My former shared host was hacked the second time over the weekend, this time they subtly inserted malicious iframes into index.php so I decided to host the site myself at least until EC2 becomes affordable (Jeff Bezos’ talk convinced me). So yeah, FreeBSD 7.0, Lighttpd and a crappy home connection should be sufficient for my blogging traffic.
I had my wallet stolen a few months ago, and since then my only form of ID has been my passport. I know the day I lose my passport gets closer every time I take it out with me so I decided to order a new provisional license from the DVLA website, which might just be the worst website ever created.
Buried under a few pages is a recover lost or stolen license link. The page warns me:
“Please don’t use the buttons on your browser (e.g. ‘back’, ‘forward’, ‘refresh’ etc.), you should only use the buttons on the bottom of each page and you should click these only once.”
Because clearly, the web is a linear place and people don’t make mistakes.
The box for surname comes before the box for forename, catching me out both times I had to go through this form. If you don’t enter your middle name in the forename box it will complain a few pages (and many fields) later that it can’t find you in the database. It won’t accept a drivers license number with uppercase characters (even though they are printed on the license in uppercase), and here are the password requirements:
Enter a memorable password. The password must:
• be between 8 and 12 characters
• contain a combination of letters and numbers
• contain two or more numbers which are separated by one or more letters
• not contain spaces or the word ‘password’
• not contain three adjacent letters or numbers the same (eg ‘aaa’ or ‘999′)
Thank god for Keychain
In response to That Canadian’s comment. Y Combinator definitely helped Auctomatic, and provided a large community of support and contacts, which is easily worth more than the funding. Though Kul or Harj would be more qualified to answer.
We’re all in different parts of the world at the moment but it’s still a pretty hectic day. The founders are apparently in a media frenzy since everything is signed and the sale was announced today. I’m working on a bunch of things right now and, most importantly, we made the front page of Reddit. The title is “Irish LISP based startup sells for millions, founders in their teens” which is pretty accurate for a Reddit headline.