What Does Your Dead Man's Switch Do?

LqdEngineer asks: "How many of you use or have used a Dead Man's Switch designed to perform some action if you don't check in for a certain amount of time? Recently, I decided to put one together using MySQL and some cron jobs, but I wanted to see what others have their switches set up to do in the event you fail to check in. E-mails to loved ones? Send encryption keys to friends/family? Hate mail to your boss? Has anyone ever been on the receiving end of the results of such a system?"

Comments

Wives and Other DMSs

[P(0)(!P(k) P(k 1))]

From TFS:

I decided to put [a dead man's switch] together using MySQL and some cron jobs . . . .

I'll counter with my own ask-ask-slashdot: why would you use MySQL? It's only one more component to fail after you've expired.

My advice: lose the extraneous components; and get a wife, too: they come with a redundant dead man's mechanism.

Re:Wives and Other DMSs

[Profane MuthaFucka]

they come with a redundant dead man's mechanism
they come with a redundant dead man's mechanism
they come with a redundant dead man's mechanism

hmmm. Now I think I understand what's in the nightstand drawer.

Halo.

[headkase]

Duh. Activate the rings and release the black hole from it's omni-magnetic retainer so it can eat Earth. No traces left.

creates more deadmens switches

[green pizza]

My deadman's switch is programmed to create a series of new deadmen's switches, each more complex than the last.

First things first

[antifoidulus]

delete all the porn!

Re:First things first

[lukas84]

When you're gone, you're gone. The world is meaningless, because you no longer exist.

Re:First things first

[ElaborateCalculator]

Mod parent up:
+1 Solipsist

Re:First things first

[rammer]

What a sadly egoist world view you have.

World may be meaningless to you. You are dead. You, in effect, do not exist anymore. But the world does not stop existing simply because you expire.
You are not the center of the universe. You are merely an almost infinitesimal part of the big, grand, large, larger than life universe.

Children are naturally egoist. You are 22. What is your excuse? :)

Re:First things first

[rawtatoor]

Then they go back to find out more information and find volumes of porn,

If they aren't down my life's passion of snuff films, poop sex and tentacle porn then let em starve.

Re:First things first

[Monkelectric]

It is so rare that one solipsists meets another.

Re:First things first

[Mr. Slippery]

Whatever these little consequences are, they can't concern me anymore, since i'm already dead...This thinking can, of course, lead to amoral decisions, and that's why we have invented religion :)

The fact that consequences of your death can't concern you when you're dead, in no way means that reasonably foreseeable post-mortem consequences should not concern you now.

That's why even people who don't believe in any sort of "afterlife" still buy life insurance to take care of their kids.

You don't need any sort of supernatural belief to end up with behavior that most people would call "moral", just some compassion and a reasonable ability to foresee the consequences of your actions.

Which takes me off on a bit of a tangent...

Foreseeing the effects of our actions is of obvious use; if you can't do that to at least some degree, you'll quickly end up dead or institutionalized.

But compassion? What's in it for me, you wonder.

Cultivating compassion expands the self. We're pretty darn sure that the human body known as "Lukas Beeler" is eventually going to stop functioning and in some way dissolve (rot in the ground, be burned up, eaten by squirrels, whatever). If you completely identify "yourself" as "Lukas Beeler", well, then, that's it for you. Maybe you can tickle the pleasure centers of that lump of meat a little bit before it dissolves, but that seems an unsatisfactory goal.

But is identifying "yourself" as "Lukas Beeler" the only option? Throughout history, some people - people who seem to derive a great deal more contentment from life than the average Joe - have suggested that transpersonalization provides a more satisfactory experience. This means identifying "yourself" as more than "Lukas Beeler".

By "more than", I do not mean anything supernatural, I am not speaking of a "soul" or anything metaphysical like that. But what if, for example, you were to invest a portion of your own concept of identity into your family? Unless all your relatives are childless, your family will outlast your body, so that "you" might have a larger and longer existence than the body of "Lukas Beeler".

What if you were to invest your identity into your community, your city or your nation? That's an even larger and longer existence. Perhaps we have here a sensible argument for patriotism. But why stop there, when by identifying "yourself" with the whole human race, "you" get even bigger and longer-lived?

Now, hold on there, you ask. How in world am I supposed to accomplish this "investment of identity" that you're going on about? Well, it means to think of yourself as these other people. It's an exercise of imagination, to see things through their eyes, to feel what they feel. With that exercise, eventually it can be seen that the ordinary idea of "self" is just a mental construct, just an idea, not an immutable reality.

In other words, compassion is the tool and the method to get You out of you, the "big You" of consciousness out of the "small you" of flesh.

Indeed, if you get good at it, you may find that you can see "yourself" not just in other humans, but in other animals; in the trees; in the whole biosphere. Expanding "yourself" until not much identity is left connected with the body known as "Lukas Beeler".

