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On a side note I always wondered if the feds tracked where all the mail was going

The USPS has been taking a picture of every piece of mail that passes through it for a decades. In some ways this should not be surprising - most mail sorting is automated, using machine vision to read the address labels (either hand-written, or barcode). In fact, the USPS was a strong investor in optical character recognition decades ago, because they recognized they could get much greater throughput this way. Previously, each letter would go past a human worker that would read the address and type in the ZIP code with a specialized keyboard.

More recently, the USPS has started retaining these images for a period of time. This has, for instance, been helpful in law enforcement - see the recent case of Cesar Sayoc. But I don't know how long the images are kept for, or what other legitimate uses there may be for it.

It's called Informed Delivery. They email you images of what's arriving that day.

https://informeddelivery.usps....

My wife signed up for it, it's sort of creepy and exciting (at first).

I would assume they image everything (at least letter sized) as part of sorting.

I expect that this what Netflix uses to speed up delivery of DVDs. I regularly drop a DVD in the mail and Netflix will send out the next one in my queue well before the returning DVD will have made it to their wharehouse. So on one hand creepy, on the other hand faster turn around time for their service.

Go to informeddelivery.usps.com
Select "Sign Up For Free."

It's called Informed Delivery. They email you images of what's arriving that day.

https://informeddelivery.usps....

My wife signed up for it, it's sort of creepy and exciting (at first).

I would assume they image everything (at least letter sized) as part of sorting.

https://about.usps.com/news/na...

HONG KONG — The U.S. Postal Service has initiated a new service with Hongkong Post that is structured to foster growth in e-commerce. The new ePacket service expands the array of options offered to e-commerce merchants in Hong Kong seeking to reach consumer markets in the United States. The ePacket shipping solution features tracking and Delivery Confirmation in the Postal Service network for lightweight goods and merchandise ordered by consumers in the United States from merchants in Hong Kong.

---

This agreement is not likely to change. The Post Office makes a lot of money on this deal because people tend to buy a lot of stuff in bulk and then ship pieces of it domestically. Or they buy lots of parts, build something and then sell that domestically. Amazon.com is filled with people reselling stuff from AliExpress

If the price were to go up substantially it would hurt the USPS.

I should think we could solve that with the $18 billion we give the post office every year.

Since the Post Office receives zero tax dollars, I am curious who you think this "we" is.

He probably thinks those contracts the USPS has with the US government are "subsidies". You know, we haven't heard about that in a very long time. I guess they were good deals after all......

I should think we could solve that with the $18 billion we give the post office every year.

Since the Post Office receives zero tax dollars, I am curious who you think this "we" is.

and the loss be paid for with tax dollars!

Your first problem is in assuming that the USPS receives tax revenue. It does not. .

The real problem is most people can't seem to be bothered to do the smallest amount of research on anything these days. Case in point. Also, remember that next time you go to the polls wondering how so many people can vote against their own best interests.

The whole issue here is that the USPS is subsidizing Amazon delivery, by charging rates lower than what it actually costs to ship things. Other mail fees are subsidizing Amazon, how is that right???

That is a lie.
USPS financial report

and the loss be paid for with tax dollars!

Your first problem is in assuming that the USPS receives tax revenue. It does not.

Your second problem is that you're a fucking moron, Mr President.

it's a half a billion people on the government's payroll

No it's not. It is exactly zero people on the government's payroll.

The USPS does not get any tax dollars.

The Post Office can't hire extra real folks

Bullshit. The USPS can and does hire temporary employees (here is an example from last year), they do not have any impact on the retirement fund.

The demand that the USPS pre-fund its retirement system is not 'crazy', it is responsible. Note that most other organizations gave up on the pension system altogether and just give the employees money via 401K matches. The employee can then (wisely) 'pre-fund' his own retirement, or (stupidly) not - and be '85 and wanna go home'. About the only pensions that are not fully pre-funded anymore are public service jobs, because you can always just soak the taxpayer later, no sense in being fiscally responsible now.

Who pays for the year over year losses totaling in the tens of billions?

https://www.thoughtco.com/post...

Someone is paying for those losses.

https://about.usps.com/news/na...

When businesses operate at losses such as these, they go out of business (ToyRUs)

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/n...

Actually this is incorrect.

Read about "e-packets" from the source..

This is why it costs less to send a package from China to New York then it does to send a package from New York to a block away.

http://about.usps.com/news/nat...

There a reason they use the USPS vs UPs and Fedex, we subsidize it, massively!

