[00:00.000 --> 00:01.980]  He's been working on this stuff, and it's awesome.
[00:09.010 --> 00:11.250]  Excuse me for a second, we had a few minor technical problems.
[00:12.030 --> 00:15.210]  So we're running just a second behind, and I'm taller than my mic.
[00:21.540 --> 00:23.180]  Okay, so welcome to my show and tell.
[00:23.500 --> 00:28.160]  My name is CypherGhost, and I've been mailing weird things myself and with others for a couple of years.
[00:29.760 --> 00:38.180]  This presentation runs about 30 minutes or so, so if you'll hold questions, there'll be plenty of time for questions, because I have questions for you as well, and I don't want to miss out on that.
[00:39.580 --> 00:42.080]  My interest in this got started back in 88.
[00:42.460 --> 00:48.680]  I was into the BBS scene and downloaded a macro that made those tall and short barcodes that you see on all of your envelopes.
[00:48.740 --> 00:49.500]  They're called POSTNET codes.
[00:49.960 --> 00:55.340]  And the idea behind this macro for Microsoft Word was that you'd be able to spray these on, and your mail would get there faster.
[00:55.560 --> 01:00.520]  But the guy wanted like 50 bucks, and I was a poor high school student, and so I wrote my own.
[01:01.060 --> 01:10.460]  But there's not instructions on how to do that, so I had to learn how to get specifications from the post office, and they won't do it unless you're a business, and so I had to make up reasons, and basically learn social engineering along the way.
[01:11.340 --> 01:24.660]  It got a lot worse in college when I had even more time in a huge research library that included things like the Annals of Improbable Research, who ran a neat article on weird stuff they were sending, and then, of course, Wired's Return to Sender contest that they run every month.
[01:24.660 --> 01:29.040]  It's in the editorial section, and the weirdest thing they get in the mail gets a free T-shirt or something like that.
[01:30.060 --> 01:32.480]  Now, a lot of people wonder why the post office matters to them.
[01:32.980 --> 01:37.820]  It's really important to our economy because it's a universal delivery service, and it's really, really cheap.
[01:38.720 --> 01:42.200]  Nobody in here is going to take something to California for 42 cents except the post office.
[01:42.740 --> 01:52.620]  And a lot of banking, a lot of business, medical supplies, books, libraries, everybody uses the postal system, and so it's really important to us.
[01:52.820 --> 01:59.040]  It's also neat from a libertarian standpoint because it's a fiscally independent government organization, and there's not a lot of these out there.
[01:59.400 --> 02:03.280]  It is a private corporation, although all the shares are owned by the Fed.
[02:04.580 --> 02:08.000]  None of your tax dollars goes to paying for postal delivery service.
[02:08.140 --> 02:11.940]  They completely have to raise their own money, and it would be nice if a few other agencies had to do that, too.
[02:12.700 --> 02:19.560]  It's also really useful for explaining hacking techniques to managers because people are really familiar with the postal system.
[02:19.700 --> 02:28.680]  They know how to use it, and there's a lot of ways you can abuse it that are similar to techniques we might use in the computer world, but you don't have to be a computer person to understand it.
[02:30.300 --> 02:33.720]  So let's start off by looking at how a letter gets from point A to point B.
[02:34.100 --> 02:38.460]  And when you drop your letter off in the mail, one of the first things that happens is it gets oriented and canceled.
[02:39.460 --> 02:40.880]  Stamps glow under ultraviolet B.
[02:41.020 --> 02:43.240]  This is not black light, quote-unquote.
[02:43.420 --> 02:45.200]  It's a shorter wavelength, higher energy.
[02:46.260 --> 02:52.340]  But it allows the computing equipment to see which side of the envelope is the address side and also which direction to turn it.
[02:53.040 --> 02:55.900]  Now, if you're going to play with this, remember that UV will burn your retinas.
[02:56.000 --> 02:59.240]  You'll get a sunburn in your eye, and it doesn't really heal, so wear eye protection.
[03:00.300 --> 03:08.380]  Just the, like, cheap $2 safety glasses from Home Depot leave a nice shadow where it blocks pretty much all of the UV, and most sunglasses do as well.
[03:08.460 --> 03:09.400]  So please don't hurt yourself.
[03:10.700 --> 03:16.700]  So the first, the next thing that happens is they take a picture of your envelope, and then they spray an orange barcode on the back.
[03:16.820 --> 03:24.380]  And it's a fluorescent orange, and it doesn't show up very well on projectors, but it uses different space instead of tall and short in order to encode zeros and ones.
[03:25.200 --> 03:32.140]  And the reason they take a picture of your envelope is so they can run the address through an OCR system and try to figure out what the whole address is, including the ZIP Code.
[03:32.140 --> 03:43.100]  And if they can't figure it out, like if you have a doctor's handwriting, they send the images to Singapore and they have, you know, armies of people working for, I don't know, probably like 70 cents an hour typing in addresses.
[03:43.740 --> 03:47.840]  Now, you might wonder, why do we need the entire address, not just the ZIP Code?
[03:47.960 --> 03:50.560]  And the reason is, is they will take that and they'll apply forwarding.
[03:50.920 --> 03:57.060]  So let's say I'm here in New York, and I mail my friend in San Francisco a letter, but he's actually moved to Miami.
[03:57.340 --> 04:00.460]  Their computer will go, oh, we have a forwarding order for this person.
[04:00.460 --> 04:03.880]  There's no reason to truck this to California and then back again.
[04:04.040 --> 04:05.200]  We'll just send it straight to Miami.
[04:05.900 --> 04:07.200]  So they save a lot of money.
[04:07.400 --> 04:12.540]  And that's part of, I mean, even though postage rates keep going up, it's actually going down when you look at the inflation rate.
[04:12.580 --> 04:20.860]  So a lot of these automations and additional efficiencies in the postal stream have helped it remain really competitive.
[04:22.500 --> 04:25.740]  Now, after we've figured out where it's going, we apply carrier presorting.
[04:26.160 --> 04:29.800]  And the post office has this huge database of all the addresses that they deliver to.
[04:29.800 --> 04:33.920]  And this is what they use to apply those extra four digits to the end of your barcode.
[04:34.320 --> 04:37.380]  They also add two more digits called the delivery point code.
[04:37.520 --> 04:41.580]  And that's the actual stop number that the mail truck makes as it's driving down the street.
[04:42.040 --> 04:53.420]  So the computer system, after it sprays that barcode on, uses it to route the mail and sort the mail, all the way down to the point where the mailman just opens the box, grabs the next bundle and shoves it in, and doesn't have to do a lot of manual sorting.
[04:54.600 --> 05:00.540]  The ZIP+four encoding scheme, if you look at it carefully, it's broken up into different sides of the street.
[05:00.680 --> 05:02.220]  That's how we get odd and even number ranges.
[05:03.200 --> 05:07.640]  This particular street that we drew a sample of is a cul-de-sac, but it's intersected by another street.
[05:07.860 --> 05:11.120]  So it changes about halfway through where that intersection is.
[05:11.320 --> 05:13.240]  I think the mail truck takes a right-hand turn.
[05:13.780 --> 05:21.660]  And it's also interesting that whoever's at 815 is at the end of the cul-de-sac, and he has his own zip plus four code.
[05:24.560 --> 05:27.680]  And there's a lot of addresses like this, particularly post office boxes.
[05:28.800 --> 05:34.100]  But it gets interesting because you can just write the zip plus four on an envelope, and it will get delivered.
[05:37.350 --> 05:51.810]  Now, I suspect that in the future the post office will come up with this really brainiac idea that they can just hand out numbers that have nothing to do with zip, and that you'll register your physical address so that when you move you don't actually have to change your address with all your magazine subscriptions and all your junk mail.
[05:51.970 --> 05:56.830]  You can just tell the post office, hey, I'm number 528675382119, and I've changed addresses.
[05:58.630 --> 06:03.170]  Yeah, somebody suggested social security number, but businesses don't have social security numbers, and yeah, that would be a bad idea.
[06:04.770 --> 06:07.910]  Yeah, it would be neat if you could have multiple numbers as well that point to the same person.
[06:08.650 --> 06:14.130]  But anyway, this begs the question that, well, what would happen if I just put the ZIP Code, just put the barcode on an envelope and mail it?
[06:14.570 --> 06:17.590]  And the answer is, it doesn't quite work that well, but almost.
[06:18.810 --> 06:25.290]  This was going to a post office box, and we sent several other pieces of mail to the same post office box that had various addressing problems.
[06:25.430 --> 06:33.630]  And we got back this exact same stamp with the broken E and broken R and the slightly smudged upper finger and the gunk stuck in the E.
[06:33.890 --> 06:37.710]  So we know that this envelope made it all the way to the destination post office box.
[06:37.710 --> 06:45.370]  And I think what happened was that the postal clerk who was putting it in the cubicles couldn't figure out which cubicle it went in, and so he gave it the finger and sent it back.
[06:47.650 --> 06:48.150]  All right.
[06:48.350 --> 06:55.150]  But since these barcodes are just read by the computer and it doesn't think anything of it, this is our first opportunity to mess with the system.
[06:56.690 --> 07:03.310]  So I was in Baltimore, as you can see by the post office, the postmark at the top, and we sent this letter to Atlanta.
[07:03.530 --> 07:06.690]  But we used the tall and short POSTNET code for HILO Hawaii.
[07:08.370 --> 07:15.090]  And when we do these, we always send a control envelope at the same time that's perfectly addressed normally so we can judge how much delay there is in the process.
[07:15.390 --> 07:17.290]  This added two weeks to the delivery time.
