[HN Gopher] I wrote to the address in the GPLv2 license notice (...
___________________________________________________________________
I wrote to the address in the GPLv2 license notice (2022)
Author : ekiauhce
Score : 764 points
Date : 2025-04-24 12:26 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (code.mendhak.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (code.mendhak.com)
| froh wrote:
| (2022)
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| Not sure if it's being exaggerated for comedic purposes but it is
| interesting to me how alien the act of sending a letter by post
| is to the author. Granted I don't send them very often but I
| wouldn't think much of it if I had to. But I guess younger people
| and particularly those in tech may genuinely never need a reason
| to send a letter (or, it seems, write an address by hand).
| diggan wrote:
| > But I guess younger people and particularly those in tech may
| genuinely never need a reason
|
| I don't think it's just a age/generation thing though. I'm one
| year older than my wife, but I grew up in Sweden in the 90s,
| she grew up in Peru. Somehow, sending/receiving letters was
| something I've done multiple times growing up, but she never
| did, and wasn't until we were living together in Spain in the
| 2010s that she for the first time in her life sent a letter via
| the street mailboxes. She's not in tech either, if that
| matters, while I am.
| rafaelm wrote:
| Probably because in our countries (I'm also from S.America)
| the reliability of the post office is questionable at best,
| so it wasn't something I ever really used.
| Symbiote wrote:
| In most/all of Europe, letter volumes are reducing but
| they're still used. Even where email is common, letters are
| usually possible.
|
| In your country,
|
| - how do you get a new bank card, when the current one
| expires?
|
| - how are you informed about a change like a price increase
| for electricity?
|
| - how do you pay for electricity? (Knowing how much to pay,
| when etc) What about an elderly person?
| tranceylc wrote:
| All of these examples are about receiving though.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Yes, but that's still dependent on the reliability of the
| post office.
| sdf4j wrote:
| To answer your questions: receiving letters is easy,
| companies know how to do it. Sending letters is not
| common for the public.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| Danish Post will soon terminate general mail delivery due
| to low need.
|
| https://apnews.com/article/postnord-denmark-postal-
| service-m...
|
| To our questions from Germany:
|
| - by Post, but I can imagine this changing as payment via
| phone/watch/... is spreading and I can imagine banks
| willing to reduce cost, making physical cards an paid
| extra.
|
| - on my contract via e-mail and the energy company's
| website. There are paper based contracts available,
| though.
|
| - In Germany/Europe SEPA wire transfers work well for
| that and are being used for decades, even with online
| banking being wide spread in the 90ies. (Pre Internet via
| BTX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bildschirmtext )
| warp wrote:
| You physically go to the bank.
|
| The electricity company has their own employees to
| deliver paper monthly statements to all their customers,
| they can attach other communications if needed.
|
| My bank has a connection to the electricity company, and
| can look up in realtime what my open balance is, which
| you can view and pay in the banking app. You can also pay
| it in cash at various offices (e.g. Western Union) around
| the city.
|
| You can also just give the electricity company permission
| to automatically take it out of your account every month
| (ppl don't trust the electricity company to get the
| amount correct, so folks don't usually do this. I do this
| for the water bill though).
|
| (this is my experience living in Ecuador for 10 years,
| I'm from the Netherlands, most of this is weird to me :)
| genewitch wrote:
| Three weeks ago I was part of a comment thread on this
| very site, where people were wondering why banks still
| had buildings for people to go in to.
| diggan wrote:
| In some countries, it is somewhat of a question "why"
| though. For example, banks in Sweden stopped carrying
| cash, and AFAIK (at least when I lived there) you
| interact with them either online or via the telephone,
| even cards are sent your home address instead of being
| picked up the branch and so on.
|
| Contrast to where I live now (Spain) where I can still go
| to the bank to deposit/withdraw money, so the use case
| for the branch/building/office is kind of obvious.
| ACS_Solver wrote:
| Yes, there are few reasons to go to a Swedish bank
| branch, and they've been closing branches, too. Almost
| everything is done online - really goes for most things
| in Sweden, not just banks.
|
| You don't even visit a branch to become a customer as
| long as you have an account with some other bank, which
| gives you BankID, a digital ID/signature system that's
| ubiquitous in Sweden. I have accounts with three Swedish
| banks. Of those, one doesn't have physical locations to
| visit, and a second I never visited. It's surely been ten
| years since I went to the third, my main bank, in person,
| and the branch office I went to closed years ago. Looking
| it up, my main bank only has one office left in the city,
| it's only open for three hours a day and requires a prior
| appointment for any services.
|
| Cash is only handled by a few bank branches (not all
| banks) and even then by prior booking - cash has been
| pretty much gone from society for a while now. Your card
| gets sent to you by postal mail. If you need to talk to
| someone at the bank, they'll suggest telephone or video
| calls, and will only see you in person as a last resort.
| Safe deposit boxes have also been largely discontinued as
| a service.
| slightwinder wrote:
| There are multiple ways to receive letters. Having a
| mailman delivering it directly to your house is usually
| the rich area's way to handle it. The lower version of
| this is to let people check with the post office
| themselves. If it's fancy, you have at least your
| personal postbox there, or you will have to ask office-
| workers which then depends on their working time. And
| outside of this, there are other ways to use other
| locations and people, not directly affiliated with the
| postal service for delivering letters. Pubs and other
| shops are often such locations, or in really poor areas
| the village chief will receive them, and then handle
| distribution.
|
| But it should be noted, except the physical objects,
| those letters can be also replaced with other means of
| communication. Just calling people via phone is common,
| or nowadays sending an email will also do the job. In my
| country we have a working and reliable postal system, but
| companies are still replacing letters with digital
| communication as far as laws allow it. Payments are also
| running automatically, so the bills are more informative
| and for taxes.
| longlonglonglon wrote:
| > - how do you get a new bank card, when the current one
| expires?
|
| The bank sends it through mail but they warn you that if
| it doesn't arrive within 2 weeks you should go in person
| to the bank to retrieve it. Depending on where you live
| there's a 50/50 chance that it never arrives through mail
| so you just wait 2 weeks and go to the bank.
|
| > - how are you informed about a change like a price
| increase for electricity?
|
| Email. Or the news channel for elderly people (if the
| increase is too big). If the increase is small that's a
| fact of life, everyone just expects it to increase a bit
| every 2 or 3 months.
|
| > - how do you pay for electricity? (Knowing how much to
| pay, when etc) What about an elderly person?
|
| Website or bank app. There are physical places that take
| cash payments and do the online process for you, elderly
| people generally use those.
| homebrewer wrote:
| I'm from a similar country and would never have thought
| about using snail mail for anything you've mentioned.
|
| For bank cards you go to their branch and get a new one
| from a person who works there, or by interacting with a
| terminal which prints your name on a blank card and spits
| it out. Some banks deliver them to your home address by
| courier service and hand them over in person, and they're
| not "elite" or special by any means.
|
| Utilities are paid through online/mobile banking, there
| are many alternatives and it takes maybe 10 seconds. Even
| my 70-something year old relatives use them. Some even
| older ones rely on help from others, or to go physical
| bank branches and pay there (which wastes a lot of time
| of everyone waiting in line to be serviced -- I don't
| personally know anyone who does that, but have seen it a
| couple of times).
|
| Price increases? Local news, or you can subscribe to
| receive them by email. Or just check in the online
| banking app when it's time to make another payment, it's
| all there.
| askonomm wrote:
| Am Estonian, and from your list only the first one is
| with physical mail, though more and more people use
| virtual cards / Apple Pay instead of even owning a
| physical card. We can also withdraw cash from an ATM
| using Apple Pay, no need for a card.
|
| As for price changes regarding utilities (or really,
| anything) we get an e-mail from the service provider or
| from the landlord (who then gets an e-mail from the
| service provider). We also pay for utilities via an
| online bank transfer or automated subscription to the
| service provider or to the landlord via a bank transfer
| (who then pays via an online bank transfer or has an
| automated subscription).
|
| Elderly people set up automatic subscription services in
| their local bank branch or by calling the bank, I have
| not heard of a single elderly person using mail to pay
| for anything.
| cameronh90 wrote:
| I'm in the UK where we do have a generally very reliable
| postal service, but of those three, it's only the bank
| card that involves a physical letter for me - and even
| then I have no idea where my bank cards even are because
| I just use contactless via my phone/watch nowadays.
|
| My electricity payment is direct debit - though I can pay
| manually via the app if I wish. The app has the amount on
| it, and they notify of service changes via the app and
| email. I suppose that if I ignored the electronic
| notifications they'd eventually send me a letter.
|
| Even if you do get your statements by post, basically
| nobody here would pay for it by mail. If you really hate
| computers, you can pay over the phone, or set up a direct
| debit by phone/letter, or use a "PayPoint" - which
| includes most corner shops, supermarkets and post
| offices. It's also quite common for elderly people to
| just have one of their younger relatives manage it all
| for them.
| remram wrote:
| The paper size and foreign stamps make sense, but I must say
| the inability to use a pen surprised me a little more.
| int_19h wrote:
| I'm not an American and I did write letters in my country of
| origin as a kid, but one thing that annoys me about US-style
| envelopes to this day is that they have no lines for address
| - you're just expected to line text up on your own correctly.
| If you're used to writing on lined paper because that's the
| standard in your country (including envelopes!), it can be
| frustrating.
|
| The envelopes I'm used to look like this: https://ru.wikipedi
| a.org/wiki/%D0%9A%D0%BE%D0%BD%D0%B2%D0%B5...
| cormorant wrote:
| Do they still say Ministerstvo sviazi SSSR ?
| int_19h wrote:
| They did for a few years after USSR was gone, as they
| were still going through old supplies.
|
| AFAIK modern Russian ones just say "Pochta Rossii", but
| the overall design is retained, including pre-labelled
| lines for various parts of address.
| rascul wrote:
| > one thing that annoys me about US-style envelopes to this
| day is that they have no lines for address
|
| I'm an American and I've used envelopes that have lines to
| write addresses on. I used to see them every now and then.
| In fact, I have about half a box sitting in my filing
| cabinet next to me that I probably haven't used for years.
|
| Many envelopes don't have the lines, though.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| We have envelopes like that, too, but they're not all that
| common.
| globular-toast wrote:
| In the UK at school in the 90s we were taught how to write
| a letter including addressing and stamping the envelope.
| It's quite strange to see it done "wrong" like in the OP.
| You're supposed to have the first line of the address
| centred vertically, leaving the top half for stamps. At
| least they got the stamps on the correct (right) side,
| though. I've seen a lot worse.
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| I wouldn't say it's that different from how the Royal
| Mail currently recommend one write the address:
|
| https://help.royalmail.com/personal/s/article/How-to-
| address...
|
| My father writes the address staggered; that is, each
| subsequent line being indented a centimetre or so
| relative to the previous line. Were you taught to stagger
| the address at your school in the 90s?
| globular-toast wrote:
| Yes, I was taught to do it staggered, but I think this
| was dying out at the time and I believe that by the time
| I wrote any letters of my own I didn't do the staggering.
| My theory is it's because of the prevalence of printed
| labels. I haven't seen it for a long time now.
|
| Now that I'm reminiscing a bit, it was also fairly common
| at the time for people to order a batch of sender labels
| that they could affix to the envelope. My grandparents
| had particularly distinctive golden metallic labels which
| meant you could instantly tell who it was from (if you
| didn't already recognise the handwriting).
| Suppafly wrote:
| >you're just expected to line text up on your own
| correctly.
|
| It only has to be lined up well enough to be read by a
| human, they don't reject them just because it's sloppy or
| not lined up correctly.
| int_19h wrote:
| Yes, I know. It still offends my aesthetic sensibilities.
| ~
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| Being unaware of paper sizes is baffling to me - where I
| live, letter and legal paper are common but I'm entirely
| aware of ISO216 paper sizes.
| Symbiote wrote:
| In a country using ISO paper, national paper sizes of one
| of the few places not using this standard are obscure.
|
| I've never seen it in any office or stationary shop in
| Europe. It's available online, at a premium.
| n3storm wrote:
| True, any page oriented software like LibreOffice,
| Inkscape, Gimp, will show you US Letter sizes and US Letter
| Envelope sizes and you may have messed up with printing on
| wrong size... but as other posters say, maybe this days
| nobody prints on real paper anymore...
| btasker wrote:
| They all default to ISO sizes for me.
|
| If I format the page size, Libreoffice does offer
| "Letter" and "Legal". GIMP shows them as "US Letter" and
| "US Legal" but again they're not the default.
|
| It wouldn't surprise me if most non-US users hadn't seen
| them at all, and certainly not that they don't realise
| the US uses a different size.
| int_19h wrote:
| It's still problematic the other way around - you try to
| print that PDF on A4, but it's formatted for US Letter.
|
| In most cases it still doesn't matter, either because
| software defaults to scaling to fit, or else because the
| margins are large enough that it works out even if
| printed in true size. But sometimes stars align and then
| you learn about those weird paper sizes.
| remram wrote:
| Odd take. It seems perfectly natural that the country using
| different sizes from everybody else would be aware of that
| fact, but that a country using the same size as 95% of the
| world might not know about the weirdo sizes used by those
| 5%.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| Fair but if you're going to diss, at least be aware it's
| not just one country :) (I've never lived in the country
| you're thinking of, and all the countries I've lived in
| use non-ISO216 paper sizes).
| reddalo wrote:
| I live in Italy and I've never seen a normal "office" paper
| sheet which is not A4.
| cjs_ac wrote:
| It's one thing to know that the US, Canada and the
| Philippines don't use the same paper sizes as the other 190
| countries in the world; it's quite another to be given a
| physical example for the first time in your life.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| You missed at least one other country that uses "US"
| paper sizes.
| swores wrote:
| Thanks for such an enlightening comment in which you were
| too lazy to write a 13th word naming the country you were
| thinking of.
|
| For anyone else curious as I was: Mexico is the 4th
| country, and I don't believe there are any others (but I
| could be wrong).
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| There are more Letter countries than just those four.
| Nicely covered with the "I could be wrong" though.
| swores wrote:
| Last time I gave you the benefit of the doubt that you at
| least thought your comment was worth posting, now I
| assume you're just a troll and am blocking so I won't see
| your comments again.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| What's more trollish than telling someone "I'm blocking
| you because you're a troll"? If you're going to block me
| just block me, don't owe any explanations to me.
|
| You're so funny heheh
| OJFord wrote:
| They're not just uncommon, they're not used at all. You
| will only see US legal in the UK if an American
| company/person sends it to you, how often do you think that
| happens? I've had it maybe once or twice, but you could
| easily never see it, especially people born ~this century
| growing up with less paper of any size anyway.
| globular-toast wrote:
| It's exceedingly rare to encounter US paper sizes in the UK
| and I expect the rest of Europe too. I've only received
| these from two places: the FSF and Donald Knuth.
| oxguy3 wrote:
| One time at my old job I was trying to load the printer,
| and I said something like "Oh shoot, these are oversized
| sheets; I need the 8.5x11."
|
| My coworker looked at me like I was crazy. "The what?"
|
| "The normal printer paper, the 8.5 by 11 inch paper"
|
| "Why do you know the exact size of printer paper??"
|
| I did not know how to respond to this question.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| Whenever someone questions what you know, the correct
| answer is "why don't you?" - I will not be trivia-shamed!
| pavon wrote:
| Ha, I'm trying to remember where I learned that as well.
| I know we covered it in drafting where we learned an
| 8.5x11 A paper is half a sheet of 11x17 B paper which is
| half a sheet of 17x22 C paper, and so on. But I thought I
| knew the size of A paper long before that, and that it
| was common knowledge, though I can't think of where or
| why I would have needed to know. Then again I also know
| that legal paper is 8.5x14 even though I have never had
| to use it.
| omegaham wrote:
| Grade school for me - teachers would say "8.5x11" instead
| of "letter size" or even just "printer paper." I don't
| know why they did it, and I assume it's for the same
| reason that I say it too. It's probably what their
| teachers said to them!
| adastra22 wrote:
| Because that's the size of the paper.
| rswail wrote:
| The problem is that the rest of the world is not aware of
| US sizes.
|
| Thus HP printers continually displaying "PC LOAD LETTER" on
| printers outside the US dealing with documents generated by
| people in the US.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| On don't worry, they also show PC LOAD LETTER in the US
| even when the correct paper size is loaded :)
| Suppafly wrote:
| >On don't worry, they also show PC LOAD LETTER in the US
| even when the correct paper size is loaded :)
|
| Only if there is an issue with the rollers or something
| and it can't feed the paper from the paper cassette. No
| one ever wants to read the manuals or do basic
| troubleshooting though. Hell newer ones have a menu on
| them that will walk you through each of the
| troubleshooting steps, but people would rather put a
| post-it on it saying it's broken.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| I was joking :)
| BalinKing wrote:
| I never realized that "LETTER" in that error referred to
| paper size--no printer I've had has actually given that
| error, so I only ever heard about it through oblique
| references to Office Space and such. It makes so much
| more sense now...
| Suppafly wrote:
| The 'PC' part is paper cassette, it's the printer
| literally telling you to load letter sized paper into the
| paper cassette, but everyone acts like it's some
| mysterious message that's impossible to figure out.
| nullhole wrote:
| Well, PC also means Personal Computer, and letter also
| means element of alphabet, so it's not like there isn't
| room for confusion
| immibis wrote:
| Sounds impossible if you didn't read the manual. Who
| reads manuals?
| toast0 wrote:
| Could be PC LOAD LEGAL if your document is really weird.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| Yeah that's crazy. I use pens to doodle designs or write
| little recipes or Kanban cards or index cards for what's
| inside a box... The author maybe does all that by typewriter?
| slightwinder wrote:
| Or they do it all digital, or don't even do it at all.
| Label printers and note-apps are very popular with IT-
| people.
| Gnuke wrote:
| I wrote a letter to a friend last year. It was the first time
| in probably well over a decade I had used a pen for more than
| just scribbled notes or doodling. I made a ton of mistakes
| and I wasted at least a dozen sheets of paper rewriting it.
| Seems it's one of those skills that deteriorates without
| frequent practice, at least for me.
| Suppafly wrote:
| > I made a ton of mistakes and I wasted at least a dozen
| sheets of paper rewriting it. Seems it's one of those
| skills that deteriorates without frequent practice, at
| least for me.
|
| Back in the old days when people still wrote by hand, they
| also made mistakes, but just scribbled them out and kept
| going. Starting over was only necessary with doing
| something special.
| 3np wrote:
| Sending physical mail is one thing. I no longer consider myself
| "digital native" after reading this:
|
| > Writing the address on the envelope was awkward, as I haven't
| used a pen in several years; it took a few attempts and some
| wasted envelopes, printing the address would have taken less
| time
| alabastervlog wrote:
| I grew up pre-smartphone (pre-Web, partially, even) and even
| through college probably half my total output for school was
| hand written (friggin' blue book exams, LOL)
|
| Some time last year, when trying to write something by hand
| and finding it alien and awkward, it occurred to me that for
| probably something like 15 years, and maybe more, I've
| perhaps not written more than a hundred words (signatures
| aside) by hand per year.
|
| I have kids, so nearly all those words are on the stupid
| forms they constantly make you re-fill-out from scratch for
| no apparent reason at doctor's offices. If not for that, it'd
| be even lower. Some years I bet I was under 50. I go _months_
| without writing more than two or three words, total.
| slightwinder wrote:
| Even digital natives are using pens with their smartphones
| and tablets these days. It's just a choice now whether you
| use them. Though, not sure whether kids these days are still
| learning it in school.
| 0xTJ wrote:
| Sending mail being a challenging or difficult thing does come
| across as odd to me, being in Canada and born in the late 90s.
| Sure I haven't mailed a letter in a couple years, but when I do
| the main hassle is just finding where I put my stamps. I can
| however understand that finding return postage would be a
| hassle; I'm not sure why the UK and Canada (amongst others)
| don't do IRCs anymore.
|
| It's also much easier these days to find out how to correctly
| format an address for a given destination. (At least for
| alphabet-based languages; I recently tried to decipher a Korean
| address in a business park and got nowhere fast.)
| palata wrote:
| Agreed. I am a millennial, so most likely older than the
| author.
|
| Not having envelopes at the ready is one thing, but ordering
| stamps... on eBay??? And then wasting a few envelopes because
| writing down the address is unusual? That kind of blew my mind.
|
| I am a software engineer, and I always have a paper notebook
| and a pen next to my keyboard to write down stuff.
|
| I guess this all tells me I'm getting old :-).
| alias_neo wrote:
| > but ordering stamps... on eBay
|
| OP was ordering US stamps to include _in_ the letter, on an
| SAE (self-addressed envelope) they were sending _from_ the
| UK, so that the FSF could reply (from the US) using said
| stamps.
|
| As a millennial myself, I have no idea where else I'd look
| for <recipient country> stamps should I want to include them
| on a SAE I was sending to said country, so that they
| recipient wouldn't incur the cost of replying to me.
|
| I don't find looking on eBay particularly strange, though I'd
| do a quick search for alternatives first.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Sure but, on the other hand, this was overly kind of him.
| In general, unless it is explicitely requested that you
| must provide a stamped envelope for the reply the
| assumption of snail mail is that each side pays for its own
| envelopes and stamps.
| palata wrote:
| And you could also put a dollars bill in the envelope?