And maybe you can keep going. Eventually you might find yourself worrying about the heat death of the observable Universe, billions of years in the future, as your end, instead of the dissolution of "Lukas Beeler" in a few decades. That's a pretty massive trade-up. And if you get that far, it's comforting to consider that cosmology seems more and more to be considering some sort of "multi-verse" scheme in which our observable Universe is only a part; there's still more to become.

"A human being is a part of a whole, called by us 'universe', a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the re

What happens when you forget?

[monkeypoo]

What happens when five years from now, after the thrill of having something like this setup, you forget to check back in? Now you've got passwords and emails going around saying you've passed on? I'm sure grandma will love that email. Why not just use a system that isn't triggered until your death certificate becomes available. Set it and forget it.

Re:What happens when you forget?

[Bazman]

"Why not just use a system that isn't triggered until your death certificate becomes available."

Such as? Maybe you can leave a sealed note with whoever has your will, saying 'in the event of my death please visit this web page', then give a URL, username, and password, the visiting of which causes a server-side script to run and delete all your pr0n, hate-mail your boss, put your low-numbered slashdot account up on ebay for the benefit of your next of kin, and so on.

Of course you'd have to make sure that URL was secured....

Re:What happens when you forget?

[daeg]

Agreed. There is a much better dead man's switch available, and it's called a living will and a lawyer who has the legal authority to open your safe deposit box in the bank once you pass on. It even has generations of legal precedent to help defend against greedy family members.

You can even set it up with your lawyer to have him mail things out once you're dead -- including your encryption keys, letters to family, etc.

And yes, I have been the recipient of such a letter. Many such letters, in fact. My great grandparents both wrote letters to the family describing our family history going back to roughly 1550-1600. Instead of sending them to us and us inevitably losing them, they wrote them to their estate lawyer, who held them until they both passed on. They are great reading and have been far more valuable tracing family history than the Internet or any books or libraries have gotten us.

Re:What happens when you forget?

[Ceriel Nosforit]

So you won't sell your account until you're dead, huh...

Excuse me, I need to make a few phone calls.

You've got a nice account, by the way. Very nice...

Too Effective?

[pyr3]

I've always thought that a Dead Man's Switch held too many problems. Unless you have people that are 'out to get you' and your switch is your leverage, then it's not much use.

What happens if you get into a severe accident and end up in the hospital without the ability to 'check in' with it? What happens if you are stranded at an airport with a snowstorm? What if you are stranded at a ski lodge in the mountains in the middle of a snow storm? etc...

If you were ever unable to check in with the switch, then you would probably regret hate mail to your boss or other nasties that you had planned to send to people you hate. It would also be an unwelcome surprise for friends and family to get 'letters from the dead' just to find out that you really aren't dead. It would definitely be a detriment to you if you had it setup to donate all of the money in your bank accounts to charities....

The Dead Man's Switch has too many if's in it. It makes more sense to just put together a will and make sure you entrust someone you deeply trust to execute it.

Re:Too Effective?

[Technician]

What happens if you get into a severe accident and end up in the hospital without the ability to 'check in' with it? What happens if you are stranded at an airport with a snowstorm? What if you are stranded at a ski lodge in the mountains in the middle of a snow storm? etc...

Mine simply locks the encrypted filesystem if the power is interupted. A raid on my premisis while I'm gone locks things up tight. Forcing the door drops power. When I'm back, I can enter the encryption key and restore normal operation.

Re:Too Effective?

[ajs318]

Well ..... considering that whatever is encrypted behind those keys might conceivably be enough to send you to jail anyway (and possibly for a longer term), it might be worth swallowing the lighter sentence for not handing over your keys.

Ironically...

[Frogbert]

It's hooked up to my personal suicide machine.

Re:Ironically...

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

Yes, but did you test it?

Re:Ironically...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but did you test it?

Oh great...he hasn't responded. You, sir, are being charged with murder!

Why not have some fun?

[monkeypoo]

Why not make a system that, after you've passed away, pretends to be you from beyond the grave?

Maybe it checks your email contacts (most people will know you've passed on of course) and sends out randomly generated messages about how great heaven is?

"You'll never believe it! The Mormons were right!!"

Re:Why not have some fun?

[Workaphobia]

Well, if the system can pass a rigorous Turing Test and functionally replace you in all your roles, that may mean that you never even died. Either that or your life was so predictable and monotonous that a machine could live it for you.

We need a new checkbox when posting to /.

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

[_] No Karma Bonus [_] Post Anonymously [_] Post Humously

Jewish Mother Dead Man's Switch

[LunchSpecial]

If I don't check in with my Jewish mother every few days she'll go crazy and call everyone I might have once talked to.
I didn't set this up, it was genetics.

What if...

[jones_supa]

What if after your death your relatives just walk in and happily unplug your Linux boxes (having no idea how they even work) before your cool scripts even get a chance to run. :S

Feed the worms

[EmbeddedJanitor]

No matter how inflated our egos, after a few tears and a small feast for the worms, the planet will continue as if we never even happened. Why complicate matters with a dead man's switch?

