skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The answer is to restructure the debt, every single one of those companies deals with failures and no-pays on a daily basis.

a) Most lawyers, especially extending credit terms in the startup field, will carry over that debt with interest for years. Call and state your case, make it clear it's no-pay right now either way, but you want to fulfill your obligation in the further - say start making payments in 12 months.

b) RackSpace - you owe personally or through corporation? If personal, call them and have the same conversation - speak with a manager and ask for payment terms outside of normal, otherwise you have to default. If corporate consider folding and walking away, corporate protection is there for a reason and even though it's not a stand-up thing to do, Rackspace's world is littered with bankrupt startups.

c) Visa & MC may be your big problem, getting blacklisted from merchant accounts isn't the end of the world but certainly something to avoid. Also nearly impossible to reach a human that can make decisions on terms. For a startup they should have a 20% merchant reserve on your account anyways, how far does that take you?

Bottom line, think 6 - 12 month terms instead of 12 day terms.

No reason at all you can't get there with the right amount of sucking it up and pleading your case.
I just assumed that the rubber was supposed to come off after about a month of use, since it happens so regularly.
I was talking more about TV than video games, actually. I don't know where everybody got the video games idea from.

Also I was talking in the six-to-eleven-year-old age group.
First of all, thanks for all the great comments back. I had hoped to get this sort of input and since I have been involved with HN, I had failed to get a sense of what the informal tone and etiquette truly is. I think you all have enlightened me a bit here.
As for dfhrtjhf's question above: I just care because I love many of the contributions of HNers I read here every week and I want to contribute something back to this community for that very reason. Does that answer your question?
If it's a real story, maybe. It's the Sun, after all - for it and the Daily Mail, I'd want independent corroboration if they said the sun rose in the East that morning.

For this story covering a remarkable string of thefts over four years? This Sun article is the only source being repeated by others in a few quick searches.
Hey! I've written to a deadline before; sometimes it works too. At least at first.
That could be an idea for a webapp. Anybody who volunteers for beta-testing MVP, receives a notification when a new project matches at least of of his criteria. Feedback would be integrated as well. Who's in for this?
Every company has engineers who obsess over every tiny design detail. The trick is having a management structure that allows the good ideas to flourish without getting swamped by all the impractical or unhelpful ideas.

This is an incredibly difficult problem which is itself composed of several incredibly difficult problems (related to corporate culture, hiring, promotions, process, etc, etc.) The difficulty of this is easy to see when you compare the fit and finish of the average piece of software or hardware on the market, for example. Most are just agglomerations of feature-sets that have been whacked with a mallet until they fit together roughly and hit with a bit of sandpaper to take off a few of the biggest splinters and sharp corners.
I don't think this is quite what the author was getting at. It's kind of a separate issue. Obviously all code is written for some end-user in the end, but this piece was about how the code is written, not what it does. When he says "who are you writing code for?", he means, who is going to read it?

Customers don't read your code.
I highly recommend the "2600 Programming For Newbies". I worked through it a few years back and loved it.

Word of warning, though - 2600 programming is particularly tricky, because you only have a couple of screen buffers, and each is a byte. So when changing the background, you have to keep track of where the electron gun is and write things at the right time if you want the left and right side of the screen to be different :)
I suspect that "HN is not turning into Reddit, but..." is the new "HN is turning into Reddit". :-)

(EDIT: This wasn't meant as a diss... it's just that people know by now that saying "HN is becoming Reddit" is a no-no, it's even listed in the guidelines. So whoever has complaints or concerns about the site, often wants to make it clear that they are not playing the HN-is-Reddit card.)
Is there any way you can turn your experience with evil people defrauding your credit card merchant account into something that you can build a startup on or consult with? Or was it just a minor avoidable error that balooned out of control and that other people aren't likely to have trouble with?

