We can’t send mail farther than 500 miles (2002)

Enduring HN “Classic” and Reposts

• Widely regarded as an all‑time classic; many say they reread it every time it resurfaces.
• Several people are “new” to it each repost and happily cite the “lucky 10,000” idea from XKCD.
• Some wish HN had a built‑in “greatest hits” resurfacing mechanism to avoid duplicate comment threads, while others defend the organic, chaotic repost culture as creatively valuable.
• People expect it to keep reappearing and even plan future resubmissions; some compare it to other recurring HN staples (e.g., tilapia skin burn treatment).

Lessons about Debugging and User Reports

• Many highlight the importance of not dismissing seemingly absurd user observations; the “500 miles” data turned out to be crucial.
• The statistics department is praised for gathering detailed, quantitative evidence before going to IT.
• The story is used to illustrate good debugging mindsets: look for “what’s different” and “what changed last,” avoid assumptions about how systems “should” behave.
• Several call it their favorite bug story and reference it as inspiration for curated collections of similar incidents.

Debate over Authenticity and Details

• An FAQ is linked that addresses whether the story really happened; some find its vagueness (e.g., loose date range, hand‑wavy answers) undermines credibility.
• One commenter outright claims it was fabricated for a job search, while others treat it as a real but fuzzily remembered event.
• Technical readers speculate about timeouts, propagation speeds, and how distance was inferred; the FAQ’s “ping known distances” approach is praised as clever.

Related Folklore and “Spooky” Bugs

• The thread fills with links to similar “classic” tales: the vanilla‑ice‑cream car, SR‑71 speed check, “Mel, the Real Programmer,” “magic/more magic” switch, “wrong password when standing,” mysterious Tuesday printing issues, and others.
• Several share their own bizarre bugs tied to the physical world: a mouse urinating inside a PC, building floorboards killing power supplies, media files that repeatedly crash a machine, animals affecting cables and keyboards.
• These stories are celebrated as “greybeard wizard lore” from earlier eras of computing that still shape how people think about debugging.

Tools, Protocol Nostalgia, and Changing Email

• Readers discover or rediscover the units program and poke at its behavior.
• Others reminisce about manually speaking SMTP over telnet (EHLO, MAIL FROM, etc.) and debugging sendmail, contrasting that decentralized era with today’s hyperscale, automated email infrastructure.