[07:19.030 --> 07:26.130]  And it's also nice that they postmarked it again when they finally figured it out and blacked out the barcode so that their machine wouldn't keep sending it back to Hawaii.
[07:28.530 --> 07:38.050]  So in addition to this being an input validation issue, because so many things rely on the post office or use the post office as a benchmark, this allows you to hack other things.
[07:38.290 --> 07:42.610]  Now, I pay all my taxes electronically, so if there's any IRS agents in the office, I've never done this.
[07:42.610 --> 07:55.810]  But since your tax payment only has to be postmarked by April 15th, not necessarily received, if somebody sent their payment to the Philadelphia office but they coded it with, I don't know, one of those fishing villages in Alaska that only gets mail once a month,
[07:56.870 --> 07:58.250]  your check just got floated.
[08:00.130 --> 08:04.410]  So there's a lot of attacks like that where you can use the post office to do other things.
[08:06.050 --> 08:12.590]  So we took the strange addressing a couple more steps further and we made some other envelopes to see how good is this OCR system.
[08:13.050 --> 08:21.050]  And we've taken a number... there's a church sign generator here and we've done a couple of others where we've used a picture and the address was somewhere in the picture.
[08:21.350 --> 08:23.150]  And in every case, these have been delivered.
[08:23.330 --> 08:24.710]  We've never had one of these get lost.
[08:25.710 --> 08:30.690]  And on average, we have less than one day delay between these and the control envelope.
[08:31.790 --> 08:34.830]  So we thought, okay, well, how good is the post office?
[08:34.830 --> 08:36.170]  Let's try some CAPTCHAs.
[08:41.700 --> 08:45.300]  Ah, you laugh, but three out of four of these arrived with no delay whatsoever.
[08:47.580 --> 08:53.180]  The one in the bottom right-hand corner, which is a red and green camouflage pattern, it never arrived.
[08:53.340 --> 08:58.180]  And in general, we don't put return addresses on our experiments because we want to force them to put it through.
[08:58.280 --> 09:01.700]  We don't want to give them the, you know, the option to just give it the finger and send it back and be lazy.
[09:02.500 --> 09:04.740]  So they end up in the dead letter office and probably shredded.
[09:05.880 --> 09:07.840]  We have sent addresses that are red.
[09:07.840 --> 09:09.360]  And we have sent addresses that are green.
[09:09.580 --> 09:11.340]  And those both arrive with no problems whatsoever.
[09:11.700 --> 09:15.200]  But somehow, mixing them up in the same characters just confuses the heck out of them.
[09:17.220 --> 09:20.020]  So POSTNETs have been around for, I don't know, 25 years or so.
[09:20.140 --> 09:22.700]  And they're going to get replaced with this new thing called OneCode.
[09:23.240 --> 09:27.340]  The post office has come out with this thing called Planet, which is a sort of a serial number.
[09:27.560 --> 09:29.380]  And let's say I'm a mass mailer.
[09:29.580 --> 09:30.660]  I don't know, I'm Sears.
[09:30.760 --> 09:31.620]  I'm sending out catalogs.
[09:31.620 --> 09:33.240]  I don't know if they send catalogs anymore or not.
[09:34.480 --> 09:36.000]  Yeah, so I get lots of junk mail.
[09:36.080 --> 09:37.100]  So let's say I'm a junk mail company.
[09:37.220 --> 09:43.040]  And I can, in addition to the ZIP Code and the routing information, I can put a serial number on the bottom.
[09:43.260 --> 09:51.220]  And every time my mail passes through some sorting equipment, the post office will send me a signal and say, it says, hey, the equipment over here saw this barcode at this time.
[09:51.780 --> 09:54.760]  And so I can use that to judge how well my mail is propagating.
[09:55.420 --> 09:57.820]  And I can also use this the other direction.
[09:57.820 --> 10:04.820]  So you'll see this on a lot of Visa and American Express statements now, where your stub that you mail back with your payment has one of those codes.
[10:05.060 --> 10:07.900]  So now they can tell that you dropped your payment in the mail.
[10:08.420 --> 10:19.600]  And maybe if it gets delayed, they won't charge you a late fee, or maybe they'll use it for cash flow forecasting, since they have a pretty good idea whether you pay your balance all the time or just pay the minimum or if you pay it off completely.
[10:20.500 --> 10:26.060]  So now if you want to monkey around with them, you could send another envelope but reuse the number that was assigned to you.
[10:27.300 --> 10:30.880]  You can either do this by just slapping it on another envelope, or you can make your own one code.
[10:31.000 --> 10:37.200]  And you could mail a letter to your mom, yourself even, and their computer would go, oh, there's a payment from so-and-so.
[10:41.720 --> 10:43.520]  Okay, so I'm not the only person who's doing this.
[10:43.700 --> 10:49.260]  And one of the earlier works I saw was a book called, a book from Bloom Panics called How to Screw with the Post Office.
[10:50.000 --> 10:58.240]  And one of the questions that comes up in this is, you know, some of the stuff, there's no real way to get a legal opinion from the post office on whether you can do some of this or not.
[10:58.440 --> 11:04.660]  So you have to think of ways that you can do these experiments that don't hurt anything, and don't technically violate the law.
[11:04.920 --> 11:06.540]  And this guy came up with a really neat idea.
[11:06.860 --> 11:12.660]  He says that he went to a utility company and asked them for all the used envelopes from payments because he wanted to see what other people were doing.
[11:13.140 --> 11:14.180]  I think he dumpstered it.
[11:14.300 --> 11:17.920]  But in any case, one of the things he discovered was that if you cut a...
[11:17.920 --> 11:25.160]  take the large commemorative stamps and cut them in half, that there's enough of that ultra-violent tag in there that the post office says, oh, this has got a stamp on it.
[11:25.260 --> 11:26.100]  Cancel it and send it on.
[11:27.080 --> 11:29.520]  And so we wondered, hmm, where else would that work?
[11:29.920 --> 11:35.440]  Now, Mr. Wizard tells us that the glue in the stamp is actually what contains the tag end.
[11:35.560 --> 11:40.540]  So if you have a sheet or a pane of stamps, the little edge stuff also glows.
[11:41.440 --> 11:42.680]  So you know where this is going.
[11:42.860 --> 11:46.340]  We put a whole bunch of it on the envelope, and sure enough, it postmarked it and passed it through.
[11:49.120 --> 11:53.780]  Now, it would really, really suck to be stuck in federal prison for stealing 42 cents of stamps.
[11:54.740 --> 11:56.900]  And I'm pretty sure that would make me everybody's bitch.
[11:57.680 --> 12:01.120]  So one of the other cool things we discovered was that two-cent stamps don't glow.
[12:01.640 --> 12:05.660]  So we covered the back with two-cent stamps, and thus we paid the postage on this envelope.
[12:09.160 --> 12:10.640]  Now, there's other stuff that glows, too.
[12:11.360 --> 12:16.660]  Any of the meter marks glow, and those glow under UVA, so you can see that under a black light.
[12:17.420 --> 12:20.780]  You can also get these prepaid envelopes from the post office.
[12:20.880 --> 12:23.480]  They add, like, an extra three or four cents to cover the cost of the paper.
[12:23.680 --> 12:27.620]  And it just has that tiny little strip that's like maybe the size of my thumbnail that glows.
[12:27.780 --> 12:32.320]  So it doesn't take very much at all to trick the cancellation equipment into thinking that's an actual envelope.
[12:33.080 --> 12:35.240]  But the cancellation equipment has some other issues, too.
[12:35.780 --> 12:41.080]  Since it uses the stamp to orient the envelope, we were like, hmm, what would happen if we put it in different places?
[12:43.100 --> 12:44.480]  And there's a couple of neat ones.
[12:44.560 --> 12:46.640]  The upper right one, you can see the barcode is on the top.
[12:47.060 --> 12:49.120]  So it actually processed the envelope upside down.
[12:49.820 --> 12:51.120]  That one arrived with two...
[12:51.740 --> 12:54.980]  That one arrived, I think, a day later, and the one right below it had the same problem.
[12:55.160 --> 12:57.120]  It arrived three days later.
[12:58.160 --> 13:00.160]  The other two, I think, actually arrived on control time.
[13:00.320 --> 13:04.220]  But it's interesting that there are several positions you can put it where it can't reach and it can't cancel.
[13:05.000 --> 13:06.480]  So you can kind of mess the machine up.
[13:07.480 --> 13:12.660]  It is illegal to reuse the stamp even if it's not cancelled, so we have these in the safe, and we can demonstrate that we haven't reused them.
[13:13.220 --> 13:15.160]  So those are some of the cool things you can do with envelopes.
[13:15.220 --> 13:16.540]  But packages are fun, too.
[13:16.540 --> 13:18.560]  So we've sent a variety of fun packages.
[13:20.560 --> 13:22.860]  The happy face there is probably the most fun.
[13:22.960 --> 13:23.900]  It was a 12-inch ball.
[13:24.020 --> 13:25.420]  I think it was a Walmart promotion.
[13:26.460 --> 13:28.240]  And so we wrote on the back...
[13:28.240 --> 13:29.300]  I sent it to my parents, actually.
[13:29.600 --> 13:36.260]  And I put stamps on it and wrote their address and took it to the counter because I wasn't sure what surcharges would apply.
[13:36.580 --> 13:42.620]  And so he puts it on the scale, and he turns around his computer to type in the ZIP Code, and it rolls off the scale and goes, Wham!
[13:43.220 --> 13:44.080]  And hits the floor.
[13:44.820 --> 13:47.120]  So he picks it up and, you know, it's just a postal clerk.
[13:47.240 --> 13:49.660]  So he puts it on the scale again, turns around again, rolls off.
