
"Of course the real lesson should have been learned by Cuban authorities – they're the ones in the wrong in this story."
Close, but no cigar.
As the working week opens, The Register likes to help readers focus by offering a fresh edition of Who, Me, the weekly reader-contributed column in which readers share stories of the times they got it wrong. This week, meet a reader who called himself "The Cuban Boy" and shared his story of graduating from a computer science …
Section 4.5.4.1 of the SMTP RFC 5321 states: "Retries continue until the message is transmitted or the sender gives up; the give-up time generally needs to be at least 4-5 days." https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc5321
I so wish users would stop confusing email with instand messaging.
Bart...
I was an early adopter of a .uk domain for my company's email address. I quickly found out that many corporate mail systems and anti-spam services assumed that .uk addresses were spam and spent a lot of my time on the "I've just sent you an email, could you check your spam box" phone calls. I gave up in the end and used my btinternet personal mail address until I managed to find a sort-of-suitable .co.uk address.
I receive contact messages from a website emailed to me by the admin of the site's server. As the reply-to address is that given by the enquirer I can just reply. At the weekend I had a reply bounded with a message which said, translated into English, you'll have to play guessing games to try to work out what went wrong. The guesses are either that outlook.com is not a domain they recognise, they'll only accept emails that reply to an address previously used for an outgoing email or that the different from/reply-to addresses confuse it in which case it's either going to be even more puzzled by an email from my own domain or there's nothing much I can do about it.. Either way my view is that if the enquirer wants to use an Ionos hosted email system it's her problem.
...Honestly, I was always under the impression that "example.countrycode" and "example.co.countrycode" were intended to be treated as interchangeable (with .co as the "preferred" standard), in the same sense as how email addresses and domain names are designed to be all lowercase, yet any permutation of capitalization still works and is just internally converted to the all-lowercase version...
Each TLD makes its own decisions as to how to organize its own namespace. That's kind of the whole philosophy of DNS.
In particular, .co., .ac., and any other peers there might be, are .uk'isms. Try emailing to .co.anything-but-uk and you'll find how un-interchangable that is in general.
I often used to get phone calls which start "I've just sent you an email" or mail. And 99% of them were from scammers mostly selling car extended warranties.
Now I mostly don't answer any phone call that only lists a number. Unless I realize I've had several from the same phone number.
I got an email yesterday saying they had left me voice message....
(my work .sig says "please call via Teams" - I have patchy cellphone reception)
----
But in a previous life I was opening an email when I detected a shadow over my desk: it was the PM who had just sent the email, wanting to know if I had read it, and just in case I hadn't, he had a print-out of it in his hand........ twat.
Got one the other day with a 5-minute expiration. Idiots. What's the threat model here? Email is already generally insecure because of weak passwords, SIM-swapping, etc. If you're going to use it as an authenticator, you're not significantly increasing risk by letting that single-use token expire in, say, a day rather than whatever random short interval you've pulled out of your ass.
"I so wish users would stop confusing email with instand messaging."
I agree with you. However ...
About a billion years ago (in Internet years, say roughly late 1989) I talked a guy through compiling, installing and setting up IRC client and server software. We used email as a close to real-time communications method during this process. He was in New Zealand, I was in California. When we were nearly done, and using IRC to wrap things up, he commented that email was just about as useful as IRC in some ways ... and more useful in others. Nothing much has changed.
Apples and oranges.
"I so wish users would stop confusing email with instand messaging."
Every day I wish for the sweet release of death to come and cover me whenever I have to deal with some dickhead user who can't understand why the person next to them hasn't had the email they sent 2 minutes ago.
Every. Fucking. Day. Except Saturday and Sunday because thats the only point in the week where I don't deal with them.
"Now, can you repeat what I told you about this last week?" If they can have them make the effort to repeat it as exactly as possible. If they can't, you have the excuse to give them the explanation and make them repeat it back to you and to make it clear that you'll ask them to repeat it next time. The effort they have to make will help them to retain it.
