I moved to Chrome for the Javascript speed up last year. This month I've moved back to Firefox.
Chrome was faster and I still think it's better for less educated users even with the lack of privacy. I'd still suggest it for friends.
However, this year I see little advantages to Chrome. Chrome has a few very annoying bugs and features. In particular there's a few things I like to do with Firefox that I can't do with Chrome:
1) Install an addon quicker without signing in to anything. Quick searching 2) Turn on and off images with img like opera. There are also other plugins for this 3) Generally I much prefer the diag stuff including web dev 4) Just much more chance of getting below the hood and knowing what's going on with Firefox 5) addons... I know Chrome is a bit more reliable on this, but I prefer the whole cmomunity feeling around Firefox
Also, the latest version of Firefox right now feels lighter and I'm more familiar with running multiple addons yet keeping it stable. On Chrome I kept running nito brick walls trying to get what I wanted working. With Firefox you've a much better chance of finding it documented and with community support. The Chrome support forums are full of users trying to do certain things.
I usually have at least a few browsers anyway on any one OS, sometimes a portable install. There's still times where I find different browsers do things differently I find myself wanting an alternative if only to confirm that it's not just a unique problem
If I install a closed source game... am I giving carte-blanche to my system, including and Bitcoins, documents and cached browser passwords? Of course it depends on permissions but I think most linux users aren't set up for this.
I think we need to make clearer what exactly the impact of this is.
Does an Indian businessman who bought a Blackberry in SouthAmerica and is working in Europe be assured on some level of privacy on communications?
Does an American businessman with a Blackberry bought in the USA visiting India on the way to China need to rethink how company documents are transmitted?
Not very clear, especially as the BIS keys can't and therefore haven't been handed over.
So we have a new server in India, but what is being routed through it?
That small electrical charge isn't going to make a big impact but... it does have an effect.
When breeding Kefir the charge from just a piece of metal is enough to kill it. Likewise, a charge from copper is enough to deter slugs (I don't think it's the slipperyness). Also, in my own accidental double blind experiment (which will remain nameless) I found that electrical charge in the body is what I believe the lowest hanging fruit for scientific study.
So I think the pill will kill off natural fauna in the gut, possibly making way for other microbes. I wish I had some literature to back me up on that.
Most of the applications at the moment are bad news. Hopefully we might see an unintended positive use for it.
Link the valuable resource of safe drinking water to the profits of Fracking.
How?
Here's some ideas. 1) Put the (well 3rd party monitored) water company in charge of this type of mining rights 2) Put the environment agency in charge of monitoring the bidding process for the rights 3) The company actually mining must actually use the water. Everyone involved in the company has to drink water from around the area
Then if there's no problem -great! If there is a problem then the economic incentive is there. Enforced capitalism.
Hopefully people uploading code and projects to forums have learnt their lesson... but I still see people using cyberlockers.
For all those projects that were on megaupload, all those links are dead. I'd like to know, how many forums that enforce copyright link to megaupload. This might help get some stats.
Does the court even acknowledge that this content was on the Megaupload servers? Does the court even know WHY people on forums like xdadevs were using megaupload?
I'm the sort of person who gets a bit annoyed at having to own more than 1 pair of shoes. 1 should be enough, I find the efficiency assuring. All the rest is just an irritation for me. I can see I don't really need it but I have to recognise social rules around me. So the partner says have to buy shoes for sport, work, hiking, sailing, work boots etc, I do it. To me, having to own more than one of something shows up the failure of something to deliver (the world on a stick).
When I was younger living at home we had my van, my dads van, my brothers car, my mothers car, my fathers car all on one driveway. Then relatives visit and we've caused our own traffic jam. It seemed like an inefficient waste of metal especially as not all of them were used at any one time. Likewise, when we're driving down the road there will be at least a few people going the same way. It costs me over $200 to fill my car now. If I was driving like I used to that would be $5000 of wasted cash. I'd prefer to have that cash in my pocket.