[13:50.040 --> 13:50.320]  Wham!
[13:51.640 --> 13:55.880]  So finally he, like, puts some pens on the scale and makes a little triangle and zeroes it and weighs it.
[13:55.980 --> 13:57.440]  And we get a stamp sticker for it.
[13:57.580 --> 13:58.300]  And all is good.
[13:58.400 --> 14:01.560]  And he looks at it and says, I'm not sure what to do with this.
[14:01.580 --> 14:02.500]  I'm going to take it in the back.
[14:02.960 --> 14:06.500]  And so he takes it in the back room, he puts it on a table, and he comes out and you hear, Wham!
[14:06.640 --> 14:06.860]  Wham!
[14:09.080 --> 14:10.900]  It got to my parents just fine.
[14:11.060 --> 14:14.880]  It took five days, I think, to make it from Atlanta to Washington, D.C.
[14:15.040 --> 14:16.480]  And it was just covered with dents.
[14:18.540 --> 14:19.680]  We're going to take questions at the end.
[14:21.200 --> 14:21.480]  No.
[14:21.680 --> 14:22.720]  It'll mess up my cadence.
[14:24.520 --> 14:25.640]  The pennies were kind of fun.
[14:25.740 --> 14:27.440]  My car tag paperwork got messed up.
[14:27.820 --> 14:30.100]  And, you know, you can just never talk to the people at the car tag office.
[14:30.940 --> 14:33.400]  And so I said, well, I'll just guess how much money I'm supposed to send.
[14:33.500 --> 14:34.520]  And we sent it in in pennies.
[14:35.040 --> 14:37.920]  But we did this with one of those flat rate priority mailboxes.
[14:41.240 --> 14:44.800]  So people often ask me, what do postal people think about your projects?
[14:44.980 --> 14:51.720]  And I'm like, well, you know, when you walk up to them with a 70 pound flat rate priority mailbox, they look at you and they go, yeah, you're really taking advantage of the system here.
[14:51.900 --> 14:54.840]  But when they ask what's in it, you tell them it's pennies for the tag office.
[14:55.120 --> 14:56.160]  They love you.
[15:00.820 --> 15:01.680]  So we've tried...
[15:01.680 --> 15:03.680]  So we've been playing around with parcels recently.
[15:03.980 --> 15:09.820]  And one of the experiments we tried was, what happens if you take a delivery confirmation sticker and reuse it?
[15:10.200 --> 15:13.240]  Now, to start with, I think delivery confirmation is really stupid.
[15:13.480 --> 15:18.940]  I mean, why should I have to pay a service fee to find out whether or not I got what I paid for?
[15:19.120 --> 15:23.380]  It's like if I went to Jiffy Lube and they said, would you like oil change confirmation today?
[15:24.740 --> 15:26.500]  So the whole thing's a racket.
[15:26.500 --> 15:29.440]  But it begs the question, if I reuse the label, what's going to happen?
[15:31.560 --> 15:35.620]  So, some thoughts were that maybe the first package would just show up when you track it online.
[15:36.000 --> 15:38.980]  And maybe if you track it online, only the second package would show up.
[15:39.740 --> 15:43.080]  And maybe if they were really smart, both packages would show up.
[15:43.800 --> 15:45.600]  But this is the post office we're talking about.
[15:45.660 --> 15:46.900]  So your package is obliterated.
[15:47.020 --> 15:47.460]  It's gone.
[15:49.000 --> 15:55.300]  Now, this is really dangerous because this leads the way into hacking pretty much any e-commerce store that uses the post office.
[15:57.040 --> 15:59.720]  A scammer could order something from eBay and receive the package.
[16:00.260 --> 16:02.520]  Then he could re-mail the package basically to anyone.
[16:02.680 --> 16:05.060]  He could mail it to himself, a recycle center, his mom, whatever.
[16:05.760 --> 16:10.020]  Wait for the package to not show up on the post office's website anymore and then complain that he never received it.
[16:10.240 --> 16:11.940]  And the seller doesn't have a lot of recourse.
[16:13.100 --> 16:14.540]  Now, this doesn't happen every time.
[16:14.600 --> 16:15.900]  So if you are a seller, you're not doomed.
[16:17.180 --> 16:22.960]  We found it to happen about 75% of the time and we're not quite sure why it's not...
[16:22.960 --> 16:24.220]  exactly the same all the time.
[16:24.640 --> 16:32.240]  It seems to happen mostly with user printed barcodes like from Stamps.com software or if you print off eBay's system or PayPal's system or the post office website.
[16:32.840 --> 16:35.340]  And we've never been able to get this to work with the green stickers.
[16:36.040 --> 16:39.700]  But in any case, track your stuff early and often and save a printout.
[16:40.840 --> 16:45.620]  So we've sent some other interesting parcels just trying to test the limits of what the postal system is.
[16:46.520 --> 16:49.420]  The smallest thing we've successfully sent is a pack of playing cards.
[16:49.580 --> 16:51.460]  The lightest thing we've ever sent is a yogurt container.
[16:52.740 --> 16:54.360]  Circles and spheres make it very well.
[16:54.660 --> 16:59.840]  We've sent a number of rubber bouncy balls and, you know, it's like 99 cent ones that are in the cage at Walmart.
[17:00.680 --> 17:02.020]  The big sphere you saw earlier.
[17:02.840 --> 17:08.440]  Another fun one is we've written an address on a sticky note and just stuck the sticky note to letters and boxes both.
[17:08.580 --> 17:09.520]  And it stays stuck.
[17:10.140 --> 17:16.180]  The post office is actually trying to make that into commercial service of some sort because they think marketers will pay money for it.
[17:17.220 --> 17:19.120]  Another fun one is unprotected CDs.
[17:19.620 --> 17:23.880]  We have about a 75% success rate sending a CD totally unprotected.
[17:24.000 --> 17:26.920]  Like we'll put the address on the label itself and stick a stamp to it.
[17:27.960 --> 17:33.520]  And then when it's received we'll pull the stamp off so that it doesn't vibrate in the drive and make a lot of noise and do an MD5 checksum.
[17:33.780 --> 17:38.520]  And 75% of the time the data can be read perfectly with no envelope, no jewel case, no nothing.
[17:39.840 --> 17:42.580]  And one of my favorites is we've done some employee honesty testing.
[17:42.920 --> 17:45.620]  We've taken really thin envelopes or glassine.
[17:46.280 --> 17:47.300]  Stamp collectors get them.
[17:47.360 --> 17:48.480]  In fact, you can get them from the post office.
[17:48.620 --> 17:49.640]  And we've put money in them.
[17:49.740 --> 17:51.860]  So you can clearly see that there's money in this envelope.
[17:52.280 --> 17:53.320]  And we've mailed it.
[17:54.140 --> 17:55.720]  And it's never been lost.
[17:55.940 --> 17:56.980]  It's never been stolen.
[17:57.200 --> 18:05.560]  But sometimes we get a white opaque USPS envelope somebody is hand addressed to our recipient and they put the money inside that and sealed it.
[18:05.560 --> 18:11.660]  So what this tells me is most postal employees are pretty honest but they think their co-workers aren't.
[18:13.360 --> 18:14.880]  How much money did you use?
[18:15.340 --> 18:16.580]  We've tried it up to $100.
[18:18.900 --> 18:20.320]  So it's gotten pretty daring.
[18:21.480 --> 18:25.500]  So while we've been playing with various packages, we saw a lot of small stuff.
[18:26.760 --> 18:30.740]  The post office specifies its maximum size limits in length and girth.
[18:30.840 --> 18:35.140]  So basically you take all six dimensions of the package, you add them together and it's got to be less than 130 inches.
[18:35.540 --> 18:38.260]  And we tried to design the weirdest thing we could send.
[18:38.480 --> 18:40.720]  And so far the best one we've come up with is a pool noodle.
[18:42.420 --> 18:43.420]  So, give a shot.
[18:49.330 --> 18:51.170]  So we have some additional tests in progress.
[18:51.490 --> 18:56.730]  We're playing around some more with color blindness tests, trying to see how it picks up different colors on different colors of paper.
[18:57.410 --> 19:02.890]  We're trying to find that specific really bright orange they use for the barcodes in the back and try to make an envelope out of it.
[19:04.310 --> 19:06.030]  We're playing with strange centers of gravity.
[19:06.210 --> 19:11.990]  Like, you know, take a 2x2x2 box and put a block of tungsten in one corner and then just AR in the rest of it.
[19:14.190 --> 19:18.690]  We've been playing around trying to send some packages like with dry ice that get lighter as they go through the postal stream.
[19:21.630 --> 19:23.150]  So do I get a refund on delivery?
[19:24.950 --> 19:28.450]  And we're also playing around with a lot of origami and recycled envelopes.
[19:28.590 --> 19:33.430]  The most recent one we've done is these aluminum foil envelopes which actually make their way through the postal stream very well.
[19:34.810 --> 19:36.970]  Shiny side out works just as well as shiny side in.
[19:39.090 --> 19:45.210]  So in the teaser, I talked about getting your own cancellation permits.
[19:45.410 --> 19:47.050]  And there's a couple types you could do.
[19:47.730 --> 19:49.090]  It's really archaic.
[19:49.210 --> 19:53.130]  There's like some old stamp collector law that allows you to apply for a permit to cancel your own mail.
[19:53.310 --> 19:57.450]  And I have a URL at the end that has like all the stuff you need to go up and get it.
[19:57.930 --> 20:01.370]  But if you want to be instantly known at your post office as a weirdo, it's a great trick to do.
