Hearted Youtube comments on Ask Leo! (@askleonotenboom) channel.

  1. The real benefit is memorization. For a given entropy I can remember far more in word combinations than random letters and numbers. Remembering four random words in sequence is far easier than remembering 10 random characters even though they have similar security.
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  2. Redundancy! That's the key. It always has been and always will be. I fully believe that no matter how fancy or reliable we think a storage solution is, having a single instance of data will always be a risk not worth taking. The reason the old saying "Don't put all your eggs in one basket" is an old saying in the first place is because it's completely true, and is as relevant today as it was centuries ago. Great video! šŸ‘
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  3. You speak logically, clearly and concisely, thereby reaching millions more people around the world. Congratulations.
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  4. You're so good at explaining things, it's like listening to my favorite professor.
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  5. In the beginning, everyone just chose a random word as a password. Once that wasn't enough, everyone lost their minds. Turns out we just needed a few more random words
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  6. The biggest advantage of pass phrases over passwords is people are less likely to write down a pass phrase. If administrators enforce strong passwords with difficult to remember rules, you will find the average user will write that password down or simply create one password and then do something like increment a number at the end each time the password is reset. You could go into any business and find dozens of passwords end in the value of the current month with an exclamation mark at the end. Creating a pass phrase of 4-5 words will be simpler for a user to remember but provides the security of a long character password.
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  7. Well done. You have no idea what a pleasure it is to listen to someone who speaks English without a horrible accent in your case no accent at all, and without a lot of background noise and without repeating a lot of useless information I didnā€™t need to hear. I realize I just got through with a tremendous horrible run-on sentence, but I just wanted to say thank you for your help in such a clear concise way. Thank you
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  8. 1. There's game theory involved. If everyone were to use word-based passwords, they would become less secure because brute forcers would be able to go that route. 2. Virtually every kind of account these days has a maximum for the characters in use, "correcthorsebatterystaple" would already be too long for most accounts despite neither (neigh-ther?) of the words being overly long. 3. While capitalization allows for more variety, it also robs the system of the main benefit. As someone who deals with people forgetting their password on a weekly basis, I can tell you that people always mess up capitalization because that's not something we inherently store in our brains. My more general advice is this: People who break into your house where you might have your passwords written down will not be interested in those passwords. Those that are interested in your passwords won't break into your house. So writing it down (on actual paper) is more secure than what people give it credit for.
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  9. You're preaching to the choir, Leo! And yes, you can have an Amen. The topics you just discussed have been among my biggest passions for at least a couple decades. I'm a skeptic who advocates skepticism, a critical thinker who advocates critical thinking, a nuanced thinker who's complained numerous times about what I call binary thinking (which is an analogy you should be able to appreciate), and a researcher who does his best to avoid confirmation bias and all the rest. People make fun of me for the amount of time and effort ā€” and yes, money ā€” I invest to get at the truth and whole truth of a topic, whether it's buying a big ticket item, choosing a political candidate, or investigating a news story. And some criticize my default position of skepticism on any new information. Yet some of those same people, skilled though they might be at making quick decisions, are egregious spreaders of manure. I'm all about facts, evidence, and reason, which is one of the reasons I love and admire science. I've been banging the drum for a long time about getting more of this into politics, and into the education of our youth, starting not in college but in elementary school. I'm aware of my own human imperfections, and no doubt sometimes they still slip through, but I've been aware of rampant misinformation on a plethora of topics for a very long time. Thanks for being another voice on these matters. I knew there was something I liked about you when I started reading your articles about personal computing many years ago. šŸ‘
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  10. Leo, I can't tell you how much I appreciate the information that you are providing. I thought that I was losing my mind as no matter what I did, my files kept going to the cloud. Thanks to your videos we can understand what is happening. Microsoft has taken an extremely aggressive and unwelcome form of marketing and control with OneDrive. In a way our data is twice as vulnerable because it can be deleted in multiple locations--your PC or on OneDrive. I also feel this is a security issue because they take data from your computer without users fully understanding how this is happening. I would be interested in OneDrive if Microsoft never took the liberty of moving my data outside of a single folder. The ultimate penetration and control of our data was putting the Document folders in the OneDrive Folder. If Microsoft is not a monopoly, its strongarm actions certainly seem like one.