How did the fraud occur? Who did it, where were they, and what did they do technically to steal from you?
Ask HN: Can we do something to help HN grow properly?
This morning on my blog I suggested the idea of potential HN Redesign but everyone hated the idea (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1723528) that really surprised me. Maybe I used wrong terms and words on my blog. HN News is my favorite community and I don't want to end up like Digg and my point was HN is growing community and we should help it grow properly.

Do you think that we need to change something in order to improve HN?
My advice would have been to reinvent the wheel. Yeah it might not add to anything useful but there is an off chance it could. The reason why reinventing the wheel is good is that you have direction as to what you should implement. Trying to do something new all the time isn't possible.

I used to build tic tac toe games It was never complete or useful but it helped me learn the tech I was using. Now days creating a blog engine is my new tic tac toe.
The definition of literally has changed over time. Now a commonly accepted definition is:
"used for emphasis: used with figurative expressions to add emphasis"

So "literally" is one of the few words that keeps its traditional meaning and means the opposite as well (like "bad" :-))
It's a C-Corp. (Edited: made an error and said S-Corp earlier) I'm not 100% familiar with bankruptcy, but I'm assuming it'd damage my name as well as my co-founder's, as well as going into stuff I don't want to get into (court, etc.)

Rather have a way to pay back this $6k.
negotiate with all of those companies to lower the total, then get one of those 0% apr for 9-12 months.

Use the checks they give you, to pay down your debt.

This way you'll be down to 4-5K and you won't pay any interest on it for a year...which should give you plenty of time to get back on your feet
Interesting. From Wikipedia:

> Windows Phone 7 features a version of Internet Explorer Mobile with a rendering engine that is "halfway between IE7 and IE8"[32].

I think this will be the first smartphone that isn't HTML5 capable. Incredible.
All a computer can do is mathematics * . This is essentially axiomatic: the term "algorithm" is loosely defined as "what a computer can do."

If you think your software is doing anything else, you're looking at an abstraction on top of something mathematical.

* - OK, OK, they can also generate heat, RF, and other byproducts. Those things have little to do with software.
Don't get me wrong, customers are of paramount importance to every business; And in the startup / small business world, the programer is often directly building things for them, but that is not the role of a programer, and that is what I chose to focus on in this specific blog post.

The roles you describe are more often associated with Product and Program management; They are important, and in a startup, even where I work at Cloudkick, the roles all bleed together, but they are fundamentally different.

I'll close the comment with a quote from Office Space:

I'm a people person. I deal with the
customers so the engineers don't have
to. Don't you get that? What the hell
is wrong with you people!
Your'e wrong. My point is there's no such thing as half a person or 1/6 of a person. The birth process might be half-way through, but that doesn't mean 1/2 a man (or a baby) is born. It means a baby is half way through in the birth process.

When you say half a person is born, "born" implies the birth process has finished and we ended up with half a baby. And that doesn't make any sense.
Dress The Cake - Play Dress The Cake online from y3 Games club
Create the cutest cake ever!
Great point. It gives me an idea: you could turn it on its head and make the subscription price the main feature. $200/month allows you access to the super-exclusive social network. ;)
Ew, Please no.

You may take our Java, but you will never take our ARM!
I had a client who racked up an $18,000 bill with RackSpace, a debt which needed to be restructured. I think it took a year to negotiate, but eventually Rackspace let them go with just a $3,000 payment. So talk to Rackspace. Explain the situation. You might be able to talk them down.
Idea: Only have the "submit" link (or even the "threads" link) on the "new" page. It won't get everyone reviewing new all of a sudden but undoubtedly headlines will catch people's eyes en route and perhaps encourage people to pay more attention to it.

(Update: On reflection, reducing usability might not be a great way to go. Typically that's a better way to reduce bad behavior than to encourage good..)
The whole point of an LLC is to have limited liability. If you haven't been involved in any fraud or misrepresentation, nobody can go after your assets except in some very specific cases.

You need to speak with your lawyer, or do a little research.
Zed Shaw is teaching two four-week Python classes (online)
Sorry, I never said that it couldn't, but I didn't explain what I was trying to say very well either.