I despair at the regression my mum is undergoing since getting covid 2yrs ago.
After 20yrs of being online, understanding the basics of computers and so forth... She now can't tell the difference between email and various messaging services.
Last year, she had some scammer message her through facebook via a compromised account of a friend... She mentioned to me that she'd not heard from him in ages and that he was 'very chatty' which was unusual to me.
After taking a look at the messages... I spotted all of the signs of the build up to the scam and told her so, I said to email him or call him to let him know his account had been hacked.
She messaged him... through facebook... to the scammer to tell him about the scammer.
Cue facepalm emoji.
I had her come to live with me 18 months ago as she's now in her late 70's and needs some extra help... at least 5 times a week, I have to deal with some ultra simple task that she's no longer capable of understanding... I can't tell if it's cognitive decline due to age, covid or early onset dementia... and she point blank refuses to see anyone about it to investigate. Which makes my life 10 times harder and more stressful than it needs to be.
I live in constant fear that she's going to be so utterly oblivious to scammers that will rob her blind... she blindly believes everything she reads on facebook... spends countless hrs each day glued to her phone and has shown me dozens of AI generated (and obviously fake) images that she thinks are real and show amazing and impossible things. I had to reset her phone to factory because she'd installed and given permissions to so much shit that her txts were utterly broken and she couldn't receive anything via text message anymore after giving some facebook/meta app permission to take over control of everything... and removing it and resetting defaults was the only way to fix it. She then accuses me of deleting all of her contacts because she can't tell the difference between a contact and an instant message anymore either.
Then there's the inability to see anything right under her nose on a screen... So when she asks me how to do something and I say 'click on the button marked XXXXXXX' she spends minutes looking for the big brightly coloured button in the middle of the screen and complaining that she can't see it even as I'm pointing right at it... and then claims it wasn't obvious to her.
Sorry for the rant... it's frustrating dealing with a parental unit who refuses to believe that they could ever be wrong about anything and who's default response to anything is denial.
Sorry to hear that you're going through this. Regardless of what the reason is for you mother's cognitive decline, it's not fun seeing someone you care about deeply deteriorate over time.
I would urge you (and anyone else reading this) to arrange for powers of attorney for your parents and other loved ones BEFORE you end up in a situation when they are no longer competent to fend for themselves or look out for their own interests. I don't know if this document has a particular name in English, but in my language there's a specific form of PoA that you can issue that allows named relatives, family members or other appointed guardians to step in and help a person make decisions if they are no longer able to take care of themselves. This will allow you to step in and help your mother when she can no longer make the appropriate decisions for herself.
To be brought up, discussed and executed with the tenderest care and understanding for your mother's wishes, of course.
Did this for my parents a few years back. Even accounting for the very helpful bank staff and very good staff at UK Gov Pensions, not to mention a very helpful local council, there's still a lot of red tape to wade through, and once you get sufficiently advanced in years just getting out of bed for a few hours is as much as you can bear, and even worse for dementia and Alzheimer's. So yes, definitely get PoA. There's two types in the UK, one for finances and other for medical. See a decent solicitor and get it done. And bear in mind PoA is cooperative between you and parents until the day comes when they really can't manage, and then solicitor has to go to court to get parent on the protection register, when responsibilities change somewhat.
Lasting Power of Attorney
You don't need a solicitor, just go to https://www.gov.uk/power-of-attorney
They check that the 'donor' is absolutely happy for this to go ahead.
I set them (financial and medical) up for my father many years ago.
He died suddenly and so I never had to enact them, but it seems fairly simple.
Also have the discussion about "Do not resuscitate" or any other "living will" type issues. That can then be placed on your medical records by your Doctor. (Although, they did try it with my father until I reminded them!)
> "Do not resuscitate" or any other "living will" type issues. That can then be placed on your medical records by your Doctor.
Recommend ensuring the local hospital also has a copy on their records.
