Examining the covidtests.gov architecture(adhoc.team)
adhoc.team
Examining the covidtests.gov architecture
https://adhoc.team/2022/01/18/covidtests-usps-aws-managed-services/
235 comments
I just discover that https://analytics.usa.gov exists to show the number of users on the site and other participating .gov sites in real time.
That's so cool! It really feels like tech best practices have made lots of headway in the past 5 years within the U.S. government. Looks like this analytics frontend was brought to us by 18F, with the codebase even hosted on GitHub[0]. Other governments in the US also seem to be using this like the city of Los Angeles[1].
0. https://github.com/18F/analytics.usa.gov
1. http://analyticsdash-46.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com
0. https://github.com/18F/analytics.usa.gov
1. http://analyticsdash-46.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com
Other sites reusing the code are listed in this README: https://github.com/18F/analytics.usa.gov#readme
Next step is directing attention of society to these systems and education as to why they're important.
Boy, a look at that site and you see why this was hosted by USPS - almost 200M hits to USPS properties in the last 7 days. I’d been tangentially aware of USPS’s pretty solid improvements to their digital architecture/offerings, but I didn’t realize they’d grown that much.
Given that essentially every American in the country interacts with USPS tangentially every day except Sundays, it seems reasonable. I get an email every day with an image of all mail coming to my mailbox, that probably counts when I open up the mail.
This is a wonderful service. I did it when I moved and set up forwarding, but continue see it every morning.
USPS Informed Delivery / Daily Digest is awesome and underappreciated
USPS Informed Delivery / Daily Digest is awesome and underappreciated
And is one of the few remaining [government] things that fails (for me, at least) to auto-verify for those of us who have an apostrophe (or suffix) in our name. I keep meaning to get signed up but, like the TSA quick-pass programs, it's always low on my list and I never get around to going in to "verify my identity". The auto-verify fails with any/all cards I've tried tried to use all the auto methods they provide (and address is owned & occupied single-family home/very 'standard').
Anyone that works on this -- please try to recognize those of us with "unusual" characters or a suffix as our given name! =D
Anyone that works on this -- please try to recognize those of us with "unusual" characters or a suffix as our given name! =D
Meanwhile, chilling effect - government knows who sends you mail and can actively build a list of whom sends you mail and whom you send mail too.
The government has known this as part of the covers program ever since the 2000s (or before). Informed delivery is just letting people do something useful with that information, which is a welcome change from other nasty surveillance programs.
We’ve gotten USPS mail on Sundays for awhile now. Why? I don’t know.
There used to be half a dozen or so cities that did Sunday mail in lieu of Saturday, typically in areas with a high Seventh Day Adventist population. However I think most of them have since moved to do Saturday delivery instead
It's mostly people tracking their online shopping. Most small, lightweight packages that aren't delivered by Amazon are delivered by USPS. Lots of stores/receipts will link directly to the package's tracking page on USPS's site.
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Why's the #3 most active city in the US listed as Graceville, a Florida village with a population of 2,153? Is that a VPN exit point for some large provider? Google isn't helpful.
I assume Ashburn traffic (#8) comes from AWS us-east-1.
edit: And another interesting thing, there are no EU countries in the geolocation table.
I assume Ashburn traffic (#8) comes from AWS us-east-1.
edit: And another interesting thing, there are no EU countries in the geolocation table.
According to their documentation, DAP is built on-top of Google Analytics, and also IP Anonymization is enabled by default. As a Google Analytics power-user, I happen to know two relevants facts: 1) Geography is inferred from IP Address 2) IP Anonymization happens before geo look-ups.
So, what's probably happening is that some IP address in Graceville happens to end in the octect 0. And a bunch of other high-volume addresses, when you drop their last octect because of IP Anonymization, look like the IP address from Graceville.
As a more general note, the accuracy of geography reports in GA are suspect to begin with (Amazon and Google only agree at the state level about 75% of the time), and with IP Anonymization enabled it takes a substantial nosedive.
So, what's probably happening is that some IP address in Graceville happens to end in the octect 0. And a bunch of other high-volume addresses, when you drop their last octect because of IP Anonymization, look like the IP address from Graceville.
As a more general note, the accuracy of geography reports in GA are suspect to begin with (Amazon and Google only agree at the state level about 75% of the time), and with IP Anonymization enabled it takes a substantial nosedive.
I was wondering the same thing. The town has a total population of like 2200. I can’t find any data centers near there. Maybe it’s just a flaw in their metrics.