I have an engineers mindset so I like efficiency. I find that beautiful. There are other arguments to be made including that having more than what we need in general is the kind of thing that is bringing the world to it's knees, but that isn't why I like to be minimalistic, promise.
I changed from a Nokia E55 to a Galaxy S1. The Galaxy can do lots of things the Nokia can't but all of those things are not essential and tend to be something I use only once in a blue moon.
The E55 has a very small screen but with Opera Mini I could do things in a push. Email's there, maps are there. All your mobile sites are there. If it could do Spanish and English at the same time I'd go back to one because the screen is higher quality outdoors and the battery lasts a matter of days longer.
I think with a lot of these big screen phones the thinking is 'why not go as big as we can'? They say big, but really it's only the screen size that has increased and not the thickness. That's been the key thing for the phones. The Razor really made the difference by making everything thinner. When that happened I think people realised that it was less about the size and the thickness was more important and so the size was able to increase.
The big screen on my i9000 means I have to carry a spare battery, which makes it really big. Add in a case or a wearable battery jacket to be sure you can get through a day no matter what you do (i.e. Sat Nav) then you got a really big device - too big. With all these things I can't even fit them in the pockets I used to.
I'd love to see a small touchscreen eink phone. The focus is all on multimedia and the web. For people who prefer to get things done we've felt quiet left out these last few years. Not everyone is on their phone all the time. Some of us use them sparingly.
Chinese firms are filling in the gaps with things like dual sim phones and watchphones that go completely against the massive phone thing. Both of course tend to be terrible quality but now bigger firms have got in on the act and it's changed a bit.
Agreed. I spend a lot of time out of the country and it's a shame having to pay for a car I rarely use, but it's essential when I am in that location.
In the UK a cheap car can be £600($940) and the tax per year for that is ~£200($312). Fuel is £6.7/gal ($10.4) Renting a car is ~£70($110)/day and leasing is only a little cheaper.
We have all these cars on the road, some people have 3 or 4 cars each for different tasks. It's ridiculous excess.
This should be useful for people in cities like London where there isn't the space but it's workable to get public transport out of town and use a car from there. I'd love this kind of thing to catch on outside the U.S.
I see your point. It's a terrible starting point and the trust of the company is broken anyway so why give them the business.
However, that viewpoint is directly against Replicant just a little too quickly: http://replicant.us/faq/ You're also going against the companies out there advising and customising phones including Android for corporations.
I was thinking of going back to Symbian. I had a E55 and E71 before this Galaxy and prefered the battery and maps coverage but is that any better? What phone do you use?
Other best plan I have is carrying 2 phones; an old phone for phone operations and then something bigger but somehow definitely offline somehow, that can be made online quickly if I need it (quicker than a battery pull). I think breaking the usefulness into separate devices is another strategy. How's about putting the darn things in a metal box? Another strategy I can think of is to act like a businessman with corporate secrets to protect and go with whatever they use. Can you comment on Blackberry?
I don't know why I take such an interest in privacy, it's thankfully feels like an intellectual exercise. But by doing it we learn things that are useful in less paranoid situations. For example, saving battery when there's no source of power for days... or when innocent but on the run.
I agree, but the solution of "These companies should either be nationalised, or else wound up." Seems to be working within a dualistic communism vs capitalism way of looking at life.
How's about using the market to get results and then if that's not possible (but I think there always is, just need to work hard at finding a way to allow competition within a big system), then fall back to the state systems (that are inefficient because they don't have evolution-like free market economics oiling the wheels)
- Android phone with Tasker. - Set Tasker to toggle on & offline flight mode in intervals - more online time for quicker response to messages, more offline time for more privacy - use Replicant as your ROM distro or Cyanogen if that's not an option. Bear in mind Replicant isn't fully secure due to the binary modem blob but afaik it's the best we have (other than Symbian?) - collect your SMS and voicemails when you feel like it... miss a few important contracts:/
one really good thing about igoogle was that I never saw it censored by sysadmins. what I've found is you have to use the services that they use but don't tell you about and this was one of them.
personally I won't miss google video but talkback is a shame and isn't mini a major shock for websites that use it?
