Matúš Cimerman

An engineer

[aditya @adxtyahq]

Apple just dropped the M5 MacBook Air.
> 4x faster AI than M4
> 9.5x faster than M1
> 512GB base storage
> Wi-Fi 7

this thing is not light work anymore.

[Andrej Karpathy @karpathy]

I wrote a quick new post on "Digital Hygiene".

Basically there are some no-brainer decisions you can make in your life to dramatically improve the privacy and security of your computing and this post goes over some of them. Blog post link in the reply, but copy pasting below too.

Every now and then I get reminded about the vast fraud apparatus of the internet, re-invigorating my pursuit of basic digital hygiene around privacy/security of day to day computing. The sketchiness starts with major tech companies who are incentivized to build comprehensive profiles of you, to monetize it directly for advertising, or sell it off to professional data broker companies who further enrich, de-anonymize, cross-reference and resell it further. Inevitable and regular data breaches eventually runoff and collect your information into dark web archives, feeding into a whole underground spammer / scammer industry of hacks, phishing, ransomware, credit card fraud, identity theft, etc. This guide is a collection of the most basic digital hygiene tips, starting with the most basic to a bit more niche.

Password manager. Your passwords are your "first factor", i.e. "something you know". Do not be a noob and mint new, unique, hard passwords for every website or service that you sign up with. Combine this with a browser extension to create and Autofill them super fast. For example, I use and like 1Password. This prevents your passwords from 1) being easy to guess or crack, and 2) leaking one single time, and opening doors to many other services. In return, we now have a central location for all your 1st factors (passwords), so we must make sure to secure it thoroughly, which brings us to...

Hardware security key. The most critical services in your life (e.g. Google, or 1Password) must be additionally secured with a "2nd factor", i.e. "something you have". An attacker would have to be in possession of both factors to gain access to these services. The most common 2nd factor implemented by many services is a phone number, the idea being that you get a text message with a pin code to enter in addition to your password. Clearly, this is much better than having no 2nd factor at all, but the use of a phone number is known to be extremely insecure due to the SIM swap attack. Basically, it turns out to be surprisingly easy for an attacker to call your phone company, pretend they are you, and get them to switch your phone number over to a new phone that they control. I know this sounds totally crazy but it is true, and I have many friends who are victims of this attack. Therefore, purchase and set up hardware security keys - the industrial strength protection standard. In particular, I like and use YubiKey. These devices generate and store a private key on the device secure element itself, so the private key is never materialized on a suspiciously general purpose computing device like your laptop. Once you set these up, an attacker will not only need to know your password, but have physical possession of your security key to log in to a service. Your risk of getting pwned has just decreased by about 1000X. Purchase and set up 2-3 keys and store them in different physical locations to prevent lockout should you physically lose one of the keys. The security keys support a few authentication methods. Look for "U2F" in the 2nd factor settings of your service as the strongest protection. E.g. Google and 1Password support it. Fallback on "TOTP" if you have to, and note that your YubiKeys can store TOTP private keys, so you can use the YubiKey Authenticator app to access them easily through NFC by touching your key to the phone to get your pin when logging in. This is significantly better than storing TOTP private keys on other (software) authenticator apps, because again you should not trust general purpose computing devices. It is beyond the scope of this post to go into full detail, but basically I strongly recommend the use of 2-3 YubiKeys to dramatically strengthen your digital security.

Biometrics. Biometrics are the third common authentication factor ("something you are"). E.g. if you're on iOS I recommend setting up FaceID basically everywhere, e.g. to access the 1Password app and such.

Security questions. Dinosaur businesses are obsessed with the idea of security questions like "what is your mother's maidan name?", and force you to set them up from time to time. Clearly, these are in the category of "something you know" so they are basically passwords, but conveniently for scammers, they are easy to research out on the open internet and you should refuse any prompts to participate in this ridiculous "security" exercise. Instead, treat security questions like passwords, generate random answers to random questions, and store them in your 1Password along with your passwords.

Disk encryption. Always ensure that your computers use disk encryption. For example, on Macs this total no-brainer feature is called "File Vault". This feature ensures that if your computer gets stolen, an attacker won't be able to get the hard disk and go to town on all your data.

