50 ms·
We can't send email more than 500 miles (2002)
- cbhl 6y agoPreviously: 2018: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18675375 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18675375 2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9338708 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9338708
- mattmanser 6y agoI remember reading this one here in the 2000s, here's one from 2008: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=385068 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=385068
- anamexis 6y agoA few more: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12778904 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12778904 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21578606 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21578606 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16384158 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16384158 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16285093 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16285093 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12997568 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12997568 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3802458 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3802458 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=123489 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=123489 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=385068 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=385068 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2701063 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2701063 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14676835 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14676835 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1293652 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1293652 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10305377 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10305377 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12126564 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12126564 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6296201 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6296201 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3427263 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3427263 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17591084 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17591084 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8176458 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8176458 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3114391 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3114391 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19321973 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19321973 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13667317 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13667317 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13082438 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13082438 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10734108 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10734108 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22065142 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22065142 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19749556 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19749556 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9081869 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9081869 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7892556 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7892556 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17602158 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17602158
- grzm 6y agoGenerally people submit links to past submissions that have comments that maybe of interest.
- hombre_fatal 6y agoThe 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 contribute anything leads me to believe that you aren't aware of that.
- anamexis 6y agoI am well aware of HN policy regarding reposts. I just found it amusing that this one has so many.
- hombre_fatal 6y agoMaybe 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.
- keithnz 6y agoits pretty common for previous threads to be posted in the current thread
- hombre_fatal 6y agoCheck 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.
- coronadisaster 6y agojust get it in the pipes
- glitchc 6y agoTubes, alright?! The Internet is a series of tubes! https://youtu.be/f99PcP0aFNE?t=127 https://youtu.be/f99PcP0aFNE?t=127
- coronadisaster 6y agolol, thanks for the correction.
- xwdv 6y agoIMO even though this has been posted a bunch of times it’s important to repost these sort of campfire ghost stories so future developers can think more creatively about strange errors.
- rlayton2 6y agoIt should be recommended reading for new IT support staff. While you get unhelpful "its not working" requests all the time, when the user does give you information on the working / not working scenarios, you should always consider them, even if it doesn't make any sense.
- mensetmanusman 6y agoIs there a book written about these campfire programming stories? This one and the microsoft bedlam one are some of my favorites.
- xwdv 6y agoNot sure, but there’s plenty of stories out there that one could probably be compiled.
- davidkuhta 6y agoHat 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
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- microcolonel 6y agoGNU Units is spectacular.
- dheera 6y agoYou can also type "3/1000 lightseconds to miles" in Google.
- dredmorbius 6y agoGNU units is available through Homebrew, and does.
- jxy 6y ago% 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
- xook 6y agoTruly this is a worldly gem. Thank you for submitting this. :) It's easy to forget that, even though transmissions still travel at near lightspeed, it still takes more than an instant to reach its destination, even digitally. I should keep this in mind, I think.
- ryanmarsh 6y agoLove this story. I'm certain it will continue to be reposted to this website until ceases operations or the heat death of the universe whichever comes first.
- abeppu 6y agoThe ending of this makes it sound super clean. 3 ms * speed of light => ~560 miles. "It all makes sense!" But ... isn't the speed of light through fiber actually like 2/3 of the speed of light in a vacuum? And that fiber isn't going to be laid out in a straight line exactly to the destination. So I think really there must have been a fair bit of uncertainty around that ~3ms to abort a connection.
- baby 6y agoAnd the time it takes to get to that fiber. It’s a fictive piece probably?
- ummonk 6y agoWas gonna say. Speed of light through cables or fiber optics is roughly 2/3 the speed of light through vacuum. Also I don't see how it would know it has established a connection until the round-trip has happened. All in all, it probably waited more like 10 ms, if this story were true, which it probably isn't.
- comex 6y agoThe FAQ addresses this: https://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail-faq.html https://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail-faq.html
- surround 6y agoSource: https://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail.html https://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail.html FAQ about the story: https://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail-faq.html https://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail-faq.html Past submissions: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=500%20mile%20mail&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=http%3A%2F%2Fweb.mit.edu%2Fjemorris%2Fhumor%2F500-miles&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... (It seems I can’t find a search query which includes both urls)
- surround 6y ago2015 Comments from the original author: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=TreyHarris https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=TreyHarris
- simonebrunozzi 6y agoI suggest to change "mail" to "email" in the title.
- dang 6y agoOk, we've e'd the mail above.
- ip_addr 6y agoDoes anyone know of stories similar to this? I would like to read more.
- btilly 6y agohttps://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/29hzlz/when_i_flush_the_toilet_my_computer_reboots/ https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/29hzl... is another classic. (I remember seeing it back in the 90s.)
- Diederich 6y agoI 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 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.
- mrtksn 6y agoHere’s a collection: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23005140 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23005140
- frandroid 6y agoThe style is very reminiscent from The Register's BOFH line of stories (though without the mischieviousness)--now those are mostly fiction, but they're amusing nonetheless...
- asgeir 6y agoNot as funny but still a very interesting read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cuckoo%27s_Egg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cuckoo%27s_Egg
- walrus01 6y agoIn network engineering circles, this one is second only to the RFC for IP over avian carriers.
