[HN Gopher] Show HN: Dead man's switch without reliance on your ...
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       Show HN: Dead man's switch without reliance on your infra
        
       I wrote this Go project to implement a dead man's switch that
       didn't rely on cron jobs, timers, databases, etc on the infra it
       runs on. Deadcheck integrates to PagerDuty and keeps a long running
       incident snoozed until expected check-in times where it'll alert
       unless a check-in occurs.
        
       Author : adamdecaf
       Score  : 115 points
       Date   : 2024-10-11 14:40 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | 9dev wrote:
       | I'm not sure I understand what the application itself does; as
       | far as I can see, it basically configures the external services
       | to carry out the actual checks and ensures this configuration is
       | up to date?
       | 
       | Wouldn't it be better to do this as part of a Terraform script or
       | something? Not to take away from the project, it sure looks neat
       | --just wondering if I really want to deploy yet another,
       | independent IaC tool.
        
         | hiatus wrote:
         | There is a pagerduty provider for terraform, too.
         | https://registry.terraform.io/providers/PagerDuty/pagerduty/...
        
         | pigeonhole123 wrote:
         | It doesn't look like PagerDuty supports sending out alerts on
         | missing heart beats
        
           | hiatus wrote:
           | That's exactly how escalation in pagerduty works.
        
           | adamdecaf wrote:
           | The idea is an app checks in after scheduled jobs, which
           | extends the snooze
        
           | bryanlarsen wrote:
           | AFAICT, that's a better description of the project for people
           | like us. It's a way to add a missing heart beat alert to
           | PagerDuty.
        
         | adamdecaf wrote:
         | It sets up expected check in times for an app/job. The job is
         | responsible for checking in, but the alert will fire regardless
         | of your infra.
         | 
         | Doesn't require a start command and your infra can completely
         | fail and you'll still get alerted.
        
       | wil421 wrote:
       | Any support for something besides pager duty? I work for a telco
       | and there are so many different heartbeats we rely, this project
       | seems very useful for something like that. The config file looks
       | much better than the python/perl/bash whatever scripts we have
       | scheduled on our systems.
        
         | adamdecaf wrote:
         | Yea I want to support other vendors. What do you use?
        
       | hiatus wrote:
       | Do the people on the receiving end of a pagerduty notification
       | require pagerduty accounts?
        
         | adamdecaf wrote:
         | No, you can get text, email, slack, etc alerts from PagerDuty
         | without installing their app.
        
       | lopkeny12ko wrote:
       | I don't understand this. You're still taking on a dependency on
       | some infra, but now that infra is Pagerduty. What problem is this
       | even solving
        
         | zeroq wrote:
         | It's a cloudification of dead man's switch.
        
         | hypeatei wrote:
         | That's what I thought; this tool is "kicking the can" to
         | whatever third party service you're using. So, it's essentially
         | just a tool that will ping stuff for you in a slightly more
         | convienent way?
        
           | adamdecaf wrote:
           | Systems always rely on something. PagerDuty has been very
           | reliable for years and we use it for alerting, so relying on
           | it more isn't a big ask. I plan to support multiple
           | integrations so you could get alerted from multiple streams.
        
         | hooverd wrote:
         | Your infra is relying on an ISP and colo and the power company
         | and maybe even the Post Office. You're always relying on
         | something that's not you. Personally I'd rely on pre-paid AWS.
         | If all of us-east-1 goes down for days then we probably have
         | bigger problems.
        
         | ellyagg wrote:
         | Now two isolated systems have to fail. Redundancy is fault
         | tolerant. Nothing is fault proof.
        
       | siliconc0w wrote:
       | A possible integration are messaging apps that support send
       | later. I sometimes set these up if I'm going hiking.
        
         | adamdecaf wrote:
         | Yea, and you would delete the pending message. Good idea...
        
       | herpderperator wrote:
       | So... like BetterStack's heartbeat monitor? [0]
       | 
       | [0] https://betterstack.com/docs/uptime/cron-and-heartbeat-
       | monit...
        
         | tnolet wrote:
         | or Checkly's heartbeat check
         | 
         | https://www.checklyhq.com/docs/heartbeat-checks/
        
           | adamdecaf wrote:
           | I don't see how to configure anything but an interval (e.g.
           | every N minutes) in checklyhq. Deadcheck allows you to expect
           | check-ins at arbitrary times (e.g. 9am, 1:15pm, 3:15pm on
           | weekdays).
           | 
           | https://developers.checklyhq.com/reference/postv1checksheart.
           | ..
        
