my system for managing passwords

The perils of password reuse, though known since time immemorial, have been making headlines lately. I would guess that 99% of everyone I know and likely the same percentage of people reading this are guilty of that sin, as was I till I developed a system that works with all devices, involves no software or hardware, does not require writing anything down, and allows me to easily remember dozens and dozens of passwords even if I haven't used them for years.

It works by combining some random but easily remembered made up word with a description of the service I'm logging into.  How do you easily remember a random made up word?  Originally I chose a poem from a Dr. Seuss book I memorized as a child, but I've since moved to the lyrics of a foreign song that I spelled out using standard characters phonetically.  I'll never forget either and the poem is full of bizarre Seuss-isms not found in a dictionary.  Anything that's non standard English that you can remember will do the trick, from a limerick to Snoop Dogg lyrics.

Once you've memorized a few sentences or stanzas pick out a handful of the oddest words, apply a healthy dose of leet speak and SensiblE CasE mOdIfIcAtIOns that'll be easy to recall and you should have a good set of five or six base passwords.  Now you just need to decide how you're going to describe the service your logging into.

It's a good idea to be as specific as possible, for instance H0ckZ0ckergmail is better than H0ckZ0ckeremail because someday down the line you may decide to open an email account somewhere else. H0ckZ0cker-GM or H0ckZ0cker-GML are even better because if someone suspects you're using a system that incorporates the site name into the password they'll be forced to make more guesses, and the use of a hyphen or other non alphanumeric character to seperate the halves increases the number of required guesses again.

Getting started with this method is just a matter of changing the password for the two or three things you have to log into most, make them things your browser isn't remembering for you like your bank.  Once you're in the habit of doing it, switching back to your old re-used password for other things will start to irritate you and you'll change them too.  Every six months to a year just change your base word, I do mine every year after my birthday.

There are a couple gotchas. If a service you don't use often decides to change names like Farkie did when it became Gazzump you may have to do some googling if you can't recall it's original name.  Also, if your using a service that won't accept the long passwords this method generates I suggest you complain loudly or find a new service.

I hope this helps folks who otherwise wouldn't spend time thinking about this sort of thing.  If you happen to be one of those people who's currently thinking "I have nothing of value, hackers aren't going to come after me", then there's not much I can do to help you with your delusions.  People in low income neighborhoods may not posses much of value but that doesn't stop break ins, crime for the sake of crime happens every day, there's no reason to make yourself an easy target.

windows 7 hates foreigners

I had to install a Microsoft OS recently so I could get remote access to work.  That being the case I got some Windows 7 action going and for the most part, I don't hate it.  It's got a couple MS type irritations; having to screw around to load an unsigned driver was annoying but at least I understand why they did that.  What I have yet to understand is the Windows undying devotion to the QWERTY keyboard layout.  Yeah it's the most common but there's no shortage of alternatives, and while MS seems to understand people want the choice of something else, they also seem to really want users to hang on to QWERTY despite their stated preferences.

For reasons I can't explain, no matter how completely I remove the US QWERTY keyboard layout, it still shows up in the language bar.  So I hide the language bar, no big deal right?  Except no matter how many times I disable the hotkeys for switching input languages I still randomly find the keys switching back to QWERTY under my fingers without warning.  I've locked myself out of my VPN access to work twice now and at least one website by unknowingly mistyping passwords when my fingers were hitting what I thought were the right keys but which Windows had shuffled on me.

I booted up Ubuntu so I could show a screenshot of how it's done properly, but it seems there is nothing to see.  Yeah because when you have only one keyboard layout selected, go figure, the language bar hides itself and the hotkeys disable themselves.

I'll update this if I figure out how to fix things, but in the meantime suggestions are welcome.

/rant.

currency, economics, and trolls

I recently read on the Pirate Party of Canada forums that the EFF has begun accepting donations in the form of Bitcoins, a form of digital currency that's seen some steady growth of late.  I read a little about Bitcoin when it popped up in my newsreader in the summer but having little understanding of either cryptography or economics my interest wandered quickly.  When I read through the replies however it seemed some people had strong concerns about such a currency being widely adopted, and one vocal protester seemed well informed on the subject so I began "discussing" it with him.  My mistake.