Internet of Things. More like @internetofshit. Whenever possible, avoid "smart" devices, which are essentially incredibly insecure, internet-connected computers that gather tons of data, get hacked all the time, and that people willingly place into their homes. These things have microphones, and they routinely send data back to the mothership for analytics and to "improve customer experience" lol ok. As an example, in my younger and naive years I once purchased a CO2 monitor from China that demanded to know everything about me and my precise physical location before it would tell me the amount of CO2 in my room. These devices are a huge and very common attack surface on your privacy and security and should be avoided.

Messaging. I recommend Signal instead of text messages because it end-to-end encrypts all your communications. In addition, it does not store metadata like many other apps do (e.g. iMessage, WhatsApp). Turn on disappearing messages (e.g. 90 days default is good). In my experience they are an information vulnerability with no significant upside.

Browser. I recommend Brave browser, which is a privacy-first browser based on Chromium. That means that basically all Chrome extensions work out of the box and the browser feels like Chrome, but without Google having front row seats to your entire digital life.

Search engine. I recommend Brave search, which you can set up as your default in the browser settings. Brave Search is a privacy-first search engine with its own index, unlike e.g. Duck Duck Go which basically a nice skin for Bing, and is forced into weird partnerships with Microsoft that compromise user privacy. As with all services on this list, I pay $3/mo for Brave Premium because I prefer to be the customer, not the product in my digital life. I find that empirically, about 95% of my search engine queries are super simple website lookups, with the search engine basically acting as a tiny DNS. And if you're not finding what you're looking for, fallback to Google by just prepending "!g" to your search query, which will redirect it to Google.

Credit cards. Mint new, unique credit cards per merchant. There is no need to use one credit card on many services. This allows them to "link up" your purchasing across different services, and additionally it opens you up to credit card fraud because the services might leak your credit card number. I like and use privacy dot com to mint new credit cards for every single transaction or merchant. You get a nice interface for all your spending and notifications for each swipe. You can also set limits on each credit card (e.g. $50/month etc.), which dramatically decreases the risk of being charged more than you expect. Additionally, with a privacy dot com card you get to enter totally random information for your name and address when filling out billing information. This is huge, because there is simply no need and totally crazy that random internet merchants should be given your physical address. Which brings me to...

Address. There is no need to give out your physical address to the majority of random services and merchants on the internet. Use a virtual mail service. I currently use Earth Class Mail but tbh I'm a bit embarrassed by that and I'm looking to switch to Virtual Post Mail due to its much strong commitments to privacy, security, and its ownership structure and reputation. In any case, you get an address you can give out, they receive your mail, they scan it and digitize it, they have an app for you to quickly see it, and you can decide what to do with it (e.g. shred, forward, etc.). Not only do you gain security and privacy but also quite a bit of convenience.

Email. I still use gmail just due to sheer convenience, but I've started to partially use Proton Mail as well. And while we're on email, a few more thoughts. Never click on any link inside any email you receive. Email addresses are extremely easy to spoof and you can never be guaranteed that the email you got is a phishing email from a scammer. Instead, I manually navigate to any service of interest and log in from there. In addition, disable image loading by default in your email's settings. If you get an email that requires you to see images, you can click on "show images" to see them and it's not a big deal at all. This is important because many services use embedded images to track you - they hide information inside the image URL you get, so when your email client loads the image, they can see that you opened the email. There's just no need for that. Additionally, confusing images are one way scammers hide information to avoid being filtered by email servers as scam / spam.

VPN. If you wish to hide your IP/location to services, you can do so via VPN indirection. I recommend Mullvad VPN. I keep VPN off by default, but enable it selectively when I'm dealing with services I trust less and want more protection from.

DNS-based blocker. You can block ads by blocking entire domains at the DNS level. I like and use NextDNS, which blocks all kinds of ads and trackers. For more advanced users who like to tinker, pi-hole is the physical alternative.

Network monitor. I like and use The Little Snitch, which I have installed and running on my MacBook. This lets you see which apps are communicating, how much data and when, so you can keep track of what apps on your computer "call home" and how often. Any app that communicates too much is sus, and should potentially be uninstalled if you don't expect the traffic.

I just want to live a secure digital life and establish harmonious relationships with products and services that leak only the necessary information. And I wish to pay for the software I use so that incentives are aligned and so that I am the customer. This is not trivial, but it is possible to approach with some determination and discipline.

Finally, what's not on the list. I mostly still use Gmail + Gsuite because it's just too convenient and pervasive. I also use 𝕏 instead of something exotic (e.g. Mastodon), trading off sovereignty for convenience. I don't use a VoIP burner phone service (e.g. MySudo) but I am interested in it. I don't really mint new/unique email addresses but I want to. The journey continues. Let me know if there are other digital hygiene tips and tricks that should be on this list.

