20yrs_no_equity

By the way, have you noticed how dramatically down usage is of this site? How participation has fallen off a cliff in the past couple years?

Ever think that might be because you harassed and banned everyone who thought differently?

That you've created a monoculture, as a result of your crusade against diversity, and thus there's not much to talk about when everyone is exactly like you and agrees on everything?

Maybe that's why. At any rate, your ideological based moderation and anti-intellectualism is not working.

No, you only ban accounts for people who don't toe the line to your ideology. IF you followed your own rules, there would be no problem. Why don't you follow your own guidelines?

Why isn't dang banned for his abuse and harassment of people?

You force me to edit my comment because you slow banned me. which means I can't respond to the people who are being abuseive.

Your moderation policy favors and encourages abuse...which is shown by the abuse that dang heaped on someone earlier (Which I identified to you.)

Again, why isn't dang banned?

You don't get to pretend like I did something wrong when you're being completely dishonest and hypocritical.

You set up the rules that prevent me from responding, you have carefully cultivated a culture where those who agree with you ideologically know they can be abusive without risk, and you hellban people for, for instance, the crime of linking to scientific articles that disagree with your ideology.

Literally, I once created an account that had one and only one submission before it was hellbanned-- a comment link in to an article that undermined the global warming hypothesis, the "article" as published in a peer reviewed scientific paper. The link was the totality of the comment and it was relevant to the discussion. You cannot justify that, it is proof positive that the moderation policy of this site is ideological, and has nothing to do with civility or being substantive.

Of course you're going to ban me- this site cannot tolerate anyone who disagrees with your hardcore leftist ideology, and technology views, no matter how civil. You harass them, as you have harassed me, you abuse them as I caught dang abusing someone before, and then you ban them.

You insist on an echo chamber. Enjoy it. But don't for a second pretend like you have any moral high ground, you lying piece of shit.

Do you even realize you're an anti-intellectual?

--------------------

The censored comment was: [Sigh, despite giving a description of how this works, meaning that aperture and sensor size are actually irrelevant, I'm being downvoted to hell, for the "crime" of pointing out how Apple has done something new. Most of the comments are ignorant, and obviously fanboy nonsense. This site does not appreciate substantive and civil comments when said comments go against its biases (in this case, hatred of Apple and love of all things google.) Further, because I am slow banned I cannot even reply to people. Therefore, I have given a substantive and civil comment, it is being misrepresented and I can't respond. Fuck this bullshit. You don't get to see what I said originally.]

Proof hacker news does not give a fuck about substantive and civil discussion, but only about agreeing with the moderators ideology.

Enjoy your echo chamber!

(and yes, I expect to be banned. I knew creating an account I would be banned because this site is run by assholes who will not follow their own rules and when caught breaking them, they delete the comments exposing their hypocrisy.)

No need to deal with TheRealBob. Blockchains make CAs obsolete.

I've been developing software professionally since the 1980s, when I had to build a computer from scratch. I've seen these three waves first hand- personal computers, now in your palm, the internet, now ubiquitous with cell networks, and finally crypto. The third has not yet become mainstream.

I will say this- we are on the verge of the crypto revolution. I have never before seen so much energy and effort, and finally, money in the crypto sphere. In large part because now there is cryptographic money (eg: bitcoin et al.)

For those of you who think that the startup scene has become lame where you're just building apps to sell advertising, you're missing out.

The thing about the crypto revolution is that it is not nearly as obvious. Internet and PCs were obviously great in the early days- great for everyone. Crypto is harder, has a learning curve for consumers and until that's eliminated it's easy to think that it will go nowhere in the same way that pgp has effectively gone nowhere for 20 years.

Much in the way that we've given up on "artificial intelligence" and made great strides in machine learning.. crypto is on the edge.

It's the place you want to be.

Wow. It's ridiculous to oppose the government stopping people from getting economic broadband? And you compare it to shooting people with a fire arm?

I knew that the loony left had taken over HN, but this is really around the bend.

This site use to be a place where people believed in the Internet, and believed that people hat a right to communicate.

