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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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If you're US citizens doing this, and >50% of the foreign corp is owned by US citizens, the company is a "controlled foreign corporation" and effectively treated by the IRS as a domestic corporati…
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Also, what random peasant farmer could read?
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I'd rather see a new university which figures out a way to support founders starting startups AND grant them some kind of credential (in case it fails). Unfortunately much of the world is credential-…
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The letter T, upside down, used to mark center of gravity for when you lift it on a sling underneath a helicopter. (total weight in Kg is also written on the tape)
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Unfortunately most of the common rail/high tech diesels are less compatible with vegetable-derived fuels than the older tech diesels. You can run biodiesel in some, but often not B100 -- but in the o…
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I've seen these, and bought some myself (replicas or mixmasters of old bolt or lever action guns, or flintlocks; they're in my colo cage now as decoration). They're amazing, although I wouldn't want …
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The problem with small diesel trucks in the US, aside from consumer perception, is that certain states (e.g. California) have emissions regulations which make it very difficult to pass (particulates, …
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Please note that the US military uses Hiluxes extensively in Iraq (and to some extent, in Afghanistan), too. We sold a bunch of Ford Rangers to the Iraqi and Afghan militaries (poor guys; those truck…
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I think he's talking about "late founders" -- early engineering hires who have enough personal wealth from early exits (or spousal income, savings, etc.) to potentially be founders on their own, who e…
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Checking to see if Yahoo is back up today is actually the first time I've intentionally gone to www.yahoo.com frontpage in...8 years.
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I think it is worth considering how this applies to Hacker News? Hacker News is somewhat niche, although not particularly, and does not have particularly arduous requirements for joining or participa…
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I would be fine with credit checks and criminal background checks being run on all final stage candidates, with consent. I hired a felon once and ended up losing seven figures. Not doing background …
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24h culture of silicon valley? Very very few things in the south bay are open even to 2300h...basically gas stations, a few grocery stores, and some fast food drive through. A lot of businesses clos…
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I'm curious about xtranormal as a business. They don't seem particularly successful to date, and really don't invest much in either supporting breakout hits, or making their product viral. However, …
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Have you tried Oakley gloves? Some are fairly waterproof (and yet breathe), and they seem durable and well fitting, at least to me.
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I'm uninterested in Hulu as a business, but if this means the IPO window is open (thus allowing people to exit financially while retaining founders in management roles and in control), I'm elated.
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iProducts are expensive if you factor in the iTunes media sales/rentals, vs. free content on something like hulu, pandora (or bittorrent). While Apple TV makes sense if you use it as a Netflix box (a…
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If we could get the smart people (physics, etc. graduates) from financial-masturbatory zero-sum games on wall street back to productive scientific and engineering enterprises, I'd feel a lot better ab…
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Would you really call it a $200k company with a 409a valuation? You say "a little more" -- definitely less than $500k or so? I'd probably bail on a $200k company with 5 years of effort sunk into it, …
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Tell that to weev. (Raided by the FBI over the ATT iPad/goatse thing, and then prosecuted over small quantities of drugs found in his apartment)
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I think there is always a high chance of 1-4 week regional disruptions (big storms, etc.). There's also a pretty common fear that you may not have enough money to buy food in the future -- I think bar…
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Why would anyone feed their children TVP? Were your parents vegetarians, or cheap (and not very creative about food)?
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This is pretty clearly just emergency prep food; no sane person would eat it on a routine basis, unless you had extremely limited logistics. It's cheaper to just buy normal bags of rice, etc. than to…
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Yeah, corporate compared to noisebridge. Uncorporate compared to most other places, although I would still say the dojo is a little more corporate than a lot of other hacker spaces (in a good way). I…
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Weird, I've never been charged cover at Old Pro.
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I'd include:
1) Hacker Dojo (conveniently near YC!) -- a slightly-more-corporate hackerspace 2) Computer History Museum 3) Weird Stuff and the other used hardware vendors 4) Drive by the "HP Garage" i…
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Right, and they only have to give it to you once to steal the passphrase, and only have to give it to one or two persons of interest, not necessarily everyone, so it can be very difficult to detect. …
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I never really get bored, but:
* Go shooting (IDPA practice, high power rifle (which requires driving to Sacramento), teaching other people to shoot) * Reading books -- I have about a thousand Kindle …
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(Thankfully, I am not a lawyer, but I've lived outside the USA for all but 30 months from age 18 to 31. This is not legal advice.) For US citizens, you need to be aware of a lot of additional regulat…
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Somehow I doubt this is the last rocket, balloon, or other high altitude vehicle they will be building, too.