12 ms·

Show HN: Hacker News' “most unique support email of 2014”

401 points by striking 12y ago

(TL;DR: http://i.imgur.com/LuPHqiN.png) While digging around in drawers that hadn't been touched for decades, I found a wonderful piece of history. The Palm Treo 600 [1] was the Mercedes-Benz of the cellphone 10 years ago, and I was lucky enough to rediscover one.[2] So I decided to restore it to working order, slapping in a T-Mobile SIM[3] and a fresh battery. It worked! It could browse the Internet[4], send/receive text messages[5], make phone calls...[6] The onboard browser even passed Acid1[7,8] and could do some level of JavaScript![9] Unfortunately, most websites were a little heavy on this poor thing's CPU. One site that I knew wasn't heavy was Hacker News! Unfortunately again, it didn't work. It "didn't work" in an odd way, though: it raised a "Communication Error" that would never occur on other pages, just Hacker News. So I did what any inquisitive individual would do: record a video, and ask HN support! This is what I sent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nqn-EmU5KPw This is what they got back to me with: http://i.imgur.com/LuPHqiN.png I am truly honored to accept this award. I'd like to thank Palm, for making such an incredible phone (10 days of battery life!), as well as the Academy. And also my parents. And you, dear reader. Thank you so much! PS: kogir :) PPS: I've always wanted to do some teardowns of old device UIs and see what our mobile device forefathers thought up. I have a couple of really cool archeological finds that I could share. [1]:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treo_600 (gallery of 2-6,8-9 here: http://imgur.com/a/Gu70R) [2]:http://i.imgur.com/xVdpUST.jpg [3]:http://i.imgur.com/2Yy8fkM.jpg [4]:http://i.imgur.com/nZ7GwC1.jpg [5]:http://i.imgur.com/OJuZmh3.jpg [6]:http://i.imgur.com/z9mNkHt.jpg [7]:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid1 [8]:http://i.imgur.com/9VKcxlY.jpg [9]:http://i.imgur.com/5KeI9TI.jpg

