freedomPusher

joined 4 years ago
MODERATOR OF
 

The problem: white goods (e.g. washing machines) are going further into the enshitification direction. The Internet of Shit is becoming unavoidable for new appliances. Your washing machine will likely depend on Internet and connect to a server that tracks your usage.

For the past 20 years or so they already have kill switches where they refuse to function if an error occurs. The manufacturer conceals from consumers the procedure to reverse the kill switch. So even if you can fix your machine, you can’t.

The fix:

Stop supporting the motherfuckers. When your machine breaks down, try to fix it. If you fix it mechanically but the kill switch blocks you from starting it again, don’t repeat the same stupid decision to buy a new one.

Instead, wash your clothes by hand until you find a dumped machine. Then fix the dumped machine, if you can. If it has a spinning drum, give it a hand spin and make sure the ball bearings are good before going further because they have made those irreplacable in recent decades. Repeat as needed.

If you’re just starting out and have not had a machine previously, don’t make the stupid decision of buying a machine that is made to exploit you. Look for a dumped one and own that shit.

Hand-washing isn’t as bad as bending over and and helping the predatory motherfuckers eat your soul. If you want easier hand-washing, buy a washboard from Ohio (USA); those probably never break down. Or this repairable machine from India \url{www.thewashingmachineproject.org}.

“But my addiction to convenience is too overbearing - I must buy”

Try this before you do that:

  1. Find the model you would normally buy.
  2. Write to the manufacturer and falsely state that you have that model and ask for the service manual (not the user manual), and ask for the software reset procedure. Or call them but be ready to give them a fake story of breakage to legitimise your request.
  3. Watch as the mfr ignores you, evades, or tells you to fuck off and buy a new machine.

You will not get the svc manual from the manufacturer. Still feel like buying it after knowing how they treat customers after they think you bought their product?

 

Most people probably do not realise that most email to and from government agencies, NGOs, and corporations traverse the servers of Microsoft Corporation, in the clear.

How would you know, you ask? Do an MX lookup.

like this:

$ for type in mx txt; do torsocks dig @"$dnssvr" -t "$type" -q "$domain_portion_of_email_address" +noclass +nocomments +nostats +short +tcp +nosearch; done

(where $dnssvr is the IP address of whatever DNS server you trust)

If you see “outlook” in response to the MX lookup, the email is certainly shared with Microsoft. Likewise for “l-google” indicating sharing with Google.

If the txt type lookup shows those strings, then it likely means MS or Google are in the loop. The reason to check that is because some orgs hide their e-mail provider behind a 3rd party email firewall service (e.g. baracuda), in which case you cannot know for certain but the txt dns records give good clues.

The best exploit is if you live in the same area as the destination. Lucky for me, this is the case for most of my recipients. So I can cycle to them and drop off the correspondence without postage. And because I withold an email address from them, their response imposes postage costs on them -- which is exactly what I want. They should be penalised for their poor choice of e-mail suppliers.

Danish people are screwed

I have no idea how a Dane can partake in this because national postal service is eliminated in Denmark. You can possibly drop off the correspondence but I suppose post boxes are going away which means you need to get it in recipient’s hands during opening hours. But then how can they respond? Would they have to use FedEx? That backfires because FedEx should also be boycotted and so it ultimately helps another shitty corp. And you have no control over who the recipient will choose to carry the response.

Germans have an extra cost or inconvenience

In Germany, some recipient’s postal boxes are publicly accessible and some are not. When they are not, only the postal worker has a mail room key. And you probably have no way of knowing in advance if the recipient’s mailbox is accessible.

Perhaps the best workflow in Germany is to print the letter, stuff the envelope, and cycle to the destination. If you’re locked out and there is no one to tailgate in, then you have to accept that you lost the gamble and put a stamp on it and post it.

Americans somewhat screwed - but FAX is quite useful

In the US, it is illegal to directly put mail in a postbox that is not your own. USPS is a gov-imposed monopoly. Every city is so sprawled out you’re probably best off buying postage and using USPS anyway.

Consequently, fax is still very useful in the US -- see below.

Why faxing is great

If the recipient still has a FAX number, use it! FAX numbers are dying like flies because people don’t use them enough. It’s a way to send correspondence gratis without revealing your email address. So fax gives you more control over your data than email.