I’ve worked on systems in the past that had different levels of ip geolocation data precision. When the precision was low, they would pick the midpoint of the known area (maybe a whole state) to “fill in” more precise data (ex: the city). Since even “nowhere” is typically part of some town limits, we’d see otherwise tiny towns show up way too frequently.
My guess is that’s what’s happening here.
My guess is that’s what’s happening here.
Graceville isn't really the midpoint of anywhere so I'd still be curious how it ended up being picked as the location.
I was looking at this yesterday too. Using USPS as the back end for COVIDtests.gov was particularly apt because (a) USPS is typically the US government website with the highest traffic and (b) verifying and storing addresses is their bread and butter.
And I think (hope) they will ship it.
Any guesses as to why Graceville, FL (with a population under 3,000) ranks under Washington and above Chicago for traffic?
I'm guessing some shady entrepreneur that has somehow compiled a bunch of unique shipping names and addresses to stockpile covid tests and try to sell them.
Its also the top 3 on other non covid website like the DEP of commerce -
https://analytics.usa.gov/commerce/
You can get a JSON of the data also and see they have “ZZ” and “not set” as two cities excluded from the front dashboard. https://analytics.usa.gov/data/live/top-cities-realtime.json
https://analytics.usa.gov/commerce/
You can get a JSON of the data also and see they have “ZZ” and “not set” as two cities excluded from the front dashboard. https://analytics.usa.gov/data/live/top-cities-realtime.json
No doubt this is happening to some extent. But it does appear that the USPS requires valid residential addresses in order to send a mask. The USPS does have a database of actual addresses that they validate against. You can't simply send to something that looks valid.
Perhaps some good citizen hacker created a bot that automatically submitted a request for every address in town.
Perhaps some good citizen hacker created a bot that automatically submitted a request for every address in town.
a minor correction just in case anyone's confused: this site is for ordering free covid tests to be delivered to your home; the free masks will be distributed starting next week at locations like pharmacies and health clinics
Most likely a similar reason as to why Potwin got so much attention: https://theweek.com/articles/624040/how-internet-mapping-gli...
Backend for that seems to be Google Analytics, I wish the government didn't have to add such trackers shared with third-parties.
Omg it’s so snappy
> But scalable web services are, in 2022, a commodity available to all.
A quick aside - I feel most folks on HN can say that they have been, in some way, shape, or form, a part of this journey for the industry. Take pride in being part of a community that has made this a possibility.
A quick aside - I feel most folks on HN can say that they have been, in some way, shape, or form, a part of this journey for the industry. Take pride in being part of a community that has made this a possibility.
"scalable" is just a euphemism for inefficient. With the hardware available today, 8m reads / day is easily served on 1 small instance.
Until we measure our services in transactions / kW, things will continue to get more redundant.
Until we measure our services in transactions / kW, things will continue to get more redundant.
Power efficiency is definitely a concern at places like Google.
Hopefully it'll catch on more, and encourage the use of productive AND efficient approaches.
Hopefully it'll catch on more, and encourage the use of productive AND efficient approaches.
It's a concern for people who can't afford their power bills. It's not really a concern for Google, who have infinite money and could save power by not running 20 different messenger services if they really wanted to.
Is it power efficient to have 1 (small|medium|large) instance per workload? Or more realistically >=2 instances for redundancy.
No? Maybe we could get cost, energy and other efficiencies by aggregating disparate smaller and larger workloads over a system that scales up and down with demand, so every instance is processing X million TPS.
Cool idea. We could label that scalable, because it’s vastly more efficient!
No? Maybe we could get cost, energy and other efficiencies by aggregating disparate smaller and larger workloads over a system that scales up and down with demand, so every instance is processing X million TPS.
Cool idea. We could label that scalable, because it’s vastly more efficient!
Is there anything in the article or the supposed architecture that leads you to believe it is inefficient? Might we suspect that using multi-tenant cloud resources may take advantage of economies of scale and be quite efficient?
CDN, LB, Api gateway, message queue – all distinctly hosted. And that's just the superficial components.
USDS is crushing it. Really well executed. Thank you govtech folks.
OMG, IT IS EVEN BETTER THAN YOU THINK, if you look at the form endpoint mentioned:
https://special.usps.com/testkits
without submitting anything, it returns this error code:
QWNjZXNzIG1haW4gcHJvZ3JhbS4gQWNjZXNzIG1haW4gc2VjdXJpdHkuIEFjY2VzcyBtYWluIHByb2dyYW0gZ3JpZC4
which base64 translates to: "Access main program. Access main security. Access main program grid."
