[HN Gopher] E-COM: The $40M USPS project to send email on paper
___________________________________________________________________
E-COM: The $40M USPS project to send email on paper
Author : rfarley04
Score : 106 points
Date : 2025-05-14 11:59 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (buttondown.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (buttondown.com)
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| now the junk mail subsidizes USPS. I wonder if they could be
| profitable without all the credit card preapprovals in the mail.
| j_w wrote:
| USPS doesn't technically need to be profitable. It's a service
| guaranteed by the Government. Government services do not need
| to turn a profit.
|
| Yes, currently the service is expected to fund itself. This is
| short sighted and has progressively made one of the greatest
| public services worse.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Sure, but then when something goes severely wrong, you wind
| up thinking of things to better fund USPS. I think USPS
| doesn't need to be aggressively profitable, but it should at
| least aim towards being as self-sufficient as reasonably
| possible. I don't see an issue with this.
| Goronmon wrote:
| _Sure, but then when something goes severely wrong, you
| wind up thinking of things to better fund USPS._
|
| This logic could be applied to literally anything, so your
| argument is effectively that the government should never
| fund anything.
|
| If there is a war, cancer/disease research is going to be
| less important, so the government shouldn't fund
| cancer/disease research.
|
| If suddenly a famine strikes, war is going to be less
| important, so the government shouldn't fund the military.
|
| If a sudden deadly disease arises, funding for food
| security/research is going to be less important, so the
| government shouldn't be funding any of that as well.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| You're straw-manning their argument to be much more all
| or nothing than it is. Definitely if there's a total war
| economy, there's going to be less money for other things,
| even if that thing is "keeping future inflation in the
| single digits".
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Exactly. Nobody expects the welfare office to be self
| sufficient, what are they gonna do, charge all the
| recipients?
|
| But a mail and parcel service, something that the private
| sector does profitably, shouldn't be deeply in the red
| though a little from time to time is probably fine.
| fragmede wrote:
| On the other hand though, if the private parcel service
| had to fund 40 years of pensions instead of giving out
| 401k's, and were obligated to serve unprofitable routes,
| they'd be deeply in the red. It's not a remotely level
| playing field, so it's no wonder the government parcel
| service is having problems.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| I wouldn't consider the USPS to be deeply in the red when
| compared with other government operations.
| fragmede wrote:
| deeply in the red is your phrase, not mine
| HWR_14 wrote:
| It costs 15x as much to use a private sector mail service
| as the USPS.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I can imagine it would cost a bit more, because
| corporation tax, and you probably can't afford to run a
| year where you lose $8.8bn[0].
|
| Although I thought USPS had an enforced monopoly on US
| mail, so how did you do the comparison with private
| sector mail?
|
| [0] https://about.usps.com/newsroom/national-
| releases/2019/1114-...
| HWR_14 wrote:
| I looked up the cost to FedEx an envelope to somewhere in
| the US. Looks like $10 is about standard (unless you want
| to go too far or too rural). The USPS will send an
| envelope anywhere for $0.74. 10/0.74 = 13.5x
|
| The USPS has a monopoly on traditional delivery to a
| mailbox. So FedEx walks all the way to the door which
| makes it not "traditional delivery"
| fkyoureadthedoc wrote:
| The downstream benefits of a well functioning USPS could be
| worth running it at a loss. If efforts to make it
| profitable make the service worse, then it could be a net
| negative.
| jgeada wrote:
| And the perverse incentive of this direction of thinking is
| that when you elect people with this thought pattern they
| prove the point by sabotaging the service. Then they say
| "see, government is ineffective ", and either directly
| pocket the resulting money (corruption) or give it to their
| rich friends (oligarchy).
| fzzzy wrote:
| You obviously haven't lived in rural america.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| On a side note related to your comment, just one side
| benefit of urbanization would be more efficient delivery
| of services (including delivery services).
