6 ms·

We can’t send mail farther than 500 miles (2002)

683 points by giancarlostoro 9mo ago

See also https://ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail-faq.html https://ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail-faq.html

austinallegro 9mo ago
How about sending mail 500 miles more? Just to be the man/woman/non-binary who sends mail 500 miles to your front door? You had me at EHL0.
- jedberg 9mo ago
  > You had me at EHL0. You just reminded me of my time working at Sendmail, where I often had to telnet to port 25 of some machine, and pretend to be a mail server sending email. I used to be able to send all the commands without having to look them up. Not sure I could still do that today.
  - frumplestlatz 9mo ago
    I think can still do it, 30 years after I last had to. The trauma of debugging sendmail m4 config issues for hours while the company e-mail remained dysfunctional has permanently etched it into my mind. EHLO example.com MAIL FROM:<foo@example.com> RCPT TO:<bar@example.com> DATA Subject: Hello, World I have crawled through the depths of hell to deliver unto you this message. . Wietse Venema saved us all.
    - eqvinox 9mo ago
      I haven't worked at sendmail or even anything e-mail related, and I can do that… just enough e-mail fixing as side work. Let's call it sysadmin calluses. What made me stumble recently was having to talk LMTP to fix a mailman setup. Cheeky fuckers changed EHLO into LHLO for LMTP. (To avoid any mixups between the protocols, which is fair.)
    - Izkata 9mo ago
      From and To should be repeated below DATA, those are the actual email headers. And From at least doesn't need to match MAIL FROM.
      - nedt 9mo ago
        Also TO doesn't need to match. When you send to a group of BCC the envelope To has to specify the exact recipient, but the DATA doesn't. Similar with the envelope From and the one in the DATA - also useful to control bounces or who gets a reply. Yeah I know the protocol and can do that manual, because I had to debug it often enough.
gnabgib 9mo ago
Popular in: 2023 (1164 points, 198 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37576633 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37576633 2020 (1034 points, 136 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23775404 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23775404 2015 (915 points, 140 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9338708 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9338708
- dang 9mo ago
  You guys beat me to it - I was working on the list! Btw for those wondering about reposts: reposts on HN are just fine after a year or so (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html), and reposts of classics every now and then are good because it's important for new users to learn the classics! Can an email go 500 miles in 2025? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44466030 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44466030 - July 2025 (122 comments) Can’t send email more than 500 miles (2002) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37576633 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37576633 - Sept 2023 (198 comments) The case of the 500-mile email (2002) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29213064 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29213064 - Nov 2021 (93 comments) We can't send email more than 500 miles (2002) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23775404 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23775404 - July 2020 (135 comments) 500 miles (2002) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18675375 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18675375 - Dec 2018 (32 comments) We can't send mail more than 500 miles - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17602158 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17602158 - July 2018 (1 comment) The case of the 500-mile email (2002) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14676835 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14676835 - July 2017 (56 comments) Every time we lift a pallet from the shipping room, the server times out (2006) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13347058 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13347058 - Jan 2017 (82 comments) The case of the 500-mile email - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10305377 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10305377 - Sept 2015 (1 comment) The 500-mile email (2002) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9338708 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9338708 - April 2015 (139 comments) The case of the 500-mile email - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2701063 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2701063 - June 2011 (18 comments) The case of the 500-mile email - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1293652 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1293652 - April 2010 (24 comments) The case of the 500-mile email - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=385068 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=385068 - Dec 2008 (28 comments) The case of the 500-mile email - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=123489 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=123489 - Feb 2008 (7 comments)
