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How to tell when a robot has written you a letter

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Re: How to tell when a robot has written you a letter

#91
post #13

If you need to send out 200 personalized letters to sales leads but haven’t got the time to handwrite them yourself — or if your handwriting is, like mine, grotesque — then Maillift will generate them for you, using teams of genuinely carbon-based people. That's horrible! I don't mind getting a printed letter but if I got a handwritten letter that I later found out was faked I would never, ever do business with that…

"Marketing people" is one of the most egregious generalization errors on HN. It's certainly in vogue to hate on marketers but it is not an identity, marketer is a hat that people wear. Just stop.

[deleted]

Re: How to tell when a robot has written you a letter

#92

Well, you can't. You can buy a wacom tablet with tilt sensors and make the robot replicate the same stroke. You could add randomness to it too. To apply different amount of force with the robot you use a spring and you control the force with the distance to the paper, it is very simple to do. We did exactly that with ABB robots in the University a long time ago. We used wacom drivers for linux and the wacoms were ove…

Do you have any links to papers or code that could help get me started on such a project? This sounds like it'd be incredibly fun to build.

Re: How to tell when a robot has written you a letter

#93

Well, you can't. You can buy a wacom tablet with tilt sensors and make the robot replicate the same stroke. You could add randomness to it too. To apply different amount of force with the robot you use a spring and you control the force with the distance to the paper, it is very simple to do. We did exactly that with ABB robots in the University a long time ago. We used wacom drivers for linux and the wacoms were ove…

3 axis would be x, y and tilt?

3 axis is X, Y, and Z (up / down). 4, 5 and 6 are usually adding rotation to each axis.

Re: How to tell when a robot has written you a letter

#94

If you need to send out 200 personalized letters to sales leads but haven’t got the time to handwrite them yourself — or if your handwriting is, like mine, grotesque — then Maillift will generate them for you, using teams of genuinely carbon-based people. That's horrible! I don't mind getting a printed letter but if I got a handwritten letter that I later found out was faked I would never, ever do business with that…

DirecTV and credit card companies do this to me all the time. I'll receive a letter that looks like some kind of greeting card or invite with no identifier but an address. The font used on the outside mimicks human handwriting, so it looks authentic if you're not really paying attention. I kinda get excited I'm getting invited to something, I open it up, and its a fucking ad. I don't understand how people do business…

One of these "cards" was exactly what put DirecTv on my "don't do business with" list.

Re: How to tell when a robot has written you a letter

#95
post #13

If you need to send out 200 personalized letters to sales leads but haven’t got the time to handwrite them yourself — or if your handwriting is, like mine, grotesque — then Maillift will generate them for you, using teams of genuinely carbon-based people. That's horrible! I don't mind getting a printed letter but if I got a handwritten letter that I later found out was faked I would never, ever do business with that…

"Marketing people" is one of the most egregious generalization errors on HN. It's certainly in vogue to hate on marketers but it is not an identity, marketer is a hat that people wear. Just stop.

I hate marketers because they flood my mailbox with so much useless shit and paper that I miss mail from people I want to hear from. They've succeeded at making every form of communication that they touch useless, and I'm glad that it's illegal for them to call cell phones.

Re: How to tell when a robot has written you a letter

#97

If you need to send out 200 personalized letters to sales leads but haven’t got the time to handwrite them yourself — or if your handwriting is, like mine, grotesque — then Maillift will generate them for you, using teams of genuinely carbon-based people. That's horrible! I don't mind getting a printed letter but if I got a handwritten letter that I later found out was faked I would never, ever do business with that…

DirecTV and credit card companies do this to me all the time. I'll receive a letter that looks like some kind of greeting card or invite with no identifier but an address. The font used on the outside mimicks human handwriting, so it looks authentic if you're not really paying attention. I kinda get excited I'm getting invited to something, I open it up, and its a fucking ad. I don't understand how people do business…

I recently moved in a new neighborhood and I think it was Direct TV that sent me one addressed to "Our New Neighbor." At first I was like, well this is awesome, I must have at least one nice neighbor. Opening it was followed by a "dirty fuckers" sighed under my breath.

They have since did it a second time, but I will not be fooled again.

Re: How to tell when a robot has written you a letter

#98
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've noticed the dead give away for those is that they come with a "Pre-sorted Standard" stamp instead of the first class postage that most personal mail uses.

I keep getting the same one from a certain car dealership every few months. Apparently handwritten address on envelope, real ordinary first-class postage stamp (even placed at a slight angle, so it doesn't look like a machine did it). Postmarked from a different state than the dealership is in. No return address. Open it up though, and the deception ends immediately. Just your usual tacky, glossy printed brochure.

You should make Rick Astley postcards, and send them back to them the same way.

Re: How to tell when a robot has written you a letter

#99
post #78
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's an accurate description. If you got to the store and they told you that, I dunno, you're the millionth customer and your TV is free, I doubt you'd feel like you failed to get rid of the money. Because you weren't trying to get rid of it — you were giving it up as a concession to get something else you want more.

I think that's a good point, but for many people going shopping they are more or less trying to spend money. They have a minimum budget and will just buy more stuff or come back the next day if what they want is on sale or something. Suppose, you got everyone on your list a nice Christmas gift for 20$ total, would you really stop shopping at that point?

If there weren't anything else I wanted, yeah, I would. I don't know a lot of people who buy things they don't want just to get rid of money. Maybe the obscenely wealthy or very compulsive people, but most people I know only part with their money in exchange for things they want, and otherwise are glad to keep it until they find something they do want. (They may not be fastidious about how much of their money they're parting with compared to how much they want the things, but it doesn't seem like they part with money just to be rid of it.)

Re: How to tell when a robot has written you a letter

#100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. More generally, the less attention that goes into perfecting the layout and wording, the more likely the reader is to believe you're on a busy human's to do list and not a mailing list. HTML layout very bad, neat little bullet points bad, good copy bad, lack of line spacing and excessive terseness good.

So basically be as inefficient as possible

Be as efficient as possible.

Don't waste time on presentation, so you don't feel like a marketroid.

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