Yes, there can be runtime compilation in Java like compilation of JSPs (for example). With Tomcat, Tomcat uses (or used to use- I'm getting old) classes in tools.jar, etc. which uses the JVM to compile and put in the work/... directory which it then loads via classloader, etc. etc. and interprets the bytecode it compiled it into into memory, etc. etc.

I was trying to explain to someone that might want to learn about what is going on with Ruby and Rubinus that unlike the Java JVM whose purpose most of the time at runtime is running precompiled bytecode, Rubinus, MRI, etc. are more often compiling at runtime than Java (at least until Java 7 with JRuby, etc. at which point I'll be completely lost, because I will need to understand how that works).

When I think of a VM in the Java sense from that background, I still think "MOSTLY (and thank you for clarifying) running compiled classes at runtime". I just didn't want the OP to be confused about that, and in process now I probably look like a total dumbass.
The computer helps my boys to read. I have an 8 year old who's desire to read stemmed from his wanting to be able to play online games like Club Penguin. He needed to read the instructions. The same is true for the Leapster video game console and the Nintendo DS.

Now he reads all the time. Has complete the Percy Jackson series, read several of the Harry Potter books cover to cover, etc.

His younger brothers are readers, but not like he is. I think it is in part because their older brother showed them how to play the games.

Then again, it is likely that my kids are somewhat self-directed learners like I am.

Still, I don't think technology should be vilified as an obstacle to reading. Especially interactive technology.
Sell your car?
I would suggest that you choose the language that will stretch your brain the most. If you use this heuristic, don't completely ignore other obvious factors like practicality, availability on your platform, etc. But I think stretching your brain should be high up on the list. For me, this meant Haskell.
How to handle getting a "no"
Legalese is way too confusing to qualify as non-ambiguous. I doubt most lawyers really understand what they're saying.
Said it better than I did!
While we're on the topic of attention to detail, the name of the operating system is "OS X" -- not "OSX".
YouTube Instant Creator Accepts YouTube Job Offer and Stays in School
If you did everything right, all your debt should be under the company's name, not yourself personally.

Therefore, you're fine. The company can't pay. That's called bankruptcy. Creditors are pros too, they should be used to it.
I'm surprised this never occurred to me. K-12 education is mostly the same stuff every year, and it's not that sophisticated. You'd pretty much only have to compile it once. I'm surprised nobody in the free software or creative commons movements thought of it.
It is in rackspace's own interest that you pay off, by sending the bill to the debt collectors they're going to end up with less than if you strike a deal with them, especially if the debt collection process forces you in to bankruptcy.

In whose name is the rackspace account? Corporate? Private? Are you incorporated?

Basically what you have to do is to come to an agreement where you contractually agree to pay them an X amount per month + some interest on the outstanding balance.

Make it clear to them that if they go the debt collection route that they will likely get nothing at all but that if they will come to an agreement with you that they have your word (for what that's worth) to make up for the hole.

How did it get this far?

I'm sorry to hear about the credit card fraud, every time someone here says they'll do their own processing I keep hammering on that, so I'll use the occasion to do it once again: Please do not do your own processing, use an IPSP that has very thorough fraud controls and scrubbing in place or you are very likely to get burned.

As for your lawyers fees, it sounds to me like he'll have to give you a discount.

Your co-founder being 'unreachable' is not very nice, in for the good times together, in for the bad times together, let's hope he turns up and will shoulder his part of the problem.

Kudos for not going incommunicado like your co-founder.
Compact, Reliable, Efficient
1) Try to buy time. Debt collectors will work with you.
2) Restructure as aresant said.
3) Set up payment plans with the people. Even if you owe $10,000, telling them you're broke and sending $50/month until you find more money usually will get them off your back. It shows you're serious about paying and is a good faith sort of thing.
4) If all else fails, remember, it could be worse. Having bad credit sucks, but isn't the end of the world. Protect it if you can, but your life isn't over if your credit gets screwed. Trust me on this one.
I'm not sure where the dividing line is between "has changed its meaning" and "is commonly misused", but I'm pretty sure that "literally" is still on the commonly-misused side of things.