ChrisArchitect 9mo ago
A classic. Related: Can an email go 500 miles in 2025? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44466030 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44466030
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
jofzar 9mo ago
All time classic.
rootsudo 9mo ago
I never realized this was 2002 and when I first read it, how new it was. And here we are almost 25 years later.
dbtablesorrows 9mo ago
> It hadn't been altered -- it was a sendmail.cf I had written. And I was fairly certain I hadn't enabled the "FAIL_MAIL_OVER_500_MILES" option. This is gold.
rfarley04 9mo ago
Never get tired of seeing this resurface every once and a while. There needs to be a /greatest for posts like these (while still allowing people to repost them every so often)
reaperducer 9mo ago
FAQ about this, which answers such questions as "Did this actually happen, or were you just spinning a yarn?" https://ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail-faq.html https://ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail-faq.html
- silisili 9mo ago
  As many times as I've read this story, I've never come across this. Pity, as the constant handwaving in the answers makes the entire thing seem made up.
  - thrdbndndn 9mo ago
    What I don't get is how the author can't pin the year down to anything narrower than "between 1994 and 1997," especially considering he wrote the article in 2002: only a few years later. I'm not at all implying the story was fake; just this particular thing feels weird.
jcgrillo 9mo ago
This, Stalking the Wiley Hacker[1], and others were the stories that got me into computers. I wish so much the experience of working in this industry hadn't so thoroughly annihilated the joy they once brought. [1] https://archive.org/details/5626281-Clifford-Stoll-Communications-of-the-ACM/page/n1/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/5626281-Clifford-Stoll-Communica...
- DWakefield 9mo ago
  I had a chance to meet Cliff Stoll a couple summers ago. He was giving a presentation to a quilt society and it was great. If you ever have a chance to see him in person, no matter the topic, you will be greatly rewarded! He is such an energetic and enthusiastic person and he finds the beauty in all sorts of everyday things. I was captivated by him the entire time on a topic I only had a passing interest in at the beginning.
rented_mule 9mo ago
About the same time the 500-mile email problem happened (mid 1990s), I had a difficult to understand issue with my office PC. Every morning, I'd come in, slide my hard drive sled in, and turn the computer on. We had 128 Kbps ISDN internet at the office and I had the same at home, but that was too slow to do much work. So I'd take the drive home so I could work at night, especially in the winter when the office was too cold at night. Suddenly one winter morning, the PC wouldn't boot. I had to run to a meeting. When I got back, I turned the PC off and on again and everything was fine. The next morning, the same thing happened. The third day, I didn't have a meeting. I turned it off and back on, still no boot. I'd gotten in late, so I just turned it off and took an early lunch. When I got back, it still wouldn't boot. But I had a meeting, so I ran to that, leaving the computer on. When I got back, it booted fine. The next morning, same thing. I decided to look inside, not having any idea what might cause such symptoms. As I took the shell off, a tiny mouse came out, jump off my desk, and ran across my lap before jumping on the floor and scurrying out of sight. From inside the computer came the smell of mouse urine. Apparently he'd been crawling in through the open drive bay to keep warm every night, and urinating while he was in there. Once the computer had been on for a while, the heat and airflow would dry it out enough to eliminate whatever electrical short was keeping it from booting. I went to the store and bought an empty drive sled to put in the drive bay whenever I took my drive out, and the problem never came back. I felt lucky that the liquid didn't cause permanent damage.
- nakedneuron 9mo ago
  Seems like 'he' came out without damage, too :)
- Dban1 9mo ago
  My mouse doesn't do that
- jacquesm 9mo ago
  Finally a real computer mouse! What a funny story :)
- mbac32768 9mo ago
  This is almost the origin story for the EDM producer deadmau5's name.
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
raegis 9mo ago
I immediately did a "apt install units". Very cool!
- tad_tough_anne 9mo ago
  I was disappointed to find Arch doesn't have it. :(
  - rnestler 9mo ago