Link to blog post version in the reply, on my brand new Bear ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ blog cute 👇

[Ondra Tomek @tomek_ondra]

Mozna jste v mediich zaznamenali informace ze technologicka spolecnost Safetica, ve ktere jsem spoluinvestor, presouva sidlo do USA. Ano, je to pravda. To, ze se nam to dari a jiz dnes 1/2 managementu Safetici tvori lide lokalizovani v USA, mame v USA uz hlavni sidlo a prodeje nam tam rostou nejrychleji ze vsech zemi, je pro firmu a tim padem i pro me skvela zprava.

Uz jinak to ale vypada kdyz se na to podivam jako otec 3 malych deti, kterym bych pral aby vyrustali v uspesne zemi s budoucnosti. Protoze, z tohoto pohledu to stehovani uz tak pozitivne nevypada. Nestehujeme se do USA protoze to je v CR cool to o sobe moci prohlasit. Ba naopak jsme se tomu stehováni vlastně dlouho jako cesi branili. Ale po nejakem case, nam uz bohuzel nic jineho nezbylo. Uz bylo zrejme ze to bud udelame, nebo si podrezavame perspektivu firmy. Proc? Tady je kratounky vycet duvodu, realne jich je nasobne vice:

- chcete li drzet jako technologicka firma krok s konkurenci, ci ji predbihat musite byt proste na trhu, kde jsou zakaznici ochotni za inovace prinasejici vyssi produktivitu zaplatit. V USA ty zakazniky zajima hlavne co jim to prinese a kdyz vidi ze to smysl ma tak si to koupi. V Evrooe je zajima “sprechen si deutsch? - pro nemce”, nebo proc jste z vychodu? .., je tady spousty otazek ale to co mi to prinese je casto nekde v pozadi. Proste to tady neni drave. Produktivita tady neni tolik cenena jako v USA a proto je v EU delsi salescyklus. A delsi salescyklus jsou pomalejsi penize, pomalejsi rust… a to si na globalnim trhu nemuzete dovolit, jakontechnologicka firma urcite ne …
- v americe byt tedy potrebujeme a bez americanu ve firme to proste nejde. Ale mit ameticany v technologicke firme nejde bez zamestnaneckych akcii. Protoze tam je to standart. Coze? Vy nemate moznost dat jednoduse zamestnanecke akcie? Prohlasi nejmenovany amik kdyz vidi vas slozity fantomovy opcni program ktery je udelany po cesku. Aby byl, ale tvaril se ze jakoby neni 🙂 protoze oficialne ho uzakoneny nemame a kazda ceska firma ktera chce zamestnance akciemi motivovat to tluce jak ji pravnici “kreativne” poradi. A pak ten amik pokracuje “mne je 42 let a cely muj zivot jsou tady zamestnanecke akcie normalni, to prece neni mozny ze jste 40 let pozadu”, no jako jo. Omluva. V tomhle jsme.
- dlouhe mesice jsme hledali skveleho sefa globalniho salesu tady v CR/ Evrope. Nenasli. Nenasli jsme nekoho kdo nam opravdu mohl pomoci, uz mel zkusenosti. Protoze my mame zakazniky v 50sati zemich sveta. To same kdyz jsme hledali globalniho sefa marketingu. Bez uspechu. Rukama nam prosli spousty lidi. A pak prisel Mirek, privedl vizi Amerika a do par tydnu v USA nasel oba. A skvely. Seniorni. Se zkusenostmi z globalnich firem, z globalniho trhu. Za par tydnu byli u nas. Proc? Protoze chteji pracovat v necem cemu veri, ze je v podstate porad na zacatku, ze tam je velky prostor pro rust a kde tedy akcie co dostanou mohou vyrazne (i z jejich pomoci) navysit svou hodnotu. A proste vsadi na to, ze Safetica muze byt jejich osudova zivotni rana. A jsme zase u tech zamestnaneckych akcii … proste jdou do toho risku s nami, odevzdaji nam co se za tech 40+ let naucili za zo ze jim odevzdame cast akcii u kterých veri, ze jim to vyresi duchod. Neni to win win? Je. V Americe. U nas komplikovane.
- vsechno to tam je paradoxne tak nejak lehci. Vice primocare. Mas neco? Muze mi to pomoct? Super. Diky beru nazdar. Haben sie etwas fur mich? Ja? Was? Sprechen sie deutsch? Proste tak nejak komplikovany to tady s prijimanim tech inovaci v EU je. Co trh to neue sprache. To neue mentalität. Ganz kompliziert.

