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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: January 21st, 2021

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  • There are some password managers where you need to either manually look up passwords and copy+paste or autotype them or select the correct password from a dropdown. Some of these will come with an optional browser extension which mitigates this but some don’t really tract domain metadata in a concrete way to do this linking.

    Some examples would be Pass which doesn’t have any standard metadata for domain/URL info (although some informal schemes are used by various tools including browser-integration extensions) and KeePass which has the metadata but doesn’t come with a browser extension by default.




  • Tips for being secure online:

    1. Use your browser’s password manager to generate random passwords.
    2. In the rare case you need to manually enter your password into a site or app be very suspicious and very careful.
    3. Never give personal information to someone who calls or emails you. If necessary look up the contact info of who called you yourself and call them back before divulging and details. Keep in mind that Caller ID and the From address of emails can be faked.
    4. Update software regularly. Security problems are regularly fixed.

    That’s really all you need. You don’t even need 2FA, it is nice extra security but if you use random passwords and don’t enter your passwords into phishing sites it is largely unnecessary.


  • I’m not an expert on modern alarm systems but it seems that it is very common and fairly inexpensive to have cellular data backup. Not every system has it, but many do. In that case cutting the main connection will likely result in someone appearing on site fairly quickly.

    Many cameras also have some form of local buffering. So even if you are gone before someone does show up you still may find yourself recorded.

    But at the end of the day just put a bag over your head and you can be gone by the time anyone shows up without leaving a meaningful trace. Other than the very top-end system security systems just keep the honest people honest.




  • Prom is fun. You get to hang out with all of your classmates, ask someone out. A subset of people are always going to go overboard, but keep in mind that you don’t see the “normal” cases. Most people just walk up to someone and ask them out. They find a date from the school or go alone.

    I’m from Canada so I don’t know if the US is wildly different, but here it is a bit of a big deal, but I think part of that is what makes it fun, you sort of build a bit of hype around what would otherwise be just another school dance.






  • I also had a bad experience where I had a test website under a megabyte in a storage bucket. It was under the free tier and sat there for a few years. Then one month they sent me a bill (it was small, a handful of cents). Contact support saying that this use is under the free tier. They said that data was added then removed from the bucket. I hadn’t logged into the account, no living API keys. They wouldn’t forgive the charge.

    Luckily my credit card had expired so they just locked my account.


  • I think we as a society need to be a bit less sensitive about gifts. I think it is fine to not like a gift. What matters is that they thought of you to get something. Sometimes it won’t land. It is better to admit that (if necessary) than hide it forever. It isn’t my responsibility to love and care for a give that you give me.

    I get you something I don’t want it wasting space in your house just because you are afraid I will be offended. That is like the worst outcome of a gift, I don’t want to be giving you a burden.

    So if the kid is no longer interested in the toy I think it is fine to give it away or otherwise get rid of it. If the person is offended they should chill the fuck out.


  • If you haven’t used any configuration management before it would definitely be valuable to learn.

    However I would also recommend trying Nix and NixOS. The provide much better reproducibility. For example using Ansible-like tools I would always have issues where I create a file, then remove the code to create the file but the file still exists or the server is still running. I wrote a post going into more detail about the difference a while ago https://kevincox.ca/2015/12/13/nixos-managed-system/. However this is more involved. If you already have a running server it will be a big shift, instead of just slowly starting to manage things via Ansible.

    But I would definitely consider using something. Having configuration managed and versioned with history is super valuable.