rdl

Joined 18 years ago

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10,540
Member since
Jul 8
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: [email protected] (etc) Twitter: @octal https://twitter.com/octal LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlackey

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Recent submissions

Comment · 5 days ago
I had no idea EU had mandated this from software developers/browser authors. I hope they can kindly go fuck themselves w.r.t. non-EU software not sold in EU (but merely available online for download by anyone).
Comment · 8 days ago
It would have been funny if you forked and made a quad9-fr which blocked this stuff for FR and let people opt in to that. Obviously not scaleable to every jurisdiction on Earth, but maybe viable for the first ~20 stupid jurisdictions.
Comment · 23 days ago
It wasn’t solely the Victorian elites — it was the entire elite part of the world in that era. Benefits of second Industrial Revolution, broadly peace, open borders and free trade compared to most of human history, etc. WW1 was a terrible end to (for much of the world; notably excepting China) one of the best periods of human civilization.
Comment · 3 months ago
EU changed a lot this year (EU EES and ETIAS, long delayed), so this is probably different now than it was for some people before. It should be passport + biometric in and out, with a passport and biometric enrolled once as well, and visa-free stay duration (and other activities, like criminal stuff) logged against that record as well. Previously if you entered in one country and exited in another there wasn't really any closure of the record, so they effectively didn't care, and you could stay in EU indefinitely (and enter/exit much more while also overstaying, especially if you had multiple passports or could enter/exit from different countries).
Comment · 4 months ago
I still remember him being one of the best writers about tech (a bit more than "journalism" in that a lot of it was of more evergreen value...) from the dotcom boom and then the peak "interesting" web apps period (2004-~2015 or so, when AJAX/etc was still new, and things hadn't calcified so much). Didn't know about his later health issues, I assumed he had just moved on to other interests naturally. RIP.
Comment · 4 months ago
Comment · 4 months ago
This will be really interesting for brain imaging I think -- particularly for non-penetrating trauma (blast, crash, falls) in environments where MRI is unsuitable/unavailable, or where potential injuries are very common and thus per-scan cost is critical.

If you scanned every American Football player before/after a game, it would probably lead to an end of the sport. Similarly with boxing, and soccer heading practice.

Also would be super useful in war zones -- you can't MRI due to metal fragments, and can't CT over and over again due to radiation, and right now most of the guidance is "don't get injured again" and is broadly ignored. Being able to scan people near point of injury (or just after high risk activities) would be great.

(Obviously lots of other uses for this in disease screening, etc.; difficulties with ultrasound due to bone, gas, etc.)

Comment · 5 months ago
If a fund can get into the Anthropic Series A vs. not get into the Anthropic Series A based on a flight to meet with the team, that is worth buying the supersonic plane even if you scrap it after.
Comment · 5 months ago
Vastly more favorable today than it was when Concorde flew.

1) Rich people are WAY richer, and time is even more valuable 2) Businesses have some very important employees and "2 day trip" vs "3-4 day trip" is worth $50-100k 3) Larger population of people able to pay $20-30k for a flight than ever before.

The biggest practical impact is there's probably going to be a private jet version instead of just a commercial one, and there will likely be transpacific demand exceeding transatlantic. Also government/military use.

Comment · 5 months ago
That would be true if everyone weren't supply constrained and buying literally everything they can find.

There are actual risks that this trend doesn't continue, but as long as the trend continues, it is pretty good for revenue. "AI shown to hit a wall/doesn't actually deliver/stops growing so fast", "massive improvement in hw efficiency or tech such that all the old stuff becomes obsolete", "bottleneck on power/regulations/etc such that no one wants anything but the most efficient cutting edge stuff" would be the ways it could end and then all these factors reverse. Right now, power is so constrained that old, inefficient power generation is actively being turned back on or set up at new sites (e.g. old aviation turbines which are very inefficient compared to combined cycle).

Comment · 5 months ago
If "cost" is mostly capital investments, absolutely. Normally you'd use operating cost (which for capital equipment would be depreciation and interest), and here they are using the capital cost as full cost.

No one really knows how quickly AI hardware investments will become obsolete and thus how long it should be amortized, but 2-3 years would be extremely conservative, and in fact used H100 (discontinued/2 generations old) prices are higher today than they were when the equipment was new several years ago.

Comment · 5 months ago
For a rapidly growing new line of business, this isn't bad at all.
Comment · 5 months ago
I think RISKS (which he edited) was one of the first places I saw computer security discussed in a meaningful way outside a military context (NSA, Puzzle Palace, Rainbow Books, etc.)

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