|
| Thankfully, the government guarantees it will deliver
| letters to some remote rural places at a price private
| companies can't touch, but we can do better to make life
| easier for everyone: the mail man, the people wanting
| their mail, etc.
| orwin wrote:
| Could USPS offer limited check accounts and debit cards?
|
| I've been twice now in WV, in counties so far away from
| everything, the only government presence is USPS. The only
| proof you're in the modern US is USPS (and a bit further a
| weird, small public library near a weirder Dollar tree).
|
| Some people have trouble getting their retirement money,
| other are destitute who found a new, non-homeless life (but
| have trouble with debt collection or just lost their papers),
| And from what I've understood, USPS has buildings and
| employees present everywhere and is really trusted in those
| deep parts, more than anything the government does.
|
| Wouldn't offering basic banking (and maybe limited but free
| internet access) be a nice addition to help the poorest in
| the US?
|
| Just an idle thought I had for a while
| moduspol wrote:
| I'm from WV. I always figured Wal-Mart would pick it up
| eventually, but I think there may be laws that make that
| difficult.
| justin66 wrote:
| I imagine the question is how much money there would be
| in it for Wal-Mart.
| jdeibele wrote:
| A lot of stores in the US used to take payments for
| utility companies. The idea was that as long as you were
| there paying that, you'd be tempted to buy things from
| the store.
|
| Paying by check in the mail put a huge dent in this and
| then having the utility automatically debit your account
| pretty much put an end to it from what I've seen. I'm
| sure there are some areas where it still is a thing but
| they'd also have a high number of people without bank
| accounts.
|
| For a while, utilities would only debit checking
| accounts, presumably because ACH payments are so much
| cheaper than credit card ones. A few years, they opened
| up to credit card payments. There seem to be a lot of
| people who do everything on credit cards and they must
| have had to change with the times.
| jermaustin1 wrote:
| Walmart has partnered with a few "financial services"
| companies to offer bank accounts in the past, but the
| partnerships never seem to last, except Green Dot.
|
| I usually actually have a handful of checking accounts
| for splitting up bills, not relying on a single bank,
| etc. And a couple years ago I started a Chime account for
| my "allowance" because they were partnered with Walmart,
| and you could deposit cash at Walmart, well not anymore
| (at least not at my Walmart). I can go to walgreens, but
| I never need to go to walgreens, so that card has been
| removed from my wallet.
| bee_rider wrote:
| This sounds like a "postal banking system," some countries
| have done it. The US had it at one point.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Saving
| s...
|
| > The United States Postal Savings System was a postal
| savings system signed into law by President William Howard
| Taft and operated by the United States Post Office
| Department, predecessor of the United States Postal
| Service, from January 1, 1911, until July 1, 1967.
|
| Bernie Sanders and Liz Warren have suggested bringing it
| back.
| amoshebb wrote:
| Yes, I've also thought postal banking could help drive down
| the visa/mastercard tax on nearly all small businesses must
| pay now. The government has run an expensive payment
| network (the mint) since before 1776, no real reason they
| should stop now that it's cheaper to do.
| nxobject wrote:
| I'd argue that its passport services are a success - at
| this point, delivering random services at POs would have
| few downsides.
| Qworg wrote:
| Postal banking existed in the US in some form until 1967.
| We could (and should) bring it back just for the reasons
| you stated.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Saving
| s...
|
| There are places in the US where the bank drives to the
| town once or twice a week, since there's otherwise no way
| to get cash or transact.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >Yes, currently the service is expected to fund itself. This
| is short sighted
|
| I could not disagree more.
|
| While I agree they don't "need" to be profitable and we
| "could" just give them tax money the fact that they try to be
| in the face of competition and come pretty close to doing so
| despite some dumb requirements really results in an incentive
| structure that puts them head and shoulders above pretty much
| any other subsection of government one interacts with. So
| perhaps let's not remove the incentive for profitability.
