alt Hacker NewsThe "original" dead man switch as I heard about it was a pedal on a train that would apply the brakes if the operator released it.
I've often wondered about how to reliably take software actions after my death or dishonor. After all, you can't really rely on me being able to pay my bills. I'm not looking to do something expensive, more like delete my accounts and send some messages.
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Would be cool to have some kind of "deadmans infra AI or bot" that would auto fund your server bills for X amount of additional months/years and then send out emails and post a notice you have died and your service EOL is estimated to be X or Y.
I also suppose you would have to also roll in some kind of automated patching and etc into it which would be rather difficult and break a lot of thing if went bad but some kind of "self healing" bot could perhaps also look after this part to fix anything should it break.
Also kinda opens up an entirely new attack vector. Threat actors could scan for these notices and go "hey this person is dead. lets hack their stuffs".
> After all, you can't really rely on me being able to pay my bills.
Bit that's exact trigger you wat.
Make something that keeps running while you pay bills and stops running after you no longer pay them. Pay those bills from your current account.
Make another something that periodically checks the status of the first system to be operational. After sufficiently long periode of failures activatie the cleanup crew.
Pay for the second system from a savings account, trust, llc or some other way that is not deactivated once you die
>> after my death or dishonor
honest question: why do you care?
Yea the idea is that if your service doesn’t check-in then a preconfigured alert triggers.
Google has an option for what to do with your account if you are inactive for a set period of time. So you can choose what to delete, and what to give access to someone you want. You can also have it send emails to up to 10 people, with whatever message you want.
As a point of interest, trains still have these. Though it usually takes the form of a somewhat sporadic alarm and an acknowledgement buzzer. Reaction time to the buzzer somewhat influences the interval of the next one.
What is "dishonor" in that context? (Sorry, not a native speaker of English)
> I've often wondered about how to reliably take software actions after my death
This is actually fairly simple and well understood: leave instructions in your will.
"Notify <Provider> to delete my account" is a perfectly valid instruction to leave for an executor.
You could leave behind a password cache with a master password left in your will, but I suspect much of this still runs on trust. I'd imagine (I haven't tried), that "X has died, please take action Y" is a fairly reliable social engineering vector if you have a convincing "proof" that X has died.
It's worth noting that the executor isn't hard forced to carry out your wishes, the legal recourse for them not doing so comes from other beneficiaries ability to take legal action against the executor. If those other beneficiaries don't care much for enforcement, then you might prefer technical methods such as the submission.