Comment by sinak | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sinak | Hacker News Reader

Hey HN,

Thomas and I (with help from a few others) have been working pretty solid for the last 10 days or so to get this banner ready, and wanted to get it out with plenty of time before 02/11. We realize there are a few cross-browser quirks and some of our code is messy, but it works, and any issues will be ironed out between now and February 11th. You can embed the code starting now without worry.

In the meanwhile, if anyone wants to submit pull requests to fix any issues they see, that'd be wonderful. We'll clean up the code and fix any outstanding issues in the meanwhile.

In case you missed it, this is a follow up to The Day We Fight Back campaign [1]. The site itself will also be updated on the day.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7037532

Edit: If you work at a medium or large tech company and care about this issue, please take a moment to start a conversation internally about joining the day of action on the 11th. It can be adding the banner, or something else entirely. It's likely you'll find quite a bit of support amongst other employees. While we've reached out to the policy arms of some larger companies, we're pretty constrained on resources, and many of them are interested but hesitant. Engineers often have a lot of say in what actually happens; if you care, speak up.

I'm working on a startup called postdot [1] that allows you to send physical mail the same way you'd send email. Would it be possible for us to help you add a feature to send a physical letter to your representatives?

[1] http://postdot.org

this is really generous and should definitely be followed up on. tons of email is easier to ignore than a cascade of real letters.

Indeed, I hope they add the mail option, and get rid of the email option. Too many people will default to it (sending an email is much easier than placing a call) and as far as I recall, most representtatives don't tally "concerns raised via email" like they do for phone and mail (mostly because they have to open their mail, and take their calls, but they can just sit on email forever without the box getting "full.")

There is a callOnly flag for the widget that I really recommend people use. In brief there was a lot of debate over whether emails should be included at all, and the flag was the compromise. Some orgs, for example the EFF, will be promoting the call-only flag when they distribute the code.

I'm in the advocacy space and you aren't collecting enough information to deliver the emails to Congress, the web forms require many other pieces of information like a title (Mr./Mrs. etc) and often a phone number. Better to take off the email option than mislead the public that it will be delivered.

I don't think a form letter has much over a form email. Lots of advocacy groups already let you send a postcard with one click. (Though, in theory, both should get logged in the system. Whether or not the member cares is another issue.)

A call or a letter/email you write and send yourself will be much more impactful.

In theory, both should get logged in the system. In practice, though, (I've seen this question answered in a lot of AMAs by congressmen et al.), they simply don't treat email as a constituency channel.

The amount of attention your representatives tend to give your issue is directly proportional to the amount of time you can force them to spend listening. You can filter an email; you can skim a letter; you have to listen to a call all the way through. The best thing, though, is to set up an appointment, and talk to them in person.

It's pretty easy to "filter" a stack of more-or-less identical postcards, but otherwise I agree.

It's almost a truism: if you want to show that you care... spend the time to show that you care. I actually think it's really cool that you can walk right into the office of your Congressman or Senator. Obviously you won't get past the interns if you don't have an appointment, but still... pretty cool.

Hey, I couldn't find any contact info on your site, but this is something I would definitely like to learn more about. I'm working on a different project to help fight state surveillance, and sending physical mail could be a hugely useful feature. Could you email me jeff@rubbingalcoholic.com

BTW, props on your generosity!

Yeah that'd be great. I've been wanting to do something like that for a campaign for a while. Feel free to send me an email (it's in my profile).

The Django Debug Toolbar is on, seems like you forgot to remove it from production servers.

Hey, just a heads up: I went and poked around the site a bit and after submitting a blank form within the "Order Summary" modal, I got the following traceback page:

http://postimg.org/image/74y6crfbf/

"You're seeing this error because you have DEBUG = True in your Django settings file. Change that to False, and Django will display a standard 500 page."

Never, never, never push to production with debug mode on!

Sweet, I was hoping someone would make something like this!

The thing that inhibits me from using your site is that I don't understand 100% what it does / how it does it, and how much it costs.

I'd add A LOT more meat to your landing page.

I want to know

* What am I allowed to print? Show me examples of all the stuff I can do

* Can I create campaigns, where it is automatically scheduled to send X on Jan 1st, Y on Feb 1st, etc..

* Can I have trinkets / widgets delivered to you guys and you combine that into one mailing?

* I definitely want to be sure the printed thing looks like how I intended it to be. How will you do this? I would like it if I got the mail piece scanned or photographed (as a review copy, before it is scheduled to be sent) and emailed to me.

