tristor

As one of the first customers of ProtonMail, this makes me really disappointed. Yen has clearly gone off the rails. This is a complete betrayal of the core principles he founded Proton on.

> There is no such thing as "failing" an IRS audit.

I consider being audited and the IRS finding corrections to prior returns as a "failure". Once I started doing things myself, I was audited and no corrections found (e.g. a "success"). In the case where I "failed" the audit, it had to do with how expenses were being handled by the accountant. At the time I was a contractor working on a 1099 and was tracking and submitting some business expenses for reimbursement, and some expenses were tracked and taken against my taxes but not reimbursed. What was filed did not align exactly with what was reimbursed, which caused an overstatement of deductions, causing me to owe back taxes. I am not making any claim that they committed fraud, as that's a crime which requires intent, I think they were just incompetent.

> The statement that the one time you used an accountant you got audited implies that you are confusing causation with correlation.

I actually didn't say that, I said the only time I got audited and failed was when I used an accountant, however I realize my style of writing made that unclear. During the time where I received income via a 1099 (and for part of that also had to file from a K-1 briefly for an LLC), I was audited three times in total. Only one time did I "fail", and it was the only time where I had professional assistance. In fact, I found the process of being audited surprisingly kind, the IRS folks involved were very professional and weren't mean about it at all. After my first experience being audited, even though I got the nasty surprise of owing back taxes, I was a lot less fearful of that process. That said, I have never had any understanding of how someone is chosen to be audited, but I have not been selected for an audit since moving to a W-2 for all of my income, which has been quite some time now. The experience of being audited did get me into the habit of storing all my tax related records carefully organized by year long-term, however, which I think is probably a good habit for everyone.

> You disparaging an entire industry without saying what type of tax preparer you used.

My intent isn't to disparage anyone, it's to share my own personal experience. I hired a CPA licensed in the state of Missouri (where I resided at the time) when I previously had a professional handle my taxes.

I have never wanted a touch screen on my laptop. I still don't. Who is this for?

I'm also 0 for 4 on tax preparers / tax accountants, so I concur with you its best to just do it yourself, which is what I now do. Only time I ever got audited (and failed) was when I had employed an accountant, since then I've never had a problem including passing audits. The tax code isn't /that/ complicated for most people's situation, and it's well worth understanding it.

I'm certainly working more now, but in a lot of ways it's to try to stay on top of the sheer amount of bullshit that's being generated within the organization and ensuring that we actually deliver what we promised to our customers. As the famous proverb says "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." and AI is basically a lying-machine.

The amount of critical strategic decisions about everything from product/technical architecture, to roadmap, to UX, that people are basically slopping together at this point in time is shocking. By using AI tools, they are completely divorcing any form of thinking from the decision process, and regressing to an uninspired average which is often not fit for purpose. Fighting the absolute torrent of slop is beyond a full-time job, and unfortunately it's a losing battle. I am not concerned with losing my job because of AI being too good at what I do, I'm concerned with losing my job because AI cripples the economy by producing too much bullshit.

> How about they just don't treat their workers in the Global South as lesser than ones in rich countries, for starters?

When you say "lesser", isn't this just a question of regional pay disparity? Are you saying companies should be obligated to pay the same compensation in every region? Do you know how badly that would destroy the economies in the Global South?

Wow, the maximum salary in the range posted there is 6 Lakhs per year (LPA), which is roughly equivalent to $528 USD a month. So the HIGHEST paid developer is making only $528 USD a month. That's insane. The average salary in Bangalore for a software dev is around 12 LPA, and is often as much as 30 LPA. They're topping out at half of the average. Many Western companies pay >100LPA (equiv to $100k/yr USD) in Bangalore. For reference, eMudhra is headquartered in Bangalore. This isn't just low by international standards, this is very low pay by local standards.

True, but the founder's two sons are at the top of the company, so mission was accomplished regardless.

Really though, this is no different than people relying on accountancy firms in the rest of the world for "trust" and "security" as technology concepts. Accountancy firms have no business consulting on technology topics, and yet that is a major part of their business all over the world, because we've allowed "security" and "compliance" to become muddled concepts.

