The Dropbox TrueCrypt Paranoia Corollary

Well, it's a week now since I started using TrueCrypt to encrypt all of my files on Dropbox, as detailed in my last post. And, I'm sad to say, after one week I'm ready to drop the encryption and go back to using Dropbox, um... unprotected. I've got a few reasons why:

TrueCrypt adds extra steps. I'm annoyingly fragile when it comes to getting into a writing frame of mind. Most anything can distract me at a critical juncture, be it a Corgi jumping in my lap for attention or that pile of laundry I forgot to pull out of the washing machine three hours ago. So having to find and mount a TrueCrypt volume before I can find and open the Word document I want to work on can actually stop me from opening that Word document. And I can't have that, now can I?

TrueCrypt nerfs Dropbox's versioning system. An obvious point I think I mentioned before, but as long as my files are in a TrueCrypt volume, Dropbox can't version them individually. For the most part, I haven't had to take advantage of this feature. Still, I've done enough development work with Subversion to know I damn well want it.

TrueCrypt slows down my syncing. I noticed this right from the get-go: with TrueCrypt, it takes Dropbox about a minute to two minutes to sync any update I make to the files in it. It's not enough to be unusable, but it's just enough to get annoying after awhile, especially if I just want to turn my computer off and go to bed after a save.

TrueCrypt actually makes me more paranoid. This is the biggie. I don't keep anything on Dropbox I would mind people looking at. Mostly it's backup copies of eBooks, evidence of CISSP CPEs I've earned, and my manuscripts. Now, it's conceivable that Dropbox is going to steal all of my shit and do nefarious things with it, but I can't imagine what. The same goes for any random hacker who breaks into my account. At worst, I'd expect to get hit with some jerk deleting everything in my Dropbox, which is why I keep offline backups.

Now, with TrueCrypt, I get the added fear that my encrypted volume might get corrupted, either from bouncing it between operating systems or by forgetting to sync updates to the volume in the correct order and having Dropbox introduce a mess of file errors. I've made that kind of screw-up before, and I don't want to do it again and have it blow away all of my files.

So, no more TrueCrypt, at least not with Dropbox. I may go back to using it to encrypt some things down the line - an In-Case-Of-Emergency file, for example - but right now it's worth more to me to have an easy time using Dropbox.

I'd go into the annoying filename quirks I ran into when I copied everything out of my TrueCrypt0 volume, but the Corg0i just jum1ped int0o my lap and star1ted1 licking my keyboard. Stop that Lina!

The Dropbox TrueCrypt Paranoia Conundrum

I've been using Dropbox for months now to back up my important files to the Mystical Cloud that drifts through the Internet. Aside from one minor wrinkle of a file conflict (which I easily resolved), it's done sterling service. My files are backed up across multiple computers and their associated backup hard drives, not to mention the Dropbox servers themselves. Losing my work in a catastrophic incident should, theoretically, be impossible.*

But over the last couple of weeks Dropbox has gotten some bad press. Aside from the security breach (see "bad"), none of this is really a surprise; if you put your data on somebody else's computer, they are going to have to protect themselves legally in some fashion. And because copyright law is a hydra with infinite heads and a bad attitude, even an innocent company is going to look bad trying to comply with it.

That said...

The security breach did bother the heck out of me. I don't know of anyone who'd want to look at my files with malice in their heart, but I also didn't know anyone who'd want to run up a $300 bill on my Amazon account. Shit happens. And while all of my files are perfectly innocent**, I still feel less than clean knowing that someone could be looking at them right now with their filthy eyes...

Enter TrueCrypt. My files are now wrapped in one big, ambiguous blob of encrypted data, one that no one is liable to crack open in the next decade without the correct password. So I am, relatively speaking, secure.

But can I still be productive?

TrueCrypt bundles your data into what is effectively an encrypted hard drive. With the right password, you can mount it and edit everything on it just like any other filesystem. So what's in my Dropbox account now is one big file that is 1.99GB in size. There are some issues with this:

Syncing. The initial upload of this file took a good three hours. Fortunately Dropbox does bitwise syncing, so it only needs to resync the bits of the file that change during an edit. I opened up a Word document and added some text, and Dropbox updated it in about a minute.

