When Amazon Go was first announced, my guess was that they were using RFID tags on every item in the store.
I now understand why that was misguided: the cost of RFID tags would scale linearly with the amount of goods sold. With Amazon's camera/ML technology, they can reproduce this store wherever they want for just the cost of the hardware and maintenance.
I really appreciated the article for explaining that.
I use KeePass to store my passwords plus other sensible data. It's multiplatform and I can have access to my passwords file on macOS using MacPass, on Linux and Windows using KeePassX, and on Android using KeePass2Android.
I use Dropbox to sync the file through multiple computers including my Android phone. I don't fully trust Dropbox for sensible stuff, but since the passwords file is encrypted by KeePass, I consider that if Dropbox ever gets compromised, they won't be able to access the contents of the file right away without a lot of work.
The passwords file uses a long password, one of the few passwords I still have to remember, plus I use a keyfile for encrypting the file. That file is not allowed to be uploaded to the cloud. I have a copy of the keyfile in my laptop, another one on my Android phone, and another one on a Veracrypt partition in my thumb drive.
It is not a perfect setup, because I still have a few issues that I haven't considered, such as how should I proceed if my phone or laptop bag ever get lost or stolen; but it's convenient for me at this moment.
This is exactly what I've done for years. The only difference is that I'm so paranoid about losing my keyfile (and with it all my passwords) that I also put it on the cloud -- just not on the same cloud provider as the keepass database.
command-line, encrypts passwords with gpg, synchronises using git and by default only copies the password to the clipboard and automatically wipes the clipboard after a minute
This is what I've used for quite a while. It's not the fanciest, but it is simple and easy to use.
For backup, I use duplicity to encrypt my .password-store and all other private files. I have it spit the output to my dropbox folder so it syncs automatically.
This keeps what sites I have passwords for hidden from the outside world.
I've looked a little into keeping the entire .password-store folder encrypted locally until I try to use it, but I guess I'm not paranoid enough for the hassle.
I really enjoy LastPass -- haven't used any others though. Your passwords are encrypted locally so even if their servers are compromised your data is safe.
I recently switched from 1password to Enpass and have been very happy. If you want to use more than 20 passwords on their mobile app it will cost you a one time fee of $9.99 per platform. Very reasonable in my opinion. https://www.enpass.io
I'm happy with PasswordSafe. It's very oldskool, you'll have to run it under Wine on MacOS and Linux, and you'll have to do your own syncing (I just use Dropbox, but want to switch to Owncloud some time).
Thanks for the question. Frankly, at the time, I was under the impression that Keypass what a quite powerful and thus complex beast. I wanted something simple with just the data I needed saved (ie app name, username and password, nothing more) so I went ahead and created the new format.
It was actually interesting to work on a new file format. The version 1 was not formally versioned. I realised that for the version 2, I would need to add a version number to the file format. Of course, the world doesn't care about any of that, but I learned something doing it and am happy about that.
I can definitely understand the simplicity argument; it is much lower barrier to just throw something together than to start reading some spec that has lot more stuff than what you need.
Designing things yourself is enjoyable and educational, so that is also a good reason.
The flipside here is that keepass format has passed quite a lot of scruitny over time, so the design should be pretty decent at this point (especially from security perspective). All that complexity that might feel overwhelming at the beginning also gives you room to grow over time.
As long as your code is well architected and your featureset somewhat conservative, switching out the storage layer shouldn't be too difficult if you ever change your mind. So from that perspective it makes sense to keep going with your own format as long as you feel like it, and focus on more important things.
I think there are better ways to have portability. Pass [1] handles this nicely with import-scripts. Unfortunately, it seems like it can import into pass, not into any other password managers.
The quote is right. The only enemy of your startup is yourself. MySpace fucked up in so many ways that it's surprising that they managed to remain somewhat relevant until around ~2010 or so.
The point is that you're very unlikely to get to that spot, and you don't have to think about that in the beginning. And even then, if you focus on your own company and execute well, you generally don't have to worry about your competitors - it's yours to lose.
App.net lost to Twitter. Netscape lost to Microsoft. Yahoo lost to Google. Ouya lost to Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo. Coin lost to existing payment cards...
The sentence that follows the quote is "So unless you discover a competitor with the sort of lock-in that would prevent users from choosing you, don't discard the idea.". Most of the winners in the examples you gave had insurmountable lock-in (network effects, etc).
App.net lost to itself. I know of exactly one person who decided to pay money, and it's my friend who'd buy/try anything once.
Try to charge money in a space that's free, in return for..... I don't really know tbh, is a recipe for suicide. It may have worked in the 2 weeks of the novelty effect, and that's it.
There was a period of time where I used both MySpace and Facebook, and preferred MySpace – but the user experience kept getting shittier, it kept getting laggier, spammier... MySpace killed itself
Clean and functional. Well done!