         | neilv wrote:
         | Better Stack got on my disapproval list, for spamming me with a
         | series of automated sales emails 15-20 minutes apart, which
         | seemed designed that way. "One more thing.", etc.
         | 
         | They should've sent _one_ welcome &upsell email, not several.
         | And not abused contact info that was intended to reach me
         | reliably and promptly.
         | 
         | For my immediate very simple need, Uptrends didn't spam me, and
         | so far they've reliably and promptly notified me whenever my
         | site is down even briefly (e.g., rebooting for kernel update),
         | so they'll be getting money from me as I grow.
         | https://www.uptrends.com/
        
           | herpderperator wrote:
           | Sorry to hear. I didn't have that experinece; it's been
           | pleasant for me (there was a billing snafu while they changed
           | their plan structure but it was resolved with a support
           | email) and their monitoring has been very reliable since I
           | signed up a year ago. Their service also seems to be better
           | (4 checks/locations vs Uptrend's 2.)
           | 
           | Anyway, tl;dr is I never had an issue that resulted in not
           | getting alerted about something that I needed to be alerted
           | about, which, above all else, is the point of their offering.
        
       | rozenmd wrote:
       | The term of art you're looking for is: "heartbeat
       | check"/"healthcheck", or most commonly: "cron job monitor".
        
         | herpderperator wrote:
         | Yeah I thought "dead man's switch" was such a weird name for
         | this.
        
           | LorenPechtel wrote:
           | It's something that happens if you fail to take action to
           | prevent it at some specified frequency. Looks a lot like a
           | dead man switch to me.
        
         | adamdecaf wrote:
         | There's no crontab for banking days. Deadcheck also requires
         | checkins within a delta of the expected checking time.
         | 
         | Deadcheck also doesn't rely on your infra to alert.
        
         | bravetraveler wrote:
         | Seems very similar to a _' watchdog'_, just... reporting
         | instead of doing anything about it.
        
         | vivzkestrel wrote:
         | uptime monitor?
        
           | rozenmd wrote:
           | Uptime monitors ping your server, this seems to do the
           | opposite.
        
       | turtlebits wrote:
       | I'm not sure running an additional service plus a SaaS
       | requirement is better than relying on infra. Standing up this
       | service is going to rely on your infra. What if it goes down?
       | 
       | If you're going to have to write a scheduled check-in anyways,
       | why not use something like cronitor and reduce the complexity?
       | (they host the check-in endpoint)
        
         | psnehanshu wrote:
         | If the infra goes down, you fix it while alive, otherwise the
         | snooze timeout on the PagerDuty incident will expire and that
         | will trigger the configured tasks. If PagerDuty goes out of
         | business before that, then that's a different discussion.
        
           | adamdecaf wrote:
           | Exactly. At Moov we rely on PD, so if they're down we have
           | bigger issues anyway. I plan to support additional
           | integrations so a check-in could update multiple
        
           | turtlebits wrote:
           | My point was - if you're going to rely on a SaaS (Pagerduty),
           | why not just use one that includes health check monitoring
           | (ie cronitor) and cut out this self hosted webhook service?
        
             | adamdecaf wrote:
             | Deadcheck handles calculating the snooze durations for you.
             | It could be a library as well.
        
       | remram wrote:
       | If you call this a "dead man's switch" I'd expect it to turn my
       | app off when I die. E.g. "switch" something when something
       | happens to a "man".
       | 
       | Your own README links to this definition: "A dead man's switch is
       | a switch that is designed to be activated or deactivated if the
       | human operator becomes incapacitated".
       | 
       | This is a watchdog timer / monitor / heartbeat, setting off an
       | alert if a timer elapses.
        
         | aftbit wrote:
         | The "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.
        
           | DowagerDave wrote:
           | >> after my death or dishonor
           | 
           | honest question: why do you care?
        
             | vincnetas wrote:
             | if you care about people that you leave behind...
        
             | nurettin wrote:
             | From experience, it is a huge inconvenience to people
             | surviving the deceased leaving without any way to pay their
             | debits. And if you don't care about what happens after you
             | die, why did you even care when alive? Why not always be a
             | dick? At least it is consistent.
        