- vidarh 6y agoThere was also this "implementation" of IP over avian carriers: https://www.blug.linux.no/rfc1149/ https://www.blug.linux.no/rfc1149/
- bobblywobbles 6y agoCan 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.
- sonofgod 6y ago$ is the shell prompt; he's not typing it. "3 millilightseconds" is the distance light travels in 3 milliseconds, the time a "zero" timeout would take to actually timeout. (This comes directly from the definition of the lightsecond: how far light travels in one second) "miles" is what he wants to see that distance converted to. Turns out it's 558 miles; one mile is 0.00179 of 3 millilightseconds.
- dahfizz 6y agoPoint of Presence is where the university network would connect with the internet
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- yousifa 6y agoPoint 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/ https://blog.stackpath.com/point-of-presence/
- sonofgod 6y agoPOP I believe is "point of presence"; I believe its meaning is "the point at which our network connects to the internet".
- drtz 6y agoI 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."
- PlasticTank 6y agoLove this story, funnily enough it was the first story I ever read on HN on my first day of work as a junior developer.
- failrate 6y agoIn a way, Hacker News acts like a Leitner deck.
- dang 6y agoAnybody know the original year?
- noisy_boy 6y agoIf 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.
- noisy_boy 6y agoEdit: 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 https://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail-faq.html
- alynn 6y agomacOS: /usr/share/misc/units.lib ubuntu: /usr/share/units, after `apt-get install -y units`
- hackerNoose 6y agounits -U gives you the location of definitions file
- staycoolboy 6y agoThe 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. ;-)
- welearnednothng 6y agoIn ‘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.
- morganvachon 6y agoAgreed, I graduated high school in 1995, and I was dating a college girl in Rome, Georgia. Our favorite hangout was a coffee shop that served, among other things, lattes and frappes.
- function_seven 6y ago> The "fancy coffee" craze was just a blip on the radar in the mid 90's but gaining momentum. Friends premiered in 1994, with The Central Perk being a major set piece of the show. I mean, yeah, its New York City and not North Carolina, but college towns anywhere are going to be early in trends. A latte in 1994 seems plausible to me. I remember getting them from a Gloria Jeans in my local suburban mall around 1990 or so. You're not wrong about the shape of the trajectory, but all throughout the 80s the coffee shop/latte trend was slowly building steam (heh) before it went hockey stick in the mid-90s.
- staycoolboy 6y agoOh yeah, that's right. Good point! I just illustrated how unhip I was in the early 90's.
- wuster 6y agoBest 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?
- nrzd 6y agoMe too! so awesome
- ornornor 6y agoBe aware that currencies are stuck with rates from several years ago and don’t update.
- divbzero 6y agoI wonder if this could be addressed with periodic updates.
- ornornor 6y agoI didn’t look too deep into it, my understanding was that the source it uses to update itself has been taken offline. There are workarounds involving data massaging and a cron but honestly that’s a lot more work than typing “1000 chf to usd” into ddg and getting the converted amount. But if you know something I don’t, maybe you could share for everyone’s benefit?
- throwaway744678 6y agoLooking at the source of the default configuration (cat /usr/share/misc/units.lib), I believe it only defines conversions for currencies that are pegged to another one (mainly to EUR or USD). You have: 10 franc You want: dollar conformability error 1.5244902 euro 1 usdollar You have: 10 franc You want: euro * 1.5244902 / 0.655957
- zerocrates 6y agoI'm tempted to say it shouldn't even attempt to support currency conversion, as constantly in flux as it is.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- optimaton 6y agoThis is wild!
- thyrsus 6y agoI've had enough years to become wiser, become a fanatic for configuration management, and get over the embarrassment: I'm the consultant that screwed things up. Some background: the Stat department was running a variety of systems besides the Solaris workstations, and there was, within UNC-CH, a separate support organization that was cheaper and more comfortable with Microsoft products where Stat was sending their support dollars. When that organization needed Unix support, they called my employer, Network Computing Solutions, and I showed up. There was effectively no firewall at UNC-CH at the time (something something academic freedom something something), and the Stat Solaris machines were not being regularly patched. Uninvited guests had infested them, and it appeared the most likely entry point was sendmail - at the time, it was the most notorious vulnerability on the internet. Since my preference to wipe and reload was unacceptable - too much downtime and too many billable hours - the obvious thing to do was update sendmail. The rest is history.
- rlonn 6y agoI read this story years ago and thought it was hilarious. Could've happened to anyone. In my book you're a near-celebrity and it's great that you can verify the story! Thanks for making things a little more interesting and a lot more fun :)
- NicoJuicy 6y ago> and get over the embarrassment It's not that bad, these things happen. It makes an interesting story though
- sillysaurusx 6y agoCan I get your autograph? The 500 mile email story has been a story since I was a teenager. Thank you for the comment. It was delightful to hear your take on the (mildly apocryphal, but highly enjoyable) tale.
