Life loses all meaning the moment you lose the illusion of your own immortality. — Jean-Paul Sartre And this doesn’t just apply to life itself. People are drawn to things that feel eternal. What’s temporary often feels meaningless.

But not always. Take Buddhists, and others with similar philosophies — they try to live in the present, in the moment. But I think that’s only possible because of some illusion of immortality. Whether it’s natural or made-up — it’s still there.

And it’s also tied to the idea of happiness. Which, to me, has two parts. There’s the happiness of life itself — the joy, the desire, the pleasure you feel right now. But also the happiness of something achieved — or maybe better said, the fulfillment of an expectation, likely born from a desire.

And desire is a sort of contract. One you sign with yourself, agreeing to be, in some way, unhappy — until it comes true.

In addition to my Macbook Pro 16", I also got a number of various accessories. Although most of them are good, there is only one that really makes me feel very, very happy. This is a USB Type C to Type C charging cable with LED light. There is a green light for fully charged battery, an orange light for still charging battery, and no light for no power being connected. This is a straightforward idea, yet it's difficult to find, expensive, and also pretty rare. Due to Apple removing any indicators from non-Apple products, this is an ongoing inconvenience. It is solved by this little light.

A charging cable with LED from Moshi was available from Amazon at one point. amzn.to/37d0ytU They have good quality stuff in general, so I am happy with everything by that brand.

My systems and devices are reasonably secure. Each service I use and every website that I sign up for has a unique and complex password. The passwords are stored in an app called 1Password, protected by strong encryption, so I never lose or forget them. In addition, the app lets me create one-time passwords required for two-factor authentication. I try to use it instead of SMS whenever it's possible.

Many passwords for non-critical places are also saved in the browser. My primary browser is Firefox, and I do have a master password there as well. iPhone and iPads are obviously locked and protected by TouchID or FaceID. They have passwords because some operations still require them. I use a 9-digit one. Since I install 1Password virtually on all devices, I do not have to remember passwords or path phrases. Mostly.

Nevertheless, there are some passwords I have to remember, and at the very least, a few that are convenient for me to remember. So that's what I want to tell you about.

I remember the password for my Mac, I use a local one, and I disable access via Apple ID. My password is the same on all my Macs, and I change it on all of them about once a year. My Apple watch can also unlock newer Macs. My new 16" Macbook Pro has TouchID, which is very convenient and fast. However, there are still cases when I still have to manually enter the password, sometimes multiple times per day, so my fingers remember the array of letters, digits, and special symbols better than my brain.

In general, all Macs have encrypted disks, and the system password unlocks them, but there are a few that have a separate disk encryption pass-phrase. It is one of the things I remember. There are recovery passwords, just in case I store them in 1Password, and I don't remember those at all.

I have to unlock the 1Password vault, and while biometric authentication spares me from typing every time, I still have to type it quite a bit. Currently, I use one vault, though I can create several for different goals.

I remember the Firefox master password. Each time the browser is restarted, I must type it again. It's pretty rare; normally, it stays open for days, but between all computers, it's easy to remember. My Sync password is different from the Firefox account password, which I can't remember. Apple Notes allows users to lock (and encrypt) some notes, so I do that, and I do remember that one as well.

All of my mobile devices have a pin code and SIM card passwords that I change and enable regularly. Usually, Apple watches can be unlocked with iPhones. Still, sometimes I unlock mine with a pin that I remember to enter almost every day.

To access my Android devices, I use an easy-to-remember pattern. It's not as secure, but I don't have any sensitive data on my Android devices.

I am surprised that I remember bankcard pin codes. Although they differ from bank to bank, I make sure they are the same for all the cards from the same bank whenever possible. It's a lot to keep in my head alone because I have so many bank accounts.

There is also a pin code for the building entrance door, but only for the building I live in now.

I also use Windows and Linux, but not all the time, so I remember their passwords only when I use them.

Though that seems like a lot, there are only two passwords you need to remember, one to unlock one of the devices and one to unlock an app that keeps them all. For me, it would be 1Password. In practice, that'd be extreme, and being prepared for quite a few things is much more practical.

The trend among big companies is to eliminate passwords altogether and replace them with some form of the verification system, such as sending a link to the email address or phone number on file. The main reason for this shift is that most users do not want to create unique passwords for different services and prefer to use only one or two passwords for everything. The bottom line is that even if the password is strong, the attack can spread throughout the Internet if the attacker steals it from one of the platforms. Thus, a site with poor security can jeopardize even those with advanced security. Furthermore, many people create trivial passwords that are easy to guess. Platforms can protect themselves against such recklessness by requiring non-trivial passwords. Even so, they really can't protect from passwords being the same everywhere. Authentication via SMS or two-factor (2FA) is much better than single-factor (password only). Yet, there are well-known ways to bypass that, such as intercepting the special code sent via SMS, or by tricking and social engineering the support services, or even by using the authorities. The 2FA protection that relies on key generation (both physical and virtual) of the single-use, time-sensitive keys is very secure but not very popular. Hopefully, it will change.