> I don't think people would choose to fix toilets to survive if they didn't have to

If I hadn't gone into tech, I might have been a plumber. Plumbing is a deeply interesting topic, and it involves a lot of physics and fluid dynamics. Acting like a plumber is a desperate idiot with a wrench is not an accurate take, and is really rude. Also, Master Plumbers who operate their own businesses generally make >$150k/yr.

> I think it's probably a pretty prosocial thing to do, unless I'm missing something

Agreed. I'm in South Texas where we have Aedes mosquitoes that are an invasive species and spread Malaria, Dengue, Zika, and other infections which kill people. I consider disrupting their lifecycle to be an unvarnished good. I carry mosquito dunks in my pocket when I go on walks and toss them into any puddles, drains, storm sewers, and ponds I encounter, and it seems to have helped a lot anecdotally. I care a lot about nature/ecology, but also fuck mosquitoes.

Yes, it's safe to do with lithium ion batteries as long as you use the right potting compound (potting compound isn't just one thing). There are compound specifically designed for battery encapsulation that assist with thermal management and preventing ruptures. As the person you're replying to has already stated, using potting compound to fill in cavities and discourage tampering on electronics is a standard practice.

Depending on your design requirements you can also use different battery chemistries or cell constructions to minimize the need for mechanical venting.

The attack was sophisticated, but Ledger appears to have taken almost zero precautions against hardware attacks, which made this attack simpler and cheaper to pull off. There are very few precautions that would have completely eliminated the possibility of this attack, but it would have been straightforward to make it more expensive, primarily by investing in tamper proofing and tamper evident design. There are several other comments in this thread that go into fair detail about some examples of these techniques.

The lack of security on these devices is shocking as someone who has worked in the hardware security space, but I guess it shouldn't be surprising that this like everything else involving crypto is some sort of elaborate scam done by non-experts and bad actors.

I hate Amazon and I still shop there. It's not about price, I will pay more for a product to buy it directly and not via Amazon /if/ I can find an original. The issue for me is threefold:

1. Discoverability: Many products are so rapidly and thoroughly cloned that it is difficult to impossible to identify the original maker, find their site, and purchase through them. The insane proliferation of counterfeits, clones, and sometimes outright scam products means that Amazon at least gives me an opportunity to buy a clone/counterfeit and return it if its not meeting my expectations. Sometimes the original is notably higher quality but no longer produced/sold, as well. Recently I wanted to buy a Polar Magnetic Pen as a gift. The website is up and the shopping cart works, but checkout is disabled. They're out of stock everywhere. There's hundreds of random worded Chinese clones on Amazon that are 25% of the price and 30% of the quality, so I bought a clone and risked it.

2. Logistical Certainty: I work a lot and have little free time after basic households tasks, other than the weekends. So if I want to do a project or something, I plan it for a following weekend and order things. If I can't order on a Tuesday or Wednesday and /know/ that I will get it by Friday, it's basically pointless. Sometimes I'll just roll the dice, but generally I prefer logistical certainty. I actually have gone back to buying at brick and mortar stores if possible to really cement this (I use Best Buy now a lot more than in the past, although selection is poor). There's a few other online retailers I strictly prefer to Amazon that can also deliver this like B&H Photo.

3. Breadth of Catalog / Access: There's basically nothing I can't acquire via Amazon. If I need, let's say 6 things, to do some sort of hobby project my options are generally either: A) go to 2-4 different stores, either physically and waste a day of my life or online and hope the shipments all arrive in time or B) order on Amazon everything at once delivered as one.

These things are way more important than price. I still hate Amazon PRIMARILY because of commingling of SKUs meaning there's no real quality indicators and I cannot do anything as a consumer to ensure I receive legitimate, actual, quality products. If they hadn't fucked that up, I'd probably still like Amazon despite everything else. I used to love Amazon back in the day, now I hate it, because of how often I've received counterfeits and fraudulent products and the proliferation of Chinese dropshipper fly-by-nights.

Now I just want Flickr to support uploading JXL since I do JXL export as my primary long-term storage format for final images. Would be great if Canon also added JXL support to their photo printer software.