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Comment by ceejayoz | Hacker News Reader

I once had to keep a $20M (technically; a million download codes for the same $20 movie for a promotion) thumbdrive in my home safe because it arrived too late to put in the safety deposit box like it was supposed to be.

I had to remind myself a few times the practical value to anyone was about $22.

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I worked at a [Not to be named Country]'s monetary authority. Part of everyone's duty was to receive shipments of newly printed cash from De La Rue and get it into the vault before it was distributed to banks. Seeing millions of dollars packaged in cardboard boxes being moved from the street to the vault with men posted up in the bushes with machine guns was something I will never forget.

It's funny how rote and regularized "playing" with money gets after a while though.

I used to work for a financial institution small enough to sometimes need someone from the back office to help fill in as a warm body for dual-control when we received cash shipments.

It only took a couple sessions in a vault to get entirely bored with having a half million dollars in front of you.

My first serious software was for a sizable goldsmith factory. They keep an incredibly low profile visible from outside, and they get really good at it. Once inside, the amount of gold that's moving around is jaw dropping. After a while, most of the time it feels like aluminum, or any other material. All you see is cuts to be made, welding to be done, carvings, sandblast, etc... It's work and responsibility and everyone is just trying to get it done and make it the problem of the next person.

My dad was a goldsmith! (Who eventually ended up doing software for jewelers!)

I definitely know what those small brown boxes which ship UPS ground look like. Very normal.

Why did that have to be transported in a thumb drive? It can't have been more than a few hundred megabytes at the most, right?

Enterprisey client chain-of-custody requirements. It was couriered to us, and the courier was late. Cue panicked phone calls to get an exemption to the contractual requirement for overnight storage at the bank.

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