Which is a JURASSIC PARK reference: https://jurassicsystems.com/
https://special.usps.com/testkits
without submitting anything, it returns this error code:
QWNjZXNzIG1haW4gcHJvZ3JhbS4gQWNjZXNzIG1haW4gc2VjdXJpdHkuIEFjY2VzcyBtYWluIHByb2dyYW0gZ3JpZC4
which base64 translates to: "Access main program. Access main security. Access main program grid."
Which is a JURASSIC PARK reference: https://jurassicsystems.com/
Having a reference to a movie where the plot is based on modifying DNA maybe isn't the greatest idea for an Easter egg...
Maybe it's not an easter egg!
they don't get any pats on the back until we see the invoice. The original healthcare.gov was about $300m . I'm guessing this glamorous system had a similar budget.
Wed be better off letting people buy masks on amazon and deducting on their 1040
Wed be better off letting people buy masks on amazon and deducting on their 1040
Usds is internal, so highly unlikely. The healthcare.gov fiasco was the result of government NOT doing things and instead subcontracting everything.
healthcare.gov launched before USDS was established. I would argue that part of the reason USDS exists is that fiasco which if I recall correctly was mostly CGI Federal.
That is exactly the reason.
why downvote? does anyone know how much this service cost? You like paying for it?
Interesting thing: Some of the assets actually live on www.usps.com, like https://www.usps.com/assets/script/lib/jquery.special.js, which itself seems to be (based on the HTTP response headers) served from EdgeCast sitting in front of Azure.
Azure offers three CDNs directly, one of which is EC (shown as Verizon due to the acquisition).
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/cdn/#prici...
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/cdn/#prici...
"There is no excuse for getting this wrong. It’s heartening to see that the team seems to have gotten it right."
It is amazing that every single thing I've read said more or less the same thing.
It is amazing that every single thing I've read said more or less the same thing.
Funny since the first thing I get when pressing the main central button on that site is just a blank page saying
{ "error": "QWNjZXNzIG1haW4gcHJvZ3JhbS4gQWNjZXNzIG1haW4gc2VjdXJpdHkuIEFjY2VzcyBtYWluIHByb2dyYW0gZ3JpZC4=" }
{ "error": "QWNjZXNzIG1haW4gcHJvZ3JhbS4gQWNjZXNzIG1haW4gc2VjdXJpdHkuIEFjY2VzcyBtYWluIHByb2dyYW0gZ3JpZC4=" }
lol: "Access main program. Access main security. Access main program grid."
Alrighty then.
Alrighty then.
It's a Jurassic Park reference. Somebody had a little fun.
Oh, I just figured that out 10 minutes ago. Should have read the posts here first :D
I got this too, from the UK (I'm pre-ordering before heading back to the US). I suspect it's trigged by non-US IP addresses. Using a VPN fixed it.
But how lame to give such an opaque error to so many people.
But how lame to give such an opaque error to so many people.
Same thing here. Site seems down. I'm accessing it internationally, without a VPN.
To further the learning, can anyone guess which part of the stack is likely generating the error?
To further the learning, can anyone guess which part of the stack is likely generating the error?
I suppose that's better than 'Something went wrong'.
It's amazing that this has become the low-bar standard for government websites -- simply to get basic things right is "heartening".
It astonished me that the people who wrote the CDC covid tracker made it refuse Firefox visitors through User Agent checks. Mozilla had to add an intervention to spoof UA's, specifically on that site:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1719846 ("Bug 1719846: Add UA override for https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/")
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1719846 ("Bug 1719846: Add UA override for https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/")
Wow. Really the only excuse to restrict a mainstream browser like that would be for a complex internal webapp where you can mandate browsers through organization policy.
I remember I had to install a UA spoofer addon when I used FF to access some sites. Absolutely obnoxious.
I remember I had to install a UA spoofer addon when I used FF to access some sites. Absolutely obnoxious.
You're being downvoted, but you're right. I used to work in defense/intel, and then spent a lot of time at a large Federal consulting firm, where I learned just how insanely wasteful these agencies are on software projects. It's not THAT infuriating that the product is so thoroughly _NOT_GREAT_, until you find out that the budget for it exceeds by orders of magnitude anything you've ever seen. The size of the teams on these projects is mind-boggling, and when you find out there's multiple managers for every developer, that's when your head will explode.
People on this site tend to think that any attack on the horrific spending efficiency of these agencies is motivated by an antipathy of the government in general, or a view that the government CAN'T do it right.