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| From the UK...?
| pansa2 wrote:
| The Post Office will sell you US currency, but AFAIK not
| US stamps.
| dmurray wrote:
| Perhaps a couple of grams of silver?
| wongarsu wrote:
| How to get accountants to hate you in one easy step
| mjevans wrote:
| Offhand, I don't think I've ever mailed an International
| letter or package.
|
| Is return postage something that, normally, my local post
| office would help me with? E.G. do they have some method of
| marking or adding post to a package that would be accepted
| globally (or at least within the destination country)?
| Symbiote wrote:
| That's the International Reply Coupon mentioned in the
| article, but it's not supported by all countries.
|
| I think I've sent far more international letters and
| parcels than domestic. Christmas cards for elderly
| relatives in the country I was born in, and postcards
| when I travelled abroad.
|
| Some obscure things I sold on eBay were mostly sent
| abroad.
| mjevans wrote:
| """
|
| United Kingdom
|
| The Royal Mail stopped selling IRCs on 31 December
| 2011[26] due to a lack of demand. United States
|
| The United States Postal Service stopped selling
| international reply coupons on 27 January 2013.[27]
|
| """
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_reply_coupon#
| Uni...
|
| That explains why I was confounded in my efforts to
| search within USPS results.
| ahazred8ta wrote:
| -
| Lex-2008 wrote:
| yep, article also mentions them:
|
| > I was disappointed to find out that the UK's Royal Mail
| discontinued international reply coupons in 2011. The
| only alternative that I could think of was to buy some US
| stamps.
| dl9999 wrote:
| I send $3 U.S. with QSL (ham radio) cards. It seems like
| everybody is able to convert that to local currency to
| cover postage.
| relistan wrote:
| I send international reply coupons with QSL cards. They
| no longer sell them in Ireland, where I live, but you can
| still order them from Swiss Post, online. They work
| everywhere. They mail them to you for free.
|
| https://shop.post.ch/en/packing-sending/sending-
| letters/regi...
| Someone wrote:
| > I have no idea where else I'd look for <recipient
| country> stamps should I want to include them on a SAE I
| was sending to said country
|
| I would try to buy them online from their post office. For
| the USA, there is https://www.usps.com/business/postage-
| options.htm:
|
| _"Print Labels Online with Click-N-Ship
|
| With your free USPS.com account, you can pay for postage
| and print just one label or a batch of shipping labels
| online"_
|
| Germany has (https://www.iamexpat.de/expat-info/germany-
| news/deutsche-pos...):
|
| _"You simply need to open the app, select the appropriate
| postage service, tick "Code for labelling" (Code zum
| Beschriften), and pay with PayPal. You will then
| immediately receive a code, consisting of the letters
| #PORTO and an eight-digit string, which you must write in
| pen in the top right-hand corner of the envelope or
| postcard. Then, just pop it in the post box, and you're
| done! The code is valid for 14 days and can only be used
| for Germany-bound mail."_
|
| That 14-day limit may not be a good idea for this use case.
| Suppafly wrote:
| that honestly seems more complicated and likely to fail
| than just buying the correct stamps on ebay.
| kalleboo wrote:
| That German app is not available in the App Store in my
| country (and I presume in any country other than
| Germany), so I would also be forced to go to eBay for
| stamps
| Someone wrote:
| Then I would Google for an alternative, and find https://
| shop.deutschepost.de/briefversand/briefmarken/briefm...
| wbl wrote:
| You use an International Reply Coupon https://en.m.wikipe
| dia.org/wiki/International_reply_coupon
| layer8 wrote:
| You obviously read neither the blog post nor the
| Wikipedia article.
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| The Deutsche Post '#PORTO' method does not apply to
| international shipments, unfortunately. However, you can
| still purchase barcode labels online for printing, and
| conventional stamps are simply values in Euro cents so
| can be used for both domestic and international
| deliveries.
|
| In addition, the 14-day limit no longer applies. Deutsche
| Post were challenged in court, and the digital stamps
| must now last for as long as conventional stamps do:
|
| https://nrwe.justiz.nrw.de/olgs/koeln/j2023/3_U_148_22_Ur
| tei...
| mvdtnz wrote:
| I just priced a stamp to send to New Zealand using that
| USPS website and it came to over USD$20 so that's not a
| realistic option. To be fair I had to take some guesses
| with weight (what the fuck is an ounce and how many
| letters fit into one?) and dimensions (they don't have
| units on that website, so I guess my letter is 6x3
| whatevers).
| cameronh90 wrote:
| The author in the UK so it's pretty much a given that they're
| exaggerating for comedic effect, but... living in the UK
| myself, I have only sent maybe about 5 letters in my life,
| all to the government bureaucracy, and none more recently
| than a decade ago. And I'm a millennial, albeit on the
| younger side (so I tell myself).
|
| I don't have any pens, paper or a printer in my house, so I'd
| probably go to my workplace if I needed to send a letter
| nowadays. I do occasionally send a parcel though, which
| involves printing off a shipping label, so the process isn't
| _completely_ alien.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| We don't have a printer at home (UK), sending parcels is
| the only time we'd need it but our small local post office
| prints labels (eg for Amazon returns, or parcel companies).
|
| I did print a page at work recently, the second one since I
| started my job 5 years ago.
| cameronh90 wrote:
| Most of the time I have to send parcels now, I use those
| drop off lockers where you just put it in the right
| cubbyhole and - I guess - they label it when they pick it
| up. Otherwise, most couriers will do label on pickup, or
| the return label is included with the delivery in the
| first place. Very occasionally there's no other option
| but to find some way of printing it myself.
|
| I did have a small inkjet printer at one point, but the
| ink kept drying up, so in the end it was costing me PS10
| and a trip to Tesco every time I needed to print
| something. Thought about getting a laser, but it's quite
| a lot of space to waste on something I use so rarely. I
| might get one of those little thermal printers that are
| small enough to keep in a drawer.
| SpaceNoodled wrote:
| It's bizarre to hear about people not even having a single
| pen, like the author. What's the last time you ever used
| one? What is your daily life like?
| cameronh90 wrote:
| I think the last the last time I used a writing implement
| was actually about two months ago, and it was a sharpie
| that I had to go to the corner shop to buy. I needed to
| take a verification picture of myself holding the date
| for an online pharmacy.
|
| I do have an iPad with an Apple Pencil, but even that I
| use quite rarely - though I at least know where it is. If
| I'm annotating a PDF, that would be my tool of choice.
|
| Aside from that, I'm not sure that my daily life is
| really that unrecognisable from anyone else's. Just that
| instead of writing stuff on paper, I either type it or
| tap it on my phone. For maths, I'm just quite quick at
| TeX input.
| Macha wrote:
| I went for 10 years not using a pen at home. That streak
| would be even longer, except for about a year I took up
| journalling as a hobby.
|
| I'm not sure exactly what you think people must be
| handwriting:
|
| - Notes? I use Obsidian for work notes, Google Keep for
| stuff like shopping lists
|
| - Signatures? Delivery receipt signatures are done with a
| finger on a touch screen, stuff like employment contracts
| and finance paperwork have basically all moved to
| e-signatures. I genuinely think the last thing I signed
| with a pen might have been my mortgage, and that one I
| had to go to solicitor's office anyway as it had to be
| officially witnessed.
|
| - Paper forms? Print, sign and scan was occasionally
| requested until a few years ago, but I did it in the
| office because I also didn't own a printer at that time.
| Even "important government forms" are done online now.
| grishka wrote:
| I'm also a millennial software engineer but I usually write
| stuff down to text files. I do use pen and paper to _draw_
| things if that helps my understanding of them. Like when
| there 's geometry involved.
|
| Sending letters isn't an alien concept to me either. I'm old
| enough to have done it regularly as a kid. I especially liked
| the part where you have to write the zip code in those
| machine-readable digits.
| eru wrote:
| > I especially liked the part where you have to write the
| zip code in those machine-readable digits.
|
| How long ago was that? The machine have gotten really good
| at deciphering regular handwriting quite a while ago.
| SpaceNoodled wrote:
| When and where were you required to write the ZIP so
| strangely? I've never heard of such a bizarre requirement.
| grishka wrote:
| Russia. It's still a thing most likely.
|
| https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Russian_postal_co
| des...
| SpaceNoodled wrote:
| Fascinating, thanks!
| palata wrote:
| That is cool!
| eru wrote:
| > And then wasting a few envelopes because writing down the
| address is unusual? That kind of blew my mind.
|
| Some people really have terrible hand writing. And dyslexia
| is a thing, too.
| layer8 wrote:
| That weren't the reasons stated, though.
| qingcharles wrote:
| I actually buy all my stamps on eBay. You can buy legit
| Forever USA stamps at below market rates.
| spoonsort wrote:
| Nah, I'm young and even to me the author's just on the
| extreme side of "digital native". The first thing I saw in
| the article was this and knew it was fake, too: "Considering
| the storage constraints back then" (he's just repeating it,
| he doesn't know if it's actually applicable). And now you
| know why random blogs, while insightful, shouldn't be treated
| as gold truth.
| bradley13 wrote:
| Honestly, sending letters is increasingly alien: I rarely send
| one letter per year. This year I have sent two, only because I
| am trying to contact an incredibly old-fashioned directorate of
| the German government that doesn't seem to have an email
| address.
|
| The stamps I have, I bought years ago - by now, they don't
| cover current letter prices. I wind up putting too much postage
| on the letters, because I'm not going to go buy even more
| stamps that I probably won't need...
| liampulles wrote:
| Sending international postage in my country (South Africa) is
| not a very reliable process, so couriers and email are used
| quite heavily here instead. Its not necessarily an age thing.
| drivingmenuts wrote:
| I have a roll of Forever stamps, purchased years ago. I don't
| even remember why, specifically, I purchased them. In theory, I
| could post a letter on my deathbed (I'm Generation X, so it's
| not that far off) and be assured that the delivery fee is
| covered by the cost of one stamp. Unfortunately, most of the
| people I would wish to correspond with will also be deceased at
| that time. So ...
|
| I leave it to y'all to monkey-knife-fight for the rest of the
| roll.
| rwmj wrote:
| Disappointed that International Reply Coupons are no longer a
| thing too! I used one back in the 1980s to write to the authors
| of the Power C compiler[1] in the US about a bug (yes, a bug
| report by mail). I enclosed an IRC in case they wanted to
| reply. They were kind enough to write back, and didn't use the
| IRC (but sent it back). They did however include a floppy disk
| with the fixed compiler, which was nice of them.
|
| [1] Still around: http://mixsoftware.com/product/powerc.htm
| relistan wrote:
| I still use them for ham radio QSL cards. They work
| everywhere that is a member of the Universal Postal Union
| (nearly all are). You can buy them online from Swiss Post.
| They will mail them for free.
|
| https://shop.post.ch/en/packing-sending/sending-
| letters/regi...
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Slightly alternate take: this post (and the fact that FSF still
| replies to paper mail) is about _accessibility_
|
| Which changes as times change.
|
| In the 90s, requiring access to the internet and an email
| address would have been exclusionary and decreased access.
|
| Now, 30 years later, it's reversed and physical mail is
| difficult.
|
| But from another perspective... the goal should be to ensure
| that _anyone_ who wants to do a thing can, with as few third
| party requirements as possible.
|
| In the sense that the FSF wants to be the exact opposite of
| {install this vendor's parking app to pay for parking} + {get
| an email account with this particular provider to ensure your
| email goes through} + {install TicketMaster for access to
| venue} + {this site requires IE^H^HChrome} all the other
| mandatory third-party choices we're forced into.
|
| Postal mail, for all its faults, is universally accessible by
| design. And continuing to support the most accessible method of
| communication is laudable!
|
| Accessibility _and_ convenience >> convenience
| Misdicorl wrote:
| > the goal should be to ensure that anyone who wants to do a
| thing can, with as few third party requirements as possible.
|
| This is a good starting point, but if you have no barriers
| then you get abuse problems which is why email is terrible. I
| remember being horrified in the 90s about attempts to charge
| 1 cent per email. Now I long for a world where that actually
| happened.
| creaturemachine wrote:
| You're paying that cent, but in the form of endless ads
| hijacking your consciousness.
| overtomanu wrote:
| you can still do some setup and access mail by using
| applications like thunderbird, which have no ads.
| odo1242 wrote:
| Or use an adblocker
| tshaddox wrote:
| Ironically, the amount of effort I expend dealing with spam
| from the postal service is much larger than the amount of
| effort I expend dealing with email.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I'm pretty sure I spend less than 5 minutes a week
| dealing with physical spam mail. I have a recycling bin
| right next to where the mail arrives and most days are 15
| seconds of "these go into that bin unopened" and
| sometimes I have to open an envelope and glance at it to
| see if it's something relevant to me.
|
| Even with the best spam filtering on email, I'm well over
| 5 minutes a week of distraction from it.
| Misdicorl wrote:
| And now imagine how easy dealing with email spam would be
| if the marginal fiscal cost was not 0 like physical spam.
| All the technology and tools available and less than 1%
| of the viable spam surface area
| ta8903 wrote:
| It's like the classic argument about IRC vs Discord. IRC is
| more convoluted to use, the clients are subpar, you need to
| set up a BNC to receive messages when offline, but Discord
| requires you to give up your phone number.
|
| Some people find IRC less accessible, but I find having a
| phone number that I'm willing to give to a third party is a
| much more difficult requirement.
| immibis wrote:
| Don't forget the next part: whenever you point out that
| Discord requires you to give them your phone number,
| hundreds of Agent Smiths appear in the replies to say that
| actually you don't. Who are we to believe - the repliers,
| or our own lying eyes?
|
| (The Agent Smith effect is something conspiracy theorists
| made up to explain why every time they show off their
| conspiracy theory in public, every single person around
| them suddenly gains the same opinion of them. I'm using it
| humourously)
| Macha wrote:
| The explanation is pretty simple: The most fervent users
| of discord also have overlap with the longest users of
| discord, and their account age and usage patterns means
| that discord's risk systems have never demanded a phone
| number from them.
| mega_dean wrote:
| > Who are we to believe - the repliers, or our own lying
| eyes?
|
| Believe the repliers: I created an account in May 2024
| and I have not added a phone number. Here's a screenshot
| from my settings: https://imgur.com/a/Q7kJpDv
|
| But also, your eyes aren't lying to you: some servers
| require accounts to have confirmed phone number in order
| to join. So there is probably a lot of people who have
| had the experience of creating a Discord account, trying
| to join a server / accept an invite, and immediately
| seeing a "you must provide a phone number" prompt.
| dheera wrote:
| > is universally accessible by design
|
| I disagree. It requires taking time out of business hours,
| and they don't pay you your salary while you line up multiple
| times for 30 minutes each. I've sometimes had to line up for
| 2 hours total (4 times) just to mail one thing. Once to ask
| "how do i mail this", once to ask for a pen (couldn't cut the
| line because a Karen wouldn't let me), once because I filled
| the wrong form, etc. Typical USPS experience
| krisoft wrote:
| I mean it is the fallback method. The solution for the "I
| never heard of this internet thing, or something else is
| preventing me from finding the licence online" problem.
|
| Almost everyone will just use their search engine to find
| this page: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-
| licenses/gpl-2.0.en.html
|
| What can you do to serve the licence to those who can't or
| won't do that (for whatever reason)? I think it is hard to
| find something more universally accessible to serve that
| edge case.
|
| You describe your story of how sending a letter went to
| you, and I admit it sounds like a bit of a pain. But you
| managed to do it. And by the sound of it you were totally
| novice at it. (didn't even bring your own pen!) Someone can
| do the same thing you did anywhere from Nairobi, McMurdo,
| Pyongyang, or Viganpetend.
|
| It is not "universally accessible" in the "easy and
| comfortable" sense. It is "universally accessible" in the
| "almost anywhere where humans live you can access this
| service" sense.
| dheera wrote:
| I mean, part of the problem is I didn't own a pen at the
| time.
|
| I have multiple computers and phones, I thought that was
| the interface to the post-2000 world.
|
| I _do_ have paint, but that 's a little clumsy.
|
| I grudgingly own a box of BIC pens now, but ... It's like
| requiring people to own a horse to do something these
| days. And in past experience during school days, those
| goddamn BIC pens all go bad (ink dries up or something),
| before I use even 5% of one of them.
|
| I realize this all probably sounds very silly to someone
| born before 1980 but ... yeah it's just the reality of
| the world, I don't normally need pens to do anything, and
| am used to pens being provided in the rare occasions I
| need to sign a receipt or something, and usually I just
| end up drawing a cat on the signature line.
| krisoft wrote:
| Oh, i absolutely get you! Was not intending to pen-shame
| you in any way. Just used it to illustrate that the
| postal process worked (eventually, and with a lot of
| inconvenience) even though you were not best prepared for
| it.
|
| But i have been exactly where you are. We were having a
| book club and trying to vote on the next book to read,
| and turns out none of us out of twenty literature loving
| people had a single pen on us. So yeah, that is for sure
| the current reality.
|
| > usually I just end up drawing a cat on the signature
| line.
|
| Thats awesome! Do the they accept it usually?
| dheera wrote:
| Yes! I've never had an issue -- in the US at least,
| signatures on receipts generally don't matter. Cat
| sketches are usually fine.
|
| The only place I've had it mattered is when signing bank
| documents in Asia.
| hermitdev wrote:
| > I realize this all probably sounds very silly to
| someone born before 1980
|
| I was born after 1980 and I think you're beating a dead
| horse, here. You're conflating accessibility with
| convenience. Not just with this comment, but others
| you've made in this thread.
|
| > those goddamn BIC pens all go bad (ink dries up or
| something), before I use even 5% of one of them.
|
| Grab the pen by the end opposite the nib, give it a good
| shake for a few seconds, lick the nib, scribble on a
| scrap piece of paper until it starts writing again.
| Problem solved. You can't resurrect a dead laptop or
| computer by licking and shaking it (at least I've never
| succeeded in doing so).
| Octopodes wrote:
| Bravo! I cannot tell if this is a satire of something.
| Can some explain the joke, if any?
| sokoloff wrote:
| Your life sounds positively exhausting.
| Symbiote wrote:
| You are intentionally making things difficult when you
| don't own a pen.
|
| That's very much your problem, and the rest of the world
| doesn't need to accommodate it.
| dheera wrote:
| When paper and pen was invented, I'm sure there was a
| bearded caveman holding a fish who made a comment about
| how it was someone's problem that they didn't have a tool
| to carve stone tablets.
|
| Paper is on its way out, electrons are the new medium.
| kergonath wrote:
| Do you realise that this is the exact same positions as
| people who refuse to use a computer or a phone on
| principle? Ranting about having to use a pen is not being
| hip or modern, it's being obnoxious.
| lproven wrote:
| > I mean, part of the problem is I didn't own a pen at
| the time.
|
| I find this mind-boggling.
|
| I immediately came up with a parallel -- "they wanted me
| to _walk to the counter_ but I do not own shoes. "
|
| Which took me to the universe of Pixar's _Wall-E_ and now
| I can't help but imagine that the subset of "people born
| after 1980" are helpless in their floating chairs and
| apparently I am aberrant because I learned to walk, and
| that makes me _old_.
| kergonath wrote:
| > those goddamn BIC pens all go bad (ink dries up or
| something), before I use even 5% of one of them.
|
| No, the ink does not dry. What happens is that the ball
| gets stuck if it is used too infrequently. This is solved
| by rubbing it against paper, or even better something
| rubbery. The underside of most people's shoes works well
| for this. Just last week I used a Bic that was at least
| 30 years old. These things are very dependable.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| If you're talking about packages via USPS, you can use
| print + pay & drop boxes for anything that fits.
|
| https://www.usps.com/ship/online-shipping.htm
|
| If you're talking about letters, the innumerable blue drop
| boxes.
