dxjones

I was just surprised to receive an SMS text message "Your Google verification code is xxxxxx".

I didn't do a password reset, I don't use 2-step verification, and I can't figure out what triggered this SMS message.

The thing is, ... Google knows what triggered it, but they keep it a secret.

The desktop version of GMAIL allows you to view a log of "Last Activity" with details showing IP address and Date/Time, ... but these are for successful logins.

As far as I can tell, failed login attempts & password resets are not shown.

A Google search for the phrase "Your Google verification code is" reveals many people asking why they are receiving these text messages.

If someone really is trying to get into your account, and if you use GMAIL for important stuff, like your startup company, what concrete steps can be taken to track down someone who is trying to hack into your account? An IP address is all I would really expect, and surely Google has that information in a log file. How can I get it?

I am seeking a geek with expert knowledge in WordPress 3.0.1 and Apache2 mod_rewrite syntax (.htaccess) to help me get past a roadblock in deploying my web app (with a WordPress front-end).

I have posted my question on stackoverflow.com ( http://bit.ly/9UeChD ) and wordpress.com ( http://bit.ly/aTSo21 ), but still no joy.

Hoping someone on HN has what it takes to rewrite "http://site.com/app/alpha/beta" to "http://site.com/app/?a=alpha&b=beta" and then let the Wordpress rules route it through index.php to the "app" page, which can pull the parameters from $_GET.

I have a small online business. Most customers are in North America and pay using PayPal. I have an inquiry from someone in Egypt, where they use Moneybookers and PayPal is not available.

What is the best way for a Canada/US web company to accept online payment from Egypt?

Moneybookers doesn't seem to support withdrawals to Canada/US bank account. PayPal doesn't seem to support customers in Egypt.

I am confident there are lots of Ycombinators who have already figured out the best way to serve customers in countries like Egypt.

Any advice or pointers would be very much appreciated.

David Jones djones@pairwiseaffinity.com http://pairwiseaffinity.com

Where do you host your startup?

I am looking for a solution that is cost-effective. I want to keep costs very low to start, but I can pay-as-I-grow for increased resources.

Imagine a URL shortening/redirecting service (e.g., bit.ly) That's not what my startup is about, but I will have that kind of traffic. I need to handle lots of hits to my web site, but each requires minimal processing and bandwidth. Top requirements are 99.9% uptime and low latency (< 20 ms).

A typical cheap/shared hosting service is not acceptable, even when just getting started, because they all suffer from downtime or "brownouts", where response latencies get slow if there's a traffic spike, of is some random user on the shared service is doing lots of database queries.

My application is currently built using Apache, MySQL, PHP, and C. I also need SSH access.

To process each "hit" to my web site, I have rather minimal requirements for CPU time, memory, database size, and data-transfer per hit.

What really seems to be the challenge (when just starting) is getting a guaranteed 99.9% uptime and low latency without paying a lot per month for dedicated hosting.

(I confess that I don't have any experience with Amazon EC2, so I don't know if that would be appropriate. If you have any practical experience with the time/cost to get up and running on "the cloud", I'd love to hear from you.)

Any recommendations, suggestions, comments, or advice would be much appreciated.

You can reply here, or by email.

Thanks in advance,

David Jones, PhD, Pairwise Affinity

dxjones@gmail.com, http://dxjones.com

djones@pairwiseaffinity.com, http://pairwiseaffinity.com

What is your favour free app for offline viewing of HTML and PDF?

I am looking for a simple solution to be used for several hundred students, most have an iPod Touch, and some have an iPhone. I want them to be able to download some HTML (or PDF) content when they are online, ... then be able to view it, including navigating links, when they are offline.

I have read a things about bookmarking data:URI, but it looks too complicated. I know there are some nice commercial apps, but unfortunately we need a free solution. I know some universities (Stanford) have custom apps for students to use. If you're an iPod app programmer and can share some for a bare bones app (that we could customize) to download, store, and offline-display HTML, that would be way cool.

Any recommendations or suggestions would be appreciated.

What do YC startups recommend?

PayPal? Google Checkout? Credit Card? (merchant account), Other?

Which provides the minimum hassles, delays, transaction fees, etc.? Which do customers prefer?

Any positive or negative recommendations based on experience would be much appreciated.