I'm not of that mind at all. My gripe is that the people who are most invested in expanding the government's role in the US for positive goals seem to have zero interest in even discussing the rot within these institutions that has crippled their ability to execute on the funding they already have. I can confidently assert that, if I'm being generous, 3/5s of the current Federal (and yes, contractors too!) work force is what my old chief called "furniture". I have no doubt that many, many private corporations have the exact same problem. (I've seen the inside of the average insurance company, and my god are those places bloated).
People on this site tend to think that any attack on the horrific spending efficiency of these agencies is motivated by an antipathy of the government in general, or a view that the government CAN'T do it right.
I'm not of that mind at all. My gripe is that the people who are most invested in expanding the government's role in the US for positive goals seem to have zero interest in even discussing the rot within these institutions that has crippled their ability to execute on the funding they already have. I can confidently assert that, if I'm being generous, 3/5s of the current Federal (and yes, contractors too!) work force is what my old chief called "furniture". I have no doubt that many, many private corporations have the exact same problem. (I've seen the inside of the average insurance company, and my god are those places bloated).
> It's not THAT infuriating that the product is so thoroughly _NOT_GREAT_, until you find out that the budget for it exceeds by orders of magnitude anything you've ever seen.
I once interacted with a private government contractor. They did an adequate job on a project. It worked, and it wasn't terrible. But they billed $5 million for a project that could have been built for $50 thousand, or—once you put up with a drawn-out sales process, endless client meetings and the occasional change request—more like $500,000.
The simple fact is that many large organizations, public or private, couldn't do a $50,000 software project. It costs more than that to close the sale and negotiate contracts. As Joel Spolsky pointed out, once you need to put salespeople on airplanes, even shrinkwrap software costs $75,000: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/12/15/camels-and-rubber-....
> I have no doubt that many, many private corporations have the exact same problem. (I've seen the inside of the average insurance company, and my god are those places bloated).
Yeah, that has often been my experience. Sufficiently large companies tend to be deeply inefficient about small things. Partly this is because they're optimizing for different needs than you might think, and partly because $1 million is basically pocket change if it actually solves a problem.
But also, once a company grows beyond a certain size, it operates internally like a centralized command-and-control economy. Internal politics matter far more in the short run than any market feedback.
If anything, governments can have a slight advantage if they keep things in-house. Government employees are often slightly more idealistic than their private sector counterparts, and they're definitely paid less. So an organization like the US Digital Service can outperform the original private contractors who built healthcare.gov. The USDS was staffed by idealistic FAANG developers working for the common good at below-market salaries. They did a better job than CGI Federal, the original private contractor.
I once interacted with a private government contractor. They did an adequate job on a project. It worked, and it wasn't terrible. But they billed $5 million for a project that could have been built for $50 thousand, or—once you put up with a drawn-out sales process, endless client meetings and the occasional change request—more like $500,000.
The simple fact is that many large organizations, public or private, couldn't do a $50,000 software project. It costs more than that to close the sale and negotiate contracts. As Joel Spolsky pointed out, once you need to put salespeople on airplanes, even shrinkwrap software costs $75,000: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/12/15/camels-and-rubber-....
> I have no doubt that many, many private corporations have the exact same problem. (I've seen the inside of the average insurance company, and my god are those places bloated).
Yeah, that has often been my experience. Sufficiently large companies tend to be deeply inefficient about small things. Partly this is because they're optimizing for different needs than you might think, and partly because $1 million is basically pocket change if it actually solves a problem.
But also, once a company grows beyond a certain size, it operates internally like a centralized command-and-control economy. Internal politics matter far more in the short run than any market feedback.
If anything, governments can have a slight advantage if they keep things in-house. Government employees are often slightly more idealistic than their private sector counterparts, and they're definitely paid less. So an organization like the US Digital Service can outperform the original private contractors who built healthcare.gov. The USDS was staffed by idealistic FAANG developers working for the common good at below-market salaries. They did a better job than CGI Federal, the original private contractor.
I kind of agree, but I respect the fact that the site hasn't had any major issues while (presumably) millions of orders have flooded in over the last 24 hours. I can't remember the last product I pre-ordered, for example, that was that stable.
It may be stable, but there are certainly issues. I cannot get mail delivered to my home address, and it told me I can only use a residential address, so no tests for me. I am far from the only person with this situation. This is a major fail when the website boldly advertises, "Every home in the U.S. is eligible". They even specifically refuse to send it general delivery to my local post office, which is the usual solution when people refuse to ship to anywhere but my home address.