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  11. In fact, my brotherā€™s method is even easier: invent a sentence for yourself, which you can make as long as you want, and including numbers, names of people and places, and choose the first letter of each words following the logical spelling of lowercase and uppercase. Include other kinds of characters where you want (!%&). Example: I am going to (t or 2) Paris in four (f or 4) weeks with Fanny and Zoe to (t or 2) visit the Louvre! It becomes Ā«Ā IagtPi4wwFaZtvtL! Ā». You now have a 16 characters password easy to remember and tape, and as long as necessary. Plus you dont have to remember which letters are lower or uppercase, you just follow the logic.
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  12. This may be true when you have only a few passwords but when you've got dozens, hundreds even, you still need to use a password manager, and at that point it makes no odds or is even worse if the attacker knows the dictionary from which the words are taken. The weak point is still the human.
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  13. Another issue I have seen with OD is the classic Microsoft issue of path length limitation, which is an issue for people who love long filenames and deep nested subdirectories. Also, I believe large files will not always sync up to the cloud. So it's possible that not everything is getting synced (watch for the subtle red "X" in the system tray or in file explorer.
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  14. I am 64y/o , did not buy a computer until 2004 so I'm a late bloomer-boomer. I have watched many , many of your videos and have learned a lot. I want to say thank-you and as long as you keep putting them out I will keep watching.
    9
  15. If the workplace is that toxic: 1. Quit! Yes, you need an income, but you don't need that place.
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  16. Onedrive backup isn't a backup. It just wants to move all your stuff on to the cloud. It is extremely poor process.
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  17. The problem with all passwords, random characters or random words, is that most people have far too many accounts to be able to remember that many unique passwords. Hence the need for password managers and multi-factor authentication. I gave up on random word passwords because I canā€™t remember random word combinations. Some people can, but my brain doesnā€™t work that way.
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  18. Ā @askleonotenboomĀ  capitalism
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  19. The real value of a multiword password, IMHO, is twofold: 1. it's a lot easier to get to a lengthy password (and if the people designing the password requirements force you to use all the different types of characters, hackers have to check all the various combinations) but 2. YOU REMEMBER IT SO YOU DON'T NEED to WRITE IT DOWN! That's the main thing people do to compromise their passwords and forcing everyone to create complicated passwords only makes it more likely they'll choose to compromise themselves in this way.
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  20. I use OneDrive all the time. Great sync tool. Lousy backup tool. I cannot understand how MSFT made such a mess in communicating the power of OneDrive. Excellent video Leo.
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  21. Congratulations! Amazing that it's been 20 years, I just found you maybe a month ago. As for AI, I feel your pain. I'm a programmer, and while I'm not directly affected yet, I'm sure it's coming soon.
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  22. Well he does say that you probably wouldn't want to leave this enabled so I think it's a fair presentation. Leo I like your videos because you speak clearly and not too fast but you are right to the point without fluff.
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  23. Ugh. I have never used OneDrive because I found it to be too confusing. I guess that was the right choice.
    5
  24. Dear Leo, you are the only ONE Youtube and online IT tech advisor who deserves to be claimed as a true experienced veteran Windows tutor and "Godfather", being non biased, solemn and serious on every each session and topic, short but concise and precise, nothing awkward to hide but with a sole aim to help out, and that is it. On top, having being a fan of you for long, I wanna sum up that you are truthful in a way with a real heart of really understand the needs of end users, and most impressively that I need to be grateful to you is that you are really addressing current and most recent issues that end users are facing and being nerve wrecked on. Thank you very much and much love to you always šŸ˜šŸ˜šŸ˜. Cheers...
