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The weight of the clipboard

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Re: The weight of the clipboard

#71

Post by fsflover »

aargh_aargh wrote: post #56
Rygian wrote: post #21

To all of you who stopped worrying thanks to a clipboard manager, how do you handle sensitive contents in your clipboard? For example, I routinely copy-paste my passwords from KeePass, and I have disabled all clipboard management to avoid copies of my passwords lingering around.

Good point, wondering the same thing. I'm considering starting using a password manager, but my bigest concern is that malware can capture the passwords by listening to clipboard. The model in my head on Windows from programming using WIN32 API two decades ago is that any application can read clipboard contents as often as it wants to. Assuming the malware does that in a tight loop, how can password managers be secur…

I solved this problem by using Qubes OS, with isolated VMs for everything and inter-VM secure text copy. The passwords are stored in plain text in an offline VM, no password manager is necessary (but you still can use it if you like).

Re: The weight of the clipboard

#73

Post by mellavora »

function_seven wrote: post #30

I have a tangentially related issue. It's completely irrational, but I can't shake it. Sometimes when writing code, I need to add a block that looks a lot like an existing one, so I'll copy it and paste just below. (Yes, I know, DRY. Sue me :) The irrational part comes in when it's time for me to make the tweaks. Maybe I'm working on a yaml config file, and I need to specify two objects that are mostly the same, with…

A) why is this irrational, and if so, why is irrational sub-optimal given that the issue involves a non-(fully)-rational system (you)?

B) The habit seems very effective, why would you want to 'shake' a very efficient process?

C) DRY is an end-state which makes sense for (some) code. It is not at all clear that it makes sense for i.e. yaml config files, where it is expected that numerous items may have many similarities.

Sounds to me that by internalizing that bits are colored you have improved your engineering skills.

Re: The weight of the clipboard

#74

Post by cmason »

james-bcn wrote: post #12

I think it's because when you copy something to clipboard you are also putting a note in your short term memory about it. Our short term memory isn't very good, with only a few slots for storage. A way around this could be for a mini-image of the contents of the clipboard to be displayed in a corner of the screen somewhere.

Newton OS used to do exactly this and it worked really well. You could enable multiple clip boards via and extension.

Re: The weight of the clipboard

#75

Post by DecoPerson »

While writing & editing code, and only while doing that, I have a tic that looks insane to onlookers. The last comment I received was “Why the hell are you tapping the caps-lock key non-stop?”

I don’t know why I do it. It helps me think, though. Maybe any of the keys on the keyboard would satisfy my cravings to tap a key repeatedly, but I unconsciously chose capslock because it’s mostly benign to press. Perhaps it’s the toggling of the capslock state that tickles my neurons? I don’t know!

Similarly, I felt very strongly about the contents of my clipboard while doing any input on a real keyboard , until I discovered IntelliJ’s clipboard history feature (Ctrl+Shift+V) and more broadly Window’s terrible but sufficiently functional version (Win+V). The emotions I felt about clipboard contents were intense. I had to have something small, succinct, and simple in my clipboard like a single word, so that I could spam Ctrl+V and Ctrl+Z constantly without consequence, just like my capslock tic.

I do wonder if my fidgeting helped me learn editor shortcuts, because while I’m never quick enough to meet my own editing-speed goals, my editor fu earned me the title of “Text Wizard” at one company. It’s fun blowing peoples’ minds by smoothly executing a column-based edit on thousands of lines of data, saving them potentially hours of manual editing.

Aside: A coworker once called a one-line regex a “dark incantation,” and a forty-line regex I wrote on someone else’s’ PC earned the title of “Cthulhu’s Lullaby.” Good text editing skills is a superpower in our age (for many but obviously not all occupations).

Re: The weight of the clipboard

#76

Post by larssorenson »

aargh_aargh wrote: post #56
Rygian wrote: post #21

To all of you who stopped worrying thanks to a clipboard manager, how do you handle sensitive contents in your clipboard? For example, I routinely copy-paste my passwords from KeePass, and I have disabled all clipboard management to avoid copies of my passwords lingering around.