    It has it in the AUR: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/units https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/units
- crumpled 9mo ago
  I did as well. I found a bug right away. If I use "units" the resulting calculations are reversed. You have: 1 mile You want: kilometers * 1.609344 / 0.62137119 You have: 1 unit You want: 1.609344 units * 0.62137119 / 1.609344
  - xigoi 9mo ago
    The output format is weird. I recommend `units --one-line` (or `units -1` for short).
- pinusc 9mo ago
  Units is a cool piece of software, but I have since switched to qalculate. Mostly units has some silly defaults like needing to type tempC(30) instead of 30C; and it's nice to have a full calculator. I know it's a way to specify that the conversion is absolute rather than relative, but qalculate just asks you about it the first time you convert, and since converting oven and outside temperatures is most of what I do, I don't havr to bother with remembering a different syntax. Also qalculate is an awesome piece of software in general, so if you're excited by units you should check it out!
  - dTal 9mo ago
moring 9mo ago
He doesn't give the chairman due credit, IMHO. The chairman collected information to help solve the problem AND it actually was the information needed. Without it, the author might look for "randomly unreachable servers" for a long time. It's almost raw data -- exactly what you would wish for. By lecturing people that "email does not work that way", next time you either get no data at all because people don't even try, or no data because people hide it thinking email doesn't work that way, or a misguided conclusion when a layman tries to make a better guess at the cause of the problem.
- subscribed 9mo ago
  Fantastic comment. Indeed.
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
- alex-moon 9mo ago
  Absolutely. It's one of my all time favourites stories and this is pretty much the reason why. I wish my users gave me such specific steps to reproduce!
  - PunchyHamster 9mo ago
    What's my recent annoyance is that users will describe their problem in great detail if they are talking to LLM, yet same people make just as shit support tickets as before
    - moring 9mo ago
      (1) disguise as an LLM to have them give better problem descriptions to you (2) provide an LLM for your users that lets you read their chat to understand their problem and: (3) try to understand why they are communicating differently to an LLM. Immediate replies? Different feelings knowing they don't talk to a human? Genuinely better help? Not getting treated as stupid? All or none of these may be true, but if it's consistent behaviour then there is a reason for it.
maximgeorge 9mo ago
[dead]
K-Wall 9mo ago
Everytime this pops up I immediately think of this classic: https://www.cartalk.com/radio/puzzler/flavors https://www.cartalk.com/radio/puzzler/flavors
glenngillen 9mo ago
Reminds me of this classic that resurfaces here every few years: if I buy vanilla ice cream my car won’t start https://www.netscrap.com/netscrap_detail.cfm?scrap_id=501 https://www.netscrap.com/netscrap_detail.cfm?scrap_id=501
- EE84M3i 9mo ago
  For me, it brings to mind the SR-71 speedcheck story just as a similar classic. https://www.thesr71blackbird.com/Aircraft/Stories/sr-71-blackbird-speed-check-story https://www.thesr71blackbird.com/Aircraft/Stories/sr-71-blac...
topranks 9mo ago
So funny to think about this now. Our email systems are mostly mediated by giant hyper-scale companies (Microsoft, Google etc). The location of mail servers being where the recipient is seems quaint (and wonderfully decentralised). And even if we do manage our own servers they are automated, and apps often containerised. Nobody ends up with older MTA due to an OS upgrade. Remember reading this like 20 years ago nice to see it again.
Andr2Andr 9mo ago
Here is another classic: wrong password when standing. https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/3v52pw/i_cant_log_in_when_i_stand_up/ https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/3v52p...
- dosshell 9mo ago
  This is a good read! and something i have in the back of my head when debugging spooky bugs.
Bengalilol 9mo ago
This story travels at light speed and will never get old.
fareesh 9mo ago
Reminds me of the time I went to Ceti Alpha 6
rustyhancock 9mo ago
I'm sure this part of the "boring details" omitted. But what was the actual timeout and distance? Presumably 60-70% VF of PVC coated copper? So a 5ms timeout would be a 500mile run?
- javierbg95 9mo ago
  There's an FAQ here: https://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail-faq.html https://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail-faq.html
  - rustyhancock 9mo ago
    Honestly burst out laughing as I saw the FAQ section covering the timeout. Thanks for sharing the link. The ultimate explanation that he just pinged known distances to calculate the time and distance relation is actually brilliant I'm not sure it would have occured to me particularly quickly to just experiment.
- EnPissant 9mo ago
