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

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

#51

Post by Diederich » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 4:24 AM UTC

ip_addr wrote: post #26

Does anyone know of stories similar to this? I would like to read more.

I don't have time to type it up more completely, but back in the early to mid 90s I administrated, among others, some AT&T 3B2 servers. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3B_series_computers )

There was an odd situation where some of the systems were unable to make connections to other systems ....some largish distance away. It was fairly variable, but some systems were almost always unreachable, and some were occasionally reachable.

Long investigation, but in summary, this happened because the default packet TTL was, for some reason, set to a fairly low value in a minor kernel update. I simply increased that number in the kernel, recompiled, and all of the problems went away.

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

#52

Post by hombre_fatal » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 4:33 AM UTC

keithnz wrote: post #15

hombre_fatal wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason people share links from the past isn't some passive aggressive "UGH reposts amirite?!" like what you appear to be doing -- it's because past discussion on a fun read has lots of fun morsels of comments, and it's fun to revisit them alongside today's discussion. HN doesn't have a rule that there should only be one canonical submission for every individual link or topic. That you thought your comment would c…

its pretty common for previous threads to be posted in the current thread

Check again. We tend to enumerate previous threads that got traction and have past discussion. It's nice to go back to read those.

But most of what this person linked had 0 to 1 comments and like 2 points. I mean, yes, I would expect an interesting story from 2002 to have at least 30 failed submissions on HN that never got traction over 18 years.

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

#53

Post by hombre_fatal » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 4:34 AM UTC

anamexis wrote: post #11

hombre_fatal wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason people share links from the past isn't some passive aggressive "UGH reposts amirite?!" like what you appear to be doing -- it's because past discussion on a fun read has lots of fun morsels of comments, and it's fun to revisit them alongside today's discussion. HN doesn't have a rule that there should only be one canonical submission for every individual link or topic. That you thought your comment would c…

I am well aware of HN policy regarding reposts. I just found it amusing that this one has so many.

Maybe next time just link to the search query. Most people familiar with forums are well aware that some topics come up more often than others.

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

#54

Post by noisy_boy » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 4:34 AM UTC

Edit: Found it - its /usr/share/units/definitions.units (on Pop!_OS, so probably same on Ubuntu/Debian).

The FAQ[0] mentions:

> units on SunOS doesn't know about "millilightseconds."

> Yes. So? I used to populate my units.dat file with tons of extra prefixes and units. And actually, I think I was using AIX to run units; I don't know if it knew about millilightseconds. Take a look at the units.dat shipped with Linux these days. It definitely knows about millilightseconds.

I tried locate for units.dat but couldn't find it. Anyone knows where is it? Not keen on running a system-wide find.

[0]: https://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail-faq.html

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

#55

Post by alynn » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 4:41 AM UTC

noisy_boy wrote: post #54

Edit: Found it - its /usr/share/units/definitions.units (on Pop!_OS, so probably same on Ubuntu/Debian). The FAQ[0] mentions: > units on SunOS doesn't know about "millilightseconds." > Yes. So? I used to populate my units.dat file with tons of extra prefixes and units. And actually, I think I was using AIX to run units; I don't know if it knew about millilightseconds. Take a look at the units.dat shipped with Linux t…

macOS: /usr/share/misc/units.lib

ubuntu: /usr/share/units, after `apt-get install -y units`

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

#56

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 4:42 AM UTC

frandroid wrote: post #31

comex wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The FAQ addresses this: https://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail-faq.html

Since the story has been posted umpteenth times, this is what should be posted these days. Very entertaining, thanks!

[deleted]

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

#57

Post by wolfgang42 » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 5:02 AM UTC

savrajsingh wrote: post #13

anamexis wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Obvious feature request for HN: page that lists most reposted stories / links. :)

That would be the ‘past’ link, though it doesn’t turn anything up in this case as the title on this post is different. (The usual title is “The case of the 500-mile email,” but this copy is missing the subject line for some reason so the submitter used a representative phrase instead.)

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

#58

Post by staycoolboy » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 5:11 AM UTC

The one thing that throws a wrench in this story for me: Lattes.

Latte's in 1994? In North Carolina? No way. Maybe on the West Coast, but I moved to Cali in 1989 and they were a rarity until the mid-late 90's. There were only 425 starbucks in the US in 1994 (from their site). The "fancy coffee" craze was just a blip on the radar in the mid 90's but gaining momentum.

;-)

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

#59

Post by wuster » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 5:23 AM UTC

Best part of reading this is coming away having learned the existence of units the CLI. How did I spend 20 years on the shell and not have needed or discovered this?

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

#60

Post by welearnednothng » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 5:26 AM UTC

staycoolboy wrote: post #58

The one thing that throws a wrench in this story for me: Lattes. Latte's in 1994? In North Carolina? No way. Maybe on the West Coast, but I moved to Cali in 1989 and they were a rarity until the mid-late 90's. There were only 425 starbucks in the US in 1994 (from their site). The "fancy coffee" craze was just a blip on the radar in the mid 90's but gaining momentum. ;-)

In ‘94 (if not earlier), I was drinking lattes at a mom and pop coffee shop in a tiny town in the Midwest. And at another indie coffee shop at the nearest major university campus. That place was open 24 hours and busy at all hours. I didn’t even know what Starbucks was, but I sure knew lattes and cappuccinos.

So yeah, lattes in ‘94 in a major college town seems totally plausible.