Why can't mail be delivered to your house? I'm pretty sure the USPS basically has a mandate to deliver to every home except in extreme cases. I mean, last I heard they still run a dog sled to deliver mail in some of the furthest reaches of Alaska.
I would guess that delivering to residential addresses only is the only way to ensure a limited number per household. Otherwise, you are going to have people trying to get a bunch for resale.
I would guess that delivering to residential addresses only is the only way to ensure a limited number per household. Otherwise, you are going to have people trying to get a bunch for resale.
Most small towns in Alaska have PO Box only service, not residential delivery.
But, it looks like the covidtests site correctly recognizes at least some of these zip codes and is allowing non-residential addresses, which is impressive.
But, it looks like the covidtests site correctly recognizes at least some of these zip codes and is allowing non-residential addresses, which is impressive.
USPS won’t deliver to my door, but they will deliver to a mailbox on a paved road about 1.5 miles away. They installed some of those locking CBU things, but not enough for everyone in the area that needs one. So I’m stuck with a non-locking mailbox.
Unfortunately, mail theft went through the roof over the past year. 90% of our packages were stolen. So, we won’t ship anything via USPS anymore and got a PO Box for things that won’t ship UPS/FedEx (which happily deliver to my door).
Unfortunately, mail theft went through the roof over the past year. 90% of our packages were stolen. So, we won’t ship anything via USPS anymore and got a PO Box for things that won’t ship UPS/FedEx (which happily deliver to my door).
So you have residential mail, you just have chosen not to use it.
In the future consider not living in a rural area, but in the suburbs. I've worked as a package handler for FedEx in my past -- delivering a package to a remote location, even if 1.5 miles from a paved road sucks. If you choose to live rurally -- be prepared for the consequences such as mail delivery issues, self managed water sources, intermittent power, etc.
Just moved to a rural area 2 years ago. Will never move back to the suburbs. My water tastes better than any city water. We do shut off the well when it gets below 20 or so (a few times a year max), but it’s no big deal because we always see it coming and stock a few gallons. Mail issues have never been a problem. Our power has been more stable out here than in the city of 50k where I moved from. Gig fiber here with massive upgrade potential in the future because they ran 12 strands to my house. I only hear crickets and wind at night. Occasionally the dogs if they have to run the coyotes off. Why would I move back to the city?
Yeah, that isn't really true. There are plenty of parts of the country they don't deliver to: https://www.serviceobjects.com/blog/service-not-available-us...
All those places still have residential mail delivery, just to centralized delivery locations instead of to the door.
one would assume usps would have the best data regarding residential addresses, so I assume "where you live" is not a residential address. Part of the reason they are delivering to residential addresses (and no "to the local post office") is to limit the orders by household, and avoid scalpers reselling those tests.
Obviously ideally they should be limiting the orders by person, but without national id and with scalpers ready to make a penny wherever they can we cannot have nice things.
Obviously ideally they should be limiting the orders by person, but without national id and with scalpers ready to make a penny wherever they can we cannot have nice things.
> I assume "where you live" is not a residential address.
It is. But there are definitely a lot of assumptions that happen. The USPS occasionally reports to HUD that my home is unoccupied because it has no mailbox, which leads HUD to report such to my bank, which makes them report to my insurance company, and then I get a call telling me they cannot insure a house that is unoccupied, and I have to explain it to them... again.
Anyway, yeah, I get the reason why they'd limit it to residential addresses. But its the "Every home in the U.S. is eligible" that is a bit of a slap in the face. Don't say it if you know it isn't true, and they know it isn't true because they address it in their FAQ.
It is. But there are definitely a lot of assumptions that happen. The USPS occasionally reports to HUD that my home is unoccupied because it has no mailbox, which leads HUD to report such to my bank, which makes them report to my insurance company, and then I get a call telling me they cannot insure a house that is unoccupied, and I have to explain it to them... again.
Anyway, yeah, I get the reason why they'd limit it to residential addresses. But its the "Every home in the U.S. is eligible" that is a bit of a slap in the face. Don't say it if you know it isn't true, and they know it isn't true because they address it in their FAQ.
This sounds a lot like you’ve decided personally you don’t want mail delivered to your house, not that USPS won’t deliver. USPS tries to deliver to your house and fails because you don’t have a mailbox…
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Conversely I placed an order and had it sent to my PO Box with no hassle. I don't live in an area where (free) box only service exists.
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Why can't you get mail delivered to your home address? Isn't delivering mail to every residential address the main mandate of the USPS?
