Founder liquidity allows founders to sell shares during funding rounds, securing personal financial stability, which significantly alters the risk landscape compared to early employees.
The practice of founder liquidity is often kept secret to maintain the image of a fully committed founder, attracting top talent willing to work for less in exchange for equity.
The author advocates for transparency in founder liquidity, suggesting that every new funding round should disclose if founders took liquidity, to balance risk and compensation for early employees.
The text discusses the financial risks and potential regrets for founders and employees selling equity early in a startup, highlighting the significant difference in value if the startup succeeds later.
It emphasizes the importance of understanding the financial implications, including taxes and opportunity costs, of selling equity versus holding onto it, and suggests using equity as collateral for loans as an alternative.
The text critiques the startup ecosystem for often misleading employees about the value of equity, suggesting that early employees frequently get a worse deal compared to founders and that financial literacy is crucial for making informed decisions.
Flameshot is a free, open-source screenshot software with customizable features, including editing, annotations, and cloud uploads for easy sharing.
It supports a command-line interface for scripting and key binds, and is available on Windows, macOS, and Linux.
Users can download AppImage or Nightly-builds Binaries for older releases, or install via Package Manager for various Linux distributions like Arch, Ubuntu, Debian, and Fedora.
Flameshot, an open-source screenshot tool, is praised for its features and compatibility with Linux, but lacks screen recording capabilities.
Users discuss integrating Flameshot with Tesseract for OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and zbarimg for barcode decoding, enhancing its functionality.
Various users compare Flameshot with other tools like ShareX, Greenshot, and Ksnip, highlighting preferences based on simplicity, feature set, and platform compatibility.
Elixir v1.17 introduces set-theoretic types, providing new warnings for common mistakes and supporting Erlang/OTP 27, while dropping support for Erlang/OTP 24.
The release includes a new Duration data type, Date.shift/2 function, and Kernel.to_timeout/1 function, enhancing date and time manipulation capabilities.
New warnings and type-checking features help developers find bugs earlier, with future releases expected to expand type analysis across function boundaries.
Elixir 1.17 has been released, introducing set-theoretic types, durations, and OTP 27, which has garnered positive feedback from users.
The new get_in/1 feature allows working with structs without raising errors when accessing nil values, enhancing developer productivity.
The release includes a gradual type system based on set-theoretic types, which improves type safety and expressivity, and is expected to significantly enhance the Elixir and Phoenix ecosystems.
The Static Linux SDK allows Swift programs to be built for Linux without needing the Swift runtime and dependencies on the target system, creating fully statically linked executables.
It supports development on macOS with deployment to Linux, eliminating runtime overhead and versioning issues but resulting in larger executables and no code sharing.
The SDK uses the Musl C library for static linking, requiring adjustments for packages using the C library, and can build binaries for x86-64 and ARM64 machines.
Swift's new static SDK supports user-definable platforms, including embedded systems and WebAssembly (WASM), showcasing its expansion beyond Apple ecosystems.
Swift's move to a non-Apple GitHub organization and its use in AI OS for security validation highlight its growing versatility and adoption in various tech domains.
The development allows running Swift binaries in Alpine containers, cross-compilation, and support for vanilla Debian, exciting developers who prefer Debian for development virtual machines (VMs).
Elon Musk has withdrawn his lawsuit against OpenAI and its co-founders, Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, which was scheduled for a hearing in San Francisco.
The lawsuit alleged that OpenAI deviated from its original mission to develop artificial general intelligence for humanity's benefit and became a for-profit entity controlled by Microsoft.
Musk's decision to dismiss the suit follows his public criticism of OpenAI's new partnership with Apple and comes after launching his own AI startup, xAI, which recently raised $6 billion in Series B funding.
Elon Musk has withdrawn his lawsuit against OpenAI and Sam Altman, which some speculate was a strategic move possibly driven by jealousy over OpenAI's achievements.
The discussion highlights OpenAI's shift from its original non-profit mission to a for-profit model, raising questions about accountability and tax-exempt status.
The text also touches on Musk's controversial behavior and his significant influence on the tech industry, despite criticisms of his management style and public antics.
