alcazar

You mention your intense, close connections are with your immediate family. Do you think your method would still work for you if you didn't like your family and were single? Unfortunately, that happens to many lonely males.

Your comment was an interesting read, though. I never before got into the mind of someone who prefers the "feral pack" over individual, more intense connections, and your description worked well with that.

Best of luck to you and also to your daughters and wife.

Of all the things I mentioned above, the one that bothers me the most is custom scroll behaviour on websites.

While I don't necessarily agree with the entire premise of the article - in particular, a well-designed range date picker is superior to two separate browser-native date pickers - I completely agree that custom scroll behavior needs to disappear.

This one is really nice. Imports in the middle of a file are very ugly but sometimes necessary. This fixes it in a nicer way.

However, it kind of goes against the principle that “explicit is better than implicit.”

And why should they, individually?

It's a tragedy of the commons.

I would expect it to supercharge them at first and become commoditized later on.

It is just like how a digital calculator affected the role of the human calculator, or how an automaton that can code would affect the job of a human programmer.

I understand you don't mean this in bad faith and are just trying to protect the internet from slop.

I just want to say that there is a human behind all of these articles. My intent is not to "spam," but to share what I think are the best practices for better privacy and security. I hope I am helping some people, at least.

Derek Sivers is of the opinion that a fake persona is better than not sharing any details [1]:

Create and post a back-story to answer (instead of avoid) the frequently asked questions.

1: https://sive.rs/anon

Being named John Smith is such an underappreciated superpower.

The fact that you shouldn't use your real info online is clear to many. That being said, is it better to leave the fields empty, call yourself "anon," or create an imaginary online persona with inaccurate data to throw OSINT investigators off?

This was a super interesting read, and it highlights exactly the strength of cryptocurrencies. They turn game theory in their favor, so egoistic players (I don't mean this in an offensive tone) contribute to making it stronger and safer for everyone else.

Thank you for sharing!

I agree. For now you can buy a used Pixel to avoid giving Google money directly. In a year, you may have more options.

At MWC 2026, Motorola announced a formal partnership with the GrapheneOS Foundation and said the two groups will work on future devices engineered for GrapheneOS compatibility.

The official announcement was careful on timing, but follow-up reporting points to the first compatible Motorola flagships arriving in 2027, not on current devices.

If that happens, GrapheneOS stops being only a Pixel answer.

https://blog.alcazarsec.com/posts/most-secure-phone-setup

What happens if you add a new item on two devices simultaneously?

I'm working on an anonymous Dead Man's Switch (https://alcazarsec.com/deadmanswitch). You don't need any personal information to sign up, and you can configure email messages that will be automatically sent only when you stop checking in.

This can be useful for families handling digital legacy, solo founders, journalists, and others.

Let me know if you give it a try!

[OpenAI says its new model GPT-2 is too dangerous to release (2019)](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47684326)

She knows about it, so she will actually be expecting it.

But yes, that is indeed a risk, particularly for other family members who don't know there is an email for them.

I also thought that, but I like it this way. It supports weekly checks as well.

I set up a Dead Man's Switch. It sends me an email with a link every day. If I click it, I acknowledge that I am alive and nothing happens. If I do not, after a grace period and more reminders, it sends an email to my wife with a password-protected file. I have listed all our accounts, passwords, assets, etc., along with instructions on what to do and whom to ask for help.

Disclaimer: I sell digital legacy products. However, I also honestly use them, and some of these tools I distribute for free and have made open-source.

Fair enough. It is an advertisement, like when you read a "What is the best free email account?" blog article on the ProtonMail blog; you know it is an advertisement for their own product.

As a company that builds stuff, you need to get people's eyeballs on your products. One way you do that is by advertising your product. This is not in a nefarious way; it is just the law of nature.

Do you have better advice on how to get people to know that we exist and to try our product? I am honestly listening.

I think Vaultwarden is the right place to store secrets and SSH keys. They can use the emergency recovery feature to request access after a certain period.

You could then share the complete instructions via email using a dead man's switch, which would make it easier for them to navigate those difficult times.

If you want to give that a try, I can answer any questions you have during setup and extend the free trial (the default is 14 days) until you are sure that this is the right solution.

Send us a message if we can help!

How do you perform the check-ins? Can you send messages to "normal" people, such as your parents, or must they be running a script to check the blockchain periodically?

Most people want an easy-to-use solution for sending messages to family and friends. However, technical people with technical friends can use the bleeding edge, and that is cool as well.

That's great if you just want them to know you are gone (although many friends would realize before that).

It is not complete if you want to send them anything after you go—some goodbye letter, or something more practical like a password, or plans and info they should know.

It is still a good idea to configure anyway. It's not one tool or another; they can complement each other.

We're sorry if you had the impression it wasn't our own product. The second recommendation is "Alcazar Dead Man’s Switch," and the page is titled "Alcazar · Blog." We thought it was clear.

We recommend our own product because we think it's one of the best options out there. We want people to hear about it, while we also share information about our competitors and when one would choose us versus them.

It's very hard to simplify a list of services to the point where it's useful for everyone. Some people have never heard of the topic and just want a quick skim. Others want the full feature list (which you can find in the linked websites). There's no perfect solution.

No upvoting ring here. In fact, I didn't realize this blew up until now.

We routinely post blog articles explaining digital legacy to people. And oftentimes we recommend our own product, as we honestly believe it's one of the most simple and private ones out there.

This is a valid point.

I think they are trying to fix this with Accrescent. I've always heard to use Droid-ify for open-source apps, and Aurora for apps that are only in the Play Store (it uses its own Google accounts as a proxy).

How so? What have you found unusable or broken compared to normal Android?

Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47444319

Not necessarily. But fixed code tends to not adapt to changing situations.

“Hey, my mother-in-law is coming today. She drives a blue Ford pickup. Let her in and record the car plate for future use.”

“There are servicemen coming today around noon. They should check the electricity box and leave in a few minutes. Let me know if they do something else.”

Are we “there” yet? To the point where deploying this as a serious security system makes sense? Or are we still in the research and demo phase?

My intuition is that OpenClaw-like systems still make too many mistakes to be trusted with security. And that it will take more months or years until the models and harnesses are truly ready.