Pavel Durov quits as VKontakte CEO • Hacker News Board

Re: Pavel Durov quits as VKontakte CEO

#101

Post by selimthegrim » Wed, Apr 02, 2014, 12:47 AM UTC

vasac wrote: post #78

mtrimpe wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Kosovo there was active, widespread genocide going on. Absolutely nothing of such kind was happening in Crimea. Additionally the Kosovo constitution offered room for secession and it's secession was consequently recognized by the vast majority of the international community. The votes on the UN council as to the legality of Russia's actions [1] say enough, but Huffinton Post wrote a fairly comprehensive article [2…

Lies, lies, lies... In Kosovo there wasn't widespread genocide, especially not before NATO started dropping bombs - by far biggest atrocities (not genocide) started after March 24, 1999. Also you conveniently forgot those guys http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosovo_Liberation_Army#Status_a... - local Russians in Crimea didn't pull anything remotely similar and I guess that they could if they wanted to provoke conflict.…

Normally the day I side with Serbian nationalists is a cold day in hell, but vasac is right. This is the end result of one of the worst kludges of the 1974 SFRY constitution, a master class document in doublespeak and not actually resolving issues between parties. Case in point: Hungarians and Albanians were "nationalities", not "nations". Why couldn't they be "nations"? Because they "already had one". Way to make your minorities feel disenfranchised at one fell swoop.

Re: Pavel Durov quits as VKontakte CEO

#102

Post by jeffasinger » Wed, Apr 02, 2014, 1:23 AM UTC

beagle3 wrote: post #77

tptacek wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to be a little careful with these rankings, because they're subjective. Forbes, for instance, drastically prioritizes taxes for its rankings. The corporate tax rate in the US is higher than that of Ireland, and (as Forbes summary straightforwardly admits) that pushes the US down in the rankings. For a startup, there are significantly more important factors to consider than the corporate tax rate, not least b…

I agree with most of your points, but: > A tax system that is reasonably simple, not disastrously onerous, and in many ways optimized for entrepreneurs (for instance, the differing taxation schemes offered for salary versus distributions, or the ease of deducting business expenses). Is objectively wrong. The US tax code was over 71,000 pages last I checked (in 2009 or so), and that's just the federal part. I have dea…

In my state (New York), there is a sales tax exemption on all goods that are intended for resale, so in your case, only the customer would pay sales tax, and you would not.

However, you have to register with the state to collect sales tax in order to be allowed to buy things without paying tax.

Re: Pavel Durov quits as VKontakte CEO

#103

Post by shmerl » Wed, Apr 02, 2014, 1:53 AM UTC

pvg wrote: post #100

shmerl wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article doesn't explain why he refused what they called > The order, issued under the Stored Communications Act, required Lavabit to turn over to the F.B.I. retrospective information about one account, widely presumed to be that of Snowden.

Sure, but you can make some reasonable guesses from other available sources, including his own statements. But his motivation is not really the issue we were discussing - it was whether the government just up and destroyed Lavabit on a whim. You said "it doesn't change the fact that US killed it since the government wanted to have access to all users' data without any restrictions and warrants." It doesn't change the…

My point is, since he didn't refuse previous targeted requests from authorities, it's reasonable to assume that this case was somehow different. I.e. for example it was formally targeted, but in practice they demanded more than necessary, or it wasn't technically possible to do what they wanted without compromising others who weren't suspects, or something of that sort. So without knowing his reasoning it's not obvious that it's "his fault" and government didn't want to kill Lavabit originally or government didn't overstep its power to begin with.

Re: Pavel Durov quits as VKontakte CEO

#104

Post by tptacek » Wed, Apr 02, 2014, 1:57 AM UTC

shmerl wrote: post #94

tptacek wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's accurate. My understanding is that Levison was confronted with a pen/trap (metadata-only) order for mail related to the Snowden account , refused it, and was then subjected to an escalating series of demands once the DOJ had "lost faith" in his cooperation. Orin Kerr, who is one of Andrew Aurenheimer's attorneys in his appeal of felony CFAA charges, has a good starting point for what happened in…

So why did he refuse the targeted request first? His reasons given later applied to his refusal to bulk data collection not to the targeted one.

