Thanks, I guess a more conventional way to call it would be something along the lines of self-hosted cloud storage.
I'd say it's about halfway between Google Drive and Windows Explorer.
That's one of the use-cases I had in mind when making this. The permissions are right in the sidebar, so that it's easy to set which people can (or can't) see or edit a given file.
Heads up, the link to "The Internet's Own Boy" says it's unavailable because whoever uploaded it changed the setting to private. Which is a shame, because it's a good bio.
For Triumph of the Nerds, Bob spent hours interviewing a few of us at ARDI, my Macintosh emulation company. Mat's is the only voice that made the cut. Our fridge got more air time than I did, but I'm juggling and riding a unicycle for a few seconds. "Those were fun days."
Nice to see Bob back, especially after the gut punch of Cleve Moler's death.
They’re “triumph of the nerds”really good. Really gets to the pivotal points in business.
The story of how MS got the operating system contract told by Gates/Balmer and the IBM executives. (MS at the time didn’t have an operating system, just software)
Also includes the Apple tour of Xerox research told by Steve Jobs and some of the xerox folks.
Worth a watch.
Transcripts if you want to read: (part 2 is the IBM entering the business)
I would love to see a follow-up series that covers the dot com bust, the revival of Silicon Valley’s tech industry thanks to mobile and cloud tech, and the modern AI boom, starting with deep neural networks ran on GPUs and culminating with large language models.
The inverse also doesn’t mean convenience is a bad idea, just happens 1Password has a strong security model and is convenient.
I end up helping a lot of older people for a variety of reasons with tech - 60s to 90s, family, neighbors, coworkers.
They’re not invalids and have a right to participate in the digital world, even if security requirements have exploded.
Anchoring the trust in stuff like 1Password where we setup domains, their account info, their OTP codes means they get to go to their bookmarked site, FaceID to unlock the PW manager, get automatically logged in, and do what they need.
Being able to let them navigate this world without always having to hand over the paper secrets notebook to random helpers, or lose sheets of paper with passwords, or get caught up in tracking down an SMS code is better for them. Their password manager with the autofill helps somewhat deter phishing links since relying on autofill usually signals something is off, and they call someone they trust.
My point, I guess, was that convenience is basic access for some subset of vulnerable groups of people.
When people had to rotate passwords every month and choose a new one according to insane complex rules and dictionary tests, well, that was not convenient. You would probably say it's good.
Reality: people started writing their passwords on sticky notes by their computer. Possibly the worst outcome.
Why the worst outcome, though? "Sticky notes" are absolutely superior to third-party password managers in regard to "attackers."
Third-party password managers INCREASE your threat surface by orders of magnitude more than sticky notes, period. They change the number of holders of secrets from two to three, and that third one is now a juicy target. This is not theory, this has happened frequently.
Sticky notes (even better, a little private physical notebook) keep this limited to your physical location which is much easier to secure; the grandmas and grandpas I know who do this (I do similar) have a far better track record than anything else.
Its a catch 22, with password requirements getting crazy its hard to remember them. At the same time storing the passwords with a password manager means you are entrusting them for your identity. For the first party sites the passwords are hashed, however for these password manager sites they are at the most encrypted with the encryption keys that the third party already has. This essentially means a rouge password manager or rouge individual in password manager service can run away with your plaintext passwords on scale
Anyhow - good luck, I bet there are people who want this.
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