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rdl
39,338karma·10,537submissions·July 8, 2008
about
Working on stuff at the intersection of cryptocurrency and computer security. Also a Puerto Rico resident (Act 20/22); happy to help people move to Puerto Rico to take advantage of the federal tax exemption, 0% capital gains rate, and 4% business income tax rate. Also FFL07/SOT02.
Chief Security Officer for Evertas Insurance -- the world's first cryptoasset insurance carrier. https://evertas.com/
Previously, CEO and Co-Founder of CryptoSeal (YC S11), which was sold to CloudFlare on 2 June 2014. CISO/Board Member of Tezos Foundation 2018-2020.
Previous startup founder (HavenCo, a couple ecash projects, distributed colo, and DoD/Iraq contracting, new thing), too. Deeply interested in computer security, infrastructure, security, conflict zones, and making the world a better place.
Aside from living on a Caribbean island during crypto export controlled 1990s, I've lived on a tiny artificial platform in the North Sea, plus more reasonable places like London, Amsterdam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait, and spent 6 months diving in Thailand.
"I, the greengrocer XY, live here and I know what I must do. I behave in the manner expected of me. I can be depended upon and am beyond reproach. I am obedient and therefore I have the right to be left in peace."
Email: ryan@venona.com (etc) Twitter: @octal https://twitter.com/octal LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlackey
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recent activity (10,537 total)
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The economics solution would be to make teachers invest in students (paying cash to teach them!) in exchange for a percentage of future earnings. Taking a cheap student who everyone assumed would be …
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The reason other countries won't flout the UN Single Convention and other international treaties is...the US. They don't want to be branded outlaws by the US, with potential sanctions, banking restri…
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Actually there are a lot of technological and policy solutions to "big line at security screening, potential bombing target itself"; in environments where the attackers were still idiots but actually …
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Cisco is particularly interesting because most Cisco acquisitions are of companies founded by or early-staffed-by former Cisco people -- an exec or top techie leaves to start a company (perhaps built …
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Smuggling people is actually easier than smuggling drugs (well, adults, either as migrant workers or prostitutes; children are kind of borderline depending on the country). In a lot of places (US Sout…
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Afghanistan is actually much simpler than Mexico, making the case for either decriminalizing opium or at least doing the Italian red cross plan of buying all the opium produced much more significant t…
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When I was in SFBA, I met several (7?) girls from OkCupid. They were all seriously insane, in different and interesting ways, except for one, who was actually a pretty awesome engineer and decent hum…
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I wish there were a hacker specific couch surfing type site. I don't think posting here can scale, but this is about the best right now. Maybe a way to support arbitrary affinity groups?
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Generally, because startups are positive-sum, and your customers and competitors are not out to kill you (and in fact, in a lot of cases, other firms in the same field, even if they compete, will coop…
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1) The state where you are physically going to be present is going to want to tax you. If you incorporate in DE (zero tax basically, some fees and such), but are physically running the business from …
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The Philippines also tax worldwide income. I think they and the US are the only which ALWAYS tax all worldwide income of their citizens/permanent residents. Actually, a lot of countries tax worldwide…
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The necessary piece of information here that most people don't make explicit is that US persons (natural or companies) are liable for all income worldwide (incl. from foreign subsidiaries when they br…
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I really have no idea on Canadians; you certainly are limited, and I think the standard solution here is to get a Canadian clearance and then use the bilateral canada/us or NATO matching to participat…
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I do not understand your thinking here. If it's a ROBS, and you invest using already-taxed Roth IRA/401k funds as a rollover into a Roth 401k, you actually don't care about the basis. You just want t…
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Any thoughts on buying my founder shares and cofounders and early team stock via a rollover as business startup (robs), ideally from a Roth? And or thoughts on same using small business jobs act of 20…
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Speaking of offers of assistance, if any (US citizen, non-felon, responsible, fairly competent, preferably either prior service or at least compatible with the military in terms of putting up with bur…
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I think UberCab will end up needing to change their name (UberCar?) to distance themselves from the "cab" or "taxi" connotation, and position themselves as an alternative to cabs, vs. a kind of cab, m…
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I really like bottled iced green tea (available throughout Asia, and often in the US). I used to be addicted to Diet Coke (2-8L/day), but now that I have easy access to bottled green tea for $1/ea, t…
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Absolutely true. There are particularly murderous Al Qaeda people who were operating in Iraq (and Afghanistan), and they are in an entirely different class (actually evil) vs. the majority of nationa…
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I did this for 3 semesters after running out of money (at MIT, undergrad) and thus being unable to afford tuition. It was a little easier since I was in the system -- I could register, take classes, …
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I believe in doing deployments for enterprise apps on Saturday or Sunday AM; everyone is still fresh vs. sleep deprived, and if something goes wrong, you have a long time to fix it. Plus, minimal imp…
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Low earth orbit satellite constellations, especially using cheap picosats, also have a good chance of being lucrative. To date, they've been fiascoes (iridium, globalstar), but given a cheap RAMAC la…
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Olin College was amazing; I wish I'd been a year or two younger so I could have been part of the founding class. They did backpedal a bit on the "free for everyone", unfortunately.
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High school sucks for everyone, but it's worst for LGBT than almost anyone else. Suicide rate is at least 4x what it is for the general teenaged population. However, despite being ~straight, I really…
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This will help founders as much as it helps angel investors. Assuming you're building a business which is likely to exit at $50mm or less (i.e. most consumer internet companies), the biggest hardship…
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The stock must be acquired between 27 SEP 2010 and 1 JAN 2011. You then hold it for at least 5 years, and subject to the other provisions, it's exempt from federal tax (especially AMT!) when exercised…
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Things I regret:
- Not getting more involved in startups earlier (I should have gotten started in the early 1990s somehow when I first got on the Internet)
- MIT vs. Stanford; being closer to startup …
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There are a lot of employers which have standard wage scales, so knowing anyone's salary is trivial with information like time of service. In the military, people wear their pay grade on their sleeve…
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Basically three stages, with a few strategies per stage. I'll try to use well known to hn tech examples to illustrate. Early years (during the hedge fund):
1) The "cigar butt" value-investor -- looki…