larrys

"if you are required to return the cartridge"

I'd love to see the exact legal language that even specifies that condition "required to return".

After all we can assume that most people don't do that or actually that those who don't return the cartridge almost certainly suffer no legal jeopardy for that inaction. If you are required to do something by a contract, then you would expect some degree of enforcement when the contract terms haven't been met. My guess is that Lexmark can't show any action they take for cartridges not returned.

I've often noted how companies that sell laser cartridges will give you a free label to UPS the cartridge back to them. They cloak it as "recycling" but it serves two purposes. It gives them a free cartridge to refill but it also takes away a cartridge that could be used by a third party that would a sale from the company.

"Not sure if trying to "trap" the liar is always the right way to go."

Agree almost never the right thing to do. Trapping people makes them dig in their heels typically as opposed to giving them a graceful way to give you what you want. All of this is situation specific of course but as a rule I never call people out on their lies in negotiation.

"Once I had to work with a freelance web master and we were trying to cancel his contract and make him transfer the domain name to us (an association I was working for)."

Honestly, best way to handle this type of things is to go the "scary lawyer letter" route. Try nicely (without threatening) and if that fails get an attorney to write the "scary lawyer letter". At that point the idea of actually getting some money (rather than having to hire an attorney to defend a verbal contract) would seem very attractive. There are other methods that can be employed (UDRP, trademark law) however they are more expensive and depend on the specifics.

There is plenty of merchandise that people buy that they don't need and can do without. Many of the products in the article are just technology variations and extensions of the type of products that sold for years in Sharper Image, Brookstone or Skymall. (Or on infomercials) [1] Just something attractively priced, that if marketed correctly, will find a small or maybe even a large market because it's in front of people and an impulse buy (as opposed to buried on a shelf at a Walmart. Focus people and single out the product in other words.

[1] There was a commercial last year that I watched for a striped screw removal tool. The price was attractive and I thought "hmm you never know when you might need this". I then searched Amazon and found and purchased the most highly rated product of that category (wasn't going to order from an infomercial). I knew this product existed prior to that of course (my Dad used them when I was a kid) but until I saw the infomercial I had no motivation to seek this particular tool out. After seeing the infomercial I wanted one so I bought it. It actually did come in handy when having to pull a stripped screw from a washing machine.

It's good add copy and ranks high on the link-bait scale.

They say after all:

"and then unit and load tested it, all without using any servers."

...with a title of "Microservices without the Servers" when what they mean is

"without provisioning any servers yourself" which is obviously much less attractive.

My curiosity was peaked by the title the title, inserting "w/o provisioning" would have not gotten me anywhere near as interested in the topic.

It would be more accurate to compare someone with an advantage such as Trump had, to people who had the same or similar advantage but never were able to achieve as much "fame and fortune". By the way he could have also gambled away and lost that fortune (and in fact he went bankrupt and came back later on as everyone knows actually).

After all when there is an story about a sports star who is particularly gifted, you don't see other articles talking about that "they are great at basketball because they were born 7 foot tall". Or about Tiger Woods "he is great only because his father took the time to train him from a young age". Credit goes to people who take advantage of what they have. It's obvious that not everyone or close to everyone born with a distinct advantage has achieved notoriety or excelled. Sometimes that is even a negative. I often take issue with Bill Gates being born into advantage myself, but the truth is many people with the same advantage never would have ended up a billionaire so yes credit is due vs. the competition or peers you might say.

No doubt that going to Harvard has helped Gates, PG, Zuckerberg and a host of others. But the truth is most Harvard Grads don't end up where they did so yes they deserve credit and not whining from the less fortunate.

Perhaps greed is the wrong word here. (By the way I am definitely not the morality police that is for sure..I have no problem with people making money practically any way they can)

I think your good judgement was clouded by what you though was an opportunity to make a large sum of money. As such you let your guard down. And ignored common sense.

For example, let's say you are on assignment for the US Government and you have a bunch of secrets in your briefcase. (Or you work for Google, whatever). You go to a bar and a super attractive hot woman (or man) strikes up a conversation with you. You are nowhere near attractive or rich or smart enough to have this women she is a 12 and you can only score 5's and that's if the woman is drunk. (let's hypothesize). So your brain should be saying "danger Will Robinson" [1] but instead it thinks "wow she likes me I'm surprised but hey anything can happen!!!". And the next thing you know she has walked off with your suitcase of secrets. What do they call that? A Honey Pot? Whatever. My point is perhaps greed is the wrong word so what is the word to describe what I am talking about here? After all you knew this was to good to be true and almost certainly not true however you did it anyway.

By the way I don't buy into that whole "to good to be true probably is" line it all depends on the circumstances. However what you did here was clearly someone outsmarted you, they knew paypal better than you did.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danger,_Will_Robinson

"Squatting on domains and making people who want to legitimately use the domains "

Everytime someone trots out that squatter argument they assume that if the person who owned it that wants to sell it "for ill gotten gains" hadn't gotten to the domain first, that it would have been sitting around for them at the point they needed it for their idea. In 2015 or in 2005.