I don't know what this question has to do with anything I've said.

Re: Pavel Durov quits as VKontakte CEO

#105

Post by shmerl » Wed, Apr 02, 2014, 2:28 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #104

shmerl wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why did he refuse the targeted request first? His reasons given later applied to his refusal to bulk data collection not to the targeted one.

I don't know what this question has to do with anything I've said.

See below: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7513078

Re: Pavel Durov quits as VKontakte CEO

#106

Post by for_i_in_range » Wed, Apr 02, 2014, 2:43 AM UTC

paulbaumgart wrote: post #4

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #2

This kind of thing seems to be one reason America is still the best place to start a business. I'm saying that in order to spark a debate and challenge that belief. Would anyone please list some actions taken by the US government which is similar in nature to the takeover illustrated here? It seems very similar to what happened in the middle ages. Before the rise of the merchant class, specifically the ability to def…

Was it ever in doubt that the USA is the best place to start a business? You have an English-speaking domestic market that accounts for 30% of the planet's GDP, huge talent pools, easy access to capital, a culture that encourages entrepreneurship, significantly above-average rule of law, strong corporate veils, and a mostly tolerable tax burden. It ain't perfect, but you can't do better anywhere else in this solar sy…

Taxes are the thing holding it back. With Obamacare, if you're in business in California making over $250k/year personally, you'll pay 53% in taxes (38% Federal, 12% State, 3% Obama).

If you're a small business owner that owns 100%, you really own 47%. You're a minority shareholder in your own company.

Re: Pavel Durov quits as VKontakte CEO

#107

Post by beagle3 » Wed, Apr 02, 2014, 6:58 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #93

beagle3 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with most of your points, but: > A tax system that is reasonably simple, not disastrously onerous, and in many ways optimized for entrepreneurs (for instance, the differing taxation schemes offered for salary versus distributions, or the ease of deducting business expenses). Is objectively wrong. The US tax code was over 71,000 pages last I checked (in 2009 or so), and that's just the federal part. I have dea…

Consider businesses with a run rate of between 2-10MM USD as a group, first in the US and then in, say, Denmark or (to make it even simpler) Ireland. Does the Danish or Ireland cohort tend to operate without the advice of tax accountants? My impression is that they do in fact tend to retain tax advisors. The argument that the US tax system is particularly onerous is, I think, compelling only if you can demonstrate th…

> I think, compelling only if you can demonstrate that it creates a de facto requirement for outside advisors that doesn't exist in other locales.

Optimization of taxes is a constantly changing, narrow field of expertise - and the complexity of even "simple" tax systems is such that even a cheap, mediocre tax professional will usually save you more in taxes (compared to a "layman understanding" of taxes) than they cost. In this sense, no country is simple enough to operate without a tax advisor. In fact, in Israel where I now reside, it is effectively a requirement to have a CPA prepare and sign off your tax papers, even if your business did not have a single transaction that year. However, the reporting is simple (compared to the US, anyway) such that even if you had quite a bit of transactions, your advisor can finish it in an hour.

For similar complexity, I ended up paying my US tax advisor approximately twenty times as much as my Israeli one. I pay for quality in both places, and the hourly rate of the US CPA is approximately twice as much as the Israeli one (that's true in general comparing both markets). The US one just has about ten times as much work to do.

> Otherwise, the complexity of the system (which is not what I was talking about) isn't much of an issue.

I guess a tl;dr of my point would be: In most of the world, a reasonable course of action is to make plans for business purposes and then adjust them according to tax considerations, whereas in the US the reasonable course of action is to make plans based on legal&tax considerations and then adjust them for business purposes.

I agree that looking at the bottom line, it's just another business expense - I was just disagreeing with your assertion of a reasonable tax code. It is the case in the US (much more so than in Europe and other modern countries, in my experience) that where and how you incorporate, how you assign your IP, and how you time your transactions (short term/long term capital gains) can have a huge impact on your bottom line. Makes it much harder to reason about your actions, which is a non trivial (and hard to quantify) cost.

