain access to your computer?

#188

Post by eljojo »

KevinChasse wrote: post #132

Interesting approach. I like that this is explicit about human recovery rather than pretending crypto alone solves catastrophe. That said, this design and fully stateless systems like mine (deterministic derivation, no escrow) are solving opposite failure modes. Shamir-based social recovery assumes: trusted third parties remain reachable, they are willing and able to cooperate, and that recovery is an exceptional eve…

thanks for your thorough review and congrats on your launch! for my personal use case, I'm not worried about coercion, but many have highlighted it as a real risk. my answer to that is to do what you suggest: update my contact list yearly, send new ZIP files with bundles, and ask them to delete the previous ones.
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