A tak bych mohl pokracovat.

Pro me jako pro investora je proste to co se Safetice dari a povedlo, to co s ni Mirek dela a udelal super.

Pro me jako otce, je to tezky sousto. Sparne se to popisuje. Vim, ze tady kazdy druhy rekne “dobre se nam tu zije”. Ok. Ale ja uz dlouho vidim, ze v technologiich (a podle me dnes uz i v jinych oborech) se tady moc tezko podnika. Duvodu je spousta. Bohuzel.

[Peter Laurinec @petolauri]

Long time no see...new blog post about ADAMs multistep losses for #timeseries #forecasting! Kudos to @iSvetunkov that we are able to work&play with it 🎉
https://t.co/bPOBF7g23e

[Matúš Cimerman @MatusCimerman]

@janrosa Rovnaka skusenost. Musel som ist opat na policiu. Nefungoval mi KEP PUK, ktory mal byt rovnaky ako predchadzajucom OP...ale nebol rovnaky a bolo ho treba nastavit pri vydani OP, no to sa samozrejme nestalo

[Matúš Cimerman @MatusCimerman]

Checkout the latest updates in @ayanzacom - Embeds, Tasks and Email invitations
https://t.co/CUgaxTOY6Z

#startups #buildinpublic #collaboration

[Garry Kasparov @Kasparov63]

When I retired from chess in 2005 to form the anti-Putin opposition, many said, “Garry, this is not chess! Politics is not black and white!” Putin’s war on Ukraine is not chess, it’s true. But it is black and white, good vs evil. My TED Talk: https://t.co/o6v7UrpEB8

[Matúš Cimerman @MatusCimerman]

@LinuxSeb Ubuntu

[Matúš Cimerman @MatusCimerman]

In Ayanza we're building an end-to-end platform for healthy organizations. Ideally you won't need Jira, Pipedrive and BambooHR anymore. We're building it in public as #openstartup #buildinpublic. Have a look at our Digital garden https://t.co/HPT83T7MQY.

[Matúš Cimerman @MatusCimerman]

@python_engineer @ayanzacom in work and also for personal usage daily. Happy to show how it helps me and a team

[Matúš Cimerman @MatusCimerman]

@ProductHunt @ayanzacom

[Matúš Cimerman @MatusCimerman]

@ayanzacom @samovrablik Clear benefits for the user is saved time and workload of the user whilst improving knowledge structure and its organization in the Ayanza app.

[Matúš Cimerman @MatusCimerman]

A message with @ayanzacom screenshot from @samovrablik (Co-founder of the Ayanza) this morning. Looks like our MVP of the "Recommended workspace" is starting to bear fruits.

#JoyOfWork #JofOfCollaboration #ArtificialIntelligence #MachineLearning

[samuel @samuelvrablik]

This is what we have done today

Do you wanna join us?

[samuel @samuelvrablik]

Tomorrow morning at 9.30(CET) I'm going to have a planning meeting with my team at @ayanzacom. Feel free to join us on our community discord https://t.co/BwJqN1byfa

[Matúš Cimerman @MatusCimerman]

Learn more about Ayanza's vision, read our public strategy and roadmap or compensation schema at https://t.co/X8x0eaO9bE. You guessed it right, we're opened and welcoming company.

[Matúš Cimerman @MatusCimerman]

Do you enjoy working on a meaningful product and shipping your ideas to customers? Let's get in touch then.

Our tech stack is primarily: Typescript + Vue.js, Google Cloud Platform (BigQuery, Firebase, Firestore), and some Python for ML.

#hiringengineers

[samuel @samuelvrablik]

I did planning session with my team in the morning and at the start I have felt so overwhelmed by so much tasks... But just a few clicks and Ayanza started to show me whats really important for us :)

[Matúš Cimerman @MatusCimerman]

I am hiring Software engineers. Our goal is to bring Ayanza experience to 1M teams worldwide. Learn more about at https://t.co/d09cfUe0JV

#hiring #SoftwareEngineer #softwaredevelopment

[Matúš Cimerman @MatusCimerman]

@NanouuSymeon Custom built desktop. It is good, but my the best experience so far was Macbook, though I switched back to PC when touchbar arrived. Now I am reconsidering going back to the mac