Hey,
I can’t believe it’s February already, please go easy on yourself, don’t feel guilty for not having achieved something in any day, heck even in the last year. Just focus on the little things, celebrate the little wins, oh and also, talk to your friends, they miss you as much as you miss them.
I can’t wait to share a film project I’ve been working so hard on, but it’s just taking so much longer to write than I ever anticipated 📷🎞 I’ve everything set up to shoot, but I want to make doubly sure what I think I know about film photography is actually true before I start preaching it.
Proper research just takes ages 📚 — Ever put something really trivial into a calculator during an exam? that’s how I feel, I’m doubting everything I know I know.
Anyway, C’mere to me…
🏴
Scottish independence?
The Scots look increasingly in favor of leaving the United Kingdom.
“The polls, which now show a consistent lead for independence, have followed a bleak year for the United Kingdom in which it has suffered one of the highest coronavirus death tolls and worst recessions of any country.
It has also coincided with Britain's exit from the European Union, which a clear majority of Scots voted against.”
(read more - Business Insider)
“How would you vote in a Scottish independence referendum if held now?
This graph runs from Jul 2016 - Jan 2021, using data from 88 polls taken since the Brexit referendum, and since June 2020 the ‘Yes’ blue line has been consistently in front - WhatScotlandThinks
Above are the most recent polls & percentages.
Mad 💸
Lost the password to $230M? 🔐
Stefan Thomas, a programmer from San Francisco, is locked out of his Bitcoin ‘IronKey’ wallet - an encrypted digital wallet.
Back in 2011, he was given 7,002 Bitcoins to make an animated video explaining how cryptocurrency works.
A decade later, those coins, as of writing this, are worth over $230M, over €190M, yep that’s M for million.
And he has got just 2 guesses left… or that’s it gone…
The problem is that Mr. Thomas years ago lost the paper where he wrote down the password for his IronKey, which gives users 10 guesses before it seizes up and encrypts its contents forever. He has since tried eight of his most commonly used password formulations — to no avail.
“I would just lay in bed and think about it,” Mr. Thomas said. “Then I would go to the computer with some new strategy, and it wouldn’t work, and I would be desperate again.”
—
Of the existing 18.5 million Bitcoin, around 20 percent — currently worth around $140 billion — appear to be in lost or otherwise stranded wallets, according to the cryptocurrency data firm Chainalysis.
(read more - New York Times)
Mad right? what would you do?
For those of you who don’t understand it at all, the system is essentially held together by maths, there is no bank or government that can just ‘issue' him a new password.
The system is not controlled by one entity, which is actually a big factor driving the success of all cryptocurrencies.
“The manufacturer of the IronKey drive, Kingston Technology, has since confirmed it has no power to assist Thomas in retrieving his private key, even if it wanted to.
“Kingston’s entire line of encrypted USB flash drive - including the military-grade IronKey line with additional tampering protections - allow a maximum of ten password attempts, after which the encryption key is erased and the data, therefore, is not retrievable,” a company spokesperson told TechRadar Pro.
“The drive then forces a reformat and requires a new password to start over. This policy helps thwart potential brute-force attacks. Kingston has no way to recover the data, as designed.”
(read more - TechRadar)
I think crypto does have a strong future, exactly which coin is still hard to call, bitcoin has some technical issues with transaction speeds and caps, so people are currently buying it more as an asset — its scarcity is modeled on the rate at which gold is taken out of the ground.
Personally, I’ve been very interested in crypto since I was quite young, I tried to mine them at one point in the early days, I don’t actually own anything at all at the moment, just as I don’t have the cash to invest, but if I did…
Anyway, if you find it interesting I’d love to try to explain different bits of how it works, the practical side of it but in easy layman’s terms, so just let me know.
P.s. - This is the video Stefan made back in 2011, to earn those 7,002 Bitcoins - YouTube
Smile 😊
On Tuesday I was so ready to write something cool on the GameStop situation but by Thursday there wasn’t a soul who hadn’t heard about it or offered to ‘explain it’.
Saved 📷
Think 🌊
Most people's handwriting shows that doing something mindlessly a million times over does not yield improvement, unless you actively try to improve
That’s all 🤙🏽
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Guy