Re: Pavel Durov quits as VKontakte CEO

#108

Post by NicoJuicy » Wed, Apr 02, 2014, 7:15 AM UTC

workhere-io wrote: post #6

paulbaumgart wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was it ever in doubt that the USA is the best place to start a business? You have an English-speaking domestic market that accounts for 30% of the planet's GDP, huge talent pools, easy access to capital, a culture that encourages entrepreneurship, significantly above-average rule of law, strong corporate veils, and a mostly tolerable tax burden. It ain't perfect, but you can't do better anywhere else in this solar sy…

Was it ever in doubt that the USA is the best place to start a business? America is no. 14 on the list of best countries to start a business in. http://www.forbes.com/best-countries-for-business/list/

I can't believe Belgium is better for starting a business..

Paperwork takes forever (unless you earn less then 15.000 €/ year). Taxes are insanely high (highest of the world) Employees are the most expensive in the world

This list ain't correct, that's easy to see as a Belgian... Or it should be very irritating to start a business in United States.

I do believe one of the beste places is Ireland though

Re: Pavel Durov quits as VKontakte CEO

#109

Post by mtrimpe » Wed, Apr 02, 2014, 9:26 AM UTC

gtirloni wrote: post #74

mtrimpe wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Navalny is a Russian opposition leader. The founder of VKontakte is Pavel.

My bad for mixing the names. While I don't have any objection to the argument that the US is working with support of the Russian opposition (and vice-versa), I think it's far fetched to think he will be held personally responsible for any sanctions that are brought upon Russia. What I'm seeing here from Latin America is that very few people think these supposed sactions will have any impact. There are articles circul…

Navalny, the Russian opposition, is already under house arrest and was threatened with jail just for 'breaking his house arrest' by publishing the blog post about his ideas on who to sanction; even before any sanctions were actually applied. The he'd be held personally responsible is not that far-fetched.

As for the lack of real impact; you're probably right. Most of the targeted officials assets are in Europe, not the US, and Europe's list was much weaker.

Re: Pavel Durov quits as VKontakte CEO

#110

Post by mtrimpe » Wed, Apr 02, 2014, 9:40 AM UTC

insuffi wrote: post #73

mtrimpe wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It more seems that the seriousness of the conflict depends on whether you see this as an isolated incident (which just happens to be the worst violation of territorial integrity in Europe since WWII) or as yet another indicator that the exact same social dynamics that led us to WWII in the first place are intensifying significantly. I'm curious as to what your take on this is then though ...

Oh boy. I think you're somewhat over-exaggerating the situation. Yes, Russia has not been the most subtle in taking over Crimea, but I can say without a doubt that any of the major superpowers would do the same if a country nearby were to experience a coup d'etat. Especially if that country was strategically important. While not technically legal, Crimea really is mostly comprised of Russians and has had a special le…

OK. It's pretty clear that you've been heavily exposed to a single perspective of the situation.

There is no way in hell 97% of the population voted in favor with 80+% turnout; especially given that 30+% of the population is Tatar or Ukrainian. Based on leaked reports to the Kremlin the real turnout is estimated at a bit over 30%.

Regardless; the referendum was literally held at gunpoint after all Ukrainian news had been shut off and Russian television showed massive fascists uprising and murder in Kiev, which heavily scared the population and did make a large portion of the population believe they were being rescued.

Thus, even if the results were true, it still would not have been a valid referendum.

As for the protests, based on direct sources from real people the protests were organize by just that: real everyday people.

Once again though; the regime was not overthrown by the protesters, but by Yanukovich losing moral authority after ordering shooting of civilians.

If you want to argue the snipers were also a false flag operation then you'd indeed be well into conspiracy nut territory; but I can also point you to videos of Ukrainian snipers assembling if you want.

Global Research also doesn't have that good of a reputation. In [1] it explicitly mentions one of it's main reality warping effects comes from a heavy reliance on Russia Today material.

[1] http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Globalresearch.ca