HN Explorer

Ask YC: Why not give away your old stuff here?

16 points by rokhayakebe ↗ HN
HN is a community mostly made (I think) of frugal entrepreneurs. All of us have a few things (electronics, programming books etc..) sometimes that we may not be using and that we would not mind giving away to someone if they paid for shipping. So why not post those giveaways here and select a winner from the community?

The nice aspect of HN, is that some level of trust has already been built using the Karma system and you can easily go back and read someone's comments/submissions to get a feel of who they are.

Now for the self plugin: I am looking for a mint condition ATT phone if you have one collecting dust. Thanks all.

26 comments

[ 5.5 ms ] story [ 72.6 ms ] thread
davidw
If someone wants programming books (or other stuff) in Innsbruck, Austria, we're going to be moving shortly:-)
spydez
AT&T uses SIM cards. So do the cheap pay-as-you-go phones from Walmart, etc. So buy a phone for $10, swap SIM cards, and you're good.
ieatpaste
I worked on these. The phone's price is subsidized into the card pricing, so they would loose money if you could do that. They had us design them that there could be no swapping (they are locked to the pay-as-you-go sims). Unlocking requires both software and hardware modifications - at least the phones we made.
abyssknight
I can comment on this. My wife is on tmobile and my father is on ATT, both are using prepaid phones with swapped SIM cards. I know the Virgin mobile phones don't use SIMs (to my knowledge) as well as Tracphone, so those are useless.
coryrc
If you don't power it on with the SIM card, they usually work.
drewcrawford
This must be a recent development, because I made extensive use of this trick (1-2 years ago?). Specifically, the $10 walmart ATT go phones worked fine with the contract (3G) SIMs.
andr
The cheap $10 phones are locked to only operate with specific networks.
tptacek
And?
kajecounterhack
Unlocker at dealextreme.com for $5 -- works on most nokia phones. go on att.net and buy a nokia gophone for $20 or so, use the unlocker, and you're good to go.
icey
Since you're already on AT&T, go to best buy and pick up one of those motorola gophones for 15 bucks. They work with the regular AT&T SIMs.
Xichekolas
I'm willing to donate the following books to anyone willing to pay the shipping ($4.95 for priority mail, a bit more if you want a confirmation number):

Agile Web Development With Rails: David Heinemeier Hansson (Paperback, 2005) ISBN-10: 097669400X | ISBN-13: 9780976694007

Rails Recipes: Chad Fowler (Paperback, 2006) ISBN-10: 0977616606 | ISBN-13: 9780977616602

I'm the original owner of both and they are in perfect shape.

russell
No. I come here for news and comments, not used stuff. If I had to wade through another Craigslist or eBay I wouldn't bother. It dilutes the franchise,
rokhayakebe
Well every now and then you get a random question about food, about movies, and other interesting subjects that are necessarily related to most topics discussed on HN. So I think a few random posts about your extra stuff would not hurt.

EDIT: This giveaway could not work anywhere else unless there is a trust system built into the community that was not based on sharing "stuff".

russell
I agree that other stuff is interesting, even book reviews, movies, and politics, but I don't think HN should be a classified advertising space.
PStamatiou
I know this thread is not highly looked upon, but I have been trying to sell a new Rev A Macbook Air + Superdrive and case for 1400 obo. email in my sig.
tocomment
I have a Nokia s60 I could send you, but I think the keypad doesn't work. It's fine though if you have people call you and then use the menu to look them up.
rokhayakebe
Thanks ToComment. I am emailing you. The incoming address is 1000app.
old-gregg
Good beginning but mediocre ending, your post reads like an average Hollywood movie. A used cell phone? Come on.

There are more "hackery" things we can exchange without USPS involvement.

I am looking for a skeleton sample of building an Outlook plugin, Xobni-style, with potential cotchas solved.

jodrellblank
Hrm, if Python's OK, I think I've seen one either in the examples of the Win32 extensions, or the SpamBayes project has an Outlook extension (not a skeleton though).
beholden
Check out Freecycle.org. They are linked to Yahoo now so you need a yahoo account but i find the service quite good. However it isn't good enough to find something specific you are looking for - essentially it's hit and miss.
cubicle67
Freecycle varies area to area. We were active members of freecycle Canberra which was a great group, but freecycle Perth is pretty crappy and seems lorded over by some self appointed email nazi.
mjr578
Along the same lines as Freecycle you might sign up for Kashless.org. They are based here in Seattle and are promoting the same free giving and receiving lifestyle.

I recently got in to the alpha and have ten invites if anyone would like to try it out.

[dead] localdataplace
Selfless plug: try LocalDataPlace, which we built as a replacement for freecycle's local recycling (http://free.LocalDataPlace.com ). We expanded it to include generic classified (http://www.LocalDataPlace.com ).

As has been discussed recently, there's a traction issue with launching a nationwide user content site. We certainly suffer from that.

We can also make private label versions of the site if anyone wants to add classifieds to their sites.

Lena Boucher lena@LocalDataPlace.com