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What old thing surprisingly still exists?
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this post was submitted on 05 May 2026
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Fax machines.
The amount of "modern" companies I had to fax shit too when my dad died was infuriating! Hyundai, Target, etc etc etc. Email is a thing dumb ass companies! Fuck me.
Many government departments and private companies consider faxed documents as a duplicated "original", instead of a copy. Because that totally makes sense.
IT MEANS FASCIMILE GOD DAMNIT
Totally.... 🤦
I can't exactly recommend the service which can be a bit annoying but clicksend allows you to send faxes and actually letters for pretty cheap. the letter thing is pretty nice when something demands a physical one. you upload a pdf and it gets printed and mailed out. fax works same way. fax is way cheaper obviously.
winfax.exe is looking at you and sneering...
we did all this, in a cave, with a 14.4 baud modem on windows 3.0
Why would someone need that instead of just printing it and mailing it themselves?
just faster. you have to have a printer and paper for it and envelopes and stamps. with the service you just upload the pdf and put in the address and hit send. I mean I think most could see how it can be useful. Bit cheaper to print and fold and seal and stamp and drop in the box but with as unoften as I need to send a physical letter I like it.
Then you need a printer, printer ink, an envelope, and stamps. If you really don't send mail out that frequently, I can see the appeal of it. Could easily be cheaper. I also imagine it might have some utility to ADHD folks.
It just occurred to me: I doubt my 26 year old son has ever sent anything in the mail himself. If he wants to send a message, it's email or text, and if he wants to send a gift, he'll order it on Amazon and have it delivered. I'll have to ask him if he's ever actually mailed anything.
Can't exactly trusr anyone with such sensitive documents that I'd have to print out and mail.
youd be surprised. most required mail stuff is straight up bullshit type stuff and not really that senstitive. its usually just hoops they through up to slow down and stymie anything your entitled to.
Why did target and Hyundai need to know your dad died?
He had accounts with them, that's part of the probate process. Letting them know.
Fax may outlast landline telephony.
It already has. Vast majority of companies still handling fax are using VoIP fax modems with digital receivers that turn it into a PDF. I haven't seen a functioning copper landline probably since 2015...
Did you know that it would have been possible for Abraham Lincoln to send a fax to a samurai?
I think the reason I didn't know it is because it isn't true.
Unless you're a Lincoln truther who thinks he wasn't killed in 1865 way before fax machines were available in the USA and Japan.
there was a period of around 12 years where it would have been possible, given that they had both been in scotland at the time. between 1853 and 1865 it would have to have been an ex-samurai.
I see the potential for a historical fiction masterpiece here
Erotic Lincoln-Samurai Fax Fiction
The first fax machine was invented in 1843.
But of course they had to wait for the second one to be invented...
They still have some uses (Invidious: mirror selection or Nadeko).
Also maddening and frustratingly!
Faxes are common in healthcare facilities and hospitals. I would imagine that they’re safer when it comes to sensitive data.
They are analog modems on a telephone line. There is no encryption at all, because they still need to be compatible with fax machines from the 1970s.
There was also an exploit where someone sent a manipulated image via fax, which would exploit an old bug in a jpg library that is used in the software stack, so you can run your own code.
not really. there's no encryption to faxing, and the software to fax from pc's directly (enabling faked records for example) has been ubiquitous since the 90s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFax
THANK YOU.
You know another fun thing that can happen? A doctor moves practices and changes fax numbers, and the old number gets assigned to a new, completely unrelated non-medical group. But no one told the medical entity that sends faxes, and no one updated the relevant records. All of a sudden several months worth of PHI has been getting sent to a women's clothing store.
Fax in the medical field needs to die. Between the possibility of this happening, higher probability of transmission failure, paper (where offices are still using physical faxes) getting misplaced before getting filed in charts, etc., it's just a plain bad way to send medical information in 2026.
Edit: OH, and don't get me started on fancy, marketing-designed lab reports that use colored indicators to communicate treatment-critical information that no one checked for legibility in black and white, yet still get sent by fax. Like, fucking WHAT??
holy fuck
Not really safer, they just work with the existing infrastructure. Personally, I think there's still a place for fax, it's essentially a convenient way to scan and transmit, and these days you can get them to your email or phone (not in healthcare because that's not HIPAA compliant). Sure, not anybody's first choice, but I think it's still valid.
It's only convenient if you have access to a fax machine, which the majority of us don't
My comment was in context of existing business infrastructure. You're right that most of us don't have a fax machine, but many organizations still do and therefore it can be very convenient for B2B communication. And in the case of orgs that want faxes but you don't have one, ifax is a thing as well.
I'm not making an argument for faxes, I'm just saying for an outdated technology it's stayed quite useful in the modern era.
With a mail-enabled printer, you can send your scan directly to an email address.
I fail to see what you'd need a fax for.
Needed it just yesterday.