BigHeadMode

AI used, but this post is not AI.

As previously mentioned, I have some photos I want to name. They come in like 20261019_12345678.jpg, which is a date and then a timestamp. The problem in this use case comes when I am reviewing photos taken within seconds of each other. Reviewing them later, is the best photo 20261019_12345678 or 20261019_12345987?

I'm aware that I can use a Digital Asset Manager (DAM) for this task. These are what semi-pro photographers use, for example digiKam or DarkTable. I think my approach can integrate with other tools nicely. This is about making filenames more useful and less ugly. The files can still be sorted after that point. That approach cannot be automated, and this is about minimal intervention. I intend to use a DAM to sort these photos further.

So the task becomes adding English words to filenames. The only hard part is getting a suitable list of English words. After searching and asking here, I didn't find any that were tightly dedicated to being non offensive and extremely boring. My list is also focused on computing and filename related uses, so ambiguous words of that nature ("program") are also excluded.

This wordlist could be nice in any situation where a raw timestamp, hash, or set of words ("Charming Ferret") is used. It's meant for humans. Machines don't need to read English and they don't get offended. I will use this for photos and voice memos to start.

Starting wordlist:

• I combined SLIP 39 and BIP 39 for about 1500 words. The final wordlists were 278 and 156 words long (156 has fewer filename collisions, explained below).
• I added 5 words to cover X and Z - xeno zeal zest zeta zinc

I used Sonnet 5.5 to create an app that allowed me to hand-label the 1500 words as "boring" (good) or "not boring" (bad). I labeled A-D myself and then sent my labeled data and the categories to Claude and had it spit out the rest. Overzealously removing "good" words is not a big problem because I ended up with 278 viable words anyway. Claude's list of "good" words contained over 80% good words. I don't think I removed more than 50 words from its list.

I also tried to give this job to Jev, but it didn't seem to understand the problem. It may be too subjective or esoteric (does a model that small understand "wave" can be colloquially a file type?).

Good properties:

• high edit-distance between words in a short number of characters. (BIP 0039 does this in 4 characters)
• non offensive
• non exciting (see my last post)
• all 26 english letters covered
• not too many words with the same first 3 or 4 characters (repeat, replace)

Frowned upon word types:

• filename collisions: using my computer as a testbed (5 million files and folders), I used Everything to exclude the most prolific words and first-4-char substrings. "Program" had 840k results. "ease" had 386k results, many from "release". "starting" is the most prolific in beige-156, with 30k results. In the larger beige-278 list, results range from 840k for program, to 50k for install, to 40k for axis.
• anything exciting. Colors, good/bad opinions ("exciting", "impressive"), animals, etc. were frowned upon. I wanted to avoid implying anything about the contents of a file from the filename.

The wordlists are in the comments.

I am trying to solve a specific problem that has some other applications.

My specific problem is I want to add an English word to every file from my camera. The files come in like [date]_time.jpg. Although I think the best workflow involves using a photo management app like DarkTable, sometimes you just want to quickly browse your filesystem and grab the original image. Browsing just by datetime creates problems when you take two very similar images seconds apart. It takes a lot of effort determining which is which. And if you pick out your best picture from a shoot, you then have to mentally note you want timestamp _12345678 and find it in your folder.

I think it would be smoother to have files like:

• 20261019_cape_12345678
• 20261019_echo_12346678

In my specific case, 100 unique words is the absolute minimum, with 500-2000 words being more comfortable.

This is trivial if you have a "wordlist", a list of words you find suitable for the task. And there's the rub. What's a good wordlist? I can hack one together myself but I'm hoping some top minds have thought about this.

Some prior art that I've found is:

• Diceware and the EFF diceware lists
• Some bitcoin folks created 2048 words that are uniquely identified by the first 4 letters of the word
• a lot of default usernames take the form adjective-noun, but I don't know where they get their wordlist
• router default passwords

This task is nontrivial in my use case. Words can:

• evoke computers - copy, original, resize, error, fail, process, base, cat, category, data, base, idle, arm
• evoke other common file formats - album, music, song, camera, photo, video
• evoke the contents of an image or file - cool, neat, tree, car, sky, beautiful, best, trip
• evoke common filenames and extensions - wave
• be full on offensive
• be offensive in some contexts, as well as have a negative connotation in the most literal sense: bad, corrupt, awful, awkward, bomb

This is partly an "I know it when I see it" problem, but I'm kind of looking for the 500 blandest, most non-ideological English words there are.

