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Can an email go 500 miles in 2025?

(flak.tedunangst.com)
308 points zdw | 1 comments | 04 Jul 25 16:49 UTC | HN request time: 0.207s | source
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robin_reala ◴[08 Jul 25 14:02 UTC] No.44500076[source]▶
If you’re one of today’s lucky 10,000 and haven’t heard the original 500-mile email story, you can read it at https://web.mit.edu/jemorris/humor/500-miles.

(discussed previously on HN 5 years ago – https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23775404 – and 10 years ago – https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9338708)

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hahahacorn ◴[08 Jul 25 14:13 UTC] No.44500186[source]▶
Even after reading the 2025 updated version, reading the original made me absolutely giddy at the end.

I can only imagine the euphoria of reconciling the inputs of “the things I know to be true of computers and email” and “my emails won’t send further than 500 miles”. What a great story - thanks for posting the original.

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vghaisas ◴[08 Jul 25 15:12 UTC] No.44500786[source]▶
I collected a list of fun stories of this form a while ago!

- Car allergic to vanilla ice cream: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~wkw/humour/carproblems.txt

- Can't log in when standing up: https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/3v52p...

- OpenOffice won't print on Tuesdays: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/cupsys/+bug/255161...

- The Wi-Fi only works when it's raining: https://predr.ag/blog/wifi-only-works-when-its-raining/

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1. d--b ◴[08 Jul 25 17:25 UTC] No.44502117[source]▶
I had one of these myself. WiFi wouldn’t work when my wife was using her laptop in bed. As soon as she gave it to me, it started working again. She thought it was the magic touch of the engineer, but it turned out that when she was in bed, she pulled her knees up and set the computer on her lap, while I would lay down completely and let the computer rest on my chest. Her knees blocked the WiFi signal enough to be quite noticeable.