I think you're right about keeping the long-term goals of the company in mind when doing the equity split. A couple months in the span of 6-10 years is nothing. We'll stick with the 50/50 split based on this.
On the vesting part IANAL so we'll stick to what works and not try to monkey with the vesting schedules.
It sounds like Cellebrite employees are largely ex unit 8200 members (Israel's SIGNIT program).[1] The article really doesn't seem to talk about Cellebrite's history much at all.
I'm not sure I buy the idea of email as a private alternative to Facebook. To keep your message content private, wouldn't all parties need to be hosting their own servers or using encryption?
There's also the problem of knowing who you're contacting and when. Hiding that would probably take some kind of anonymous remailer program.
Normal people would probably just have a free email account from companies like gmail or yahoo and not use any encryption. Wouldn't services like TinyLetter then be transferring the data from Facebook to other email hosting companies? This takes care of some privacy issues but still doesn't seem to solve all of problems for private communication.
There was a good talk back in 2012 from ex NSA that laid out some of the
details for how the US surveillance keeps track of online behavior
too[1]. I think (as awful as it is) we can expect most governments major
governments to do this if it's within their technical capacity.
To get out from under this, I think we'll need 100% encryption of
everything, open source devices, and ways for companies to make money
without ads or data brokering. Basically, this will stop when hell
freezes over.
If you want to create an analogy, I think chans are more like user
group meetings that happen in public spaces (e.g. a public park). Nobody
would kick members out of the park because they heard that they're
pro-ISIS (that's just their opinion). However, display of illegal
content or illegal actions would get members removed via someone calling
the cops. Off topic comments that detract from the spirit of the group
could also get members suspended or kicked out of the group
permanently.
Is it up to park police to monitor the user groups? Sure, but they
cannot take action unless it violates the law.
I understand the state's fear after the Mt. Gox fallout but their effort seems too overreaching. How could they possibly enforce _all_ citizens and businesses involved in cryptocurrencies to have licenses, hold 10 years of records, etc.?
OTOH, would there be a way to hold currency exchanges legally accountable without breaking cryptocurrencies?
There are too many stupid exchanges that scam peoples' coins and this seems like a barrier to adoption for lots of people. It would be nice to just push $100 from a bank account into a bitcoin account (like paypal does).
The one thing I still like about AppleScript is the GUI scripting. I don't know of any other way to control the mouse position, clicking, and keyboard input using a programming language.
One time I had to fill out a few thousand pdf files and print only select pages from them (like pages 2-4 and 14-22) for a client. I used applescripting because it was easy to write (took about half an hour) and worked consistently. Are there any other ways to do GUI scripting in OSX?
It might be fun to look at LOGO (maybe UCBLogo[1], free books included) for a first programming language. This has a first-person (turtle) view on a GUI that you move around to make shapes and do math/physics. The idea is that when programming it will be easier for the programmer to associate themselves with the turtle and interaction/exploration in the language will be natural.
The Logo way is pretty different from conventional programming models because it was tailored to be more intuitive than conventional languages like C, JavaScript, or VB. It still offers access to complex, higher order programming concepts like algorithms, AI, automata, etc. Harold Abelson from MIT (SICP) wrote a cool book that covers math/physics in Logo, too.[2]
The creator of the language has an awesome book[3] on how computers can enhance pedagogy and someone wrote a cool blog post on programming for children that mentioned it too[4].
LISP is still a great language for web programming! [1]
Lately it seems like more people are doing compile to JS (like asm.js and Mozilla's emscripten work in Odin Monkey [2]) which fits in perfectly with LISP dialects. Programmers can still create their own DSLs, macros, compilers, etc. in LISP and use them for modern web apps today. Just because this is a less popular/documented route doesn't mean it isn't possible. I hope we'll see a rise in LISP web programming pretty soon.
It would be fun if someone could write a compiler for a new ClojureScript dialect that targets asm.js and takes advantage of CPS for recursion like Scheme does.
There was a pretty good talk at 29C3 about side-channel analysis and how it can break secret keys of wireless devices and smartcards. [1]
With knowledge of cryptanalysis and lots of free time I think it's conceivable that someone could have cracked the system. I wonder if car companies test their crypto very rigorously?
Maybe this would be a good opportunity for university students over there to test out a network like Freenet for communicating? FMS, Frost, or Freemail could be used for messaging back and forth in place of e-mails and social networks. A couple people could build a jSite for news stories/pictures/videos. I don't think groups of students would have that hard of a time adding each other as peers under darknet mode. The docs make it pretty easy to switch over [1].
If they can't talk freely to one-another over emails or popular social networks like Facebook and Twitter... maybe they shouldn't use them.
Don't go to Venezuela! I suspect that Maduro will use Snowden for political gain (contra el imperialismo, yada yada yada), technological expansion (how does US intelligence operate, can I mimic their tech?), any other intel secrets, and leverage for any international trade agreements. After the Venezuelan government is done with Snowden, what's to stop them from selling him away for money/resources/diplomatic deals?
Examine the Venezuelan government's political history since 1999 and try to not get sick to your stomach (personal fav is Chavez doing a khrushchev impersonation with a shoe at the UN). Their government is horribly totalitarian (even if it is "elected") and repeatedly makes rash political decisions.
Venezuela is possibly the worst country to go to. Hold out a bit more for another location!
On the vesting part IANAL so we'll stick to what works and not try to monkey with the vesting schedules.
Thank you for the advice!