Comment by devonsydney on Not Getting Hacked · 2022-12-22T13:14:49.117Z · LW · GW

Nice post on an important topic! One comment. Afaik, Google Chrome's password manager is NOT an encrypted store. I understand this is an active decision by Google as they consider your device password your "protection" and don't want to provide a false sense of security. Problem is many people have weak device passwords and also remote access may allow hackers to gain access to the device / your Chrome, and therefore ALL passwords in your manager. This doesn't meet my muster so I recommend against Chrome's password manager. Here's a Quora that appears to validate my thinking but I accept things may have changed since. I personally use BitWarden, as it's the most trustworthy I can find, free for the most common features and the interface has improved over recent years.

Security awareness is hard to hammer into people's heads and scams are getting more and more sophisticated. I got tired of repeating these messages for my friends and family to be safer online, and so wrote a guide for this. Fully intended as a PSA, no monetisation or benefit to me, just to share and help people be safer, so feel free to share.

https://sec.terminusfoundry.com/

Wrote it for two main audiences:

1. If you don’t know much about security, but want to be safer and don’t know where to start.
2. If you’re a techie and scared about the safety of your loved ones, and want a helpful lesson plan to guide you through making them safer.

This is evergreen and I frequently add things, so would love feedback!

Comment by devonsydney on The Pyramid And The Garden · 2021-01-16T18:57:31.763Z · LW · GW

Agreed, there is an infinitesimal chance of intersecting something with such large significance as the pyramids. My point was to show that by leaving 1 of only 2 chosen variables open AND having a variable that can be set to many different values along a continuum, you significantly increase optionality for how you could retrospectively jump through hoops to assign importance to what is just a coincidence.

One further thought would be this example chose a single hypothesis a conspiracy theorist may try to prove, when in reality they will be looking for these 'proofs' in many different places. If they don't find the connection in one place they'll just keep looking.

Comment by devonsydney on The Pyramid And The Garden · 2021-01-15T06:33:24.562Z · LW · GW

There is another significant way you can increase the search space. If we're only considering either latitude or longitude and throwing out the other variable, we get to draw lines all the way around the planet when looking for a site of interest:

That is, we can search:
- a line around the whole planet at latitude 29.9792458° N
- a line around the whole planet at latitude 29.9792458° S
- a line around the whole planet at longitude 29.9792458° E
- a line around the whole planet at longitude 29.9792458° W

Then you could search another 4 lines at 2.99792458° N/S/E/W.

With this we drastically increase the places we can look for meaningful / coincidental intersections.