    5
  25. Happy Anniversary Sir! We have all been the beneficiaries of your vast repertoire of knowledge. THANK YOU!
    5
  26. I love tech and find many of your topics interesting more specifically your take on it. Thank you Leo and cheers to the next 20!
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  27. DNA IS THE BEST MEDIA šŸ˜Š
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  28. I read your article. It was an interesting read. I enjoyed it. Being a content creator on You Tube must be hard and especially for someone who is a little older than the average "user" today. Finding an audience in that younger crowd when competing for time against all the "kids" with tech channels must be daunting. It's too bad because I think it is just that group that could benefit the most from the information you dispense here. Of course, we older folks (me) benefit too but we're probably in a group that isn't the most tech savvy and probably never see your channel unless it's by chance. It's a tough way to compete but I hope you continue for a long time. As much as I think I know about PC's, you always seem to present things that are new to me or is a great reminder of things I once thought I knew.
    5
  29. Leo, I downloaded this video, and saved a copy to an external mechanical hard drive, a USB flash drive, a DVD, a CD, LTO tape, reel-to-reel tape, and 51 floppy disks. I could not find punch cards. I made 7 sets of everything, to bury a set on each continent. I am considering making additional sets, for each of our oceans. And I might make one more set, and place it on Funk & Wagnalls' porch.
    5
  30. When we got our new Wifi router my roommate asked me if I could change its password into something that wasn't a pain to type every time someone needed to log in for the first time. I chose the first line of a poem that pretty much anyone knows. It's about 50 characters long, has capitals, spaces and a special character and so far (over a year later), anytime someone asks for the password, I just tell them it's the first line of said poem and they immediately enter it correctly first time. Both the easiest and most secure password I've ever had, which is why it pisses me off every time I have to create a password for some site which has so many limitations and requirements for a password that make it impossible to remember if I don't use it regularly.
    4
  31. How about M-DISC, the company estimates that the data stored on those last approx. 1000 years, because it's burned into the MINERAL substrate of the Read-Only discs. Of course that assumes that the disc does not get burned to the ground, or the disc gets thrown in the garbage and then incinerated in a waste-to-energy garbage plant. M-DISC has never lost any data for me, but then I've used it for only 10 years.
    4
  32. The tricky part that's not covered is how to generate this random passphrase. You need a wordlist from somewhere, and if that wordlist exists then it's available for hackers. In my experience wordlists have been quite short too, 2048, 4096 words are common, or 7,776 (diceware) but often much less than the 30K. And sometimes it's unknown: I use bitwarden and it has a passphrase option that defaults to 3 words, from a maybe 4096 word list, it has caps (first letter only option, which just doubles the entropy) a preference for separator and options to put a digit in. Maybe 10^15 at most. So, definitely room for user error if doing this, much more than random chars.
    4
  33. There are other things that can also increase the 4 words password strength : - spelling mistakes (intentional or not) - Slang and local dialect - different languages pidgin creole etc... Yeah most people are not fluent in another language, but I'd say most people know words that are not in the english dictionary.
    4
  34. Even more confusing: the Documents folder is a Known Folder, meaning that users can freely change its location and apps that are written properly will still find it because Windows knows where it is. However, when OneDrive backup is enabled, weird and confusing things can happen if you try to take advantage of this feature by moving the Documents folder out of the OneDrive folder. You have to explicitly get OneDrive to relinquish it before you can use the feature as intended. I'm not sure why Microsoft made OneDrive work this way instead of just relying on the existing Known Folder moving functionality that Windows has supported for years. You can move Known Folders freely in and out of other cloud sync client folders like Google Drive and DropBox, but OneDrive has this confusing procedure you have to follow.
