One of The Scariest Hackers I’ve Ever Met — Pablos Holman
Tim Ferriss Show episode with no sponsor read, in which Tim Ferriss talks with Pablos Holman, the hacker and inventor Ferriss calls one of the scariest he has met, about a career built on extreme risk tolerance and curiosity. Holman's self-summary: he has only worked on things he thought were cool or interesting, optimizing for that over everything, going broke more than once on ideas that were too soon, too cool or too expensive - and he asks why anyone would overoptimize for safety at a big company instead. Ferriss replays the 2008 conference demo where Holman, like an evil Las Vegas magician, spoofed caller ID to hijack the organizer's voicemail live, bumped a front-door lock with a filed key, and skimmed a volunteer's RFID credit card with an eight-dollar reader bought on eBay. On the term hacker: someone attracted to puzzles, drawn to security because it is a bottomless pit of them - and his mission now is hacking everything but computers and rescuing hackers from the security department to attack bigger problems. PARTIAL COVERAGE: this summary highlights the mindset and origin stories; the invention portfolio is not covered. These are Holman's own views and stories, not independently verified.
Executive Summary (TL;DR)
Tim Ferriss Show episode with no sponsor read, in which Tim Ferriss talks with Pablos Holman, the hacker and inventor Ferriss calls one of the scariest he has met, about a career built on extreme risk tolerance and curiosity. Holman's self-summary: he has only worked on things he thought were cool or interesting, optimizing for that over everything, going broke more than once on ideas that were too soon, too cool or too expensive - and he asks why anyone would overoptimize for safety at a big company instead. Ferriss replays the 2008 conference demo where Holman, like an evil Las Vegas magician, spoofed caller ID to hijack the organizer's voicemail live, bumped a front-door lock with a filed key, and skimmed a volunteer's RFID credit card with an eight-dollar reader bought on eBay. On the term hacker: someone attracted to puzzles, drawn to security because it is a bottomless pit of them - and his mission now is hacking everything but computers and rescuing hackers from the security department to attack bigger problems. PARTIAL COVERAGE: this summary highlights the mindset and origin stories; the invention portfolio is not covered. These are Holman's own views and stories, not independently verified.