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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?

#71

Post by cyberax »

eljojo wrote: post #53
repiret wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what I do too, but be warned about “fire proof” - a fire that results in the total loss of your house will create enough heat for enough time that fireproof gun safes and smaller fireproof lockboxes will be destroyed, or even if not, their contents will get hot enough to combust anyway. A bank safe deposit box offers a different security profile that’s probably more robust against fire because banks burn less…

do you store stuff in a bank? could you tell me more about it? my account gives me access to one for free and been meaning to put a yubikey there for a while but never have

I do. I have a small safe deposit box in my local branch for about $1 a year.

It's great if you want to store some documents. But don't expect _real_ security. It's guarded by a minimum-wage employee, and the keys are usually laughably insecure. Banks know this, so they cap their liability for the loss of the deposit box at around $1000.

So don't even think about storing gold bars there, like they do in movies.

There _are_ companies that provide safe storage for high-value items, but they are pretty exotic.

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

#73

Post by echoangle »

0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #66
ses1984 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another solution is to engrave your secret on something that’s stable up to household fire temperatures.

A real innovation from the Bitcoin world! There are several physical password store systems that they have suggested for this kind of use case. The simplest is basically using a nail to punch out a password onto a piece of sheet metal.

Just make sure that the metal you use has a high enough melting point.

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

#74

Post by nightshift1 »

eljojo wrote: post #53
repiret wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what I do too, but be warned about “fire proof” - a fire that results in the total loss of your house will create enough heat for enough time that fireproof gun safes and smaller fireproof lockboxes will be destroyed, or even if not, their contents will get hot enough to combust anyway. A bank safe deposit box offers a different security profile that’s probably more robust against fire because banks burn less…

do you store stuff in a bank? could you tell me more about it? my account gives me access to one for free and been meaning to put a yubikey there for a while but never have

Safe deposit boxes are not safe. There are many stories of peoples stuff going missing.

ex: https://www.cbc.ca/news/safety-deposit-box-protection-1.7338...

https://archive.is/www.nytimes.com/2019/07/19/business/safe-...

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

#75

Post by mohn »

eljojo wrote: post #67
thephyber wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how many thousands or millions of useful projects are so well hidden that they are effectively nonexistent.

you know, I've always thought that "If I know I have something... somewhere, but I don't know where that thing is is, I have effectively lost it"

I agree with the sentiment, and the specific wording of your comment made me want to link to the classic bash.org quote[0] which has consistently been in the top 5 for a long time, but I just learned that we lost bash.org... :(

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20230610235249/http://bash.org/?...

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

#76

Post by willmadden »

repiret wrote: post #44
bitexploder wrote: post #7

Low tech: I put my secret manager password in a physical journal that is locked in a fire proof, water proof vault and hidden somewhere only my partner and myself know where it is. I use a password manager. Everything else goes in the password manager.

This is what I do too, but be warned about “fire proof” - a fire that results in the total loss of your house will create enough heat for enough time that fireproof gun safes and smaller fireproof lockboxes will be destroyed, or even if not, their contents will get hot enough to combust anyway. A bank safe deposit box offers a different security profile that’s probably more robust against fire because banks burn less…

Floor safes do better than above-ground safes.

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

#77

Post by unsnap_biceps »

mathstuf wrote: post #60
0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing says you cannot trivially encode the paper password. Those in the know understand that you need to append “BoomShakalaka”, replace “A” with “Q”, or some other super simple modification to what is recorded. Maybe the NSA would be willing to brute force the infinite variations from that starting seed, but it is still effectively locked for mortals.

I've thought about making a "word search" and embedding the passphrase in it using a pattern (e.g., a subset of a Knight's tour, a space-filling curve overlay, or some other sampling algorithm).

https://www.passwordcard.org/en

I used to keep a password card in my wallet and had a pattern I would use.

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

#78

Post by eljojo »

mohn wrote: post #75
eljojo wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you know, I've always thought that "If I know I have something... somewhere, but I don't know where that thing is is, I have effectively lost it"

I agree with the sentiment, and the specific wording of your comment made me want to link to the classic bash.org quote[0] which has consistently been in the top 5 for a long time, but I just learned that we lost bash.org... :( [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20230610235249/http://bash.org/?...

ayyyyyyyyyyyy lmao 100%

also RIP bash.org found out thru you :(

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

#79

Post by nerdsniper »

Eduard wrote: post #69
repiret wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what I do too, but be warned about “fire proof” - a fire that results in the total loss of your house will create enough heat for enough time that fireproof gun safes and smaller fireproof lockboxes will be destroyed, or even if not, their contents will get hot enough to combust anyway. A bank safe deposit box offers a different security profile that’s probably more robust against fire because banks burn less…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Gelsenkirchen_heist In December 2025, items worth an estimated €30 million were stolen from a Sparkasse bank in the Gelsenkirchen suburb of Buer, Germany. The thieves used a large drill to break into the bank's underground vault and proceeded to crack over 3,000 safe deposit boxes.

Don’t need events that extreme. Regular branch banks have stuff go missing from the safety deposit boxes shockingly regularly. The locks aren’t particularly secure and various people are able to access them. It can be hard to find articles about them because they don’t make the news like the more remarkable incidents do. Examples of boring security box failures (but that were noteworthy in other ways so they did make the news): Jennifer Morsch, Roberta Glassman, Lianna Sarabekyan (multiple customers affected), Philip Poniz, Wells Fargo in Cape Coral FL, Wells Fargo Katy TX (many customers affected, blamed on road construction down the street), lots of individual stories where banks just totally stopped following their own procedures on ID checking and logging.

The vast majority of these don’t make the news because there’s no proof there was even anything inside the box in the first place so anyone could be lying.

> Mr. Pluard, who tracks legal filings and news reports, estimates that around 33,000 boxes a year are harmed by accidents, natural disasters and thefts.

> Oddly, the bank returned to him five watches that weren’t his. “They were the wrong color, the wrong size — totally different than what I had,” Mr. Poniz said. “I had no idea where they came from.”

https://archive.is/j8e6x

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

#80

Post by eljojo »

cyberax wrote: post #71
eljojo wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

do you store stuff in a bank? could you tell me more about it? my account gives me access to one for free and been meaning to put a yubikey there for a while but never have

I do. I have a small safe deposit box in my local branch for about $1 a year. It's great if you want to store some documents. But don't expect _real_ security. It's guarded by a minimum-wage employee, and the keys are usually laughably insecure. Banks know this, so they cap their liability for the loss of the deposit box at around $1000. So don't even think about storing gold bars there, like they do in movies. There…

that's... a really good perspective to have, thanks for sharing!
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