Show HN: My weekend project, tracking the services you can't have in Canada • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: My weekend project, tracking the services you can't have in Canada

#111

Post by cmer » Mon, Apr 04, 2011, 1:55 PM UTC

mbesto wrote: post #110

cmer wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using StrongVPN, a similar service, with great success.

I run OpenVPN via Linode for $20/month. I've got about 5 friends on it so we just split the costs. http://library.linode.com/networking/openvpn/

I started out using OpenVPN as well. However, the speed and latency was always very bad even though my VPS connection is fast.

After spending too much time trying to figure it out, I decided to just spend just $55/year and use StrongVPN. Added bonus, I can use StrongVPN on my iPad/iPhone!

Re: Show HN: My weekend project, tracking the services you can't have in Canada

#112

Post by ianlevesque » Mon, Apr 04, 2011, 2:10 PM UTC

I have a suggestion. mcrider, why don't you allow interested Canadian users to "vote" for support of these services. It would become an activism platform of sorts that way. If Zappos for example sees that 2 million canadians want to buy their shoes, they have an incentive to add support!

Re: Show HN: My weekend project, tracking the services you can't have in Canada

#113

Post by noarchy » Mon, Apr 04, 2011, 2:34 PM UTC

jleyank wrote: post #97

noarchy wrote: post #47

I wouldn't call it a "service", per se, but you cannot buy a Kindle from Amazon.ca. You can, however (and this is more on-topic), buy books for it, but the selection is limited. Edit: I should add that a lot of the things that are available on Amazon.com (the US site) won't ship to Canada. You don't even get the option to pay for extra shipping charges; it just won't ship, period. Edit 2: An article about Amazon's ef…

I just checked, and Amazon says it can (now) ship Kindle to Canada. Customs duties, etc, but they can ship. FYI.

My original comment was about Amazon.ca, not Amazon.com. If you try to buy the Kindle via Amazon.ca, you get sent to a .com site. The Canadian site itself won't sell it, as it still must be imported. For whatever reason, they don't want to stock it in their Canadian warehouses. Maybe the duties on it are more than they want to swallow? I figure they'd pass that cost along, and not worry about it, but perhaps I am wrong.

Re: Show HN: My weekend project, tracking the services you can't have in Canada

#114

Post by pmjordan » Mon, Apr 04, 2011, 2:53 PM UTC

rb2k_ wrote: post #106

pmjordan wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On OSX this will work for some Flash video implementations, but not others. (BBC iPlayer website: yes, Desktop: no; other UK TV channels: no) You can use https://github.com/apenwarr/sshuttle to transparently proxy all TCP connections (to whitelisted or non-blacklisted IPs) though. OSX and Linux only, though.

The BBC iPlayer website is pretty easy to fool. I just set up a squid proxy on a UK VPS and created a .pac file that redirects all bbc.co.uk requests. The final video stream won't be on that domain, so it will just go over the "normal" connection.

Curious. I didn't realise the stream itself wasn't IP-restricted. This could solve issues with flaky VPS bandwidth.

Re: Show HN: My weekend project, tracking the services you can't have in Canada

#115

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Apr 04, 2011, 3:37 PM UTC

dcosson wrote: post #6

Are copyright laws more strict in Canada? Or are royalties a lot higher? There seem to be primarily music/video content services on the list.

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: My weekend project, tracking the services you can't have in Canada

#116

Post by clscott » Mon, Apr 04, 2011, 3:48 PM UTC

acangiano wrote: post #99

jackowayed wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is funny since he lives in Canada.

Canadian taxes can be a pain in the rear. I assume cperciva doesn't want to deal with collecting and remitting the HST for Canadian customers.

Tracking GST/HST isn't that big of a deal, and you are only required to do so once your annual revenues exceed $30K.

http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/E/pub/gp/rc4022/README.html

Re: Show HN: My weekend project, tracking the services you can't have in Canada

#117

Post by sjs » Mon, Apr 04, 2011, 4:05 PM UTC

rb2k_ wrote: post #74

sjs wrote: post #72

Poor man's SSL VPN ssh -D 9050 yourbox.net and set your system's SOCKS proxy to localhost:9050

sadly Flash will try a direct socket connection first and just ignore your system's proxy settings...

It works for me on some sites, on OS X in Canada. I watch Hulu and YouTube videos only available in the US with that method. YMMV.

Re: Show HN: My weekend project, tracking the services you can't have in Canada

#118

Post by mcrider » Mon, Apr 04, 2011, 4:14 PM UTC

AlexC04 wrote: post #109

I'm interested in a bit more about your choices with respect to the implementation of project. Is it a CMS? Wordpress? Did you code it yourself? Flat HTML? Is there anything dynamic about it or did you just put a bunch of stuff up on a page and a domain? Incidentally, "suggest a link" is broken unless you submit a fully qualified domain name. (I just sent http://example.com to you)

I used a html pack from http://sickdesigner.com/resources/HTML5-starter-pack/index.h... then added in my own PHP. I wanted to automate as much as possible any future upkeep of this site, so its very much dynamically generated, with a bunch of forms to add data to the back end. I also use BBPress as forum software, which is turning out to be pretty nice so far.

Re: Show HN: My weekend project, tracking the services you can't have in Canada

#119

Post by UnFleshedOne » Mon, Apr 04, 2011, 4:31 PM UTC

noarchy wrote: post #113

jleyank wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just checked, and Amazon says it can (now) ship Kindle to Canada. Customs duties, etc, but they can ship. FYI.

My original comment was about Amazon.ca, not Amazon.com. If you try to buy the Kindle via Amazon.ca, you get sent to a .com site. The Canadian site itself won't sell it, as it still must be imported. For whatever reason, they don't want to stock it in their Canadian warehouses. Maybe the duties on it are more than they want to swallow? I figure they'd pass that cost along, and not worry about it, but perhaps I am wro…

The ship times to canada are international too (3-4 weeks), as opposed to 1-2 days in US. And it actually does take that long (did in my case anyway).

Re: Show HN: My weekend project, tracking the services you can't have in Canada

#120

Post by mbesto » Tue, Apr 05, 2011, 12:48 PM UTC

cmer wrote: post #111

mbesto wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run OpenVPN via Linode for $20/month. I've got about 5 friends on it so we just split the costs. http://library.linode.com/networking/openvpn/

I started out using OpenVPN as well. However, the speed and latency was always very bad even though my VPS connection is fast. After spending too much time trying to figure it out, I decided to just spend just $55/year and use StrongVPN. Added bonus, I can use StrongVPN on my iPad/iPhone!

StrongVPN looks pretty good. Also easier to support other VPN connections out of the box (i.e. through Win standard VPN and not have to install OpenVPN, as well as via iPhone). Thanks for the suggestion.