What am amazingly fun read. Beyond the obvious technical skills, OP is a great writer.
How we recovered $300k of Bitcoin
131–140 of 209 posts
Re: How we recovered $300k of Bitcoin
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
> How did that saying about "brightest minds working on ads" go? I think it goes something like the Open Source saying "that person doesn't owe anyone their intelligence to work on so-called important problems for free, just because it might be nice if they did". Want smart people to solve important problems? Find a way to pay more for that, than for ads, or find a way they don't need to earn money to live at the sta…
Never going to happen. Look at other important jobs - doctors and nurses can have very low wages, while professional footballers earn millions. We all know which one is more important, but there's no way the medics will ever get paid comparably.
Some top doctors can earn at least nba coach level figures. Frontline workers testing people will never make that amount because the skill level is lower so more people can do the work. If everyone refused and only a handful of people were left they couldn't reproduce the same impact anyhow and the program would close instead of paying them millions. Together they have a big impact and one on one they have a big impact but a single first responder doesn't have the attention or connection of millions. Would you put a poster of Jill, Nurse 56 from Grandrapids who works in the covid wing cleaning sheets? Probably not, even though the job is extremely important.
Re: How we recovered $300k of Bitcoin
#133I don't know why, but these headlines disgust me. There is no insight. Just. Headline of greed.
Re: How we recovered $300k of Bitcoin
#134The 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.
I've seen some CS and math PhD grads being employed for software engineering roles where all that mattered was knowing framework X by heart, memorizing GoF patterns, TDD, DDD, SOLID, clean code and all what uncle Bob was preaching in the '90s and early 2000.
I think both CS and software engineering have their own importance but they are not the same. It's better to hire the right person for the job.
Re: How we recovered $300k of Bitcoin
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thank you for your work on PRTK. As a forensic practitioner during your time at AD, it was always an invaluable tool in my kit.
Glad to hear it!
Just wanted to say that was such a fantastic read. Incredible stuff. I aspire to be as talented in Applied crypto.
Re: How we recovered $300k of Bitcoin
#136The 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…
Sometimes you have no choices than working on something not fitting your skills.
Imagine those with a university degree working at McDonald's serving menus
Re: How we recovered $300k of Bitcoin
#137How could you be sure you didn’t just help heist someone’s bitcoin that this Russian snatched with some malware?
> Luckily, he still had the original laptop and knew exactly when the encryption took place.
Re: How we recovered $300k of Bitcoin
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If you’ve got interesting technical analysis... FYI, not sure if english is your first language or not but this should be "If you have interesting technical analysis..."
"If you've got" may not be formal "correct" English, but everyone understands it and it's used quite commonly in daily speech (and writing). I would wager that "if you've got" may actually be preferable to "if you have," in order to engage the reader at a more comfortable, personal level.
Not only that, but in speech, the 've is often dropped entirely, like "Hey if you got a few more minutes can I ask another question?"
I wouldn't write this, but I would absolutely say it, and it doesn't carry the rough affect of something like ain't.
Re: How we recovered $300k of Bitcoin
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
This "CV" is the embodiment of show, don't tell: it's a lot more convincing than a bullet point saying "experienced cryptographer".
Yeah but that's because you're on his site. Go on other personal sites and you will experience the same, no?
He didn't say it was the only job pitch that he'd read at the end of an article. He said it was the best one.
Re: How we recovered $300k of Bitcoin
#140How off was the 100k compute time estimation?