[20:02.030 --> 20:10.870]  And there's also a separate system called pictorial postmarks that you've probably seen like around the holidays where occasionally advertisers will get their own postmark to put on outgoing mail.
[20:11.410 --> 20:12.530]  And you can get these.
[20:12.650 --> 20:15.170]  They're mostly for special occasions and festivals and stuff like that.
[20:15.230 --> 20:18.750]  And there's, I don't know, maybe 120 or so at any given time around the world.
[20:19.230 --> 20:23.710]  I didn't find out about hope in time to get a hope cancellation for this ZIP Code.
[20:24.010 --> 20:27.430]  But if we do another one or you've got a hacker con in your area, it's a really neat hack.
[20:29.390 --> 20:31.190]  So I've got a couple challenges for all of you.
[20:31.350 --> 20:32.650]  There are things I can't quite figure out yet.
[20:33.450 --> 20:40.770]  One of them, I'm looking for help decoding the electronic and Dysha on eStamps and the different printer on postage services.
[20:41.270 --> 20:44.630]  We've decoded a number of them and it's a huge number stream that looks like this.
[20:44.630 --> 20:54.390]  But even on sequentially printed stamps, like to the same ZIP Code from the same meter from the same amount and the same date, even the number groupings change around.
[20:54.590 --> 20:57.830]  And it seems like there's some things that match up each time.
[20:57.930 --> 21:01.590]  Like maybe, you know, like 90% of the meter numbers are in there somewhere in this one.
[21:02.230 --> 21:05.570]  But then if you print the next one, it's in different places and it doesn't appear there.
[21:05.570 --> 21:07.970]  And so we haven't really been able to find out anything.
[21:08.830 --> 21:16.570]  So if anybody works for a company that makes these, I'd be really interested in specifications because right now the post office is just not giving them to me.
[21:18.090 --> 21:20.590]  Another trick that I'm trying to do is GPS tracking.
[21:20.810 --> 21:26.470]  And I understand there's some cheap, like one-off cell phones that you can get that send a signal back saying where they're at.
[21:27.090 --> 21:32.930]  And I've dug around a little bit and I just haven't been able to find any salespeople who can, like, sell me something that works directly.
[21:32.930 --> 21:38.390]  So if you've experimented with GPS cell phone tracking, I'd love to know, like, what to buy, what service to get and stuff.
[21:38.590 --> 21:44.170]  So instead of buying delivery confirmation, we can actually track our packages and see where the heck they are.
[21:46.330 --> 21:50.470]  And I'm also trying to send a package and get it stuck in the postal system for an entire year.
[21:51.370 --> 21:56.130]  And the best idea I've come up with so far is to cut a hole in the box and put, like, an LCD display in there.
[21:56.350 --> 21:58.770]  And every night at midnight, change the address.
[22:07.850 --> 22:11.090]  Anyway, I just don't know enough yet about the electronics on how to do this.
[22:11.210 --> 22:12.090]  I know it's really simple.
[22:12.330 --> 22:14.530]  And there's, you know, Make's got the different controllers and stuff out.
[22:14.930 --> 22:17.010]  But I just haven't had time to learn how to do it yet.
[22:17.650 --> 22:27.450]  The best simple idea I've come up with is to get an e-book reader and load a 365-page PDF with a different address on each page and just use a timer to advance the page every day.
[22:28.250 --> 22:36.890]  But, yeah, if anybody would like to help out with this, we have some ideas on how to power it and some ideas on how to make a package strong enough to withstand that kind of abuse.
[22:41.160 --> 22:43.520]  So, there's a couple of ethical considerations.
[22:43.780 --> 22:45.440]  I mentioned already, don't steal from the post office.
[22:46.020 --> 22:50.760]  It really would suck if the government's spending $100,000 a year to keep you incarcerated for stealing 42 cents.
[22:51.360 --> 22:52.200]  It's just dumb.
[22:52.280 --> 22:52.960]  It doesn't make any sense.
[22:53.500 --> 22:55.520]  Please don't do anything that harms other people's mail.
[22:55.520 --> 22:57.420]  And we've had to be really careful with this.
[22:57.580 --> 23:04.940]  Like, we had a group of magicians we were working with that we built a box that is too big to fit down the slot into the mailbox.
[23:05.140 --> 23:09.320]  And it had elastic bands and stuff in it, and it would reassemble itself when you let go of it.
[23:10.260 --> 23:17.500]  But when we tested this on a used one, we discovered that it could clog up or that it would fill up a huge amount of space and that other people who were putting their mail in couldn't mail their stuff.
[23:17.680 --> 23:20.160]  And so we decided to lay off that idea for a while.
[23:20.820 --> 23:22.260]  And be nice to the postal people.
[23:22.760 --> 23:24.780]  So far, none of them have said anything negative.
[23:25.340 --> 23:26.620]  Some of them have been kind of confused.
[23:27.280 --> 23:28.680]  And some of them give you ideas.
[23:29.840 --> 23:31.080]  But yeah, be nice to them.
[23:31.180 --> 23:33.160]  And be very careful about mailing dangerous items.
[23:33.940 --> 23:35.140]  Two suggestions I get all the time.
[23:35.300 --> 23:36.940]  People ask me if I've ever mailed dog shit.
[23:37.320 --> 23:38.900]  A, no, I don't have a dog.
[23:39.020 --> 23:40.040]  And B, I don't want to touch the stuff.
[23:40.240 --> 23:42.620]  If you wrap it correctly, it probably can be sent as a lab sample.
[23:42.720 --> 23:44.080]  But no, it's just gross and there's no point.
[23:44.740 --> 23:47.700]  And another one, people see the metal sphere and ask me if I've sent a bowling ball.
[23:48.120 --> 23:58.240]  And I'm like, you know, that lightweight sphere that was like maybe three or four ounces is a lot different than, you know, something that's 20 pounds and goes rolling through a warehouse where nobody can hear it coming because of all the machines and then breaks somebody's ankle.
[23:58.940 --> 24:00.760]  So we've got to be really careful with this stuff.
[24:01.860 --> 24:03.560]  So that's all I've got to show today.
[24:04.340 --> 24:06.760]  My blog is alwaysusezipcode.com.
[24:06.860 --> 24:08.380]  And there's a copy of this presentation there.
[24:09.220 --> 24:11.420]  Also, all the links are there, so you only have to write down one of them.
[24:12.500 --> 24:14.500]  And, oh yeah, I forgot about the Fred Flintstone one.
[24:14.560 --> 24:15.000]  This is great.
[24:15.380 --> 24:17.540]  Bedrock, Colorado is a town of like 800 people.
[24:18.040 --> 24:27.380]  And they get so much mail addressed to Fred Flintstone that the Postmaster had a special stamp made that says, Return to Sender, Fictitious Cartoon Character.
[24:38.670 --> 24:40.190]  Okay, so that's what I've got.
[24:40.190 --> 24:42.330]  I really appreciate HOPE putting this show on.
[24:42.470 --> 24:43.890]  This is a great event as always.
[24:44.050 --> 24:48.890]  And I really, really appreciate the fact that they record all these presentations and put them on the website for everybody.
[24:49.130 --> 24:52.070]  So if you'd like to ask questions, we've got a microphone set up over here.
[24:52.290 --> 24:55.290]  If you'd line up and if we could bring up the house lights, that would be great.
[24:55.310 --> 24:56.110]  So we're not tripping on each other.
[24:56.690 --> 24:59.850]  We have lots of time for questions and for your ideas.
[25:00.350 --> 25:01.510]  So thanks a lot for coming.
[25:06.710 --> 25:07.370]  Go for it.
[25:16.360 --> 25:17.580]  We're having an AV problem.
[25:17.720 --> 25:18.300]  Is the mic working?
[25:20.640 --> 25:22.740]  We have a red light on the back of it, so I think it's turned on.
[25:22.920 --> 25:24.720]  Oh, it's turned up at the mixer.
[25:24.920 --> 25:25.920]  No, it's a little closer to it.
[25:25.920 --> 25:26.220]  Okay, there you go.
[25:26.340 --> 25:26.480]  Go for it.
[25:26.660 --> 25:27.500]  Okay, that's better.
[25:27.860 --> 25:28.140]  Right on.
[25:28.260 --> 25:30.280]  You sent a lot of stuff to the same location.
[25:30.460 --> 25:32.840]  Were the people at the post office box cool?
[25:33.100 --> 25:35.820]  Were they amused by getting all these neat things coming into that one box?
[25:35.980 --> 25:36.180]  Yes.
[25:36.600 --> 25:38.480]  We have several participants.
[25:39.200 --> 25:42.940]  Some of our participants didn't want to have their addresses up on a big screen.
[25:43.120 --> 25:46.420]  And I didn't want to have a presentation full of just blacked out stuff.
[25:46.600 --> 25:48.160]  Make you look like I'm the CIA or something.
[25:49.100 --> 25:52.300]  But yeah, we have about 15 people nationwide that we send stuff to.
[25:52.460 --> 25:55.520]  So we know if we're getting consistent results from one post office box to the next.
[25:56.520 --> 25:57.200]  I'm sorry.
[25:57.800 --> 25:58.100]  No problem.
[25:58.240 --> 25:58.860]  Two things.
[25:59.240 --> 26:01.220]  The phone you want to look at is the track phone.
[26:01.360 --> 26:03.960]  There's one model that's like 20 bucks or something prepaid.
[26:04.000 --> 26:05.020]  And it has a GPS.
[26:05.020 --> 26:07.860]  And you can send the GPS coordinates over SMS.
[26:08.900 --> 26:10.720]  Is it kind of like continuously send?
[26:11.220 --> 26:14.000]  You can program it to do whatever kind of sending you want.