               | hotspot_one wrote:
               | Under US law, the debts die with the person. You are
               | under no obligation to repay your parent's debts. Now if
               | the debt is tied to a house (mortgage) or a car (car
               | loan), you might lose the house/car if you don't pay, but
               | you do not have an obligation to pay. Likewise failure to
               | pay will not impact your credit.
               | 
               | So if I die in debt up to my eyeballs, and if I am sole
               | signatory on those debts, I have only hurt my creditors,
               | not my family.
               | 
               | caveats-- if my family was counting on the house and I
               | have an unaffordable mortgage, then yes I have caused
               | them harm. Likewise other irresponsible debts.
               | 
               | -- at the end of the chain, creditors are also people. It
               | is their job to loan money at risk, so their loss is
               | their problem, but this assumes I was dealing in good
               | faith when I took the loan.
        
               | groby_b wrote:
               | The debts very much don't die with the person - the
               | estate is on the hook to pay your debts before
               | distributing to heirs.
               | 
               | Obviously, with some "it depends" nuance - but if the
               | difference between this and your world view would make a
               | significant difference to your loved ones, you might want
               | to talk to an attorney.
        
               | SoftTalker wrote:
               | Correct, but if you die broke, nobody else is on the hook
               | to pay your debts, unless that person cosigned a loan or
               | something like that.
        
               | PeterisP wrote:
               | Sure, but it would be reasonable to assume that most
               | people in this forum won't die broke.
        
               | SoftTalker wrote:
               | Dying broke is a goal for many people. And a lot of
               | people who earn a lot of money still end up broke because
               | they never really learned how to manage it and are easy
               | manupulated by "managers." See esp. professional
               | athletes, celebrities, musical artists who hit it big --
               | anyone who jumps from near or actually in poverty to very
               | wealthy in a short period of time.
               | 
               | I am sure that there is no shortage of developers who hit
               | a big payday at a FAANG or startup and then spent like it
               | would never end.
        
               | Roscius wrote:
               | Dying broke is the optimal way to die.
               | 
               | The definition of broke could be the residual after the
               | planned distributions to heirs. Or if no heirs, dying
               | flat broke makes the most sense. Getting there is tricky.
        
               | LorenPechtel wrote:
               | How to pay??
               | 
               | Two experiences with this. Companies don't particularly
               | care who pays the bill. They send a bill, they get money,
               | they don't care if the person who paid is the person. In
               | fact, in my recent brush with such matters the company
               | specifically knew the person was dead when they accepted
               | the payment.
               | 
               | What's hard is getting access to their money to pay debts
               | with.
        
             | fragmede wrote:
             | I cared about these people when I was alive, why would that
             | stop because I'm dead? If a meteor struck me dead in my
             | bed, I'd want the survivors to be able to use my stuff to
             | make their lives better.
             | 
             | I had a friend pass and his fiance was in need of money but
             | he didn't leave the password to access the crypto, so it's
             | lost forever. If I die unexpectedly, I'd at least want it
             | to not be lost forever.
        
           | adamdecaf wrote:
           | Yea the idea is that if your service doesn't check-in then a
           | preconfigured alert triggers.
        
           | edm0nd wrote:
           | 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".
        
             | LorenPechtel wrote:
             | In the US we already have a system that could be used and
             | would be hard to spoof but I am not aware of anyone
             | implementing it. It has a delay of months built into it.
             | 
             | Specifically, the Social Security Death Index. Some months
             | after you die your Social Security number gets listed. It's
             | meant to prevent impersonating a dead person but could be
             | used to shut down accounts etc.
        
           | xnorswap wrote:
           | > 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.
        
             | ryandrake wrote:
             | I keep a "death README" with all of my online and offline
             | account credentials and phone unlock codes, PII that might
             | be needed to authenticate w/ various companies' services,
             | copies of wills, trusts, powers of attorney, health care
             | proxies and so on, copies of all vital docs like marriage
             | certificate, birth certificates, home router SSIDs and
             | passwords, information about doctors, health insurance,
             | life insurance, all financial accounts and brokerages,
             | approximate balances, bills and how to pay them, tax
             | returns and how to file them, a list of recurring expenses
             | and how to pay them, property w/ approximate values, and so
             | on. A hardcopy is kept in our house where next of kin can
             | find it if needed without knowing a safe combination, but
             | casual robbers wouldn't stumble across.
        
