You guys beat me to it - I was working on the list!
Btw for those wondering about reposts: reposts on HN are just fine after a year or so (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html), and reposts of classics every now and then are good because it's important for new users to learn the classics!
These kind of posts are why I check HN pretty much every day for 15+ yrs now. Hard to believe I've missed this one. Glad I caught it this time! This posts reminds me to stay humble and avoid jumping to conclusions without analysis.
IG_Semmelweiss•39m ago
I wonder when we will see a timeless classic like this on HN, but for AI.
We can then poke some fun at what AI did, what went wrong, and our incredibly illogical "debug" of AI
I never realized this was 2002 and when I first read it, how new it was.
And here we are almost 25 years later.
dbtablesorrows•11m ago
> It hadn't been altered -- it was a sendmail.cf I had written. And I was fairly certain I hadn't enabled the "FAIL_MAIL_OVER_500_MILES" option.
This is gold.
rfarley04•6m ago
Never get tired of seeing this resurface every once and a while. There needs to be a /greatest for posts like these (while still allowing people to repost them every so often)
reaperducer•5m ago
FAQ about this, which answers such questions as "Did this actually happen, or were you just spinning a yarn?"
gnabgib•1h ago
2023 (1164 points, 198 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37576633
2020 (1034 points, 136 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23775404
2015 (915 points, 140 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9338708
dang•1h ago
Btw for those wondering about reposts: reposts on HN are just fine after a year or so (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html), and reposts of classics every now and then are good because it's important for new users to learn the classics!
Can an email go 500 miles in 2025? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44466030 - July 2025 (122 comments)
Can’t send email more than 500 miles (2002) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37576633 - Sept 2023 (198 comments)
The case of the 500-mile email (2002) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29213064 - Nov 2021 (93 comments)
We can't send email more than 500 miles (2002) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23775404 - July 2020 (135 comments)
500 miles (2002) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18675375 - Dec 2018 (32 comments)
We can't send mail more than 500 miles - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17602158 - July 2018 (1 comment)
The case of the 500-mile email (2002) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14676835 - July 2017 (56 comments)
Every time we lift a pallet from the shipping room, the server times out (2006) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13347058 - Jan 2017 (82 comments)
The case of the 500-mile email - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10305377 - Sept 2015 (1 comment)
The 500-mile email (2002) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9338708 - April 2015 (139 comments)
The case of the 500-mile email - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2701063 - June 2011 (18 comments)
The case of the 500-mile email - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1293652 - April 2010 (24 comments)
The case of the 500-mile email - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=385068 - Dec 2008 (28 comments)
The case of the 500-mile email - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=123489 - Feb 2008 (7 comments)
bobjordan•1h ago
IG_Semmelweiss•39m ago
We can then poke some fun at what AI did, what went wrong, and our incredibly illogical "debug" of AI