I expect Sony won't license this and prevent Samsung etc from using this. I want free choice on phones but this is a very useful thing for me to have on a phone.
Should you be able to buy an aftermarket plastic film to stick on anything you want?
look out moths! I'm gonna mash you up and sell your eyes on Taobao!
I guess making bumps less than lights wavelength is not something I can do at home right? I mean, a rep rap hasn't got that precision... hmm...
There's a chance you could be going somewhere and staying for a while. in this scenario you could carry a normal keyboard and mouse, smallish computer and even USB display.
We need to know the factors. Also security. A MacBook Air is great to use but I'd be worried of it all the time.
Remote desktop and rolling passwords from a USB key and portable apps sounds great til you see how variable the systems are you'll be using.
Phone solutions... hmm... if so then I'd recommend a separate phone for when the battery runs out. Tablet and Transformer... well its nice not to need power but hang on, you still need to plug in a some point.
Why not bite the bullet and go tethered as that's what you often need for serious work anyway? I can see the OP finding Pico computers and thinking is there not a way to make something useful from this? If you have office space at your destination, or somewhere comfortable like a hotel room then why not go with this route? Its lighter and could be better than an Asus Transformer, separate to your phone, could be a bit more serious potentially, yet is lighter than carrying a x86 tower. HDMI out on a pi like thing wouldn't be good enough for me... yeah I can see the point of a projector. Haven't seen a solution in the thread that is readable in bright sunlight though...
So I think there is merit.in what the OP is enquiring about. I just wish I had a projector.and Pico computer to try it out
I don't believe this, they didn't even assess the economic impact via fair competition - creating an artificial dependence a-la Microsoft only with food as happened in India.
The story I heard was that in northern India GM took off massively and this created a dependence on Monsanto somehow and that this led to poor people being unable to grow their own food and in isolated cases, close to starving. I don't know how true this story is... need to check the sources
but it's pretty shocking that only the health risks of the current generation of GM products was assessed without the antitrust fair competition side.
I also have a life on the road. I have had many things stolen. This is my philosophy now.
I don't spend a lot on technology anymore. I only buy what I think will be useful and what I need for work. The laptop I use is very old, my phone is quite old. I find I don't need much more.
I looked at the Galaxy Note and said to myself "Yes, that would be very useful in that I can use it for ebooks, as a phone as well as some light tasks when I've left the laptop at the hotel... but...
it was ~$800!" How am I going to be able to use that when I want to? How am I going to pull that out on the underground in Columbia?
So instead for a long time I went with a Nokia E71. When that broke instead of getting a new Android I went with an old Galaxy S1 at about £100. If this gets stolen I have a backup and I can buy locally. I always buy within the limit of 'would I cry if I lost it' now. This is actually a relaxation on my strategy. Before I went with things that didn't attract attention because I didn't want to go through the psychological aspect of getting mugged - now I just go with things I can afford to lose as long as it's not every month.
Cloud backup doesn't work for me. The bandwidth just isn't there. This makes things complicated and messy. For the phone the best I can do is copy SD cards and upload as and when I can. Need to improve a system there, to create a habit. As for the hard drive, this is a problem. It's just a lot of data, too much for cloud storage. Only about 10gb of the 300gb 2.5" HD is important but this needs to be organised. However, even 2gb is too much bandwidth in some places to backup regularly. What to do? It's difficult. When you got a lot of data you need a lot of space extra with which to move it round and organise it.
As an interim I treat the hard drive with a lot of care: - put just the hard drive in the hotel safe - take the hard drive out of the laptop and hand carry through airports - back up selected things when I can (but this is too infrequent...)
