81–90 of 108 posts
It makes me wonder what other legacy telecom systems are still in use somewhere. Are there any public X25 networks still in use? What about telex? Telex over HF? Inmarsat C? Any X400 gateways still running? Can you still send a UUCP mail? This kind of digital archaeology has a strange fascination to it.
Uucp can still be used when you have intermitent connectivity.
Japan still loves its faxes. Gotta maintain a sense of tradition, I guess. Take pride in doing things the same way their forefathers did.
It's hardly surprising that fax machines are still used.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
[Repeat rant about people not adopting PGP when we've had it for 27 years] Nothing about a smartphone prevents email from being encrypted. The fact that nobody's sending encrypted email does, but that's a user adoption problem rather than a technical problem. The technical problem is solved, solved well, and has been solved for decades.
Encryption is easy. Key management is not. PGP is a lousy solution. Too difficult to use and sacrifices too much functionality. The world needs something like iMessage but more open.
We've had the ability to do this for a long time, but only a few major players are in a position to ensure sufficient user adoption, and they're not interested in creating anything that doesn't drive users to their walled gardens.
I noticed real estate also heavily relies on it. Everything still seems to be done with paper and fax.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Possibly a naive question, but why would you need a credit score for being hired, especially as an intern? I can (somewhat) see the need for privileged positions (i.e. CFO or similar).
It was a bank, that was just standard procedure for everyone. Technically I was a contractor not a intern (and it "just happened" to be for a summer between two semesters of university), but I doubt being an official intern would have changed anything.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was a bank, that was just standard procedure for everyone. Technically I was a contractor not a intern (and it "just happened" to be for a summer between two semesters of university), but I doubt being an official intern would have changed anything.
Were they advancing you any money? If not, it's a stupid procedure that should be regarded as harassment.
I don't particularly think it counts as harassment. They can add any non-discriminatory stupid terms to the contract that they want.
And there are certainly lots of jobs in a bank where it makes sense to minimize insider risk (say, if you're the one approving peoples loans...).
IT Manager of a large medical centre in Australia here. I've been spending quite a lot of time trying to minimise the number of faxes we send and receive but there's only so far I can go. Email and fax-to-email services are generally frowned upon by the relevant medical accreditation boards, as they consider these to be insecure unless PGP is used. Email addresses have the ease of use and interoperability that fax nu…
To me, a person that doesn't (and never did) live in the US, faxes there seem to be even more ubiquitous than this article paints. Imagine my amusement when I registered an Amazon account only to get it suspended with the request to verify it by... faxing bank statements and whatnot. Internationally on a +1 number. [0] And yes, support was not been able to offer any alternative to that. [0] https://www.amazon.com/gp/…
Fax has a carve out in PCI & HIPPA compliance, and there is a huge existing momentum behind continuing to use fax. Alternatives for actually secure document transmission boil down to difficult to use private messaging/"secure" email systems (that only work in their walled garden). Many in the general public get frustrated with these walled gardens, as it is another login & interface to remember, and their credit unio…
Don't forget that in the US utility bills are still often used as proof of living address. signatures are compared in some cases of identity verification (e.g. voting). Paper checks are still used as means of payment, even in retail. It's hardly surprising that fax machines are still used.