Take a look at this. Pay attention to :

And most importantly
1. The Postal Service receives NO tax dollars for operating expenses and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations.

No you are pants on fire lying because this is something that can be Googled. The growth in our Shipping and Packages business provided some help to the financial picture of the Postal Service as revenue increased $2.1 billion, or 11.8 percent. However, that growth was offset in our financials by the decline in mail volumes discussed above, as well as a $1.1 billion 2016 noncash change in accounting estimate and the 2016 roll-back of the exigent surcharge mandated by the Postal Regulatory Commission which further reduced revenue by $1.1 billion from what it otherwise would have been. https://about.usps.com/news/na...

The Postal Service has a mandate to pre-fund their retirement program, mandated by Congress. This is where the deficit comes from. This is something no other government or private entity is forced to do. Do you think FedEx is pre-funding their retirement programs?

My trash and recycling cans are near my mailbox, I subscribe to several magazines and one newspaper. The junk mail goes directly into the trash. The USPS has a special rate for junk mail, bulk rate that costs much less than what you or I pay to mail a letter or bill. So I pay twice-once for the junk subsidy and again for a 49 cent stamp. Screw that. https://pe.usps.com/businessma... .

For expensive deliveries, I just ask the shipper (e.g. amazon) to ship to my office instead of home and then add a delivery notification so that I know when to head up to reception and thank them for helping out. Total added cost is a few smiles and maybe a cookie every once in a while.

For routine deliveries, FedEX, UPS and USPS all have the ability to leave them with standing instructions, such as "leave on side porch", "leave with neighbor", "I'll pick up from your office", etc., FedEx and UPS will also do scheduled-time deliveries and will even redirect to a different address, although these are extra-cost services.

url that does not work: USPS price calc

https://postcalc.usps.com/?cou...

press enter then enter weight in oz then try changing it THE SHIT Naturally USPS doesn't care. Whose bug is it? It works in chrome

If you're using postage stamps (which can't be trace), you have to mail packages larger than 13 ounces at the post office.

All mail that weighs over 13 ounces and that uses only postage stamps as postage (this includes pre-paid Priority Mail Flat-Rate Boxes and Envelopes) must be presented to an employee at a retail service counter at a Post Office. This is part of ongoing security measures established by the Postal Service, in cooperation with other government agencies, to keep the public, customers, employees, and the mail safe.

https://about.usps.com/postal-bulletin/2007/html/pb22218/kit1_014.html

USPS consolidated five zip codes into one distribution center, turning four 30,000-sqft facilities into storefront locations. It took five years to remove all the kinks at the existing facility as the combined workload got done with fewer workers.

Yeah but in 5 years how much did mail volume fall?

https://about.usps.com/who-we-...

You really missed it didn't you, secure in your letters, oh and look and whole raft of laws https://about.usps.com/manuals... to secure your mail as per the constitution, which by logical and reasonable extension should apply to digital information transmission and dip stick it is you data, whether you are sending it or receiving it. Just a letters are yours whether you are sending them or receiving them. Basically the corrupt arse holes have just written a law equivalent to saying the postal service is allowed to open all mail and scan it's contents in order to profit by that information whether by extortion or to sell to others. Because yeah, the ISP can now legally extort money from you ie we have secrets about you, want them to stay secret pay extra for privacy. Make no mistake this is seriously sick and disturbing stuff, the stuff of slavery or them owning your privacy and by inference owning you, digital slavery. Republicans have proven exactly how evil they truly are.

I don't know about that, but USPS will insure up to $50,000USD. I guess they weren't using USPS.

They have been losing money every year as long as I can remember. Without government support they would be bankrupt....

https://about.usps.com/news/na...

FedEx and UPS are bit players. USPS is the big gorilla in the room.

Not in package shipping they aren't. USPS is small potatoes in the package shipping business. In Q2 2016 USPS shipped $1.2billion in packages. UPS had revenues 10X that amount over the same period the vast majority of which was in package shipments.

In a week, USPS moves more than UPS does in a year. FedEx is smaller. It takes USPS just 3 days to do the same.

You are comparing letters with packages. Not a meaningful comparison. In theory USPS could compete strongly in package delivery but they haven't been effective at it to date.

Amazon's network may be big, but they won't be UPS/FedEx big.

They don't have to be as big as the third party couriers networks. Amazon doesn't have to roll out delivery everywhere all at once to be efficient at it. They could simply start with population centers like NYC and back haul. Over time they build it up AND they have a guaranteed customer unlike the freight couriers.