drdeca 12y ago
Out of curiosity, have you tried viewing a static page with the same content as HN, and checking whether it has that error? Very interesting, and congratulations on your award!
Chanie 12y ago
Ha! this is great! Congratulations on your award ;)
leesalminen 12y ago
My gut says that they've disabled SSL v2/v3, and that the device does not support TLS.
- kogir 12y ago
  I'd love to see the results from visiting the Qualys SSL Client Test: https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/viewMyClient.html https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/viewMyClient.html I imagine the issue is that we only support TLS 1.0+ and not SSLv2 or SSLv3. https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=news.ycombinator.com https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=news.ycombina...
  - yuhong 12y ago
    I just tried it using IE6 with TLS 1.0 disabled and it does not load at all. If you watch the video carefully you will see the certificate errors that comes from the device having such an old certificate store too (in the case of google.com they now use GeoTrust with a cross certificate to Equifax). And I doubt the device support SHA256 certificates either. The device might not support the 3DES cipher suite either (as it was relatively slow compared to RC4) and many sites have disabled RC4.
- Animats 12y ago
  Security Theater Everywhere strikes again. Unless you're logged in and entering data, Hacker News does not need SSL.
  - geofft 12y ago
    So I should take it that you're OK with every country's intelligence agency modifying links on HN for their citizens, redirecting crypto downloads to trojaned pages for specific users, suppressing links that are overly critical of the government, right?
    - Animats 12y ago
      Protection against changes should be done with subresource integrity hashes (http://www.w3.org/TR/SRI/ http://www.w3.org/TR/SRI/). With HTTPS, an observer still knows who you're talking to, and since they can see how big the request and reply are, they can probably guess what you're looking at.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
hyp0 12y ago
> TL;DR http://i.imgur.com/LuPHqiN.png http://i.imgur.com/LuPHqiN.png > This is what I sent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nqn-EmU5KPw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nqn-EmU5KPw > This is what they got back to me with: http://i.imgur.com/LuPHqiN.png http://i.imgur.com/LuPHqiN.png > [1]:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treo_600 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treo_600 (gallery of 2-6,8-9 here: http://imgur.com/a/Gu70R http://imgur.com/a/Gu70R) [2]:http://i.imgur.com/xVdpUST.jpg http://i.imgur.com/xVdpUST.jpg [3]:http://i.imgur.com/2Yy8fkM.jpg http://i.imgur.com/2Yy8fkM.jpg [4]:http://i.imgur.com/nZ7GwC1.jpg http://i.imgur.com/nZ7GwC1.jpg [5]:http://i.imgur.com/OJuZmh3.jpg http://i.imgur.com/OJuZmh3.jpg [6]:http://i.imgur.com/z9mNkHt.jpg http://i.imgur.com/z9mNkHt.jpg [7]:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid1 [8]:http://i.imgur.com/9VKcxlY.jpg http://i.imgur.com/9VKcxlY.jpg [9]:http://i.imgur.com/5KeI9TI.jpg http://i.imgur.com/5KeI9TI.jpg (links as comment so clickable)
- obituary_latte 12y ago
  If only I had scrolled a bit first, I could have saved myself minutes. Thank you, and my support request is: please start auto-linking safe urls.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - bactatin 12y ago
    My browser does stuff like that for me. :)
    - thameera 12y ago
      Safari?
      - oneeyedpigeon 12y ago
        Safari doesn't do that out of the box. Something with an extension?
j45 12y ago
My palm Treos are still the most productive devices I've ever owned. Android is starting to get close but that keyboard and shortcut keys to go directly into an app on the Treo has been unrivalled. Hoping with the sale of the Palm Trademark, and WebOS being free, which is a generation ahead of all mobile operating systems, before the javascript app craze came up, might, in some way, come to lead and inspire the way again.
- yourad_io 12y ago
  I was recently looking for a sliding qwerty keyboard phone and to my dismay I realised that while we weren't looking, the NSA took them all away! In my quest I found a phone database where you can search by features (I forget which one right now) and sorted through all possible candidates. My hopes went up momentarily when I saw the Dell Venue Pro[1] before I clicked "next" and saw how wrong they got it[2]. Eventually I sumbled on the Motorola Photon Q[3] - which I'm not even supposed to have, as it doesn't come with a SIM slot at all. Luckily some enterprising Korean guys have figured out the modding process and are selling them on ebay. I tried my luck and received it a few days ago. Really good value for money, loving the sliding action and physical keys but wish it were a bit more powerful. I think I've compensated for this mostly by cutting out a lot of fat and its puny dual core CPU now runs 4.4 fairly comfortably. I'll probably go back to my Nexus 5 soon but it's a great backup phone and I love the keyboard. I'm half convinced that a custom N4/5 backplate with a built-in keyboard would sell like crazy. #kickstarterideas TL;DR: Look at Moto Photon Q. [1] http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/Dell_Venue_Pro_smartphone.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/Dell_Venu... [2] http://cdn.slashgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/dell_venue_pro_11.jpg http://cdn.slashgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/dell_ven... I literally burst out laughing as soon as I saw this. Bless you, Dell. (also: windows) [3] http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8d/Motorola_Photon_Q_4G_LTE.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8d/Motorola_...
  - walterbell 12y ago
    Can it run Cyanogen? The Blackberry Passport is one of the few modern keyboard phones, it uses Amazon's appstore for Android apps.
rizumu 12y ago
Uniqueness is absolute, so the support email is either unique or not. There are no degrees of uniqueness for something to be more unique than another thing. Sorry, but this grammar mistake is a big pet peeve.
- raldi 12y ago
  That's only sorta true.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- dang 12y ago
  Now if we ever issue this award again we will be obliged to repeat the mistake forever. :) Had I thought about it I probably would have written "most unusual". Still, I'm not sure the pedant's case holds up on this one. Two things may differ from everything else to varying degrees; both are unique, but the one that stands apart more is arguably more so. Even among the unique support requests of 2014, Rob's email stood apart the most by a long shot.
  - hueving 12y ago
    Take the following definition of unique - being the only one of its kind; unlike anything else. So if something is 'more unique' than something else, it doesn't really fit the first part of the definition because they are both only one of a kind, but it fits with the second in that it is more unlike anything else than the other thing.
- mikeash 12y ago
  My dictionary lists two definitions for "unique." One is "being the only one of its kind" and is thus a binary property as you say, but the other is merely "particularly remarkable, special, or unusual," which is perfectly amenable to modifiers like this.
  - 12y ago
rndn 12y ago
Perhaps build your own web proxy which strips images, CSS and JS for a better web experience. Someone did that a year ago for his Macintosh Plus: http://www.keacher.com/1216/how-i-introduced-a-27-year-old-computer-to-the-web/ http://www.keacher.com/1216/how-i-introduced-a-27-year-old-c...
BorisMelnik 12y ago
