Hacker News Reader

tdm911on A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter

I was under the impression that if it re-lists itself then it will always list at the same price - $2500.

tdm911on The most hilarious "Amazon shut off our API access" email ever.

Here's the source of the blog post, from the company forum:

http://www.collectorz.com/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=15...

tdm911on Helium.js - discover unused CSS on your site

Aussie band Gerling had a song called 'dust me selecta' - i wonder if one served as inspiration for the other?

tdm911on HN long term change

I believe it's just the text formatting gone awry. They are:

ask hn (ask hacker news) and ask yc (ask Y Combinator).

ask yc was obviously more popular in the early days.

tdm911on Ask HN: Why doesn't nasa.gov get its url to work?

I think that's your browser adding the www in. Try it in Internet Explorer or try pinging nasa.gov

tdm911on Ask HN: Why doesn't nasa.gov get its url to work?

Although a smaller scale, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology has the same problem. bom.gov.au doesn't resolve to anything.

For what it's worth, Firefox will change nasa.gov to www.nasa.gov.au but won't do the same for bom.gov.au. Internet Explorer won't do this at all.

tdm911on The risks of "$15 for $2097 worth of mobile internet"

This reminds of me how Three Mobile in Australia drops back to Telstra when roaming. This is by default and the user is none the wiser (unless they had the knowledge to turn off roaming).

I think every person I know who has a Three phone used an amount of data in their first month whilst roaming and had a $100+ excess usage charge (often much higher).

I'm sure it's all spelled out to them upon purchasing, but it's not clear and your average user has no idea what roaming is.

tdm911on Why the HTML5 ‘Video’ Element Is Effectively Unusable

It's not the video and audio aspects of flash he is concerned about, it's the automatic loading and playing of content with flash that is annoying. Audio and video that doesn't load until you ask for it is perfectly acceptable.

tdm911on Octopuses Carry Coconuts as Instant Shelters

Whilst this is amazing to watch, I have to admit I didn't even know that Octopuses could walk around on their tentacles like they do in the video.

tdm911on View all the letters of Vincent Van Gogh

along a similar line, i have enjoyed 'letters of note', a blog of famous and noteworthy correspondence.

http://www.lettersofnote.com/

tdm911on PieGuy - fully cached iPhone webapp game

Installing it merely puts a shortcut to the website containing the game on your iPhone home screen.

If you change your user agent to iPhone and go to http://mrgan.com/pieguy/ on your browser I assume you could play it on your desktop.

tdm911on Wakemate (YC S09) helps you kiss groggy mornings goodbye

I pre-ordered one and i'm in Australia. I figured $5 was worth the risk to see if they will ship it to me.

edit: and had i opened my eyes i would have seen the free shipping worldwide!

tdm911on The Ecommerce Scam

Could search technology improve this process?

I'm assuming that's where he is going. From his twitter bio: Currently co-founding an ecommerce search company.

tdm911on Ask HN: What small problems do you face frequently?

www.warrantyelephant.com is a site designed to solve your warranty problem. Won't help with the others though.

tdm911on [dead]

Google translate: http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?hl=en&...

tdm911on iStoleYourStartup: A story of an iPhone Company Con Man

"he paid $300 for a manual on how to make money on Twitter and gave it to me"

I'm assuming that's how to make money on twitter. Sell books on how to make money on twitter for $300!

tdm911on Ask HN: What music alters your state of consciousness?

Two of my favourites as well. AIR are the perfect 'background music' and i don't get distracted by their lyrics. The Donnie Darko soundtrack is moody and atmospheric.

Also, anything by Sigur Rós. Not because they are a great band, but because they don't sing in English (or Icelandic a lot of the time). I find their music isn't distracting and really enthuses me.

tdm911on Ask HN: How to master the Art of Selling

Love your product and know EVERY single facet of it. There is no better selling technique than knowledge and enthusiasm.

Personally, I've never been able to reliably see a product I don't have a passion for. Maybe this makes me a bad salesman, but I know I've had a lot of success over the years selling what I love and have never had to resort to sales 'tactics' or otherwise.

tdm911on Ask HN: Looking for a specific story about defeating hackers

also: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001125.html

tdm911on Why Email isn't Dying

the biggest reason i believe email is not going anywhere is because it is entrenched in corporate life. enterprise moves slowly and to move from email to another system would take longer than it took them to embrace email in the first place (i.e. decades).

tdm911on TheFacebook: Stunning Numbers (May 2005)

Absolutely, I was under the impression that they had for the first time.

Also, were they really making enough money in 2005 for it to be described as 'gazillions'?

tdm911on TheFacebook: Stunning Numbers (May 2005)

Oh yeah, and they are already making gazillions of dollars and are profitable.

Didn't Facebook only achieve profitability a month or so ago? Or have I missed something?

tdm911on Poll: What is your primary *nix distro on your home machine?

Are they all physical machines? Or VM's? Surely you could virtualise all of these on 1-3 physical hosts?

tdm911on “I made the first animated ‘under construction’ icon”

Heh, I ran a Red Alert fan page back in the day too! :)

It was a Geocities page and had one of those massive long URL's and may have even used an animated gif or too also!

tdm911on Dropbox Acquires The Domain Everyone Thought It Had: Dropbox.com

I frequently see users type www.microsoft.com or similar into Google. I think people see Google as their address bar, as generally it's set as the home page.

Asking a user what the address in the address box/bar is often ends with a blank expression on their face!

tdm911on Apple challenges new Woolworths logo

Until I read this I had never even realised that the Woolworths logo was in the shape of an apple, and they are my local supermarket.

tdm911on The startup culture at Posterous

I'm the opposite, I had been pronouncing it correctly, but thinking the whole time i was incorrect and it was supposed to start with the sound post!

tdm911on Ask HN: What is Y Combinator's 'anti-portfolio' like

I assume the OP is looking for startups that applied to YC and were not accepted and then went on to success afterwards.

tdm911on Inventing Demand

I noticed that too! A great Aussie success story brings us all out! :)

tdm911on Inventing Demand

As an example of Steve's commitment to Rentoid, he lists his mobile phone number on the site and actively encourages people to call it. He's had calls at all times of the day and night, however the feedback he gets from his customers through this is second to none. He also gets the opportunity to convert an unhappy customer into a happy one instantly. The phone is still a powerful medium, especially in businesses where trust is paramount.