Earlier quoted context omitted.
Now the question is: What happens to the DeadMansSwitch service if something were to happen to its maker? It's like we need to form mini multi-generational cults to keep human services like that going for as long as humans keep going until the point they stop.
The research people have been doing into conveying the dangers of nuclear dumps to potentially primitive future peoples is quite fascinating.
GitHub Deceased User Policy
51–60 of 109 posts
Re: GitHub Deceased User Policy
#52So, on top of financial debt, you can also transfer technical debt to your successors ?
Immortality (in minds of pissed off relatives), here I come!
Re: GitHub Deceased User Policy
#53This is great, it will be great if tech companies can also start working with the government systems which recognize the legal heirs as well. In the case of GitHub it may not be so pertinent, but with email ids etc. where bank account details and OTPs are sent to, it may be important for email providers to recognize real world legal entities and work with the usual estate management legislations.
This is not a new problem. This happens all the time when someone dies: Executors must put the deceased' affairs in order and contact all the companies the deceased had business with.
It's just that tech companies tend to think that this does not apply to them and that they don't need to be able to deal with actual mail or this sort of process.
Github's policy is simply how things ought to be (and credit to them for doing it). People find it so great simply because the industry is so appallingly bad.
Re: GitHub Deceased User Policy
#54If one of your friends is a freenode user and comes down with a slight case of death, please contact the freenode staff via chat.freenode.net #freenode and their account will be memorialised. (I had to do one of these a few days ago and it's sadly not the first)
A lot of providers will be happy to figure something out, too - the previous-to-this one situation the deceased also had a linode account and once I got through to them they put the deceased's account onto a deep freeze where the systems were off but the data was kept to give the deceased's family time to get everything else done, with an understanding that once they sent a death certificate through that would allow for the data to be released to them.
Also, if you're lost, contact me as 'mst' on irc.freenode.net or irc.perl.org - I make no guarantees as to how much I can help but everything I've learned from dealing with my friends' passing I'll be happy to do my best to use to help you deal with your friend's passing. My friends would, if they were around to do so, appreciate the re-use of effort and sharing of knowledge.
Re: GitHub Deceased User Policy
#55If one of your friends is a freenode user and comes down with a slight case of death, please contact the freenode staff via chat.freenode.net #freenode and their account will be memorialised. (I had to do one of these a few days ago and it's sadly not the first) A lot of providers will be happy to figure something out, too - the previous-to-this one situation the deceased also had a linode account and once I got thro…
Sorry for your loss, I wish you all the best
Re: GitHub Deceased User Policy
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
The research people have been doing into conveying the dangers of nuclear dumps to potentially primitive future peoples is quite fascinating.
Agreed. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-time_nuclear_waste_warn...
In futureLang:
- Hey, we found some hieroglyphs, in better shape than the ones near the pyramids, do you recognise the gods?
- No, but they all seem to say similar things: Don't open or "Calamities" or something. I wonder what their primitives beliefs were based on... Let's dig!
Re: GitHub Deceased User Policy
#57GitHub/Microsoft is really setting themselves up to be a customer-centric (different to user-centric!) tech platform. If you try doing this process with Google, you are given a canned form and you'll probably (not) hear back from a robot.
It may depend on the services. A few years ago I lost an old email account, a hotmail one, because it was flagged for being potentially compromised. An account flagged as so has its password wiped and you have to reset it by following a link that is sent to your recovery email address.
Somehow, and I don't know how my 10yo-self managed to do this, but the account's mail and the recovery mail were the same, so I wasn't able to recover my account this way.
The only alternative was to fill up a form with your full name, date of birth (probably lied about it at this time), passwords you may have used for this account, people to whom I had sent emails (I only used it to register to websites)...
I have never been able to do a "perfect score" to this test monitored only by robots. Now my account, from what I've read online, is probably disabled forever due to a 2 years inactivity.
Re: GitHub Deceased User Policy
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google has Inactive Account Manager, a dead man's switch for your account: https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3036546?hl=en
Their activity detection does not inspire confidence. Google is an incredibly bad proxy for user activity. Edit: downvoted but no substantive responses? Guidelines are for thee but not for mee, I guess.
I mean, if you use Gmail for instance it's incredibly likely I'll be dead when I stop checking my email for a year.
Re: GitHub Deceased User Policy
#59Sometime ago I stumpled upon a github repo that interested me. Due to several reasons I suspect the maintainer might be dead. I tried to verify it somehow but no luck. Might be easier if you are a Greek citizen. Suggestion? Of-course a persons death is tragic, but it is also a shame no one will start maintaining a fork while the original repo is in limbo...
Re: GitHub Deceased User Policy
#60Sometime ago I stumpled upon a github repo that interested me. Due to several reasons I suspect the maintainer might be dead. I tried to verify it somehow but no luck. Might be easier if you are a Greek citizen. Suggestion? Of-course a persons death is tragic, but it is also a shame no one will start maintaining a fork while the original repo is in limbo...
I feel like if its clear the maintainer has dropped off the internet, forking and dropping an issue "Something is up with XYZ, lets work in this forked repo until its clear whats going on" is fine. If they come back you can still offer to shut down your fork/help them transfer added content/...