I used a Palm treo up until about 3 years ago, and used to browse HN quite often. My treo was modified and upgraded I should say :) beleive it or not, some poor soul actually stole it, probably not knowing it would be worth more on ebay as an obscure item than at a pawn shop.
- wpietri 12y ago
  Yeah, fellow former Treo user here. I loved that thing. When people talk about how Steve Jobs invented the smartphone, I used to say, "but but but..." Now, though, I just sigh and nod like I'm still listening to them.
- edeion 12y ago
  I hoped Nokia E6 would come close to the Palm Treo. The shape is about the same but slimmed down and without the antenna. And hardware is good. But the software is somehow disappointing (I expected more from a descendant of Psion). If I recall, the to-do lists on Palm were so much nicer, for instance.
keithwarren 12y ago
I had this same phone, in the post iPhone era we tend to forget that smartphones did exist and some of them were actually pretty fantastic devices. From the 600 I upgraded to the 700w and that was probably my favorite phone of all time.
- beachstartup 12y ago
  i also had a treo 6xx (then upgraded to 7xx) and it was the first device that i could actually do work on the road with (email, basic web, ssh, phone). i remember it had outlook integration which was especially awesome because my employer at the time used outlook and i was able to leave my work-from-home post during the day to have lunch or drinks with friends in san francisco and not be out of touch. even though this was barely ten years ago, now i feel really old.
- chrissyb 12y ago
  Totally agree, i sometimes reminisce about the good ol' days with my Nokia N70 i bought in 2005. Here's some memorable achievements: - I watched most of the world cup 2006 games live streamed over 3G. -I used to frequently use google maps which without GPS would use cell towers triangulate my position within a couple hundred meter radius. - Used it as a wireless AP -And even uploaded videos to youtube. When i first heard of the iPhone i wasn't that impressed as i already been using what i considered a smartphone. Obviously i that's all changed now! ;)
  - soylentcola 12y ago
    I remember at the time being a bit nerd-irritated over the iPhone release. At first I was thrilled because I'd fallen in love with smart phones starting with the early Treos and into the HTC PocketPCs. The one thing they always got wrong was poor graphics drivers/acceleration so even though they did so many things, it was like using a Windows PC with the generic VGA drivers (laggy scrolling, etc). iPhone really fixed that one thing but at the time I was outraged (outraged!) that to get that smooth UI performance I'd have to give up 3rd party apps, 3G, MMS, GPS, (shitty by today's standards) video calling, copy/paste, task switching, and even the ability to change my wallpaper or ringtone! Kind of amusing today with the relative parity between mobile OSes and the abundance of models to choose from but at the time I just remember being so frustrated with how no single company seemed capable of putting everything into one device. Still, those Treos and PPCs laid the groundwork for the insanely capable and useable devices many of us carry in our pockets today.
jacquesm 12y ago
This is the first thing I'd look at to make this work: telnet news.ycombinator.com 80 Trying 198.41.190.47... Connected to news.ycombinator.com.cdn.cloudflare.net. Escape character is '^]'. GET / HTTP/1.0 Host: news.ycombinator.com HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2015 03:19:43 GMT Content-Type: text/html Connection: close Set-Cookie: __cfduid=d2949a43e20a9ea8923fe50222805b7621421810383; expires=Thu, 21-Jan-16 03:19:43 GMT; path=/; domain=.ycombinator.com; HttpOnly Location: https://news.ycombinator.com/ Server: cloudflare-nginx CF-RAY: 1ac05f0dbbeb0743-AMS <html> <head><title>301 Moved Permanently</title></head> <body bgcolor="white"> <center><h1>301 Moved Permanently</h1></center> <hr><center>nginx</center> </body> </html> Connection closed by foreign host. Maybe you could set up a https->http proxy and access that to see if that solves your problem?
codezero 12y ago
I had a similar issue when I broke out my iBook from 2000ish. It seems like the root certificate authorities had changed, or the certificates sent by websites weren't able to be resolved. Whether that was the changes to SSL/TLS, or the root authorities, I didn't get into :P
- yuhong 12y ago
  If you are using Classic Mac OS, Classilla has the most up-to-date SSL/TLS support (with both SHA2 certificate and SNI support!)
  - codezero 12y ago
    Thanks for the heads up! I was actually running a very old copy of Linux on the system, running a system update actually solved it :)
wazoox 12y ago
In my drawers, I still have all of my Handspring/Palm "smartphones", I used almost all their PalmOS lineup during the naughties: * Handspring Visor+Visorphone (2002): huge! * Handspring Treo 270 : broken lid * Handspring Treo 600 : working, but broken screen * Palm Treo 650 : working * Palm Pré : still working, but broken USB connector
enthdegree 12y ago
Have u tried with NetFront
majke 12y ago
I suspect this device can't do TLS. Blame POODLE for killing SSLv3: * https://blog.cloudflare.com/sslv3-support-disabled-by-default-due-to-vulnerability/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/sslv3-support-disabled-by-defaul... Also RC4 is about to die: * https://blog.cloudflare.com/killing-rc4-the-long-goodbye/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/killing-rc4-the-long-goodbye/ * https://blog.cloudflare.com/killing-rc4/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/killing-rc4/ * https://blog.cloudflare.com/the-web-is-world-wide-or-who-still-needs-rc4/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/the-web-is-world-wide-or-who-sti...
soneca 12y ago
Funny, but this post doesn't follow Show HN guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html). Should be a "Tell HN" instead.
endeavour 12y ago
I don't think it's possible for something to be the 'most unique'.
- Confusion 12y ago
  Not in a single metric. But you can formalize what is meant: there are many metrics in which something can be unique. Something is deemed the 'most unique' when it is unique in so many metrics that the utterer estimates no thing is likely to be unique in more metrics. Even mathematicians use sloppy language.
- teach 12y ago
  I used to be similarly pedantic with English. But a few years ago I converted to descriptivism[0], and I've been much happier ever since. :) [0] http://english.blogoverflow.com/2012/10/prescriptivism-and-descriptivism/ http://english.blogoverflow.com/2012/10/prescriptivism-and-d...
allending 12y ago
Speaking of HN support emails, we emailed Daniel at 4:10PM a few days ago and got a reply at 4:12PM. Send a follow up email and another reply 6 minutes later. Brilliant.
- Joona 12y ago
  That is very impressive. Almost as fast, or maybe even faster than me answering on IRC!
Chirael 12y ago
Still using my Palm Pilot daily :)
giacomoharp 12y ago
This one showed up early in the morning and executives were scurrying to find out what happened: Subject: XXXX Case #XXXXXX : Priority changed to Customer Down Date: Tue, 6 May 2014 03:17:47 -0700 From: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX To: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX CC: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX * Case Priority change * Case Priority has recently been changed to: Customer Down Case Details:: Case #: XXXXXXXX Company: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Contact Name: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Status: New Category: Support System - Support Accounts Subject: My name is spelled XXXXXXXX Apparently, the customer could not function if their name was spelled wrong...