[26:14.180 --> 26:15.260]  And is that a service with track phone?
[26:15.380 --> 26:17.360]  Or is that like an add-on you have to use or a third party app?
[26:17.380 --> 26:18.160]  It's built into the phone.
[26:18.520 --> 26:21.300]  So you just have to load whatever the appropriate software is on the phone.
[26:21.520 --> 26:22.240]  That's what I'm trying to find out.
[26:22.280 --> 26:23.140]  It's like what all the details are.
[26:23.240 --> 26:24.500]  It's a track phone specifically.
[26:25.140 --> 26:28.460]  The other one I wanted to ask is have you tried much sending like internationally?
[26:29.340 --> 26:30.040]  No, I haven't.
[26:30.060 --> 26:34.380]  Mostly because I don't know anybody internationally to send stuff to me or for me to send stuff to them.
[26:35.400 --> 26:35.720]  Yeah.
[26:36.080 --> 26:36.320]  Have you just...
[26:36.320 --> 26:37.220]  I'd be interested...
[26:37.220 --> 26:38.560]  Somebody asked if Canada counts.
[26:38.800 --> 26:39.900]  We have the hackerspace in Toronto.
[26:40.080 --> 26:41.060]  So if you want to send us stuff.
[26:41.200 --> 26:41.460]  Right on.
[26:41.980 --> 26:42.720]  Send me an email.
[26:42.820 --> 26:43.520]  My address is on there.
[26:43.700 --> 26:44.920]  I'd love to get some international stuff.
[26:45.440 --> 26:45.960]  Sir, your turn.
[26:46.260 --> 26:46.500]  Okay.
[26:46.500 --> 26:51.440]  This is not something I'd recommend people do because it goes against what you were saying about keep...
[26:51.440 --> 26:51.920]  About avoid...
[26:51.920 --> 26:52.460]  About fraud.
[26:53.200 --> 27:01.940]  But just as a comment, the ancient trick of flipping the addresses has worked in the past and probably does.
[27:02.080 --> 27:04.680]  That doesn't mean that you should be doing it, but it's something...
[27:05.380 --> 27:06.500]  Theoretically, it's interesting.
[27:06.700 --> 27:07.980]  It's a theory exercise.
[27:08.200 --> 27:08.960]  It does work, apparently.
[27:08.960 --> 27:09.180]  Yes.
[27:09.180 --> 27:10.080]  It does work.
[27:10.220 --> 27:11.540]  We know people who have tried it.
[27:11.620 --> 27:14.600]  I haven't tried it myself, but people have sent me stuff that way that was unsolicited.
[27:15.280 --> 27:23.680]  I don't recommend it because it's really obvious looking at the envelope that if the postmark city doesn't match the return address city that, yeah, you're going to have a really hard time explaining that in court, so I wouldn't try it.
[27:24.960 --> 27:29.100]  Did you see the TSA bag cam talk or are you familiar?
[27:29.100 --> 27:29.540]  Yes, I did.
[27:29.880 --> 27:33.060]  Have you considered that approach maybe in combination with the GPS logging?
[27:34.120 --> 27:34.440]  Yes.
[27:34.840 --> 27:36.260]  That's actually one of the questions I meant to ask.
[27:36.360 --> 27:37.080]  Thank you for bringing that up.
[27:37.240 --> 27:43.460]  I would love to be able to take the cell phone and also be able to put, I don't know, like a noise sensor or something on it so it turns off when it's in the airplane.
[27:43.460 --> 27:48.220]  That way when my luggage gets lost, I can tell what city it's in and whether or not I should stand around at the airport waiting for it.
[27:49.880 --> 27:52.840]  There's also a group of people who have sent cameras to the post office.
[27:53.080 --> 27:57.200]  And I apologize, I don't have a link, but Google probably knows.
[27:57.320 --> 27:58.640]  And that was kind of interesting.
[27:59.220 --> 28:04.460]  One of them even put a camera on the side of the box and a big sign on the box asking postal employees to please take pictures.
[28:04.800 --> 28:06.840]  And when they got it, the entire camera had been shot off.
[28:06.940 --> 28:09.580]  It was like just postal employees in different places taking pictures around the place.
[28:10.100 --> 28:11.700]  So they do have a sense of humor.
[28:12.240 --> 28:12.900]  Go for it.
[28:13.540 --> 28:13.920]  Yeah, hi.
[28:14.180 --> 28:15.020]  Thank you for your talk.
[28:15.060 --> 28:15.740]  I enjoyed it.
[28:15.840 --> 28:16.060]  Thank you.
[28:16.260 --> 28:19.980]  I've been trying to fight the junk mail influx.
[28:20.200 --> 28:22.040]  It's been a battle I've been waging lately.
[28:22.440 --> 28:29.940]  One of the things I do, a lot of people do when they get the postage paid envelopes from unsolicited senders.
[28:29.940 --> 28:30.740]  Yeah, business reply mail.
[28:30.920 --> 28:31.520]  People, yeah.
[28:31.920 --> 28:35.120]  People, you know, they'll take them and just send them, throw them back in the mail.
[28:35.280 --> 28:35.440]  Mm-hmm.
[28:35.540 --> 28:37.980]  And I've taken a little rub on that trying to...
[28:37.980 --> 28:44.340]  I get the mails from these things where they send you the huge wad of coupons that I don't want.
[28:44.640 --> 28:44.820]  Mm-hmm.
[28:44.820 --> 28:46.120]  So I've been throwing those out.
[28:46.180 --> 28:50.360]  I've been taking those and jamming them into the postage paid.
[28:50.480 --> 28:50.720]  Yeah.
[28:50.820 --> 28:54.700]  These certain things, trying to figure out how to increase the weight of the postage paid.
[28:54.780 --> 28:55.840]  There's a couple of things with that.
[28:55.840 --> 28:59.460]  I actually know somebody who got rid of an entire pallet of extra bricks.
[29:02.300 --> 29:03.000]  And the basis...
[29:03.460 --> 29:04.540]  I mean, there are a couple of things to consider.
[29:04.840 --> 29:11.420]  First, in addition to the postage, the company that owns the business reply mail permit also has to pay a surcharge.
[29:11.500 --> 29:13.080]  And I think it's like 49 cents an envelope.
[29:13.240 --> 29:16.580]  So it's almost a buck right now just to send it back empty.
[29:17.560 --> 29:19.200]  You can add additional weight to it.
[29:19.260 --> 29:20.120]  And I think there's a weight limit.
[29:20.580 --> 29:24.880]  The post office is also not required to charge them, although they are required to deliver it.
[29:25.340 --> 29:27.520]  So I'm not sure how much economic damage you can have.
[29:27.920 --> 29:34.500]  But another thing I've heard is that, like, credit card companies that receive a lot of those, they open it all with automated equipment in order to process it.
[29:34.620 --> 29:37.560]  And, you know, you've noticed there's, like, barcodes and stuff that identify your applications.
[29:37.720 --> 29:39.320]  They don't have to retype it and all that kind of thing.
[29:40.000 --> 29:42.860]  Glue the envelope completely shut and you'll probably jam one of those machines.
[29:44.520 --> 29:45.100]  Go for it.
[29:45.100 --> 29:47.880]  Have you ever tried sending magnets through the post?
[29:48.320 --> 29:49.160]  Magnets, yes.
[29:49.640 --> 29:49.920]  We've...
[29:49.920 --> 29:50.280]  We've...
[29:50.280 --> 29:51.520]  You can send magnets.
[29:51.740 --> 29:57.840]  If they're above a certain power rating, they have to be labeled as ordinary regulated materials domestic.
[29:58.980 --> 30:01.280]  But, yes, you can as long as it's packaged properly.
[30:02.400 --> 30:06.020]  So you never, like, had a letter stick to a machine as far as you know?
[30:06.540 --> 30:08.800]  If it's packaged properly, it should not stick to a machine.
[30:09.860 --> 30:11.040]  This also gets into...
[30:11.040 --> 30:14.560]  I mean, we've sent some, like, you know, like, baseball-sized neodym magnets.
[30:15.240 --> 30:19.420]  I mean, like, if you pick this up and move it across the room, you need to think before you walk.
[30:20.100 --> 30:23.620]  Because they'll do things like slam your hand into a file cabinet and break the bones in it.
[30:24.360 --> 30:26.220]  And we have sent this kind of stuff through the mail.
[30:26.480 --> 30:28.880]  But, yeah, properly packaged, it's safe to do.
[30:29.800 --> 30:31.860]  But, yeah, be careful about the safety.
[30:32.400 --> 30:32.860]  Go for it.
[30:32.880 --> 30:36.560]  You mentioned mailing a phone with GPS receiver and stuff like that in it.
[30:36.560 --> 30:39.120]  Is there... I mean, you could probably get in trouble for that if it's on.
[30:39.240 --> 30:41.180]  I mean, you also mentioned having it turn off while it's on the phone.
[30:41.520 --> 30:43.480]  What if you mailed a phone that was on, like airmail?
[30:43.740 --> 30:46.160]  I don't know any rules against that.
[30:46.280 --> 30:47.840]  If it goes airmail, that's a good question.
[30:48.060 --> 30:51.020]  I mean, it's still... you're still not allowed to have radio transmitter on...
[30:51.020 --> 30:54.580]  Well, the FAA regulation says that passengers are not allowed to.
[30:55.420 --> 30:56.140]  Maybe the cargo?
[30:56.440 --> 30:57.500]  So I don't know...
[30:57.500 --> 31:00.220]  I don't know how cargo would actually work with that.
[31:00.240 --> 31:02.720]  I was thinking that for the bag cam thing, too, but I never asked it.