               | fragmede wrote:
               | Why without the safe combination? Not to out myself but
               | mines in a safe. If I'm dead I expect my next of kin to
               | crow bar it open but if I'm not, I'd rather not have
               | anybody else access that.
        
             | echoangle wrote:
             | The ,,X has died, please take action Y" thing also only
             | works if the service reliably knows that the account
             | belongs to X. My executor can't delete my HN account
             | because he can't prove it's actually my account (without
             | getting the password).
        
               | ssl-3 wrote:
               | Can it not be cryptographically proven?
               | 
               | Leave a public key in your HN bio.
               | 
               | And leave a matching private key and validation
               | instructions in your will.
               | 
               | If the keys match along with a death certificate, then:
               | The account owner is validated as being dead.
        
               | echoangle wrote:
               | If I prepare for it, sure. At that point, I can just
               | leave my password though. I was responding to the point
               | that you don't need to leave the password because a death
               | certificate would be enough.
        
               | ssl-3 wrote:
               | Aye, indeed.
               | 
               | But maybe I don't want to leave my password behind
               | because I'm weird that way or something, and instead I
               | just want my account nuked.
               | 
               | Cryptographic proof of ownership by the dead guy + death
               | certificate should allow for account nuking, without
               | allowing for a third party to do something else with my
               | account.
               | 
               | (Not that I'm worried about it, myself. In fact, I've
               | found all of these dead man's switch/after-death
               | automations pretty amusing every time I've seen them pop
               | up in the past couple of decades.
               | 
               | I mean: When I'm dead, my HN/Google/whatever accounts
               | will become idle, and I'm dead AF so I don't care if
               | someone hacks the passwords some time later. It's a non-
               | refundable one-way ticket for me.)
        
               | PeterisP wrote:
               | It's not about it being impossible to cryptographically
               | prove/validate it, but rather about services choosing to
               | not attempt to try to validate it. They generally don't
               | provide such an option, because it's tricky, somewhat
               | manual, has certain costs and risks, and no benefit to
               | the service provider.
               | 
               | If some law prescribes that after following a certain
               | verification process, the operator is required to delete
               | the account, then that legally mandated process would
               | work, but in the absence of such a law literally no
               | process can be sufficient, because the operators can and
               | will choose to ignore it, no matter how reliable it is.
        
           | BrandoElFollito wrote:
           | What is "dishonor" in that context? (Sorry, not a native
           | speaker of English)
        
             | meindnoch wrote:
             | It doesn't mean anything, because it is wrong. The correct
             | idiom is "death before dishonor", which means that one
             | would choose death instead of doing something
             | disgraceful/shameful.
        
               | superb_dev wrote:
               | That doesn't make sense in the context
        
             | eep_social wrote:
             | As a native speaker, I don't think the phrasing is
             | idiomatic but I read it to mean imprisoned or otherwise out
             | of society without actually being dead.
        
               | aftbit wrote:
               | Yes, you got it 100%. I agree, it is not idiomatic, but
               | was intended to call back the "death before dishonor"
               | trope that your sibling commenter mentioned. I intended
               | "dishonor" to cover a number of cases short of my death
               | where I might be unable to continue to care for my
               | obligations for a long period of time. For example,
               | imprisoned, deplatformed, critically injured in a coma,
               | lost in a serious mental health crisis, etc. In some
               | ways, handling that is a harder challenge than handling
               | death, as there are fewer well-worn paths to follow.
        
             | LorenPechtel wrote:
             | (Native speaker) Wrong, but the intent was clearly that
             | they were out of it for whatever reason. And since the true
             | purpose of language is to communicate and it does that is
             | it truly wrong?
        
           | greiskul wrote:
           | 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.
        
           | Muromec wrote:
           | > 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
        
           | IIAOPSW wrote:
           | 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.
        
         | vorpalhex wrote:
         | Wire in pagerduty to whatever your action is. Ideally
         | distributed on multiple infra pieces. This is just the switch
         | side not the action side.
         | 
         | Normally deadmans switches can be compromised by disrupting the
         | deadman switch hardware. This removes that attack vector and
         | pushes it further up the chain (which may or may not help you).
         | 
         | It's certainly very clever.
        
           | adamdecaf wrote:
           | Thanks. We already rely on PD so preconfiguring the
           | alert/snooze isn't additional risk for us.
        