|
| Edit: And before anyone tries to construe this as me
| advocating for privatization or anything else like that, I'm
| saying they're fine the way they are (on a macro level, I'm
| sure there's tons of individual items that could use
| refinement, like any organization) and ought to be a model
| for other government functions.
|
| >and has progressively made one of the greatest public
| services worse.
|
| What? Are you joking? Have you ever tried to do anything
| other than a bog standard transaction at the DMV or get
| anything beyond typical "homeowner pays professional to do
| typical thing" type work permitted? The USPS is one of the
| most user friendly services in existence even once you get
| off the beaten path of sending standardized envelopes and
| parcels. If you restrict the comparison to just federal
| services it's not even close except perhaps some very
| specific common workflows but even then when it goes off the
| rails it goes off the rails way harder and is way more
| painful to resolve. Ask anyone of social security age if you
| don't believe me.
| kochb wrote:
| Either it is able to fully fund itself through sender fees
| and other operations, or the net losses are ultimately paid
| for by other government revenues, primarily taxes.
|
| I enjoy Christmas cards and personal letters as much as
| anyone, but with electronic payments and telecommunications
| taking more of the volume, it is increasingly becoming an
| advertising service. If it is operating unprofitably, we are
| paying a form of subscription fee to receive those ads.
| nxobject wrote:
| More charitably, it's a cost-sharing scheme for last-mile
| delivery to rural communities and deep suburban sprawl -
| as, to be fair, is often true for other rural services with
| significant federal funding like healthcare and higher
| education.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| At some point, we should do what we can to promote
| urbanization. Being able to deliver government services
| more efficiently is one benefit.
| jermaustin1 wrote:
| A lot of the people who don't want to live in
| urban/suburban areas also view "government services" as a
| bad thing to begin with. Probably because they've never
| had good access to services.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| I think they view government services as a bad thing for
| a few reasons, _despite_ having access to good government
| services. These two stick out to me:
|
| The ubiquitous conservative media bombards them with lies
| about the quality, quantity and cost of these services,
| along with who receives the benefits.
|
| They also haven't taken a step back to consider all the
| things they enjoy that _are_ provided as government
| services, like roads, police, education, subsidized mail
| delivery, unemployment, support for dairy products, etc.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Alternatively, they view government services as a bad
| thing when they are terrible, which they very often are
| because of the retreat from public investment that's been
| going on since the 80s; and when they view them as good,
| they also view them as temporary. Because they will be.
|
| No efficient service will be allowed to survive long in
| the US, if anyone has any power to cut it. An efficient
| service is just one that temporarily lacks enough
| middlemen to increase costs, or enough red tape to reduce
| enrollment. If neither of these things happen, that means
| no one with any power has any personal interest in it, so
| it will be cut arbitrarily at some point in order to make
| a budget target.
|
| The reason USPS has lasted so long (even in its degraded
| state) is just because it has lasted so long previously,
| and is deeply integrated into society. But there's been a
| bipartisan effort to privatize it and sell it off (to
| each other) for nearly a generation now. They've taken
| the steps of lowering its quality and level of service,
| barred it from entering lines of business that private
| companies have taken over, and played accounting games
| with it in order that people will depend on it less. This
| is not something "conservatives" did, but both Democratic
| and Republican Congresspeople have even dropped into
| deceit to try to make happen, and they publicly blame
| each other for the inexorable progress of dismantling
| USPS during each administration to distract extreme
| partisans.
|
| Democrats talked a lot of trash about DeJoy before not
| firing him when they had the opportunity. It's like how
| they screamed about DeVos being horrible and out of
| touch, but Arne Duncan, the school privatizer-in-chief,
| got to play the "cool" white guy who plays basketball
| with the "cool" president with virtually identical policy
| positions.
|
| Once people have stopped depending on the USPS because it
| is bad, they can give it the Royal Mail treatment that
| they've always wanted. Mail privatization in the UK was a
| massive success if you don't care about the mail. The
| people who got it made a lot of money. The mails there
| became so brutally expensive and unreliable _that it
| probably affects exports_ and it still doesn 't matter.