[31:02.720 --> 31:03.340]  I don't know if you knew.
[31:03.800 --> 31:04.520]  It's a question.
[31:04.520 --> 31:06.720]  I mean, there's all kinds of... and I can get into...
[31:06.720 --> 31:08.620]  This is a whole other separate talk about the cell phones and airplanes.
[31:08.820 --> 31:13.800]  I am a pilot, and I can talk a lot about what the hazards are.
[31:13.860 --> 31:16.060]  And the hazards aren't so much that one's cell phone is going to mess things up.
[31:16.080 --> 31:17.420]  It's when you have 150 of them.
[31:18.220 --> 31:24.060]  And actually, the pilot can hear that GPS chatter that you hear in your computer speakers, and we hear a lot of it.
[31:24.660 --> 31:27.540]  So that's probably the most of the interference that we would receive.
[31:27.860 --> 31:29.880]  But, you know, pilots are up there in the front, too, calling their wife.
[31:29.880 --> 31:30.560]  Yeah, I'm on approach.
[31:30.700 --> 31:32.240]  I'll be home in time for dinner or whatever.
[31:32.820 --> 31:34.820]  And you hear it on the ATC frequencies all the time.
[31:34.880 --> 31:37.140]  So it's not going to cause a plane to crash.
[31:37.280 --> 31:39.260]  But, yeah, I would like to find some way to...
[31:39.260 --> 31:41.440]  If they were able to detect it somehow, you might be able to get in trouble.
[31:42.040 --> 31:43.360]  Yeah, I don't really know.
[31:43.820 --> 31:46.420]  That's one of the things we have to check out before we do it.
[31:46.980 --> 31:47.880]  So thanks for your comment.
[31:48.320 --> 31:54.540]  On his note, I've heard that was more due to keeping people's attention during the take-off and landing procedures.
[31:55.260 --> 31:57.400]  But if that were the case, you should be able to talk the rest of the flight.
[31:58.100 --> 32:02.720]  Cell phone carriers also don't like the fact that you're a six-mile high antenna, and you start connecting to multiple towers.
[32:02.840 --> 32:05.640]  That's why they haven't really thrown up a big hissy fit about it.
[32:05.880 --> 32:18.380]  My actual point on the track phone may be more cost-effective, but have you thought about sending photo loggers that photographers use to track their pictures, and it basically keeps a time stamp and the current location?
[32:18.560 --> 32:20.540]  It doesn't tell me where my package is when it's lost.
[32:20.580 --> 32:22.320]  And that's what we're looking to do.
[32:22.620 --> 32:22.900]  Okay.
[32:23.000 --> 32:24.420]  I have several customers who...
[32:24.420 --> 32:25.840]  Part of this is actually for work.
[32:25.860 --> 32:27.540]  I have customers who send gold to the mail.
[32:28.220 --> 32:31.920]  A lot of people don't know that Hope Diamond was actually sent registered mail to the Smithsonian.
[32:32.080 --> 32:33.220]  The post office is very proud of that.
[32:33.780 --> 32:38.020]  And the registered mail service actually has a lower loss rate than any other courier service in the nation.
[32:38.200 --> 32:40.440]  So if you're getting commercial insurance, it's actually cheaper.
[32:41.240 --> 32:45.760]  But yeah, their website only updates like once every 48 hours or something like that.
[32:45.940 --> 32:47.720]  And we'd like more real-time tracking than that.
[32:47.820 --> 32:48.000]  Gotcha.
[32:48.200 --> 32:49.160]  So that's kind of what we're into.
[32:49.360 --> 32:50.740]  But yeah, thanks.
[32:51.320 --> 32:51.920]  Go for it.
[32:52.080 --> 33:02.660]  Have you tried deforming flat-rate mail envelopes with various shapes inside the envelope?
[33:03.240 --> 33:13.080]  Also with respect to the question of whether a stress might be imposed on the glued seam, depending on what you put inside.
[33:13.800 --> 33:13.880]  Okay.
[33:13.900 --> 33:14.500]  So that...
[33:15.620 --> 33:16.480]  Yes, we have.
[33:16.660 --> 33:19.440]  We filled one burst into the seams with concrete rebar.
[33:21.460 --> 33:27.740]  And the rules are, as long as it can stay closed under its own glue, as it was designed by the post office, it's legal to go.
[33:28.560 --> 33:29.520]  So I think...
[33:29.520 --> 33:31.280]  I think we got it...
[33:32.440 --> 33:33.200]  Well, actually...
[33:34.300 --> 33:37.840]  Yes, you're not supposed to use tape on it, although most of the time they'll let that fly.
[33:38.380 --> 33:39.680]  Somebody asked about hot glue.
[33:40.060 --> 33:42.020]  Actually, the envelopes have hot glue in them.
[33:42.160 --> 33:43.140]  And you can...
[33:43.140 --> 33:44.180]  So you can use them...
[33:44.180 --> 33:45.260]  Use that to heat seal as well.
[33:45.360 --> 33:46.280]  There's already a strip there.
[33:46.380 --> 33:47.620]  Just iron it and go.
[33:49.440 --> 33:51.320]  But yeah, for short distances it works.
[33:51.400 --> 33:55.020]  For longer distances, the chipboard that it's made out of can't really handle that much weight.
[33:56.420 --> 34:00.460]  We've put balloons in them and those go pretty good and don't cause much structural damage.
[34:00.900 --> 34:09.500]  We've also put rare earth materials like tungsten in them that don't deform it a lot, but take it up to the 73 pound maximum weight limit for the postal union.
[34:10.760 --> 34:11.860]  And you had a second question?
[34:13.460 --> 34:15.280]  No, but you...
[34:15.280 --> 34:21.900]  There's experiments you did also with not just flat rate parcels, but flat rate envelopes.
[34:21.900 --> 34:22.340]  Yes.
[34:22.560 --> 34:23.960]  Yeah, the cardboard flat rate envelope.
[34:24.120 --> 34:24.340]  Yes.
[34:24.480 --> 34:24.720]  Yes.
[34:25.840 --> 34:27.880]  Yeah, that's what we used for the rebar.
[34:28.000 --> 34:30.320]  Not the plastic milk jug recycled ones.
[34:31.440 --> 34:32.120]  Next question?
[34:32.400 --> 34:37.400]  Yeah, you were talking about having an update, an address continually update like daily.
[34:38.120 --> 34:46.980]  If you just use like a piece of like adding machine roll or like receipt printer paper and just had something in there that would like wind it every...
[34:47.300 --> 34:49.000]  Okay, so you'd like...
[34:49.000 --> 34:51.720]  And then just have a clear window and it would just roll the address.
[34:51.980 --> 34:52.100]  Yeah.
[34:52.100 --> 34:58.420]  I don't know a lot about like building stuff from like scrap and electronics, but we've thought about doing that with LEGO Mindstorms.
[34:58.520 --> 35:01.140]  I feel it would be pretty simple to tell it, you know, turn on step so many steps forward.
[35:01.840 --> 35:02.780]  So that's a good idea.
[35:05.020 --> 35:14.640]  All right, something I've just learned recently, if you live in a small town, there's a big city near you, your local mail, say you're mailing something yourself, will get ratted to the big city then send back to you.
[35:14.740 --> 35:22.340]  If you actually say to the person at the counter, keep in office, they will not send it out to the main, I guess, where they route the mail.
[35:22.540 --> 35:22.560]  Yes.
[35:22.560 --> 35:23.720]  They'll keep it in the local...
[35:23.720 --> 35:25.480]  So you're kind of day or two off for delivery.
[35:25.700 --> 35:26.780]  Yes, you can.
[35:27.020 --> 35:30.000]  There's a lot of requests like that you can make.
[35:30.340 --> 35:39.020]  For example, stamp collectors like their mail to be stamped a specific way and that's part of why the apply it yourself cancellation is interesting.
[35:39.640 --> 35:42.660]  A lot of them just, you know, want it to be nicked, just the minimum amount possible.
[35:42.660 --> 35:43.880]  And you can do that.
[35:44.060 --> 35:46.140]  Also, if you have something fragile, you can ask them to hand cancel it.
[35:46.240 --> 35:47.080]  And it's usually not a problem.
[35:47.240 --> 35:50.100]  Last thing, I was in an office where there were just like two people working there.
[35:50.200 --> 35:53.360]  And I asked them about this and said, we'll get the postmaster for you.
[35:53.500 --> 35:55.780]  And out of the back room came a little old guy.
[35:55.840 --> 35:58.680]  And for the local post office, he was called the postmaster.
[35:58.920 --> 35:58.960]  Yes.
[35:59.400 --> 36:02.600]  Some post offices also have a separate mail drop for in-town mail.
[36:02.720 --> 36:03.080]  Yeah, sure.
[36:03.400 --> 36:04.500]  Which, yeah, does the same thing.
[36:04.580 --> 36:05.600]  Saves gas, saves you time.
[36:05.960 --> 36:06.540]  Go for it.
[36:06.680 --> 36:08.900]  I'd like to thank you for your talk.
[36:08.920 --> 36:09.700]  It was very interesting.
[36:09.700 --> 36:15.740]  I was wondering if anybody through perhaps the use of helium has tried sending something that's lighter than air.
[36:16.180 --> 36:16.740]  Yes.
[36:16.740 --> 36:17.640]  We've looked into that.
[36:17.900 --> 36:25.860]  And the problem is that there's nothing that we've found that is light enough to contain the helium.
[36:26.260 --> 36:27.620]  Everything is just too fragile.
[36:28.100 --> 36:30.660]  Or it exceeds the relatively small sizes.