         | asdfman123 wrote:
         | I thought this was going to be some way to exact retribution on
         | your employer after being laid off
        
           | John_Cena wrote:
           | Naw, in the modern world only people like Bench Simmons get
           | guaranteed contracts. :|
        
           | duggan wrote:
           | Routinely surprised that there are adult human beings that do
           | this, but so it goes.
        
             | asdfman123 wrote:
             | I would never do it myself. Move on with your life!
             | 
             | I did know a guy who worked at a major corporation explain
             | his dead man switch like it was the most normal thing in
             | the world, though. Extremely cursed.
        
               | hinkley wrote:
               | I could see people in a somewhat toxic situation do
               | things like this but it's better to get out.
               | 
               | Especially if there's some complex onerous task that
               | needs to happen and you get no credit for doing it well.
               | Leave, and let them find out what it's like being one of
               | the other characters in It's a Wonderful Life in the
               | worst timeline.
        
           | hinkley wrote:
           | That is the typical scenario in the context of software.
           | 
           | Not that it happens often, but that the incidents are so
           | memorable.
        
       | jbverschoor wrote:
       | Not to be confused with deadmanssnitch.com
        
       | roshan8 wrote:
       | Nice one! Do you have any plans to support something else apart
       | from Pager duty. I have been using Squadcast.com for my hobby
       | project monitoring. Integration with that would be nice. I'm open
       | to create a PR if you are interested.
        
         | adamdecaf wrote:
         | Thanks, yea I'd like to support other vendors. Haven't heard of
         | Squadcast
         | 
         | I have https://github.com/adamdecaf/deadcheck/issues/12
         | tracking additional vendors
         | 
         | Edit: I'm open to a PR if you're willing. Curious, but would
         | you use their delayed notification config to implement?
         | 
         | https://apidocs.squadcast.com/?version=latest#7742a9af-29fe-...
        
       | focusedone wrote:
       | I feel like posting a software project to HN and meeting
       | criticism is some near-end-stage of programming mastery.
        
         | wcallahan wrote:
         | Was thinking the same!
        
       | encoderer wrote:
       | Cool trick using PagerDuty like that.
       | 
       | If you don't want to use a service like Cronitor, you can self-
       | host this without the usual fear that an outage will also take
       | down your monitoring.
        
         | adamdecaf wrote:
         | Yep. I looked at Cronitor and thought about using it, but
         | direct to PD removed a step for us at Moov.
        
       | EGreg wrote:
       | Speaking of not using anyone's specific infra, we deployed
       | software on blockchains to do this.
       | 
       | We had to implement a "heartbeat" and "succession" in our
       | blockchain-based solutions for organizations to control things
       | together.
       | 
       | It's part of our "application suite for organizations" where each
       | one is sort of this general-purpose LEGO block that could be used
       | to build a custom solution.
       | 
       | In each case, you'd enter some parameters and create an instance
       | from a Factory. We made it simple and secure for any organization
       | to use this.
       | 
       | In this specific one, ControlFactory is used to create
       | ControlContract instance that can be used to control an address
       | together (to sign off things collectively, like transfer tokens
       | or call an arbitrary method on a different address)
       | 
       | We had to handle what happens if the M of N people don't show up
       | for a while. And we said they have to call a heartbeat() method
       | every so often. If they fail to call it then control temporarily
       | passes to the next group in succession, until the OGs can finally
       | call the heartbeat() method again.
       | 
       | Here is more info on the why:
       | https://community.intercoin.app/t/intercoin-applications-con...
       | 
       | And here are the rest of the blockchain apps for organizations:
       | https://community.intercoin.app/t/applications-of-intercoin-...
       | 
       | You can go ahead and use it, the factory it's been deployed on
       | many EVM blockchains, at the same address.
       | 
       | PS: fun fact, you can configure a ControlContract to also manage
       | calling methods on itself, thereby creating custom "policies" for
       | organizations when it comes to granting/recoving rights of other
       | people to the quorum.
        
       | joshbetz wrote:
       | Very clever. I have Alertmanager in a second region so it can
       | check on my first Alertmanager, but this is much nicer.
        
         | jrockway wrote:
         | I ended up going this route:
         | https://github.com/jrockway/alertmanager-status
        
         | adamdecaf wrote:
         | Yea I've setup multiple Alertmanagers that all check each other
         | before. That setup is useful to detecting route failures
         | between sites.
        