401 points by striking 12y ago

drdeca 12y ago

Out of curiosity, have you tried viewing a static page with the same content as HN, and checking whether it has that error? Very interesting, and congratulations on your award!

Chanie 12y ago

Ha! this is great! Congratulations on your award ;)

leesalminen 12y ago

My gut says that they've disabled SSL v2/v3, and that the device does not support TLS.

kogir 12y ago
I'd love to see the results from visiting the Qualys SSL Client Test: https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/viewMyClient.html https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/viewMyClient.html I imagine the issue is that we only support TLS 1.0+ and not SSLv2 or SSLv3. https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=news.ycombinator.com https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=news.ycombina...
- yuhong 12y ago
  I just tried it using IE6 with TLS 1.0 disabled and it does not load at all. If you watch the video carefully you will see the certificate errors that comes from the device having such an old certificate store too (in the case of google.com they now use GeoTrust with a cross certificate to Equifax). And I doubt the device support SHA256 certificates either. The device might not support the 3DES cipher suite either (as it was relatively slow compared to RC4) and many sites have disabled RC4.
Animats 12y ago
Security Theater Everywhere strikes again. Unless you're logged in and entering data, Hacker News does not need SSL.
- geofft 12y ago
  So I should take it that you're OK with every country's intelligence agency modifying links on HN for their citizens, redirecting crypto downloads to trojaned pages for specific users, suppressing links that are overly critical of the government, right?
  - Animats 12y ago
    Protection against changes should be done with subresource integrity hashes (http://www.w3.org/TR/SRI/ http://www.w3.org/TR/SRI/). With HTTPS, an observer still knows who you're talking to, and since they can see how big the request and reply are, they can probably guess what you're looking at.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