|
| edit: sometimes I feel optimistic, though. There was a
| recent announcement that while hiring for a new person to
| run public transportation in Chicago, the city has
| decided that, this time, they will look for somebody with
| experience in transportation. This is unusual because the
| job is usually filled by political patronage, by someone
| with no experience.
| nxobject wrote:
| Don't we all believe that! I think the challenge to do it
| politically without ending up getting entangled into
| culture warring over urbanisation (e.g. "15 minute city"
| conspiracy theories [1]). The best we can do is endless
| suburbia...
|
| [1] https://www.npr.org/2023/10/08/1203950823/15-minute-
| cities-c...
| jermaustin1 wrote:
| As a business that ships physical products through USPS
| because they have been WAY more reliable than UPS or FedEx,
| I wouldn't mind paying more for the service (well passing
| it on to customers), so long as it improved the service.
| But the non-government run parcel services can't compete
| (in my experience) with the USPS, even with the recent rate
| hikes that have been going on every few months.
|
| Right now I have about a 1% lost/damaged package rate
| (averaged over 12 months - it's a tiny amount and it is
| insured), but come Christmas, that shoots up to around a
| 10% lost/damaged package rate through USPS - some of those
| packages do eventually resurface, and I let the customers
| keep them (I've already filed the insurance claim and
| shipped a replacement).
|
| UPS was at 5% on average - never used them around Christmas
| - so no data for that - they might be better than USPS and
| the were close enough in cost just further away from my
| workshop.
|
| FedEx (only used for 2 weeks) cost double and 30% of my
| packages were lost or damaged - can't average it out since
| there isn't enough data, but having to file claims for 1 in
| 3 packages after already paying 2x USPS rates wasn't going
| to fly.
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| It always surprises me how different people's experiences
| very so widely between UPS, FedEx, and USPS.
|
| We ship packages via UPS, and have <1% lost/damaged. Not
| sure how long it's been now since a damaged/lost package
| - maybe 300?
|
| It probably helps that our smallest packages are ~1000 cu
| inch and 6 pounds. Hard to lose.
|
| I don't like dealing with UPS customer service, but I
| really like the actual shipping service. And it's very
| fast and predictable. Very rare that it takes any longer
| than UPS WorldShip predicts. 1 day shipping to most of
| our customers in our state, and some in neighboring
| states.
| jermaustin1 wrote:
| From my memory (I didn't record lost and damaged
| separately, just "claims") it was mostly damages (I think
| same with all of the carriers), but I have no idea how
| solid oak/walnut/cherry trays that are 3/4" thick wrapped
| in bubblewrap and in a bubble mailer gets damaged by
| anything other than someone stomping on it.
|
| ETA: Except Christmas, that is basically 100% loss,
| though, about 50% of those losses seem to show up after
| the claims have been submitted.
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| We ship perishables (cheese) in styrofoam coolers. _When_
| we have a damage claim, what usually happens is that the
| cooler is broken or even smashed completely, and the
| cheese got too warm and separated.
|
| And then UPS won't pay out a claim, since they don't
| cover perishables, even when it's their fault for
| smashing the cooler. So we started self-insuring at $3
| per order, plus we've learned how to package the cheese
| in the cooler better so it's less likely to break.
|
| And as I mentioned it's very rare now to get a damaged
| one.
| TheJoeMan wrote:
| This creates a market discontinuity by the government that
| leads to abuse. Part of the reason for Amazon's dominance is
| that USPS undercharges for package delivery. When Amazon
| rolled out their own delivery service, they optimize
| delivering the "cheap" packages, and making USPS deliver the
| "expensive" out of the way packages, and due to flat-rates,
| USPS was in the red. USPS's solution? Keep squeezing grandma
| who wants to mail a few first-class letters a year.