It’s worth noting that the recipient’s fax may be a service that repackages the fax as an email that traverses MS servers anyway. But it’s still more private than email because you need not disclose an email address and also MS would have to run OCR on the payload to snoop on it.

It’s a crapshoot but the odds are in favor of fax (vs email).

The extra benefit to hand delivery: a poor man’s registered letter

You can print a form and ask the recipient to sign for the delivery. Most will sign. Some will not. But when they do it gives you some proof of delivery that may help in court if anything goes sideways. I have actually used this kind of proof of delivery in court before.

 

The EFF wrote in their most recent newsletter:

… Because it's your rights we're fighting for.

  • Your right to speak and learn freely online, free of government censorship
  • Your right to move through the world without being surveilled everywhere you go
  • Your right to use your device without it tracking your every click, purchase, and IRL movement
  • Your right to control your data, including data about your body, and to know that data given to one government agency won’t be weaponized against you by another
  • Your right to do what you please with the products and content you pay for …

Cloudflare has been DoSing the whole Tor community for over a decade now. Those who are not excluded from CF sites (over ⅓ of the web), who are free to move around only have that liberty because they submit to surveillance and give up their privacy.

EFF has ties to the Tor Project that are closer than most people realise. At the same time, Tor Project itself has submitted to licking Cloudflare’s boots. TP has quietly removed material from their blogs that criticises Cloudflare.

Searching EFF newsletters for Meta, Facebook, Google, Amazon, etc has no shortage of hits. But not a word about Cloudflare -- the most direct adversary of what EFF claims to fight for.

People are already aware of Google and Facebook. If they choose to pawn themselves to those platforms, they know what they are signing up for. It’a waste of energy and resources to fixate on those known evils. EFF is doing a gross injustice by not informing people about Cloudflare.

Cloudflare is one of the few tech giants that wise users cannot escape. In some US states you cannot even register to vote without Cloudflare knowing. You can submit a paper registration but then the data entry worker still submits your personal data to a Cloudflare website.

It’s relatively trivial to escape Google and Facebook and protect yourself. Most of that battle is a matter of not registering and not accessing the services, and watching out for a few corner cases. Cloudflare fucks everyone by compromising websites whose admin doesn’t even know what they are signing up for and the fact that they are pawning all their own users. When your gov publishes legal statutes exclusively in Cloudflare’s walled garden or puts gov services inside CF, we’re fucked to an extent that is much more beyond our control.

I will not donate to EFF until they get their priorities straight.

 

Just encountred https://onion.email/. Seems like they hijacked a catchy name to use for false advertising? I see no onion capability there.

 

WTF happened to onionmail.info?

So disturbing.

It was such a great resource for email. It was a quite unique infrastructure that gave a bit of freedom and privacy unlike any other email provider.

 

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/34988139

WTF happened to onionmail.info?

So disturbing.

It was such a great resource for email. It was a quite unique infrastructure that gave a bit of freedom and privacy unlike any other email provider.

 

WTF happened to onionmail.info?

So disturbing.

It was such a great resource for email. It was a quite unique infrastructure that gave a bit of freedom and privacy unlike any other email provider.

 

An equity or brokerage sent proxy voting forms which arrived 1 day before the deadline that they needed the filled ballot back in their hands. There is of course and electronic way of voting. E-voters are the only investors who can actually vote due to the schedule and mailing date. Impossible for offline investors to vote.

This is probably a boring post. I don’t vote anyway because I can’t be bothered to do the research. But it’s another instance of marginalisation of offline people. I thought it should be recorded somewhere that this is happening in case someone cares.

 

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/34439797

Many train tickets in Europe are available exclusively online. In other cases the online price is lower. So to chase up why this happens, I found the following law:

Article 11 Availability of tickets and reservations

  1. Railway undertakings, ticket vendors and tour operators shall offer tickets and, where available, through-tickets and reservations.
  2. Without prejudice to paragraphs 3 and 4, railway undertakings shall sell, either directly or through ticket vendors or tour operators, tickets to passengers via at least one of the following means of sale: (a) ticket offices, other points of sale or ticketing machines; (b) telephone, the internet or any other widely available information technology; (c) on board trains. The competent authorities, as defined in point (b) of Article 2 of Regulation (EC) No 1370/2007, may require railway undertakings to offer tickets for services provided under public service contracts via more than one means of sale.

