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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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In Brazil (and probably elsewhere in South America), real estate values go down (and thus crime goes up) the higher you go on the hills. Basically, this is because walking up and down the hills is ar…
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For a couple years, I've worked for a company founded by an MD ~20 years ago, doing PACS (Radiology IT system; basically how X-Rays and CTs and MRIs get distributed within a hospital, viewed by doctor…
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For me, the personal benefits of reading more and better books (vs. whatever magazines or mediocre books are lying around) more than cover the costs. I wouldn't consider the Kindle an iPad replacement…
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Anon User has been steadily decreasing in prominence on Quora. I signed up in March 2010, and Quora has been my favorite site since then, mainly due to the initial population of users, those users set…
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People absolutely do move between states for politics. People who move directly for political reasons (taxes, regulations, etc.) are relatively small, but for instance I left California due to Califor…
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Rail seems like it would be a win for someone who was mobility impaired (wheelchair, old, morbidly obese, etc.). The only other viable option would be a specially outfitted car or bus. The times I've…
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My strategy is to always leave a really easy "next task" when I'm done for the day, so I won't feel anxiety about "what should I do next" with any given project. I call it "park on a hill", the way yo…
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It absolutely went from utter failure to just sort of failure with the surge and awakening. No one really won (well, the Kurds, and maybe Iran), but sometimes making something really bad suck less is …
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I assume he's actually trolling us. Canada is a great choice. Singapore or Hong Kong would be ok. Various Eastern European countries, or Ireland, or Australia or New Zealand -- all great. The only r…
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I think far more US university students, especially the top 10%, are going to have worked on projects semi-independently or independently. Either "group projects" in software engineering, or maybe pe…
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I think it's kind of sad that they don't have bots, usually (they rely on humans to transcribe from voice radio to IRC and back again), and use mIRC vs. something like irssi or even BitchX. Also I dou…
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Money, and lives ("blood and treasure"). Also note the 23 US WIA and the ANA/etc. WIA, of which 5-10 are going to be permanently disabled, and all of which together probably cost more in medical treat…
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To be honest, based on my knowledge of Afghanistan, and of military operations to date, there hasn't been substantial harm due to the release of this information. (I haven't read through it all, but …
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I don't think the problem was so much a lack of raw data (most of this information actually WAS reported in open source publications; just ignored), as much as a lack of any ability to analyze and dra…
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He's Pakistani; Pakistani (and Indian) English tends to have different phrasings -- probably tending toward stilted and archaic to western taste. I think he was just trying to say "it's not like that …
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Yes, mIRC on windows xp or vista, backbone of military command and control. It is kind of sad. People in the operations center ("TOC") sit there monitoring HF radios and watching 2-8 mIRC windows fo…
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Three other points: 1)
The other reason why Iraq was moral was that the sanctions in Iraq from 1991-2003 were actually more genocidal than the US invasion of 2003. If the invasion was a precondition …
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I was trying to use an example/scenario which might be more relevant to 99.999% of HN which does not live in a war zone. More precisely, "If I lived in a town where a criminal gang would kill members …
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There are a lot of examples. Afghan society is generally willing to sacrifice individuals for their tribe, so it's not that hard to understand. Example: Kandahar, Marines under MajGen Mattis, late De…
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I don't disagree that the media has done a horrible job of reporting on Iraq/Afghanistan. However, I think you really overestimate the downrange reporting coming from Vietnam (I don't know how old you…
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The US killed more civilians in one afternoon on 16 MAR 1968 at My Lai (and, unlawfully) than have died in the ENTIRE AFGHAN WAR FOR TEN YEARS. The reason there is no news reporting of numerous horrib…
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It depends entirely on the context. Obviously, I would be unhappy if someone I liked got killed. However, if my house were on fire with 10 of my family trapped inside, and the firefighters racing to t…
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If the media covered Iraq/Afghanistan like they covered WWI/WW2/Korea, there could be burning cities (well, burning crappy towns in the case of Afghanistan), tens of thousands of dead civilians, etc. …
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Sort of off-topic (it's highly doubtful the Taliban have the latest generation...), but which MANPADS would you consider top for the anti-blackhawk mission? The Starstreak?
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AN/ALQ-144A and AN/ALQ-157M is an IR jammer, and effective against IR MANPADS. The newest Stingers are IR + UV to defeat this. This is the "disco ball". I don't know how effective these are (I suspe…
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A lot of that is because no one cared about Afghanistan from late 2002 until maybe 2008; Iraq was the focus of all attention, even by the military.
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Which specific actions in this set of documents do you think were incidents of indiscriminate or careless killing? There were definitely a bunch of cases of needless (in retrospect) killing, but those…
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Members of the military absolutely can be prosecuted under the UCMJ if they commit crimes, including murder of innocent Afghan civilians. There have been numerous prosecutions -- in fact, the "guncam…
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It would be kind of interesting to reformat this as it originally appeared -- line by line as IRC messages in mIRC on someone's plywood shack or tent operations center.
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I do think they did a more respectable job of releasing this information than they did with the Iraq Apache guncam footage. It's unedited, relatively unbiased, and they did go out of their way to red…