Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The 500-mile email (2002)

web.mit.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 145 posts

Re: The 500-mile email (2002)

#31

Post by geuis »

seqizz wrote: post #24
geuis wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an interesting idea. Have a system where a community can mark something as important, and to have it automatically reposted at preset intervals. Community members could be allowed to additionally repost, or the system can politely say it's already archived and will be shared again on such & such date. Use it as a way to reinforce community history.

Different form of "stickies" I guess. Except no one reads stickies.

Right. I'd imagine it working well on reddit where content is just reposted automatically and receives normal upvoting. Makes it more organic.

Re: The 500-mile email (2002)

#32

Post by jen729w »

geuis wrote: post #22
Pyxl101 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once a year is about the right frequency. Recurring stories is one way in which a community shares and perpetuates its culture with newcomers. Some of them are a delight to read on that yearly cadence, like the SR-71 story about a pilot and his copilot becoming a crew. That said, it's wise to consider the frequency with which such things appear, individually and in total. Too much repetition and focus on memes become…

This is an interesting idea. Have a system where a community can mark something as important, and to have it automatically reposted at preset intervals. Community members could be allowed to additionally repost, or the system can politely say it's already archived and will be shared again on such & such date. Use it as a way to reinforce community history.

Sounds like we already have exactly such a system, no?

Re: The 500-mile email (2002)

#34

Post by simplyluke »

nathancahill wrote: post #2

1 year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8176458 2 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6296201 3 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3802458 4 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3114391 5 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1293652 6 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=385068 7 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=123489

I don't think this is a bad thing. It was either 1 or 2 years ago when I first read about this - newcomers to the community have to find out about things in one way or another.

Re: The 500-mile email (2002)

#35

Post by carlesfe »

That was great out-of-the-box thinking, and I wonder if that could be used as one of these job interview questions:

Q: "Your email server for some reason is only working for addresses within 500 miles of the server. What may go wrong?"

And let the candidate think logically and reach some sane answer, even if not 100% accurate (i.e. check routers first, connectivity, DNS, timeouts...)

Re: The 500-mile email (2002)

#36

Post by riking »

kissickas wrote: post #30

Why do I get: > unknown unit 'millilightseconds' Is this one of the embellishments that just makes the story more entertaining?

If you're on a mac, try $ brew install gnu-units - it's probably using a very incomplete library of units.

Re: The 500-mile email (2002)

#37

Post by kaishiro »

kissickas wrote: post #30

Why do I get: > unknown unit 'millilightseconds' Is this one of the embellishments that just makes the story more entertaining?

Not an embellishment at all.

Via 'man units': "The conversion information is read from a units data file that is called 'definitions.units' and is usually located in the '/usr/share/units' directory."

Via definitions.units (L. 223), you can see the milli- prefix: https://gist.github.com/anonymous/f06769de95e0c7f9e658#file-...

Via deifnitions.units (L. 1060), you can see the lightsecond unit: https://gist.github.com/anonymous/f06769de95e0c7f9e658#file-...

Maybe check it for completeness?

Edit: Spelling

Re: The 500-mile email (2002)

#39

Post by masklinn »

kissickas wrote: post #30

Why do I get: > unknown unit 'millilightseconds' Is this one of the embellishments that just makes the story more entertaining?

More complete units library. Note how the original author's units has 1311 units and 63 prefixes, OSX only has 586 and 56.

Re: The 500-mile email (2002)

#40

Post by golergka »

emilioolivares wrote: post #7
Twirrim wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the submitter is one of the ten thousand https://xkcd.com/1053/ Bet there are a few more that will find this submission too.

Ha, I'm one of the ten thousand for both the XKCD and this post. Lucky me!

You mean, for the whole XKCD? Not just this issue, but the whole thing? I envy you so hard right now. (Unless you were going to be productive today).
Post reply on HN