I had another phone stolen last year. It had everything on there. Thankfully encrypted but because I decrypted that file almost daily to remember things like bank account numbers I couldn't use a password to match the level it should have done. This is a problem I have even now. Somewhere out there there's a SD card with enough stuff to cripple me. The thing is, because I didn't have a recent backup I'm not entirely sure if I've changed all my passwords. Let this be a lesson to you! Thank god I encrypted. You only have to put the lightest protections to reduce the risk by 95% but really I wish I'd done more.
I find a lot of this security advise can be crippling in a working environment. Convenience is critical. You have to assess your risk and strike the balance. If you overprotect then the cure can be worse than the problem. For example, if your password takes you 20 seconds to type, and you get it wrong 1 in 5 times how much is that costing you on productivity and is it worth it for that particular thing you're protecting? I would say protect that data but don't worry too much on hardware and instead cut the cost of replacing it. The typical thief just wants your phone but the info on it usually takes a bit longer to be a problem.
2 factor authentication is very useful on the road. If you had your laptop stolen you might need to login to your home ssh server via some shady internet cafe. Think about this. Have one time passwords as an optional extra. Think about 2 factor auth for your phone like Google Authenticator. Have some backup codes listed somewhere. Can a relative available by phone have a copy? Don't label it and they most likely won't even know what it's for. If you lose your phone have a number remembered that you can call to get to a backup of your stuff including bank etc.
Writing this is all very useful. I will have to have another look at this because I've seen some holes now.
Finally, what would happen if all the banking system went tits up like it did for people in Argentina? If you went to the ATM and it didn't work and also you couldn't make any purchases? I happened to me for 2 weeks and it was pretty humbling.
Slashdot Mirror
I moved to Chrome for the Javascript speed up last year. This month I've moved back to Firefox.
Chrome was faster and I still think it's better for less educated users even with the lack of privacy. I'd still suggest it for friends.
However, this year I see little advantages to Chrome. Chrome has a few very annoying bugs and features. In particular there's a few things I like to do with Firefox that I can't do with Chrome:
1) Install an addon quicker without signing in to anything. Quick searching
2) Turn on and off images with img like opera. There are also other plugins for this
3) Generally I much prefer the diag stuff including web dev
4) Just much more chance of getting below the hood and knowing what's going on with Firefox
5) addons... I know Chrome is a bit more reliable on this, but I prefer the whole cmomunity feeling around Firefox
Also, the latest version of Firefox right now feels lighter and I'm more familiar with running multiple addons yet keeping it stable. On Chrome I kept running nito brick walls trying to get what I wanted working. With Firefox you've a much better chance of finding it documented and with community support. The Chrome support forums are full of users trying to do certain things.
I usually have at least a few browsers anyway on any one OS, sometimes a portable install. There's still times where I find different browsers do things differently I find myself wanting an alternative if only to confirm that it's not just a unique problem
... assuming the internet shares your definition of a life form.
However... forever is a long time!
So the whole concept seems kind of broken
How's about using NNTP just for distributing the .torrent only :-)
I did a quick search... amazingly I haven't seen anyone doing this?
If I install a closed source game... am I giving carte-blanche to my system, including and Bitcoins, documents and cached browser passwords? Of course it depends on permissions but I think most linux users aren't set up for this.
I think we need to make clearer what exactly the impact of this is.
Does an Indian businessman who bought a Blackberry in SouthAmerica and is working in Europe be assured on some level of privacy on communications?
Does an American businessman with a Blackberry bought in the USA visiting India on the way to China need to rethink how company documents are transmitted?
Not very clear, especially as the BIS keys can't and therefore haven't been handed over.
So we have a new server in India, but what is being routed through it?
That small electrical charge isn't going to make a big impact but... it does have an effect.
When breeding Kefir the charge from just a piece of metal is enough to kill it. Likewise, a charge from copper is enough to deter slugs (I don't think it's the slipperyness). Also, in my own accidental double blind experiment (which will remain nameless) I found that electrical charge in the body is what I believe the lowest hanging fruit for scientific study.
So I think the pill will kill off natural fauna in the gut, possibly making way for other microbes.
I wish I had some literature to back me up on that.