- sah2ed 6y agoHow about a joint autograph from both the protagonist—Trey Harris, and the antagonist—the consultant to the Stats department :) ? Trey Harris also on HN [0]. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=TreyHarris https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=TreyHarris
- panosfilianos 6y agoDebugging software is not unlike detective work.
- rogierhofboer 6y agoA while back, Andreas Zwinkau collected this kind of stories. Please post him if there is anything not yet listed. http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/lore/index.html http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/lore/index.html
- netmonk 6y agoSo old! DUPE
- bawolff 6y agoI've heard this story before, but i didn't realize it was as recent as 2002. It feels like something from a much earlier bygone era, like the early 90s
- lelag 6y agoThe author states it happened sometime between 1994 and 1997.
- wh1t3n01s3 6y agoIn fact it is from 1994 -1997, as explained in the FAQ linked above
- rcarmo 6y agoThis story makes me smile every time it comes up. It's fascinating how many arbitrarily coded limits we keep breaking as we make our tech go faster without re-assessing the original assumptions :)
- doebi 6y agoSoundtrack for this story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbNlMtqrYS0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbNlMtqrYS0
- martyvis 6y agoOnly the other week we were doing some testing on a new HCI (hyper-converged infrastructure) I'm doing the network for. At the end of the test period, we were having some storage sync issues. Everything seemed to PING ok, except my colleague happened to notice large jumbo frames over 8000 bytes were getting dropped. I double checked that we hadn't inadvertently changed network configuration. It was only by chance we had another test looking at transceiver signal levels that a customer engineer saw an alarm on RX level. It was then we remembered one test was to remove a module. I then noticed some error counts. We shutdown that particular link until we could visit the site. Sure enough, that fibre wasn't quite clicked in anymore. There was enough of a bridge across the fibre air gap for shall packets, but just wide enough so large packets statically couldn't be corrected enough to work.
- lostmyoldone 6y agoMade ne think about the precision required for some errors to occur. Have had sort of similar things occur, and where it's almost impossible to reproduce it when you try! As a hobbyist sound engineer, usually regular cables are the first I check, but maybe I should extend that to fibre? Interesting error nevertheless, and honestly, checking fibre cabling for those kind of errors would probably be a bit lower on my list, unless I saw a lot of tranciever errors.
- kinduff 6y agoThis is one of my favorite bugs ever. Loved to read it again.
- henpa 6y agoSince I've worked with linux email servers (sendmail, qmail, postfix, exim, etc) practically my whole profissional life (since around 1997, but used BBS since 91 - I'm 41 now), this story really amused me and got my attention! I love this kind of email debugging! LOL
- abhgh 6y agoI used to collect these kind of stories: When I flush my toilet my computer reboots: http://www.techtales.com/tftechs.php?m=199712#66 http://www.techtales.com/tftechs.php?m=199712#66 (the first story on the page) If I buy vanilla ice-cream my car wont start: http://www.netscrap.com/netscrap_detail.cfm?scrap_id=501 http://www.netscrap.com/netscrap_detail.cfm?scrap_id=501 A specific cargo routing crashes system: https://www.jakepoz.com/debugging-behind-the-iron-curtain/ https://www.jakepoz.com/debugging-behind-the-iron-curtain/ Tape-drive failure only within large print jobs: http://patrickthomson.tumblr.com/post/2499755681/the-best-debugging-story-ive-ever-heard http://patrickthomson.tumblr.com/post/2499755681/the-best-de... Interplanetary debugging with the Mars Rover: https://www.eetimes.com/the-trouble-with-rover-is-revealed/# https://www.eetimes.com/the-trouble-with-rover-is-revealed/#
- photonic277 6y agoIn my intern days some time around 10 years ago, a PI at the NASA GRC facility told me about a problem of this flavor an old grad student of his had. The guy was working on an optical sensor in a light-tight lab. Every morning, he came in, calibrated the sensor, and performed measurements. All morning, it held calibration with negligible drift. But when he came back from lunch, each time, the calibration had drifted off. Could it be related to the time of day? He tried taking his lunch an hour earlier and an hour later. Each time, the calibration was rock solid until right after lunch. In spite of protocol, he tried eating lunch in the lab, no one else in or out. Before lunch: good calibration. After lunch: bad calibration. He tried not eating lunch at all. That day, the calibration held all day. How could an optical sensor have any concept of whether its user had eaten lunch? It turned out, it only had to do with the lunch box. The sensor was fiber coupled, and it was sensitive to changes in transmission losses generated by changes to local radii of the patch chord. Every morning, the grad student set his lunch box down on the lab bench, nudging the fiber into some path. After eating, he’d replace his lunch box on the bench, nudging the fiber into a different path. After that, the fiber was secured with fixed conduit, and lunch boxes no longer entered the lab.
- darekkay 6y agoThere is a popular GitHub repository for similar debugging stories: https://github.com/danluu/debugging-stories https://github.com/danluu/debugging-stories
- MasterYoda 6y agoHaha, this was interesting. I posted the same story with more or less the same title a couple of month ago [1], and no one saw it and no comments. This time it got almost 1000 points and a lots of comments. What I think is interesting is how the same thing can get so different traction. Wonder what factors it is that makes a thing get traction and not? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22164691 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22164691