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| Maybe in some places, but in our rural area (Durham,
| Kansas) 95%+ of Amazon packages are delivered by UPS.
| kbolino wrote:
| It actually was profitable for most of its existence. It
| zealously guarded its monopoly on first-class mail because
| that's where the money came from. And it did so _before_ it
| was spun out as a quasi-private entity.
|
| This is actually one of the challenges of public services in
| the US today; many things, from mail delivery to bus and
| train service to road construction and vehicle registration,
| were once self-sufficient but haven't been for a long time.
| There's a lot of reasons for this, but one of the outcomes is
| that entities which used to take care of themselves now have
| to beg for a growing portion out of the general fund.
|
| However, it's clear that the 1970s experiment to have it turn
| a profit again didn't work and likely never would have worked
| (it was, in many ways, set up for failure).
| jermaustin1 wrote:
| For the USPS, it would be profitable if it wasn't required
| to self-fund and pre-fund all retirement benefits for
| current and future employees 75 years in advance, paying
| for retirement health care for "workers" who aren't in the
| workforce, or even born yet.
|
| It was a political ploy to force the USPS into debt in 2006
| with the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act. No
| other federal agency or private sector business pre-funds
| its retirement benefits.
| kbolino wrote:
| That requirement was repealed in 2022. The USPS still
| isn't profitable. While it reaped the benefit of that
| repeal and reported only a small loss in 2022, it
| reported much larger losses in 2023 and 2024, comparable
| to its loss in 2021 (when the requirement was still in
| effect).
| strongpigeon wrote:
| Last quarter was slightly profitable [0], but yeah the
| losses in 2023 were pretty big.
|
| https://about.usps.com/what/financials/financial-
| conditions-...
| jermaustin1 wrote:
| If I'm not mistaken, they still carry the debt they
| acquired to pre-fund, and still spend about $10B on
| retirement benefits each year.
|
| But to me, none of that really matters, because I don't
| believe a government entity should be turning a profit on
| me, because then it is a tax. So I want the USPS running
| at a loss (pulling from appropriations as needed), but as
| close to breakeven as possible. If it ever pulls a
| profit, I expect prices to drop in accordance.
| kbolino wrote:
| If you see it as a tax, and the tax funds the service,
| and you like the service, why wouldn't you want to pay
| it?
|
| About half of their liabilities were forgiven as part of
| the 2022 legislation. They still have debt and retirement
| liabilities, but those are more in line with other large
| services (private or public) now. However, they've each
| increased over 20% per year since 2022, which is quite a
| lot.
|
| Personally, I would like to see a return of postal
| banking, in which case the postal service would pay out
| its profit to its accountholders.
|
| ----
|
| FY23 report showing the halving of liabilities from
| '21-'22 (p. 29):
| https://about.usps.com/what/financials/annual-
| reports/fy2023...
|
| FY24 report showing the significant increase in other
| liabilities from '22-'24 (p. 28):
| https://about.usps.com/what/financials/annual-
| reports/fy2024...
| kotaKat wrote:
| To be fair, all the credit card preapprovals in the mail help
| ensure every last American is reached by mail, even if it means
| by mule train.
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/06/mule-ma...
|
| https://www.removepaywall.com/search?url=https://www.theatla...
| citizenfishy wrote:
| I developed so many similar services for the UK Royal Mail in the
| 1990's
|
| We used Yellow Royal Mail branded envelopes to gain attention.
| maguay wrote:
| Would _love_ to hear more about your experience! Any chance you
| 'd be up for an interview on the Buttondown blog?
| citizenfishy wrote:
| Happy to, find me on LinkedIN - Dave Barter CEO Nautoguide
| dmix wrote:
| > The Postal Rate Commission took 15 months to review E-COM--long
| enough that standard postage went up 5C/ in the interim. It
| barred the USPS from operating its own electronic networks, just
| in case the Post Office decided to deliver messages
| electronically and in print. And it raised the price on the
| service to 26C/ for the first page, plus 5C/ for a second page.