Syncing again. The encryption works fine if I only edit the file on one computer at a time. Since that's what I do anyway, this is no big deal. But if I forget and let my systems get out of sync, I'm going to wind up with a 4GB conflict that could potentially corrupt my data. So be careful with those edits, m'kay?

Nerfed features. Dropbox allows you to access your files from the web, but not if they're in one big encrypted blob. Ditto for sharing files with other people, or versioning them. Happily I'm not using these features anyway and don't plan to start.

So this isn't a perfect solution. Still, I think it's a happy balance between ease-of-use and security, which is all I can ask for.

And if it turns out to be more annoying than I bargained for, I'll store my files in my data dog instead.

*This is tempting fate. I'm certain some alien intelligence with a global-scale EMP generator is reading this and giggling.

**Pay no mind to that donkey in the corner.

Weird Shit That Brings People To My Blog

If you have a blog, I encourage you to play around with Google's webmaster tools if you get the chance. Seeing what sort of search queries bring people to your blog can be instructive. Like so:

Crazy Dave - My #1 search query. Thanks, Google, I'm fucking flattered.

Free Emo - Well I don't recall writing about this, but I do support getting Emo released from prison, whatever his particular crime may be.

Sixty Dollars - Huh. Can I, like, have sixty dollars, Google? I feel I should qualify for sixty dollars because of this.

Club Crab - I don't know what this is, but I want to go there and have crabs and beer. I would add "in the company of beautiful women," but I fear pubic lice.

How To Get An A Writing To Describe - What? I don't... Who even typed this into a search bar? Also, I'm sad to say this is the first time "writing" appears in my list of search queries, and I called the goddamn blog Author's Log. (Wait, no, "writing to describe 2011" comes first. Still. Fuck.)

Black People Running - This one was so damn odd I had to run it down. Turns out it's from my Games Day post, where I talk about Black Library and people running around a convention hall. So no, I did not get drunk and post about some track event.

Emo Pake Topi - I'm pretty sure this is a Pokemon.

Horus Helmet - Once again I didn't write about this, ever, but now I'm fascinated. Presumably Horus had a helmet of some kind or another. Why haven't we seen his helmet? What are you trying to hide, Black Library?

Gruskin - A horrible creature that lives in small caves. It crawls out at night and lies down on forest paths until something trips over it, then disembowels the unfortunate victim for sustenance.

Crotch Crabs - Damn it, I knew I'd have to worry about pubic lice! I'm totally suing Club Crab for this.

Permission

Alright, everyone, repeat after me:

I hereby give myself permission to fuck up when I write.

I will not berate myself for misplaced punctuation, be it comma, period, semicolon or colon. Nor will I whip myself with a cat-o-nine tails for using a semicolon in the first place.

I will pay no attention to the failings of grammar. Sentences shall be allowed to end with prepositions. Neither Grammar Girl nor Nazi shall stay my work.

I will not pay any penance for plot holes. If a MacGuffin is required to move the story along, it shall emerge as from thin air. If a character must do something against his nature, his nature shall change. Forward momentum shall be the rule of the day.

I will show no fear of the beginning, nor the middle, nor the end. The story shall start and stop where I damn well please. If I wish to write the ending first, so be it. I shall jump from scene to scene like a kangaroo on crystal meth if the mood takes me. The tangled snarl of my plot structure shall hold no power over me.

I solemnly reaffirm that I have permission to fuck up when I write...

...so long as I Actually Write...

...and so long as I promise to fix it all in revision.

So let it be written. So let it be done.

Scrap

"Hur hur hur," said the Scrapman. He walked through valleys of broken machines, his beady eyes seeking and peeking, skittering over rusted-out hulks as they sought any signs of movement. The Tallyman had said there were artificials wandering the scrapyard, and that meant money.

The Scrapman's ears perked up. A skitter, a clatter! Around a pile of industrial piping he ran, and found a sleek black artificial lifting a pipe and putting it back down, over and over again. The artificial looked at him with one good glowing red lense.

“Disassemble/recycle?” it said. Its voice was a static-laced blurt. The Scrapman chuckled, and slipped the slaver cube out of his satchel. It was the work of a moment to affix the cube to the artificial’s chassis. Nanofilaments extruded from the cube’s surface and wormed their way into the artificial’s logic centers, imparting new directives, new loyalties. The artificial set down its pipe for the last time and followed the Scrapman as he continued his hunt.

