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How we recovered $300k of Bitcoin

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121–130 of 209 posts

Re: How we recovered $300k of Bitcoin

#121
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> lots of parallels to HFT. Including the fact that it might make its practitioners rich, while creating nothing of social value.

In the case of ads, arguably negative social value.

Connecting people to goods and services they may want or need in a targeted way that tries to make them more relevant seems positive if anything to me.

Re: How we recovered $300k of Bitcoin

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How did that saying about "brightest minds working on ads" go? The sentiment is a bit older than ads. It goes: " I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night, who poverty and tatters a…

Some might consider your post to be off-topic or worse a "well, actually" interjection, I found it fascinating to learn the source of the "best minds of my generation" framing. Thanks.

I see no reason to think Ginsberg originated the phrase "best minds of a generation," but it doesn't appear cliche enough of a phrase to even have an etymology I could look up.

Re: How we recovered $300k of Bitcoin

#123
post #7

"I’m currently looking for work in a staff or senior staff engineering or data scientist role. If you’ve got interesting technical analysis or optimization problems, please reach out to me and let’s talk." That is probably the best CV I've ever read by accident. You should broaden your job hunt criteria to technical content marketing - seriously! Very rare to possess the skill to tell a story in an entertaining, appr…

Sadly its not a well paid skill on average (As in, excluding famous youtubers or whatever)

Re: How we recovered $300k of Bitcoin

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the case of ads, arguably negative social value.

Connecting people to goods and services they may want or need in a targeted way that tries to make them more relevant seems positive if anything to me.

Great, So when do we start?

I would love to see ads that are only relevant to my life instead of penis pills.

Re: How we recovered $300k of Bitcoin

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting paid $300k / year to work on CRUD apps seems pretty nice to me.

Working in easy or boring stuff for a lot of money is nice if you need it, but miserable if you're an intrinsically motivated person.

If you already do this every day for 1/10th of that compensation with no way out, the misery and boredom are already the norm.

Re: How we recovered $300k of Bitcoin

#126
post #5

The author is a very talented applied cryptographer with a very impressive resume (he is looking for new projects). The following CV line stands out however: Google: Software Engineer, Ads Review. June 2014– March 2016. Angular / Java developer on the internal tool used by contractors to review Google ads for policy violations. How did that saying about "brightest minds working on ads" go? I am not blaming the author…

This kind of story is pretty standard at Google:

1. Hire the best of the best, typically PhD level.

2. Assign them to random crap project that have precious little to do with their specialty and strengths.

3. Assume that if they were smart enough to earn a PhD on topic X, they'll learn quickly how to do work on Y, even if X and Y are completely unrelated.

Re: How we recovered $300k of Bitcoin

#127
post #24

> Recovering the key was usually instantaneous, but to help people feel like they’d gotten their money’s worth, we’d put on a little animated show like a Hollywood hacking scene with lots of random characters that gradually revealed the right password. and later ... > I’m currently looking for work in a staff or senior staff engineering or data scientist role. If you’ve got interesting technical analysis or optimizat…

That's an incredibly cynical take.

Re: How we recovered $300k of Bitcoin

#128

Attacking the wetware would have been worthy try :) Would hypnosis work to recover the forgotten password?

He actually tried that without success.

Any reason why a dictionary based attack wasn't tried first?

Or did your client remember selecting something really hard in the first place?

Re: How we recovered $300k of Bitcoin

#129
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Working in easy or boring stuff for a lot of money is nice if you need it, but miserable if you're an intrinsically motivated person.

If you already do this every day for 1/10th of that compensation with no way out, the misery and boredom are already the norm.

That's a part of my point. The compensation is arbitrary past a certain point where your actual needs are met, unless you're driven by the stuff you exchange the money for. For myself, it's evident even in the post necessity phase where I know I still need to bank some cash to be able to assume some future volatility, but am not in the market for anything out of my reach to buy, so the money stops having tangible value.

Re: How we recovered $300k of Bitcoin

#130
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One can exercise motivation outside of work.

It’s hard to do when you get home with 0 brain power left after working for 8-10 hours straight doing mind-numbing work

But if you are over qualified your effort is lower. Working at a startup I felt I had nothing left in the tank compared to corporate job that I could checkout easily at the end of the day go home and write more code.
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