Good point, wondering the same thing. I'm considering starting using a password manager, but my bigest concern is that malware can capture the passwords by listening to clipboard. The model in my head on Windows from programming using WIN32 API two decades ago is that any application can read clipboard contents as often as it wants to. Assuming the malware does that in a tight loop, how can password managers be secur…

Your concerns aren't unfounded, but they're a bit misplaced. Password managers aren't intended to protect you from a local attacker, on your machine, like the malware you described. It is trivial to capture clipboard contents, as you say, but it's also similarly easy to keylog so your passwords would be exposed either way. If you consider your computer compromised or antagonistic like this, don't use it for anything sensitive.

Password managers are mostly intended to help facilitate unique passwords per account, to avoid password re-use which prevents credential stuffing. That is, if an attacker gets a hold of your password from one website they can't use it to log in everywhere.

Back to your concern, there isn't a solution for Windows in this space at the moment. Malware that's alive in your user context (or Satya forbid, SYSTEM) can do quite a bit thanks to Win32 APIs.

Re: The weight of the clipboard

#77

Post by ornornor »

Rygian wrote: post #21

To all of you who stopped worrying thanks to a clipboard manager, how do you handle sensitive contents in your clipboard? For example, I routinely copy-paste my passwords from KeePass, and I have disabled all clipboard management to avoid copies of my passwords lingering around.

I try and copy the password only so that on the very odd chance someone combs through my clipboard history they still wouldn’t know what site or username it matches. I tend to use unique/generated usernames or emails as much as I can so that I’m not “1337wiz” on every website I have an account on.

Re: The weight of the clipboard

#78

Post by diffeomorphism »

amelius wrote: post #59
diffeomorphism wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's confusing. It is also very useful, but if you don't want it many clipboard managers have a simple checkbox to just have one clipboard. For instance "synchronize clipboard" in this screenshot: https://www.putorius.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/gpaste-g...

Interesting, I never looked into clipboard managers. I often have to copy X and Y coordinates from two fields to the same fields in another instance of the application. Is there an easy way to copy both values and only then switch to the other instance and paste them?

In Excel? Click on field X, press and hold ctrl and click on field Y to mark both fields, then just copy&paste should work.

Otherwise this is up to the app. A generic clipboard has no concept of the content of X and Y being in different fields (because it has no clue what a "field" is). It just stores the content.

Re: The weight of the clipboard

#79

Post by kayodelycaon »

Rygian wrote: post #21

To all of you who stopped worrying thanks to a clipboard manager, how do you handle sensitive contents in your clipboard? For example, I routinely copy-paste my passwords from KeePass, and I have disabled all clipboard management to avoid copies of my passwords lingering around.

Blacklisting BitWarden in the clipboard manager. If I copied from another app, it's four extra keystrokes to paste and delete: Cmd+V -> Cmd+Shift+V -> Cmd+Delete -> Esc.

Re: The weight of the clipboard

#80

Post by enricozb »

glandium wrote: post #61
enricozb wrote: post #55

Does anyone have a solution to sync clipboards across: 1. The system (XServer) 2. A terminal text editor (Kakoune) 3. The same text editor on another system over ssh I currently have 1 & 2 sync'd ok, but 3 is only one-way. I use the OSC 52 escape sequence (supported by my terminal) to sync a copy on 3 to 1. But I have not figured out how to sync from 1 to 3.

Are you implying you have a solution to sync the X selection buffer and the X clipboard?

I might be misunderstanding you. I have a setup such that:

When I yank to the "kakoune clipboard buffer" in kakoune (a terminal text editor), the X clipboard is updated (again through OSC 52). When I copy something to the X clipboard (either on chrome or some other program), the "kakoune clipboard buffer" is updated [0].

[0]: technically, the kakoune clipboard buffer updates itself from the X clipboard when it is read from.

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