We can't send email more than 500 miles (2002) • Hacker News Board

Re: We can't send email more than 500 miles (2002)

#41

Post by yousifa » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 3:20 AM UTC

bobblywobbles wrote: post #37

Can someone please explain to me the POP reference? I do not understand what this author means by that. I also would like help understanding what $ units gives? The command looks to be "units", but where do the numbers he entered in come from? I would appreciate this extra context.

Point Of Presence (POP) is the location where two or more networks meet each other to connect.

Here is a good explanation: https://blog.stackpath.com/point-of-presence/

Re: We can't send email more than 500 miles (2002)

#42

Post by sonofgod » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 3:22 AM UTC

bobblywobbles wrote: post #37

Can someone please explain to me the POP reference? I do not understand what this author means by that. I also would like help understanding what $ units gives? The command looks to be "units", but where do the numbers he entered in come from? I would appreciate this extra context.

POP I believe is "point of presence"; I believe its meaning is "the point at which our network connects to the internet".

Re: We can't send email more than 500 miles (2002)

#43

Post by drtz » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 3:34 AM UTC

I love that this took a perfect storm of having a statistician and sys admin both bent on finding the cause of a weird intermittent problem in their own way.

This could have happened a million times where the story was a lot less interesting:

"Hey, I'm having weird intermittent problems sending email."

"Hmm, we're using the wrong version of Sendmail. All fixed, case closed."

Re: We can't send email more than 500 miles (2002)

#44

Post by jxy » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 3:37 AM UTC

davidkuhta wrote: post #8

Hat tip to @nfriedly from back in 2011: FYI units on OS X doesn't recognize millilightseconds, but you can do this: You have: 3 lightyears / 365 / 24 / 60 / 60 / 1000 You want: miles * 559.21802 / 0.0017882113

    % units
    586 units, 56 prefixes
    You have: 3 lightyear*millisec/year
    You want: mile
     * 558.84719
     / 0.0017893979

or you can patch up the library file

    /usr/share/misc/units.lib

Re: We can't send email more than 500 miles (2002)

#45

Post by PlasticTank » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 4:01 AM UTC

Love this story, funnily enough it was the first story I ever read on HN on my first day of work as a junior developer.

Re: We can't send email more than 500 miles (2002)

#46

Post by failrate » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 4:02 AM UTC

In a way, Hacker News acts like a Leitner deck.

Re: We can't send email more than 500 miles (2002)

#47

Post by dang » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 4:03 AM UTC

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #25

I suggest to change "mail" to "email" in the title.

Ok, we've e'd the mail above.

Re: We can't send email more than 500 miles (2002)

#48

Post by dang » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 4:03 AM UTC

Anybody know the original year?

Re: We can't send email more than 500 miles (2002)

#49

Post by dang » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 4:06 AM UTC

anamexis wrote: post #4

cbhl wrote: post #2

Previously: 2018: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18675375 2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9338708

A few more: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12778904 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21578606 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16384158 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16285093 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12997568 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3802458 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=123489 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=385068 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2701063…

It's better to link to just the past submissions with interesting discussions. Those appear to be:

2008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=123489

2008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=385068

2010 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1293652

2011 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2701063

2015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9338708

2017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14676835

Re: We can't send email more than 500 miles (2002)

#50

Post by noisy_boy » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 4:23 AM UTC

If somebody is tracking apt/yum downloads of packages, they might see a sudden spike for "units". Just installed and it is a nifty little useful tool.