  It was a fake story he made up to help in his job search. Don't expect any of the details to add up.
qwertox 9mo ago
"Thankfully, it failed." So relatable, in general, when debugging systems.
AGivant 9mo ago
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/shoot-me-kangaroo-down-sport/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/shoot-me-kangaroo-down-spo...
markstos 9mo ago
I once had a computer that would turn itself off when I left the room to get a drink. Turned out be an old building with loose floorboard. The force of standing up was just enough to short out a failing power supply.
dmurray 9mo ago
Last night I downloaded a TV episode and played it in VLC. 30 seconds in, the power failed. Fine, it's an old laptop I'm using as a media server, battery is long dead - this never happened before but maybe something is loose. I checked the power supply and restarted it. It failed again at the same point in the video, and again a third time. Something about that video causes my laptop to die. I turned it off and went to bed. Maybe I'll troubleshoot it today. But I'd love to understand what could have happened. The closest thing I know of is the Janet Jackson video that could crash hard drives [0]. In this case the sound was playing on a different device (my TV) so I don't think it's the same explanation. For extra weirdness, the episode was Black Mirror S7E01. Exactly the kind of thing the creators would like to build into a Black Mirror episode. [0] https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20220816-00/?p=106994 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20220816-00/?p=10...
- aiahs 9mo ago
  If you manage to find out what the cause is, I'd love to hear it.
- jerf 9mo ago
  Dying on the exact same frame, or just generally in the same spot? In the case of the latter my first thought would be thermals. Different video codecs have significantly different decoding costs, and may also stress different parts of your system. You could check for that by playing that same video but not starting at the beginning and see if it's the same duration. Or jump to just before it dies and see if it plays through. If by "downloaded" you mean The High Seas, those who provision the high seas are often on the cutting edge of using codecs with every last feature turned on to make the videos smaller to squeeze every last bit out of the encodings that they can, which can make them unusually expensive to decode. Or so I've heard.
  - dmurray 9mo ago
    I didn't get to dig much further into it, but for those of you who suggested ideas: - not always the same frame. The first three failures were within seconds of each other, possibly the same frame. I tried again the next night and it got through that part of the video, but crashed a minute later - I was able to play the video using a different app (Ubuntu's built-in Videos app from an old Ubuntu release, maybe 20.04)
theyneverlear 9mo ago
[dead]
gue-ni 9mo ago
TIL about 'units'
stego-tech 9mo ago
…I almost choked on my breakfast bacon reading this. This is some fabulous “greybeard wizard” lore from the early days of the WWW that I just love hearing about. Bless OP for sharing this gem today. I needed the laughter.
ubermonkey 9mo ago
This is one of my favorite Old Internet tales. It's up there with "Mel, The Real Programmer."
- burningChrome 9mo ago
  Absolute classic if anybody else is interested in reading: https://users.cs.utah.edu/~elb/folklore/mel.html https://users.cs.utah.edu/~elb/folklore/mel.html Mel was for sure on another level: It was a long time before I understood that remark. Since Mel knew the numerical value of every operation code, and assigned his own drum addresses, every instruction he wrote could also be considered a numerical constant. He could pick up an earlier "add" instruction, say, and multiply by it, if it had the right numeric value. His code was not easy for someone else to modify.
- drummojg 9mo ago
  I also enjoy the one about testing bird strike tolerances with store-bought chicken.
arbirk 9mo ago
Now someone post the "we can't print on Tuesdays story" too
wang_li 9mo ago
There's also the "magic" and "more magic" switch. https://users.cs.utah.edu/~elb/folklore/magic.html https://users.cs.utah.edu/~elb/folklore/magic.html
euparkeria 9mo ago
This post always go back, like the doctors in Brazin using tilapia skin to heal burn wounds article.
jihadjihad 9mo ago
A classic. It's like the hacker version of the SR-71 Blackbird speed check story [0]. Every time it comes up, I have to read it. 0: https://www.thesr71blackbird.com/Aircraft/Stories/sr-71-blackbird-speed-check-story https://www.thesr71blackbird.com/Aircraft/Stories/sr-71-blac...
hmhrex 9mo ago
My favorite bug story. I created a curated list of similar bugs at https://500mile.email https://500mile.email
MORPHOICES 9mo ago
[dead]
harimau777 9mo ago
I love that the statistics department decided not to contact IT until they had enough data to be statistically significant!
avipars 9mo ago
Heisenbug
diebillionaires 9mo ago
This made me LOL so many times.