Most of the applications at the moment are bad news. Hopefully we might see an unintended positive use for it.
First post, over a 4k/sec satellite connection...
beverages drinks don't mix well with electronics... captcha is unwind...
Link the valuable resource of safe drinking water to the profits of Fracking.
How?
Here's some ideas.
1) Put the (well 3rd party monitored) water company in charge of this type of mining rights
2) Put the environment agency in charge of monitoring the bidding process for the rights
3) The company actually mining must actually use the water. Everyone involved in the company has to drink water from around the area
Then if there's no problem -great! If there is a problem then the economic incentive is there.
Enforced capitalism.
Hopefully people uploading code and projects to forums have learnt their lesson... but I still see people using cyberlockers.
For all those projects that were on megaupload, all those links are dead. I'd like to know, how many forums that enforce copyright link to megaupload. This might help get some stats.
Does the court even acknowledge that this content was on the Megaupload servers? Does the court even know WHY people on forums like xdadevs were using megaupload?
The syntax for "linkto: megaupload.com/*" ?
Mobile use, particularly at sea tends to involve omnidirectional antennas. Directional, gyro corrected antennas are very expensive and large.
Can this service tally with a handheld sat phone for lower speeds? I would hazard a guess of a yes but I've never found any info on this...
I'm the sort of person who gets a bit annoyed at having to own more than 1 pair of shoes. 1 should be enough, I find the efficiency assuring. All the rest is just an irritation for me. I can see I don't really need it but I have to recognise social rules around me. So the partner says have to buy shoes for sport, work, hiking, sailing, work boots etc, I do it. To me, having to own more than one of something shows up the failure of something to deliver (the world on a stick).
When I was younger living at home we had my van, my dads van, my brothers car, my mothers car, my fathers car all on one driveway. Then relatives visit and we've caused our own traffic jam. It seemed like an inefficient waste of metal especially as not all of them were used at any one time. Likewise, when we're driving down the road there will be at least a few people going the same way. It costs me over $200 to fill my car now. If I was driving like I used to that would be $5000 of wasted cash. I'd prefer to have that cash in my pocket.
I have an engineers mindset so I like efficiency. I find that beautiful. There are other arguments to be made including that having more than what we need in general is the kind of thing that is bringing the world to it's knees, but that isn't why I like to be minimalistic, promise.
I changed from a Nokia E55 to a Galaxy S1. The Galaxy can do lots of things the Nokia can't but all of those things are not essential and tend to be something I use only once in a blue moon.
The E55 has a very small screen but with Opera Mini I could do things in a push. Email's there, maps are there. All your mobile sites are there. If it could do Spanish and English at the same time I'd go back to one because the screen is higher quality outdoors and the battery lasts a matter of days longer.
I think with a lot of these big screen phones the thinking is 'why not go as big as we can'? They say big, but really it's only the screen size that has increased and not the thickness. That's been the key thing for the phones. The Razor really made the difference by making everything thinner. When that happened I think people realised that it was less about the size and the thickness was more important and so the size was able to increase.
The big screen on my i9000 means I have to carry a spare battery, which makes it really big. Add in a case or a wearable battery jacket to be sure you can get through a day no matter what you do (i.e. Sat Nav) then you got a really big device - too big. With all these things I can't even fit them in the pockets I used to.
I'd love to see a small touchscreen eink phone. The focus is all on multimedia and the web. For people who prefer to get things done we've felt quiet left out these last few years. Not everyone is on their phone all the time. Some of us use them sparingly.
Chinese firms are filling in the gaps with things like dual sim phones and watchphones that go completely against the massive phone thing. Both of course tend to be terrible quality but now bigger firms have got in on the act and it's changed a bit.
Agreed. I spend a lot of time out of the country and it's a shame having to pay for a car I rarely use, but it's essential when I am in that location.
In the UK a cheap car can be £600($940) and the tax per year for that is ~£200($312). Fuel is £6.7/gal ($10.4) Renting a car is ~£70($110)/day and leasing is only a little cheaper.