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| I find it hard to believe that waiting two hours is normal
| for customers of the USPS. You can order stamps online,
| they have (collection) postboxes and even offer a pick-up
| service for parcels. At $0.73 to send a letter anywhere in
| the USA, that sounds like a pretty impressive offering to
| me.
| dheera wrote:
| It's lining up multiple times. When I walk in with a box,
| I don't know how the hell to mail it, what to fill out,
| what the pricing vs. delivery ETA grid is so I can decide
| where I want to position myself on that curve, the
| different forms you need to fill to be on different parts
| of that curve.
|
| I usually end up screwing it up a few times in the
| process too. I didn't realize that the free boxes they
| give you are only for 2 day service (and doesn't work for
| 1 day or 3 day). 1 day is a different box, 3 day is
| bring-your-own-box.
|
| The pens they provide don't work, you have to line up to
| get a pen. You have to line up to ask a question. The
| workers are grumpy, the people in line are grumpy, I've
| had the experience that sometimes nobody will let you cut
| anything even if it's just for a pen or a piece of tape.
|
| Oh and they charge you if you ask for more than about X
| of tape. It's a tricky dance. I think X is about 20cm. If
| you ask for 30cm, they will refuse even the 20cm and ask
| you to buy 300cm, which entails getting in the 30 minute
| line again (so the actual cost of the tape is 0.5 * your
| hourly consulting rate, so if you're a software engineer
| paid $100/hour of stocks and $100/hour of equity, that'll
| be a $50 roll of tape plus $30 of stock assumimng Trump
| just announced more tariffs). If you ask for 15cm, they
| might give you 20cm for free. It's tricky. I wish there
| were a sign that said "free tape: <=20cm" or whatever the
| actual number is, in front of each employee's desk.
|
| Which reminds me, the actual number also seems depends on
| the mood of the USPS employee, so you also need to
| carefully watch your position in line so that you try to
| get yourself in front of the happiest employee. If the
| grumpiest employee is almost done with their previous
| customer, you have to fake needing to fix something
| really quick and let someone ahead of you in the line so
| that they get the grumpy one and you get the happy one.
| Or you can try to estimate the processing time of the few
| people ahead of you in line by eyeballing the complexity
| of shipping whatever they are holding, and time your
| place in line to be in front of the happiest employee
| when it gets to you. That way you are more likely to get
| more free tape to seal your box.
|
| You also need to think about how to keep them happy. That
| usually involves some small talk. More small talk gets
| you more tape. Weather is a good safe topic on the east
| coast, because you can commiserate the bad weather with
| the USPS employee, but in California the weather is
| always good, so it doesn't make for good small talk, and
| the USPS employee might be at risk of going from happy to
| grumpy because they'd rather be outside.
| qmr wrote:
| If you have this much difficulty mailing a package I
| think your consulting rate should be a lot more than $200
| an hour.
|
| Shipping quotes are trivial to get online. It's also easy
| to print shipping with pirateship.
|
| USPS picks up packages for free with your regular
| delivery.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| This is some other issue, perhaps untreated executive
| dysfunction.
|
| I have seen people struggling to complete tasks at post
| offices and banks, queuing multiple times unnecessarily,
| being afraid of choosing the wrong options but not doing
| any research, etc. They don't take the basic steps that
| the others in line do to make their visit work.
| elzbardico wrote:
| I find your experience at the post office weirdly
| fascinating. Yeah, I am a strange guy.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| > I find it hard to believe that waiting two hours is
| normal for customers of the USPS.
|
| GP said postal services are "universally accessible". So
| first, it doesn't matter is it's "normal", it matters if
| it happens at all. And USPS does not represent postal
| mail universally - I have never even seen a USPS building
| in my life and don't expect to. Is postal mail as
| universally accessible to a homeless man in Laos and a
| 5-year-old kid in rural India? I think it's ludicrous to
| claim that postal mail is "universally accessible" and
| displays a huge Western bias.
| Symbiote wrote:
| The task is sending a letter, not a parcel.
|
| You buy the stamps (from the post office, another shop with
| opening hours you prefer, or online), sick one on the
| envelope and put it in a mailbox.
|
| Overcomplicating everything so you can grumble on the
| internet isn't required.
| samspot wrote:
| A common mistake in accessibility is to assume accessibility
| is mostly for users who are blind. I've rarely seen the
| opposite approach, calling something accessible that is very
| much not accessible to a person who is blind. A url is much
| more accessible for many people with disabilities than the
| postal mail.
|
| Even if you mean access instead of accessibility, presumably
| a person who can find a way to acquire stamps can just as
| easily make it to a library with public computers.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| accessibility: the quality of being able to be entered or
| used by everyone, including people who have a disability
| xmprt wrote:
| > Postal mail, for all its faults, is universally accessible
| by design
|
| I think it's important to note that this isn't actually true.
| For a lot of homeless people or people who move often postal
| mail isn't as good. Online communication is actually more
| universal. Most (all?) public libraries have computers now.
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| Not sure if this works in other countries, but here in the
| Netherlands, homeless folks can get a postal address at
| municipal offices. People who move can set up (albeit paid)
| mail forwarding for up to a year.
|
| Other than that, there's good old 'poste restante', in
| which you can supposedly address mail to any post office
| and they'll hold it for the recipient (even
| internationally), although I've never tried this.
|
| (I appreciate that not everyone may actually know about
| these options, though.)
| pabs3 wrote:
| I wonder if any post offices have digital post box
| services to open, digitise, email and incinerate any
| incoming letters.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| Physical mail isn't difficult, even now, for anyone with a
| modicum of competence. I can understand if someone hasn't
| used physical mail before, but it's _very_ easy to look up
| how to send a letter + buy envelopes and stamps. If someone
| cannot do that without difficulty, they really need to work
| on their basic life skills.
| carstenhag wrote:
| Buying a stamp in the home country is doable for most
| people. But even then, imagine you are 20, how many mails
| do you think will you have sent?
|
| For a different country, I'd have no idea. Especially if
| it's so far away like the USA and I can't locally get a
| special reply post stamp. What I would have done is to put
| in 5EUR in the envelope and call it a day. The person would
| probably be happy seeing other money.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| His difficulty was finding postage stamps for the self-
| addressed return envelope, and clearly the author is not
| American. Do you think it would be quite so easy to "buy
| envelopes and stamps" if you had to send a stamped return
| envelope to Nepal or Manila? Is that a "basic life skill"
| or would you have to do a little research to figure out
| what you'd need?
| Symbiote wrote:
| He had difficulty writing an address on an envelope.
|
| This skill is something we expect of 8 year old children.
| singpolyma3 wrote:
| Maybe we used to. When sending letters was still a thing
| people did.
| odo1242 wrote:
| Nowadays, not really. I had a similar experience - the
| first (well, first in a few years) time I had to send
| mail was this year for my taxes, and I ended up having to
| buy another envelope from the post office because I mixed
| up the delivery address and return address.
| Brybry wrote:
| I sympathize strongly with the author. I write with a pen
| so infrequently ( _years_ between handwriting) that I
| often have handwriting errors that displease me.
|
| So I usually do some practice writing on scratch paper
| before attempting the final version.
|
| Notice he said "printing the address would have taken
| less time". That doesn't sound like the issue was
| formatting or knowledge. It reads to me as the physical
| skill of penmanship.
| adastra22 wrote:
| How is that possible? I write things literally every day.
| Everyone I know does so. How do you go a literal year
| without picking up a pen?
| Brybry wrote:
| Aside for signing my signature (which I almost never need
| to do anymore) then the only time I need to handwrite is
| to fill out forms, usually for medical purposes, and I
| don't go to the doctor every year (yes, I recognize this
| is unwise).
|
| If I have time I prefer to scan forms and fill them out
| with a computer.
|
| All my text generation is digital using either a keyboard
| or touchscreen.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| At various points, I've gone years at a stretch without
| using a pen -- except maybe to scribble my signature on a
| paycheck or something. I just never encountered anything
| that required using one during those times.
|
| It's not very far-fetched -- especially for regions where
| paper checks became outdated long ago, like my European
| friends have told me has been the case there since the
| Earth cooled.
|
| So how, specifically?
|
| These days, I get paid electronically. I pay my bills
| online. I bought some Forever stamps and mailing
| envelopes once about 5 years ago, but I haven't had any
| reason yet to use any of them. If I have to send out a
| package, I'm using a service like PirateShip and printing
| a self-adhesive label to keep it consistent with other
| packages. My work is usually done with a computer -- and
| when it is more hands-on, then it's usually work that
| doesn't imply writing anything at all.
|
| When I want to take a quick note, I use my pocket
| supercomputer. For longer notes and correspondence, I use
| a real computer. If I need to draw a diagram to share
| with others, I'll probably be sharing it with them
| electronically so I produce that diagram electronically
| from the start.
|
| I did use a pen the other day to draw a napkin sketch of
| a wiring diagram for some changes I want to make in my
| garage. AFAIK, I only have 1 working pen at home. I knew
| exactly where to find it; it was sitting in the last
| place I used it, about 3 months ago.
|
| But now I'm inclined to reproduce that diagram
| electronically so I can easily move elements around and
| label it all clearly (so I can formulate a complete plan
| and spend more of my time doing the work instead of
| thinking about it once I get up on a ladder in the dark),
| so drawing it on paper may have been just a duplication
| of effort.
| ryandrake wrote:
| > Not sure if it's being exaggerated for comedic purposes but
| it is interesting to me how alien the act of sending a letter
| by post is to the author.
|
| It was pretty recognizable as trolling--the very good and
| clever "old school Internet" style of trolling where it sounds
| plausible and sincere, but then you get done reading it and
| say, "Oh lawd, he got me! Good one!" The kind of writing that
| people used to spend a lot of time perfecting on Slashdot. I
| refuse to believe there are adults out there where things like
| using a pen to write and mailing a letter are alien concepts
| that need to be learned. It was very earnestly written though,
| bravo!
| petesergeant wrote:
| > I refuse to believe there are adults out there where things
| like using a pen to write and mailing a letter are alien
| concepts that need to be learned.
|
| Some adults were born in 2007
| xmprt wrote:
| Younger than Gmail, YouTube, and the iPhone.
| layer8 wrote:
| The iPhone is not yet 18.
| adastra22 wrote:
| By only two months.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| Anyone, even someone born in 2007, should know how to use
| pen and paper. This is a basic component of being an
| educated person, not knowing how to do that is as shocking
| as being illiterate.
| petesergeant wrote:
| Sure. But why are they mailing letters? I remember being
| 18 myself (a looong time ago), and having a helpful adult
| shocked that nobody had ever taught me how to write a
| check. I think I've written a total of 8 in my whole life
| now?
| Symbiote wrote:
| If a British 12 year old today were to need to write a
| cheque, I'd expect they would need to look up or be told
| how it's done.
|
| I wouldn't expect them to need to buy a pen first, or to
| need several attempts to write 10 words nearly.
| adastra22 wrote:
| You messed up typing nearly though.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| > I refuse to believe there are adults out there where things
| like using a pen to write and mailing a letter are alien
| concepts that need to be learned.
|
| Well, believe it. I'm in my 40s and haven't written a letter
| since I was a kid. Why would I ever have to? Ask someone who
| was born in 2003 if they've ever written and mailed a letter.
| 99% are going to say no.
| programjames wrote:
| As someone born in 2003, I did this just last week when
| filing my tax returns.
| Suppafly wrote:
| >As someone born in 2003, I did this just last week when
| filing my tax returns.
|
| Why didn't you efile like a normal person? The only time
| you need to do it the hard way is if you are under 16 and
| filing for the first time.
| tart-lemonade wrote:
| I had to file by mail because I moved to a new state and
| got 2 W-2s for the same job, of which the W-2 for the
| former state left the federal fields (1-13) blank. This
| weird W-2 apparently makes me ineligible for e-file.
|
| Edit: In hindsight, I could have just waited until the
| start of 2025 to update my address in the HR system and
| gotten a single, normal W-2, but then I would be both
| violating the remote work rules (by not adding my new
| work location) and (probably) committing tax fraud.
| adastra22 wrote:
| There is a lot of stuff that can make you ineligible for
| efiling.anything exceptional and not handled by the
| standard form requires efiling. They only just recently
| dropped the requirement for 83(b) elections to be sent in
| with your tax return, and until then I had to send in a
| paper return every time I did that.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| You file tax returns by post? What country? Do they
| charge you extra to submit by post?
|
| That's crazy to me - tax returns for our micro-business
| and personal tax has been online since at least 2005.
| yyhhsj0521 wrote:
| I had to file my tax by postal mail in the US. Granted
| there is the option to file online, but that only works
| for ~80% of the people when things are completely within
| the intended domain. I have just one extra item outside
| of standard salary slips and some investment income, so I
| had to file physically.
| ndiddy wrote:
| For federal returns, there's a site called Free File
| Fillable Forms, which has digitized versions of all the
| tax forms. Unlike the normal IRS Free File program,
| there's no restriction on income. If you're comfortable
| filing paper tax returns, this is the exact same process
| except the returns are digital and sent over the
| internet. For state returns, the process depends on your
| state but everywhere I've lived has a free site that you
| can use to file your state return.
| dpifke wrote:
| From https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/free-file-
| fillable-form...:
|
| _Attaching statements -- This program does not allow you
| to attach any documents to your return, except those
| available through the program. If you need to attach any
| such documents, you will have to print and mail in the
| return._
|
| Especially with business returns, it's common to have to
| attach statements to certain forms, for example if you
| choose the de minimis election for equipment repairs that
| would otherwise have to be capitalized, or when the SS
| 174 changes went into effect and everyone had to start
| amortizing software development expenses over multiple
| years. You can't do that on Free File Fillable Forms.
| coldpie wrote:
| In my state (Minnesota), there is no free online filing
| for state income tax. You either pay for one of the
| online filing softwares, or print the sucker out and mail
| it in. I choose the latter :)
| bongodongobob wrote:
| Most people do it digitally or have an accountant do it,
| this isn't the norm.
| tart-lemonade wrote:
| Do you not send thank you cards for birthday and holiday
| gifts?
| singingboyo wrote:
| Physical thank you cards are pretty dead. I don't even
| keep track of mailing addresses for a number of my
| friends (and a couple siblings, come to think of it) -
| how would I send them a physical card?
|
| Even older relatives - we sent a physical gift a bit ago,
| but the response/thanks was by text. It just doesn't make
| sense to send a letter, have it take a week, never know
| whether it got lost, etc.
| layer8 wrote:
| In Europe where I live sending birthday letters and the
| like to relatives is still a standard practice, at least
| in my social environment.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| No. In person, text, or phone call.
| Macha wrote:
| The only people I know of that do this are over 60.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I just sent in my taxes by USPS mail a couple of weeks ago.
| Long after online payments were available, I would pay my
| monthly bills by writing checks and sending them in the
| mail, as that process actually took me less time than
| logging in to five or six different websites and navigating
| through their online payment flows.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| That's very uncommon. All my bills are set to autopay on
| my credit card. Who manually pays bills? You don't need
| to click the buttons every month.
| SpaceNoodled wrote:
| I click them manually every month. It's kind of a
| holdover from when I needed to time things in order to
| keep my checking account in the black, but I kept the
| process as it helps me keep track of my bills and catch
| any errors or discrepancies, which does happen.
|
| It certainly takes less time than writing a check and
| stuffing an envelope, though, what with saved credentials
| and smartphones; I can do this in a matter of moments
| while lying in bed every other Friday morning.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Payment to a credit card often involves extra fees. And I
| don't want to give them autopay access to my checking
| account.
| SpaceNoodled wrote:
| There's a difference between writing a letter longhand, and
| simply _knowing how to use a pen._
| mrloop wrote:
| I had to inform numerous companies of my mums death last
| year. A lot of them had either phone support with very long
| wait times or a postal address, no email. It took me less
| time to write a letter and post it than to wait on hold
| dheera wrote:
| Once I had to send an international RMA that they wouldn't
| pay for the shipping. It went something like this:
|
| 0. Went to Fedex to check on the shipping cost for this tiny
| box. It was $120 so I passed
|
| 1. Went to USPS, found that they were closed, the only option
| was a 30 minute line to use the machine. Lined up for 30
| minutes, found that it the goddamn UI on the machine did not
| support international shipments.
|
| 2. Went home to generate a USPS international shipping label.
| $25, much more acceptable. FedEx should be out of business.
|
| 3. I didn't have a 2D printer at home, tried to 3D print the
| shipping label with 1 layer of white and 1 layer of black but
| it wasn't high resolution enough in the X/Y direction for the
| label to be readable so I gave up
|
| 4. Went to FedEx to use their 2D printers but realized I
| forgot my USB drive at home
|
| 5. Went home to get my USB drive
|
| 6. Back to FedEx, realized I forgot my mask (this was COVID
| times, so no go)
|
| 7. Went home to get my mask
|
| 8. Back to FedEx, printed the 2D shipping label
|
| 9. Back to USPS, found out they had no tape
|
| 10. Back to FedEx to buy a roll of tape because I don't know
| where the hell else to buy tape same day, and all my tape at
| home are electrical tape, teflon tape, or Gorilla tape
|
| 11. Back to USPS and the stupid package drop box had a
| mechanical issue preventing it from opening more than a few
| cm, not enough to fit my package
|
| 12. Went to another USPS to drop the package
| processunknown wrote:
| > 3. I didn't have a 2D printer at home, tried to 3D print
| the shipping label
|
| This sentence really captures the absurdity of this story.
| genewitch wrote:
| Could have 3D printed a pen holder for the 3D printer and
| then used the 3D printer as a plotter to write the
| address on a sticker or the envelope itself.
|
| Right?
| Suppafly wrote:
| >12. Went to another USPS to drop the package
|
| You have a USPS drop box for tiny boxes in front of your
| house.
| dheera wrote:
| > house
|
| I can't afford a house ($2M+ where I live), so I don't
| have one of those mailboxes. My apartment complex doesn't
| have a visible USPS pickup anywhere that I know of.
|
| If you meant those inverted U shaped things that look
| like they are from WW2 (maybe WW1?), I forgot about
| those, but somehow I never know how frequently they are
| checked ... there is no indicator about when they were
| last opened and I wonder whether the mailman might just
| forget about a couple of them in odd parts of town, which
| is why I always feel more "secure" dropping it at a USPS.
|
| I was once walking down the street when I saw a
| presumably-GenZ person who thought they were a trash can
| and casually dumped trash in it so there's also that
| concern, if everyone is using them as trash cans now ...
