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inertial | 7 years ago | on: Family finds hidden camera livestreaming from their Airbnb in Ireland

Airbnb says "The safety and privacy of our community -- both online and offline -- is our priority [1]"

[1] Contradicts the experience of the guest : "They still didn't seem to grasp the seriousness of the issue. They were treating it like a canceled booking," Nealie Barker said. Ultimately, Airbnb's trust and safety team promised to conduct an investigation, and it temporarily suspended the listing. ... After she got through to them two weeks later, the company told her that the host had been "exonerated," and the listing reinstated. It was only after she posted about the incident on Facebook and local New Zealand news stations reported her experience that the host was permanently banned, she said.

inertial | 7 years ago | on: Am I Happy At Work? Analyzing my entire career

What's the trick to be happy & joyous (without any strings attached) ? How does one train the mind to not be achievement driven (especially if you are on HN everyday) ?

Can anyone recommend a course or a book to achieve that ? Something that makes you happy naturally (not forced).

inertial | 7 years ago | on: Ask HN: Reasons to stay in Software Engineering

> After all it's "just" software. Besides yourself, nobody really cares how you solved the problem.

More that once I've come across such crossroads, and the answer for me is:

(i) Find a niche in which you can excel, master your domain and then people will "care".

OR

(ii) Don't worry about how others perceive you as long as you are having fun along the journey. Find a way to stay happy.

inertial | 7 years ago | on: Stripe Atlas for LLCs

There are many countries where Stripe etc. aren't available. Starting an LLC in USA is an easy route to get that going albeit at additional compliance cost (e.g. filing informational returns). The article above clarifies that a foreign owned LLC with no income connected with US doesn't have to pay taxes in US. They just have to pay tax in their home country. It makes it more appealing & easier to start an LLC.

inertial | 7 years ago | on: Stripe Atlas for LLCs

Relevant for non-residents / foreign owned LLC :

https://onlinetaxman.com/us-llc-tax-haven-for-foreigners/

If you don’t have a dependent agent that substantially furthers your business in the US and don’t have an office in the US, you are not subject to US tax. Even if the LLC generates income in the US, the income is not taxed in the US.

Furthermore, if you reside in a country with an applicable tax treaty with the US, then you would not be subject to US tax. Since you reside in your tax home, you can claim you operate a “permanent establishment” (e.g., an office or other fixed place of business) in your home country.

inertial | 7 years ago | on: Credit card fraud warning signs

The bad part of credit card fraud is that the card network, issuing bank & gateways pass on the liability to the small merchant. There is always a looming risk of losing your account & business due to excessive fraud, something over which you have no control at times. If you become over aggressive with fraud protection, you risk not only losing revenue but pissing off genuine customers.

Your gateway would tell you that as a merchant, it's your job & responsibility to accept a charge & related risk of fraud. Well, if big guys handling billions of payments can't catch fraud, it's quite easy for a small guy to miss it as well.

When you are selling a digital product, it's very difficult to win a chargeback. Some low level bank employee hardly cares about your meticulous documentation & proof that you delivered the product.

3D secure is one way to shift liability to issuing bank but it only works for the first charge (not recurring subscription). There are lots of reasons for getting hit by incorrect chargebacks e.g. mistake on part of a customer because they didn't recognize, customer's card getting stolen midway during a subscription, unhappy customer who wants a refund after using your service for months etc.

I wish the industry would side with the merchant as well at times i.e. maybe a rating system to see how easy is the merchant's cancellation / refund policy etc.

inertial | 8 years ago | on: Stripe Billing

Awesome job on making it easy to add usage based plans. I've found Stripe's customer service to be a notch above the rest.

Request to folks at Stripe ( @pc / @tarstarr ) : Please do something to protect small business owners against fraudulent payments (i.e. with stolen cards). Even if they follow all recommended practices by Stripe, it's very likely that there are a handful of stolen cards that will fly under the radar and hit them negatively.

I'd say if the merchant is not at fault due to a stolen card being used on their site, they should not get penalized for it. The chargeback fee is one thing, the worse part is the dispute rate going up. This threatens the existence of any business if their account is suspended by Stripe.

inertial | 8 years ago | on: One of Estonia's first "e-residents" explains what it means

- Are there any good (easy to use) payment processors available in Estonia (like Stripe) ?

- Is your startup governed by specific laws for data privacy etc.

- What about legal disputes, arbitration. How does that work for startups based out of Estonia ?

inertial | 8 years ago | on: Working on an iPad Pro as my main computer

I've been searching for a light & thin computing device for intermittent travel needs where I can

- use SSH

- edit & run code (i.e. python / JS etc.)

- preferable running Ubuntu

- form factor of iPad or iPad Pro

- multitask with browser, terminal and editor

Your article is the closest thing I've found so far. The list of tools that you use are also useful, thank you !

If it had Ubuntu, it would have been a perfect solution for me.

inertial | 8 years ago | on: Why social media bosses don’t use social media

It sounds fairly reasonable to me. You design a cool app but it evolves into something much more than what you envisioned. You are still passionate about it but it doesn't mean that you have to be a compulsive user. Same story with several employees / key executives. There are there to perform a role, maybe manage engineering, run finance etc. They really don't need to be immersed in the app to do that, neither should they be expected to.
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