There is a need to strike a balance between safety and ease of use. Users will find the system unattractive if it is very robust yet cumbersome to use. In other words, either they will find a way to not secure it, or they will just avoid it outright. If you have a lock that is not easy to use, chances are that it will be unused or unlocked all the time. We are becoming more accustomed to the need for good security. Thus, the accepted lever of how much we have to use and remember is rising slowly. Now, what seemed impossible a decade ago is considered acceptable.

I started counting how many of those things I remembered, and I was surprised. The memory, however, is a very unreliable mechanism.

The Innovator's Dilemma came out back in 1997 and had a huge impact on the tech sector, the entire internet boom, and all the startups that followed. I won't rehash it here; you can find the main points on Wikipedia.

And in the book, Professor Christensen actively encouraged questioning his conclusions.

For example, Ben Thompson actively does this on his website, in his newsletters, and on his podcast. I highly recommend checking him out, by the way.

I read the book a really long time ago. But Clayton Christensen passed away the other day, RIP. And while reading the news about it, I found out there's a new, modernized, and expanded edition.

And of course, here's the funny part: at the very end of the book, there's a chapter clearly written before Tesla about what electric cars need to be like in order to disrupt the market.

It's interesting; I know and understand so much more about all this stuff now, so reading it again is a really interesting experience.

Anyway, I recommend it too.

Clayton Christensen — The Innovator's Dilemma

Kindle https://amzn.to/2GuMccs

Audible https://amzn.to/2U4igvQ

The internet is full of links to various PDFs with the full text of the book, so it's generally easy to find if need be.

The book has also been translated into Russian.

When I was in Arizona, I made a new painting called "What's that?"

In countries where people use democratic or at least semi-democratic means to determine political and economic changes, there are two main sides: one side usually leans more toward helping "everyone," while others let markets regulate most things.

The main idea of the libertarians and most other western economists is that the government sucks at almost everything, and too much regulation stiffens the economy. In other words, most things should be left to free-market forces.

So if that is done right, the amount of earned money will correlate to effort put into the system.

It's a good idea, with fairness in mind, but naturally, it works very differently. Even when all the laws are fair rich and powerful will tend to earn more and more, the poor will make less and less. To such degree that the "fair" 45º slope will turn to a drastic "L" shape, with super-super rich will be making all the money, and the rest 99.99% will be barely surviving. On top of that, it's never all very fair; the system gets corrupt, exaggerating the benefits of the wealthiest and most powerful elite, thus running to "L" shape distribution even faster. That was pretty much the standard from the dawn of civilization till the relatively recent revolutions. Basically, it leads to bloody revolts. So some social safety net was put in place. It's natural for people to help the struggling ones, and some welfare gives good economic results. Then came communists and socialists. Their idea of the distribution is very different. Everyone should get enough, so taking money from the very rich and giving it to the very poor is considered reasonable and practical. But that horrible removed the incentives to work hard. As a result, pretty much all socialist countries did not do well economically.

Modern West is afraid of Socialism, yet influenced by it dramatically. And with the often two-party political system, we see the struggle as following. One side tries to help the poor a lot, the other side tries to oppose it.

It was a challenging year for me. I would not say the worst. I don't know yet. The time will tell.

I made a handwritten typeface Slimamif, it's free for both personal and commercial use. It has over 1000 different characters and supports many languages in Latin, Cyrillic, Georgian, and Greek scripts, with lots of various diacritic marks and special glyphs. Stylistically it's thin and something between handwritten and Art Nouveau.

You can download it from dimka.com/fonts

I have a massive pile of images that I collect for inspiration. It's pretty diverse. About a month ago, I started a telegram channel with those inspirational images. The channel's name is DimkaIMG If you use telegram already, you can take a look or even subscribe. t.me/DimkaIMG

Why there? Well, it looks like Telegram messenger is getting momentum. It's like Slack and Whatsapp for the rest of us. It still lacks discoverability, but it will get there. It brings the spirit of freedom, liberty, and not being regulated back to the modern world.

Lotte is a little dog. She has family, a bunch of friends, and actually the whole world. There are a few books, a theme park, and three full-length animated feature films. The stories are lovely, full of humor, kindness, and positive inspirations. It's made in Estonia and Latvia by few local animation studios, and actual stories are quite unique. Songs are great and performed by popular local bands. Even though animation quality, characters, and plots are top-notch and translated to several languages, the marketing is relatively poor, so it's somewhat unknown in the rest of the world.

The three feature animated films are:

• Lotte Goes South [2001]
• Lotte from Gadgetville [2006]
• Lotte and the Moonstone Secret [2011]

All three are great, suitable for kids from the age of 2.5, and fun to watch for animation-loving adults. There is no one plate to point to. I guess their theme park site is the most encompassing one.

Update: Since the time I originally wrote about it, I found two more features: Tom & Fluffy [1997] and Ladybirds' Christmas [2001] and in 2019 came out a whole new one: Lotte and the Lost Dragons.

lottemaa.ee