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Most are picked up daily at a scheduled time.
| Suppafly wrote:
| >My apartment complex doesn't have a visible USPS pickup
| anywhere that I know of.
|
| They usually a slot or little door for outgoing letters,
| if your package was larger than that, sometimes you can
| leave them at the 'office' of your complex if they have
| one. But yeah, in your case, going to an actual post
| office might have been the solution if you don't trust
| the street mailboxes.
| adastra22 wrote:
| Even if you are in rural Alaska or something, drop boxes
| are checked on a rigid schedule as part of the mail
| delivery route. They're reliable.
| SpaceNoodled wrote:
| I do? Where?
| retrac wrote:
| Mailboxes are bidirectional. If there is outgoing mail in
| the mailbox your postal worker will take it to the post
| office. That is what the flag is for. Not sure how well
| this is adhered to anymore, to be fair. I could be out of
| date.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Not sure about OP but it's become more common in certain
| areas of the US to not have mailboxes in front of each
| house. But usually there's a shared bank of mailboxes
| within a mile so with the ability to drop off outgoing
| adastra22 wrote:
| Your doorstep. You just leave it there and they pick it
| up.
| ac29 wrote:
| > FedEx should be out of business.
|
| Those crazy retail rates exist so businesses can get big
| discounts. The company I work with ships maybe half a dozen
| packages international with FedEx a year and they still
| give us like 60-70% off retail.
| SpaceNoodled wrote:
| I think the strangest part is that it had been years since they
| had used a _pen._
| immibis wrote:
| Keeping a pad of paper at your computer is one of those
| underrated things. You'd think the computer can record
| information just like the paper, and it can, but psychology
| is weird.
| SpaceNoodled wrote:
| Agreed. Grabbing a pen and a post-it is faster for me than
| opening a text document, and a pad of paper allows me to
| format and diagram things freely.
|
| The post-its can be sorted, stacked, moved, stuck to
| pertinent notebook pages, altered, and ultimately recycled
| when they are no longer relevant. It's much freer than a
| document on a phone or computer, where it can still be a
| pain to move information from one domain to another.
| kccqzy wrote:
| I don't send letters by post but I often need to send packages
| by post. Perhaps it's returning some merchandise where the
| merchant didn't have free shipping. Perhaps it's shipping a
| security key to a close friend so I can have offsite backup of
| a key. When I moved, I got rid of my book collection by asking
| friends which books they wanted and I shipped it to them (media
| mail is cheap).
|
| It's efficient to transmit information over the internet, but
| it's still essential to send physical items by post. When I
| visit USPS branches, I always see plenty of people mailing
| packages.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| > Writing the address on the envelope was awkward, as I haven't
| used a pen in several years; it took a few attempts and some
| wasted envelopes, printing the address would have taken less
| time.
|
| Sometimes I cut out my address from a bill and tape that on as
| my return address. I know it's formatted right.
|
| I'd definitely do the same on a "self"-addressed stamped
| envelope that I need returned.
| globular-toast wrote:
| As far as I know there are still some things you have to post
| in the UK, like sending your cut up old driver's licence to the
| DVLA and maybe you still have to post your V5 when you sell a
| car. OP might not own a car or drive, though, so who knows?
| desas wrote:
| V5Cs have been online for 3-4 years now.
|
| You still have to send back your cut up old driver's license,
| though I have my doubts that someone is sat there checking
| and cross referencing each one they receive.
| wink wrote:
| I mean, yes it reads a little awkward, but not too long ago I
| had misplaced the stack of envelopes + stamps I keep in my desk
| drawer and I needed to send something by snail mail (hey,
| remember that term?) and yeah. I am not someone who takes notes
| on paper, so I'm holding a pen only about once a week (the
| years quoted in the article sounds weird even to me) and it was
| a bit of a task (the whole sending, this time, not the
| writing). Bonus points for trying to use up old stamps when
| they're constantly changing the needed amount every couple
| years - so I usually need to put about 3 stamps even for local
| postage. But I guess that's just because I'm cheap and don't
| want to buy "new" code stamps when I have about 20 EUR in old
| stamps I can still use up.
|
| Always interesting discussions with my wife who works in an
| office where paper mail, fax machines, and signing things on
| paper all happen multiple times every single day.
| lproven wrote:
| > it is interesting to me how alien the act of sending a letter
| by post is to the author.
|
| Indeed.
|
| The author also seems unaware that a 1991 document could not
| contain a Web address because _the world wide web did not exist
| yet._ They guess it is because it is not widely available. That
| astonished me.
| elzbardico wrote:
| Man. I am generation-X, from a time when teachers would take
| the kids to a local post office and teach them how to send a
| letter and a telegram. And yet, while I have a vague idea of
| how could I send a letter nowadays, I would have absolutely no
| idea of how to send postage for the international return.
| diggan wrote:
| > The first thing that came to attention, the paper that the text
| was printed on wasn't an A4, it was smaller and not a size I was
| familiar with. I measured it and found that it's a US letter size
| paper at about 21.5cm x 27.9cm. I completely forgot that the US,
| Canada, and a few other countries don't follow the standard
| international paper sizes, even though I had written about it
| earlier.
|
| I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the US and some other
| countries decided to do things differently... As a European, I
| don't think I've ever seen something not A4 or A3/A4 in a
| professional context in my life, ever. Are US letter sizes what
| people use instead of A4 in a workplace for documents and such
| (seems confusing if so), and do printers sold in the US default
| to US letter sizes when printing? Or just happens to be something
| FSF only seem to be doing?
| robin_reala wrote:
| It's US standard. Hence the infamous default PC LOAD LETTER
| message on HP printers that made zero sense to anyone outside
| the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_LOAD_LETTER
| bombcar wrote:
| PC isn't Personal Computer, it's Paper Cartridge.
|
| That's the missing link for Americans.
| crazygringo wrote:
| That's implying it made sense to people _in_ the US...
| bayindirh wrote:
| > do printers sold in the US default to US letter sizes when
| printing? Or just happens to be something FSF only seem to be
| doing?
|
| Yes, the default printing paper for US is US Letter. I prefer
| to use my computers with US English language, and macOS
| defaults to US Letter as print and page size when you use US
| English as the default language.
|
| Moreover, I had a ream of US Letter paper in the past, given me
| by our neighbor (I live in a A4 country, so it's that "odd"
| size).
| jodaco wrote:
| It's a US thing and most printers in the US default to it. You
| would be hard pressed to find someone who knows what A4 is.
|
| Letter size is 8-1/2 x 11 inches by US standards.
| bombcar wrote:
| I've found that many Americans know what A4 is - that "weird
| European size that doesn't print right".
| remram wrote:
| Yes all paper is usually letter. It's close to A4, so you don't
| usually need to reformat documents to print on one or the
| other. Most printers take A4 and US letter and adapt
| automatically.
|
| A4 is readily available in the US but not commonly used.
|
| The main problem is that if you cut it in half, you get a
| really silly sizes (too narrow) instead of A5.
| sgarland wrote:
| > Most printers take A4 and US letter and adapt automatically
|
| I found out that they do not automatically adapt to JIS
| sizes. My wife's work once had a printer that somehow got
| configured to use JIS, I assume JB5. It then refused to print
| on US Letter, but as printers are wont to do, didn't produce
| any useful error message, nor relay this information to the
| computer. It just wouldn't print. I only discovered this
| (because if you work in tech, you must know how to fix
| printers, right?) by laboriously scrolling through every menu
| on the tiny LCD screen, and finding that the paper settings
| were incorrect.
| frutiger wrote:
| > if you work in tech, you must know how to fix printers,
| right?
|
| You kid, but it turns out the assumption was correct in
| this case. I suppose the truth is that by working in tech,
| you are likely very methodical and rely on deduction, which
| are both essential in fixing printer issues.
| sgarland wrote:
| Yes, but that's the annoying part. So many tech problems
| that people encounter can be trivially solved with a
| quick web search, poking at menus until you find
| something promising, or a combination thereof. I remember
| helping my mom over the phone to troubleshoot something
| on her iPhone - at the time, I had an Android, so
| everything was foreign to me, but I was able to deduce
| where a given setting _might_ exist, and figured out
| whatever the problem was.
|
| I don't know when or why this skill declined, but it's
| upsetting.
| db48x wrote:
| Yea, it's like people's brains turn off. They can read
| menus at restaurants, but refuse to do so when confronted
| with a printer or whatever.
| jccalhoun wrote:
| Yes, in the USA letter size is the standard. A3,4 don't exist.
| It isn't confusing because I would guess that more than half of
| all people in the USA don't even know that letter size isn't
| the standard everywhere. I was probably in my late 20s before I
| found out that Europe doesn't use the same size paper as we in
| the USA do. I can remember exactly once that I encountered it
| in the wild (I was at a conference and someone from Europe had
| some handouts).
| bombcar wrote:
| The European sizes exist in the USA if you want them, you
| just have to order them from a print shop or supplier.
|
| Or you can get whatever you want - I wanted B4 paper to print
| a booklet (or B3 maybe) and I just bought a ream that was
| larger and had a print shop slice it down to B4. My US laser
| printer was fine printing onto B4.
| sgarland wrote:
| Oh no, it's worse.
|
| 8.5 x 11" is US Letter, or 215.9 x 279.4 mm. We also have US
| Legal, which as the name implies, is frequently used by legal
| professions. I have no idea why. It is 8.5 x 14", or 215.9 x
| 355.6 mm. Finally, we have US Tabloid (I guess used for small
| newspapers?), which is 11 x 17", or 279.4 x 431.8 mm.
|
| And yes, our printers default to US Letter. The line from the
| movie Office Space: "PC Load Letter? WTF does that mean?" is
| the printer's cryptic way of saying "Load Letter-sized paper
| into the Paper Cassette."
|
| EDIT: there are are apparently more US-specific sizes I was
| unaware of, which you can view and compare with others on this
| site: https://papersizes.io/us/
| dsr_ wrote:
| Nearly everything in the US uses letter, legal (letter but
| longer), or tabloid (double width letter, to be folded over).
|
| Much to my surprise, a random check of a US-based office supply
| company shows that they do have A4 in stock -- at a price about
| 40% higher than letter-sized.
| kstrauser wrote:
| And by "nearly everything", I've never personally seen or
| used printer or copier paper that wasn't letter or legal. I
| know it exists, but I've never, not once, bought or used it.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| I used to work at Kodak and they had an industrial printer
| division in my building. They would go through pallet-fulls
| of A4 for their testing. Only place Ive seen it in use in a
| business setting in the US.
| owl57 wrote:
| > legal (letter but longer)
|
| This one surprised me quite a bit. I think most people have
| A4/letter-sized folders. Why does anyone think that papers
| slightly longer than those folders are a good idea?
| bombcar wrote:
| Legal size folders exist and are widely used by people who
| use ... legal size paper.
|
| Legal folders can be great to be able to print letter-sized
| things on, then you have an area at the bottom to write
| notes and stuff.
| cannam wrote:
| I'm just about old enough to remember (in the UK)
| foolscap paper, an imperial size also a bit longer than
| A4. You never see it any more (at least I don't) but
| foolscap sized box-files are still readily available. I
| guess a slightly bigger box than you need is not usually
| a problem.
| bombcar wrote:
| Foolscap is just half an inch below legal - and I bet
| having a box a bit larger than what you're putting in is
| a selling point, not a hindrance.
| Macha wrote:
| Huh, this explains why some of my older teachers would
| call a4 pads as foolscap pads. I guess the paper size had
| been updated by the time I got to school, but their
| terminology wasn't.
| alexjm wrote:
| Many filing cabinets in the US are also sized so you can
| put letter sized folders in one way, or rotate the
| folders 90 degrees and legal sized folders will fit
| correctly.
| owl57 wrote:
| > Legal size folders exist and are widely used by people
| who use ... legal size paper.
|
| Sure. But I didn't know I use legal size paper or even
| what it is before I asked the apartment complex to print
| the lease agreement, and it didn't fit in their own
| folder with the other move in papers. In my rank of
| weirdness discovered upon moving to the US, this is at
| about the same level as the different ounces.
| codazoda wrote:
| Don't forget my favorite size, "statement". This is half of
| letter size. Sometimes used for small statements, sometimes
| used as letter folded.
|
| Hacker News users may be familiar with Julia Evans
| (http://jvns.ca) who creates technology zines that work in
| both A4 and Letter sizes, folded in half.
| Aardwolf wrote:
| > legal (letter but longer)
|
| Why are two slightly different standards needed? Does legal
| really need to print "just a little bit more" text than
| others? If so, why not just use that one for everything?
| rietta wrote:
| It's the standard here in the USA. The other standard is the US
| Legal at 8.5 inches by 14 inches (216 mm by 356 mm). This is
| what is used in court settings (hence the name) but also things
| like paper mortgage statements will typically come printed on
| that. That is much similar to your A4 size.
|
| I am familiar with A4, A5 and such. But I think that fewer and
| fewer people are. It's just not something used every day.
|
| As a side note, most of the big important house bills and
| statements I still insist on receiving via US mail for
| protection reasons. There is a risk if I only had them emailed
| to me that my wife would not have access. If I were to suddenly
| die, I don't want my wife with our kids to miss a critical
| bill. By having them show up at the house in physical form
| provides a bit of defense in depth here.
| gnfargbl wrote:
| There's a map of ANSI vs ISO paper size usage around the world
| which crops up on Reddit occasionally:
| https://reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/19dswr4
|
| I can guess why the Philippines uses ANSI sizes. But Chile?
| sanderjd wrote:
| How is this "confusing"? I don't think I've ever thought about
| paper size a single time in my life.
| int_19h wrote:
| I think GP is referring to the name - "letter" implies that
| it's the standard paper size used for writing letters
| specifically, as opposed to printed documents (of course, in
| US it's really both).
| twoodfin wrote:
| I'd guess that nomenclature originates in the world where
| every small US Main Street had a stationary store carrying
| all manner of paper sizes and stocks for diverse purposes--
| none of which involved use in anything more sophisticated
| than a typewriter.
|
| One particular "standard" that sticks out in my memory was
| "math paper", which I recall as being unbleached, about 5"
| x 8", and used pervasively in primary education (at least
| in New England) into the 1990's.
| sanderjd wrote:
| Oh... I don't really see why "letter" is a more confusing
| way to describe a paper size than "A4"...
|
| My general point is just that I'm surprised so many people
| seem to notice and care about paper size in general. I've
| just never thought about this at all.
| int_19h wrote:
| Well, "A4" doesn't imply anything about the intended use.
| The format of the name also implies that there is A3, A5
| etc, both of which aren't all that uncommon either.
|
| But, yes, for most people it doesn't really matter - you
| go to the store, you buy paper, you shove it into your
| printer, and it mostly just works. However, it's also not
| all that hard to run into situations where things break.
| E.g. most PDFs originating from US are rendered for
| Letter size paper, which means that printing them outside
| of US generally requires setting "fit size" rather than
| "original" to ensure that nothing gets clipped. Vice
| versa also happens, but because US is so culturally
| dominant, Americans rarely run into that particular
| issue.
| int_19h wrote:
| Like most other weird things in US that pertain to measurements
| and units thereof, letter-sized paper predates the A-series
| standard (which originated in Germany). FWIW the latter didn't
| became an ISO standard until late 20th century.
|
| Americans are just very obstinate about those things. It's like
| the Windows of metrology - backwards compatibility trumps
| everything else, even when you have utterly bonkers things like
| ounces vs fluid ounces.
| umanwizard wrote:
| We are not particularly obstinate, we just have no strong
| reason to change. Metric is already used in areas where it
| actually matters (e.g. STEM)
| eadmund wrote:
| > Metric is already used in areas where it actually matters
| (e.g. STEM)
|
| Using French Revolutionary units doesn't really matter in
| STEM, either: one can conduct science just as well in any
| units one wishes. One unit of measure is not more
| scientific than another. For example, degrees Kelvin and
| Rankine measure the same thing with different units. If
| anything, the Rankine degrees are more precise!
| pasc1878 wrote:
| However the abbreviation is STEM. For S and especiually M
| you can do in different units.
|
| For T&E it really matters see NASA's Mars Climate Orbiter
| and the need for heroics in the Gimli glider.
|
| You need to keep to the same unit.
| eadmund wrote:
| > For T&E it really matters see NASA's Mars Climate
| Orbiter and the need for heroics in the Gimli glider.
|
| > You need to keep to the same unit.
|
| Completely agreed. You'll get similar issues if you have
| one set of parts using m/s and others using km/hr.
|
| And you'll avoid those issues with any standard, whether
| it's m/s, knots or mph. The important thing is to have a
| standard.
| tialaramex wrote:
| You shouldn't use degrees for Kelvin, it's an absolute
| unit, the degrees are needed for the relative units like
| Celsius.
|
| Anyway, the French system isn't what people mean by
| "metric" in this context, they mean the SI system of
| units, and so in practice it's not so much that it
| wouldn't matter which you choose as that you don't have
| any option except SI.
|
| If you wanted an independent system of units you'd need
| to do a lot of expensive metrication, and in practice
| Americans are too cheap for that, so the US "customary"
| units are just aliases for so-and-so-much amount of some
| SI unit, they aren't actually independent at all.
|
| The reason people focus on metric is that for everyday
| people that's the part which jumps out as more intuitive.
| All these nice powers of 10, very tidy.
| rcxdude wrote:
| It's useful in STEM because SI units are often
| straightforwardly defined in terms of one another, it
| substantially reduces the amount of arbitrary constants
| you need in your equations, making them a lot easier to
| work with.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| >Americans are just very obstinate about those things.
|
| It's not just obstinance, switching everything to metric in
| the US would likely cost billions (if not trillions) of
| dollars. And other countries that have made the switch have
| often ended up with weird Frankensystems of measurement, like
| the UK where they mix metric and imperial all the time (plus
| the weird UK-specific measurements they have like "stone",
| which is based on the pound).
| andyferris wrote:
| Other countries switched. Short term pain for long term
| gain.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| >Other countries switched.
|
| Except they didn't actually, see my points about the UK
| (similar points apply to Canada).
| KolmogorovComp wrote:
| Other countries than the UK and Canada exist.
| coldpie wrote:
| The trouble is there is just very little gain. It really
| just doesn't matter. All the systems are fine, they all
| work. If you come live here, you'll adjust after 2 years.
| If I moved to Europe, I would adjust in 2 years. Once in
| a blue moon you have to bother with converting units but
| _c 'est la vie_. There's bigger things to worry about.
| int_19h wrote:
| I've been living in US for 15 years now and I still can't
| remember which unit scales are factor-of-3 and which ones
| are factor-of-4. How many cups are there in a gallon? How
| many yards in a mile? I don't want to waste my brain
| cells on stuff like this, yet it comes up all the time in
| e.g. cooking, or using maps for navigation.
| coldpie wrote:
| Yeah, every system has pros & cons. I think the lack of
| an approximately-one-foot (30 cm) unit in metric is
| clumsy to work around, and I think degrees-C are too
| wide. We can argue about the details if you find it fun
| ("yards in a mile" does not come up all the time), but
| they're all evolved from hundreds of years of usage, and
| that means they all work fine at the end of the day.
| int_19h wrote:
| > I think the lack of an approximately-one-foot (30 cm)
| unit in metric is clumsy to work around
|
| What's clumsy about 30cm though? If you are working at
| scales where this level of precision is needed, you can
| just use cm throughout, and the beauty of metric is that
| even someone who has never had to do that before will
| know immediately how much it is because conversion to
| meters (or millimeters, or whatever the primary unit is
| in _their_ usual applications) is so easy.
|
| Similarly, I've heard similar sentiments expressed about
| lack of pound equivalent in metric. But in practice we
| just say "500 grams" etc (and for bonus points you get
| 400 grams, 300 grams etc).
|
| Miles and yards are both used as units of distance, so
| conversion is obviously relevant. The only reason why
| "yards in a mile" doesn't come up all the time is because
| Americans work around it by subconsciously (?) avoiding
| any such cases where the conversion is non-trivial. E.g.
| a road sign in Europe might say "400 m", whereas in US a
| similar one will be "1/4 miles".
|
| And "evolved from hundreds years of usage" generally
| means a lack of internal consistency, because most units
| originated a long time ago as a way to measure something
| very specific - in many cases, something completely
| irrelevant to most people using those units today. Nor
| did those units remain consistent through history - just
| look at how many definitions ounce has in US in different
| contexts, all of them historical! Or regular vs nautical
| vs survey mile. Even just cleaning up that mess would be
| a massive improvement.
| coldpie wrote:
| > would be a massive improvement
|
| This is where we disagree. It would be a small
| improvement at best. Most of what you're pointing out are
| the awkward corner cases that just don't come up or, like
| you said, we already have other solutions for. Outside of
| some specialties, pretty much no one needs to know how
| many cups are in a gallon or yards in a mile or what a
| nautical mile is. I don't know those things, and I
| somehow get by OK.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| Two cups to a pint, two pints to a quart, four quarts to
| a gallon. That makes sixteen cups to a gallon. There are
| 5280 feet in a mile, and three feet to a yard, so that
| makes 1760 yards to a mile (if I did the math correctly
| in my head just now).
|
| These are conversions I know off the top of my head, I
| didn't need to look them up. Which is the point the GP
| was making: it's not hard to memorize the handful of
| conversions you will encounter in everyday life. Most
| people living here did it as children and have never had
| to think about it since. That's why there's no actual
| gain for us to switch to metric units. On the other hand
| there would be quite a bit of pain as everyone had to
| adjust to estimating things in kilos vs pounds, grams vs
| cups (in recipes), and so on. So for the typical
| American, it is actually a net negative for the country
| to switch to the metric system. It isn't just
| stubbornness.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| If you're not the biggest, it matters alot.
| lproven wrote:
| > All the systems are fine
|
| This is not true and that's trivially verifiable.
|
| No calculator, no references, no Google:
|
| How many inches are in 5 and three-quarter miles?
|
| How much does 5 & 3/4 gallons of water weigh?
| coldpie wrote:
| In what scenarios would I need to know the answers to
| those questions?
| thesuitonym wrote:
| Also, switching everything to metric is just not necessary.
| We already use the metric system all the time. We also use
| imperial.
| int_19h wrote:
| Yes, so you have all the disadvantages and none of the
| advantages.
|
| And sure, of course metric isn't _necessary_. You can
| also write all software in COBOL and PL /I. But over the
| long term, the convenience of having a self-consistent
| system based on a few simple principles rather than
| historical precedent adds up.
| graemep wrote:
| It is a weird mix in the UK, distances are measured in
| miles, and speed limits are set in miles per hour, but fuel
| is sold in litres, for example.
