" 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.

Yeah, it all went up in smoke.

> "Close, but no cigar."

You're Havana laugh

Something of a rum deal?

He showed her his heels

You Castro be joking

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...

We regularly get phone calls which start "I've just sent you an email"......

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.

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.

"We've emailed you a code to login. This expires in 30 minutes."

"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.

Thankfully mine isn't everyday, but at least once a week I get to explain email to someone. Normally the same someone...

"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 dunno. You can't fix stupid.

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!)

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.

Even if I happen to see and reply to an email within a few minutes of it coming in, it gets intentionally delayed by an hour or so on the way out so as not to turn into a conversation!

Every day I wish for the sweet release of death to come and cover me whenever I have to deal with some dickhead user …

Might I suggest wishing for the sweet release of death to cover the user?

Well to be fair @wolfetone didn't specify whose death...

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.

On the sadly-deceased blog Shelley the Republican, they assured readers that Linux was 'commie', here we have proof!

Yes, it was a spoof - I think, though lots of rednecks did take it as gospel.

Somehow rednecks fail to understand red is the color of communism in other countries. And they all vote red.

Don't Fidel with those servers.

> ... on that fabled isle ...

No, really, it's not; I've been there.

> "Communists love Linux over there,"

Don't know about that, but Cubans surely do love stuff that is (a) free, and (b) not American-owned.

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.

That's easy for you to say but you aren't an American living under constant threat of Cuban invasion for the last 60 odd years.

And the real joke is that Castro wasn't communist until the USA blockaded Cuba for the overthrow of their buddy Batista, who richly deserved his fate.

A rum old tale. Hopefully heel have learnt his lesson.

My god, I'd almost forgotten about the Cuban Boys' Hamster song and this article a just reminded me of it.

I'm not linking to a video as I'm less evil than the Vulture who penned this piece...

Yes, from orbit -->

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.

> Email usually does arrive within moments.

Not so much from (or to) Cuba.

If your email is on Google or Microsoft or a giant service provider that trusts the bank's service provider. Otherwise you're never getting it