Very few words come to mean their exact opposites via misuse. (I am assured that "bad" meant "good" in some brief period of the 80s in which I was too young to know the cool slang, but it wasn't because people were confused about which meant which.)
You should edit your post if you can to mention that its a C-Corp. From what I know the C-Corp should be protecting you from personal liability, but I'm sure other commenters here have more expertise
Full disclosure: I have no professional/ financial affiliation with Codelesson, though I am friends with one of its founders.

Posted this since I've seen so much praise for Zed's Python book here on HN.
I'm on a team that is writing documentation for developers to mitigate the OWASP Top 10 and CWE 25. You'd be surprised how many intelligent, bright developers think that because their code is behind the firewall it is safe and acceptable to leave those kinds of holes wide open.
1. even if a company does business as an LLC or C corp, etc. if there wasn't much in assets when it was started (like cash), your corporate entity probably doesn't holdup;

2. most likely, you signed a contract with Rackspace personally right?

3. as for the merchant/credit card account - most require a personal guarantee anyway

So, first of all - I am sure your lawyer will defer or write off a bunch of that bill - happens all the time, especially if you have already paid a number of previous bills.

Rackspace is probably doing what most creditors do - acting as aggressively as possible. If they turn it over to collection, they are already looking at a huge writeoff (collection agencies get a nice percentage of whatever they collect and usually also have authority to write down the debt substantially in offers in compromise). So when push comes to shove, if you offer them a payment plan, I bet they will go for it or at least counter offer. Offer them $1,000 now, and $500 a month for 10 months say - that's full payment of the account. If you feel lucky, offer $3K, $1K now and $500 a month for 4 months.

The credit card account is going to be sticky - because unlike rackspace who made a profit margin on the $6K you owe, the credit card company has probably already refunded the $$ to cardholders that it "paid" to you - the fact that you describe it as "huge" doesn't help - I would assume it may be the majority of all payments advanced to you by the merchant provider. Again, you can probably propose a payment plan which has a good likelihood of being accepted.

Good luck.
It's no big deal.
If you don't have the money you don't have the money...
I had a similar situation at my first startup where I was on the hook for $36,000... not $9k. And everything worked out fine. You will have to restructure the debt and it will probably nick your credit but that's not the end of the world.

I will comment though that people are often confused about forming companies to prevent personal liability. If you are the only person on the books for the company, you're still on the hook for everything, whether you've got an LLC, C-Corp, S-Corp, etc.
it just goes to show the stupidity of the market. ARM takeover was speculated for months. Now that someone with a lot of cash actually mentions that they want "chip companies" the market goes crazy and pushes up it's first choice even more. Nevermind that buying ARMH makes zero sense for ORCL. Though stranger M&As has happened...

Edit: though judging by today's jump MIPS and AMD seem more of a choice
Sometimes hearing "No" is better than some of the alternatives: http://voltagecreative.com/editorials/no-means-thank-you/
Thank you very much. What's more is that I'm quite well known on Hacker News—not as much as patio11 to have an article written about him, but enough that a good amount of people I meet that read Hacker News say that they know me.

Which makes it more stinging and 500% more embarrassing. But that makes it all the more interesting, huh?

It's interesting. I licensed my technology as an SP to be used with this company, so all of the IP is mostly, well, mine. I have thought about it, but haven't reached a decision.
Investors seem to prefer bonds at 1% to stock dividends at 2.5%...?
It is usually an Ask HN post. see samples

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8...
Even the 1.1 version of the front page has the "an environment for Ruby" bit high-up, with no reference to it being an implementation until 1500-ish pixels down the page. Admittedly, only people familiar with what Rubinius is are likely to want/need to use Rubinius so far.
"Your'e wrong."