|
| People get very worked up about it too. People got very
| worked up about a government proposal to allow people to
| put imperial units on food in larger type than metric (at
| the moment it has to be metric larger - or at least the
| same size).
|
| Everything in engineering and science has been entirely
| metric since the 80s.
| mrob wrote:
| Distances in the UK are measured in miles and yards (or
| fractions of a mile). Google Maps gets this wrong and
| uses miles and feet. I don't think many people in the UK
| have a good intuition for how far 500ft is.
| int_19h wrote:
| The whole yard vs feet thing is especially weird. Indeed,
| in US as well, feet are normally used to measure sizes -
| at scales where it's reasonable - while yards are
| normally used to measure distances. Even though the two
| units are in the same ballpark / order of magnitude. And
| yes, as you rightly point out, it means that few people
| can estimate distances in feet.
|
| OTOH on road sings, US at least seems to be using miles
| alone consistently, so you end up with labels like "1 3/4
| miles" every now and then, which I find to be difficult
| to parse quickly.
| graemep wrote:
| TomTom Amigo uses miles and yards. I think OSMAnd does
| too.
|
| I tend to think in metres at that scale but a yard is
| near enough.
| tialaramex wrote:
| Only _road_ distances for _cars_ are in miles and yards.
| The British railways continue to use chains (which are
| not used for any other ordinary activity) and non-road
| traffic is often in metres or kilometres as appropriate.
|
| Some of those "Metric martyr" types, the kind of people
| who think anything which changed after they were 35 is an
| abomination, but somehow anything which changed ten years
| before they were born has never been any other way, will
| vandalize legal stuff which uses (in their opinion) the
| wrong units. So if you put a (legal and reasonable) 1.5km
| distance sign on a cycle route, but some car driver who
| thinks sane units are fascism sees it, they might smash
| it to pieces which is annoying.
|
| There has been a very gradual lean towards sanity, after
| all my mother was taught decimal currency because it was
| _forthcoming_ when she was at school, her parents had
| used a non-decimal currency system. When I was a teenager
| I still had coins which, though they were treated as
| their modern decimal value, if you read their faces had a
| non-decimal value printed on them, because it 's too
| expensive to replace the currency when you switch.
|
| When I was a child I would buy a quarter pound of sweets.
| At the turn of the century I'd ask for, and receive, 100
| grams or 200 grams as I felt, but most customers would
| use pounds (although legally they'd be served in grams).
| These days everybody else would likely also ask in grams.
| So it's changing, it's just very slow.
| mikeocool wrote:
| Interestingly, it's actually codified in US law that the
| metric system is the "preferred system of weights and
| measures for United States trade and commerce" -- however
| it wasn't a mandatory change so most industries didn't make
| the change, nor did the government.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_Sta
| t...
| int_19h wrote:
| Every single country in the world that is on metric today
| had to switch from something else at some point in the
| past. Why overfocus so much on UK when you have literally a
| hundred successful examples?
|
| One does have to wonder what it is about Anglo countries
| specifically that makes it so difficult for them, though.
| Well, Canada at least has the excuse of being next door to
| US, with the resulting economic effects. For UK I'm pretty
| sure it's just about not being like "the Continent" at this
| point.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| >Every single country in the world that is on metric
| today had to switch from something else at some point in
| the past. Why overfocus so much on UK when you have
| literally a hundred successful examples?
|
| A huge percentage of those countries didn't have
| established industrial bases, infrastructure, etc. And
| also no educated general populace that needed
| reeducating. And often those countries were effectively
| forced into adopting metric through colonization and/or
| invasion.
| int_19h wrote:
| Even then, that still leaves most of Europe.
| pasc1878 wrote:
| For the UK in practice it is only distance measurements
| that are non metric now. For some things like small liquid
| amounts we colloquially use imperial - pints - which differ
| from US pints. I think the actual official volume is the
| metric it is just you could say slang that keeps to pints.
|
| Anything to do with STEM is metric.
| tialaramex wrote:
| If you buy beer "loose" like at a bar it has to be sold
| in pints. Most people will have seen a "half" and anybody
| who likes stronger beers or goes to festivals where you
| taste different ones will know a "third" of a pint is
| also a legal amount of beer to sell. You would not want
| to try out a few different 8% stouts if they were sold
| only in whole pints, unless they're going to make it a
| multi-day event and provide somewhere for you to sleep it
| off.
|
| Milk is also allowed to be sold in pints, traditionally
| glass bottle re-usable milk bottles were one pint.
|
| It is also usual (but not legal) to sell a pint or a half
| of various soft drinks, in theory you should be sold
| these in some other way, I always say "large" or "small"
| but in practice ordinary people say "pint" and after all
| the staff will probably more or less fill a pint glass
| so, whatever.
|
| Spirits (e.g. gin) are measured in either 25ml or 35ml
| shots. An establishment can choose either, post which one
| they picked and use that consistently. Why two seemingly
| unrelated sizes? Well, historically there were two
| different non-metric sizes permitted in law, and when the
| government legislated to make these SI units there were
| lobbyists demanding they allow this to continue despite
| the opportunity to rationalize.
|
| As in the US, containers you purchase in a store are
| labelled, but here the labels must prominently show SI
| volume units and EU-style value metrics are required on
| shelf markings, so e.g. 10p per 100ml of Coke is a good
| price, maybe the Pepsi is on a deal for 9.5p per 100ml,
| the store's terrible own brand is 5p per 100ml. This EU
| strategy prevents people screwing with sizes to make you
| think you're getting a better deal, that cheaper bottle
| may look like a good idea but hey, it's 18p per 100ml,
| ah, it's slimmer in the middle which makes it actually
| much smaller than it looks.
| ascorbic wrote:
| The UK uses metric for almost everything. Miles/mph for
| driving and pints in the pub are the only things that are
| always non-metric. Human height and weight are the only
| other thing that is often non-metric, and even then a lot
| of people will know their weight in kg rather than stone.
| umanwizard wrote:
| > seems confusing if so
|
| It is no more confusing to Americans than the fact that
| Europeans use A4 is to Europeans. Why should it be? Just like
| you didn't know standards other than A4 exist, Americans don't
| think about the fact that standards other than 8.5x11 inches
| (I.e. letter) exist. All printers, binders, folders, hole
| punchers, etc. are made with letter size paper in mind, and
| most people unless they are involved in business with other
| countries have never encountered an A4 sheet of paper in their
| lives and probably have no idea other standards exist.
| diggan wrote:
| > It is no more confusing to Americans than the fact that
| Europeans use A4 is to Europeans. Why should it be?
|
| Well, A4 (and variants) are not Europe-specific formats, it's
| the formats most of the world except some few countries
| (including the US) use, so I'd say it's slightly more
| surprising than the other way around.
| umanwizard wrote:
| Right, but why does that make letter size confusing?
|
| Even if every other country in the world used A4, the only
| people in the US who would even notice would be people who
| commonly do business with other countries or who live near
| the border. And in reality, Canada and Mexico also use
| letter so the border thing doesn't apply.
|
| So why should letter confuse us just because other people
| use something else?
| diggan wrote:
| > Right, but why does that make letter size confusing?
|
| That's the part I initially quoted; "the paper that the
| text was printed on wasn't an A4, it was smaller and not
| a size I was familiar with. I measured it and found that
| it's a US letter size paper at about 21.5cm x 27.9cm"
|
| The author isn't from North America, so they had
| forgotten the format was different, so they got confused
| when they assumed it would have been A4 like the rest of
| the world, but it wasn't.
|
| > the only people in the US who would even notice would
| be people who commonly do business with other countries
| or who live near the border
|
| Or, as in the case of the author, they live outside of
| North American and send/receive letters to/from North
| America.
| echoangle wrote:
| A4 isn't some random format, you can derive it with three
| pieces of information:
|
| A0 is 1 square meter
|
| An to An+1 means cutting the paper along the middle of the
| longer edge
|
| Each An has the same aspect ratio
|
| Those are pretty useful properties and precisely define the
| dimensions of A4.
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| Why is this useful if you want to write a letter?
| echoangle wrote:
| For a normal letter, it probably doesn't matter. But it's
| useful in general and doesn't make it worse for writing
| letters, so it's still better to use than a specific
| letter format with worse properties.
| umanwizard wrote:
| True, but I don't understand why this would make letter
| size confusing to Americans. European office workers are
| not sitting around marveling at the mathematical elegance
| of the definition of A series paper. It just doesn't matter
| in daily life.
| tialaramex wrote:
| > It just doesn't matter in daily life.
|
| Like a lot of mathematics it does matter in your daily
| life but you actually just don't think about it because
| of _course_ this works - unless you 're an American and
| so no it doesn't.
|
| The A-series paper sizes mean everything scales very
| naturally. Poster? Pamphlet? It's just the same ratios
| again but bigger or smaller. There is a single design
| where this works, and that's why the A-series exists, you
| can't just pick anything, only this works.
| umanwizard wrote:
| Can you explain concretely why it matters in daily life
| that I can cut the paper posters are printed on in half
| several times to wind up with paper of the size that
| letters are printed on, and that these have the same
| aspect ratio? Why would I ever want to do that / why
| should I care that it's possible?
|
| I'm not trying to be combative; I genuinely don't know.
| tialaramex wrote:
| Not the paper, the stuff _on_ the paper scales the same.
| Want a large poster and then also handbills to give out?
| They 're identical. Got 15 full size sheets of colour
| information but now want to turn it into a pocket handout
| ? No problem, it's the same thing but smaller.
|
| This feels obvious - of course it works like that, until
| your paper sizes _aren 't_ using this ratio (which the US
| ones don't) and then the frustration is apparent.
| Macha wrote:
| Isn't the important part here just using a consistent
| aspect ratio?
|
| Like the fact that the aspect ratio chosen allows
| manufacturers to just use one base sheet and then
| subdivide it into smaller page sizes is convenient for
| manufacturers, but it's not a necessary property for
| scaling the contents of the page.
| echoangle wrote:
| Having the halving property for each step means you can
| easily create booklets by getting paper one size larger
| and pinning it together in the middle. That's pretty
| useful.
| Aaron2222 wrote:
| Sort of. For scaling something to different paper sizes,
| the constant aspect ratio is the important part. But the
| subdivision property is also important for a few reasons.
| Take booklet printing as an example. You need a paper
| size that's twice as wide as the normal paper size to
| print that on (so Ledger/Tabloid for booklet printing
| Letter pages). But ideally you'd want this larger paper
| size to have the same aspect ratio, so you could scale up
| something like a poster to it. The only aspect ratio that
| works for is 1:[?]2.
|
| Same for printing two copies per page (2-up). With a
| 1:[?]2 ratio, you can perfectly fit two copies of
| something side-by-side on the same paper size. This was
| incredibly common back when I was at school, where A4
| worksheets were printed 2-up on A4 paper so that each
| individual one was A5 in size (half the area, [?]2/2 the
| length). With A4, you then just chop the printed pages in
| half and the worksheet fits perfectly. With any other
| aspect ratio, either there'd be wasted space due to the
| different aspect ratio of the chopped-in-half paper to
| the original, or you'd have to print 4-up on larger paper
| and chop it into quarters. The 1:[?]2 aspect ratio of ISO
| paper sizes means you can just chop a page in half and
| get the same aspect ratio, and that's useful to people
| doing printing, not just manufacturers.
| db48x wrote:
| Here in the US we just print posters at whatever size we
| want. We don't have to rely on someone to have
| standardized the sizes of posters. Large-format printers
| often go up to eight feet wide, so you can print
| something as big as a wall if you want (and as long as
| you like, because they print on a _roll_ of paper instead
| of a sheet). Computers have made elegant ratios
| irrelevant.
|
| But if you really think it's important, then you can
| consider a series of sizes like tabloid, letter, and memo
| to be equivalent to A3, A4, and A5. Each is exactly half
| the area of the previous, and can be had by dividing the
| larger size in half along the longer side.
| tialaramex wrote:
| > But if you really think it's important, then you can
| consider a series of sizes like tabloid, letter, and memo
| to be equivalent to A3, A4, and A5.
|
| This seems like you entirely missed the thread? The
| _whole point_ is that this actually works for the
| A-series and in your made up US series it can 't work
| because the ratio is wrong.
| db48x wrote:
| These are not made up sizes. They are standard paper
| sizes available in any store. Most ordinary househole
| printers won't actually print on tabloid, and some won't
| print on memo, but all copiers (and multifunction
| scanner/printers) can copy two letter pages and print
| them side by side, scaled down to memo size, on a single
| sheet letter of paper. It's just a button you press, or
| maybe a checkbox you check, or whatever. It's not magic.
| therealpygon wrote:
| Not sure where you got "random format" from the comments,
| but we (U.S.) also use a very precise method for defining
| the size of paper, which is 8.5x11 and legal as 8.5x14. For
| the US, both are sized to fit in the same standard
| envelopes. I've never thought, "boy, I really need half
| this sheet length-wise but made shorter to keep the same
| aspect ratio for this situation", so while I can understand
| why that could make sense when creating an international
| standard, it isn't more or less random or more/less precise
| than any other basis. Our basis simply evolved naturally
| from our system of measurement and our needs with countries
| we traded most closely, rather than as an international
| standard based on a different system of measurement that
| needed to be shared among numerous countries situated
| closely together.
| rswail wrote:
| Not only that but C envelope sizes match the A size. So an
| A4 piece of paper fits a C4 envelope flat.
|
| A4 folded in half (size of an A5) fits in a C5 envelope.
|
| An ISO standard that makes sense and isn't based on
| different professions like "letter" vs "legal" vs "folio"
| and other US sizes.
|
| But also the reason that, for example, screens have 80
| columns, (also related to punch cards), but that was about
| the width of a "letter" page at 10cpi.
| eadmund wrote:
| > A4 isn't some random format, you can derive it with three
| pieces of information ...
|
| You can derive letter paper with _two_ pieces of
| information: 81/2 and 11. Just having a laugh, of course --
| I do admire the A /B series, even if I wish that they were
| based on a square yard :-)
| dizhn wrote:
| It's a pretty good paper size standard. Fold A4 in half and you
| get A5. Put two A4s side by side and that's an A3 size.
| tallanvor wrote:
| Look, there's plenty of things to complain about with regards
| to the US - especially these days. But getting upset about US
| citizens not using all the same standards in their daily lives
| as many other places is just silly. --It's like complaining
| about the UK and a relatively small number of countries that
| chose to drive on the left instead of the right. Could they
| change? Sure. Are they likely to change? Seems pretty unlikely.
| diggan wrote:
| > But getting upset about US citizens not using all the same
| standards in their daily lives as many other places is just
| silly
|
| Good thing it wasn't a complaint then, just questions from
| someone who doesn't know how it works across the pond :) And
| it seems to be the story of someone outside of North America
| trying to interact with the North American standards, not
| some internal confusion between internal states or whatnot.
| therealpygon wrote:
| > Are US letter sizes what people use instead of A4 in a
| workplace for documents and such (seems confusing if so)
|
| Yes, it is just our standard like A4 is yours. When you pull a
| paper out of the pack it is A4 when we pull it out it is ANSI
| A, commonly known a US Letter size. Instead of 8.27"x11.69", we
| use 8.5"x11". We also commonly use US Legal size, which is
| 8.5"x14". Slightly longer and can fit in the same envelope.
|
| > do printers sold in the US default to US letter sizes when
| printing?
|
| Yes. However all of our printers can do all sizes since our
| paper is slightly larger, while an A4 specific printer couldn't
| print a US letter.
| rswail wrote:
| Except pretty much all printer drivers these days can down
| convert from letter to A4.
|
| Margins on left/right might be skinnier, but length wise US
| letter fits.
| pests wrote:
| Since they are talking about physical paper size, I assume
| they meant that an A4 printer that physically only takes A4
| sized paper would not be able to print on letter paper
| stock, as its physically too big to fit. I can print any
| size onto a business card too with down converting and
| messing with margins.
| 2mlWQbCK wrote:
| I don't think I ever had a A4 printer that could not also
| print Letter. It is almost certainly the exact same models
| that they also sell in the US, but with just some bit flipped
| in the firmware to change the default paper size.
|
| My current printer, like most printers I believe, can be
| configured to print custom sizes. The maximum is something
| like 9 or 9.5 inches wide IIRC, and the length can be set
| much longer.
| PaulRobinson wrote:
| I'm interested in hearing from someone at FSF (and I used to know
| someone, but I don't think he's there any more), who can tell us
| how often this has happened. I can't imagine it's a frequent
| occurrence.
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| Yeah I sort of hoped it would cover that bit not just the
| author's foibles at writing a letter.
| bluGill wrote:
| As I implied in my top level comment, it should happen more
| often than it likely does. If you work on a commercial project
| with any GPL code ask your test group who has done that and
| when - if you don't see a lot of hands go up then your test
| group isn't doing their job. (if you are only automated tests,
| then I assume you have an automated test to send this letter
| and verify the response)
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| For April fools I should set up an API for sending postal
| mail as a service
| xoe26 wrote:
| https://docs.lob.com/#tag/Letters
| layer8 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that's a common business use case.
| stusmall wrote:
| I love how small of a world this site is:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43784538
| gwd wrote:
| > Writing the address on the envelope was awkward, as I haven't
| used a pen in several years; it took a few attempts and some
| wasted envelopes...
|
| Wow -- I mean, sure, I don't use a pen _that_ often, but I 'm
| sure I hand-write _something_ at least once a month...
| dharmab wrote:
| I'm at the point where the only things I handwrite are gift
| labels and holiday cards. Maybe an occasional doctor's office
| form, but those are increasingly digital.
| int_19h wrote:
| I can't even remember the last time I've used a pen for
| anything other than writing a check.
| cormorant wrote:
| Well, there's my minimum of once per month :)
| maccard wrote:
| I've never written a check in my life.
| dharmab wrote:
| How do you pay for things above a few thousand dollars? I
| guess if you don't ever buy a pricey car or own a home you
| wouldn't need it.
| gwd wrote:
| Not the person you're replying to, but the bank payment
| system in Europe is waaaay better than the US; nearly all
| four- and low-five-digit sums in the last 20 years I've
| paid for with bank transfer.
| Gnuke wrote:
| You paid for your home with cheques?
| Symbiote wrote:
| Electronic transfer through online banking, or a debit
| card (may well be followed with a call from the bank to
| verify, though it's years since I've done this).
|
| Visa's debit card limit on Denmark seems to be 100,000
| DKK, roughly 13,000EUR. There's no limit with the
| national system, Dankort.
| maccard wrote:
| Credit Card, Debit Card, or Bank Transfer.
|
| Faster payments [0] is pretty much instant. Some banks
| have lower limits, and CHAPS[1] is same day and
| unlimited. I used faster payments for buying a car, and
| for paying a house deposit. My bank transferred my
| mortgage via CHAPS.
|
| [0] https://www.starlingbank.com/resources/banking/guide-
| to-fast... [1] https://www.hsbc.co.uk/current-
| accounts/what-is-a-chaps-paym...
| yieldcrv wrote:
| wire transfer, or walk into the bank and have them create
| a cashier's check
|
| and a normal check is the same as an ACH transfer, so I
| will do the ACH transfer
|
| or lawyer's escrow
|
| and every other larger transfer has been cryptocurrency
| in my life, its been over a decade of that unlimited
| amount, zero scrutiny, 24/7/365 option
|
| (I've tried various other country's and international
| system transfers, and the convenience is completely over-
| embellished, and limited to small amounts at best. and
| yes, I'm talking about instant SEPA in European banks. A
| lot of people don't have balances in crypto currency so
| it would just be more inconvenient for them to get into
| that system)
|
| but the only time I'm personally using checks are because
| a new employer's HR system wants me to write VOID on a
| physical one, and I've opted to photoshopping a template
| with my account number and routing number, because checks
| are the same as an ACH transfer, and they could have just
| asked me to copy and paste those numbers into a input
| field
| schlauerfox wrote:
| There was a time that printed checks had to use special
| laser toner called MICR Toner that was magnetic so the
| magneto readers could machine read the check bottoms
| routing and account numbers, but that went away when the
| Fed just ran it all as ACH/ electronically and optically
| scanned checks around the time mobile deposit and well
| after OCR became a thing. Last I checked the rule was
| still present in the statues.
| dbrgn wrote:
| Many people in Switzerland love to buy used cars with
| cash, even if they cost a few thousands.
|
| (But we can also just scan the QR code of the recipient's
| bank account with the e-banking app and initiate a
| transfer that way.)
| int_19h wrote:
| This is very much an American thing. And it's only a thing
| because our banks don't offer a truly universal and no-fee
| equivalent of easily transferring money between accounts
| across bank boundaries.
| lolinder wrote:
| I can't remember the last time I wrote a check, but I use
| pens pretty regularly.
| jrmg wrote:
| You don't even write down temporary notes? Or doodle geometry
| when coding UI?
| dharmab wrote:
| I use a text editor for notes. I do have a drawing tablet
| for digital art but that's not really the same as a pen or
| pencil.
| int_19h wrote:
| Yep, exactly so.
|
| For notes especially I find the digital version
| preferable because it is automatically archived,
| searchable, and readily accessible across all my devices.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| Not even a whiteboard marker?
|
| I'm in the US so I use permanent marker to write my lawyers
| phone number on my arm before protests
| int_19h wrote:
| Whiteboard brainstorming is an interesting scenario that I
| haven't considered, but even then I'd have to say no
| because I've been fully remote for a while now.
| bregma wrote:
| That would only work if the phone system in El Salvador is
| operating.
| Alex-Programs wrote:
| As a Brit, the concept of "My lawyer" is slightly
| unfamiliar. The average Brit doesn't "have a lawyer"; they
| would only find a lawyer if they had a specific need, eg
| being accused of a crime or wanting to write a contract
| etc.
|
| And yet as far as I can tell, most middle class Americans
| seem to refer to "their lawyer". Do you pay a monthly fee?
| Are they a criminal defence lawyer, or something broader?
| How often do you talk to them? How do you find them?