Key wording: “at least ONE of the following means of sale”

Since it’s easiest to sell tickets online, they are effectively encouraging train ticket vendors to marginalise offline people and unbanked people. Further down the statute it says people with disabilities get an exceptional option to buy tickets on the train at no extra cost if there is no ticket office or machine. But no one else is entitled to that option.

 

Many train tickets in Europe are available exclusively online. In other cases the online price is lower. So to chase up why this happens, I found the following law:

Article 11 Availability of tickets and reservations

  1. Railway undertakings, ticket vendors and tour operators shall offer tickets and, where available, through-tickets and reservations.
  2. Without prejudice to paragraphs 3 and 4, railway undertakings shall sell, either directly or through ticket vendors or tour operators, tickets to passengers via at least one of the following means of sale: (a) ticket offices, other points of sale or ticketing machines; (b) telephone, the internet or any other widely available information technology; (c) on board trains. The competent authorities, as defined in point (b) of Article 2 of Regulation (EC) No 1370/2007, may require railway undertakings to offer tickets for services provided under public service contracts via more than one means of sale.

Key wording: “at least ONE of the following means of sale”

Since it’s easiest to sell tickets online, they are effectively encouraging train ticket vendors to marginalise offline people and unbanked people. Further down the statute it says people with disabilities get an exceptional option to buy tickets on the train at no extra cost if there is no ticket office or machine. But no one else is entitled to that option.

 

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/32830968

I stopped distributing Linux Mint to the low-tech users who I support roughly ~10 years ago when the project jailed their docs in tor-hostile Cloudflare websites (e.g. readthedocs.io, IIRC).

A recent general search for info on getting a piece of hardware working on linux led to forums.linuxmint.com (the query had no relevance to Mint specifically). This website uses #Sucuri for elitist tor-hostile gatekeeping. There is no action for me to take since I already quit supporting Mint, other than perhaps to ask others in my local linux support group to also drop Mint support because our users should not face a choice between software freedom and privacy. Certainly when I am asked to install Mint for someone, I will refuse and try to steer them to Debian, perhaps with Cinnamon.

Screenshot attached. Not sure how long linuxmint has been using Sucuri for crude IP reputation discrimination, but note that the Debian project that feeds the Mint project demonstrates respect for people’s privacy. Mint adds value in some ways, but at the same time worsens a good distro by jailing information.

This is not a “something is better than nothing” scenario. It’s actually destructive. When you host a discriminatory access-restricted forum, you create an attraction for useful info and simultaneously become an obstacle to the information that would otherwise find a better host. If forums.linuxmint.com did not exist, the discussion would still occur somewhere and it would have a chance at occurring in an open access venue.

 

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/32830968

I stopped distributing Linux Mint to the low-tech users who I support roughly ~10 years ago when the project jailed their docs in tor-hostile Cloudflare websites (e.g. readthedocs.io, IIRC).

A recent general search for info on getting a piece of hardware working on linux led to forums.linuxmint.com (the query had no relevance to Mint specifically). This website uses #Sucuri for elitist tor-hostile gatekeeping. There is no action for me to take since I already quit supporting Mint, other than perhaps to ask others in my local linux support group to also drop Mint support because our users should not face a choice between software freedom and privacy. Certainly when I am asked to install Mint for someone, I will refuse and try to steer them to Debian, perhaps with Cinnamon.

Screenshot attached. Not sure how long linuxmint has been using Sucuri for crude IP reputation discrimination, but note that the Debian project that feeds the Mint project demonstrates respect for people’s privacy. Mint adds value in some ways, but at the same time worsens a good distro by jailing information.

This is not a “something is better than nothing” scenario. It’s actually destructive. When you host a discriminatory access-restricted forum, you create an attraction for useful info and simultaneously become an obstacle to the information that would otherwise find a better host. If forums.linuxmint.com did not exist, the discussion would still occur somewhere and it would have a chance at occurring in an open access venue.

[–] freedomPusher@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 month ago

Library hours are limited. Where I live they are open 10am to 9pm. They are closed on Holidays. They are closed when the rather is bad. I checked in Grenoble which I’m slightly familiar with and librarys there are closed on Sundays.

What was the response when you complained? Try city council.

That makes it completely impossible to receive morning schedule changes.