Best contribution to the pedantry discussion so far.

I contend that if a given baby is eighteen inches long, then in a period of time when three inches of that baby exits the appropriate orifice we have witnessed the birth of one sixth of a baby. Put six of those together and you have a whole baby.
I'd characterize these posts as "Last year, Perl developers and users debated the relative merits of backwards compatibility vs. innovation". All of the participants care about backwards compatibility, just to differing degrees. Keep in mind, Perl had just had its first major release in 5 years, and was starting to have more frequent major releases; there's been lots of discussion of how Perl should evolve.

Another long thread discussing the same question: http://use.perl.org/~educated_foo/journal/38525
Apple has an architecture license for ARM, so they don't really care what happens to ARM the company. It could shutdown tomorrow and that would not impact future iPhones in any way.
If it's an S-Corp then you are protected personally - you don't necessarily need to file bankruptcy but I also wouldn't pour anymore of your money into it if it is jeopardizing your personal finances. Talk to the vendors, explain the situation and then talk to your co-founder and come up with a plan to pay it off through the company (consulting, selling assets, etc)
Stop Worrying Start Coding
You should also have a look at SpiderOak as a possibility if security is a big concern. Their emphasis on comprehensive data encryption is one of their main selling points.

They have a free 2GB plan as well.
Of course, the article doesn't say anything new, and admits this right at the start.

But I thought it conveyed its content in an interesting way. Articles such as these IMO convey more than just objective information. You imbibe a subjective component as well from such things as the language, analogies and quotations used. There's a difference between saying,

"Fundamentals are really, really important."

and quoting someone accomplished in his field as saying,

"Faithfulness to the fundamentals is something that becomes second nature to a professional."

The latter conveys a certain mindset, an attitude that the former doesn't, and this has real value.
Consider yourself lucky that you can submit your own articles to HN. My blog got banned from HN, but I gave PG my word that I wouldn't submit my own articles and so he unbanned me.

Submit on a Saturday.
I'm a late joiner into the Minecraft obsession, having only downloaded it last week. I can honestly say it's one of the most fun games i've played in a long time. I'm not your average "gamer", but i'm a sucker for anything puzzle related, and Minecraft brings out the kid in me that loved Lego, Meccano, etc. It's just a simple, innocent little game that lets you go wild with your imagination and build all sorts of crazy contraptions and creations without needing to "dedicate" yourself to it as with most modern games. Very easy to pick up even if you don't play games often too.

I compare the feeling of playing this to that old DOS game "The Incredible Machine", but mixed in with some mining/resource-collection, crafting/construction, and the all-too-popular-lately retro 8-bit graphics.
I have a pair of Etymotic ER4P's.
http://www.etymotic.com/ephp/er4.aspx

They are truly reference-class equipment. (My Brain-Age2 word-discrimination score would jump a whopping amount just by using those!) I don't use them unless I'm on a plane, though. In-ear is just too much effort/overhead for me.

These Sennheisers had decent sound and folded up to fit in a dandy little case. However, my girlfriend at the time told me that they look so dorky, she didn't want to be seen in public with me wearing them.
http://amzn.com/B001NZ8PHQ

Then I told her that there's even better sounding headphones (non-iPhone) in the same price range that look even dorkier. She didn't believe me until I sent her the link.
http://amzn.com/B00001P4ZH

Apple needs to solve the headphone/headset design problem!
Here http://stefan.arentz.ca/stuff/A_Digital_Media_Primer_For_Gee...

Recoded the 720p version with Miro Converter. It is a 27MB file. Plays well on the iPad, iPhone or in Safari.
Trying Tim Ferriss's "no grain" diet for 30 days...
It is worth noting that, as evidenced by the fact that (e.g.) Toshiba still sells plenty of computers, many customers really don't care that much about design details. No doubt there are many who do, and no doubt there is a third group that vacillates back and forth depending upon what seems trendy that year or what their friends have or whatever.