I ran compsize on my debian box. Most files on my btrfs drive are around 20 GB. Almost all are uncompressed. I have 6000 files and 221000 regular extents.

Is that too much fragmentation? The ideal case is 1 extent per file.

I am reading around 100 MiBps from the drive out of a theoretical max of ~119 MiBps on a 1 Gbps line.

edit: On a local read I am getting 130-150 MiBps which exceeds the 1 Gbps network. pv /path/to/file >/dev/null

edit 2: For reference, this is a WD Red 6TB drive from around 2018-2020. Max speed should be in the 200 - 250 MBps range.

I defragged a ~300 GB folder and deleted some unneeded files. Extents per file actually went up, but I think that's because the remaining files are heavily fragmented (many 70+ extents per file). Somewhat surprisingly, most/all of the defragged files still had 3-10 extents. Each file is under 2 GB.

Before: ~35 extents per file. After: 55 extents per file.

compsize /path/to/folder
Processed 2648 files, 145287 regular extents (145287 refs), 1 inline.
Type       Perc     Disk Usage   Uncompressed Referenced
TOTAL       99%      1.5T         1.5T         1.5T
none       100%      1.5T         1.5T         1.5T
zstd        19%      236M         1.1G         1.1G

I want to make Linux my main OS. I've used Windows for decades. Since Vista or 7, the Windows security model is this, from what I understand:

1. unprivileged programs have limited/no ability to do scary things to your computer. they might be able to read some data, but it's not going to implant malware in the boot sequence for Windows.
2. if a program wants escalation, it triggers a UAC popup and the user has to accept it. Remote programs cannot accept UAC on a physical person's behalf. Escalated programs have admin level control and can do the scary things.
3. As with any OS, there may be privilege escalation vulnerabilities that escalate (1) into (2).

I've only had Windows malware a few times since Win7, and the entry point was fairly avoidable. (Running a sketchy EXE, and a possible drive-by malware install via an advertisement. I could never prove the latter.)

I have never run a password on my Windows desktops. (edited)

On any system, physical access is game over. edit: new section. A lot of people in the comments are making some assumptions. I don't run Windows on laptops. When work provides me with a laptop, they enforce passwords and full disk encryption. That makes sense because they would rather have workers type in a password once per screen lock than than have some random person or competitor get access to their network.

My Windows desktop is always in a house/apartment where I have other measures to determine if people have entered. I also have locks on the doors.

People also seem somewhat ignorant regarding the concept of a threat model. They make the assumption that login password = encryption password and that my machine will contain secrets I want to hide.

In my threat model, anyone with harmful physical access to my desktop is either:

1. Casual burglar looking to sell my items (not steal data)
2. Sophisticated thief looking to drain me financially
3. Government entity with some real or imagined reason to target me

Non-sophisticated on-prem hackers are not in my threat model.

On Linux, the password is paramount. I've tried to understand the security model and I keep failing. Synthesizing from arch wiki

SSH

Equivalent to local physical access as the user. If it's a sudoers or root account, it can do scary things. Not a threat if ssh is disabled or well secured (password or key pairs).

If a network has a well configured firewall (on the router), it should block ssh requests from outside the network unless the admin specifically wants SSH outside the network.

As with any OS, there may be bugs that allow remote access outside of SSH.

Local login / password prompts to physical users

Without a password, you can't escalate to root and install new software. Some software, often dealing with hardware (smartctl) requires sudo/root to run.

Encrypted drives

Passwords can decrypt drives if they are encrypted.

Keyrings

Some DEs (KDE) offer a 'keyring' that stores passwords. It's locked/encrypted with a password, usually the same as the login password.

So what am I missing? Is Windows + UAC + no password secure? What is Linux protecting us from by using passwords?