karlick88

Unfortunately, many of those who used mongodb regretted the decision

Mongodb is a good db but it is not good for many use cases that people are using them for. There are a lot of companies that realized the mistake and are actively migrating off it. I know we are planning a "Off-Mongo party" with another company once we both manage to migrate off

While I am complete appalled by the data breach and hope that similar things never happens to anyone again

I would like to propose a purely thought experiment:

The hacker reported sold the nude photos of Jennifer lawrence for a mere sum of $130 using bitcoin.

If we apply game theory here, these kind of data is very difficult to monetize. If you sell one copy of the data, it is then immediately distributed online for free. Although, nude photos of celebs are arguably very valuable.

The question is: What is the ideal path for these people to maximize profits?

I think the better alternative would have been a kick starter type model where the attacker will only release photos if reaches a funding goal (let's say $50k). The attacker might release less revealing photos to build interests in the goal funding.

I often hear about decentralized kickstarter models with bitcoin (mutlsig; or ANYONE_CAN_PAY hash type). But I always thought of them as gimmicky. This is actually a use case for it.

So going beyond, celeb photo breach, this similar model should be applied to many more scenarios. ie.

1. you have a valuable asset,

2. but it loses value immediately after the first distribution

3. so you must capture all of the value at distribution

Note:

Anyone can pay: https://bitcoin.org/en/developer-guide#term-sighash-anyoneca...

Tangent:

Given the sidigital is a digital marketing solution company. These kind of projects is ingenius content marketing for themselves.

It generates good buzz for:

1. their potential customers (look how innovative we are)

2. their potential hires (you will have heaps of fun working here)

3. gives existing employees something to brag about (look how cool my company is)

As a side note, I remember there are a startup in SF that mapped every engineer's desk and have nerf guns (hooked up to their continuous integration service) that shoot at engineer whenever someone breaks the build; If I were the CEO, I would only approve these kind of projects if I get some marketing benefits out of it

Has anyone here been with companies with similar side projects, what are your thoughts on ROI?