    4
  35. I've been using multi-word passwords for years now. I hate using intercaps but I do mix in things other than common English words. Rarer English words from more obscure parts of my vocabulary. Words from other languages that I know a sprinkling of. Character names from movies, anime, books, etc, that I like. What I call "pronounceable non-words" (EG blipple, bingdinka, bobbotop, and whatever else springs to mind in the moment). Plus a small dusting of numbers just to add some spice to the password. Every password of mine is unique and none are really guessable from knowing any others, nor even from knowing my password making rules. My main threats are, as this guy says, someone getting a hold of my password directly. From phishing, breaking into the password storage, keyloggers, etc.
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  36. Thank you. It is mutual, especially in my backup practices and Macrium Reflect.
    4
  37. No, thank you! Happy Anniversary and congratulations. Wishing you good health and continual success, I know someday it will stop like all good things but, for now keep em coming. As long as you can or are able to. Again thank you for all you do.
    4
  38. From Microsoft Terms of Service: Your Content.Ā Many of our Services allow you to create, store or share Your Content or receive material from others. We donā€™t claim ownership of Your Content. Your Content remains yours and you are responsible for it. From Google's:1. Your Content Google Drive allows you to upload, submit, store, send and receive content. As described in the Google Terms of Service, your content remains yours. We do not claim ownership in any of your content, including any text, data, information, and files that you upload, share, or store in your Drive account.
    4
  39. Yes, so many of us appreciate Leo more than he knows.
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  40. My history as an old geek : the more reliable storage I had tested : 1-Cassettes, I have cassettes from the early 80s (ZX Spectrum, C64) still working perfectly for nearly 9/10. 2-5.25 floppy disks, 7/10 still working 3-HDD drive, 6/10 and also incompatible formats or hardware protocols/connectors (RLL, MFM, early IDE, early SCSI ...). 3-USB sticks / memory cards 5-6/10 and also about memory cards, the problem of old formats (Memorystick, Smartmedia, CFI/II, ...) 4-3.5 floppy 4/10 5-CD, DVD, ... less than 3/10 The best system is punched tapes, even after 3/4 of a century, almost 100% are still readable but I never used it and who still needs it ? I don't know yet about SSD but till now seem quite reliable. About cloud storage, what if your supplier go bankrupt ? The best option for important data is multiple copies, and ideally at least one on a offline storage. This is of course for long term storage/reliability, for years.
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  41. No way of knowing, but it would be interesting to know how many people have been helped by Ask Leo in the past twenty years. It has helped and educated me many, many times. JimE
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  42. Thanks
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  43. What about a 3d printed... something? Some sort of encoding, whether binary or something else, combined with some method of scanning the data back in, whether using an actual scanner or something akin to a record player? Sure, the cheap plastics used in modern home 3d printers aren't great, but I can imagine such a system that offered long-term storage for relatively small amounts of data.
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  44. Thanks!
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  45. Metal sheets have proven more reliable than clay over centuries. but rust never sleeps.
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  46. Thank you Leo, I can explain this in one answer: Microsoft can't get people to buy 365 or they're deciding NOT TO, so, they're using a dubious tactic to force them to (never happened in this company's history before has it?....) } HOW the hell can One Drive storage count towards your email when they're separate products and totally different tech wise? That's like a taxi driver getting a fare. Then, charging, the customer for someone walking on the pavement. Nonsense greed. David
    3
  47. The thing to be afraid of is you might have to ask your kid for help. That is worse than death.
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  48. You're absolutely right šŸ‘
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  49. I have an 8TB external USB3.0 drive. I keep my desktop image backups, my iOS/iPadOS backups and Windows File History on it. Has served me well for several years. I'm using Paragon HDD manager for the desktop backups and iMazing for my iOS/iPadOS backups. Two great applications.
    3
  50. This is why I don't use MS tools at all if there is an alternative. Paid sw, open source, Google, Android. Anything is better than MS. Mac if you're rich, Linux if you're a geek...
    3