683 points by giancarlostoro 9mo ago

See also https://ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail-faq.html https://ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail-faq.html

How about sending mail 500 miles more? Just to be the man/woman/non-binary who sends mail 500 miles to your front door? You had me at EHL0.

jedberg 9mo ago
> You had me at EHL0. You just reminded me of my time working at Sendmail, where I often had to telnet to port 25 of some machine, and pretend to be a mail server sending email. I used to be able to send all the commands without having to look them up. Not sure I could still do that today.
- frumplestlatz 9mo ago
  I think can still do it, 30 years after I last had to. The trauma of debugging sendmail m4 config issues for hours while the company e-mail remained dysfunctional has permanently etched it into my mind. EHLO example.com MAIL FROM:<foo@example.com> RCPT TO:<bar@example.com> DATA Subject: Hello, World I have crawled through the depths of hell to deliver unto you this message. . Wietse Venema saved us all.
  - eqvinox 9mo ago
    I haven't worked at sendmail or even anything e-mail related, and I can do that… just enough e-mail fixing as side work. Let's call it sysadmin calluses. What made me stumble recently was having to talk LMTP to fix a mailman setup. Cheeky fuckers changed EHLO into LHLO for LMTP. (To avoid any mixups between the protocols, which is fair.)
  - Izkata 9mo ago
    From and To should be repeated below DATA, those are the actual email headers. And From at least doesn't need to match MAIL FROM.
    - nedt 9mo ago
      Also TO doesn't need to match. When you send to a group of BCC the envelope To has to specify the exact recipient, but the DATA doesn't. Similar with the envelope From and the one in the DATA - also useful to control bounces or who gets a reply. Yeah I know the protocol and can do that manual, because I had to debug it often enough.

gnabgib 9mo ago

Popular in: 2023 (1164 points, 198 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37576633 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37576633 2020 (1034 points, 136 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23775404 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23775404 2015 (915 points, 140 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9338708 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9338708

dang 9mo ago
You guys beat me to it - I was working on the list! Btw for those wondering about reposts: reposts on HN are just fine after a year or so (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html), and reposts of classics every now and then are good because it's important for new users to learn the classics! Can an email go 500 miles in 2025? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44466030 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44466030 - July 2025 (122 comments) Can’t send email more than 500 miles (2002) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37576633 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37576633 - Sept 2023 (198 comments) The case of the 500-mile email (2002) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29213064 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29213064 - Nov 2021 (93 comments) We can't send email more than 500 miles (2002) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23775404 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23775404 - July 2020 (135 comments) 500 miles (2002) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18675375 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18675375 - Dec 2018 (32 comments) We can't send mail more than 500 miles - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17602158 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17602158 - July 2018 (1 comment) The case of the 500-mile email (2002) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14676835 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14676835 - July 2017 (56 comments) Every time we lift a pallet from the shipping room, the server times out (2006) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13347058 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13347058 - Jan 2017 (82 comments) The case of the 500-mile email - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10305377 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10305377 - Sept 2015 (1 comment) The 500-mile email (2002) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9338708 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9338708 - April 2015 (139 comments) The case of the 500-mile email - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2701063 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2701063 - June 2011 (18 comments) The case of the 500-mile email - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1293652 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1293652 - April 2010 (24 comments) The case of the 500-mile email - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=385068 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=385068 - Dec 2008 (28 comments) The case of the 500-mile email - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=123489 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=123489 - Feb 2008 (7 comments)

ChrisArchitect 9mo ago

A classic. Related: Can an email go 500 miles in 2025? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44466030 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44466030

deleted 9mo ago

[deleted]

jofzar 9mo ago

All time classic.

rootsudo 9mo ago

I never realized this was 2002 and when I first read it, how new it was. And here we are almost 25 years later.

dbtablesorrows 9mo ago

> It hadn't been altered -- it was a sendmail.cf I had written. And I was fairly certain I hadn't enabled the "FAIL_MAIL_OVER_500_MILES" option. This is gold.