We have all these cars on the road, some people have 3 or 4 cars each for different tasks. It's ridiculous excess.
This should be useful for people in cities like London where there isn't the space but it's workable to get public transport out of town and use a car from there. I'd love this kind of thing to catch on outside the U.S.
I see your point. It's a terrible starting point and the trust of the company is broken anyway so why give them the business.
However, that viewpoint is directly against Replicant just a little too quickly:
http://replicant.us/faq/
You're also going against the companies out there advising and customising phones including Android for corporations.
I was thinking of going back to Symbian. I had a E55 and E71 before this Galaxy and prefered the battery and maps coverage but is that any better? What phone do you use?
Other best plan I have is carrying 2 phones; an old phone for phone operations and then something bigger but somehow definitely offline somehow, that can be made online quickly if I need it (quicker than a battery pull). I think breaking the usefulness into separate devices is another strategy. How's about putting the darn things in a metal box?
Another strategy I can think of is to act like a businessman with corporate secrets to protect and go with whatever they use. Can you comment on Blackberry?
I don't know why I take such an interest in privacy, it's thankfully feels like an intellectual exercise. But by doing it we learn things that are useful in less paranoid situations. For example, saving battery when there's no source of power for days... or when innocent but on the run.
I agree, but the solution of
"These companies should either be nationalised, or else wound up."
Seems to be working within a dualistic communism vs capitalism way of looking at life.
How's about using the market to get results and then if that's not possible (but I think there always is, just need to work hard at finding a way to allow competition within a big system), then fall back to the state systems
(that are inefficient because they don't have evolution-like free market economics oiling the wheels)
There's got to be an exploit in there somewhere!
- Android phone with Tasker. ... miss a few important contracts :/
- Set Tasker to toggle on & offline flight mode in intervals - more online time for quicker response to messages, more offline time for more privacy
- use Replicant as your ROM distro or Cyanogen if that's not an option. Bear in mind Replicant isn't fully secure due to the binary modem blob but afaik it's the best we have (other than Symbian?)
- collect your SMS and voicemails when you feel like it
Sounds like users have had it with passwords...
or is the problem still between the keyboard and the chair?
one really good thing about igoogle was that I never saw it censored by sysadmins. what I've found is you have to use the services that they use but don't tell you about and this was one of them.
personally I won't miss google video but talkback is a shame and isn't mini a major shock for websites that use it?
I expect Sony won't license this and prevent Samsung etc from using this.
I want free choice on phones but this is a very useful thing for me to have on a phone.
Should you be able to buy an aftermarket plastic film to stick on anything you want?
look out moths! I'm gonna mash you up and sell your eyes on Taobao!
I guess making bumps less than lights wavelength is not something I can do at home right? I mean, a rep rap hasn't got that precision... hmm...
He's trying to avoid the death penalty in the US, gibe the guy a break!
There's a chance you could be going somewhere and staying for a while. in this scenario you could carry a normal keyboard and mouse, smallish computer and even USB display.
We need to know the factors. Also security. A MacBook Air is great to use but I'd be worried of it all the time.
Remote desktop and rolling passwords from a USB key and portable apps sounds great til you see how variable the systems are you'll be using.
Phone solutions... hmm...
if so then I'd recommend a separate phone for when the battery runs out. Tablet and Transformer... well its nice not to need power but hang on, you still need to plug in a some point.
Why not bite the bullet and go tethered as that's what you often need for serious work anyway? I can see the OP finding Pico computers and thinking is there not a way to make something useful from this? If you have office space at your destination, or somewhere comfortable like a hotel room then why not go with this route? Its lighter and could be better than an Asus Transformer, separate to your phone, could be a bit more serious potentially, yet is lighter than carrying a x86 tower. HDMI out on a pi like thing wouldn't be good enough for me... yeah I can see the point of a projector.
Haven't seen a solution in the thread that is readable in bright sunlight though...
