Another commenter in a different thread mentioned wsudo could be a better name and I was thinking the same.
It doesn't really bother me personally either way, but I understand peoples' concern. I didn't mind the wget and curl aliases. I find myself autopilot typing 'ls' in PS quite often and I'm glad they aliased it to 'dir'.
Paranoia isn't the only factor in a purchasing decision. It seems quite clear to me it's a Russian company trying to hide that fact for obvious reasons. I appreciate pnw posting this and making me aware before I decided to send money (indirectly) to Russia.
Even the report mentions the team members moving to Tbilisi, Georgia. Afaik Pavel moved to Dubai and still has Ukrainian citizenship. So I doubt a significant portion of company's money ending up in Russia, maybe except salaries of a few engineers. But it's pennies compared to how much the regime is paid for the resources, if that's what you worry about.
Semantics aside, I think it's quite clear they are trying to mislead by giving the appearance of being an American company. What does their company address show on their website? Delaware.
The report mentioned that their LinkedIn profiles changed from showing Moscow to Tbilisi. I'm sure I could also change my location to Tbilisi on my LinkedIn profile. How is that a meaningful argument? I don't want any amount of my money going to the Russian economy if I can avoid it, even if it's merely pennies as you say.
I'm not sure why you assume malice intentions by default.
Using a legal entity in a more convenient country for a startup seems like a common practice, including listing the address of such entity on the website. You'd be surprised how many companies are incorporated in America, pay taxes there, but have founders/employees/contractors elsewhere around the world.
So, I personally wouldn't count it as active effort of "trying to hide" or "trying to mislead".
> The report mentioned that their LinkedIn profiles changed from showing Moscow to Tbilisi. I'm sure I could also change my location to Tbilisi on my LinkedIn profile. How is that a meaningful argument?
Again, not sure why assume malice intentions. I also updated my Linkedin location when I left Russia, is that surprising?
> Why do you care to defend them so much?
Pavel pays me 15 rubles per comment of course! (tbh not sure why I waste time on this :D)
Thanks for your condescending explanation of corporate practices. I'm sure the typical HN reader is completely ignorant to those facts. Perhaps you could also explain Russian corporate practices and ethics to us all.
Only you are saying anything about malice. Everything is easily explained by greed (or the desire to simply gain if you prefer softer language).
I wasn't aware of a Russia connection until this post. On flipperzero.com near the top it says:
>Our team was originally formed in Neuron Hackspace by collaborating with industrial design and manufacturing experts Design Heroes.
A quick Google search for Neuron Hackspace and Design Heroes shows their location as Moscow. I'm inclined to believe the detailed report from that blog post and am glad I did not end up buying the device.
> I wasn't aware of a Russia connection until this post.
I'm still not aware of it after reading the post. Pointing out that some of the people on the project were members of a hackerspace in Moscow at some point in the past is not remotely sufficient to substantiate that there exists any current connection between the project and Putin's regime.
You refer to the post, but did you read the PDF linked to it? There's a conclusion section that's easy to digest.
As far as a connection to Putin's regime, you should read up the thread and note that nobody here mentioned that. Regardless of their supposed affiliations or lack thereof, I'm not interested in sending money to the Russian economy by purchasing a product from a Russian company. It's that simple. I think others would want to know that same information so thanks to pnw for mentioning it.
You mean like the CEO does work for FSB lives in Moscow supports the Russian war effort and built a service to silence Putin's opposition is not enough? We need to get him shaking hands with someone or cashing a check from FSB for services?
