Tloewald (u/Tloewald)

Tloewald commented on New Zealand travellers refusing digital search now face $5k Customs fine radionz.co.nz/news/nation... · Posted by u/petethomas

scrollaway · 7 years ago

Hey Tloewald, please don't pretend to speak for everyone when you say "being searched" isn't a problem in the first place.

It's not a problem for you, fine. I'd ask you to let me search you but that'd only be to prove a point, so by all means keep accepting it. But when you say it's not a problem, you do not speak for me.

It's pointless, degrading, and above all it's sad that you and many others accept it without questioning it.

Tloewald · 7 years ago

The principle here is people can agree to surrender some of their privacy for safety. The problem isn’t that searching my bits is a greater violation than searching my atoms, but that it’s not useful. Right now there’s no pattern of bits I can carry with me to blow up a plane and in any event I could easily bypass the search.

I’m not thrilled by the social contract, but it’s a good deal more convenient than driving across country.

Tloewald commented on New Zealand travellers refusing digital search now face $5k Customs fine radionz.co.nz/news/nation... · Posted by u/petethomas

jackhack · 7 years ago

It's troubling to watch one of the most amazing places on earth transform itself into a totalitarian purgatory.

Access to physical phone/laptop is only the first step -- mark my words. Big Brother's bureaucrats are never satiated. Next, we will have demands for passwords and unrestricted access to : email, facebook, photo sharing, hacker news posts, social media, etc.

I see sudden spike in the market for burner phones. ANd a long-term opportunity for a company that can create a "burner" social media profile.

Tloewald · 7 years ago

Twenty years ago, Nicholas Negroponte pointed out the irony that when he passed through Singapore customs, they searched his atoms but not his bits.

Is being searched before you get on a plane or enter a customs checkpoint some kind of hideous infringement of your civil liberties? No!

There’s no problem with this in principle. The problem is that it’s silly, and it causes a privacy and security violation while not accomplishing anything.

Tloewald commented on World’s Oldest Surviving Torrent Still Alive After 15 Years torrentfreak.com/worlds-o... · Posted by u/lainon

a-saleh · 7 years ago

I remember blizzard using this ~7 years ago for at least some of their downloads. Not sure if it still does.

Tloewald · 7 years ago

They used it for WoW patches.

Tloewald commented on How China Systematically Pries Technology from U.S. Companies wsj.com/articles/how-chin... · Posted by u/petethomas

Tloewald · 7 years ago

Of course America got all its technology fair and square.

Tloewald commented on Amazon pulled an Apple on the smart home staceyoniot.com/amazon-ju... · Posted by u/imartin2k

aiilnns · 7 years ago

I don't understand why you would use Siri then.

You could manually set a timer. It would probably be quicker than saying "Hey Siri, ..." and you could also avoid using any kind of software.

Tloewald · 7 years ago

It's definitely not easier to manually set a timer than it is to use Siri. Also, you can do multiple timers at once and they follows you around (versus being screamed at because the timer in the kitchen is beeping and no-one has noticed for half an hour and now the fire alarm is going off).

Tloewald commented on Amazon pulled an Apple on the smart home staceyoniot.com/amazon-ju... · Posted by u/imartin2k

Tloewald · 7 years ago

If there’s one thing Apple did, with Steve Jobs, other than build fantastic user experience out of mature but unapproachable technologies, it was communicating the fact that it had done so. Not only has Amazon failed to do this, the writer has as well.

I think it’s pretty cool that, in theory, I could say “Alexa, turn on the oven to 450” and it would (a) turn the correct device to the correct setting and (b) remind me when it was ready (or if it’s being super duper smart, tell me that it was 2 mins or so away from being ready) so that I could stagger over to the kitchen, pull a pizza out of the fridge or freezer, unwrap it, and stick it in the oven. All I need to do is have a bunch of speakers bugging my home, a new oven, ideally probably not two new ovens or not a new oven and a new toaster oven because god knows what will happen, and all this stuff networked.

Or I can walk over to the oven, turn it to 450, and say “Hey Siri, set timer for ten minutes” and wander off. When my wrist buzzes, I go stick a pizza in the oven and I say, “Hey Siri, set timer for thirteen minutes” and go do stuff.

I don’t need a new oven. I don’t need to worry that I’ll pick the wrong oven. I’m not inviting Amazon to parse all my conversations. I don’t need to learn a new magic phrase.

Oh and imagine the hilarity when you try to sell or rent your house and the internet gets turned off. We had a smart sprinkler system which, when we sold the house, we essentially had to rip out because it was easier to install a conventional replacement than figure out how to talk to it without an active WiFi.

Tloewald commented on Ask HN: How much did you, as an employee, make when your startup exited? · Posted by u/saaswarrior

BurningFrog · 7 years ago

Tell us more about "somehow"?

Tloewald · 7 years ago

If I understood the details I would never have signed the contract. At the time I was pretty desperate for a job (I’d moved to the US from Australia and my own company had gone belly up and I was living in Santa Barbara with a mortgage).

Tloewald commented on Alane: Using Aluminum Hydride as Fuel ardica.com/fuel/... · Posted by u/peter_d_sherman

amelius · 7 years ago

What is nasty about the way the human body stores its energy?

Tloewald · 7 years ago

A healthy human diet is 8700 kJ/ day. A gallon of gasoline has 120,000 kJ.

So, we are very energy efficient. But no so awesome in terms of energy storage density.

Tloewald commented on Ask HN: How much did you, as an employee, make when your startup exited? · Posted by u/saaswarrior

gammateam · 7 years ago

what needs to be explained, a several hundred million exit is LOWWWWWW. If they had a series B for 20 million or so, or a series C for close to or above 100 million, then the valuation itself was WAY more than that.

A few hundred million exit will result in ZILCH (almost $zero) for any common stock shareholder every single time, unless the company was in series A or lower.

VCs have a separate share class called Preferred, and they also negotiate "Liquidation Preferences" with a multiple. So a Liquidation Preference x1 means they get their money back, as much as possible. A Liquidation Preference x2 means they get double their money no matter what, before anybody else - like common stockholders - get paid.

And this is before your stock options' strike price matters.

Its a shitty deal, investor protection laws should be extended to cover this, because the information and transparency is lacking.

Tloewald · 7 years ago

The exit was in 2005, and several hundred million was not bad (although it came after a failed effort to go public for somewhere north of a billion). I was very new to the startup game and had comparatively little at stake and didn’t understand any of the language but I was invited to some gatherings of engineers who had been screwed by the deal.

My impression is that founders or early investors often have a lot of ability to dilute the value of stock prior to making a deal (there’s description of similar shenanigans early in “Chaos Monkeys”)

Tloewald commented on Ask HN: How much did you, as an employee, make when your startup exited? · Posted by u/saaswarrior

Tloewald · 7 years ago

I joined a successful startup about ten months before it was acquired for several hundred million. The deal somehow led to a lot of employees losing their options (myself included). There was some discussion of a lawsuit but it fizzled.