What Jeff believes is right is what accrues to Jeff more power. The founders of Google, Bill Gates and Steve Balmer, Jobs and Wozniak, the early Sun people, they all made mistakes and might have done bad things. Generally I think people running businesses are doing so because they want to make a dent in the universe. I don't buy the idea that CEOs are sociopaths (which seems to be a common perception). But if you told me you believed Bezos was a sociopath I would suspect you were right.

I only worked there a couple years but I had more interaction with him than I would like (though he never chewed me out) and usually, I'm eager to get close to the CEO and learn what I can.

Even a 1X liquidation preference is screwing the founders. Here's my opinion: Dollars are fungible. If a redneck gives you a dollar for your beanie baby, that dollar is as valuable to your bank or to walmart as a dollar coming from a lawyer in an expensive suit. It should be no different whether that dollar is a dollar in cash from an investor or a dollar in salary that an engineer gives up.

So, If an engineer gives up $70k a year in salary to work for a startup, the "options" should have an intrinsic value of $70k a year (the numbers that vest in that given year.) So should the RSUs. Anything less is cheating that engineer.

Those options or that stock should have the same participation as the venture capitalists. I will accept preferred having some narrow advantageous rights, but it should be only a few that are essential and make sense. Right now these deals are loaded down with double dipping that screws entrepreneurs because it is "standard practice "and "VCs need to cover their risk" -- but this is BS -- VCs have less risk. The VC is in many deals, the entrepreneur isn only one.

If anyone should get LPs it is engineers. So the company I'm founding next will have one class of stock, or if it has two it will be the founders and employees with preferred stock. (and sure VCs will balk, until they are desperate to get in on the deal-- but you should be raising money not when you have an idea or because you want to be able to pay yourself, but when your investors are desperate to get in on the deal. If that sounds unrealistic, then you're following the standard startup model, which is designed to screw founders, and now I'm getting circular so I'll get off this train.)

RSUs can be granted, with no cost, as a form of compensation. I think that's the better way to do it.

Options require an exercise price which is the source of a lot of hassle. For instance an early employee gets pushed out because someone wants his equity, so he has 90 days to come up with $35k/year (so $70k if he's been there 2 years) to exercise his options he's already effectively paid $70k a year (in lost salary) to get.

Options are very tenuous- they can be cancelled or adjusted in acquisitions (according to many terms) etc. RSUs have none of these problems. (Though the tax situation might be worse for them, but that's showing the IRS or the people who lobbied the IRS for the rules, setting it up to screw employees.)

I could go on.

Founder Shares are just shares with special rights for founders. Google and Facebook had them.

For Apple Beats Audio was a talent acquisition (eg: they got the founders, Trent Reznor and the like) for Apple Music, and a technology Acquisition (Beats streaming service and content is powering Apple Music) as well as buying a profitable accessories business.

Apple has great gross margins on computers because they have such operational excellence in building them, but still a Mac makes much less margin than headphones- at any price point along the quality curve.

Accessories are just generally really profitable.

I worked at Amazon, I interacted with Jeff Bezos, the Washington Post doing this does not surprise me. It is effectively his political blog, where he gets to push his agenda while being abstracted away from responsibility. (EG: Amazon PR can continue its campaign of BS propaganda without WashPo articles hurting them or Bezos.)

I suspect the regulators who wrote the laws that are preventing this are wise to your idea and its the actual right of way that they are going after. The only advantage that a municipality has over a private company or not-for-profit, is a monopoly on the control of rights of ways in their geographic area. That's why municipality is can do this- private entities would have to get their permission to install a network. And it would come at high cost.

So long as there are levers of control, people will attempt to exploit them. The government at every level, should have no power to prohibit entities, whether government or not, from providing internet service.

Freedom of transaction is a basic human right (whether the Bill of Rights talks about it or not, read the Preamble to the Bill of Rights and you'll see the Bill of Rights doesn't create rights, according to the Bill of Rights, it creates limitations on government from violating those rights.)

Even if you disagree with the above, the First Amendment is unquestionably part of the constitution and thus this is a violation of freedom of speech (internet is speech.)