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| Not an American but have been involved in lots of US
| legal things for a charity. Generally "their lawyer"
| refers to a lawyer (solicitor in British usage) who is
| 'on retainer', which means that the client either pays a
| monthly fee to secure the lawyer's availability, or has a
| deposit with the lawyer which will be drawn from if legal
| assistance is needed.
|
| Funnily enough, Americans do not use the term solicitor;
| that's reserved for lawyers working for the government!
| richardfontana wrote:
| > Funnily enough, Americans do not use the term
| solicitor; that's reserved for lawyers working for the
| government!
|
| It is certainly a rare term in American English. I
| associate it with the probably now-archaic "NO
| SOLICITORS" signs, which used to be commonly used in an
| effort to ward off door-to-door salesmen and such. The
| specialized usage you are referring to is the use in
| titles of certain important government lawyers (I'm only
| aware of this in the federal government). The most famous
| is the Solicitor General, which is an appointed official
| in the Department of Justice whose job is mainly to argue
| on behalf of the government before the US Supreme Court.
| acuozzo wrote:
| > most middle class Americans seem to refer to "their
| lawyer"
|
| I've only run into this among the so-called "upper middle
| class" here (e.g., physicians making $500K+/yr) and even
| then it's pretty rare.
| philwelch wrote:
| It's not normal for Americans to just have a lawyer ahead
| of time. But then again it's also not normal for most
| Americans to routinely get themselves arrested at
| "protests". So if you're going to engage in activities
| that are likely to get you into legal trouble, you might
| find yourself a criminal defense attorney ahead of time.
| In particular, organized "protests" often have legal
| assistance from sympathetic lawyers.
|
| It is possible to have an attorney on retainer though,
| either as a consequence of having hired that attorney in
| the past or as part of a subscription service.
| richardfontana wrote:
| The average American does not have a "my lawyer" either.
| Not sure where you're getting "most middle class
| Americans" from unless you're extrapolating from pop
| culture. I think it's common in movies and TV dramas for
| characters to refer to "my lawyer" in situations in which
| there is contact with law enforcement.
| gwd wrote:
| I probably write a check every 5 years, and each time I need
| to ask someone how to do it, because the checks are slightly
| different compared to the country I grew up in.
| daedrdev wrote:
| There will soon be many people who never learn how to write,
| only type
| mort96 wrote:
| And many, many more people who never learn how to write or
| type, only to tap a phone screen!
| rswail wrote:
| And many many more people that will just say it or think
| it.
| xaitv wrote:
| Think the last time I used a pen is about 8-9 years ago when I
| had to sign something to buy my home. Notes and stuff I just
| write on my phone or computer and I don't see what else I'd use
| a pen for.
| massysett wrote:
| Wow, I use a pen nearly every day. Sometimes I deliberately
| get a pen or pencil and paper rather than a phone. I was
| doing some home improvements in my attic, and I would often
| need to jot down a measurement so I could cut wood etc. I did
| this once or twice on my phone and realized it's much easier
| to do this with a pencil and small notepad.
|
| In what is perhaps the most ironic blend of high and low
| tech, I wrote my own software to build grocery lists, which I
| then print and use a pen to cross items off as I shop. This
| is by far the most efficient vs trying to faff about with
| some mobile solution.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| Apple Reminders has native grocery lists now. The
| collaboration feature (a household can keep just one shared
| grocery list) and auto-categorizing by store section are
| serious time and frustration savers. No "oh shit, I left
| the list at home", no "I could go to the grocery store
| while I'm out, if we need anything... but the list's at
| home...", no manually organizing the list, no grocery-list-
| by-text. It's so nice, saves far more time than any _faff_
| it introduces (I 'd agree that without the collaboration
| and auto-categorizing, grocery lists on phones would be
| more trouble than they're worth)
|
| (I know other apps have also done it, but having it on a
| built-in is really handy and it works well)
| SpaceNoodled wrote:
| I prefer an app for grocery lists since it can be managed
| with a single hand while shopping - no need to stop in the
| middle of an aisle to pull out a pencil and cross something
| off, nor to print anything out before heading to the store,
| for that matter. Plus, I won't have to re-sync the list
| with what remain on the physical list at the end of the
| trip.
| massysett wrote:
| My software is highly idiosyncratic. I input recipes for
| the week, and it adds ingredients to the shopping list,
| but only some ingredients. Other staple ingredients are
| things we keep in standard inventory and these go on the
| shopping list periodically rather than on demand.
|
| UNIX is a friendly environment for me to write my own
| software like this. Phones are hostile, they're more like
| appliances. Pair up UNIX with old-school peripherals like
| printers and I'm in business.
|
| But yeah I love my phone for its appliance-like uses.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| I tried for a while to do the whole "notebook life" thing
| that was really trendy to blog about some years back, but
| found I never had the notebook I wanted on-hand (even if I
| was just using one notebook...) or forgot to grab a pen or
| can't find a pen et c. Then making it possible to find
| anything in them requires more effort afterward.
|
| What do I have on me basically all the time? My phone.
|
| I've done everything in Apple Notes for years now, and it's
| so much less hassle, and actually works for me. I just make
| sure to include words I might use to search for a note, when
| writing a new note. Search does the rest. I can and sometimes
| do organize things into directories, but usually it's kinda
| wasted effort. Search is enough.
|
| Meanwhile, the few dozen pages scattered across four or five
| notebooks that I generated in that brief kick remain,
| passively, a pain in the ass. I've carted them through two
| moves, meaning to digitize them, because when I remember they
| exist and browse I'm like "oh yeah, that was a good idea!"
| but, out of sight out of mind and when I stumble across them
| I'm always in the middle of doing other, more important shit.
| mcgrath_sh wrote:
| Genuinely curious, I don't write anything long by hand, but do
| you not jot down disposable information with frequency, or date
| food, or anything like that? I date food we put in the
| fridge/freezer. I jot down something like a phone number if I
| am redirected. I have to give my pet medication occasionally
| and I use a post-it to track so the household can know. Like I
| said, I'm not writing anything even as long as a card, but I
| use a pen multiple times a week, and essentially daily. I know
| a lot of people use their phones for this stuff (and I do too),
| and maybe I'm an old person now for not using my phone for all
| of that.
| dharmab wrote:
| I use a text file in my phone for notes.
|
| I don't have roommates, but if I did we'd probably use a
| whiteboard for tracking errands and schedules.
| diggan wrote:
| > I date food we put in the fridge/freezer
|
| What date are you putting on the food? Every packaging here
| in Spain (and Europe I assume) has both the production date
| and "best before" dates printed on them from the factory, and
| stuff that doesn't have packaging you know if they're bad by
| looking/smelling/tasting.
| dharmab wrote:
| This is handy if you're doing things like separating a
| package into portions for your fridge for near term use and
| freezer for long term storage. Such as the large packages
| from Costco/Sam's Club.
| spiffytech wrote:
| When I open milk, I write the date on the cap to help keep
| track of how long it'll remain good.
| wongarsu wrote:
| My method is that I assume it's gone bad when it tastes
| sour.
| hk__2 wrote:
| Yeah, no need to write anything down when you already
| have a detector built-in in your body called
| "nose+tongue" (well, at least for milk).
| stevetron wrote:
| I throw away bread when the green fuzzy stuff on it no
| longer tastes good.
| wongarsu wrote:
| I can taste the mold in bread before it's grown big
| enough to become visible.
|
| For most foods evolution has graced us with the ability
| to see, smell or taste any issues well before they
| actually become a problem. There are some things you have
| to look out for like botulism or salmonella, but for
| simple foods like bread and milk there isn't much point
| in taking precautions
| pasc1878 wrote:
| Much easier to just drink enough so there is no chance of
| that happening.
|
| But then I am in UK where milk is easily obtained in 2
| pint or less packages and is all long term - over a week.
| It is harder to gat 4 int or gallon containers which I
| think are more common in the US.
| stevetron wrote:
| In the US, the way milk is sold, is that larger amounts
| cost less. In other words, the 1/2-gallon container, buy
| two of those, and it costs significantly more than a
| single 1-gallon container. It gets even worse for quarts.
| But I seldom buy in the 1-gallon container as it will
| generally spoil before I've used it all, so there isn't
| any savings there for me.
| Suppafly wrote:
| >In other words, the 1/2-gallon container, buy two of
| those, and it costs significantly more than a single
| 1-gallon container.
|
| Except sometimes the 1/2 gallons will be randomly on sale
| where you can get like 3 of them for the price of a
| gallon. Milk economics makes no sense to me. But yeah,
| it's usually cheaper to buy more than you need and just
| throw it out if you don't use it, as is the American way.
| omegaham wrote:
| Inversely, I've also seen promotions where the gallon is
| heavily featured in the ads, and they're selling the half
| gallon for full price. Neat, you're paying extra to get
| less milk!
| notpushkin wrote:
| It also usually sours I think? You can still use that for
| pancakes or something... not sure because I'm too lazy
| and throw it away myself.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Food that's not prepackaged. e.g., I recently threw out a
| container of eggs that had been in my freezer for about two
| years because my hens were laying so much faster than we
| could consume, that we had dozens of extras.
|
| I also label things like the date I install a new HVAC
| filter, or how much to cut off on a piece of lumber, etc.
| stevetron wrote:
| I was unaware that it was safe to freeze eggs.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Why would you think it wasn't?
| mcgrath_sh wrote:
| I batch cook and freeze meals, and some of them look
| similar (sauce and chicken vs sauce and pork) and I want to
| eat the older stuff first. There are also some products
| that are recommended to be disposed of within X days of
| opening, which fall well before their best by date.
| Macha wrote:
| When I batch cook meals, I then eat them over the next
| few days until either it's done or it's been too long for
| that meal. Then I batch cook something else. I usually
| don't have multiple batches on the go.
| philwelch wrote:
| So you just eat the same meal over and over again until
| you run out?
| Macha wrote:
| Pretty much. I'll have the same meal 2-3 days then cook
| the next.
| omegaham wrote:
| Unopened, a jar of pasta sauce is good basically
| indefinitely, but as soon as you actually open the jar the
| clock starts ticking. We don't make enough pasta at a time
| to use a full jar, (and in fact will usually use a small
| fraction of the jar) so I write the date that I opened the
| jar on the lid to plan its use a little better. "Hey,
| better find a use for this sauce, it's going to go bad
| eventually."
| seszett wrote:
| When freezing something you made or something unfrozen you
| won't be able to finish before its expiration date, it's
| good to write the date on it as well as _what_ it is when
| it 's not immediately obvious (for example... frozen duck
| fat and coconut oil look pretty much the same, and they
| don't smell anything when frozen).
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| He's also obviously not used to write/type letters... The whole
| thing is quite awful.
|
| Schools used to teach this a minimum but they no longer do. It
| was also standard to learn that for job hunting but, again, I
| don't think many people apply for jobs by post nowadays
| although it can still be useful to know how to write a formal
| cover letter.
| dharmab wrote:
| These days most candidates use AI generated cover letters.
| SpaceNoodled wrote:
| Good thing I got ahead of the curve by never reading them
| sph wrote:
| My hand writing got rusty and awkward until I read that writing
| something by hand is shown to strengthen one's memory and
| recollection. It definitely seems to be the case for me and has
| made me much more organised.
|
| Now I journal on a paper notebook, take daily notes on a
| whiteboard and I'm rediscovering index cards for long term
| storage, but I wish real life had a search function.
|
| If I had an automated scanning + OCR + convert to Org system, I
| would never use a text editor for notes ever again.
| pasc1878 wrote:
| Try using a tablet with hand written notes. There are
| programs (or even applications that replace the popup
| keyboard ) that will convert your writing into computer text.
|
| I think that gives the improved retention plus easy filing of
| the result and if your writing is like mine the ability to
| actually read what you wrote a year before.
| brnt wrote:
| Wow wow wow, look at mr bestseller over here!
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| I recently was in an awkward situation when ordering my new
| passport. Most times I got to sign some papers I have some
| signature which is a few waves, not forming many letters. In
| the passport office the clerk told me they can't recognize any
| enough letters in there, so I had to do multiple attempts till
| they were happy ... now my passport got a signature I won't be
| able to replicate ever.
|
| (I do some handwriting for notes taking, but that's some
| writing based on block letters, not script as in a signature)
| Suppafly wrote:
| >now my passport got a signature I won't be able to replicate
| ever
|
| I'm not sure I could ever prove I am who I say I am using my
| signature. My wife signs my name most of the time when it's
| necessary for a check or a health form for the kids or
| whatever. Whenever I go to vote, I try to sneak a look at
| their copy of the form to see how I signed it when I
| registered. I think my credit union has one 'on file' for me,
| but I'm sure it's nothing like how I actually sign my name
| and is from ~25 years ago.
| int_19h wrote:
| This is a very strange requirement, to be honest. E.g. what
| about foreigners whose native script is not the same, so
| their (pre-existing) signature is unparseable to that clerk
| anyway?
|
| FWIW I have a signature that is barely recognizable as my two
| initials, and I have never had it rejected on such grounds in
| the five different countries (using two different scripts)
| I've had to sign documents using it.
| Suppafly wrote:
| >but I'm sure I hand-write something at least once a month..
|
| I'm sure I do too, but I couldn't actually tell you what I used
| it for. Probably to cross items off a shopping list or sign my
| name on something. Actually we got a new car and I needed to
| sign the form at the DMV to get license plates, so I guess that
| was it.
| sudobash1 wrote:
| This thread is more interesting to me than the article itself.
| I am the complete opposite. I always have a pen in my pocket
| along with a really small (2"x3") notebook, and I absolutely
| use it all the time.
|
| Personally, I find pen and a memo pad much handier than a
| phone. There is no unlocking, searching, or loading. And I can
| write much faster than tap a little screen keyboard. Even more
| importantly, on my memo pad there are no notifications to
| completely sidetrack my lizard brain.
|
| But aside from the practical, it is also just such a nice
| change of pace to use analog technologies when I can. I use my
| computer and write software all day. It's good to get a break
| sometimes.
| ryukoposting wrote:
| I'm not sure if I go one day without writing _something_.
|
| For my blog, I can usually go straight to typing, but for my
| bigger projects I start by writing out any ideas, research,
| etc. I find that writing stuff helps me recall it later, even
| if I don't actually read the notes. It's especially helpful for
| big blobs of interconnected ideas.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| This was written in 2022. Do people still know how to postal-mail
| things? Asking as the acquisition of envelope, paper and stamps
| read like a new adventure for the author.
|
| I make a practice of sending _(picture) postcards_ to each of my
| descendants, when i arrive at a new place. It is a very rare
| occasion when I can find them, even rarer for the vendor to know
| what they are. Once the vendor was insisting that a flash card
| (smallish, lined cards for taking notes) was indeed a postcard.
| Sadly, I often have to buy them at the airport on arrival.
| munchler wrote:
| > flash card (smallish, lined cards for taking notes)
|
| These are called "index cards" in the US, although you can
| certainly use them to make flash cards if you want. Source: Am
| old enough to have used index cards unironically.
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| my flash cards all store at least 32 GB of data but are so
| tiny I keep losing them.
| voidUpdate wrote:
| What places don't have postcards? Whenever I go to places in
| the UK, tourist tat shops will often have hundreds of them in
| every flavour of souvenir
| alberto-m wrote:
| It seems to be a cultural thing. As an European I am used to
| find postcards in every town, but when I went to Singapore I
| had a hard time procuring them. None of the souvenir shops
| had them, and when I asked the employees they often looked at
| me as if I were some kind of strange animal. I finally found
| a small, dusty selection in the darkest corner of a huge
| department store.
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| I always like to buy a postcard.
|
| Occasionally actually post them before I leave a place
| (ideally soon after I arrive).
|
| Generally they arrive substantially after I get back.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| Yep, same path. Arrive, get cards ASAP, usually as I walk
| out of the airport, give it to the hotel concierge the next
| morning. They will often stamp and drop it in the mail for
| me.
|
| It is so much fun to watch my spawns showing me the cards
| they got with strange stamps and neat pictures of far away
| lands. I address them individually, so there are plenty to
| write, still fun.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| I know how to send mail but it's like doing taxes, I'm afraid
| I'll get something wrong and not find out until I'm in trouble
| for it
|
| I'm probably younger than you by quite a bit.. no descendents,
| no time to travel, not allowed in many countries or US states
| anyway
| Suppafly wrote:
| >Asking as the acquisition of envelope, paper and stamps read
| like a new adventure for the author.
|
| I can pretty much guarantee it'd be an adventure for my teen,
| nearly adult, children.
| radnor wrote:
| Yes! Check out Postcrossing, where you can sign up to send and
| receive postcards to random people. :)
|
| https://www.postcrossing.com/
| cormorant wrote:
| Different addresses are stated in different copies of the
| license. https://opensource.org/license/gpl-2-0 has: "59 Temple
| Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA"
|
| https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.txt has no
| postal address.
|
| https://spdx.org/licenses/GPL-2.0-only.html has "51 Franklin
| Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA" in red italics,
| and says: " Text in red is replaceable (see Matching Guidelines
| B.3.4). License or exception text will match to the text for the
| specified identifier if it includes a permitted variant of this
| replaceable text. The permitted variants can be found in the
| corresponding regular expression as shown in title text visible
| by hovering over the red text."
|
| Which in turn says: "can be replaced with the pattern .{54,64}"
| (that is, any string between 54-64 characters long).
| yapyap wrote:
| > as I haven't used a pen in several years
|
| Lol this is a bit ridiculous but a fun blogpost!
| pabs3 wrote:
| The FSF has moved address at least once, and more recently, now
| closed their offices entirely. I wonder if the new owners of
| their old addresses will or did get confused by copy-of-GPL
| requests.
| vinceguidry wrote:
| Postman probably just redirects, with a business or institution
| it's easy to just have the Post Office direct all mail
| addressed to "Free Software Foundation" to the current address.
| bluGill wrote:
| For a few months. The post office will do it for anyone for a
| few months, but then they stop forwarding mail. Maybe
| businesses get that treatment longer, but when people move
| they only get a few months.
| jen20 wrote:
| Standard US Mail forwarding is 12 months and may be
| extended for a further 18 months.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| Standard mail forwarding is one year, and you can extend
| that for an additional 18 months. I don't know of any
| reasonable person who would call that "a few months"
| pabs3 wrote:
| They don't have a current address to redirect to, they went
| completely virtual.
| mattl wrote:
| I used to work at the FSF and one of my jobs was replying to
| these letters. They would be so infrequent by 2008 that I think
| I handled less than 10 in my time there. I sent way more copies
| of books to prisoners who requested them, gave more tours of
| the office, etc. I also did some other stuff when I worked
| there but if you were to look at the FSF website today you
| might think I'm still there as pages often have the name of the
| person who created the page listed as the author still.
|
| The FSF has moved a few times.
|
| * 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge.
|
| * 59 Temple Place, Boston
|
| * 51 Franklin St, Boston
|
| * 31 Milk Street, Boston
|
| The first address wasn't around for too long, but does still
| exist. It's an office building above a bank in Central Square,
| Cambridge right above the Red Line stop.
|
| The second address was around for a long, long time. A few
| years ago, the building was demolished and turned into a hotel.
