Windows Resource Repository
One tradition on LessWrong has been to have repository for neat tricks for various occasions. A lot of them are listed in the Repository repository.
In this iteration I want to focus on which useful Windows programs we have installed on our computers. If anybody has written interesting and useful scripts that they want to share, that’s also welcomed.
this seems offtopic for the front page
Why? It feels to me that repository posts on LessWrong were a useful institution.
Repositories can become useful references, correct. This one feels oddly specified and I don’t expect it to get many responses.
This feels like it could fit in a discussion board, but that it’s not worthy of being an Article(tm) on The New LESSWRONG. I think this about the repository posts in general, and about the open threads.
edit: posted to the disagreement thread
f.lux is software that reduces the amount of blue light that your monitor emits at night. This helps with melatonin production and thus better sleep.
I use KeePass as my password manager. It UI isn’t the most intuitive but it’s open source and does everything I want. I don’t need to trust an external party with my passwords and by using Mega.nz I can still backup my key file.
Better than password managers, I believe, are deterministic password generators (like pwm) secured with a strong passphrase. lahwran wrote a command-line aid for coming up with actually decent and secure passphrases. You’ll want secure storage for modification details and one-off passwords, maybe a record of what sites you have accounts on, but just using a password manager doesn’t mean you’re using passwords intelligently.
From a security standpoint I’m not sure. If you use your password in public to unlock your device and the security doesn’t rely on a file or any kind of two factor authentification, a single camera is enough to lose all your passwords if you use a deterministic password generators.
while I agree and appreciate the mention, I do want to give password managers their fair representation—they’re definitely good enough on their own, and just have the annoyance and risk that you still have store something.
As a clipboard manager I use Ditto. Having a clipboard history is nice and it’s easily configured to not save the passwords from KeePass in it’s history.
It’s especially helpful when you want to save multiple text snippets at once to the clickboard.
For automatically backing up my files I use Mega.nz. It’s like DropBox but it’s encrypted client-side and has 50GB of free storage. The data is hosted in New Zealand which means that it’s not as easily coerced by US or EU courts.
edit: this comment got posted to the wrong thread due to a bug in lesswrong2. I was attempting to post this comment, but it got posted to the wrong thread.
I don’t use Windows nowadays, and many of my crucial tricks are either browser extensions, web services, or hacked into my general dev setup.
Generally though? On every device or medium I try to have:
A timer that I can start the instant I recognize time-boxing myself might be helpful.
Unobtrusive note-taking/thinking space. I use notepad or nvim with markdown highlighting.
A random number generator (and/or list shuffler), to arbitrarily narrow decision spaces that are taking more effort to think about than they’re worth.
In the long run, simple tools that do exactly what you tell them beat out complex gadgets that try to anticipate every use case. If you want a smart aid that can act precisely to cause good outcomes on your behalf, consider going out and making friends.
Do you have a timer that you prefer?
Howler Timer