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A comment on We can't send email more than 500 miles (2002).

Re:We can't send email more than 500 miles (2002) by cbhl on Wednesday July 08, 2020 @08:02PM (#23775628)
Previously:

2018: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18675375

2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9338708

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Re:We can't send email more than 500 miles (2002) by dang on Thursday July 09, 2020 @12:06AM (#23776848)
It's better to link to just the past submissions with interesting discussions. Those appear to be:

2008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=123489

2008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=385068

2010 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1293652

2011 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2701063

2015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9338708

2017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14676835

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Re:We can't send email more than 500 miles (2002) by divbzero on Thursday July 09, 2020 @02:53AM (#23777653)
I love that after all these years there are still people discovering this classic for the first time.
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Re:We can't send email more than 500 miles (2002) by iso1631 on Thursday July 09, 2020 @05:10AM (#23778315)
That's a great non-cynical non-humbuggy view to have

I see something like this and have to consciously think of https://xkcd.com/1053/

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Re:We can't send email more than 500 miles (2002) by bibinou on Thursday July 09, 2020 @06:38AM (#23778734)
thanks, I was looking for this comic for some unrelated reason.
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Re:We can't send email more than 500 miles (2002) by savrajsingh on Wednesday July 08, 2020 @09:06PM (#23776002)
Obvious feature request for HN: page that lists most reposted stories / links. :)
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Re:We can't send email more than 500 miles (2002) by wolfgang42 on Thursday July 09, 2020 @01:02AM (#23777094)
That would be the ‘past’ link, though it doesn’t turn anything up in this case as the title on this post is different. (The usual title is “The case of the 500-mile email,” but this copy is missing the subject line for some reason so the submitter used a representative phrase instead.)
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Re:We can't send email more than 500 miles (2002) by tempestn on Wednesday July 08, 2020 @09:44PM (#23776190)
Ha, I was just thinking if one wanted to farm karma they could just set up a cron to post this monthly. Seems to be a perennial favorite!
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Re:We can't send email more than 500 miles (2002) by akeruu on Wednesday July 08, 2020 @08:58PM (#23775968)
Yes, this story gets posted a lot, and many of us might know it, but at the same time, I like to think about the ones that didn't. They will learn something new today. XKCD said it better than I could: https://xkcd.com/1053/
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Re:We can't send email more than 500 miles (2002) by dredmorbius on Wednesday July 08, 2020 @10:21PM (#23776378)
Genuine perennial favs are worth repeating every so often --- a year or two's interval seems reasonable, and is vouched by HN.

A marker of aging for me was seeing, a decade or two after I'd first read them in the local paper as a callow youth, repeats of previous features, by topic if not the actual text. Eventually the thought occurred to me that perhaps the versions I'd remembered were themselves not original.

People tell, and repeat, and embellish, stories. Sometimes because the young'uns and whippersnappers and new arrivals haven't heard them yet. Sometimes because they're just damned good stories and we enjoy the retelling.

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Re:We can't send email more than 500 miles (2002) by divbzero on Thursday July 09, 2020 @02:55AM (#23777661)
Yes, I’ll continue upvoting this classic when it pops up in the years ahead.
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Re:We can't send email more than 500 miles (2002) by ElFitz on Thursday July 09, 2020 @04:14AM (#23778039)
I did. And it was not only informative but also hilarious.
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Re:We can't send email more than 500 miles (2002) by frandroid on Wednesday July 08, 2020 @10:44PM (#23776475)
One of the most endearing xkcd strips. A bit lightbulb moment when I figured this out in my life.
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Re:We can't send email more than 500 miles (2002) by grzm on Wednesday July 08, 2020 @08:15PM (#23775714)
Generally people submit links to past submissions that have comments that maybe of interest.
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Re:We can't send email more than 500 miles (2002) by hombre_fatal on Wednesday July 08, 2020 @08:32PM (#23775805)
The reason people share links from the past isn't some passive aggressive "UGH reposts amirite?!" like what you appear to be doing -- it's because past discussion on a fun read has lots of fun morsels of comments, and it's fun to revisit them alongside today's discussion.

HN doesn't have a rule that there should only be one canonical submission for every individual link or topic. That you thought your comment would contribute anything leads me to believe that you aren't aware of that.

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Re:We can't send email more than 500 miles (2002) by anamexis on Wednesday July 08, 2020 @08:53PM (#23775935)
I am well aware of HN policy regarding reposts. I just found it amusing that this one has so many.
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Re:We can't send email more than 500 miles (2002) by hombre_fatal on Thursday July 09, 2020 @12:34AM (#23776967)
Maybe next time just link to the search query. Most people familiar with forums are well aware that some topics come up more often than others.
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Re:We can't send email more than 500 miles (2002) by keithnz on Wednesday July 08, 2020 @09:16PM (#23776065)
its pretty common for previous threads to be posted in the current thread
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Re:We can't send email more than 500 miles (2002) by hombre_fatal on Thursday July 09, 2020 @12:33AM (#23776957)
Check again. We tend to enumerate previous threads that got traction and have past discussion. It's nice to go back to read those.

But most of what this person linked had 0 to 1 comments and like 2 points. I mean, yes, I would expect an interesting story from 2002 to have at least 30 failed submissions on HN that never got traction over 18 years.

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Re:We can't send email more than 500 miles (2002) by mattmanser on Wednesday July 08, 2020 @08:09PM (#23775673)
I remember reading this one here in the 2000s, here's one from 2008:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=385068

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