> Any time a big hack makes the news it turns out that either some system had no security, they used social engineering, or a disgruntled former employee.
Back in 2003 or so, my boss showed up at my desk at work, and looked like he was about to blow a gasket. There was a hack that was on the news, and it was getting featured in news stories all over the world.
He basically said he was going to fire me if it turned out it was my fault. (I built the servers that held the data that was compromised.)
Within a day, it turned out that it wasn't all the data, it was just one person, who had a lot of famous friends.
What had happened was that someone had accessed her account. The way that they did it was by guessing her password. Her password was the same as her dog's name, and she was a celebrity known to be seen at events with her dog.
I remember seeing "pros" in the arcade doing combos with something like 40 hits. They were using that character with the crowbar, can't recall his name.
He may have been saying, "don't work on arcade games". Boon's last major arcade game was "The Grid", which was (in my opinion) a well-made game, but unfortunately it came out during the end of the arcade era. It was a very expensive cabinet at a time when arcades were dying down that pretty much marked the turning of Midway's fortunes (and the arcade industry in general).
> As a kid who ruined their studies because of this game, wanting to meet Boon after learning about the Noob Saibot backstory was it!
I met Ed Boon at the premier of Mortal Kombat II.
Talking to him was one of the things that basically convinced me to stop trying to work in videogames. Up until I met him, my dream was to make videogames.
I wish I'd taken pictures, the entire cast of Mortal Kombat II was there. This was at the AMOA show in Anaheim California, where companies that run vending routes meet up with companies that sell things like arcade games and pinballs and jukeboxes and vending machines.
> I wonder if persistently low interest rates is the real culprit that led to housing as investment.
Of course.
The profit from selling a leveraged investment is based on the delta between what you pay to borrow the money and how quickly the asset goes up. Doesn't matter it that's a house, a stock, bonds, whatever.
Housing is particularly attractive for these bets, because it's so easy to qualify for a big loan and because the rates have been so low.
Once mortgage rates exceed about six percent, the incentive to invest in real estate will be much lower.
