Tag: Imported Post

Originally posted somewhere else (ex. a blog I don’t use anymore, or a social networking site) and moved here sometime later. Usually keeping the original posting date.

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Have you ever abandoned an email address? Did you make sure everyone switched to your new one? If your old provider has reissued the address to someone new, your old contacts could still be sending mail to someone else with your personal information.

This shouldn’t be a surprise, but InformationWeek reports that Yahoo! users who’ve picked up recycled addresses are getting important mail meant for the previous owner of the email address.

It started off with some stuff from catalogs and clothing companies and I thought, ‘That’s fine, I’ll just unsubscribe.’…But then I started getting emails with court information, airline confirmations, a funeral announcement…

Update: Yahoo! is introducing a “not my email” button to report mistaken deliveries.

Well, that’s an interesting approach to the misdirected email problem. This might even be useful as a general solution beyond recycled addresses. I once ended up receiving someone else’s Sears receipt and promotions, I assume because of a sales clerk’s typo.

But I find myself wondering about the potential for backscatter, collateral loss of mail, and just how people will actually use it in relation to the report spam button.

And that’s just with the honest people who get the reused mailbox!

Update 2: For commercial email especially, XKCD points out the importance of actually verifying that the email address someone gave you is theirs, and not someone else’s address written as a typo, and Word to the Wise highlights some real-world cases they’ve written about in the past.

Originally posted as two link posts on Facebook and one on LinkedIn.

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Allergic Living has advice on how to respond to a severe allergic reaction, particularly when to administer epinephrine and seek emergency medical treatment.

At first she didn’t show any symptoms and her mother gave her a dose of antihistamine; but in 20 minutes the systemic reaction began. Her father, a physician, gave her three doses of epinephrine, but it wasn’t enough to stop the rapid-fire chain of events. She began vomiting, her throat swelled to the point where she could no longer breathe and she went into cardiac arrest. She died in his arms.

Natalie’s story has spiked fears among Allergic Living’s readers, in particular parents of children and teens with food allergies. It has also raised questions about just what to do in case of an accidental allergen ingestion, so we turned to two experts for answers.

The key takeaway: you can’t always be sure a mild reaction will stay mild, because it takes time for the body to absorb the food. I was fortunate enough to survive learning that lesson, exactly one week before Natalie Giorgi’s death. All I lost was an afternoon and the $200 co-pay for the emergency room. It could have been so much worse.

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Interesting idea: The Human Body as Touchscreen Replacement. The downside to using a touchscreen over something with physical controls is that you lose that instant feedback of where the buttons are. (Skip a song on an old-school iPod while driving? Easy. Do the same on a touchscreen? That’s trickier.) Your own location sense plus knowing exactly what part of your hand (or, in another prototype, ear) you’ve touched could really improve usability for applications that are suited for it.

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Circular window with concentric circles and spokes, seen from below and to one side.

Partway down the central escalator at the San Diego Convention center, you can look down the long cylindrical skylight that makes up the roof of the lobby, rings forming the appearance of concentric circles. Years ago, a friend of mine referred to it as the Death Star Cannon shot, and it’s a popular one to take, both during Comic Con and at other events.

Looking along a long, semi-open tube in a building, with the Comic-Con banner in the center.

At this year’s Comic-Con International, I found myself looking at the windows surrounding the stairs instead. My first thought was to mix things up with the classic cannon shot, but when I got home and looked at the results, I realized: This really does resemble the windows in the Emperor’s throne room. It’s still a Death Star shot, but a different part of the station!

If you’d like to see more photos or read more about my experience at the convention, check out I Survived Comic-Con 2013.

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