|
| > Sending the messages wouldn't be simple, either. Customers had
| to register their company with the USPS using Form 5320, pay a
| $50 annual fee, send a minimum of 200 messages per post office,
| and "prepay postage for transmitted messages received, processed,
| and printed for each transmission," dictated the 1981 Federal
| Register.
|
| Almost sounds like a parody
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| So that people can discuss the US Postal service intelligently.
| About 15 years ago, there was a service (Outbox) designed to scan
| your mail, email anything important to you, and discard junk
| mail. They were growing, people enjoyed the service, and then
| they went to Washington DC to talk to the Postmaster General
| about expanding nationwide.
|
| https://www.rstreet.org/commentary/outbox-vs-usps-how-the-po...
|
| >When Evan and Will got called in to meet with the postmaster
| general, they were joined by the USPS' general counsel and chief
| of digital strategy. But instead, Evan recounts that Postmaster
| General Patrick Donahoe "looked at us" and said "we have a
| misunderstanding. 'You disrupt my service and we will never work
| with you.'" Further, "You mentioned making the service better for
| our customers; but the American citizens aren't our customers--
| about 400 junk mailers are our customers. Your service hurts our
| ability to serve those customers.'"
|
| That's the US mail. Can we all please stop pretending that any
| actual human needs the US mail to continue? No one's paying their
| bills through the mail... you can't even really write checks.
| Hell, given how international mail works, it's the US government
| subsidizing Aliexpress and Temu. No one should be defending the
| US Postal Service.
| chneu wrote:
| The USPS does a lot more than ship junk mail. It's a fun joke
| but it's super ignorant. It speaks to idiots, everyone else
| rolls their eyes and thinks you're not very bright.
|
| It's a public service. It doesn't need to turn a profit because
| every dollar put into it generates economic activity.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| >The USPS does a lot more than ship junk mail. It's a fun
| joke but
|
| Junk mail is well over 99% of their activity by any metric
| you can offer. Pieces of mail, revenue, weight, etc. It's not
| a joke. It's the fucking truth of it. And you're all
| bizarrely delusional if you can't or won't see it.
|
| >everyone else rolls their eyes and thinks you're not very
| bright.
|
| I've experienced that all my life. And yet I always out-
| tested everyone who thought that. Why would that change? The
| comment above yours talks about how he's always paying by
| check... what the fuck is grandpa going to do in the next
| couple years when that goes away? They can only postpone the
| deprecation of paper bank checks for so long. Guess he will
| either have to stop living in the 1950s, or just croak.
|
| >It's a public service.
|
| It's a goddamned public nuisance.
|
| >It doesn't need to turn a profit because every dollar put
| into it generates economic activity.
|
| ???
|
| We could also pay them to dig holes and fill them back in.
| That'd be an economic win too, eh? Though your comment
| probably comes closest to hinting at the real justification:
| a unionized voting bloc that without it the Democrats would
| become doomed to irrelevance.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| >No one's paying their bills through the mail... you can't even
| really write checks.
|
| This is exactly how I pay all my non-cash invoices -- via USPS,
| sending checks. I don't even use email anymore (freedom!).
|
| Ironically, I lost access to online banking a few years ago
| [which I'd really love to have, but US banking has ridiculous
| "security" infrastructure].
| jdietrich wrote:
| This kind of service does have at least one very valuable niche
| application - armed forces personnel on active deployment. During
| the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, British troops received
| hundreds of thousands of letters every month through the e-bluey
| service. Letters could be sent via email (including attachments)
| and were printed as close as possible to the recipient. It
| greatly reduced logistics costs and improved speed of delivery,
| often facilitating next-day delivery to extremely remote Forward
| Operating Bases.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Forces_Post_Office#The...
|
| It isn't an entirely novel idea - during the Second World War,
| mail was often sent to very remote destinations on microfilm.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-mail
| Gud wrote:
| Why didn't the service personnel have access to their e-mail?