For practical benefit a copy needs to be in full sight and signposted so that when the paramedic gains entry (front door, window etc. - with or without fire brigade assistance) it is the first thing they see.
Without it, they are required to attempt CPR on home deaths.
Having the form so obvious, means the first paramedic can stand down the second paramedic (to assist CPR), ambulance (to take the person to hospital), police (home deaths are ‘suspious’) - all of whom will be on route, so that they can be rerouted to other incidents (where hopefully their skills can be of benefit). Additionally, all these people aren’t subjected to the emotional trauma from having to perform CPR on someone who obviously either is most likely already dead or isn’t going to survive the recovery. The first paramedic can then simply perform a simple ECG to confirm heart has flatlined, leaving the deceased at peace and in a condition that doesn’t warrant a closed coffin.
My daughter is a nurse, and the number of elderly patients they have to try and save is staggering - a good number don't survive the trauma of the recovery procedure. She's told her grandmother (my MIL) to get a DNR, but grandma took it poorly initially - I think she has seen sense since though. Sir Pterry's Choosing To Die should be mandatory viewing for all families who care about their elders' dignity.
Same from my wife nurse of decades. CPR on a person of advanced years is often pointless. Even if you do get them back they often have broken ribs as a result due to their age and the vast majority will pass away within a few days anyway no matter what.
DNR is not an excuse to do nothing it's about being realistic about dying.
There's two types in the UK, one for finances and other for medical.
Advice I agree with is: have "must be two" for finances and "any one" for medical. That way you're protecting financial stuff from rash rushed decisions where finances never need to be rushed that fast, but allowing medical decisions to be done quickly where such decisions sometimes do need to be done with urgency.
You don't need a solicitor, I've generated PoAs for most of the extended family and lots of family friends with no issues, saves a lot of money.
Also had no problems enacting the ones for my dad, most organisations granted me straight access to his accounts as soon as I showed it to them. I didn't need to go to court to do anything.
Also I changed my parent's ISP to one that allowed me to block social media apps, installed a call blocker on their phones, and used OpenDNS. You can't stop everything and it's a constant game of catch up, but so far they've not lost too much! Only got scammed at the front door so far, nothing I could do to stop that as I wasn't there. I did investigate various family control apps but at the time none were reliable, perhaps that has changed, advice welcome.
Dementia is shit for all involved, sorry to all those who are dealing with it.
You don't need a solicitor, I've generated PoAs for most of the extended family and lots of family friends with no issues, saves a lot of money.
Yes, though if you have other legal paperwork to take care of, you can do it all at the same time if you have a decent lawyer. When my now-wife and I started cohabitating, we scheduled a visit with a lawyer friend and did powers of attorney for financial and medical for each other, a childcare power of attorney so I could take care of her daughter, wills, advance directives, and so on. An afternoon well spent.
I would urge you (and anyone else reading this) to arrange for powers of attorney for your parents and other loved ones BEFORE you end up in a situation
This 1000 times!
And not just for your parents, a friend in the UK was recently hospitalised as she was in no state to look after herself and the doctor was hopeless. Her parents tried to intervene, but no solicitor would help as there was no power of attorney setup.
Thanks for the suggestion, but my dad had parkinsons and lewy body dementia. I gace up work for 7yrs to help my mum care for him and know exactly how bad it can get. The thought of having to go through it again and lose another 7yrs or so of my life... terrifies me. So, whilst it was too late to do anything about POA for him, we got it sorted for my mum about 10yrs ago. both me and my sister have POA if needed.
It's worth doing for parents... don't leave it too late.
Hopefully a problem shared is a problem solved for you. It's heartbreaking to watch people lose themselves due to illness or ageing, but it's very common.
I write from the other side of the coin - I'm in my seventh decade and I'm petrified of losing my remaining marbles such that I can't do what I like to do now.
One solution to both problems is a Power Of Aattorney (If you're in the UK, at least) where you can take over financial and medical issues for her. I know it's easier said than done, but having the argument now may help in the long run. There is also nothing stopping you ringing her doctor (or going in to speak to them) with your concerns.