rfarley04 9mo ago

Never get tired of seeing this resurface every once and a while. There needs to be a /greatest for posts like these (while still allowing people to repost them every so often)

reaperducer 9mo ago

FAQ about this, which answers such questions as "Did this actually happen, or were you just spinning a yarn?" https://ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail-faq.html https://ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail-faq.html

silisili 9mo ago
As many times as I've read this story, I've never come across this. Pity, as the constant handwaving in the answers makes the entire thing seem made up.
- thrdbndndn 9mo ago
  What I don't get is how the author can't pin the year down to anything narrower than "between 1994 and 1997," especially considering he wrote the article in 2002: only a few years later. I'm not at all implying the story was fake; just this particular thing feels weird.

jcgrillo 9mo ago

This, Stalking the Wiley Hacker[1], and others were the stories that got me into computers. I wish so much the experience of working in this industry hadn't so thoroughly annihilated the joy they once brought. [1] https://archive.org/details/5626281-Clifford-Stoll-Communications-of-the-ACM/page/n1/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/5626281-Clifford-Stoll-Communica...

DWakefield 9mo ago
I had a chance to meet Cliff Stoll a couple summers ago. He was giving a presentation to a quilt society and it was great. If you ever have a chance to see him in person, no matter the topic, you will be greatly rewarded! He is such an energetic and enthusiastic person and he finds the beauty in all sorts of everyday things. I was captivated by him the entire time on a topic I only had a passing interest in at the beginning.

rented_mule 9mo ago

About the same time the 500-mile email problem happened (mid 1990s), I had a difficult to understand issue with my office PC. Every morning, I'd come in, slide my hard drive sled in, and turn the computer on. We had 128 Kbps ISDN internet at the office and I had the same at home, but that was too slow to do much work. So I'd take the drive home so I could work at night, especially in the winter when the office was too cold at night. Suddenly one winter morning, the PC wouldn't boot. I had to run to a meeting. When I got back, I turned the PC off and on again and everything was fine. The next morning, the same thing happened. The third day, I didn't have a meeting. I turned it off and back on, still no boot. I'd gotten in late, so I just turned it off and took an early lunch. When I got back, it still wouldn't boot. But I had a meeting, so I ran to that, leaving the computer on. When I got back, it booted fine. The next morning, same thing. I decided to look inside, not having any idea what might cause such symptoms. As I took the shell off, a tiny mouse came out, jump off my desk, and ran across my lap before jumping on the floor and scurrying out of sight. From inside the computer came the smell of mouse urine. Apparently he'd been crawling in through the open drive bay to keep warm every night, and urinating while he was in there. Once the computer had been on for a while, the heat and airflow would dry it out enough to eliminate whatever electrical short was keeping it from booting. I went to the store and bought an empty drive sled to put in the drive bay whenever I took my drive out, and the problem never came back. I felt lucky that the liquid didn't cause permanent damage.

nakedneuron 9mo ago
Seems like 'he' came out without damage, too :)
Dban1 9mo ago
My mouse doesn't do that
jacquesm 9mo ago
Finally a real computer mouse! What a funny story :)
mbac32768 9mo ago
This is almost the origin story for the EDM producer deadmau5's name.

deleted 9mo ago

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raegis 9mo ago

I immediately did a "apt install units". Very cool!

tad_tough_anne 9mo ago
I was disappointed to find Arch doesn't have it. :(
- rnestler 9mo ago
  It has it in the AUR: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/units https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/units
crumpled 9mo ago
I did as well. I found a bug right away. If I use "units" the resulting calculations are reversed. You have: 1 mile You want: kilometers * 1.609344 / 0.62137119 You have: 1 unit You want: 1.609344 units * 0.62137119 / 1.609344
- xigoi 9mo ago
  The output format is weird. I recommend `units --one-line` (or `units -1` for short).
pinusc 9mo ago
Units is a cool piece of software, but I have since switched to qalculate. Mostly units has some silly defaults like needing to type tempC(30) instead of 30C; and it's nice to have a full calculator. I know it's a way to specify that the conversion is absolute rather than relative, but qalculate just asks you about it the first time you convert, and since converting oven and outside temperatures is most of what I do, I don't havr to bother with remembering a different syntax. Also qalculate is an awesome piece of software in general, so if you're excited by units you should check it out!
- dTal 9mo ago