Man and machine walked twisting pathways through the scrap, around mountains of twisted metal, cracked gears and sparking circuitry. Here and there, the Scrapman spotted a bit of yttrium or lanthanum, and slipped them into his satchel; it never did to turn down easy money, after all. But for hours more artificials eluded him.

The Scrapman saw the sky lightening in the east and cursed, knowing that he would have to leave the scrapyard soon or risk running afoul of the Reclamation Authority. He was just about to turn back when a bit of light caught the corner of his eye. A pair of green glowing lenses was peeking at him around the side of a cracked maker engine.

“Here, little one, don’t be afraid,” said the Scrapman, smiling with an easy charm despite his missing teeth and growths of patchy stubble. “Come to your old uncle Scrapper.”
The Scrapman bent low and made welcoming gestures. The artificial, a small silvery unit, inched out from its hiding place. It was missing a manipulator unit, and sparks flew from the broken stump, but otherwise it seemed in fine condition.

“That’s right, you beauty,” the Scrapman said as the artificial crept closer. “Come to poppa.”

The black artificial perked up then, its red-lensed gaze locking on to the smaller unit. “Disassemble/recycle?” it said, raising its long, pointed manipulators and clacking them together quickly with a sound like chattering mandibles.

The smaller artificial started, then turned and ran. The Scrapman cursed his luck and went running after it, his inconvenient companion following along behind him with a smooth, unhurried stride.

The silver artificial ran like a kangaroo, springing from point to point in a way that would have been comical if it hadn’t allowed the machine to cover so much ground so quickly. The Scrapman was hard-pressed to keep up, puffing and wheezing from his exertions.

The Scrapman’s foot caught on an outstretched artificial limb, and he went down heavily, the air whooshing out of his lungs. He cursed again and looked up, expecting to see the silver artificial fleeing out of sight and out of reach.

To his surprise and pleasure, he saw instead that the artificial was bounding into a narrow gap between two large mounds of scrap, one even the Scrapman could see was a dead-end. The thing’s pathfinding algorithms must have been damaged. The Scrapman scrambled to his feet and got running again.

He caught up with the artificial at the end of the gap. It was bouncing up and down in place, it’s green lenses sweeping back and forth as it tried to decide where to go.

“You led a good chase, little one,” said the Scrapman, moving forward carefully. He kept both arms outstretched, in case the artificial made another break for it. “But Scrapper’s here now. Scrapper will take care of you.”

The silver artificial turned around at last and fell over in surprise. It scurried backward on ball-jointed arms and legs, clambering up the wall of scrap metal behind it in its desperation to get away. The scrap shifted and collapsed, keeping the artificial from making any progress.

“All be over soon, don’t worry,” said the Scrapman, pulling another slaver cube from his satchel.

The artificial’s frantic scrambling increased as the Scrapman drew close. The sparking stump of one of its arms clanged against a large square piece of blackened metal revealed by its struggling.

The spark travelled through the metal, down into circuitry and synapse structure that had been left cold and depowered years ago. The flare of electricity interacted with redundant power systems, jump-starting batteries that had been believed long dead.

The blackened metal shivered, then shook, then started to rise. The Scrapman and the artificial leapt away as the mound of scrap shifted and collapsed from the efforts of the immense form that had been hidden under it. The slaver cube dropped from the Scrapman’s hand and bounced under the collapsing heaps of metal.

The immense artificial was canine in appearance, a military-class artificial judging by the spikes and broken turrets that bedecked its emerging form. It regarded the Scrapman with eyes that burned like furnace doors as control systems tapped into the local network and tried to determine its current assignment.

UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL DETECTED, it growled in deep bass tones. YOU HAVE FIVE SECONDS TO VACATE THE PREMISES.

The Scrapman shivered and whimpered, his motor functions gone the way of his bladder control. One hand desperately reached into his satchel, but shook too badly to grip the cubes inside.

TIME’S UP, the guard dog said, and leapt.

A short time later, the guard dog had curled up in a rest state. The silver artificial was sitting on top of its head, gently polishing the dog’s head with its undamaged manipulator, when the sleek black artificial arrived. The guard dog ignored it – it was authorized, after all.

The black artificial looked down at the remains of the Scrapman. “Diassemble/recycle!” it said happily, and did just that.

I wrote this for a flash fiction challenge on Chuck Wendig's blog, TERRIBLEMINDS. It's a great blog, go check it out!