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rdl
39,337karma·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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You make it a negotiating point; you might have to accept lower valuation or other terms to protect investors if you push on board control. Being obviously brilliant, responsible, and experienced (Pa…
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http://www.quora.com/How-did-Mark-Zuckerberg-retain-control-... …
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Be glad you missed out on 1998-2000.
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Mark Zuckerberg's most valuable friend is/was Sean Parker. Thanks to Sean, Mark retained control of the board, and thus was able to avoid the utter disaster of a $1b sale to Yahoo. Sean got to see wh…
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Releasing "standard financing documents" like this is a win in two ways -- it saves you from the legal costs of creating documents from scratch each time, AND provides an "objective" "standard" set of…
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Wow. I didn't realize it was that big a risk factor. (I certainly wouldn't want a child care provider smoking around my hypothetical children; that seems like the biggest gain for the lowest loss of…
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Strict smoking bans make a big difference for smokers, but not such a big deal for second-hand smoke. (I find it offensive if someone lights up a cigarette or cigar next to me without asking, and in …
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I am sort of interested in doing a vertical-market payment app, similar to paypal, in a well-regulated, legal US market where paypal refuses to transact for utterly bullshit political reasons. There …
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Clean air, clean water, especially at the most local level, matters a lot more to me than global and theoretical things like CO2, definitely. I think the environment is way too important to be left t…
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Something being deductible on federal is nowhere near the same as a tax credit. You don't get a tax credit for state/local taxes. You get a deduction (which doesn't apply under AMT). So, if you're …
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The amusing thing for me is that there are certain incomes where the marginal rate actually goes down when income goes up (although absolute taxes paid always go up), due to phase-outs of deductions, …
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FICA phases out around $100k, but there's also the future ObamaCare 3.8% tax (unearned income) 0.9% (earned income) as well (currently legislated to begin 1 JAN 2013).
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I can't imagine anyone who lives in SF ever leaving anything visible in the car. Even leaving spare change or an old blanket in the back seat causes people to break in within hours (causing damage to…
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I think people don't (at least in the US, and probably globally, generally) begrudge people what they view as "fair" rewards, especially if they themselves might have a shot at them. Most of the poli…
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There is if you count state and local taxes. In California you can be paying 9.3% + 1.0%, and in other places (NYC) it can be even higher. At 39.6 + 9.3 + 1.0, you would be above most countries in t…
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IBM and Sun Microsystems (one of the first workstation vendors, then seller of servers, especially to finance; now an obscure division of Oracle, a commercial database company) used to do something si…
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AIDS also generally affects young and generally healthy people, vs. a lot of diseases which affect older people. From a purely economic standpoint, losing a 25 year old is more economically harmful t…
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Definitely, those people exist. I would not advise those people to pick fights with terrorists.
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Generally the kind of people who act on fatwahs to kill people like that are not super ninja assassin masters, but actually fairly incompetent. Being alert (which is one of the main things taught in …
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Offended but law-abiding armed Muslims are fine. (and I think some of the EDMD cartoons were offensive, and if I were a Muslim, more of them would be offensive to me). Non-law-abiding potential-assas…
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I absolutely agree, for the average citizen of a first world nation who isn't at any particular special risk. However, when you face a credible death threat for your (principled, honorable) actions, …
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She lives in Washington, so I'd take "reasonable precautions" with a threat like that, but not go overboard. You can get a concealed pistol license on a shall-issue basis in WA (I have one, it took a…
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This looks like an interesting position, and it seems like maybe you're putting more emphasis on doing infrastructure/ops yourselves vs. trying to outsource as much as possible to a hosting or "cloud"…
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Sitting around and doing nothing (or driving around the country in an RV, etc.) is the most depressing thing I can think of doing. I hope when I'm >65 I am still working, if not in an operational…
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The irony here is that anonymous digital cash protocols, while complicated, are also basically built around digital tokens or "coins", so efficient change-making is still relevant! (although the coin…
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AIG failed due to AIG Financial Products, which sold overly-cheap high risk derivative Credit Default Swaps on mortgage-backed securities, not due to their core insurance business. CDSes are insuranc…
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I'm looking for a technical/business cofounder or two for my new virtualization/cloud security infrastructure thing. I am spending the rest of 2010 outside the US, but will be moving somewhere (defau…
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Adeo is principled in that he is honest and consistent. He's not an unadulterated cheerleader, and in Founder Institute, the aggressive/pressure inducing techniques (standing up before the room and h…
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I actually drive SF to Seattle (and any shorter distance; there is zero chance I'd ever fly SFO-LAX or SFO-LAS) to avoid commercial flights. I've met Adeo many times (as a student in the Founder Insti…
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That would actually be a decent application for StickyBits on UPC codes for popular products.