Ask HN: What do you automate in your life and work?

Re:Ask HN: What do you automate in your life and work? by gorgoiler on Monday October 28, 2019 @12:38AM (#21374318)

I have a folder on my mail server called “Dead”. If I move an email to that folder then all subsequent emails to the same address as the first one go into “Dead/Match”. It’s driven by procmail and a script.

When used with one-off email addresses you get a behavior that’s like unsubscribing, but without having to trust any “unsubscribe” links or processes, and also without having to edit any config files (it’s all driven from iOS Mail.)

1/ book your hotel using the email address $RANDOM@yourdomain

2/ receive booking conformation and enjoy holiday

3/ when you eventually get marketing spam, file it in Dead and never be bothered again.

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Re:Ask HN: What do you automate in your life and work? by rsync on Monday October 28, 2019 @12:07PM (#21378188)

Interesting ... that is superior to my own method, which is to simply add the From: address to my blacklist file:

  :0
  * ? formail -x"From" -x"From:" -x"Sender:" \
  -x"Reply-To:" -x"Return-Path:" -x"To:" \
  | egrep -is -f /usr/home/john/.blacklist.txt
  blacklist

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Re:Ask HN: What do you automate in your life and work? by Theboda on Monday October 28, 2019 @03:03AM (#21374866)

Would you mind sharing the code you're using for that?

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Re:Ask HN: What do you automate in your life and work? by michaelbrave on Monday October 28, 2019 @10:24AM (#21377271)

I've been half tempted to build an email client just to have similar functionality to that.

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Re:Ask HN: What do you automate in your life and work? by michaelfavia on Monday October 28, 2019 @09:05AM (#21376544)

Until you book again at that hotel chain or third party agent like Priceline and never receive another email again right? I like the premise but the details seem like they would cause more trouble than the solution solves.

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Re:Ask HN: What do you automate in your life and work? by davchana on Wednesday October 30, 2019 @10:34PM (#21405203)

Same thing happened with me twice.

Long time ago I setup workflowy.com to send me emails of daily changes; gmail filter to mark as read, apply label, archive & forward to Trello board. So twice I forgot the password, asked password reset link; & it is not coming to my inbox; because that filter was auto reading & archiving it.

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Re:Ask HN: What do you automate in your life and work? by gorgoiler on Tuesday October 29, 2019 @02:24AM (#21384654)

This would be true, but in practice I sign up with a brand new email address each time.

I am certainly missing out on loyalty / reward points, but I don’t travel often enough for it to matter.

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