I live on a corner. My "address" is on one street, but if I walk out the side door I'm on the wrong street from what my address says.

This is resolved with standards. A building can only have one address, so in the case of a building on a corner, you have to pick one. This probably varies by country or state, but I think in many places in the US, residential houses' addresses are determined by which road the driveway enters from. I lived in a house like that years ago: the front door faced street A, but the driveway was on street B, so that was the house's address. I don't really see the problem here; it's not like the two are very far apart.

If you're coming out of a larger buildings with faces on two non-contiguous streets, and want a roboUber to pick you up, you should be able to just give it your GPS coordinates. (Also, I wouldn't be surprised if in large cities, buildings like that don't frequently have multiple street addresses that are resolvable by GPS, but I don't really know. Again, this probably varies a lot from place to place, since addressing is controlled by local government.)

How do you fix the "coordinate" problem of having ten different coordinate systems in use just in one place?

Um, the default? Almost everything is WGS-84 AFAIK. My car GPS lets me enter GPS coordinates, and it doesn't ask me for a datum. According to the Wikipedia article for WGS-84, it is the datum used by the GPS system itself, so logically that's the one you should use. Again according to the article, it's consistent worldwide to an accuracy of +- 1m. For building addresses, that's far more than sufficient resolution, esp. if you're just worried about where some robocar is going to pick you up. If you can't walk an extra 6 feet to deal with an inaccurate address, you're not going to be taking a roboUber anywhere.

(Here's one I really love. I order something online and the vendor tells me that my address doesn't exist. I've lived here for 20 years, I get mail and packages here all the time. Unfortunately, the shipping program he's using has "fixed" my address and it doesn't appear in his database, so my address doesn't exist.)

Does your address exist according to the USPS? That's the real authority there. I've seen that before, where people claim their address is such-and-such, but the USPS does not recognize that as an address and so will not deliver to it. Just because Google Maps thinks it's a real place doesn't mean the USPS does. To check, you need to go to usps.com and use their address verification tool there. If it doesn't come up there (along with a 9-digit ZIP code), then you need to contact your local postmaster and have the issue fixed. However you say you get mail there all the time (I'm assuming USPS when you say "mail"), so likely it is in there, and the vendor is using some other 3rd-party address database which is incomplete. I'm not sure what the real problem here is without more information but it sounds like your vendor has some shitty 3rd-party software. My recommendation is to go here:
https://tools.usps.com/go/ZipL...
and check your address. It'll correct your address if you're entering it weirdly, and will put it into the USPS's preferred standardized format (no punctuation, correct city name, etc.). Use that for your orders always. If the vendor has a problem with that, then it's the vendor's fault. Point them to the USPS's verifier if they disagree. How many vendors have a problem with this anyway? One or a lot?

There is a special program going on in my area where for less than $0.50 my sealed, encrypted correspondence will be hand delivered to it destination by a uniformed representative of the United States government. These representatives will stop by my home or place of business to pick up my correspondence or I can use several convenient drop boxes located throughout my neighborhood. I find this service to be an excellent way to securely communicate with friends and family and to conduct business in this modern era.

There might be a similar service in your area. You can find out here.

The USPS is more the exception with their sole focus being mail than the rule.

How soon people forget:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

They still do Money Orders:

https://www.usps.com/shop/mone...

There are those who think the USPS should get back in the financial business to help serve the underserved/underbanked

http://www.latimes.com/busines...

Don't you mean an impossible standard

Well, the USPS are still there 10 years later, so it must be possible. I, for one, expect nothing but the very best from our benevolent and omniscient government. If they can decide, how I should pay my doctors and what medicine is good for me, if they can know, what foods are healthy, how children should be reared, Internet-service provided, and retirement financed, they can certainly figure out, how to pay for their own workers' retirement. Especially, since they are exempt from some of the local laws (like parking regulations) — NYC alone gets over $100 mln in fines from FedEx and other private companies every year, but not from USPS.

And make it a model too — for the knuckle-dragging KKKapitalists to follow!

Seriously though, the required prefunding , which you Statists like to talk about so much, protects taxpayers, who'd be on the hook to pay for these government workers otherwise. Hasn't Detroit taught you anything? We do not owe employees of private companies, but postal workers work for us. This is why USPS is — and ought to be — treated differently from the "Fortune 500" companies.

you amusingly stupid mucksavage

And here come insults and name-calling. I think, I'll retire from this thread before you escalate to throwing of feces and banana-peels. Remember to logout.

