Yes, that’s what the Soylent is for.

If you take a multivitamin, I don’t see why you couldn’t live off of it indefinitely. It does probably have enough vitamins for you anyway. Is that really a life worth living?

That’s a very different use case than a fax. I mean, why even use email for that?

If you’re passing a string, and you don’t know what currency it is, you have the exact same problem as passing an int and not knowing what currency it is. USD’s smallest denomination is 1/10 cent (gas stations usually charge in tenths of a cent, and half pennies are still legal tender, even though they’re not minted anymore), so the string representation in your examples would be exactly the same for USD and Dinar.

I agree that the best way to represent it between server and client is as a string, but that doesn’t work when you need to perform calculations, so in that case, the best way to do the calculations is to use the smallest denomination, then use banker’s rounding on the result, then use the int for storage and turn it back into a string representing the default denomination for transit. Or, just use ints representing the smallest denomination everywhere except displaying to the user. Even JavaScript can handle integer arithmetic.

Source: I’ve also done fintech for loan and retail companies. Yes, there are definitely a lot of gotchas, so using integers is best when you need to do calculations.

The vast majority of senders do not send email using end to end encryption. If you’re sending an email from a PM address to another PM address, sure, it’s end to end encrypted. If you’re sending to another service, it’s not end to end encrypted unless you’ve both gone through the painful steps of setting up PGP encryption. Same as if you’re receiving from another service.

You can read about it here:

https://proton.me/support/proton-mail-encryption-explained

So that quote you just responded with is saying exactly what I had just said above it. They promise that they’ll encrypt that unencrypted email that just came into their server for you. And they promise that they’ll encrypt that unencrypted email you just sent outside their service.

Every currency has a smallest denomination.

Or, use the smallest denomination. In the US, that’s typically tenths of a penny. So, $1 = 1000. Then everything uses integer arithmetic.

Of course, JS doesn’t actually have integers, so yeah, strings are probably best.

It would be a lot more troubling if screaming kids didn’t make you soft.

The email comes into their server unencrypted. They promise that they will encrypt it for you, though. Of course, you’re also relying on the sending server to keep the message secure as well.

That is true that they have the technical ability to do that, but it is also illegal if they disclose that information to anyone, and it’s unnecessary to run the service, so it simply puts them in a lot of legal jeopardy and adds to service costs.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2511

I personally trust AT&T with a fax line a lot more than I trust Google with an email.

Google specifically discloses that it does record the contents of every email (obviously), and that when you delete an email, it’s not really gone from their servers. AT&T (as well as any phone company in the US) is not allowed to disclose the contents of your phone call or fax without a valid wiretap order (which don’t apply to privileged communications), so they almost never record call content. Keep in mind, email providers must also hand over any emails covered under a valid search warrant.

So when you send an email, your document is 100% definitely recorded by at least two companies (or one if you use the same provider as the recipient). When you send a fax, it’s highly unlikely that the contents of your document are recorded at all, except on the printed page at the receiving end. It’s just not necessary and puts the phone company at risk, so it doesn’t make any business sense.

Having to physically wire tap the phone line is a lot more difficult and requires local bad actors. Email’s exposure to the internet makes it easier to hack. Yes, email can be encrypted, but if your server is compromised, that doesn’t matter. End to end encryption for email is much harder, and isn’t really used by any institutions (and usually can’t be because of data retention regulations), so the server has complete access to the unencrypted email in almost all cases. Compromising a fax machine that isn’t connected to the internet is a lot harder.

Not all faxes go through VoIP. Your everyday home fax machine probably uses VoIP, because having a landline installed in your home is stupid expensive and unnecessary, but faxes in institutions probably use the PSTN. These institutions most likely need landlines anyway, so having a dedicated fax line makes a lot more sense.

And if a fax goes through VoIP, it’ll be encrypted the same way email is. So in that case, it’s the same level of security as email, which is to say, easier to compromise. At least you can’t trick someone into clicking a link in a fax though.

Fax machines. Phone lines are pretty private, and sending a fax is usually more secure than emailing something, especially if someone else manages your email.

I am a Californian. My flag is the flag of the California Republic.

Unfortunately, my state sees fit to subsidize a bunch of conservative states that otherwise would have failed already.

I ♣️ my dog.

Society probably wouldn’t work very well. I don’t know anything but how to write code and eat hot chip. Lots of plane crashes.

Definitely ghosts. Shower ghosts. Clean shower ghosts. Clumsy clean shower ghosts.

There was a movie about this exact thing. I’m trying to remember the lesson… oh I’m sure it wasn’t important.

Elon doesn’t spend time with his children. They are meat shields to him.

Cool, I don’t want it. Like, at all. Not one bit.

There are a lot of places in the world that aren’t any better than what you’re talking about, and it’s a testament to how resilient the people who live there are.

There are also people fighting wars with astoundingly more gruesome weapons than we used to have. At least when someone killed you with a sword, they’d have to be there, watching you die. Now people kill like a video game, with a controller and a screen.

All animals have an amazing ability to just keep pushing through, even when the situation is dire. Some do it better than others, but humans have got to be near the top.