hyp0 12y ago

> TL;DR http://i.imgur.com/LuPHqiN.png http://i.imgur.com/LuPHqiN.png > This is what I sent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nqn-EmU5KPw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nqn-EmU5KPw > This is what they got back to me with: http://i.imgur.com/LuPHqiN.png http://i.imgur.com/LuPHqiN.png > [1]:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treo_600 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treo_600 (gallery of 2-6,8-9 here: http://imgur.com/a/Gu70R http://imgur.com/a/Gu70R) [2]:http://i.imgur.com/xVdpUST.jpg http://i.imgur.com/xVdpUST.jpg [3]:http://i.imgur.com/2Yy8fkM.jpg http://i.imgur.com/2Yy8fkM.jpg [4]:http://i.imgur.com/nZ7GwC1.jpg http://i.imgur.com/nZ7GwC1.jpg [5]:http://i.imgur.com/OJuZmh3.jpg http://i.imgur.com/OJuZmh3.jpg [6]:http://i.imgur.com/z9mNkHt.jpg http://i.imgur.com/z9mNkHt.jpg [7]:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid1 [8]:http://i.imgur.com/9VKcxlY.jpg http://i.imgur.com/9VKcxlY.jpg [9]:http://i.imgur.com/5KeI9TI.jpg http://i.imgur.com/5KeI9TI.jpg (links as comment so clickable)

obituary_latte 12y ago
If only I had scrolled a bit first, I could have saved myself minutes. Thank you, and my support request is: please start auto-linking safe urls.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- bactatin 12y ago
  My browser does stuff like that for me. :)
  - thameera 12y ago
    Safari?
    - oneeyedpigeon 12y ago
      Safari doesn't do that out of the box. Something with an extension?

j45 12y ago

My palm Treos are still the most productive devices I've ever owned. Android is starting to get close but that keyboard and shortcut keys to go directly into an app on the Treo has been unrivalled. Hoping with the sale of the Palm Trademark, and WebOS being free, which is a generation ahead of all mobile operating systems, before the javascript app craze came up, might, in some way, come to lead and inspire the way again.

yourad_io 12y ago
I was recently looking for a sliding qwerty keyboard phone and to my dismay I realised that while we weren't looking, the NSA took them all away! In my quest I found a phone database where you can search by features (I forget which one right now) and sorted through all possible candidates. My hopes went up momentarily when I saw the Dell Venue Pro[1] before I clicked "next" and saw how wrong they got it[2]. Eventually I sumbled on the Motorola Photon Q[3] - which I'm not even supposed to have, as it doesn't come with a SIM slot at all. Luckily some enterprising Korean guys have figured out the modding process and are selling them on ebay. I tried my luck and received it a few days ago. Really good value for money, loving the sliding action and physical keys but wish it were a bit more powerful. I think I've compensated for this mostly by cutting out a lot of fat and its puny dual core CPU now runs 4.4 fairly comfortably. I'll probably go back to my Nexus 5 soon but it's a great backup phone and I love the keyboard. I'm half convinced that a custom N4/5 backplate with a built-in keyboard would sell like crazy. #kickstarterideas TL;DR: Look at Moto Photon Q. [1] http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/Dell_Venue_Pro_smartphone.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/Dell_Venu... [2] http://cdn.slashgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/dell_venue_pro_11.jpg http://cdn.slashgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/dell_ven... I literally burst out laughing as soon as I saw this. Bless you, Dell. (also: windows) [3] http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8d/Motorola_Photon_Q_4G_LTE.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8d/Motorola_...
- walterbell 12y ago
  Can it run Cyanogen? The Blackberry Passport is one of the few modern keyboard phones, it uses Amazon's appstore for Android apps.