       | grahamj wrote:
       | Neat. We use OpsGenie to monitor our alerting infra and it has
       | deadman/heartbeat support so something like that is another way
       | to go.
        
         | adamdecaf wrote:
         | How are they triggering the alert when the dead man's switch
         | isn't tripped in time?
        
       | cduzz wrote:
       | I guess I'm an oldster shaking my fist at clouds, but ...
       | 
       | Depending on where you live, and if it matters, give it to an
       | attorney.
       | 
       | Maybe use this to trigger the notification to your attorney, with
       | instructions on how to double check things before doing things.
        
         | danbruc wrote:
         | I agree, I think people underestimate the importance of
         | actually checking why the heart beat was missed, double
         | checking is important. You might think you can easily click
         | some button once a week and it is no problem to take some
         | drastic and maybe irreversible actions after a week without any
         | event. And then you get into a serious accident and end up in
         | hospital for weeks. Or there is some bug unintentionally
         | triggering the actions.
        
           | cuu508 wrote:
           | The configuration example in README has "Reports Finalized",
           | so I assume this is more for IT infra monitoring, than for
           | taking irreversible actions when you become incapacitated :-)
        
       | xyst wrote:
       | I'll use this for my next wormable vuln instead of hard coding
       | DNS checks ;)
        
       | christina97 wrote:
       | I sometimes think about a "dead man service": you leave
       | instructions (that you upload to the service), then when you pass
       | away/etc, the service operators go and follow your instructions
       | and do whatever you asked for. You'd pay some pre-agreed sum,
       | possibly annuity-type subscription, and at the end we go and
       | follow your wishes. Basically a technically competent will
       | executor. It's probably too much to expect your family to know
       | how to operate your systems. Maybe you encrypt the instructions
       | and give fractional keys to family etc.
        
         | INTPenis wrote:
         | I've thought about this too but I think the type of business
         | best suited to execute this is a law firm, or you know, the
         | normal executor of people's wills. They just need the IT bit.
        
         | lancesells wrote:
         | This is an attorney. No subscription, no tech, no bugs, no
         | encryption, less hackable.
        
           | mhink wrote:
           | > Basically a technically competent will executor.
           | 
           | I don't think OP is saying that an attorney *can't* get these
           | things done, but that it would make them feel more
           | comfortable knowing that a technically competent person
           | and/or service will be performing the actual actions.
           | 
           | I do think there's a place for an attorney here, in the sense
           | that they could be the trusted individual responsible for
           | notifying DeadManService, Inc. that a particular person has,
           | indeed, passed on and wishes DeadManService to run their
           | instructions.
        
             | ufmace wrote:
             | I'm not sure what value adding a DeadManService would have
             | then. Probably simpler to just have the attorney's
             | instructions say, "Hire a technical consultant to carry out
             | the following:".
        
       | INTPenis wrote:
       | I did something similar years ago when I was working with
       | observability. Prometheus alertmanager triggers a special alert
       | constantly that calls a lambda (or any webhook), so when
       | alertmanager dies or is unable to alert then the lambda will send
       | an alert over a 3rd party push service to notify ops that
       | alertmanager is down.
       | 
       | We called it a dead man's switch but it was really just a way to
       | monitor alertmanager.
        
         | adamdecaf wrote:
         | Yea I've setup two alertmanagers that check each other before.
         | It's useful for multi site deployments.
        
       | v3ss0n wrote:
       | Better have something that runs off the cloud. PagerDuty is not
       | something under your countrol. A stuff as imporant as dead man
       | switch should not rely on someone's service.
        
         | tatersolid wrote:
         | Okay, so now your dead man's switch depends on your home or
         | colo's power, internet connection, compute hardware, storage
         | hardware, network hardware, software stack maintenance, plus
         | the ability to pay bills for those on time?
         | 
         | Pre-Paying a cloud service pennies per month to do all that for
         | you will likely be more reliable and much simpler.
        
         | PeterisP wrote:
         | I'd argue entirely opposite, that a dead man's switch should
         | 100% rely _only_ on someone else 's services and should avoid
         | any dependencies on your stuff, as something happening to you
         | is correlated to something happening to things you run or own,
         | and the whole point of such a switch is that it should function
         | properly when e.g. all your stuff burns down or gets
         | confiscated or whatever.
        
       | ForHackernews wrote:
       | I don't know about the rest of the people here, but I aim to
       | outlive PagerDuty.
        
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