Seriously.. I ordered an open source Smoothieboard (for a 3D printer) from the US to Canada. It left Idaho, went to Los Angels and then went to Tokyo where it sat for two weeks.

https://tools.usps.com/go/Trac...

Doesn't surprise me anymore when shit ends up going to the wrong place.

USPS Form 1500 only pertains to sexually oriented advertisements. Unless one wants to claim an obscure fetish about credit card offers I don't see how this form would help.

IIRC it doesn't require any explaination of why it is objectionable. Always use the rules in your favor.

USPS Form 1500 only pertains to sexually oriented advertisements. Unless one wants to claim an obscure fetish about credit card offers I don't see how this form would help.

USPS offers tracking. Your shipping back-end should capture this tracking number, write it to the order shipment table, and send e-mail to the customer. That way, calls about "where's my stuff?" can be handled with a script: "Log in to your account, open past orders, and click the Track button."

Some more URLs I have in my collection (haven't checked some of these in awhile, though):

UPS tracking (after trigger enter your tracking number)
US Postal Service Tracking (after trigger enter your tracking number)
YouTube Video Search
E.gg Timer (type the length of the countdown in plain text after your trigger -- eg: "5 minutes" to make the timer run for five minutes, "2 hours 3 minutes" for two hours and three minutes, ect. You can even go do other browsing and background the tab, it will jump to the front when it goes off.
IMDB Search
Rotten Tomatoes
Google Translate (to English) -- just paste the URL of the foreign site after your trigger.
ZXing QR Code decoder -- paste a image URL after the trigger.
DownForEveryoneOrJustMe website check
NewEgg Product Search
FreshPorts Search

For sites without their own searches, you can always set up a Google search restricted to the site with "site%3Adomainofsite.tld+%s" as the string.

Once you have all the major search engines set up there's really no reason to waste toolbar space on Firefox with the actual Search Bar anymore.

Total mail volume, 2013: 158.4 billion
Even you use it. Did you even have a point?

Of-course I completely forgot to mention all of the service prices that are rising, from accounting, to lawyers, to court fees, to mailing, to education, to car repair, etc.

Did I forget to mention coffee and coffee shops?

Obviously water

They will talk about drought and bandits and weather and climate and every single excuse under the Sun except for the actual real cause of this nonsense: inflation.

you being an idiot and driving your car over a pedestrian infringes on their right to the pursuit of happiness

Sure. And any such idiots ought to be punished — and have their right to drive a car suspended. But this has nothing to do with the preventive prohibition — which is what the license requirement amounts to.

You see, when it comes to behaviors that put others at significant risk

Risky driving — or drone-flying — can be prohibited. People engaging in it may lose their right to drive (or fly drones) at all — or be punished otherwise — that's fine and normal. What I do not approve of, however, is the preemptive requirement to have a government's permission to do anything.

why only punish the ones who were unlucky enough to have the negative outcome actually happen

Because determining, what's really risky and what is not, is only a little bit easier, than detecting a murderer before he kills...

Similarly, Amazon flying drones over residential neighborhoods sounds pretty risky to me

It does, huh? You don't mind the thousands-pounds piloted aircraft flying above your all day, you don't mind the trucks driving around all day (delivering the same stuff), it is the light drones, that keep you awake at night?

not sure this ban is such a bad thing until we can prove suitable precautions are being taken

That, right there, is the key to our disagreement. You want everybody, who wish to fly a drone, to prove, they've "taken precautions". I don't believe, you ought to have the power to impose such a requirement. The burden of proof ought to be on you.

Now, that was philosophical. Now comes the more practical. Amazon being the 800-pound gorilla, can afford to argue with the government — they can not be ignored. They even managed to get the USPS to offer Sunday delivery — though now it seems available to all.

But the FAA simply killed other attempts to use drones — such as for the delivery of flowers. The barrier to entry — to start competing with the incumbent behemoths — was upped, and we the consumers are losing. No wonder, Amazon aren't suing to overturn the FAA's decision — any favorable overcome would apply to all. They are merely asking for exception — for themselves. Crony capitalism much?

The US Postal Service already does this... ...snip...

Meta-data is not secret, not private, not protected. .....snip...

False military meta-data is classified secret or higher.
Its classification is a study in why meta data is interesting
and I suspect shows why it is both an invasion of privacy and a powerful tool.

The document that contains the COLLECTED set of meta data that
maps units, individuals, locations and postal delivery information is classified.

Anyone with family in the service knows that they can sent to
PFC Joe Soldier APO/FPO/DPO and it gets delivered.