So I think there is merit.in what the OP is enquiring about. I just wish I had a projector.and Pico computer to try it out
I don't believe this, they didn't even assess the economic impact via fair competition - creating an artificial dependence a-la Microsoft only with food as happened in India.
The story I heard was that in northern India GM took off massively and this created a dependence on Monsanto somehow and that this led to poor people being unable to grow their own food and in isolated cases, close to starving. I don't know how true this story is... need to check the sources
but it's pretty shocking that only the health risks of the current generation of GM products was assessed without the antitrust fair competition side.
To keep it simple when you're discussing this:
Software patents and freedom of speech. What's the difference? Never has this been made clearer than around software.
I also have a life on the road. I have had many things stolen. This is my philosophy now.
I don't spend a lot on technology anymore. I only buy what I think will be useful and what I need for work. The laptop I use is very old, my phone is quite old. I find I don't need much more.
I looked at the Galaxy Note and said to myself "Yes, that would be very useful in that I can use it for ebooks, as a phone as well as some light tasks when I've left the laptop at the hotel... but...
it was ~$800!" How am I going to be able to use that when I want to? How am I going to pull that out on the underground in Columbia?
So instead for a long time I went with a Nokia E71. When that broke instead of getting a new Android I went with an old Galaxy S1 at about £100. If this gets stolen I have a backup and I can buy locally. I always buy within the limit of 'would I cry if I lost it' now. This is actually a relaxation on my strategy. Before I went with things that didn't attract attention because I didn't want to go through the psychological aspect of getting mugged - now I just go with things I can afford to lose as long as it's not every month.
Cloud backup doesn't work for me. The bandwidth just isn't there. This makes things complicated and messy. For the phone the best I can do is copy SD cards and upload as and when I can. Need to improve a system there, to create a habit.
As for the hard drive, this is a problem. It's just a lot of data, too much for cloud storage. Only about 10gb of the 300gb 2.5" HD is important but this needs to be organised. However, even 2gb is too much bandwidth in some places to backup regularly. What to do? It's difficult. When you got a lot of data you need a lot of space extra with which to move it round and organise it.
As an interim I treat the hard drive with a lot of care:
- put just the hard drive in the hotel safe
- take the hard drive out of the laptop and hand carry through airports
- back up selected things when I can (but this is too infrequent...)
I had another phone stolen last year. It had everything on there. Thankfully encrypted but because I decrypted that file almost daily to remember things like bank account numbers I couldn't use a password to match the level it should have done. This is a problem I have even now. Somewhere out there there's a SD card with enough stuff to cripple me. The thing is, because I didn't have a recent backup I'm not entirely sure if I've changed all my passwords. Let this be a lesson to you! Thank god I encrypted. You only have to put the lightest protections to reduce the risk by 95% but really I wish I'd done more.
I find a lot of this security advise can be crippling in a working environment. Convenience is critical. You have to assess your risk and strike the balance. If you overprotect then the cure can be worse than the problem. For example, if your password takes you 20 seconds to type, and you get it wrong 1 in 5 times how much is that costing you on productivity and is it worth it for that particular thing you're protecting? I would say protect that data but don't worry too much on hardware and instead cut the cost of replacing it. The typical thief just wants your phone but the info on it usually takes a bit longer to be a problem.
2 factor authentication is very useful on the road. If you had your laptop stolen you might need to login to your home ssh server via some shady internet cafe. Think about this. Have one time passwords as an optional extra. Think about 2 factor auth for your phone like Google Authenticator. Have some backup codes listed somewhere. Can a relative available by phone have a copy? Don't label it and they most likely won't even know what it's for.
If you lose your phone have a number remembered that you can call to get to a backup of your stuff including bank etc.
Writing this is all very useful. I will have to have another look at this because I've seen some holes now.
Finally, what would happen if all the banking system went tits up like it did for people in Argentina? If you went to the ATM and it didn't work and also you couldn't make any purchases? I happened to me for 2 weeks and it was pretty humbling.