* What's the cost? You don't have to do all the stuff above for free. You can charge a fee for everything, e.g. $1-$5 per trinket that has to be processed, $10-$20 for a review copy photo / scan. What's the cost per print + mailing? Can I choose the mailing speed (e.g. FedEx overnight, UPS 3-day ground, etc.)?

Death by feature-creep.

Sorry, but you sound like you'd be a nightmare client.

While it might not be the best feature-set for this specific startup, those are features that I would be looking for if I wanted to use this for my business.

However, the "About" page makes it very clear that this is nothing more than a project (not a business), so adding the feature request would likely take more time than it would bring in dollars.

The YCombinator startup whose product you may be able to use to build the service you want is Lob.

A platform play for "Snail-Mail as a Service (SMAAS)"!

I love the idea, but most of my outgoing mail requires that I send along a specific piece of paper. Most of my bills can be paid on-line now, but my quarterly income/tax declarations require a coupon that's 1/4 letter size.

I suppose it's the signature they really want (though my account details are on there too and for some people, that eliminates incoming payments that can't be read due to illegible hand-writing).

Your Django debug is showing! D:

    DoesNotExist at /letter/new
    Address matching query does not exist. Lookup parameters were {'name': u''}

That would be freaking awesome.

I would totally pay 1mBTC or something to have a letter sent for me.

Always got "DoesNotExist" error whichever valid address I put in

You've got an interesting idea, and I have no idea how to contact you from your site to talk to you about it. Or from your HN profile.

Love the idea, but I don't really get the recipient field - whichever (valid) address I put in, I get an error. I also think it's a bit unclear on what should be entered here, a post/zip code, company name, etc.?

WordPress plugin to add the footer js. https://github.com/darkness/thedaywefightback

Thanks for making the plugin! How do I add it in WordPress? I went to https://github.com/darkness/thedaywefightback, downloaded it as a .zip, and tried to install it via http://www.my-site-name.com/wp-admin/plugin-install.php?tab=..., but got the error "The package could not be installed. No valid plugins were found. Plugin install failed."

The zip contains a subdirectory. Only the subdirectory should be uploaded to your site plugin folder. If you want to upload a .zip file in the browser, only the subdirectory should be zipped first.

Thanks--zipping the subdirectory, then uploading it, worked to install the plug-in. (If it's not too much trouble for you, putting it in the WordPress Plugin Directory, http://wordpress.org/plugins/, would let WordPress users find it easily.) Unfortunately, when I tried to activate it I got this error: Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_FUNCTION in /home/content/61/6806261/html/wp-content/plugins/thedaywefightback/thedaywefightback.php on line 13

The official site has chosen a similar plugin that has some additional options you can configure. They've also added good instructions on how to install it. https://github.com/modemlooper/thedaywefightback.wp

Hey, I tried to check out the examples, but neither one displays the header for me. (FF-28a) There's only a black bar at the bottom of the page and this in the console:

    TypeError: options.location.country is undefined
    if(options.location.country.iso_code) {

Sorry, our bad. Fixing that now, should be done in a few minutes. That's our GeoIP server not returning a value, and our javascript freaking out as a result.

Encountered an uncaught exception, too.

http://pastebin.com/UsR21Cqe

Thanks, just rechecked and it does work.

Should be fixed now; sorry! Made the code that checks for geoip location more resilient.

All socially-polished hustlers in the DC area might consider prioritizing some time to setting up meetings with congress people to continue this crucial conversation in person. It's important to underscore that their participation in the debate or not and their votes are being watched. On a personal note, a friend of mine promised to do this and I will bug him again to follow-through on it.

It's not obvious from the call-to-action button or on the call info page whether the call costs the end user anything, and if so, how much. Judicious use of the word 'free' might increase conversions (if that's actually the case).

It just occurs to me, though I'm signed up and all, that I don't actually want "new laws" that curtail online surveillance. I don't personally believe that the current interpretation of law is Constitutionally valid, and what I really want is for more gravitas to be given to the 'old laws', namely, the fourth amendment.

I don't know that I expect you guys to change it, or whether or not my non-solution is actually workable, or that it will necessarily stop me from displaying the banner; Either way, while I'm not trying to be a pedantic nay-sayer, I couldn't let it go unmentioned.

I agree. History has shown that new laws are largely used to legalize the behavior. The wording should focus on the fact that mass surveillance is unconstitutional and we want our leaders to support the constitution that they swore to uphold.

Thanks, Sina.

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