• 3 Posts
  • 19 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • -Use your password manager for everything. 16-20 digit randomized passwords for each account. Change the password to everything you care about and put it in Bitwarden. Don’t host your own instance of Bitwarden, unless you have really good backups. If things go wrong you’re fucked.

    -Your master password should be 5-7 words strung together. Brand names, uncommon words, etc. Avoid dictionary words except for 1 or 2. Use random brands, not something you own that can be socially engineered. Write it down, work on memorizing it for a week or so, then throw it away.

    -Use 2FA on Bitwarden. If you can afford it, buy 2 yubikeys. One for your car keys, and one for a safe place at home. Add both to your account as your only 2FA method. This way there is zero possibility of an online attack. The only way your account could be compromised (outside of a software vulnerability) is a highly-targeted in-person attack, in which case, you have way bigger things to worry about. If you can’t afford 2, than buy 1 and print out a Bitwarden 2FA backup code to store in a very safe place at home.

    -This one is important: NEVER EVER USE SMS 2FA, too many things can go wrong (see: sim swapping). Pay the $10 a year for Bitwarden Premium and use the OTP 2FA codes. If a website doesn’t have OTP (most do nowadays, it’s usually labeled as the “authenticator app” option), than SMS is ok, just try to avoid it.

    If you follow these instructions, I see no probable scenario in which you would have a breach caused by something on your end. A breach in Bitwarden (with it being FOSS and highly-audited, this is pretty unlikely) or, more likely, a breach in the service your account is using are the two scenarios you would realistically be breached.

    Also, you’re very very unlikely to be locked out of Bitwarden as long as you keep 1 yubikey and/or a printed backup code in a safe space at all times. If you end up with brain damage and forget your password, you’d be fucked I guess, but if you’re that worried than write your password on paper in an obvious safe space. That definitely hurts your security though.

    You could also fall for scams and/or social engineering, but that’s a topic way beyond the scope of this post.












  • In terms of optimization, Gentoo is the best you’re gonna get, but the word “convenience” makes me hesitant to recommend it to you.

    Arch is minimal, and has many resources/guides on battery optimization (Especially for ThinkPads), but if you’d like to learn something else, Void is the way to go.

    If you’re looking for a tiling WM, I can wholeheartedly recommend bspwm. Lots of control and customization, but pretty easy to configure when you understand it. Just know, it might be a hard change going from stacking to tiling.