So, for arguments sake, if PG had wanted to use "Yc.com" instead of Ycombinator.com in 2005, the domain yc.com would just be sitting waiting for him to use at a cost of $NOMINAL_OR_AFFORDABLE because NOBODY ELSE would have used it for their "bake sale website".

Your point about paypal is of course correct.

Importantly though in this case the buyer knew the price was to good to be true and his greed got the best of him. Plus the thing to keep in mind is the level to which a company like paypal can protect against fraud. Might be similar to expecting that a dry cleaner should detect a forged clothing ticket perhaps. Or a restaurant should detect that another diner is using your reservation. Doesn't scale very well.

Just so you know the filter that people who own and trade domains is actually much better than even what the OP (and you) are describing. It's actually more like "a 3 letter .com being sold for $5,000" where the 3 letters aren't particularly memorable and the domain might typically be worth $10k. You'd have to be in the business to really know the risk involved.

With domains you have to make sure you know the history of the domain (which takes a bit of research) and additionally most people in the domain business, at least with valuable domains, tend to use escrow.com as an intermediary to make sure there is recourse.

That said another thing to watch out for is buying a domain which has been stolen from someone which does happen. In that case a domain is priced attractively (not to cheap not to expensive) and unloaded quickly before the real owner even knows what has happened. This can happen as a result of a simple hijacking of an email address (of the rightful owner) or by social engineering the registrar. As only two examples. That is much harder to detect and even in the case of using escrow.com you would still be out of the domain once it gets yanked back to the original registrant.

Source of the above: Me, I've been doing this for almost 20 years and get paid to buy names as well as buy on my own account.

You of course are right. Tail between legs is embarrassing but in the end you won't go hungry or homeless.

Problem is in popular culture there are also stories about the 1 out of 1000 guys (just like you) that essentially gambled and came out ahead. Let me say that again. Gambled and won. You hear those all of the time. What you don't hear is about the ones who lost or hit the skids as a result of those chances that they took. Or maybe you do (there are always counter stories floating about) but the shine of the winners typically totally blocks those out.

For example I am sure in response to this thread someone has already mentioned the type of family that Steve Jobs came from.

"PG has a huge incentive to wax heroic about the "risk takers" "makers" and "founders""

To be sure (in the spirt of NY Times "to be sure" statements) [1] PG (who went to Harvard of course as everyone knows) and others always point out the obligatory risks but tend to do so in a way that I think most people perhaps ignore. More or less a "sure it's risky but" as opposed to "you'd be foolish however there's always a small small chance that..."

[1] That is where they (and others in the media) counter something they are saying with the other point of view typically buried 3 quarters down the page as a qualifier.

What I'd like to see is a "Show HN: I built a working core memory".

With a Porsche Macan S (which has terrible gas mileage) I can see a noticeable difference whereby in cold weather temperature (doesn't auto idle much) vs. warm weather I see about 2 mpg difference in city driving. Haven't done any specific calculations but that is what I have been seeing.

I don't disagree with what you are saying and I probably should have not used the word "definition" in that sentence.

However the reason I used "definition" was because what comes to mind with SCOTUS and porn,[1] that is "we know it when we see it" in a sense that it can't really be defined in the traditional sense and probably never will be.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it

The startup scene has it's own definition of startup.

Some, but not necessarily all of the following apply:

1) Younger people

2) Educated (can be self taught)

3) College grads or dropped out of college to do a startup

4) Have more to gain than to lose by participating in a startup. (Little assets, [1] not leaving a traditional job but perhaps going from another "startup")

5) Working primarily with other people's money

6) Has the interest and/or money of "angels" "Vc's" or "incubators".

7) Doing something that could get big and stands a high chance of failure. (In other words, not starting an Italian restaurant that's going to be a single location sauce and cheese place)

8) Located or able to travel and possibly relocate to a place that startups are typically. (Silicon Valley, NYC or the other hubs..)

What am I missing? (Please fill in the other things I am almost certainly forgetting).

[1] Unless they have family money or have done a previous startup where they hit the pay window.

"But in industries with slim margins, you see more cutthroat behavior."

Absolutely. Not to mention in business and industries which are being operated by typically older people who have families and are in fear of losing their job or their business or their house (which is often collateral for loans). It's easy to be a relaxed nice guy if you are a tenured University prof with an office of dusty books. Or a startup guy who has multiple plan b's. [1] A bit harder if you've got outstanding accounts receivable as well as aggravating customers and cutthroat competitors. And the type of run of the mill mediocre people that you typically get to work for you if you are not a "startup".

