231–240 of 406 posts
Does anyone remember in old-timey puzzle books that you might have read as a kid, the example puzzles (maybe fictional) of how the British postal service would decode people's addresses expressed in rebus form? Like: HILL ---- MIKE ---- WOOD They would say the post office cleverly got it delivered to Mike Underhill, Overwood UK. I guess that was for a more leisurely, less efficient time.
In the US I wonder if something like "6 W 8, NY NY" would work. Google Maps can find it: https://www.google.com/maps/place/6+W+8th+St,+New+York,+NY+1...
An annoyance in NYC is people not in Manhattan giving their address as NY, NY. A lot of street names repeat in other boroughs so you do in fact need to specify that that address is in Brooklyn if it's there. Queens is even more complicated since street names are not unique within the borough so you should use the "town"/municipality name (e.g. Ridgewood, Astoria, Long Island City (of which Astoria is a part so you can kinda use that for Astoria without problems in my experience)) when mailing there, not Queens.
12345-6789
(assuming that actually corresponded to a P.O. Box) and have it delivered.
With automation, you might even be able to just put the bar code for a letter on the envelope and have it delivered. I say this based on the fact that I used to stamp mail for previous inhabitants with a not at this address and black out the address (but not the bar code), dump it in the mailbox and then have it show up in the email I get daily from the post office showing the day’s mail (fortunately, the human step of delivery usually pulled those letters out of the process).
In the US, you can check the address database directly to see what the minimum required elements are that resolve to your address [0]. This is what the USPS does when you mail something, they match to this database and then print a delivery barcode along the bottom of the letter. Worth noting is that the delivery barcode is all that really matters. If you write 'return to sender' on an envelope and change nothing els…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not aware of any postal service that uses a method other then optical imaging for address reading. Further, in some countries such as the US, it is not legal for the postal service to "look inside" mail pieces without a warrant. While this type of 3D X-Ray technique is indeed possible it requires expensive specialized equipment and a great deal of effort, thus it being a major achievement for this university grou…
> I'm not aware of any postal service that uses a method other then optical imaging for address reading. Further, in some countries such as the US, it is not legal for the postal service to "look inside" mail pieces without a warrant. It could be hackers exploiting my lack of knowledge to social engineer me for their own criminal gain then. They even mentioned some of the old postal machines were for sale on ebay.co.…
You would struggle to determine whether a page is folded A4 or A8 with one of these machines, reading text is far beyond their capabilities.
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I'll bet "Rishi Sunak" would get to 10 Downing Street. Although that's also an address with it's own postcode, so "SW1A 2AA" would also get there.
I'll bet "Rishi Sunak" would get to 10 Downing Street. I wonder if random mail sent to top level politicians actually gets to them. The intention is clear, yes, but there's probably layers of security that will prevent it from getting to its intended address...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'll bet "Rishi Sunak" would get to 10 Downing Street. Although that's also an address with it's own postcode, so "SW1A 2AA" would also get there.
I'll bet "Rishi Sunak" would get to 10 Downing Street. I wonder if random mail sent to top level politicians actually gets to them. The intention is clear, yes, but there's probably layers of security that will prevent it from getting to its intended address...
Excellent book has a collection of such letters.
“Reagan: A Life In Letters“
At the risk of opening myself up to having postal workers kick in my door and charge me with a federal crime: one experiment I tried was to stamp a postcard addressed to me, cover the address with a card with my friends address on it, shrink-wrapping it and sending it to them. The stamp does not get canceled because of the plastic wrap & the reply can travel back to me on the same stamp. (basically: "yes you can cover a stamp with plastic to avoid cancellation then reuse it.")
One nit I'd pick with the author here is that the address style he uses does not adequately route the letter to him. He states that all the mail in his building goes into one box, so if this were not something he was expecting and it arrived for him, there would be no way to route it to the correct person once it reached the building. I suppose in the more general case, assuming a single family household, this method would work. Cool post in any event!
I grew up in a small town with a population of about 2,000. I remember one time I signed up for a website with my real name and city, but didn't want to give my home address so just made up "123 Main St" (my town doesn't have a "Main St"). Sure enough, they sent a spam postcard, addressed to my name @ 123 Main St. The post office, being friendly and knowing who all the residents are, still delivered it to my home, al…
However, they can appear a bit random here and have a resolution of about three or four properties.