Monica

breaking into a Mac?

2024-02-21T21:55:56Z

Dear brain trust,

My father had a laptop, an old MacBook. My mother would like to know what's on it. It's password-protected. I've been unable to guess the password, even knowing some of his other passwords and some patterns he used.

I have the passwords to his two desktop computers (iMacs), but also can't get in via network share (access denied). I have his cell phone, which should let me get into his iCloud account (that's the second factor). I have the impression that none of that will help.

Is there any way I can override the laptop's password and get in anyway? Or connect an external drive and make a copy somehow? I'm willing to take the laptop and a copy of the death certificate to an Apple store, except that I don't know if it's technically possible to get in (without damaging the contents, which is the whole point of the operation). I mean, we'd all like security to actually be secure, so this shouldn't be easy, but is there something between "easy" and "impossible" that I can try?

The laptop is at my mom's house, so I can't test things immediately, but I'm looking for any clues that could help on my next visit.

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Sh'loshim

2024-01-26T02:49:39Z

My dad's funeral was 30 days ago. For some reason, Judaism counts the first days of mourning from the funeral not from the death, even though the annual commemoration (yahrzeit) counts from the death. Dad wasn't Jewish but I am, and I find our markers in time to be helpful.

Dad was part of a small music group for many years. They were all friends, as you expect in small long-running groups, and the director spoke at the funeral. Later, when I started going through his email looking for things that require action, I found out she has a newsletter and had posted about him. I recognize a lot of that, so I think this is what she read at the funeral.

My dad made a huge difference in my life and in the lives of my mom, sister, and niece -- and I'm learning about some of the other people he also touched deeply.

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and after, there is tech support

2023-12-27T18:00:42Z

My mother is not computer-savvy, and when she's ready I'll help her sort out my father's computer stuff and (I hope) break into his account so we can sort out whatever household stuff he was managing online (like bill payments). She has "an old password" written down; here's hoping that helps.

She mentioned, in passing, that she'll contact their cell carrier to drop his line -- no sense continuing to pay for a second phone, after all.

Do I need to prevent her from doing that until we determine whether he was using 2FA for anything? I haven't figured out the right search queries that will cut through what you should do in advance lest you lose your phone. Like, I don't know where or if he was using 2FA, so I can't just go in and set alternate recovery addresses or something. The point is to be able to get into those accounts later, when my mom is ready. Does she need to keep paying for cell service so that phone number will be able to receive texts, or is there some other way to handle that? Should I go with her when she visits the cell provider (yes she was going to go to a store and do that in person)?

Anybody among my readers navigated this before?

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Baruch dayan ha-emet

2023-12-22T15:41:55Z

I love you Dad. I'm sure going to miss you. :-(

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serendipity

2020-04-29T02:44:47Z

We received a beautiful and serendipitous gift today for our 20th wedding anniversary (which was a couple weeks ago, but shipping is more complicated during a pandemic). The serendipity requires backstory:

A few years ago, in a year of big design changes, Stack Overflow had a contest with SO-branded cheese boards as prizes. I won one. Recently I've been divesting myself of some of my SO swag and packing most of the rest away, because of the pain and also because I'm not very interested in promoting that company by, say, wearing those t-shirts in public any more.

I offered some of my Stack Overflow/Stack Exchange swag to folks on Mi Yodeya, with the price being a torah teaching of the recipient's choice. I got some thoughtful torah, and a taker for the cheese board. I sent it off to its new home a couple months ago.

We eat cheese not infrequently, by the way.

And then today, somebody who knows nothing of Stack Overflow, recent events there, or swag, sent us this:

It's beautiful and well-crafted, and I look forward to using it with much fondness. Yay, 20 years of marriage! Yay, nice gift from someone who didn't about the extra niceness!

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