moring 9mo ago

He doesn't give the chairman due credit, IMHO. The chairman collected information to help solve the problem AND it actually was the information needed. Without it, the author might look for "randomly unreachable servers" for a long time. It's almost raw data -- exactly what you would wish for. By lecturing people that "email does not work that way", next time you either get no data at all because people don't even try, or no data because people hide it thinking email doesn't work that way, or a misguided conclusion when a layman tries to make a better guess at the cause of the problem.

subscribed 9mo ago
Fantastic comment. Indeed.
deleted 9mo ago
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alex-moon 9mo ago
Absolutely. It's one of my all time favourites stories and this is pretty much the reason why. I wish my users gave me such specific steps to reproduce!
- PunchyHamster 9mo ago
  What's my recent annoyance is that users will describe their problem in great detail if they are talking to LLM, yet same people make just as shit support tickets as before
  - moring 9mo ago
    (1) disguise as an LLM to have them give better problem descriptions to you (2) provide an LLM for your users that lets you read their chat to understand their problem and: (3) try to understand why they are communicating differently to an LLM. Immediate replies? Different feelings knowing they don't talk to a human? Genuinely better help? Not getting treated as stupid? All or none of these may be true, but if it's consistent behaviour then there is a reason for it.

maximgeorge 9mo ago

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K-Wall 9mo ago

Everytime this pops up I immediately think of this classic: https://www.cartalk.com/radio/puzzler/flavors https://www.cartalk.com/radio/puzzler/flavors

glenngillen 9mo ago

Reminds me of this classic that resurfaces here every few years: if I buy vanilla ice cream my car won’t start https://www.netscrap.com/netscrap_detail.cfm?scrap_id=501 https://www.netscrap.com/netscrap_detail.cfm?scrap_id=501

EE84M3i 9mo ago
For me, it brings to mind the SR-71 speedcheck story just as a similar classic. https://www.thesr71blackbird.com/Aircraft/Stories/sr-71-blackbird-speed-check-story https://www.thesr71blackbird.com/Aircraft/Stories/sr-71-blac...

topranks 9mo ago

So funny to think about this now. Our email systems are mostly mediated by giant hyper-scale companies (Microsoft, Google etc). The location of mail servers being where the recipient is seems quaint (and wonderfully decentralised). And even if we do manage our own servers they are automated, and apps often containerised. Nobody ends up with older MTA due to an OS upgrade. Remember reading this like 20 years ago nice to see it again.

Andr2Andr 9mo ago

Here is another classic: wrong password when standing. https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/3v52pw/i_cant_log_in_when_i_stand_up/ https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/3v52p...

dosshell 9mo ago
This is a good read! and something i have in the back of my head when debugging spooky bugs.

Bengalilol 9mo ago

This story travels at light speed and will never get old.

fareesh 9mo ago

Reminds me of the time I went to Ceti Alpha 6

rustyhancock 9mo ago

I'm sure this part of the "boring details" omitted. But what was the actual timeout and distance? Presumably 60-70% VF of PVC coated copper? So a 5ms timeout would be a 500mile run?

javierbg95 9mo ago
There's an FAQ here: https://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail-faq.html https://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail-faq.html
- rustyhancock 9mo ago
  Honestly burst out laughing as I saw the FAQ section covering the timeout. Thanks for sharing the link. The ultimate explanation that he just pinged known distances to calculate the time and distance relation is actually brilliant I'm not sure it would have occured to me particularly quickly to just experiment.
EnPissant 9mo ago
It was a fake story he made up to help in his job search. Don't expect any of the details to add up.

qwertox 9mo ago

"Thankfully, it failed." So relatable, in general, when debugging systems.