See: https://www.usps.com/ship/apo-...
Also see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...
And see: http://www.dtic.mil/whs/direct...

The classified document is classified not because of the the individual line entry
it is "the collection of meta data entries" that gets stamped. Apparently some of
the locations of some of the units are classified a little or a lot. Layers of routing contain layers
of security management for each of the associated documents.

Unlike SMTP mail there are no progress stamps.... for good reasons.

The analysis of the security risks associated with these documents predates
modern large data analysis tools. And may need to be reconsidered in light
of modern statistical analysis. i.e. Local agencies that have the tools to collect
meta data could use that equipment under the guise of training to spy on family
of active duty service and pose a national security risk. This risk IMO is inherent
in both phone and other digital connection data.

To speculate further is foolish for me....

Citation? Not that I expect an AC to respond, but this sounds like you pulled it out of your ass.

Are you an retarded? You seriously didn't know that tampering with US mail is a crime?

http://about.usps.com/posters/...

But obviously that's only for us plebes not for the Panopticon operators.

http://pe.usps.com/businessmail101/mailcharacteristics/parcels.htm

If your mailpiece isn’t a postcard, letter, or a flat (large envelope), then it’s a parcel. You may be surprised to find out that "parcels" are not just big boxes. Many mailers send small parcels in all classes of mail. Parcels offer some of the best value for your postage dollars.

Parcel Dimensions
Generally, commercial parcels must measure:

        At least 3 inches high x 6 inches long x 1/4 inch thick.
        Except for Standard Post and Parcel Select, no mailpiece may measure more than 108 inches in length and girth combined. Length is the measurement of the longest dimension and girth is the distance around the thickest part (perpendicular to the length). Maximum weight is 70 pounds.

Sorry dude, but whoever told you that lied to you. In 2001, the USPS pension fund had $0 in it, and they'd promised to pay out $32 billion. You can see it in their annual report:

http://about.usps.com/who-we-a...
Click "balance sheets" and it's at the bottom of page1.

Congress mandated that they start catching up, first by reducing the outflow in 2003-2005, then by actually setting money aside starting in 2006. What was pretty extreme about the mandate is that Congress gave them only ten years to get caught up. That's roughly the same as asking someone to pay off their mortgage in 10 years - it can be done, but it sure isn't easy. That's what all the shouting was about - until the tinfoil-hat crowd started making up complete BS like what you spouted. Of course, there was a reason for the relatively short timeline - it's entirely possible that in the next ten years marketers will largely switch to email and stop using the postal service much. If that happens, USPS will not be bringing in revenue to cover their retirement plans. So the timeline is short, getting caught up is painful, but it would be unfair to their workers to rely on Penny Saver to still be pumping billions into the USPS 20 year from now.

They've done a pretty good job catching up, as you can see in this 2014 GAO report:
http://www.gao.gov/assets/670/...

You don't have to pay for it. Per 39 CFR 3008 'Prohibition of pandering advertisements' (http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/39/3008), you can tell the USPS that you find mailers from any sender to be offensive and the USPS is required to issue an order that no more mailings be sent to you by that mailer. The form you need is PS1500, available at http://about.usps.com/forms/ps...

WRONG.

USPS does have such a service. It's called click-n-ship.

https://www.usps.com/business/...

I've long thought this is an obvious application for electric vehicles, what with predictable routes and whatnot. Another one would be the small local delivery mail trucks, especially as those things are constantly stopping and starting - a very inefficient way to use an ICE, and one which puts a lot of wear on the engine.

You would seem to be right about that.

Funny you should mention that - the latest issue 'Forever' international stamps are in fact round.

No, he doesn't...

UPSS? $15.9 BILLION loss last year... http://about.usps.com/news/national-releases/2012/pr12_131.htm NASA did manage to accomplish several things, but not very cost effectively.

USPS has a money-back guarantee for Priority Mail Express (in most markets), but charges more for holiday delivery.
https://www.usps.com/ship/priority-mail-express.htm

So, like any consumer, you choose the shipper that best meets your needs based on their well documented service offers.

But the law only applies if somebody is doing it on purpose. Mistakes are not "unfair trade practices". Sending you something other than what you DID ask for, if it is a mistake, is not an intent to defraud you and so the unsolicited merchandise law does not apply. You see?

It appears that it is you who don't know the Unsolicited Merchandise law.

Quote USPS ... throw out unwanted items or if you like it "finders keepers"

http://about.usps.com/publications/pub300a/pub300a_tech_021.htm