He is a top expert on a security topic. Running Android platform security gives him an opportunity to have incredible positive impact for many people---which he did for a decade.

People weigh trade-offs.

At the beginning, he may have had high ambitions to deploy interesting, research-forward ideas to Android; at this point, he has accomplished a lot of that. Maybe now, he is considering other factors.

Guessing that people are only money-driven or have made some decision because of threshold personal wealth is awful, especially if you do not know them.

Almost all academics I know (I am one also) are driven by personal curiosity, intellectual ambitions, a need to identify and solve problems, and a strong desire for positive contribution. I know Rene and believe this to be true of him.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46940725

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

22/29 = 76% in some form of "yea"

That feels like "rough consensus"

(2) One of the goals of this project was to layer ZK on top of current identity standards that DMVs already issue, so that gov orgs don't have to change what they currently do to support the strongest user privacy. One example format is called Mdoc.

(3) The user holds the identity information on their device only. No other copies. The user's device makes the zkp proof on-device. This was one of the major technical challenges.

(4) The relying party (eg a website) runs the zk verification algorithm on the proof that is produced by the device to ensure soundness.

(5) Yes, the user can use any compatible implementation to produce the proof. We have open-sourced our implementation and we have a spec for the proof format that others can also reimplement.

That doesn't explain the way this scheme works, but it's a nice start.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44272257

Points: 6

# Comments: 0

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43835246

Points: 12

# Comments: 1

"Thousands of scientists are cutting back from Twitter"

Essentially, a survey published in Nature about twitter usage among scientists dropping, in part, because of the phenomena mentioned in this New Yorker article.

Eg:

"Žiga Malek, an environmental scientist at the Free University of Amsterdam, mentioned in the survey that he had started seeing a lot of “strange” political far-right accounts espousing science denialism and racism in his feed. He has to block them constantly. “Twitter has always been not so nice let’s say, but it is a mess right now,” he said."

* for traffic see the small note "all values rebased to 100" they are likely hiding the significance of the increase

* for the app downloads graph: does the 30x gap say anything? are there seasonal reasons that can explain why every Jan1--Feb4 has more DLs than Feb4--Mar11 ? e.g., new phones?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35223918

Points: 21

# Comments: 14

From that, about 1.3% + 5c per tx go to interchange + assessment fees.

This leaves about 1.6% + 25c for the payment processor.

14.3 on 816b is about 1.7% which is consistent.

On 1T, that means about 17b in revenue.

Lets assume they have 7000 employees (i've seen 6000-8000 in searches). As rough estimates, these SFO-based SWEs + knowledge workers cost 1m/yr on average (which includes their total comp, insurance, federal + state taxes, and operating overheads amortized over all employees). So their cost of labor may be around 7-8b/year.

They may have other acquisition and marketing costs, but it means the co can feasibly be earning >8b before taxes, depreciation, amortization, etc.

That number could justify a 80b valuation.

If their current round cap is 55b, then my #s on costs are off, or the multiple has dropped to 6-7. Please debug.