Intel is transporting a 916,000-pound "cold box" across Ohio to its new $28 billion Ohio One Campus, causing road closures for nine days.
The project involves building two chip factories on a 1,000-acre site, expected to create jobs and fund local schools and universities.
The Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) is ensuring infrastructure can handle the load, including moving power lines, with other companies also using the planned routes for their large loads.
Intel is transporting a massive 916,000-pound "Super Load" across Ohio to its new semiconductor fabrication facility, highlighting the logistical challenges and planning required for such oversized equipment.
The "Super Load" is a 23-foot tall, 20-foot wide, and 280-foot long air-processor structure, too large for normal railroads and heavy-lift helicopters, necessitating a complex route and multiple support vehicles.
This transport underscores the importance of semiconductor fabrication facilities in the US for economic and defense reasons, aiming to reduce dependence on foreign countries like Taiwan and South Korea.
In 2017, T-Mobile promised no price increases for users sticking to the same plan, but recently announced price hikes of up to $5 per line on older plans, surprising many customers.
T-Mobile's "Un-contract" promise included a clause that the company would pay the final month's bill if customers canceled due to a price increase, but this information is now harder to find.
T-Mobile is defending itself against an FCC complaint, stating that customers with the "Price Lock" guarantee (April 2022 - January 2024) are not affected by the recent price hikes, provided they stay on the qualifying plan.
T-Mobile users are frustrated by unexpected price increases despite believing they had a lifetime price lock.
Users suggest that telecom companies should incentivize switching to new plans with better features rather than raising prices on old plans.
The discussion includes various opinions on telecom mergers, regulations, and the impact of property taxes on home prices, highlighting the complexity of the telecom industry and its broader economic implications.
John Carmack's implementation of Binary Space Partitioning (BSP) in Doom significantly improved the game's rendering speed, solving the visible surface determination (VSD) problem.
BSP trees, originally used in military research, allowed Doom to efficiently manage complex 3D scenes by splitting them into manageable parts, ensuring real-time rendering without excessive CPU usage.
Carmack's innovative use of BSP trees in Doom, influenced by academic research and prior works, exemplifies the application of advanced computer graphics techniques in video game development, marking a milestone in the industry.
The text highlights John Carmack's exceptional ability to read and understand research papers, especially in computer science, where historical context is often neglected.
It discusses the evolution of computer graphics and programming languages, emphasizing the importance of older, clearer research papers and the practical application of these techniques in game development.
The text also touches on the challenges of the tech industry, including the tendency to reinvent existing systems, the role of open-source volunteers, and the impact of software patents on innovation.
The paper titled "The Rate of Return on Everything, 1870–2015" introduces a new data set covering all major asset classes, including housing, from 1870 to 2015 in 16 advanced economies.
The study reveals that residential real estate and equities have similar high returns, averaging about 7% a year, but housing returns are less volatile than equities.
The findings challenge common beliefs about risk and return, showing that housing has been the best long-term investment in modern history due to its lower volatility compared to equities.
Housing costs have steadily increased over the past century due to population growth outpacing the supply of desirable land.
Industrialization has reduced the proportion of income spent on food and labor required for goods, increasing overall wealth faster than the supply of desirable land.
The text discusses various factors affecting housing prices, including dual-income households, urbanization, and the impact of technology on distributed living.
Raspberry Pi has gone public with an IPO on the London Stock Exchange, initially priced at £2.80 per share, valuing the company at £542 million ($690 million).
The shares rose 32% to £3.70, potentially raising over $200 million, with retail investors able to trade shares starting Friday.
Raspberry Pi's single-board computers, popular among hobbyists, are increasingly used in industrial applications, which now account for 72% of its sales.
Raspberry Pi has become a public company, raising concerns among some customers about a shift from its mission-driven approach to profit-making.
The company has been accused of anti-competitive practices and prioritizing bulk sales over individual customers during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Despite these issues, Raspberry Pi remains popular due to its strong ecosystem, documentation, and support, though some users are considering alternatives like Intel NUCs and second-hand PCs for better performance and stability.
