I recently explained fax machines to my 7 y/o and looking back — what an incredibly wild concept:
public printers on the end of a *public* phone number that anyone could send anything to — any everyone just went along with it?
Zach Leatherman 4747 replies 162162 likes1414 reposts22 quotes Original on MastodonOriginal on BlueskyAlso posted to Bluesky.
47 replies
@zachleat Makes me think about old phone books and how now it'd feel really weird to just have my name and phone number in a public book. :T
"Let me tell you about open mail relays, son…"
@zachleat As with early web traffic and E-mail... a ton of "how in hell was that trusted, and not abused?" it came down to "only a very niche group of people actually had them". Once that stopped being the case...
@mattwilcox I’m tempted to say “this is why we can’t have nice things” but fax machines were pretty terrible 😅
@zachleat@fediverse.zachleat.com @mattwilcox@mstdn.social
And yet, I still run into the occasional thing where, in order to submit a form, I have to send it via fax. Hell, I still even have to send cheques, sometimes (and, now that Zelle, etc. are requiring that your registered phone number be "real" cellular numbers and not VOIP, I may be stuck going back to cheques).@ferricoxide @zachleat Cheques?! In the 21st century?!
@mattwilcox@mstdn.social @zachleat@fediverse.zachleat.com
FSA provider disputed one of my claims. Couldn't just wire them the money to get my account reactivated, I had to mail them a cheque.
Similarly, with Zelle (et. al.) deactivating accounts that don't have "real" cellphone numbers associated with them, I'm no longer able to use money-transfer apps for personal expenses. So, if non-businesses need money from me, it's gonna have to be in the form of cheque.
we still allow this for postal service junk mail for some reason (the reason is money)
a public box on the end of a public address that anyone can send physical objects to?? wild
To addresses that mirror your physical whereabouts instead of numbers that keep this information between oneself and the postal company 🤯
Having worked for an older doctor, I can tell you that fax machine spam is very real.
Why are folks still using these beasts 😅
Lemme tell you, I had to fax a referral _LAST YEAR_ to a specialist. The whole department apparently requires faxed referrals.
@zachleat We didn’t know how good we had it.
@jgarber well, wait — this was terrible 😅
I bought a receipt printer hoping someday to re-do a BERG / @genmon.fyi style Little Printer thing. With a public web interface. Still in boxes, bother.
nordprojects.co/projects/lit...I mean, this is lovely 😍
You‘d be surprised how many of those are still in active duty. Especially in Healthcare. Or in Japan.
We have E-Mail-addresses anyone can drop any BS into. We have phones anyone random person can call without previous permission or authentication. Sometimes we should be as flabbergasted about what we still have, not just the stuff we used to have.
TBF physical stuff being sent to you feels disturbing on a different level than just electronic information.
3d-printer-fax machines when
There's probably a few unsecured open endpoints connected up if you scan the web. Be the change you want to see!
oh no. [don't] imagine unsolicited dickpics on a whole other level.
- @Zach Leatherman :11ty: I found and still do find, that fax machines are quite useful. I fail to see how they were terrible.
@zachleat afaik, thats still very common in germany. If i remember correctly, i had the possability to register me for the elections last year via fax
@koratex *what*
@zachleat now do email
@janl oh no…
Those were brighter days for pranksters 😭
@zachleat the company i worked for had a thermal one that crapped out if there was too much black for too many pages
@adamarmfield thermal printers are underrated!! no separate ink required 🏆
I remember doing work experience at a stock broker when I was 15 and I sent many faxes for many transactions. Fond memories. Excellent times.
trade delays = $$$ right? look I don’t really know how it works
stonks go brrr
Part of the reason I got into programming was because I was working for my Dad in my late teens by getting invoices via fax and then manually inputting them into custom software and then sending a fax back for confirmation.
And all I could think was that there had to be a better way!
Who among us doesn't still have an efax number?
*looks around*
Goes to show what kind of trust and decorum existed back then.
Now we live in a world of owning multiple email addresses and false birthdays to try and protect ourselves… 😢
I’m curious if it’s just another example of shipping things without considering consequences at scale 😅
Most certainly.
One of the blind spots was not anticipating how things change when they’re inexpensive operations.
Remember when we paid like $0.05 per text? No bad actor would consider spamming people the way they do now with fake job offers and phishing attempts.
@zachleat It wasn’t cheap, you had to pay to send. They were mostly business to business IIRC, so not really a plaything. You could see the senders number. And, maybe crucially, you couldn’t see the recipient’s reaction, unlike social media trolling these days. However, mates would send each other “memes” or jokes with them. I remember seeing them on my dad’s office wall.
Security through obscurity used to work really well. It’s not that weird.
@zachleat take your kid to Germany to see them in use. My partner who works in public services still uses fax machines regularly 🙃
Remember junk faxes? We had to change our fax number to an unpublished one because we were using up the toner in the machine for junk mail.
Now do wet copiers (the precursor to Xerox machines)!
I have somehow not found the correct command combination to get my HP laser printer to always accept incoming calls with the fax modem. (I'm retired from a telco so my landline is free, the only calls are spammers or the electric company reporting outages, and I want it to squeal at the spammers.)