No, it just means you cannot sit in a chair inside the library to get your morning schedule changes. Any wi-fi you traverse in the morning will do the job.

Yes. And what are you doing yo do about it?

I personally use hacker spaces and universities in moments when libraries fail to serve.

Suggest that it should be privatized and deregulated like the Internet so that it magically becomes free?

Libraries are already the right price for me. But if you’re getting fucked on the price, knock yourself out asking for privatization but I can’t see that improving anything. You would still be asking the same people to broaden the operating hours, but they would have to alter a contract.

But you have been arguing against regulating!

No I haven’t. You are really lost here. I never said anything of the kind. By now you should know that I advocate boycotting. Whether you boycott or not has nothing to do with the extent they are regulated.

I guess I should boycott libraries too until they change?

Not sure why you think a boycott affects a public resource. Unlike a private sector boycott, your lack of relationship does not cost the library. You would have to get nearly /everyone/ to boycott the library just to make the case that it should be shut down due to lack of use. You have a better chance of just asking for morning hours, after convincing them that the local university library is also closed in the mornings.

Do you need me to go back and quote you where you repeatedly defended Trump’s deregulation because high speed Internet customers would subsidize cheaper service?

Yes, I do.

“Netneutrality is not going to cause dial-up customers to lose even more performance. If anything, they might even fair better because the ISP will be able to bring in more profits which could increase the effect of subsidy from higher payers.”

Is that the quote you think defends deregulation? Your mother tongue is apparently not English. Nothing in that quote endorses deregulation. It simply supports the claim deregulation harms broadband users but not narrowband users. Harm to either is harm nonetheless.

[–] freedomPusher@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 month ago

That was a single example from a link I gave you with dozens of examples from multiple states from 10 years ago.

The only interesting state was Texas because the other states have offline filing, which makes them entirely irrelevant.

It also included states that require online filing for small claims and landlord tenant disputes.

You’ve misunderstood the article. Only Texas has the requirement.

Internet is cheaper than a lawyer.

This is a false dichotomy. You need not choose between the two. If you opt out of the lawyer, free public wi-fi is cheaper than Internet delivered to your home.

[–] freedomPusher@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

Your lawyer does the filing, not you. So no problem if you boycott having Internet at home. If you need to file pro se in Texas, it’s shitty indeed that there is no analog mechanism but at least you have the library. And the court itself probably has machines you can use. Otherwise, there is a human rights issue in Texas if court access is exclusively for people who have property (i.e. PCs).

[–] freedomPusher@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 month ago (2 children)

And people need to receive communications before and after school hours.

And? Are you trying to imply that library hours are a total subset of school hours, making it impossible for students to access libraries? If so, that’d be a quite dysfunctional library system you have.

Many libraries aren’t even open on Sunday.

You have a democracy. Use it. Stop making excuses and demand better.

I have access to an unstaffed library on Sunday. The library card unlocks the door.

That’s not an argument. It is a veiled personal attack.

Nonsense. “Rediculous” is not an argument. You have failed in presenting facts and logic that support your claims. Attempting to claim my ideas are “rediculous” is a baseless ad homenim. Pointing out your lack of sound logic is not.

It is as weird insult for you to use because you have been defending this Trump ruling to deregulate large Internet corporations.

It’s the other way around. You have lost track of the thesis. The boycott opposes Trump’s action and the corps interests. Your opposition to the boycott is the boot licking pro-Trump stance.

[–] freedomPusher@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 month ago (8 children)

It does because they need Internet to receive communication about School for their children.

Not simultaneously. The library operates all day long. Different people have different schedules.

Children’s homework is also online.

Bad idea. But not everyone has kids. Not all kids have homework. Not all homework requires the cloud. Not all homework must be done the same day it is assigned.

The time to build a larger library is measured in years. A timer means the library cannot support everyone but everyone needs the Internet.

I am living proof that all hospitals can be closed. (I haven’t needed to be in a hospital since childhood)

Your argument is ridiculous.

You sound like Trump’s lawyer, who could put together a logical argument, and so was just left with declaring “rediculous”. Can’t pound the law.. cannot pound any facts or evidence... so you are left pounding the table.

We are talking about the potential affect of net neutrality on everyone. That you personally can function without it doesn’t mean everyone can.

I am not functioning without Internet. I am using the Internet in a sacrificial way without feeding the infra. I am not streaming movies and using all the convenience frills that pushovers are addicted to.