Best of luck to you both.
This post has been deleted by its author
...
I totally agree with all of the suggestions, my parents and my... second degree cousin(? whatever. ) have at least a document about medical treatments. Those are placed in a certain desk drawer, us kids know about them and these contain much of what was suggested (like us making decisions about treatment, and also about lines they do not want to cross. Ever. Come back as a ghost to haunt you.).
...
Dementia (any form) is tough. Especially for the relatives. It is, excuse my French, really fucked up. There are glimpses, and, as one of my cousins remarked about my grandma (who had dementia) "she [could] be happy like a little girl", Embrace these moments.
Good luck.
As someone who used to work at the backend, we tended to look at our email 3 times a day. Morning, noon and half an hour before we went home.
People who send emails - often assume you are just doing emails and can respond as soon as you get it.
Working with another team, we would expect 24 hour+ response time, but sometimes we would send an email and then an instant message saying "FYI there is an incident brewing, you might want to look at the email before your manager comes round to speak to you about it" That way they got brownie points for being on the ball (or so they could quickly do what they had forgotten!)
That is what the RFC says, but when they talk about transmitting a mail, they're talking about an MTA (Mail Transfer Agent) talking to another MTA, and the issue you then have is what constitutes an acknowledgement that a mail has been received.
Generally, this means that the sending MTA has engaged with a receiving MTA, and has successfully completed all the elements of a mail transfer, including the final termination. If that has been successful, then the sending MTA will stop retrying, because as far as it is concerned, the mail has been delivered to the next-hop agent.
The retransmission specified in the RFC is there ro allow for a receiving MTA to be off-air for a while, something that used to happen a lot more than it does now.
This story appears to hinge around a locally run MTA that had received mails, but had not sent them on so that the MDA (Mail Delivery agent) can show them to the recipient.
It is quite normal for there to be several MTAs in an organization, with one sending and receiving email to/from the Internet (or another mail network), and one (or more) handling all of the intermal email. Working in collaboration, they route the mail appropriately. So the external facing one could have received the mail, but not passed them on to the internal one.
Sometimes, it's instructive to turn on the view of the SMTP headers in an email just to see how many MTAs are involved between you and the sender! (Hint. It's normally a lot more than you would expect.)
Tough if your bank, building society, trading platform etc. uses email for authentication. When my ex-ISP saved money by drastically overloading their servers I was locked out of many vital organisations that assumed email would always arrive within 15 minutes.
I had email in the late 80s via dialup UUCP. My home machine (an AT&T 3B1) had links to two or three friends' machines, and some of those had links to the wider world. They had cron jobs to call each other a few times a day to exchange any accumulated messages.
Email routinely took days to arrive, and it was fun looking through the Received: headers to see the (sometimes circuitous) route it had taken.
Not to mention the fun (TM) with UUCP-style bang paths and the .UUCP pseudo-domain.
When someone gave you their email address, it was wise to send a test message. (From that memory I infer that there was reason to suspect that things might not work, but I no longer recall why, beyond the obvious spelling errors.)
"And they all vote red."
To be fair, Trump, their Glorious Leader, claims to be best buds with a couple of communist dictators ... and admits to wanting to be a dictator himself.
Tailgunner Joe is now spinning furiously ... Who would have ever thought that a commie lover would be leading the Republican party?
Can't really blame them for (b). We (the US) have a lot to answer for in Central and South America (and elsewhere). IMHO, we should have, when the Russkies told Cuba "Good luck, you're on your own", extended the hand of friendship and offered to let bygones be bygones. Which may or may not have worked, but would at least have given both of us the opportunity to act like adults. At least until The Donald took office.
Yeah, exactly. And when the USSR fell, the US should certainly have done more than stick out its tongue and say "haha, sucks to be you! communism doesn't work after all!"
Like you say, we should have been the adults, let bygones be bygones, and extended food shipments and other assistance.
