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I was definitely worried for the US Digital Services team when I heard President Biden promise a website that would within a few weeks handle test orders for mi

by danso 5y ago

I was definitely worried for the US Digital Services team when I heard President Biden promise a website that would within a few weeks handle test orders for millions of households. But using USPS infrastructure was definitely the obvious and right solution, considering how many critical and secure online services USPS.com already handles, like change of address and informed delivery (i.e. scans of physical mail emailed to you daily)

KennyBlanken 5y ago
Informed delivery is just them leveraging the scanning and storing of the front and back of every piece of mail shipped in the US which they've been doing for over a decade and totally isn't creepy as hell...but yes. Singing up for this was amazingly easy. I think it took me under a minute to fill in and submit. Instant page load and form submission processing. No captcha checks. No weird javascript address validators (half of them think my address is malformed). No needlessly "cute" page design/graphics. No problems with any of the slew of privacy and ad-blocking tools I have installed. Filled in my address and email, clicked submit, done. Seconds later, I had an email from them confirming it. This is proof that government can work just fine. Guarantee that if this had been a private contracted thing we would have ended up with some monstrosity of browser-choking javascript, needlessly cutesy page design, etc. Can we please bring this sort of simplicity and efficiency to paying income tax / calculating withholdings and W4s? Or, FFS, everything the IRS does? And how about a national ID system, please? We already have nearly 1% of the US population in such a system: the DoD's Common Access Card. Lessons learned from that could easily be applied to a national digital/physical ID card. The crap I (and especially my parents) had to go through to prove to my DMV that we were honest-to-god citizen and could have a RealID drivers license...which isn't actually useful for anything except getting on a plane or into a federal building...was insane. And embarrassing, for a "first world" nation in this day and age.
- evan_ 5y ago
  > No weird javascript address validators (half of them think my address is malformed). There's really no excuse for those- The USPS provides an address validation API that's easy to use, accurate, and free: https://www.usps.com/business/web-tools-apis/ https://www.usps.com/business/web-tools-apis/ When you're literally the final word on what is, and is not, a deliverable address, you don't need a regex. You can just do a database lookup. Presumably they're also leveraging the same address matching technology they use with real mail in that API as well.
zucked 5y ago
A lot of people love to dogpile on the USPS, but they're AWESOME and I'd happily give them a bigger slice of the funding pie to continue to improve. I occasionally schedule package pickups for the next business day via the USPS website. No issues - package gets picked up by my mail carrier every single time. I occasionally go on vacation and pause my mail. No problem - all done online and delivered together when I get home. I've changed my address three times in the last decade - all done online and executed flawlessly. My day's mail gets scanned and sent to me digitally so I can decide if I need to go to the mailbox that day. It all just works pretty darn well.

by danso 5y ago

KennyBlanken 5y ago

Informed delivery is just them leveraging the scanning and storing of the front and back of every piece of mail shipped in the US which they've been doing for over a decade and totally isn't creepy as hell...but yes. Singing up for this was amazingly easy. I think it took me under a minute to fill in and submit. Instant page load and form submission processing. No captcha checks. No weird javascript address validators (half of them think my address is malformed). No needlessly "cute" page design/graphics. No problems with any of the slew of privacy and ad-blocking tools I have installed. Filled in my address and email, clicked submit, done. Seconds later, I had an email from them confirming it. This is proof that government can work just fine. Guarantee that if this had been a private contracted thing we would have ended up with some monstrosity of browser-choking javascript, needlessly cutesy page design, etc. Can we please bring this sort of simplicity and efficiency to paying income tax / calculating withholdings and W4s? Or, FFS, everything the IRS does? And how about a national ID system, please? We already have nearly 1% of the US population in such a system: the DoD's Common Access Card. Lessons learned from that could easily be applied to a national digital/physical ID card. The crap I (and especially my parents) had to go through to prove to my DMV that we were honest-to-god citizen and could have a RealID drivers license...which isn't actually useful for anything except getting on a plane or into a federal building...was insane. And embarrassing, for a "first world" nation in this day and age.

evan_ 5y ago
> No weird javascript address validators (half of them think my address is malformed). There's really no excuse for those- The USPS provides an address validation API that's easy to use, accurate, and free: https://www.usps.com/business/web-tools-apis/ https://www.usps.com/business/web-tools-apis/ When you're literally the final word on what is, and is not, a deliverable address, you don't need a regex. You can just do a database lookup. Presumably they're also leveraging the same address matching technology they use with real mail in that API as well.

zucked 5y ago

A lot of people love to dogpile on the USPS, but they're AWESOME and I'd happily give them a bigger slice of the funding pie to continue to improve. I occasionally schedule package pickups for the next business day via the USPS website. No issues - package gets picked up by my mail carrier every single time. I occasionally go on vacation and pause my mail. No problem - all done online and delivered together when I get home. I've changed my address three times in the last decade - all done online and executed flawlessly. My day's mail gets scanned and sent to me digitally so I can decide if I need to go to the mailbox that day. It all just works pretty darn well.