[1] And let's just put it right on the table here. Anyone who gets a large amount of funding and fails gets their ticket punched and gets another try either working for another startup or perhaps raising for another idea. And actually the larger the failure (and visibility) it's typically good for the next thing someone will do. Edit: Failure in traditional business is failure. It's a negative plain and simple. You end up working for someone in their lackluster business and since you may have lost some of your assets you can't even typically start a new business (and your friends and family are not going to give you an additional money, nor will you be able to get bank loans..)

"As I've written before, one of the things that has surprised me most about startups is how few of the most successful founders are like that. Maybe successful people in other industries are; I don't know; but not startup founders."

I know that "old school" world quite well and have for a long long time. There is a big difference between being, in general, fresh out of school working with your peers of highly motivated and typically educated and skilled people (that you additionally socialize with) vs. being in an environment where you have your own money on the line, no margin for error, and people are constantly doing stupid shit that threatens your livelihood. [1] With all due respect to PG afaik he has never operated in this world. But it is a world that does exist and there is a reason for it as well.

[1] Note I am not talking about the corporate world and obviously goes without saying that there are many people running entrepreneurial companies that aren't like the caricature which PG describes.

Wish I could say but probably not a good idea to give out that info. It was an East Coast team though.

I deal in this industry. It's not always about needing the money or not needing it. It about gambling that the that offer of 1 million actually could be 2 million. You'd be surprised at how even ordinary people think when they get wind that they have something valuable.

Fun Fact: I bought a domain name for a reasonable price off a patent troll company. Was actually one of the easier and most surprising transactions I ever did.

I actually sold a team domain to MLB. They didn't approach through Cahn (and the fact that his name appears is a PR coup for him) but through a corporate registrar iirc was CSC who does some name recovery for big brands.

I think many people are missing perhaps the real issue with appearing on a list like this (even if wrongly accused so to speak). By appearing on the list you raise suspicions and those suspicions could very well cause someone (spouse, girlfriend) to look at what you do more closely. That may or may not matter. It may have to be combined with other solid or sketchy data. This is similar to how police solve some crimes. Some little fact, while insignificant in itself, gets them to focus more closely on a particular individual that they might not have thought much about prior to the insignificant and even incorrect fact that was passed to them. Such as "well I did see a Red Chevy Camaro with Florida plates" or "a guy wearing a University of Michigan sweatshirt"...

The key point:

"Network Solutions gave away perhaps hundreds of thousands of .xyz domain names last year. They weren’t just offered for free; They were placed in customer accounts on an opt-out basis. "

"and poor execution is why they don't"

Luck and timing no doubt play a very important role in addition to simply poor execution. Also even excellent execution doesn't take into account how the market will respond to what you are making or trying to sell which can't always be determined prior to actually going through the motions.

Yeah but actually would have been better if they had registered the domain some time ago,let it bake for some time, and then put up the shutdown page and watch as HN commenters questions but took them somewhat seriously.

Could also be security cameras in addition to what others mentioned.

Failing to see at $3 delivery charge how anyone can afford to do these deliveries with wear and tear on a car and so on.

"look at all of the fancy marketing they've done"

They are trying to be Apple even the design seems close to what Apple might do at least to my eye. The thing is Apple does this and gets business because there was a core of important and vital products and software that got people using Apple for a different reason. So if I buy (as I have) Apple's Airport extreme it's because I am buying other Apple products. I can't say if that weren't the case that would be what I would go with. (I mean I might but since I am already buying the brand I am biased and just go for the IBM choice so to speak...).

My point is that a company can't simply take a product here and a product there and hope to have great success with just a great isolated device for a particular purpose.

Which means that since google is not stupid they must be doing this for another reason (as others have mentioned). They aren't doing it because they honestly expect and need to sell routers and make money from that or even another play that they are building on that we don't know about. Must be something else going on here.

Lastly, end users in flyover country don't care about all of this unless they know about or have a particular problem. And how many people even have these problems? (I don't as only one example..) If they did they would be protesting outside of cable companies and demanding better remote controls for their fios or comcast dvr's.

They use 20 years and in the past I have heard that the average time for home ownership is typically 7 years. I don't know the true figure today (wasn't able to find it when I just searched) but for most people a 20 year payback is way to long and I would imagine this certainly contributed to lack of adoption of solar in addition to other factors obviously.

Edit: Note this: https://www.google.com/get/sunroof/faq/#financial-considerat...

The above, even if true, ignores the fact that if you love what you do (whether it be business or programming) not working or being involved is simply not as nice a life for certain types of people.

Working toward and earning what you eventually end up is way more satisfying than simply being passive and finding yourself in later years with the same amount or more money. Of course I can see how someone who doesn't understand the love that someone has for what they do saying that.

Exactly. Also having that family meant he could take risks that others couldn't simply because he knew the family would bail him out (personally, not the company) if things didn't work out.

About his family, at least according to Phil Greenspun

http://philip.greenspun.com/bg/