[36:31.680 --> 36:34.140]  Yeah, we've looked at like a Mylar balloon or something like that.
[36:34.940 --> 36:40.920]  And one of the things to keep in mind, I mean, if, you know, sometimes you get some static when you take stuff up to the counter and they go, well, we're not really sure you have to do it.
[36:40.980 --> 36:41.700]  You know, you can mail this.
[36:41.780 --> 36:43.420]  Or, oh, you're going to have to put that in a box.
[36:43.900 --> 36:47.800]  If it's under 13 ounces, you can just drop it off and not talk to anybody.
[36:49.720 --> 36:56.060]  So, yeah, it might be possible with some sort of strengthened Teflon or Mylar to build a balloon.
[36:56.200 --> 36:59.380]  But yeah, I just, I haven't found anything that's readily accessible to me yet.
[36:59.380 --> 36:59.900]  Thank you.
[36:59.900 --> 37:02.140]  So, if you come up with some ideas on how to do it, I'd love to know.
[37:02.320 --> 37:03.080]  Thank you, thank you.
[37:03.180 --> 37:05.240]  We'd love to send a negative weight package.
[37:07.220 --> 37:07.820]  Go for it.
[37:07.960 --> 37:08.100]  Yeah.
[37:08.700 --> 37:12.520]  I didn't see it on your list of URLs, but you may know it.
[37:12.580 --> 37:16.540]  It's a browser for ZIP Codes, semaphorecorp.com.
[37:16.900 --> 37:17.180]  Yes.
[37:18.400 --> 37:36.000]  It's seemingly unique because you can put in an address and see not only you get the barcode in the full zip plus four plus two, but it will also let you browse the neighborhood and see other addresses and what the valid addresses are for, like, several,
[37:36.220 --> 37:38.320]  like, all up and down the block, all up and down the street.
[37:38.500 --> 37:38.540]  Yes.
[37:38.540 --> 37:43.580]  You can do that on the post office's website, too, just by putting the street address in and not specifying an address.
[37:43.820 --> 37:44.900]  And that's how I got the ranges.
[37:45.100 --> 37:46.780]  That was actually a screen capture from the post office.
[37:46.980 --> 37:49.180]  It's interesting, but semaphorecorp.com.
[37:49.800 --> 37:49.960]  Yes.
[37:50.160 --> 37:53.600]  I guess they're in the business of selling data, but there's also a free lookup.
[37:53.600 --> 37:54.160]  Yes.
[37:54.500 --> 37:55.300]  It's interesting.
[37:55.560 --> 37:56.200]  Yes, it's a neat reference.
[37:56.320 --> 37:56.860]  Thanks for mentioning it.
[37:57.300 --> 37:58.700]  Two quick questions.
[37:58.920 --> 38:01.180]  How much would you say you invest in postage in a year?
[38:02.140 --> 38:04.300]  In a year, maybe $250.
[38:05.600 --> 38:12.360]  And most of that's because we're sending multiple copies of the same stuff to lots of people, so we get a larger sample space.
[38:12.560 --> 38:17.160]  It's by no means statistically significant sample space, but, you know, it's greater than one.
[38:17.720 --> 38:27.640]  And then have you tested, like, the structural intensity or, like, how much a package is jostled, like, a very thin strip of LEGOs and seeing if they break up into all pieces?
[38:27.960 --> 38:29.640]  We could put an accelerometer in a package.
[38:30.160 --> 38:32.320]  That would measure that.
[38:32.540 --> 38:32.800]  Yeah.
[38:33.560 --> 38:34.040]  Let's see.
[38:34.060 --> 38:34.700]  What else could we do?
[38:34.800 --> 38:44.420]  There was one person who made a ball of ink pens pointed out, and it was an art project to see how much it would get scrambled up inside the box, and that was kind of interesting.
[38:46.480 --> 38:51.560]  We haven't done much else with that, although we have been doing some experimentation in materials packaging.
[38:51.860 --> 38:53.920]  We're currently sending uncooked eggs to the mail.
[38:55.400 --> 39:04.520]  We drill a small burr hole in one end and then punch the other end, and we use compressed air to blow the actual egg stuff out, so it's not going to spoil or turn rancid or anything like that.
[39:04.720 --> 39:08.620]  It also makes the egg just the shell, so it's now weaker because it has no internal structure.
[39:09.160 --> 39:13.040]  But the best thing we've found is to use a milk crate as an exoskeleton on our box.
[39:13.680 --> 39:15.720]  And we've thrown them off the parking decks.
[39:15.820 --> 39:16.620]  We've drop-kicked them.
[39:17.160 --> 39:19.540]  We haven't thrown one out of an airplane yet, but that's coming.
[39:21.300 --> 39:26.200]  But yeah, there's... you can... properly packaged, you can... the g-forces in the mail are negligible.
[39:26.900 --> 39:27.160]  Thanks.
[39:27.400 --> 39:28.640]  Oh, one other thought on that.
[39:28.760 --> 39:30.960]  You can send certain types of live animals to the mail.
[39:32.000 --> 39:32.400]  So...
[39:34.900 --> 39:38.600]  So, I heard a rumor a while back that at...
[39:38.600 --> 39:45.300]  MIT's Draper Labs, when they were developing missile guidance systems, they, in fact, tried mailing gyroscopes to themselves to see if the dead reckoning stayed accurate.
[39:45.580 --> 39:48.100]  And, of course, being gyroscopes, they would precess.
[39:48.340 --> 39:55.560]  So the postman would have it sort of balancing in his hands, and when it got onto the mail handling equipment, it might sometimes flip itself on a ramp.
[39:56.360 --> 39:56.780]  That's interesting.
[39:56.900 --> 39:59.560]  That goes along with the offset centers of gravity.
[40:00.140 --> 40:02.940]  I'd be interested in learning more about that, particularly how they powered it.
[40:03.160 --> 40:04.240]  That was my question.
[40:04.240 --> 40:05.580]  Because gyroscopes suck a lot of power.
[40:06.180 --> 40:08.680]  Yeah, I mean, less so if you vacuum pack them.
[40:08.760 --> 40:10.040]  And, of course, they had military-grade equipment.
[40:10.200 --> 40:12.020]  But I've always been dubious as to whether this was true.
[40:12.060 --> 40:13.720]  So I was sort of wondering if you'd ever heard about it.
[40:15.480 --> 40:17.260]  I think I know where I can get some electrical...
[40:17.260 --> 40:20.260]  I'm a pilot, so I can get vacuum gyros, no problem.
[40:20.380 --> 40:24.120]  But I think I know somebody I can borrow a set of electrical gyros from to try that with.
[40:24.420 --> 40:25.300]  So we'll have to give that a shot.
[40:25.840 --> 40:28.260]  So subscribe to the RSS feed, and maybe you'll see a posting.
[40:30.760 --> 40:31.660]  Really quick question.
[40:31.780 --> 40:35.080]  I just wanted to know, do you know what happens to all those Santa letters people send?
[40:35.200 --> 40:37.180]  Like, do they go in the trash, or do they get returned to standard?
[40:37.180 --> 40:37.200]  No.
[40:38.020 --> 40:42.080]  It's a charity thing that postal employees do out of the goodness of their heart.
[40:42.700 --> 40:47.260]  They're routed to whatever city the child is at.
[40:48.240 --> 40:51.460]  And there's volunteer groups that try to answer as many of them as possible.
[40:51.460 --> 40:56.160]  A lot of them just get a written response back, and that's kind of what they're looking for, if it's just encouragement or best wishes.
[40:56.520 --> 41:00.180]  But yeah, for poor kids and stuff, they try to fill wishes.
[41:00.780 --> 41:04.580]  And it's postal employees who do that off the clock for free.
[41:04.760 --> 41:06.600]  So yeah, they get handled.
[41:07.200 --> 41:08.000]  So, good question.
[41:09.580 --> 41:13.180]  Yeah, you said that one time someone you mailed a camera through the mail?
[41:13.340 --> 41:13.520]  Yes.
[41:13.780 --> 41:18.000]  Have you ever thought of mailing a phone and seeing if you could have a conversation with someone who was processing the mail?
[41:18.780 --> 41:19.980]  That is a nice idea.
[41:21.180 --> 41:25.840]  Battery life is an issue, and talk time is an issue, except that you can get the...
[41:25.840 --> 41:29.380]  I guess it's T-Mobile who has the free unlimited calls to five people.
[41:29.480 --> 41:29.840]  There you go.
[41:29.960 --> 41:31.000]  So yeah, you could keep the channel open.
[41:31.000 --> 41:33.120]  Ask them if they like their job or what kind of a day they're having.
[41:33.500 --> 41:33.740]  Yeah.
[41:33.960 --> 41:34.580]  That's a neat idea.
[41:34.680 --> 41:35.500]  We'll have to look into doing that.
[41:35.620 --> 41:35.820]  There you go.
[41:37.540 --> 41:39.240]  Along the lines of shipping phones.
[41:39.780 --> 41:51.400]  If you're worried about causing interference on a plane, you could possibly use an accelerometer and a very light power draw circuit that could turn off everything else if the speed ever crossed the threshold.
[41:51.720 --> 41:59.480]  So as soon as you're on the tarmac and coming up to speed, you can turn off all the other circuitry and wait until you see the deceleration and turn it all back on.
[41:59.720 --> 42:00.260]  Right on.
[42:00.460 --> 42:01.360]  That's a very good idea.
[42:01.540 --> 42:01.840]  Thank you.
[42:03.360 --> 42:05.260]  Well, remember, somebody mentioned it's expensive.
[42:05.440 --> 42:09.500]  I have access to surplus aviation parts.
[42:10.100 --> 42:10.540]  Go ahead.