(the troll, do not feed it!)

After a bit of back and forth it became clear that my troll was either unwilling or unable to provide a sound argument for any of his positions that didn't eventually fall back on ubiquitous corporate evil doing and one world governments.  Still interested, I took my curiosity to another forum I frequent hoping to find some well reasoned opinions on the matter.  During the discourse that took place there I was directed to an interesting paper describing the failure of gold backed currencies, educated about the Nixon Shock, and the foolishness of engaging trolls.  (A friend who works in parliament messaged me on Facebook later to advise I run and don't look back "They're all kooks. Flee!").

Normally the story above wouldn't wind up here, but I've included it because since then with a bit of economy on the brain I've been paying more attention to such topics while surfing.  There seems to be a lot of interest in alternative open economic models lately that strike me as interesting if a bit over my head.  For the curious, here's a brief overview of some of the concepts, a short video about money, wealth, and creation of value including links to several projects in the problem space, and a free book + wiki "The Wealth of Networks" about the influence of social production on markets.

Also worth checking out; DYNDY.  I still haven't worked out exactly what it is, but they seem to be sniffing out and examining all manner of alternative and complementary currency systems.  Check out this post for an overview of a presentation about themselves at a recent conference in Amsterdam.

I really have no idea what all this buzzing might mean if anything, but I do find it intriguing. If you have any suggestions about reading material pertaining to backed vs fiat economics or alternative models please drop a comment. I am vastly under informed on the topic and would like to change that.

space isn't just big, it's weird too

Today I found myself reading about Zarmina and how people might one day fling themselves toward it at a large fraction of c by sticking a firecracker worth about 1.8 x 10^25 Joules of energy on the end of the ISS and lighting it up.  Cool beans.

This lead me to an interesting clickfest at Wikipedia where I hopped from current and upcoming exoplanet surveys, to finding distances and pinpointing objects with various coordinate systems where I had a flash back to the movie Contact (yes I read the book, of course it was better). I then wound my way round to the bigger items of interest like the age of the universe and the size of the observable universe where I found something crazy. It was so crazy my mind stumbed, fell, got up and dusted itself off then immediately fell again and stayed there in the dirt for a moment trying to decide what to do next.

Now to preface this I should say that I read some time ago that it is thought by some that when travelling the universe, as when travelling the surface of the Earth, you could pick a direction and travel in it and eventually if you kept at it long enough you'd find yourself back where you started.  Conceptually it makes sense to us on a planetary scale but I suppose you need a certain amount of years seated before a blackboard discussing planes and vectors and toroids and so on before it starts making sense with the whole universe.  I took it at face value that it was one theory that smart folks had given some thought to and went about my business. 

Then today I read this:

"It is also possible that the (physical) Universe is smaller than the observable universe. In this case, what we take to be very distant galaxies may actually be duplicate images of nearby galaxies, formed by light that has circumnavigated the Universe. It is difficult to test this hypothesis experimentally because different images of a galaxy would show different eras in its history, and consequently might appear quite different."

Roll that thought around your noodle for a while.  Weird right?

Anyway the article goes on to say that this idea was disputed this summer by some very clever sounding folks in their article "Observable circles-in-the-sky in flat universes".  If it makes any sense to you by all means please direct me to a pre-chewed version, I haven't the chops for such stuff.

sound reasoning

Some friends and I were chatting while bringing a few things from their car up to their apartment last night, and having a heated debate when suddenly, shit got real.

him: Oh yeah?

me: Yeah!

him: Wanna bet?  How much?

me: Umm ... no?

her: Ohhhh, suddenly he doesn't sound so sure!

him: See as soon as there's money he thinks I'm right.  Surprise surprise!

me: Whoa hey wait a minute, I never said I think you're right.

him: So, let's put some cash on it big guy.

me: No see because I suspect I may be wrong, that's not even close to thinking you're right.  Different things entirely.

him: You're an idiot.

her: *nods*

I stand by my flawless logic.