The ensuing crime, economic and other chaos pretty much ensured someone like Putin would bubble up to power. And here we are.
For the record, I do not know of any Americans who have felt like they have been living under constant threat of a Cuban invasion ... except folks in Miami, perhaps. But that's OK, because they voted in a guy who promises to keep all the Hispanic immigrants out of America.
Wait ... They did WHAT? WTF? Seriously, what the fuck?
These Republicans are crazy ...
But Cuban-American folks in Miami are very careful to make sure none of those immigrants from Latin America ever get in because that would undermine their traditional American way of life.
And they have to vote Trump because all Democrats are Maoists and if a Democrat was ever elected everyone in America would be sent to work in salt mines where they would have their guns and pickup trucks removed
I have a strong feeling of Poe's Law with this one.
The real problem with US-Cuba relations — and some administrations have tried to ease things a bit — is that Florida has a bunch of Electoral College votes, is a swing state, and has a significant bloc of anti-Cuba voters. Said voters apparently are too blinded by ideology to realize that the best attack on the Castro regime would be to flood the island with US tourism dollars.
Email usually does arrive within moments.
So we all tend to expect it to. And as noted 2FA and various other confirmations tend to send a link or code that expires quite soon - and which we want or need to use straight away, anyway.
So if the email isn't behaving as we'd like they request another code, then when the original one does arrive they use that, but it no longer works because either it's expired or there's a new one- which hasn't arrived yet.So we end up in expired code Hell.
I have found that email between California and Cuba takes about as long as email between California and the rest of the Caribbean ... but then, nobody I know is fomenting revolution.
Surprisingly, the usually suspect Wiki has a rather decent article on Cuban Internet access.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_Cuba
It's complicated, primarily because of the fatheads in power at all possible bottleneck points.
As Granpa once told me, there is a reason there are castles all along the Rhine.
I came over to the US to work in mid-1984 in a time when the Internet didn't exist, (snail) mail service was slow** and international telephone calls 'rather expensive'. My wife was about 7 months pregnant with our first child so I returned for the birth, got back here, she spent her maternity leave here and then I endured some quite long periods -- most of the next 2 years or so -- with very sporadic communications. It wasn't a fun time at all for me but "needs must".
Working away from home when you have a family sucks but lots of people do it. It might stress a marriage but it shouldn't break a decent one. (We've been married for give or take 50 years, not atypical among our age group.)
(**BTW -- Back then the USPS's idea of "Air Mail" was to truck mail from California to New York and then fly it to the UK. Seriously. It used to take a week or more. I discovered this when there was a strike on the East Coast which forced the USPS to load the mail onto planes at LAX for Europe. It reduced the delivery time to 36-48 hours.....)
"I came over to the US to work in mid-1984 in a time when the Internet didn't exist"
The TCP/IP version of the Internet went live on January 1st, 1983. The NCP version went live in late 1969. Very soon after, we were using it for UUCP email between the US and GB, and the rest of Europe a trifle later. UUCP itself was released in 1968, but was Bell Labs only until they included it with V7 UNIX.
If you're referring to the age of the Internet I think you are, one of my special quirks is that the difference between my age in seconds and a standard Unix timestamp is < 86,400. It has been a long annoyance, though, that when I see those dates crop up on technical bits, I often end up unclear on whether it's because that's my birth date, or because a timestamp got cleared or defaulted to zero.
whether the unfortunate discarded signora was more interesting than a dozen linux servers. :)
A misspent youth.
Seems a bit fishy that the expat spouse didn't write a letter (snail mail) or even telephone after his emails went unanswered. A bit odd that if the mail wasn't being delivered to the hospital server the originating MTA or any destination backup MXer should have timed out after 5 days (normally) and bounced the mail. I can only imagine /var/mail was full but /var/spool/mqueue wasn't so sendmail was accepting mail but local delivery was broken.
Back then correctly configured email rarely lost email - it either was delivered or bounced.