gwern comments on Anti-akrasia remote monitoring experiment - Less Wrong

45 Post author: cousin_it 27 September 2010 11:34PM

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Comment author: purpleposeidon 28 September 2010 06:48:38PM 1 point [-]

Sharing a list of running processes and DNS lookups would be more privacy-sensitive. (I have no idea how to implement the latter, but the former could at least be done on Linux, and possibly Windows, using ksysguard) You might not want to share your screen with a random stranger, but would you share process names and DNS lookups? How about open sockets?

Comment author: gwern 28 September 2010 07:56:13PM 0 points [-]

Process names should be safe to share, since all users on a system can see them and a system is supposed to be secure for a user even with other malicious users. No sane software puts keys or passwords into stdargs where it can be seen through a ps or something.

DNS lookups should also be secure in a sense since no one in their right mind would write server software where the port/address is the key, but privacy might also be a problem. (Then again, if you are browsing FreePorn.com while doing this, maybe you deserve any consequences.)

Comment author: Dustin 28 September 2010 08:00:56PM 1 point [-]

FYI, I think on Windows you can only see processes for your user unless your user is an Admin.

Windows Vista/7 makes not running as Admin more common.

Comment author: gwern 28 September 2010 10:27:55PM *  0 points [-]

Yes, well, Windows doesn't have a very good history when it comes to supporting multiple users - not nearly as good as Unix systems, anyway. So draconian measures are to be expected.