I tasked Claude to analyze the files and figure out what's going on, and eventually we figured out that each file had a custom metadata header + thumbnail + actual image concatenated. I had it write a python script and was able to recover all the images with their metadata. It's nothing a human couldn't have figured out, but it was definitely WAY faster than doing it myself.

I've also used Claude in the past to figure out how to break into routers with locked down firmware. It's great at suggesting and trying approaches.

The increase in compute (decrease in brute-force cost) combined with price increases in many crypto tokens means brute-forcing old wallets can become worth it years after passwords were forgotten.

And of course even smaller, local AI models can now easily write optimized scripts to brute-force any given KDF function.

Man. I wish I had a lost wallet worth a quarter of that even, technically didn't need Claude for this, just needed any password cracking software.

So claude drafted an email even pointing to the right Internal Revenue Code (IRS Law), and specify why we fall under a specific category. The auditor got back to me two days later admitting their mistake and said our company now qualifies for $8k in tax credits. And a few months ago, it identified items in our AWS that saved us $250 a month (paying for itself).

So now I joke that even if I have a claude max plan, I've still come out ahead financially.

TBF the real breakthrough was finding this, though no doubt they couldn't have recovered without Claude

I'd love to mine a bitcoin a day on my PC now...

Since we are dealing with Anthropic, the entire story could be staged of course.

Claude has limits that would make this simple statement be much more complicated-

Via Claude "So the chat upload file size limit is actually 500MB per file (not 30MB as many third-party sources claim - those appear to be outdated). The 20-file-per-chat cap and the 30MB-per-file limit in Projects remain consistent across plans. The real constraint at any subscription level remains the context window - how many tokens Claude can hold in memory at once during a conversation. "

I didn't want to take the chance of force closing and losing everything. I used claude code to extract my text out of the browser internals and filesystem objects.

In the physical world, I can't imagine too many people being happy that old keys to your house still work even after you've changed the locks.

Can someone better informed, help me understand how this worked and why it's ok.