[42:11.180 --> 42:14.760]  This isn't so much postal hacking, but it's more of just an interesting thing of what could go on with the mail.
[42:16.080 --> 42:18.220]  There's a certain company that sells like ant farms.
[42:18.520 --> 42:18.840]  Uh-huh.
[42:18.900 --> 42:22.020]  But when you buy the farm, you don't buy the actual ants.
[42:22.120 --> 42:22.780]  You get a card.
[42:23.060 --> 42:23.180]  Yes.
[42:23.180 --> 42:24.180]  You have to mail your address in.
[42:24.460 --> 42:24.660]  Yes.
[42:25.100 --> 42:27.280]  Ants and bees are one of the live animals you can send to the mail.
[42:27.480 --> 42:27.680]  Right.
[42:27.880 --> 42:29.680]  So you get a card, you get to send the mail anywhere.
[42:29.680 --> 42:31.820]  But they don't check to see who sent it.
[42:32.720 --> 42:33.500]  Anyone you want.
[42:39.540 --> 42:39.940]  Oh,
[42:44.440 --> 42:45.660]  thank you very much.
[42:48.080 --> 42:49.320]  Can you repeat that, please?
[42:49.520 --> 42:50.460]  We didn't hear it.
[42:50.660 --> 42:51.460]  We didn't hear it.
[42:51.460 --> 42:51.780]  Okay.
[42:52.400 --> 43:02.100]  His comment was, if you want to play a prank on somebody, not necessarily the post office, get one of those ant farm kits and inside there's a post card that you write off to the company and they'll mail you the ants.
[43:02.360 --> 43:05.440]  But they don't necessarily know that you're the one who bought it.
[43:05.540 --> 43:07.800]  So you can have them send ants to whoever you want.
[43:12.490 --> 43:13.090]  Go for it.
[43:13.250 --> 43:19.030]  So on the note of getting a package in the post office for a year, have you ever seen Back to the Future?
[43:19.530 --> 43:20.630]  Yes, I have.
[43:21.090 --> 43:21.830]  You know what I'm getting at?
[43:21.970 --> 43:23.370]  Can the lawyer do something like that?
[43:24.170 --> 43:24.610]  Wow.
[43:24.830 --> 43:26.990]  The post office is not really in the business of holding mail.
[43:28.090 --> 43:31.090]  I'm not sure how we would send something that far.
[43:31.290 --> 43:35.370]  I mean, that was done with Western Union, which is a private courier service.
[43:35.570 --> 43:41.370]  The closest thing we've done with that is, as they were evacuating New Orleans for Katrina, I sent some people letters.
[43:42.250 --> 43:47.210]  Because I wanted to see what kind of crazy return stamp I would get on it or how long it would get delayed.
[43:47.990 --> 43:52.130]  And what happened was that everybody got back to their homes and they said, I have no power.
[43:52.270 --> 43:53.470]  My sewer is backed up.
[43:53.550 --> 43:56.090]  I've got six inches of water in my house and there's no gas.
[43:56.270 --> 43:57.550]  But I have a letter from you.
[44:02.770 --> 44:04.390]  So they really do work hard.
[44:06.590 --> 44:07.310]  Thanks for the question.
[44:08.870 --> 44:19.590]  In terms of shutting the phone off when you're doing air mail, you could, you know, as you said you have extra airplane parts, you can maybe try doing some sort of an altimeter thing.
[44:19.790 --> 44:21.290]  I don't know how that would work.
[44:21.350 --> 44:25.790]  The altimeter wouldn't work very well during takeoff because you're already at ground level.
[44:26.890 --> 44:31.070]  We've looked at maybe like the intensity of noise because it's very noisy down there.
[44:31.250 --> 44:36.790]  But yeah, an altimeter wouldn't work, especially when you consider it like the cruise altitude of my airplane is the field altitude of Denver.
[44:38.330 --> 44:38.810]  So...
[44:38.810 --> 44:40.510]  And then if you could...
[44:40.510 --> 44:43.450]  Well, another way to do it is if you could get GPS...
[44:43.450 --> 44:49.010]  If GPS would be working in the plane, GPS will give you a rough altitude reading.
[44:49.210 --> 44:50.130]  Not the answer.
[44:50.990 --> 44:51.770]  Altitude in general.
[44:51.830 --> 44:55.850]  Yeah, we're still coming back to altitude, not knowing our altitude on the ground.
[44:55.850 --> 44:56.230]  Well, you change in altitude though.
[44:56.750 --> 44:57.110]  Yeah.
[44:57.390 --> 44:58.590]  You could monitor it.
[44:58.590 --> 44:58.790]  Possibly.
[44:58.790 --> 45:01.230]  Yeah, your initial role wouldn't work.
[45:01.750 --> 45:04.570]  However, you might be able to use GPS to sense our speed.
[45:04.850 --> 45:05.110]  Yeah, you could do that too.
[45:05.110 --> 45:06.910]  And then if we're actually moving, that we send a signal.
[45:07.290 --> 45:08.090]  That would make more sense.
[45:08.250 --> 45:08.270]  Yeah.
[45:08.270 --> 45:08.690]  The airports.
[45:09.970 --> 45:10.570]  Oh, excellent.
[45:10.670 --> 45:13.050]  Somebody just put in a GPS location at the airports.
[45:13.050 --> 45:13.110]  That'll work.
[45:13.730 --> 45:16.050]  Every airport, you know, you have the list of their locations.
[45:16.050 --> 45:18.250]  If you're within a mile of that location, turn on...
[45:18.250 --> 45:20.570]  Yeah, it'd be more like 20 miles when you're in the approach pattern.
[45:20.730 --> 45:23.590]  But yeah, a GPS might work with a sensitive MF antenna.
[45:24.210 --> 45:24.830]  So, yeah, thanks.
[45:25.150 --> 45:25.630]  Next question.
[45:27.550 --> 45:40.650]  I think I saw it quite a while ago where they, you'd put a ZIP Code somewhere in Canada and then you'd write the rest of the address in something like Russian using an ideogram script rather than English.
[45:40.970 --> 45:49.550]  And then when you get to the Canadian, like, postal service, they'd have someone who could speak Russian, translate it, and then forward it onto Russia.
[45:49.550 --> 45:49.950]  Yes.
[45:50.210 --> 45:51.430]  Yeah, it's popular e-commerce fraud.
[45:51.750 --> 45:52.050]  Right.
[45:52.230 --> 46:04.390]  What you could do is maybe put a Chinese ZIP Code on it, send it to China, and then have the address in China saying whatever your home address is, and then it should, in theory, come back to you.
[46:04.510 --> 46:05.090]  Oh, that's neat.
[46:05.110 --> 46:09.170]  I haven't thought about sending it to... getting stuff returned from other countries.
[46:09.390 --> 46:11.830]  So, that I'll definitely have to try.
[46:11.970 --> 46:15.630]  That might be something working towards your staying in the postal system for a year.
[46:15.730 --> 46:16.670]  That's a very good idea.
[46:16.870 --> 46:17.410]  Thank you very much.
[46:17.970 --> 46:21.910]  We've got time for two more questions, and then I've got to...
[46:21.910 --> 46:22.930]  This is just a quick comment.
[46:23.010 --> 46:23.710]  It's not really a question.
[46:23.850 --> 46:24.010]  Go ahead.
[46:24.010 --> 46:24.610]  Very quick.
[46:25.170 --> 46:34.570]  I've noticed that with post office box ZIP Codes, the normal ZIP Code finder that the post office uses, and a lot of companies use, does not give you the correct last four.
[46:34.790 --> 46:40.810]  It will give you what would be the right, if it was a street address, but it won't be the correct last four for a PO box.
[46:40.930 --> 46:45.970]  There are some general addresses as well for simplified systems.
[46:46.150 --> 46:46.490]  Right.
[46:47.070 --> 46:53.130]  And there's special zip fours in different ranges, like 01 and 909, and a couple of others in between.
[46:53.130 --> 46:53.910]  I think start with four.
[46:54.050 --> 46:56.450]  Let's say 7040, which is 0012.
[46:56.950 --> 46:58.990]  One's house, one's PO box.
[46:59.130 --> 47:02.250]  And they're roughly the same location, but one is not right.
[47:02.390 --> 47:03.090]  The other is.
[47:03.210 --> 47:05.470]  But the system will convert it to the other one whether it's right or not.
[47:05.510 --> 47:07.310]  If you can email me a sample, I'd like to look into that more.
[47:08.350 --> 47:09.370]  Can I take the next question?
[47:09.490 --> 47:10.070]  Because we're almost out of time.
[47:10.790 --> 47:10.870]  Yeah.
[47:11.370 --> 47:11.690]  Go for it.
[47:11.810 --> 47:16.050]  This is really just swapping stories, but people complain about junk mail.
[47:16.490 --> 47:20.350]  There was a guy who put himself on as many lists as possible.
[47:20.390 --> 47:23.010]  And they got a wood burning stove and burnt the postage.
[47:23.810 --> 47:24.710]  Yes, I've heard of that.
[47:24.710 --> 47:25.650]  But they shifted fuel for free.
[47:25.650 --> 47:26.210]  Great.
[47:28.030 --> 47:28.570]  Very awesome.
[47:28.930 --> 47:29.750]  Okay, I've got to go.
[47:30.030 --> 47:34.470]  Those of you who still have questions, if you want to come over and talk with me, I'm going to head out so we don't interfere with the next people.
[47:34.590 --> 47:35.950]  But I'd love to answer your questions.
[47:36.050 --> 47:36.690]  That was the question.
[47:42.990 --> 47:45.560]  The last four days are 001...