Re:Show HN: If you lose your memory, how to regain access to...
by octoberfranklin on Friday February 06, 2026 @07:16PM
(#46919948)
Reed-Solomon is error correction, not encryption.
Re:Show HN: If you lose your memory, how to regain access to...
by integralid on Sunday February 08, 2026 @04:45AM
(#46932847)
Reed-Solomon and Shamir secret sharing are quite similar (even though in practice they're used for very different things).
"Do not roll your own crypto" though.
If you want to share your password with M family members such that you only need N to agree to recover the original:
Split your password into ordered chunks.
Make a polynomial p, of power N where the p(1) = chunk1, p(2) = chunk2, ...
Evaluate the polynomial at M other points: p(N+1),p(N+2)...
Gives those M new points to your family along with their index (+1,+2,...).
If less than N family members get together, they will not be able to figure out the password much better than guessing. If N get together, they can interpolate their points to form the unique polynomial which will match p. Then evaluate p at p(1),p(2),... to get your original password.
If you put the whole password into 1 chunk, and pad the polynomial with random extra coefficients or points to make the polynomial of sufficient degree, then they get literally no information on the password without having at least N cooperate. If you make multiple chunks then they can do a little correlation between the chunks without knowing the whole thing.
This is sufficiently simple you can even work this out by hand without a computer, though it would be somewhat tedious.