Re:Feed the worms

[kalirion]

Maybe it will continue after your death, but considering the fact that the universe is merely a figment of my imagination, I predict that my death will have a greater impact.

Internet dating

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok it sounds paranoid but on several occasions I've met up with someone from the internet.

I usually have a few details about them but given I'm into the alternative scene (and I don't mean music) you don't usually just pass these details to a friend.

Never the less, meeting up with someone like this for these kind of activities is down right dangerous, taking a few precautions is always sensible.

I usually put together a zip file filled with every piece of contact information I have for this person and use a cron job to email this in 48 hours if I dont stop it.

I also send a text message to myself prior to entering anyones house that I am meeting like this - the uk mobile phone companies will store location information for up to 3 years.

Ok its paranoid but I know several people (though usually women) that have been raped meeting like this - worse things could possibly happen as you are taking your life in your hands doing though. I'll admit that being a guy I am probably less vulnrable - but its better to be on the safe side and atleast give yourself some backup.

Its never gone off before... but its nice to know its set up - just in case.

Re:what I tell the guy with the gun

[Barny]

And after all that torture, all that pain and death, everyone who receives the message deletes it as spam....

I've got one.

[munpfazy]

I often take part in political protests, and have on occasion been arrested and held for days.

So, I put together a quick routine using perl and chron that dispatches email to my workplace, the local legal rep contact, and some friends. The later includes directions to a hidden key and asks them to feed my cat until they hear from me. I only enable the system when I'm expecting a significant risk of arrest. Once it's started, if I don't either log into the machine or send myself an email containing a specific string once every 24 hours, the alarm goes off.

Turns out it's never actually been used (except when testing.) I did get caught up in a surprise arrest not too long ago, but since my girlfriend was going to be at home and able to take care of any problems I didn't turn on the system.

But, if you ask me, trusting life-changing information to a php script is a really, really scary idea. Even my trivial "please feed my cat" letters included disclaimers explaining that they may have been falsely triggered.

Now, on the other hand, the possibility of spoofing dead man's letters from other people *does* sound promising.

Re:My gas pedal...

[ajs318]

s/bus/milk float/
s/55/4

This is true...

[Anonymous Coward]

About six years ago I had the misfortune of working for a company where our lead developer was a complete fruitcake. He wore all black every day, put his cigarettes out on his keyboard, you name it. He was one of those die-hard, born-in-the-soup hackers who started out configuring the household appliances to kill his family.

A genuine genius, and impossible to work with.

Well, one week he had happened to catch some variant on the face-melting death. I'm talking about the kind of influenza which turns your various facial orifices into creeping faucets of mucus. His wife assured me of a fever which would kill a lesser being. Sweat sheeted off his face like a rainstorm on a greenhouse roof. Needless to say he took some time off.

I get a call on Friday afternoon and it's him. The sounds coming from his end of the call were like the elephant throwing up and trying to talk into the little voice scrambling doohickey from the movie Scream. "You have to come get me," he says. "Why?" I reply. "Because I'm in no shape to drive, and I need to login to my computer there." Empathetically, I told him to stay there if he was sick. "You don't understand," he barfed, "If I don't login once a week..."

Yes. He had a DMS on our key development machines. One which he explained would lock up everything tighter than [gratuitous image deleted].

I was unthrilled to say the least, and refrained from chewing him out as he brought his barely clothed mass of plague into my beautiful car, coughed plumes of virii and bacteria into our office, made my boss practically bust a vein in his forehead as I led his nearly-blind ass to his computer-- all because he refused to share his password with us to access and protect company property --then finally have the nerve to croak a child-like plea for McDonald's from my back seat on the way home.

Once he was fully recovered we had the intervention and asked the usual questions, Why do you think this is necessary? What are you hiding from us? How screwed would we actually be if he actually died? Etc. In his paranoid, seen-the-Matrix-too-many-times universe, there was nothing wrong with installing some 'basic security'.

I did mention this guy was a genius, right?

The boss caved completely, and to be honest, we all knew there was no way in heck we could find whatever weird little bombs he'd hidden in our own system let alone the machine he'd practically joined to at the spine 12 hours a day. I quit the company that June, Mr. Maniac is still writing all their code and the company is quite successful.

So, yeah, DMS... Why send email to the unworthy after you're claimed in the Lord's rapture, when you can just grab your entire company by the nuts and twist?

(Posted as AC because I'm at work.)

16 Mexicans

[solareagle]

"Every Setpember, 16 Mexicans have a great party celebrating the revolution of Mexico but the fact is, that the revolution was not complete. " Is it the same 16 Mexicans every year? If you are one of only 16 Mexicans to attend this great party, you really need a Dead Man's Switch giving some one else your party spot!