AGivant 9mo ago

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/shoot-me-kangaroo-down-sport/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/shoot-me-kangaroo-down-spo...

markstos 9mo ago

I once had a computer that would turn itself off when I left the room to get a drink. Turned out be an old building with loose floorboard. The force of standing up was just enough to short out a failing power supply.

dmurray 9mo ago

Last night I downloaded a TV episode and played it in VLC. 30 seconds in, the power failed. Fine, it's an old laptop I'm using as a media server, battery is long dead - this never happened before but maybe something is loose. I checked the power supply and restarted it. It failed again at the same point in the video, and again a third time. Something about that video causes my laptop to die. I turned it off and went to bed. Maybe I'll troubleshoot it today. But I'd love to understand what could have happened. The closest thing I know of is the Janet Jackson video that could crash hard drives [0]. In this case the sound was playing on a different device (my TV) so I don't think it's the same explanation. For extra weirdness, the episode was Black Mirror S7E01. Exactly the kind of thing the creators would like to build into a Black Mirror episode. [0] https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20220816-00/?p=106994 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20220816-00/?p=10...

aiahs 9mo ago
If you manage to find out what the cause is, I'd love to hear it.
jerf 9mo ago
Dying on the exact same frame, or just generally in the same spot? In the case of the latter my first thought would be thermals. Different video codecs have significantly different decoding costs, and may also stress different parts of your system. You could check for that by playing that same video but not starting at the beginning and see if it's the same duration. Or jump to just before it dies and see if it plays through. If by "downloaded" you mean The High Seas, those who provision the high seas are often on the cutting edge of using codecs with every last feature turned on to make the videos smaller to squeeze every last bit out of the encodings that they can, which can make them unusually expensive to decode. Or so I've heard.
- dmurray 9mo ago
  I didn't get to dig much further into it, but for those of you who suggested ideas: - not always the same frame. The first three failures were within seconds of each other, possibly the same frame. I tried again the next night and it got through that part of the video, but crashed a minute later - I was able to play the video using a different app (Ubuntu's built-in Videos app from an old Ubuntu release, maybe 20.04)

theyneverlear 9mo ago

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gue-ni 9mo ago

TIL about 'units'

stego-tech 9mo ago

…I almost choked on my breakfast bacon reading this. This is some fabulous “greybeard wizard” lore from the early days of the WWW that I just love hearing about. Bless OP for sharing this gem today. I needed the laughter.

ubermonkey 9mo ago

This is one of my favorite Old Internet tales. It's up there with "Mel, The Real Programmer."

burningChrome 9mo ago
Absolute classic if anybody else is interested in reading: https://users.cs.utah.edu/~elb/folklore/mel.html https://users.cs.utah.edu/~elb/folklore/mel.html Mel was for sure on another level: It was a long time before I understood that remark. Since Mel knew the numerical value of every operation code, and assigned his own drum addresses, every instruction he wrote could also be considered a numerical constant. He could pick up an earlier "add" instruction, say, and multiply by it, if it had the right numeric value. His code was not easy for someone else to modify.
drummojg 9mo ago
I also enjoy the one about testing bird strike tolerances with store-bought chicken.

arbirk 9mo ago

Now someone post the "we can't print on Tuesdays story" too

wang_li 9mo ago

There's also the "magic" and "more magic" switch. https://users.cs.utah.edu/~elb/folklore/magic.html https://users.cs.utah.edu/~elb/folklore/magic.html

euparkeria 9mo ago

This post always go back, like the doctors in Brazin using tilapia skin to heal burn wounds article.

jihadjihad 9mo ago

A classic. It's like the hacker version of the SR-71 Blackbird speed check story [0]. Every time it comes up, I have to read it. 0: https://www.thesr71blackbird.com/Aircraft/Stories/sr-71-blackbird-speed-check-story https://www.thesr71blackbird.com/Aircraft/Stories/sr-71-blac...

hmhrex 9mo ago

My favorite bug story. I created a curated list of similar bugs at https://500mile.email https://500mile.email

MORPHOICES 9mo ago

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harimau777 9mo ago

I love that the statistics department decided not to contact IT until they had enough data to be statistically significant!

avipars 9mo ago

Heisenbug

diebillionaires 9mo ago

This made me LOL so many times.