rizumu 12y ago

Uniqueness is absolute, so the support email is either unique or not. There are no degrees of uniqueness for something to be more unique than another thing. Sorry, but this grammar mistake is a big pet peeve.

raldi 12y ago
That's only sorta true.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
dang 12y ago
Now if we ever issue this award again we will be obliged to repeat the mistake forever. :) Had I thought about it I probably would have written "most unusual". Still, I'm not sure the pedant's case holds up on this one. Two things may differ from everything else to varying degrees; both are unique, but the one that stands apart more is arguably more so. Even among the unique support requests of 2014, Rob's email stood apart the most by a long shot.
- hueving 12y ago
  Take the following definition of unique - being the only one of its kind; unlike anything else. So if something is 'more unique' than something else, it doesn't really fit the first part of the definition because they are both only one of a kind, but it fits with the second in that it is more unlike anything else than the other thing.
mikeash 12y ago
My dictionary lists two definitions for "unique." One is "being the only one of its kind" and is thus a binary property as you say, but the other is merely "particularly remarkable, special, or unusual," which is perfectly amenable to modifiers like this.
- 12y ago

rndn 12y ago

Perhaps build your own web proxy which strips images, CSS and JS for a better web experience. Someone did that a year ago for his Macintosh Plus: http://www.keacher.com/1216/how-i-introduced-a-27-year-old-computer-to-the-web/ http://www.keacher.com/1216/how-i-introduced-a-27-year-old-c...

BorisMelnik 12y ago

I used a Palm treo up until about 3 years ago, and used to browse HN quite often. My treo was modified and upgraded I should say :) beleive it or not, some poor soul actually stole it, probably not knowing it would be worth more on ebay as an obscure item than at a pawn shop.

wpietri 12y ago
Yeah, fellow former Treo user here. I loved that thing. When people talk about how Steve Jobs invented the smartphone, I used to say, "but but but..." Now, though, I just sigh and nod like I'm still listening to them.
edeion 12y ago
I hoped Nokia E6 would come close to the Palm Treo. The shape is about the same but slimmed down and without the antenna. And hardware is good. But the software is somehow disappointing (I expected more from a descendant of Psion). If I recall, the to-do lists on Palm were so much nicer, for instance.

keithwarren 12y ago

I had this same phone, in the post iPhone era we tend to forget that smartphones did exist and some of them were actually pretty fantastic devices. From the 600 I upgraded to the 700w and that was probably my favorite phone of all time.

beachstartup 12y ago
i also had a treo 6xx (then upgraded to 7xx) and it was the first device that i could actually do work on the road with (email, basic web, ssh, phone). i remember it had outlook integration which was especially awesome because my employer at the time used outlook and i was able to leave my work-from-home post during the day to have lunch or drinks with friends in san francisco and not be out of touch. even though this was barely ten years ago, now i feel really old.
chrissyb 12y ago
Totally agree, i sometimes reminisce about the good ol' days with my Nokia N70 i bought in 2005. Here's some memorable achievements: - I watched most of the world cup 2006 games live streamed over 3G. -I used to frequently use google maps which without GPS would use cell towers triangulate my position within a couple hundred meter radius. - Used it as a wireless AP -And even uploaded videos to youtube. When i first heard of the iPhone i wasn't that impressed as i already been using what i considered a smartphone. Obviously i that's all changed now! ;)
- soylentcola 12y ago
  I remember at the time being a bit nerd-irritated over the iPhone release. At first I was thrilled because I'd fallen in love with smart phones starting with the early Treos and into the HTC PocketPCs. The one thing they always got wrong was poor graphics drivers/acceleration so even though they did so many things, it was like using a Windows PC with the generic VGA drivers (laggy scrolling, etc). iPhone really fixed that one thing but at the time I was outraged (outraged!) that to get that smooth UI performance I'd have to give up 3rd party apps, 3G, MMS, GPS, (shitty by today's standards) video calling, copy/paste, task switching, and even the ability to change my wallpaper or ringtone! Kind of amusing today with the relative parity between mobile OSes and the abundance of models to choose from but at the time I just remember being so frustrated with how no single company seemed capable of putting everything into one device. Still, those Treos and PPCs laid the groundwork for the insanely capable and useable devices many of us carry in our pockets today.

