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rdl
39,335karma·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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LT Capital Gains are taxed at 34.1% in California once this bill passes. 15% + 5% 2010 increase + 9.3% CA + 1% CA Mental Health + 3.8% Health Care capital gains. ST Capital Gains will be taxed at 39.…
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This is great news -- I think Europe is fertile ground for doing startups. Europe only has one fundamental disadvantage for startups -- that there aren't a lot of startups yet. Three factors:
1) Europ…
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I live in Seattle (except I am in Kuwait) WA kind of sucks for tech businesses due to the B&O tax, which is a gross receipts tax. This doesn't hurt you until you have revenue, but if you're a low…
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Indeed, USAA is great. They're also the least-bad insurance option. Some of the other service-related credit unions (Navy Federal, Pentagon Federal, Tower Federal (NSA)) are pretty decent too.
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I sent you long email describing. Basically I'd like to see public subsidized or free health care at the NHS level (i.e. kind of crap, but good enough), with available free relatively-unregulated pri…
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The status quo of health care definitely retards entrepreneurship. Increased taxes also retard entrepreneurship (in a historically well documented way, although maybe the effect between 15-23.8% isn'…
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I think the combined CA + US tax burden might reduce marginal angel investments. It probably won't affect VC investments, but doubling my tax burden on a win means I'd need to double the odds of a wi…
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This is going to hurt startups. (the health care part is theoretically nice, but offset by the tax implications) Short-term capital gains will be 15% (Fed) + 5% (Fed Increase in 2011) + 3.8% (this) +…
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I think a domain expert can be a stronger founder than a programmer, if it's the right kind of domain. You either need to know what needs to be built, or how to build it, to have a chance (ideally, y…
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Fundamentally bayesian antispam, netflix, and amazon all win because they generate recommendations as a side effect of user actions (ideally "what they buy/watch", but even just marking things with st…
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The product would need to be sold in retail to actually reach most customers, so your $40 BOM is going to be a $100 product (with your per unit costs like assembly, test, packaging, shippng) and then …
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Usually I see the start date for 4 years for founder vesting back-dated to start when the people actually started working on the project, not necessarily from taking funding or even incorporation.
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This isn't a great opportunity: 1) There are tools to let you stream to airport extremes, e.g. Airfoil. 2) Competing on price is fail. Competing on a fundamental COST differential is sometimes win, a…
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I did the Bay Area Winter 2009 program (although I dropped out halfway through for dayjob emergency; I may go back for Summer 2010). FI is great for several reasons:
1) It focuses more on developing e…
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I did FI Bay Area Winter 2009 (but dropped out midway through because I had to go to the middle east for dayjob, and couldn't quit dayjob without seriously screwing over a coworker). I may do FI agai…
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My current favorite for "productive work machines" vs. games/movies is 3 portrait-mode 1200x1920 monitors. These need to be thin-bezel, and IPS panel, so they have decent vertical (now horizontal) vi…
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I was 16. MIT doesn't really care about high school diplomas. I'd already done 1580/1600 SAT and had a grad student and associate prof at MIT write letters of recommendation based on performance in …
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I also dropped out of high school (and never bothered to get a GED; I went to college for a while and then dropped out to do a startup, so I've ended up with neither diploma). It's kind of fun being a…
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I met some of the Willow Garage people at SHDH a couple months ago -- they are pretty awesome, even compared to startups. I remember they were looking for a great python developer at the time. I love…
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I drive even when I live in San Francisco. A (nice) car costs about $1k/mo to keep in SF (parking, registration, insurance, payment) before the first mile driven, but it is how I would spend my margi…
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I actually wonder the same thing sometimes -- I'm 30, went to MIT from age 16-18 but dropped out due to lack of money, went to found a few startups, and am now doing defense contracting (for another f…
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The biggest problem I have with defense contracting is that the people in the contracting office often are not subject matter experts in what they buy. This is less true with vehicles, pencils, etc. …
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There's also preference for small businesses, service related disability, veteran, etc. on certain contracts. I'd like to see female and minority preference phased out over time (which it is) due to …
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There is a pretty wide gap between the actual bad guys who must be killed (Al Qaeda, other transnational terrorist groups, and the hard core of the insurgencies in many countries..the people who go ar…
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check out the big defense contractors: ITT
General Dynamics
Dyncorp
KBR/Halliburton
L-3
General Atomics
CACI Basically, if you want to be doing something decent, make sure you can get at least secret …
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On security in 2010: 1) Afghanistan can still be dangerous. The risk for a trigger puller/door kicker is very high, but for an IT contractor it's about the same as riding a motorcycle 50-100mi/day in…
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Also, people here do not realize: An IT contractor (presumably for ITT, at that low salary) is working at a helpdesk on a big base. The contact with locals is almost zero. You'll encounter a lot of …
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Heh, that article was written about me by my friend Jon! It's not really very realistic for 2010 working for a big contractor, in 2005 things were in flux and I ran my own tiny company.