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Comment by NoZebra120vClip | Hacker News Reader

I distinctly remember cks as the very guy who recommended ten years as an expiration date on my self-signed certificates, and I distinctly recall believing this was a bad idea because I'd be guaranteed to have trouble reconstructing the renewal process in ten years' time.

Thankfully I completely discontinued use of the relevant apps long before that deadline.

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> I distinctly remember cks as the very guy who recommended ten years as an expiration date on my self-signed certificates

Link? In https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/sysadmin/MakingSelf... I see him saying he uses 27y (9999 days).

I don't know. I could be wrong. I interacted with cks in live chat on a daily basis for nearly 25 years. Mostly not over his website.

cks also gave me some other amazing ideas, such as cross-grading my system from 32 bit Ubuntu to 64 bit. That was an ordeal and a half, but I'm proud to say that I finally achieved that goal without any reinstalls, rollbacks, or data loss.

It's a good job no one ever learns from experience, eh?

Ah yes, if we wait long enough, all our problems will eventually go away.

https://xkcd.com/1822/

There's a classic fable (of Nasruddin Hodja tradition?) where the protagonist agrees that he'll teach the king's donkey to speak in 7 years; and when his friends warn him that he'll be executed as he will fail in this task, he responds - ah, the pay is good and many things can happen in 7 years, perhaps the king will die, perhaps I will die, likely the donkey will die, so the problem will eventually go away..

This is a wonderful allegory of modern software companies in SV.

"We do not need to make profit, maybe we will be acquired, many things can happen".

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