|
| I was in Afghanistan for a different country. It was my job to
| keep the satellite communications working, including so people
| could send emails to their friends and family.
| jdietrich wrote:
| _> Why didn't the service personnel have access to their
| e-mail?_
|
| Because they weren't in one of the larger bases that had
| satellite internet. Combat troops in the wilds of Helmand
| might go weeks without seeing a fresh egg or a slice of
| bread. Satellite terminals circa 2002 were bulky, expensive
| bits of kit that just weren't that widely distributed, at
| least in the British armed forces.
| Gud wrote:
| Fair enough.
|
| I was there in 2010 and even our FOBs had access to BGANs.
| dheera wrote:
| It would presumably be more secure to have the recipient
| receive them directly with a cell phone or satellite device.
| Printing them creates a literal paper trail and footsteps.
| jdietrich wrote:
| In the context of peer or near-peer conflicts, Ukraine has
| shown us many reasons why a cellphone or satphone can get you
| killed. Anything with a radio transmitter is a giant beacon
| announcing your location if your enemy has a half-competent
| ELINT operation. Allowing personal devices with internet
| access to be used in the field is a gargantuan COMINT risk,
| because it's basically inevitable that some idiot is going to
| post a geotagged photo of something sensitive on social
| media. Mail delivered through specific authorised channels
| can be monitored and censored much more easily than real-time
| communications.
| koolba wrote:
| Why do you even need two way communication? Just have an
| encrypted signal with per device decryption keys. Kind of
| like how satellite tv works but for messages. You won't
| have proof of delivery or a way to reply, but that's a
| feature, not a bug.
| deepsun wrote:
| Besides mandatory censorship, I've heard in WW2 they just
| delayed all mail by 2 weeks intentionally. By that time all
| secret information is not relevant anyway.
| lldb wrote:
| Another interesting thing about WW2 mail - they would
| photograph letters onto microfilm, then reprint them on the
| other end to save valuable shipping capacity.
| reaperducer wrote:
| Before long distance phone service was widespread, but local
| service was becoming common, people often sent a telegram over
| the phone.
|
| Person in City A would phone the local telegraph office and
| dictate a message. It would be sent over the telegraph wires to
| the nearest telegraph office to the recipient in City B, where
| it would be written down by the operator. Then someone would
| phone the recipient and read the telegram over the phone to
| them.
|
| This was in use at least into the late 1940's that I know of.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| French postal service offers this, which is very convenient for
| legal letters because it stores a copy of it so people can't
| pretend they received something else.
| Sadzeih wrote:
| I use this constantly when I have an online document I need to
| send through the mail. I just use the online postal service to
| send it directly. It's probably a lot environmentally friendly
| since they can just print as close as possible to the
| destination. Instead of sending it across the country etc...
| floam wrote:
| There is something like this being used in jails and prisons now.
| The purpose is to limit the ability of people to sneak in paper
| bathed in fentanyl or other potent enough substances.
|
| Inmates do not receive originals - incoming mail is scanned at
| some service provider's office that a PO Box forwards to, and
| things are reprinted at the detention center and walked to the
| inmate. Or people sign up for a faster service where photos /
| letters are uploaded through an app to skip the snail mail +
| scanning step.
|
| One of these is called pigeon.ly
|
| At most participating facilities the only exception to get an
| inmate physical paper from the outside world is legal mail.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| >At most participating facilities the only exception to get an
| inmate physical paper from the outside world is legal mail.
|
| This is how some imprisoned authors have managed to publish
| their samizdat -- by sending thoughts/outlines to their lawyer
| [under the pretense of _legal mail_ ] -- when their written
| ramblings might otherwise have been destroyed [as contraband].
| robobro wrote:
| > The purpose is to limit the ability of people to sneak in
| paper bathed in fentanyl
|
| Or is it to make even more profit on the backs of prisoners &
| their families for companies who win juicy contracts from the
| government? This was being done by private companies before
| fentanyl.