That needs to be built. The current infrastructure cannot support everyone using the public library.

It only needs to be built if 10k people actually have the will power to boycott. And in that case the affluent users and the poor users are treated equally by the library, unlike the boot-licking action you advocate for where wealthy people can buy their way to superior access from the comfort of their homes.

It’s not will power when it is required by schools and the government.

Citation needed on the government mandate that you have Internet installed in your home. It’s will power because access from your sofa and home office is a matter of convenience.

[–] freedomPusher@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 month ago (10 children)

The total infrastructure support for 1,000 simultaneous people in a library that was only built for 100 is far greater than that.

It’s not simultaneous. 1000 people boycotting does not mean they all leave their homes and enter the library at the same time. Libraries are scalable (not limited to 100). They control the upper limit of the scale as well with timers.

And it doesn’t fix the problem that communication via Internet is required. You can’t live at the library.

Works for me. I am living proof that occasional Internet access from the library is possible.

Again that is a side effect. If reddit paid tier ones to block Lemmy, they now can.

They cannot. You’re again fixated on what’s legally possible, not how the market works. Reddit could not pay tier 1’s enough money to block Lemmy and offset the market consequences of that move.

I’m focused on tier 1 because that’s what actually matters. They are the ones who fought net neutrality.

That’s a false cause fallacy. Comcast fought net neutrality because for their retail business, not tier 1 business.

56k is a side effect, not the target.

Exactly. It’s not the target. As I said, you cannot market a dial-up connection that is artificially crippled. And you cannot cripple the speeds across the board enough to affect 56k connections.

Stop saying that when we’ve already proven it’s impossible because of government/school communication.

Nonsense. I am proof that boycotting is viable. I am living by the boycott. I can communicate with my gov just fine. I also communicate with researchers at universities just fine without paying Internet subscriptions and without using other institutions bandwidth that was not oversold.

Consolidation reduces the work up to the limit of existing infrastructure. You can litter without affect.

Indeed.

Everyone littering means more cleaners are needed.

The already exposed brokeness of your analogy continues to escape you. As already pointed out, the analogy is inaccurate if you assume no one litters to begin with. Everyone is already using the Internet. They would be effectively be moving their litter from being scattered to consolidated. The same litter in one place reduces the amount of infra needed, not increases. There is no longer a need to maintain all those comms lines citywide if no one uses them.

It’s why a festival requires far more clean up than regular service.

It’s far less effort.

We’ve already covered this.

Yes we have. How can you still fail to grasp this? 2-4 people cleanup after a festival in <2 hours. That same litter scattered citywide needs a staff of hundreds working days. It’s not even close. As I already established, you’re off by at least 2 orders of magnitude.

It’s why you can use the library, but it isn’t an option if all 10,000 people in a village needed to use it at the same time.

If you cannot support a network for 10k people in a small place, it’s a failure of your competency, not physics. A “library” need not be a single building. 10k people would be using a combination of libraries and campuses, in the unlikely event that you manage to find 10k people with the will power to boycott. You are well in the realm of pure fantasy at this point because Americans would have no hope of escaping their own intolerance for inconvenience on that scale. You simply will not find 10k people in any given city with the will power to boycott anything at all, much less something that serves as a daily convenience. But if you do, you’re limited only by your competence.

Which is beside the point that families with children living at the library isn’t an option. Schools communicate through the Internet.

There is nothing that stops students from using libraries and gov buildings. No one needs to “live” at a library.

[–] freedomPusher@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (12 children)

You admitted that everyone using the library would increase costs to the library.

Your math and memory are both failing you. I said: “They lose my subscription fee but the library does not have to pay the difference in excess of their costs.”

That’s the same for everyone. If 1000 people cancel their $40/month subscriptions and go to the library, the library costs do not increase by $40,000/month to offset the loss, even if you forgot that library consumption per person is less than always-online domestic usage per person.

W.r.t your memory failure, I said I alone do not increase the library costs. Conflating /myself/ with /everyone/ neglects the math above.

You don’t understand how the Internet works.

The ability for intermediary networks to interfere with Internet traffic isn’t bogus. That is why the FSF has and is fighting for it.

