tkiley

Recently, I read back through some of my forum posts on HN and elsewhere from the past ten years. In hindsight, I see that I often erred on the side of harshness, and often conflated cynicism and intelligence. As I get older, I see increasing value in a bias toward kindness. Thank you for your kind words.

You're right, a lot of the benefit is in deferring taxes to a later date. This deferral is quite valuable when you consider the time value of money and the fact that by spreading out $millions of gains over many decades, I get to put a lot more of the gains in a lower tax bracket, where if it all came in one year, it would basically all be taxed at 20%.

When you combine decades of deferral with the sizeable charitable deduction, it feels like double dipping. If putting equity in the crut only gave me one or the other (deferred taxation or a big deduction) that would seem intuitively fair. But both together? That feels absurd.

That's true! I'm happy that I am paying low taxes. It just seems ridiculous that my effective tax rate is so much lower than the effective tax rate paid by other people.

As best I can make out, a CRUT reduces your tax burden dramatically if 1) you are young, and 2) you fund the CRUT with equity that has a very low cost basis. I don't think the tax code should contain a special magic wand that reduces tax liability so low for this particular situation, because this advantage seems unfair to people who accrue their wealth over a lifetime by more traditional means.

I had a bunch of equity in a startup that had a cost basis of, essentially, $0. Under normal circumstances, I would have sold this for $millions, and would have paid nearly 20% in capital gains taxes immediately.

Instead, I contributed my equity to a CRUT. I paid zero capital gains taxes at that moment, and the CRUT pays zero capital gains taxes ever. Also, because a contribution to the trust is a contribution in part to charity (with proportions calculated according to actuarial figures of my life expectancy), I got a charitable tax deduction of many million dollars which I was able to carry forward for many years.

Each year I owe taxes on the 5% which the CRUT distributes to me every year, but since this is capital gains income, it is taxed at a very low rate -- which is effectively reduced even further because it is offset by the charitable deduction which I have been able to carry forward.

The net effect is that I'm paying capital gains taxes in a tiny trickle over the remainder of my lifetime, and I also got a giant charitable deduction to offset those capital gains taxes. When I die, the principal in the trust goes to charity. The IRS will never get the kind of bite at this equity that I would intuitively expect it to get.

I don't understand how this capital gains tax loophole could be beneficial to society. I think it should be removed from the tax code.

Another side effect of the CRUT I hadn't anticipated: Occasionally, I note the intrusive thought that my continued life is the one and only barrier which is keeping a decent amount of capital from serving charitable purposes right now. That's honestly pretty depressing sometimes.

Derek's writing influenced me quite a bit in the early 2000s. I bootstrapped a software business from zero to near $10m in annualized revenue, and sold it almost half a decade ago. I contributed 100% of my equity into a charitable remainder trust because I learned about that idea from his website.

Since then, I've done a lot of "puttering". I'm teaching myself jazz guitar, and I'm currently enrolled in law school. I have basically unlimited time to read whatever interests me. If I could go back five years and give myself some advice, I would say that "enough" is not durably satisfying. Purpose is durably satisfying. Purpose arises from constraints. Having "enough" means you lack a particular type of constraint. Thus, enough" can get in the way of developing purpose, particularly if you are somewhat undisciplined like me.

(Also, I would abolish charitable remainder trusts from the tax code. I created one for lifestyle reasons not tax reasons, but after experiencing the tax consequences firsthand, I think they are profoundly unfair.)

I'm surprised that a "Free Speech" network would demand that its users indemnify it against liability arising from their speech. Here's Parler's ToS:

> You agree to defend and indemnify Parler [...] from and against any and all claims, actions, damages, obligations losses, liabilities, costs or debt, and expenses (including but not limited to all attorneys fees) arising from or relating to your access to and use of the Services. Parler will have the right to conduct its own defense, at your expense, in any action or proceeding covered by this indemnity.

Twitter has no similar clause, because 47 USC § 230 provides computer services with a pretty good shield against liability of this kind. I'm not sure why Parler would include such a clause.

"But what value of R would you pick?"

I don't know -- and until we can agree on the answer to your simple question with a high degree of confidence, I think complex models based on specific assumed values of R obscure more than they reveal.

A little bit of modeling is useful because humans are intuitively bad at exponential math and we need scary graphs to jolt us awake sometimes. But when we don't even know the basic parameters (transmission/hospitalization/fatality) with a high degree of precision, complex models with myriad parameters create a false sense of confidence.

Even though the answer to your question is "no", many lawyers will advise you to add the copyright symbol anyway. Even if the symbol is not operative by law, it still operates on the minds of potential copyists who don't know whether it matters. In this regard, the copyright symbol is kinda like the "protected by ADT" sign in a front yard: It's not protection per se, but it might serve as a deterrent.

On the other hand, the likelihood that a mere copyright symbol will deter economically-consequential copying from a website/webapp is quite low. Therefore, as a former founder and current law student (and definitely not a lawyer yet), I'd advise you to do whatever the hell makes sense for your business for ancillary reasons. Add the symbol if you think you're dealing with superstitious folks to whom a copyright symbol lends an aura of credibility; omit it if you are going for a clean aesthetic.

> So from Facebook's perspective, this is probably a big win.

It does feel like they confessed and repented a few spectacularly egregious sins and bought a $5 billion indulgence for the rest.

If the pi is designed to throttle at a temperature where its lifespan is reduced from 50 to 49 years, then it is throttling at a gratuitously low temperature that affects quite a few use cases.

On the other hand, if it is designed to throttle at a temperature that materially reduces the lifespan, then it needs a fan to preserve its lifespan.

Either way, the hardware is starkly suboptimal for a pretty large set of advertised use cases until you add a fan.

lag compensating projectiles on the client decreases usability more often than you'd think.

Projectiles like rockets apply a lot of forces to the player which are not easily predictable. If you fire a rocket and client-side prediction has it leaving your vicinity without collision but the server has someone stepping into the path of the rocket so it explodes close enough that the explosion exerts force that changes your position, you're going to have a really bad misprediction on the player's position, which of course can get waaaay worse if the player launches another rocket while the first rocket's effect on player position has not been sorted out properly.

> They are putting on steam largely because of the USA's shit healthcare system "after Zach's latest cancer scare, we determined that with my healthcare plan's copay etc., I'd be wiped out if I had to undergo the same procedures . . "

I have mixed feelings about this.

On the one hand, it totally sucks.

On the other hand, I suspect that as as consequence of this crappy pressure, Dwarf Fortress will reach a substantially wider audience and bring joy to a greater number of people.

I'll be interested to see how Tarn looks back on this moment in, say, five years.