|
| Look into Jpay - they do a lot of slimy things and make a lot
| of money doing so. The free market in action I guess.
|
| https://theappeal.org/prison-tablets-ipads-jpay-securus-gtl/
| tantalor wrote:
| We use this for summer camp. The kids aren't allowed anywhere
| near computers or phones, let alone internet access. So we write
| them emails and attach photos that are printed out and delivered
| to their bunks.
|
| The service is https://www.bunk1.com/
| hoseyor wrote:
| Why not simply sit down and write an actual letter with a pen
| on paper, encouraging your child to also write?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Some camps are a week long. You'd only really be able to
| write on Monday/Tuesday to be sure it got there by Friday.
| tantalor wrote:
| The campers are definitely encouraged, and sometimes
| required, to write letters by hand. In fact their handwriting
| is much often _better_ than adults, because they write by
| hand much more frequently.
| vaindil wrote:
| I'll start by saying I am not a parent.
|
| I attended summer camps as a kid and worked at one for years as
| an older teenager. I love summer camps. Looking back, part of
| the magic for me was being away from my parents for an extended
| time in a way that wasn't really possible in any other setting.
| The service you linked (a way for parents to constantly follow
| along with what's going on at camp) just feels... wrong?
| unnecessary? detrimental? to me. Do parents really need to be
| updated all the time with what's going on while their children
| are away for a week or two?
|
| I don't think it's immoral or unethical to offer this service,
| I'm sure there's a market for it, but I just don't see why
| anyone would choose to use it. Let the kids go off to camp and
| have a good time, and they can tell you about it when they get
| home. It would really take the wind out of my sails if I got
| home and my parents already knew everything I had done, instead
| of getting to tell them all about it myself.
| exabrial wrote:
| jfc all we want is the opposite. Think of the massive emissions
| reduction if we reduced all physical spam to emails.
|
| 1. diesel needed to cut the trees down
|
| 2. diesel needed haul logs to saw mills
|
| 3. natural/gas/coal needed to make the water to turn logs into
| paper
|
| 4. diesel needed to haul paper to printer to make spam
|
| 5. diesel needed to haul spam to post office
|
| 6. diesel needed to haul spam to to your door
|
| 7. diesel needed to put spam in the landfill
| miki123211 wrote:
| The Polish Post actually introduced a system like this recently.
|
| It serves as boring technical infrastructure for government
| agencies which still need to send physical mail. Instead of each
| agency employing their own people to handle printing their mail
| and stuffing it in envelopes, they can just send it
| electronically to the post office, which will handle it far more
| efficiently.
|
| The eventual goal is to move most people to e-deliveries, which
| you're encouraged to set up when using government services
| online. For those who haven't done so, the letter will be printed
| as close to them as possible to save on delivery time and costs,
| regardless of where in the country the sending agency is located.
| Ancapistani wrote:
| This reminds me of the time FedEx spent $200m trying to integrate
| fax into their delivery network:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zapmail
| jdeibele wrote:
| What I wanted (and still want) is a secure place to hold
| statements from banks for savings accounts, credit cards, etc.
| and brokerages.
|
| I bank with two credit unions. Years ago, they implemented a fee
| of $2/month for paper statements. I get it, printing and mailing
| statements costs money. But it also comes to me without me having
| to log into an account and navigate my way to where the statement
| is.
|
| I'd prefer to have them send the statement each month to an email
| address I specify. I get that they should take security
| seriously, so practically maybe that only means Gmail, Apple
| Mail, etc. are whitelisted.
|
| I used to think there was a business idea here, that the banks
| should be willing to pay $.10/statement to save on the cost of
| paper. I'd be willing to use the service because the statements
| would automatically go to it and be retained for forever.
|
| The reality is, I'm afraid, that the banks don't want you looking
| at statements because then you might find errors and dispute them
| and that costs the banks money.
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