FSF is not in the slightest worried about Lemmy being throttled below 56k. If they were, it would indicate inability to understand how business works. FSF is fighting for reasons you don’t understand if you think the concern is throttling Lemmy below analog modem speeds.

Companies do not act as idealized politically neutral agents. For example right wing media has distorted news reporting because it is what the owner wants despite the loss in profit from alienating part of their customers.

You should really avoid analogies.

A tier 1 network can now restrict content both for profit (a competitor pays the tier 1’s to shut down the competition) or simply because the owner wants it despite the lost profits.

Tier 1 is too far up the supply chain to have the effect that you think it does. The netneutrality battle matters most to consumers on the last mile of transmission lines which determines the contracts. Worrying about tier 1 is like worrying about what is happening in Guatamala or El Salvador when you buy coffee on the world market, while ignoring the local market. But in any case, if your flawed understanding of how the Internet works leaves you fixated on tier 1 and you want to focus on that, boycotting is still the best move if you have the will power to walk. Boycotting the retail end of the transaction also boycotts tier 1, even if you hypthetically watch Netflix all day at the library instead of at home because the consolidation still yields less oversold unused bandwidth, less fat, and less revenue for the industry.

Your claim that your littering causes absolutely no social cost is absurd.

Yet you fail to support your claim that my use of the library has driven up the library’s cost for their flat rate contract. Your absurd litter analogy failed you because you failed to realise that consolidation of work reduces the work, reduces the infrastructure needed, and reduces the revenue it brings.

[–] freedomPusher@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (14 children)

Your suggestion to don’t use the Internet was refuted at the very start when I explained that some government services, in particular schools, require internet for communication.

Your attempt failed when you failed to realise the reduction in revenue. They lose my subscription fee but the library does not have to pay the difference in excess of their costs.

Lemmy isn’t throttled because no one is paying them to do so.

Then your claim was bogus to begin with. I addressed the /potential/ scenario that you suggested; I never claimed that your suggestion was reality, just that it was flawed.

They can now legally throttle it below 56k. Physics has absolutely nothing to do with it.

It’s not the law the prevents the throttling. It’s the marketplace. The physical limit is low enough that it is the min tolerance the market will accept. Physical limits and marketplace limits are relevant, but legal rights to throttle are irrelevant when the dialup market won’t accept less than physical limits.

Because up until now you argued the opposite.

I never claimed a boycott is not sacrificial. I have advocated for boycotting, but that does not mean it’s not a sacrifice. Hence why I mentioned will power in the OP. Boycotts have consequences, which I accept.

Irrelevant to your original argument that there was no effect.

Your analogy has failed you. Your litter analogy supports the reality contrary to your thesis. Revenue is reduced when people consolidate their consumption with fewer flat-rate subscriptions. Just as litter cleanup has reduced costs in concentrations that need less infrastructure.

[–] freedomPusher@sopuli.xyz 0 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Your logic is off-target, as this is caused by “management”, not the individual.

It is management that I was referring to. That should be obvious. The incompetence belongs to whoever makes the incompetent decision, which in this case would be high in upper management.

It’s fair to assume in this case USPS is not that incompetently wasteful.

No. It isn’t.

The USPS is being intentionally mismanaged as a step towards dismantling the pillars of US government.

A safe assumption need not be an accurate assumption. It’s about consequences. Incompetence has consequences -- and rightfully so. IOW, when the assumption is wrong, it does not obviate the purpose of my action. Therefore the assumption is safe.

[–] freedomPusher@sopuli.xyz 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

That would not make economic sense. Why would they hand-enter grandma’s chicken scratch hand-written return address when it is not needed for outbound routing? Anyone wasting money like that is not competent for their job.

Just finding the return address takes time in itself. It could be on the top left, or it could be a one-liner just above the destination address, or it could be on the backside, or not even supplied. They should only be looking for it when it is needed.

It’s fair to assume in this case USPS is not that incompetently wasteful. But if they are, then that incompetence is the problem (not how we choose to address our envelopes).

[–] freedomPusher@sopuli.xyz 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (4 children)

For return service, indeed. In that very rare event, they would have to hand enter it just as they do for hand-written addresses.

Your sympathy is backwards though. Postal workers’s job security is under threat currently as people move away from postal service. Denmark eliminates postal service for the whole country this year.

(update) Also, other countries are downgrading the postal service and cutting staff in the drive toward digital transformation.

view more: next ›