jacquesm 12y ago

This is the first thing I'd look at to make this work: telnet news.ycombinator.com 80 Trying 198.41.190.47... Connected to news.ycombinator.com.cdn.cloudflare.net. Escape character is '^]'. GET / HTTP/1.0 Host: news.ycombinator.com HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2015 03:19:43 GMT Content-Type: text/html Connection: close Set-Cookie: __cfduid=d2949a43e20a9ea8923fe50222805b7621421810383; expires=Thu, 21-Jan-16 03:19:43 GMT; path=/; domain=.ycombinator.com; HttpOnly Location: https://news.ycombinator.com/ Server: cloudflare-nginx CF-RAY: 1ac05f0dbbeb0743-AMS <html> <head><title>301 Moved Permanently</title></head> <body bgcolor="white"> <center><h1>301 Moved Permanently</h1></center> <hr><center>nginx</center> </body> </html> Connection closed by foreign host. Maybe you could set up a https->http proxy and access that to see if that solves your problem?

codezero 12y ago

I had a similar issue when I broke out my iBook from 2000ish. It seems like the root certificate authorities had changed, or the certificates sent by websites weren't able to be resolved. Whether that was the changes to SSL/TLS, or the root authorities, I didn't get into :P

yuhong 12y ago
If you are using Classic Mac OS, Classilla has the most up-to-date SSL/TLS support (with both SHA2 certificate and SNI support!)
- codezero 12y ago
  Thanks for the heads up! I was actually running a very old copy of Linux on the system, running a system update actually solved it :)

wazoox 12y ago

In my drawers, I still have all of my Handspring/Palm "smartphones", I used almost all their PalmOS lineup during the naughties: * Handspring Visor+Visorphone (2002): huge! * Handspring Treo 270 : broken lid * Handspring Treo 600 : working, but broken screen * Palm Treo 650 : working * Palm Pré : still working, but broken USB connector

enthdegree 12y ago

Have u tried with NetFront

majke 12y ago

I suspect this device can't do TLS. Blame POODLE for killing SSLv3: * https://blog.cloudflare.com/sslv3-support-disabled-by-default-due-to-vulnerability/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/sslv3-support-disabled-by-defaul... Also RC4 is about to die: * https://blog.cloudflare.com/killing-rc4-the-long-goodbye/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/killing-rc4-the-long-goodbye/ * https://blog.cloudflare.com/killing-rc4/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/killing-rc4/ * https://blog.cloudflare.com/the-web-is-world-wide-or-who-still-needs-rc4/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/the-web-is-world-wide-or-who-sti...

soneca 12y ago

Funny, but this post doesn't follow Show HN guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html). Should be a "Tell HN" instead.

endeavour 12y ago

I don't think it's possible for something to be the 'most unique'.

Confusion 12y ago
Not in a single metric. But you can formalize what is meant: there are many metrics in which something can be unique. Something is deemed the 'most unique' when it is unique in so many metrics that the utterer estimates no thing is likely to be unique in more metrics. Even mathematicians use sloppy language.
teach 12y ago
I used to be similarly pedantic with English. But a few years ago I converted to descriptivism[0], and I've been much happier ever since. :) [0] http://english.blogoverflow.com/2012/10/prescriptivism-and-descriptivism/ http://english.blogoverflow.com/2012/10/prescriptivism-and-d...

allending 12y ago

Speaking of HN support emails, we emailed Daniel at 4:10PM a few days ago and got a reply at 4:12PM. Send a follow up email and another reply 6 minutes later. Brilliant.

Joona 12y ago
That is very impressive. Almost as fast, or maybe even faster than me answering on IRC!

Chirael 12y ago

Still using my Palm Pilot daily :)

giacomoharp 12y ago

This one showed up early in the morning and executives were scurrying to find out what happened: Subject: XXXX Case #XXXXXX : Priority changed to Customer Down Date: Tue, 6 May 2014 03:17:47 -0700 From: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX To: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX CC: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX * Case Priority change * Case Priority has recently been changed to: Customer Down Case Details:: Case #: XXXXXXXX Company: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Contact Name: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Status: New Category: Support System - Support Accounts Subject: My name is spelled XXXXXXXX Apparently, the customer could not function if their name was spelled wrong...