SQLite's popularity stems from its use as an application file format, offering advantages like handling rich data and being incrementally updatable.
The U.S. Library of Congress endorses SQLite as a recommended storage format, highlighting its reliability and efficiency.
Discussions include the potential issues with SQLite's journal/WAL files, the suitability of SQLite for various applications, and comparisons with other databases like DuckDB and PostgreSQL.
Kimberly Gasuras, a veteran news reporter, lost her freelance job due to accusations of using AI, highlighting the growing reliance on AI detection tools like Copyleaks, GPTZero, Originality.AI, and Winston AI.
AI detectors, despite being advertised with high accuracy rates, are criticized for their unreliability and false positives, impacting professionals' livelihoods and reputations.
Universities and companies are increasingly skeptical of AI detectors due to their inaccuracies, with some institutions banning their use after false accusations, while AI detection companies acknowledge the need for better solutions.
Mark lost his writing job despite proving he wrote an article by hand, resulting in a significant income loss.
The text discusses the challenges and limitations of AI detection in writing, highlighting issues like false positives and the difficulty of distinguishing AI-generated content from human-written content.
The increasing use of AI in content creation and its impact on jobs, quality of work, and the reliability of AI detectors are central themes, with concerns about AI's role in creative fields and the potential for misuse in surveillance and hiring practices.
A University of Maryland study found the "duckbill" N95 mask to be the most effective at preventing COVID-19 particles from escaping, blocking 98% of particles.
The study revealed that KN95 masks were less effective than expected due to poor fit and air leakage, while cloth masks outperformed both KN95 and surgical masks.
The research underscores the importance of mask-wearing, especially with highly transmissible COVID-19 variants, and recommends duckbill N95 masks for high-risk environments like nursing homes and healthcare settings.
The study confirms that N95 masks are highly effective at blocking airborne COVID-19, sparking discussions on why the US government didn't distribute them widely.
The text highlights the political implications of vaccine skepticism, noting how views on the COVID-19 vaccine have evolved, particularly among different political affiliations.
The effectiveness of various masks, including N95, surgical, and cloth masks, is discussed, with a focus on their ability to block viral particles and the challenges in proper mask usage and distribution.
The article emphasizes the critical importance of using unique nonces in AES-GCM encryption to prevent severe security failures.
It explains how reusing a nonce can allow attackers to decrypt ciphertexts and authenticate data without knowing the AES key, compromising the entire encryption scheme.
The post delves into the mathematical foundations of AES-GCM, including Galois field arithmetic and polynomial factorization, and demonstrates how these principles can be exploited to break encryption when nonces are reused.
The text highlights the risks of nonce reuse in AES-GCM encryption, particularly for long-term key usage scenarios like VPNs, packetized communications, and full disk encryption.
Nonce reuse can lead to severe security vulnerabilities, including potential attacks if an attacker knows both the plaintext and ciphertext.
Alternatives to AES-GCM, such as AES-GCM-SIV, XSalsa20, XChaCha20, and the AEGIS family of algorithms, are recommended for better performance and security, especially in environments where nonce reuse is a concern.
The post argues that batteries, not AI, will be the defining technology of the 2020s, revolutionizing various sectors including warfare, transportation, and energy storage.
Significant advancements in battery technology have led to reduced costs and increased energy density, making them crucial for electric vehicles, drones, and renewable energy storage.
The integration of AI with battery-powered devices, such as autonomous drones and robots, is expected to transform industries and daily life, presenting lucrative opportunities for venture capitalists and tech companies.
Sodium-based batteries are now available on Alibaba and AliExpress, priced around $9 for a single cell or $100 for a 20-pack, and they require new Battery Management Systems (BMSs).
Sodium-ion batteries, which use sodium ions as charge carriers, are cheaper, safer, and perform better in extreme temperatures compared to lithium-ion batteries, but they are heavier and larger.
The text discusses the potential of sodium batteries to become a competitive alternative to lithium-ion batteries, especially for stationary and long-duration storage, due to their cost-effectiveness and safety.