| I don't know if 59 Temple Place is still a valid address or
| not. For this one, I found many of most frequent places and
| filed bugs to get it updated. Greg K-H helped me update the
| kernel and many of the issues I opened got resolved with other
| projects. Worth noting too that the FSF had two different
| offices in the same building but mail would go to the building.
| Mail did forward from here to the next address for a while, but
| I'm not sure if it'll forward again to the latest address.
|
| 51 Franklin St is just around the corner from 59 Temple Place.
| When they moved here, many staff were able to walk their stuff
| over to the new office. This one finally closed last year. I
| worked here my entire time at the FSF.
|
| The final one is a PO Box but also around the corner from 51
| Franklin St.
| Thoreandan wrote:
| I'd always wanted to see a physical copy of the $5,000.00
| 'Deluxe Distribution' -
|
| https://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~trent/gnu/bull/16/gnu_bulletin_23..
| ..
|
| > The FSF Deluxe Distribution contains the binaries and
| sources to hundreds of different programs including GNU
| Emacs, the GNU C Compiler, the GNU Debugger, the complete MIT
| X Window System, and the GNU utilities.
|
| > You may choose one of these machines and operating systems:
| HP 9000 series 200, 300, 700, or 800 (4.3 BSD or HP-UX);
| RS/6000 (AIX); Sony NEWS 68k (4.3 BSD or NewsOS 4); Sun 3, 4,
| or SPARC (SunOS 4 or Solaris). If your machine or system is
| not listed, or if a specific program has not been ported to
| that machine, please call the FSF office at the phone number
| below or send e-mail to gnu@prep.ai.mit.edu.
|
| > The manuals included are one each of the Bison, Calc, Gawk,
| GNU C Compiler, GNU C Library, GNU Debugger, Flex, GNU Emacs
| Lisp Reference, Make, Texinfo, and Termcap manuals; six
| copies of the manual for GNU Emacs; and a packet of reference
| cards each for GNU Emacs, Calc, the GNU Debugger, Bison, and
| Flex.
|
| > In addition to the printed and on-line documentation, every
| Deluxe Distribution includes a CD-ROM (in ISO 9660 format
| with Rock Ridge extensions) that contains sources of our
| software.
|
| I wonder how many (if any?) were sold, it'd be an excellent
| museum piece.
| mattl wrote:
| By the time I joined in 2008, I don't think they were being
| offered anymore as IIRC the person locally who was handling
| the compiling and tape archiving didn't have access to the
| systems anymore.
| Sesse__ wrote:
| Debian also has a packaging lint rule telling people to
| update the FSF postal address. So much energy must be wasted
| in this. :-)
| mattl wrote:
| What's the alternative?
| Sesse__ wrote:
| Leave it alone, since it has no real effects?
| mattl wrote:
| I think keeping the address up to date makes sense. At
| the same time the FSF should have gotten a PO BOX in
| 1985.
|
| When I worked at Creative Commons we closed the office
| down there too and I got a PO BOX in Mountain View where
| the office was at the time and that seemed to work out
| okay.
| bluGill wrote:
| At least he got a response. Meaning the address didn't change
| mostly.
|
| A few years back I worked on an embedded linux project. For our
| first "alpha" release one of the testers read through the license
| agreement (as opposed to scrolling past all that legalese like
| most people do) and found the address to write to to get all the
| GPL source, he then send a letter to the address and it was
| returned to sender, invalid address. Somehow the lawyers found
| out about this and the forced us to do a full recall, sending
| techs to each machine to install an update (the testers installed
| the original software and were expected to apply updates, but we
| still had to send someone to install this update and track that
| everyone got it). Lawyers want to show good faith in courts -
| they consider it inevitable that someone will violate the GPL and
| are hoping that by showing good faith attempts to follow the
| letter and spirit the court won't force releasing our code when a
| "rouge employee" manages to violate the license.
|
| The more important take away is if your automated test process
| doesn't send letters to your GPL compliance address to verify it
| works then you need manual testers: not only are you not testing
| everything, but you didn't even think of everything so you need
| the assurance of humans looking for something "funny".
| diggan wrote:
| An updated version would say to make sure every email address
| you use/show in the application/terms/policies are usable and
| someone receives it.
|
| When reviewing stuff that introduces new emails and whatnot I
| always spend 10-20 seconds sending an email with "Please
| respond if you see this" to verify it actually works and
| someone receives it, as I've experienced more than once that no
| one actually setup the email before deploying the changes that
| will show the email to users.
| terinjokes wrote:
| Why should the test process be sending physical letters (edit:
| in 2025)? Nothing in the GPLv2 requires a physical letter.
|
| The address the OP sent a letter too has already been removed
| from the canonical version of the license (and was itself an
| unversioned change from the original address), and section 3
| doesn't require a physical offer if the machine-readable source
| code is provided.
| ndiddy wrote:
| Some companies still do this mainly to make the GPL request
| process more annoying so fewer people do it. If you have to
| mail a letter with a check to cover shipping/handling and
| wait for the company to send you a CD-R with the code on it,
| fewer people will look at the code compared to if the company
| just put it on Github or something.
| bluGill wrote:
| Most of the time the GPL request is a waste of time with no
| purpose other than annoy a company. You can download linux
| source code from many places, why do you want to get it
| from us?
|
| There is a slight possibility we have a driver that you
| could get access to, but without the hardware it won't do
| you any good. Once in a while we have hacked the source to
| fix a bug, but if it isn't upstream it is because the fix
| would be accepted (often it causes other bugs that don't
| matter to use), and in any case if it isn't upstream, the
| kernel moves so fast you wouldn't be able to use it anyway.
| regentbowerbird wrote:
| You only have to serve those requests if you distribute
| your changes yourself.
|
| So presumably as a hardware company you'd be offering
| your hardware with your custom linux installed, and then
| people wanting to audit or hack the product they bought
| would request the code from you.
| bluGill wrote:
| This is GPL2 - there is no requirement that you be able
| to install/use/hack the software, only that you get the
| same source.
| pabs3 wrote:
| That is incorrect, the GPLv2 requires that you be able to
| modify the code, build it, reinstall the binary and run
| the modified binary.
|
| https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/mar/25/install-gplv2/
| https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/jul/23/tivoization-
| and-t... https://events19.linuxfoundation.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2017...
| immibis wrote:
| This relies on a court's interpretation. GPLv3 made it
| explicit that the user has to be provided with everything
| they need to install modified software. GPLv2 just says
| "scripts used to control installation" which can be
| easily interpreted to exclude private signing keys. And
| the LGPLv2 says when an executable statically links to
| the library the user must be able to produce a modified
| executable - nothing at all about being able to install
| that executable.
| adastra22 wrote:
| That is an overly obtuse interpretation. Real law doesn't
| work that way. Get in front of a court and the bench
| judge will shut down that kind of analysis real fast. The
| intended interpretation is quite clear in context.
| ndiddy wrote:
| Again I see no purpose in doing things this way besides
| trying to minimize the amount of people who look at your
| GPL code for some reason. Isn't it more annoying for the
| company to make someone in customer support read paper
| letters, burn the GPL package onto a CD-R, and mail it
| than it is to simply host the GPL package for each
| product on a support site or Github or something and
| include a link in the product documentation?
| ack_complete wrote:
| There's definitely a purpose, it's to obfuscate usage of
| GPL software and dodgy linkage. There's no other reason
| for situations like hosting a binary download as a plain
| download on a website while getting the source requires
| mailing a check or money order to a UK address.
| immibis wrote:
| There's actually a near-100% chance that the kernel on my
| device is not the upstream kernel. There's a near-100%
| chance that you have added some custom drivers or got
| them from your upstream. There's also a near-100% chance
| that you have written some scripts to install the kernel
| on the device, which you are required (at least one
| German judge thinks so) to share with me so that I can
| install a modified kernel on my device.
| terinjokes wrote:
| If the goal is to be annoying, sure make sure folks can
| jump through hoops. I just don't think in 2025 a company
| legitimately intending to satisfy the GPL requirements
| needs anything to do with physical mail, since they'll
| provide it online.
|
| I stopped putting in requests for source code offers
| because I've had a 0% success rate.
| immibis wrote:
| Companies don't legitimately intend to satisfy the GPL
| requirements.
|
| If you put in a source code request and get no reply you
| should try to contact the copyright holder or someone
| like the Software Freedom Conservancy or the EFF, because
| they are breaking the law. There was a case recently in
| Germany where a court forced a maker of home routers to
| give up not just their source code, but also the scripts
| to install modified software - as required by the
| license. (As I understand it there is no precedent in a
| civil law system, but it does mean at least one judge
| believes Tivoization of GPLv2 software is illegal)
| terinjokes wrote:
| I am keeping an eye on SFC's lawsuit against Vizio[0].
|
| [0]: https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-
| compliance/vizio.html
| pabs3 wrote:
| Please let the Software Freedom Conservancy know about
| any companies that are still in violation of the GPL by
| not satisfying requests for source code.
|
| https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/help.html
| foxglacier wrote:
| I offer GPL source via physical address because I don't
| want to distribute it with the software and I think the GPL
| said you have to do it that way. I also provide an email
| address for convenience but without it being the official
| way so I don't really have to respond to those. In 10
| years, I've had zero requests either way.
| adastra22 wrote:
| Why do you distribute under GPL if you don't want to
| distribute the source?
| fph wrote:
| Maybe because they have to. If you are reusing GPL code,
| you don't really have a choice.
| AlbinoDrought wrote:
| The Free Software Foundation closed their office at 51 Franklin
| St in August 2024 [1]. Their new mailing address is on 31 Milk
| Street [2].
|
| If this test was reproduced today, we may see different results
| ;)
|
| [1]: https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/fsf-office-closing-
| party
|
| [2]: https://www.fsf.org/about/contact/mailing
| dunham wrote:
| That's recent enough that mail forwarding should work, if
| they set it up:
|
| > Standard mail forwarding lasts 12 months. You can pay to
| extend mail forwarding for 6, 12, or 18 more months (18
| months is the maximum).
|
| Edit for source: https://www.usps.com/manage/forward.htm
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| > > Standard mail forwarding lasts 12 months. You can pay
| to extend mail forwarding for 6, 12, or 18 more months (18
| months is the maximum).
|
| That's kind of awkward when you consider people will find
| that address for source code where that license file just
| wont be updated for decades to come, if at all.
| __turbobrew__ wrote:
| We need DNS, but for mail addresses.
| ajb wrote:
| One thing I've been meaning to try, but never got round
| to, is to stick a URL on an envelope, pointing at a page
| with an address, and see if the mail (royal mail, in my
| case) actually deliver it. I suspect they would but that
| it would take a few extra days. It's no worse than some
| of the addresses that they do deliver.
| ayewo wrote:
| What about encoding the address as a QR code?
|
| This should not require any Internet access to view by
| whoever is scanning it to be sorted for delivery.
| aftbit wrote:
| It also does not help you to update the address later.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| It does if it leads to a web page with an address.
|
| What happens when all project maintainers die and the
| source code disappears?
| pabs3 wrote:
| Hopefully it will never disappear, since Software
| Heritage and ArchiveTeam will have saved it.
|
| https://www.softwareheritage.org/
| https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/Codearchiver
| fragmede wrote:
| Hope is not a strategy. As much as I hate crypto,
| something on the blockchain might be more durable. You
| want something that isn't reliant on any one person or
| company to continue to exist (though maybe the long now
| foundation will) and even if Bitcoin goes to zero, I
| think there will be some die hard true believers to keep
| running miners even past the built in 2140 expiration
| date.
| Sophira wrote:
| It does, but I think the person you were responding to
| was referring to the "This should not require any
| Internet access to view" part.
| solarkraft wrote:
| Even moving once has made the need for this clear to me,
| it boggles my mind that it isn't a (common) thing.
| schlauerfox wrote:
| CGP Grey, a youtube channel, has a video on some of the
| problems of the postal codes and addresses from earlier
| this year that I learned about alternates to my familiar
| US based system.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1K5oDtVAYzk
| pdfernhout wrote:
| Maybe DNS for mail addresses is like a Post Office Box
| number? :-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_office_box
|
| With 20/20 hindsight, if the FSF had used a P.O. Box
| number in the license, the license addresses would always
| be correct even if the FSF office changed addressed or
| (as now) was no longer maintained.
|
| Of course, the cost of a P.O. box over 40 years would
| have added up to thousands of dollars and that is less
| money for FSF advocacy. And time spent going to the post
| office to check the box would also have taken away from
| advocacy time.
|
| Another physical mail DNS-like idea is mail forwarding --
| but it typically has time limits at the post office
| although not for private mail forwarders:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_forwarding "Private
| mail forwarding services are also offered by private
| forwarding companies, who often offer features like the
| ability to see your mail online via a virtual mailbox.
| Virtual mailboxes usually have options to get your mail
| scanned, discard junk mail and forward mail to your
| current address."
|
| Although strictly speaking, these forwarding services are
| not quite like DNS (even if they do get at the idea of
| indirection). A true mail DNS would be more like a
| service you mail a post card to with a person's or
| organization's name and which mails a post card back to
| you which tells you what address to currently write to in
| order to reach that person or organization. (At least, if
| you write to that received address during some time-to-
| live window of validity of the address.) And I guess
| Encrypted DNS would be like you and the service using
| more expensive security envelopes instead of post cards?
| :-)
| vitus wrote:
| > Of course, the cost of a P.O. box over 40 years would
| have added up to thousands of dollars and that is less
| money for FSF advocacy. And time spent going to the post
| office to check the box would also have taken away from
| advocacy time.
|
| To be fair, renting office space in downtown Boston also
| adds up to tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of
| dollars, every year. By comparison, $500 dollars a year
| [0] for a medium PO Box (in the lobby of the building for
| their new office, no less!) is a steal.
|
| [0] https://poboxes.usps.com/findBox.html?q=02196
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| since this is hacker news... i once had some trouble
| changing mail address from one supplier (they would send
| the materials to the new address, but insisted on sending
| billing/tax info to the old one) so i did the mail
| forward process some three times + their extensions (i
| recall it was 6 + 3mo or so)... it got me close to 3 yrs
| of reliable mail forward from the great folks at usps
| until i could get thru the supplier personnel thick
| skull.
|
| the only issue "redoing" the request is that people at
| the old address can block it, so be sure to talk to them
| first.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| > the only issue "redoing" the request is that people at
| the old address can block it, so be sure to talk to them
| first.
|
| That's so strange, especially when you consider that for
| legal purposes, if you receive mail at someone's home,
| you are now a "resident" and it is harder for police to
| kick you out. Why would anyone willingly want your mail
| to come to your address.
| grepfru_it wrote:
| Simply receiving mail does not make you a resident. You
| must establish residency and that is being allowed access
| to the home, the understanding that you are leaving
| belongings behind with the ability to access them later,
| how long you have stayed, and maintaining things like
| utility bills. A lease is a contract that clearly
| establishes the guidelines between two willing parties.
| Absent that, the definition of residency is typically
| delineated in your state landlord-tenant laws.
|
| Disclaimer: in the USA
| mattl wrote:
| I wrote a little more about the various offices as someone
| who used to work there.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43783632
| brian-armstrong wrote:
| Did they also force RMS to move out?
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Maybe he refused to move, so they did?
| twic wrote:
| This test isn't about writing to the FSF, it's about writing
| to the vendor who supplied the software.
| chasd00 wrote:
| reminds me of this old joke. Two testers walk into a bar, the
| first says "i'll have a beer please" and they get their beer as
| expected. The second says "I just want water" and they get the
| water just like the asked. Then a user walks into the bar and
| asks "where's the bathroom?". The bar explodes.
| ahtihn wrote:
| > court won't force releasing our code when a "rouge employee"
| manages to violate the license.
|
| Is this an actual, real risk? Has a court ever forced anyone to
| release their code because they were violating the GPL?
|
| My understanding is that this is not how this works. If you
| violate the license you simply don't have a valid one and
| basically committing copyright infringement. The punishment for
| that isn't being forced to comply with the license, it's having
| to pay damages to the copyright owner.
|
| Showing good faith doesn't really change the end result: you're
| using code that you don't have a license to. The only fix is to
| start complying or stop selling your software until you remove
| the code you don't have a license to use.
| bluGill wrote:
| Not that I'm aware of. NEXT however did release objective-C
| source code, but AFAIK that never went to court (anyone able
| to find those details - I can't find them now).
|
| The text of the GPL is release source code. There are a few
| people who want release source code to be the only way out of
| any infringement. If a company intentionally violates the GPL
| that starts to look like a reasonable argument to courts.
| However if a company takes "enough" effort to not infringe
| and does anyway a smaller penalty would apply.
|
| If you don't have a license and distributed software, then
| that is a copyright violation and the author is entitled to
| damages. Exactly what those are is something the court
| figures out. However one important piece of evidence is the
| license was release your source code. Thus lawyers want that
| additional cover of we knew and decided not to use GPL code,
| and there are the steps we took to ensure we didn't: since we
| took effort you shouldn't apply that extreme penalty.
|
| I do know that good faith in other areas has made a
| difference. Companies have been caught bribing foreign
| officials before - which is a shut down the company level
| event (many countries have laws that if you bribe a
| government anywhere, not just in their country). However
| because the company could show they made good faith efforts
| to ensure everyone knew not to bribe this was just the act of
| a rouge employee.
|
| How real is it? Hard to say. Good lawyers will tell you that
| putting in some effort to ensure you don't infringe is cheap
| protection even if the risk is low.
| terinjokes wrote:
| A few countries I'll be visiting this summer still sell
| International Reply Coupons. It might be interesting to pick some
| up and see how difficult it is to exchange them. Would a PostNL
| point even know what to do with one?
| relistan wrote:
| As a ham radio operator who still likes paper QSL cards, I've
| bought international reply coupons from Swiss Post because they
| still sell them and you can order them online (I live in
| Ireland but here they no longer sell them). Any postal service
| that is a member of the Universal Postal Union (nearly all of
| them are AFAICT) is obliged to accept them. They work in most
| places.
| maxloh wrote:
| Perhaps the FSF got confused about which license the author was
| referring to, or perhaps they intentionally mailed back GPL v3 --
| this isn't the first time they haven't been generous.
|
| In the old days when they released GPL v3, Linus Torvalds
| considered it "not the same license at all". He felt betrayed
| because the FSF "try to sneak in these new (tivoization) rules
| and try to force everybody to upgrade". People could fork the
| Kernel and relicense the fork in a way that prevented him from
| merging their improvements upstream. He referred to the FSF's
| move as "dishonest", "sneaky" and "immoral" and decided he would
| "never have anything to do with the FSF again".
|
| https://youtu.be/PaKIZ7gJlRU
| coldpie wrote:
| > Perhaps the FSF got confused about which license the author
| was referring to
|
| When no version is specified in the request, returning the
| latest version seems like a reasonable thing to do.
| maxloh wrote:
| IMO, the correct response would be "Hey we have version 1, 2,
| and 3 of this license, all of them have been attached. Please
| make sure which one you were talking about".
| coldpie wrote:
| That would also be reasonable, sure. Triple the cost
| though!
| roywashere wrote:
| That reminds me on the time the FSF moved, they changed their
| address, and the open source product I worked on had to change
| their address in the license notices in our product:
|
| https://github.com/moritz/otrs/commit/e845575e1848fd0124fb8d...
|
| And of course, as happens more often, this issue was raised to us
| by Debian developers, who care a great deal about 'correctness'
| craniumslows wrote:
| The FSF offices have moved again if you weren't aware. The new
| address is
|
| Free Software Foundation 31 Milk Street, # 960789 Boston, MA
| 02196 USA
|
| https://www.fsf.org/about/contact/mailing
| collinfunk wrote:
| In Gnulib we distribute and use the license with just a link
| to <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/> [1]. I would just use
| that.
|
| Many GNU projects use a rule that will fail 'make distcheck'
| when it sees an address in the sources [2].
|
| [1] https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/gnulib.git/commit/?id=b
| f31... [2] https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/gnulib.git/commi
| t/?id=086c...
| pabs3 wrote:
| Hmm, I wonder if there is a linter somewhere for copyright
| notice and license grant smells.
|
| Made a note to add an fsf-address check to check-all-the-
| things.
| sinuhe69 wrote:
| It would be a perfect story for the "Dull Men Center" or alike :D
| martopix wrote:
| _Writing the address on the envelope was awkward, as I haven't
| used a pen in several years;_
|
| Really??
| VikingCoder wrote:
| I think these licenses are incredibly useful.
|
| I have a really, really dumb question.
|
| Why don't we have more licenses and contracts like this? Do we
| just need to set up a foundation that drafts them and makes them
| freely available to use?
|
| Like, for instance, "Hi, Mark - we'd like to offer you a job here
| at our daycare, but first we need you to look over this contract
| and sign it."
|
| This contract says, roughly, that if there's an accusation of
| sexual abuse against children that it will go to a mediator who
| has final say, and if they say it was a credible accusation, that
| Mark immediately loses his job, and can never work anywhere that
| uses this same contract, ever again. Sorry, you lost your chance
| to work with kids. It sucks that it might have been a false
| accusation, but our kids are just far too important to trust to
| the existing systems.
|
| Guess what? Churches should follow a similar license. Letting
| priests or pastors move from town to town, abusing kids? That was
| completely bonkers insane. And I feel like a contract like this
| (and a registry, and etc.) could have helped. If people forced
| their daycares and churches to accept a license like this.
|
| Another one, "Hi, Greg. We understand we'd like your endorsement
| from our political party? Sounds good, here's a contract for
| you..."
|
| It says, among other things, that if Greg switches political
| parties that he must resign from office. Sorry. He's welcome to
| run again, but he can't stay in office on our votes.
|
| Like, shouldn't we have more contracts like this?
