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Comment by semi-extrinsic | Hacker News Reader

The implied meaning might have been "a significant post on a nation-state's cyber attack budget"? I'm pretty sure they did not mean "the total budget of a nation-state" or anything of the sorts, since that's obviously wrong.

One has to agree, an entity willing to drop a cool $100k on finding a single SHA1 collision to try and attack your git repo is a lot closer to nation-state level than the for-the-lulz level.

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The whole point of using the "nation-state" term is to discuss something so difficult that even large companies or organized crime couldn't do it.

There are plenty of non-state organizations for whom $110,000 is barely even pocket change.

Why do people always say 'nation-state' specifically in these cases, as well? Some of the richest states in the world aren't nation-states, like the UK.

Can you clarify? I thought "nation state" was a fancy way of saying "country". Does it have a more specific meaning?

Edit: wikipedia to the rescue! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation_state#United_Kingdom

I imagine because what they actually mean (state) gets ambiguous and confusing because of the united states, which are not really states in the same sense.

$100k isn't that much money, particularly since collisions can be reused for multiple attacks w/ length-extension. Heck Bitcoin has had (ineffective) spam attacks that have probably have cost around that much, and there's good reason to suspect they've been privately funded by angry trolls.

There's a lot of people for whom $100k is "fuck you" money.

That's not what "fuck you" money means. https://www.quora.com/What-is-fuck-you-money

"fuck you money" is something different - it's the amount of wealth you need (varying per individual) where you can comfortably say "fuck you" to a particular job or opportunity or proposal someone makes to you if you don't want to do it. I believe the term you're looking for is something like "chump change"

I have seen it used in that (to mean the same as chump change) in linkedin articles by random recruiters, so I guess it will suffer the fate of literally vs. figuratively. Terrible.. but use dictates meaning, if it goes mainstream.

Can you give an example? "Fuck you money" is pretty literal already, - the money required to be able to say "fuck you." I can't see how it can make any sense in any other context.

Can't find it. The use was as if it was "fuck it money", "it" being the fact you have enough so you're not counting expenses.

I'm aware of that usage of the term; I've also seen it used the way I'm using it.

English is fun that way. :)

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