How we recovered $300k of Bitcoin • Hacker News Board

Re: How we recovered $300k of Bitcoin

#161

Post by joncrane » Sat, Apr 04, 2020, 3:00 PM UTC

brailsafe wrote: post #100

_se wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being bored for 10 hours a day when you have the capability to do so much really is terrible. Couldn't agree with you more.

I'm kind of in this situation now, and it doesn't feel super great to be sort of trapped in a golden handcuffs kind of situation. The effect would be less intense if it weren't an entirely mental exercise.

I have two thoughts:

1) I generally take the higher paying gigs but mostly so I can accelerate retirement 2) Even in the crappiness of high paying jobs (I often think I'm essentially being bribed to put up with all the BS) I can generally maneuver myself into doing interesting work. It takes about 1.5 years of concerted effort, but once I understand how stuff works, I can generally start nudging stuff in the right direction, and can eventually find some form of fulfillment amongst the BS.

Re: How we recovered $300k of Bitcoin

#162

Post by staplers » Sat, Apr 04, 2020, 3:10 PM UTC

c3534l wrote: post #122

DavidAdams wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah we shouldn't credit anyone for popularizing anything unless they were the absolute first to fathom the idea.

Re: How we recovered $300k of Bitcoin

#163

Post by pbhjpbhj » Sat, Apr 04, 2020, 3:54 PM UTC

dantillberg wrote: post #18

hanniabu wrote: post #15

Earlier 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.

FWIW "you've got" seems very US American to me (native en-gb).

Re: How we recovered $300k of Bitcoin

#164

Post by pbhjpbhj » Sat, Apr 04, 2020, 4:01 PM UTC

wolco wrote: post #132

joosters wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 impa…

>Some top doctors can earn at least nba coach level figures //

Ethically?

Re: How we recovered $300k of Bitcoin

#165

Post by antonzabirko » Sat, Apr 04, 2020, 4:18 PM UTC

adamweld wrote: post #139

antonzabirko wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I didn't say it was the only one he read, i was asking how it's any better than all the other same ones lol.

Re: How we recovered $300k of Bitcoin

#166

Post by carlsborg » Sat, Apr 04, 2020, 4:33 PM UTC

metaweta wrote: post #157

carlsborg wrote: post #151

Great story and impressive work at Pyrofex. Can you share your perspective on the crypto industry right now?

There's no way that the AccessData job I had would exist today. Most services are online, with data encrypted in transit and stored in the cloud. TLS security has improved dramatically over the last decade in response to attacks like BEAST and BREACH and CRIME and POODLE. Google drops (? is going to drop?) your SEO ranking if you don't have proper certs installed. Nowadays, it's rare to find an attack on the connecti…

Thanks. Is an implementation of the Casanova and c delta blockchain papers in the works? I don’t see it on GitHub.

Re: How we recovered $300k of Bitcoin

#167

Post by spopejoy » Sat, Apr 04, 2020, 5:00 PM UTC

WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #41

I always assumed that the encryption used on zip files was relatively trivial and could be broken given the right software and hardware. Well, it looks like it's a lot harder than I thought. You still need the right software and hardware but you also need the right person to do it. Most of what I read was above my understanding but it was good reading anyhow. Good job on the recovery and good job writing about it.

You're not alone, wikipedia for zip says

> ZIP supports a simple password-based symmetric encryption system generally known as ZipCrypto. It is documented in the ZIP specification, and known to be seriously flawed. In particular, it is vulnerable to known-plaintext attacks, which are in some cases made worse by poor implementations of random-number generators. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip_(file_format)#Encryption

IMO the fact that the author was able to recover the password at all indicates weakness. Something encrypted with AES-GCM would presumably be all but impossible.

Re: How we recovered $300k of Bitcoin

#168

Post by dkersten » Sat, Apr 04, 2020, 5:36 PM UTC

anyfoo wrote: post #91

dantillberg wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

So correct, that I distinctively remember learning it from school books in English class in Germany.

Germans tend to pronounce A's in English as if they were E's ("cat" is pronounced as "k-eh-t" instead of "k-ah-t" -- which I don't really understand since A in German is pronounced as "ah"), so I'm not sure if everything you learned in English class is correct ;-)

Re: How we recovered $300k of Bitcoin

#169

Post by dkersten » Sat, Apr 04, 2020, 5:46 PM UTC

joncrane wrote: post #161

brailsafe wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm kind of in this situation now, and it doesn't feel super great to be sort of trapped in a golden handcuffs kind of situation. The effect would be less intense if it weren't an entirely mental exercise.

I have two thoughts: 1) I generally take the higher paying gigs but mostly so I can accelerate retirement 2) Even in the crappiness of high paying jobs (I often think I'm essentially being bribed to put up with all the BS) I can generally maneuver myself into doing interesting work. It takes about 1.5 years of concerted effort, but once I understand how stuff works, I can generally start nudging stuff in the right di…

I'm only commenting on 1, not on the rest of your comment:

> I generally take the higher paying gigs but mostly so I can accelerate retirement

My problem with this outlook is that sacrificing my current well-being for increased future well-being is risky. I don't know how long I will live or what my health will be like. I have to make the best of the time I have now (without sacrificing too much future well-being, of course!)

Not that I don't do the same, just, it feels risky, on its own. I think the rest of your comment is super important for this reason.

Re: How we recovered $300k of Bitcoin

#170

Post by miguelmota » Sat, Apr 04, 2020, 5:49 PM UTC

khabibthyme wrote: post #69

_se wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being bored for 10 hours a day when you have the capability to do so much really is terrible. Couldn't agree with you more.

Having worked in startups for most of my career, I see a lot of engineers who yo-yo between high paid, boring jobs in FAANG-esque companies and burnout-inducing early stage gigs.

I love working at startups and hated working at a large company. You learn 10x more in a fast paced environment where you get a chance to work on a little bit of everything and talking to partners and investors compared to a large scale company where you’re tweaking a small area of the company. Startups are obviously not for everyone and I know plenty of people that prefer the corporate environment either because they like the stability, hours, or the salary.