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| If I follow correctly, then yes I agree that having more widely
| used standard licenses/contracts would be nice. One of my crazy
| legal fantasies is that _all_ EULAs have to go through a
| central government authority that pushes back on new ones,
| because one of the things I love about FOSS is that there 's
| only a handful of common licenses, so you can reasonably read
| them _once_ and then just see them and know what you 're
| getting. I don't need to re-read the GPL every time I use a new
| piece of software using it, because I already know what it
| says.
|
| To a specific point, though,
|
| > Guess what? Churches should follow a similar license. Letting
| priests or pastors move from town to town, abusing kids? That
| was completely bonkers insane. And I feel like a contract like
| this (and a registry, and etc.) could have helped. If people
| forced their daycares and churches to accept a license like
| this.
|
| Er, yes, that does sound bonkers; where are you that every
| school, church, and daycare isn't already doing a background
| check on every single person working there?
| VikingCoder wrote:
| > Er, yes, that does sound bonkers; where are you that every
| school, church, and daycare isn't already doing a background
| check on every single person working there?
|
| Someone has to be convicted for something to show up on their
| background check, yes?
| equinoxnemesis wrote:
| I could imagine a judge holding a contract to resign from
| office void as contrary to public policy (on the basis of the
| intuition that elected representatives shouldn't have their
| continuance in office subject to random contracts with third
| parties lest this interfere with their service to the public.)
| inetknght wrote:
| > _Like, shouldn 't we have more contracts like this?_
|
| So... like a social scorecard that's easily manipulated?
|
| No.
| gus_massa wrote:
| > _and if they say it was a credible accusation, [...], but our
| kids are just far too important to trust to the existing
| systems._
|
| You mean dropping some hard earned human right like Presumption
| of Innocence?
|
| You may think it doesn't apply to you, but the landlords and
| HOA can add a similar clause, because children must be safe at
| home too. And every software company may add the same clause
| because they (may) have a game division and children must be
| safe online too. And ...
|
| Suddenly, any accusation that a non-professional fake-judge
| says is "credible" makes you an outcast of society.
| skeltoac wrote:
| Contracts are negotiable. Don't like the numbers in paragraph
| twelve? Can't agree to forfeit one of the rights listed in
| appendix G? Redline it and see what they say.
|
| EULA, TOS, and Docusign have mostly forced people to forget
| their right to negotiate contracts because all they let you do
| is agree to the terms offered. So it seems natural today that
| people just want standard contracts for everything.
|
| Lazyweb: what's that story about the guy who redlined his
| credit card contract and the bank accepted it?
| Suppafly wrote:
| >Like, shouldn't we have more contracts like this?
|
| We have tons of them, they are written by lawyers.
| VikingCoder wrote:
| I wish they were standardized and freely available.
| Suppafly wrote:
| You can get books of them, but standardization mostly
| doesn't work because every situation is different enough
| that it can't be standardized enough.
| throwaway173738 wrote:
| A lot of your use cases are already met by professional
| certifications and licenses. For example to run or work at a
| daycare in my state you have to have a license and part of the
| licensure process is a background check. That's a much better
| system already because there's already a state agency in charge
| of managing and revoking the license and as edge cases arise
| they don't require re-negotiation.
| rietta wrote:
| I am impressed that the FSF has kept up the same office / mailing
| address for 32 years at the time the article was written!
| yukiAkita wrote:
| Sure but, on the other hand, this was overly kind of him.
| low_tech_punk wrote:
| Exploring implications of an absolute physical address. FSF
| basically claimed a physical "domain name" and no future
| organizations will be able to reside in that address. FSF can
| move out and ask USPS to do a 301 Moved Permanently or 308
| Permanent Redirect.
| jraph wrote:
| they actually did move in the meantime :-) [1]
|
| Can this redirection be forever?
|
| > no future organizations will be able to reside in that
| address
|
| You are supposed to put the name, no? "Some Organization, <old
| address>" would unambiguously refer to the new org.
|
| [1] https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/fsf-office-closing-
| party
| reaperducer wrote:
| _ask USPS to do a 301 Moved Permanently or 308 Permanent
| Redirect._
|
| The USPS doesn't honor either 301 or 308. As someone who moves
| just about every year, and fills out the paperwork to get my
| 301s and 308s for free, instead of paying a third-party
| service, I can tell you that the 301/308 at USPS is only good
| for one year.
|
| To get around this, I used to use a 305: Use Proxy, but then my
| UPS Store of choice closed, and I was back to 301/308 land.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| At my first job, we'd occasionally have old people showing up
| to pay their water bill (with checks, of course!) because 20
| years previously, the local water utility occupied the same
| building that we were in. They were generally pretty upset
| because we had no idea where the water company was and they
| were paying in person because the bill was late, and their
| water could potentially be shut off.
| crmi wrote:
| > After a few weeks of waiting, I eventually received the
| 'African Daisy global forever vert pair' stamp which was round! I
| should have noticed that the seller sent me the item using stamps
| at a much lower denomination that those I had ordered. Oh well.
|
| Wild that so many commenters don't see the satire dripping from
| the post. Is it just a UK thing to never take things at face
| value?
| Luc wrote:
| I don't think that's satire. A wry observation perhaps.
| returningfory2 wrote:
| I don't understand the satire, can you explain?
|
| We can't see the full set of "lower denomination" stamps on the
| letter, but I'm not 100% sure it's actually lower denomination.
| The sender of the stamps seems to be using the "2 domestic
| forevers + some amount of cents = 1 global forever" formula. I
| think the UK sender didn't need to include _two_ global
| forevers.
| returningfory2 wrote:
| Indeed, the formula is correct. Wikipedia maintains a list of
| historic Forever pricing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histo
| ry_of_United_States_posta...
|
| From the blog, the letter from California was dated April
| 2022, at which point the rates were domestic = $0.58 and
| global = $1.30. So the California sender correctly attached
| two domestics valued at $1.16 total plus an additional $0.14
| to make $1.30.
| sudobash1 wrote:
| > I think the UK sender didn't need to include _two_ global
| forevers.
|
| It would be hard to know that ahead of time though. The
| global forever stamp is good for letters up to 1oz which can
| be as little as 4 US letter pages. It took the FSF 5 double-
| sided pages. Granted, it looks like lightweight paper & the
| post office doesn't seem to be very picky about this. But I
| think sending two forever stamps was being on the safe side.
| returningfory2 wrote:
| Good point!
| crmi wrote:
| I think quoting that part alone, didn't make it clear I was
| referring to the whole article.
|
| >...... "Oh Well."
|
| May have been more apt.
|
| Is eBay really anyones first thought when looking for a (non-
| collector) stamp to (actually) mail?
|
| Perhaps he should have picked up a few PS1 coins on eBay, use
| them to purchase some stamps from the post office?...
| Scoundreller wrote:
| They needed US stamps.
| crmi wrote:
| I didn't see any request for a return envelope or stamp.
| Author decided to include them (unless I missed
| something).
| xp84 wrote:
| It seems like common courtesy for me. Given the FSF are
| providing that service out of altruism, and are not the
| ones who neglected to give OP the license in the first
| place, it's only appropriate to not impose upon them to
| go buy stamps to send an international letter.
| crmi wrote:
| What about the paper, ink, labour involved? Why not slip
| $10 into envelope instead?
| db48x wrote:
| De minimis. You only include the extra envelope so that
| you can write your own address on it. Postage is the only
| real expense.
| unwind wrote:
| But, again, he was in the UK buying US stamps, so that the
| FSF could mail their answer back to him from the US. I
| don't think UK post offices supply all the world's stamps,
| buying that online from individuals who have them for sale
| makes some kind of sense, doesn't it?
|
| I guess the a more "digital native" way would have been to
| first check if the USPS supports some kind of
| downloadable/printable stamping method, like QR codes or
| pre-bought labels (which, according to come early comment,
| they do).
| Scoundreller wrote:
| I'm surprised this stamp seller didn't cover half the envelope
| in 5 cent stamps.
|
| That's what I usually get _on_ the envelopes from stamp
| sellers: decades old stamps from the "bad investment" portions
| from stamp collectors.
| changadera wrote:
| I used to order fragrance samples on eBay, The first order I
| received from them had a 10 1/2 pence stamp attached. I was
| perplexed as the half pence (ha'penny, pronounced HAPE-KNEE)
| coin had been discontinued in 1984, 30 years ago at the time,
| and I'd only seen them in an old collection of coins from my
| parents. Also the portrait of the Queen (I'm from the UK) was
| a bit outdated.
|
| I contacted the seller and it turned out her husband was a
| stamp collector and gave her his low value cast-offs to use
| as postage. I found it amazing that 30+ year old stamps were
| still valid. It's only recently they've become invalid
| postage as now stamps require a barcode.
|
| Also I used to get items delivered to my office, and the
| office manager's husband was a stamp collector, so she used
| to ask to keep the stamps I got (I used to order electronic
| components from all over the world) so this completed the
| philatelist cycle.
|
| Another old currency anecdote. I used to work on the
| checkouts at a supermarket in Cambridge circa 2009 and at
| least two times we'd get visiting academics from the USA who
| had studied in the UK years before and they'd try to pay with
| currency they'd had from the time, except it was the awesome
| old pre-decimal money (We switched to decimal in 1971). I
| found it quaint that they thought it was still valid and
| thought to bring it with them.
| davisr wrote:
| This is funny because I was the operations assistant (office
| secretary) at the time we received this letter, and I remember it
| because of the distinct postage.
| MadnessASAP wrote:
| How wonderful! Since the game of the day seems to be the
| technicalities of the minutiae, could you explain the decision
| to send the GPLv3 vs GPLv2? Is this a request that happens
| often?
| jenscow wrote:
| The version wasn't specified in the request
| yoda222 wrote:
| They should have responded a code 300 Multiple Choices
| dolmen wrote:
| Or still 200, but with a "Vary: Accept-Version" header.
| self_awareness wrote:
| The sender didn't specify the version in his request, so I
| find it natural that they've sent him the latest version.
| kevincox wrote:
| How does a sender who only has a GPLv2 license notice even
| know that there is a v3? Should they first send a letter
| asking which versions are available?
| self_awareness wrote:
| If the sender requests GPLv2, he should receive GPL
| version 2.
|
| If the sender requests GPL, I find it natural for him to
| receive version 3, because it's the latest version. At
| the time of receiving the license, he gains knowledge
| about the existence of version 3 (the header on the print
| says the GPL he received is version 3).
|
| If the sender has a notice about GPLv2, it means that
| there's a high chance that there's also GPLv1. This
| should be a sufficient hint that requesting only "GPL" is
| not sufficient, because the sender should be aware of the
| risk of receiving GPLv1 if he won't mention the "v2".
| pantalaimon wrote:
| GPLv2 by default means GPLv2 or later, so GPLv3 is
| perfectly valid indeed.
| mmx1 wrote:
| That's actually not true. GPLv2 by default means v2, not
| v3, unless you explicitly allow "or later."
|
| Linux is actually the famed example of v2 but not v3.
| snickerbockers wrote:
| the usual license header has something along the lines of
| "either version [23], or at your discretion, any
| subsequent version", which clearly explains that there
| are specific versions with distinct rules. Many people
| opt not to include this clause because they
| (understandably) don't want to automatically agree to a
| contract that hasn't even been written yet. However if
| they fail to make the version clear that's on them.
|
| Anyways I don't think this defense would ever fly in
| court. As soon as the plaintiff's lawyers produce
| evidence that you _are_ aware of GPLv3 (such as pointing
| out that you have GPLv3 software on your PC or phone) the
| judge is going to see that you 're trying to game the
| system on technicality and sanction you. Judges really
| don't like this sly loophole BS where it's extremely
| obvious that you're feigning ignorance for the sake of
| constructing an alternate reality where you
| hypothetically never knew there was a GPLv3.
| taftster wrote:
| The author mentioned this exact problem. Quoting:
|
| _> There was a problem that I noticed right away, though:
| this text was from the GPL v3, not the GPL v2. In my
| original request I had never mentioned the GPL version I
| was asking about._
|
| _> The original license notice makes no mention of GPL
| version either. Should the fact that the license notice
| contained an address have been enough metadata or a clue,
| that I was actually requesting the GPL v2 license? Or
| should I have mentioned that I was seeking the GPLv2
| license?_
|
| This is seemingly a problem with the GPL text itself, in
| that it doesn't mention which license version to request
| when you mail the FSF.
| DSMan195276 wrote:
| Well to be fair, that's not the full license notice,
| that's only the last paragraph. There should a couple
| more above that one and the first paragraph says the
| version of GPL in use. That said I think the license
| notice is also just a suggested one, it's not required
| that you use that _exact_ text.
| hughw wrote:
| A Sid Caesar skit showed doughboys celebrating and one
| shouted "World War 1 is over!"... when they made GPLv2
| maybe they didn't anticipate creating future versions
| (although yeah, if you're already on v2 you should
| foresee that).
| dredmorbius wrote:
| There is a GPL v.1, and it may have been so numbered at
| initial publication:
|
| <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-1.0.html>
| cortesoft wrote:
| What sort of request volume did you get? How many per day were
| you sending out?
| davisr wrote:
| On average, zero per day, maybe 5 to 10 per year.
| zorked wrote:
| I'm really surprised that it's more than 1 ever.
| mapmeld wrote:
| At scale, there are a lot of confused people who do
| unexpected stuff. The maintainer of cURL has people
| contact him when a notice shows up in car software or
| when they think he is connected to hacking:
| https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2018/02/16/why-is-your-email-
| in-... https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2021/02/19/i-will-
| slaughter-you/
| davisr wrote:
| At FSF, someone would call every month thinking they had
| been "hacked" and that FSF was responsible because they
| found "evidence left behind" (the GPL).
| pmkary wrote:
| This is gold :) I wished you share more of this stories
| ngharo wrote:
| I met a web developer working for the FSF at a Boston pub one
| night while in town for a Red Hat conference. After many
| drinks, he walked us down fifth street to the FSF office
| building. I wasn't sure what to expect but when we got there,
| he typed in some numbers on the door entry system, and what
| came out was RMS singing the free software song lol. It was a
| wonderful treat for a young Linux nerd on a hazy adventure in
| the early morning
| fph wrote:
| I love that your story could be read in two different ways:
| (1) a recording of RMS appeared on the door entry system
| screen, or (2) the man himself waltzed out of that door and
| started singing.
| leoh wrote:
| Was including reply postage in fact required?
| samspot wrote:
| If you never pick up a pen to sign a birthday card, thank you
| note, or wedding album, that's a symptom you are too isolated!
| supportengineer wrote:
| "Writing the address on the envelope was awkward, as I haven't
| used a pen in several years; it took a few attempts and some
| wasted envelopes"
| ray023 wrote:
| Dude wastes the FSFs time, complains about wrong license without
| telling them the one he wanted. Then complains again that he
| needs to recover from the HORROR of using the postal service that
| was a deliberate, POINTLESS CHOICE. Gets fame on Hacker News for
| it.
|
| YAY!
| avodonosov wrote:
| I once was reading a software license, and deep inside it there
| was a promise: who has read till this place will get a certain
| prise. I emailed them, they kind of confirmed that I am eligible
| for the prise. But it was a far away city, so I never went to
| claim it.
| johnea wrote:
| This was such a laugh!
|
| I have to wonder if the whole exercise was a prime example of a
| brit "taking the piss" 8-)
|
| > the US, Canada, and a few other countries don't follow the
| standard international paper sizes, even though I had written
| about it earlier
|
| I literally laughed out loud at this 8-)
|
| And the outrageous expectation of obtaining... stamps!
|
| It was just too funny.
|
| For unfamiliar muricans: The success, according to british
| cultural standards, in the humiliation of the intended victim is
| increased, when the victim replies while being completely unaware
| that they are actually being mocked.
| renecito wrote:
| is the owner of the address a perpetual owner of the GPL?
| Example: - Step 1: Create evil Corporation - Step 2: Buy that
| address - Step 3: Create a new GPL, still GPL but technically a
| new version. This can make sure the sole owner of the claimed IP
| (remove the FSF of course). - Step 4: Sell your updated license
| to anyone that'd want to go around previous GPL.
| AxEy wrote:
| Tangentially related: I've always wanted to write a hello the
| address that they show during the opening credits of MST3K. Has
| anyone tried?
| pcbmaker20 wrote:
| Why would you do this, the text is available online!
| rs186 wrote:
| Looks like no other comment dwells on the fact that FSF was based
| in Boston.
|
| I heard that Boston was a small hub for tech companies back in
| the 90s (which is is much less true these days), which might
| explain this.
| philwelch wrote:
| FSF was founded by Richard Stallman, who was a Harvard student
| and worked at the MIT AI Lab.
| stevage wrote:
| > Writing the address on the envelope was awkward, as I haven't
| used a pen in several years;
|
| I wonder if this was just rhetorical flourish? Are there really
| people who never ever use a pen?
|
| I barely ever handwrite anything but there are still crosswords
| and the occasional form to fill in.
| srott wrote:
| the building seems to have 4 floors only
|
| https://www.google.com/maps/place/51+Franklin+St,+Boston,+MA...
| neilv wrote:
| It's kinda charming when some old-school address or phone number,
| that perhaps few have used in a long time, still works.
|
| Circa 2010, I bought a vintage Concept2 Model B rowing machine,
| made in the 1980s, and wanted to fix it up. The paper order form
| I found for parts was similar to those tiny order forms at the
| bottom of an ad in an old comic book, where you'd handwrite your
| return address, and it told you the address to mail it to, with
| your payment.
|
| Somehow, not only did this address still reach them, but they
| were set up to fulfill parts orders this way, they actually had
| the parts for this decades-old model, and sent me the parts (for
| a pittance), and they tossed in a free service manual.
|
| I already loved the product (from using it at gyms), and now I
| loved the company.
|
| I wonder what percentage of 25 year-old URLs still work.
| INTPenis wrote:
| Funny how the later generations of IT people often have poor
| penmanship.
|
| I'm old enough to remember penmanship in school, but I was into
| computers from a young age so my penmanship ended up just as bad
| as author.
|
| I did improve it a lot by getting a penpal through reddit. We
| communicated for a year and change, and during this time I went
| through the process of learning to be patient and write my
| letters slowly so they were legible.
|
| It hurt my hand a lot to write a whole letter and I felt like I
| had said about as much as I have in this comment, but with time I
| became faster and faster.
|
| Now probably 10 years later I still take a greater care when I
| write, ensuring each letter is legible.
| gitroom wrote:
| man, seeing folks still dealing with mailing letters for code
| gets me every time - crazy how much the basics trip people up
| after a few years online. you think well ever really get rid of
| physical addresses or is this just another forever headache?
| andix wrote:
| Why should we get rid of physical addresses? It's not really
| relevant for letters anymore, but people still need to go to
| places. Deliveries of goods are a bigger thing than ever
| before.
|
| I can imagine that in the future a company doesn't need to have
| a physical address to be registered. But we already have that
| too, PO boxes and addresses where you can register your company
| without having an office here.
| rkagerer wrote:
| It's an "I wrote a letter" blog post - which I suppose may be
| novel for some in today's audience.
|
| TLDR: To save space, some old GPLv2 software didn't include the
| full license text, instead just a short notice with an address
| you can contact to obtain it. Blogger did so (glad the address
| still worked after 30+ years), included return postage (some
| nifty US stamps bought off eBay), but the reply received was
| version 3 instead. So they did so again, and received the correct
| version.
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