I no longer have that problem but let me give an example. Person lives in a small condo complex that does not provide a cluster box (CBU) for mail delivery by USPS. Residents then must get a PO Box for delivery or, if they are short term seasonal in a rural area, they may be able to get the post office to hold mail at the counter for them to pick up periodically (they aren't thrilled to do this either).
I'm way off any public road and there's nowhere to put a mailbox. I could get a PO Box at the local post office, but why should I pay for that when I can get my mail delivered to my office location?
There's pros and cons to every living situation. The frustration you're experiencing is entirely of your own creation. I'm glad the post office has not spent time optimizing their program on the edgiest of edge cases here, like your housing decision to live in a house with no mailbox. Maybe they eventually get around to it, but in no way should they have waited to roll this out to address your use case.
Engineers have long memories. Get some thing wrong once, and it'll take years to overcome. They need to stay perfect for 3 to 5 years before "heartening" becomes "normal".
TBH it's a low bar for any software company – in general, we (developers) tend to dramatically over-engineer quite a few things.
It makes some sense that it would be that way. If a private company's web site doesn't work at all, then they don't get your money. There are incentives for them to get basic functionality right, and if they still screw it up they can be replaced by a competitor. If a government web site is completely broken, what can you do about it? Yell angrily at a passing cloud?
(In theory you could vote for a legislator who wants to make that web site a priority -- but nobody runs on that. Why would they? It would put most voters to sleep.)
(In theory you could vote for a legislator who wants to make that web site a priority -- but nobody runs on that. Why would they? It would put most voters to sleep.)
How many other sites do you know that would go from 0 users to hundreds of millions within a few days? Even big studio games like Blizzard or Square Enix often struggle with release day, and those probably get a fraction of the users that something like this would, being blasted on all news platforms at once across the country.
The day used to be that "good enough for government work" was a compliment, an expression of the satisfaction that comes to a craftsman for doing work to high standards.
The feds had 2 years of pandemic to get it right. A bit late to launch but still glad to see resources getting out to individuals to help slow down the spread.
examples of good government sites? time.gov and weather.gov get the job done (time.gov is actually kind of snazzy)
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I wish it worked for me. My home has three separate addresses (it's a corner property), but USPS won't accept any of them. One it says is a commercial property and they won't deliver the COVID tests to there, and the other two it says don't exist. Despite the fact I get mail at all three addresses every day.
I can't leave my home to get a COVID test because I am on house arrest, so I guess I am just out of luck.
I can't leave my home to get a COVID test because I am on house arrest, so I guess I am just out of luck.
I'm half trolling here, but if you can't leave your home, why would you need a COVID test?
I don't know about OPs situation, but house arrest often allows for basic movement (groceries, court cases, etc). The list is strictly defined and the law may not allow for covid tests.
Because people visit him at his house, and he'd like to ensure that he isn't spreading it between visitors?
these tests are antigen tests, correct? If so he'll know he's sick no matter what as antigen tests aren't going to show covid until a couple days after symptoms start (typically).
> antigen tests aren't going to show covid until a couple days after symptoms start (typically)
This is false? It was definitely false pre-Omicron and my understanding is that it's still false.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.08.22268954v...
> sensitivity was 97.6% (95% CI 95-100%) for persons with symptoms.
This is false? It was definitely false pre-Omicron and my understanding is that it's still false.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.08.22268954v...
> sensitivity was 97.6% (95% CI 95-100%) for persons with symptoms.
Maybe you're saying my claim is exaggerated? Which I agree my wording wasn't precise. With antigen tests you'll have far more false negatives early on than later. The sweet spot seems to be a couple of days after symptoms.
If you're not saying that, I'm not sure what claim you're making that is contrary to my own.
If you're not saying that, I'm not sure what claim you're making that is contrary to my own.
The antigen test is supposed to show if you're currently spreading covid, which is a little different from experiencing it. You'll have symptoms for a while after you stop being infectious too.
With omicron the gap between them is a day or two smaller IIRC.
With omicron the gap between them is a day or two smaller IIRC.
Personal experience - I started testing positive 1 day after onset of symptoms and my wife 5 days after. We started having typical omicron symptoms at the same time (low grade fever, etc)
You know there are illnesses out there (this is the season) that aren't COVID? My daughter had a temperature & sniffles and a negative test 3 days and 5 days after symptoms started. She just had a cold.
We wouldn't have sent her back to school as early if she wasn't showing negative.
We wouldn't have sent her back to school as early if she wasn't showing negative.
I understand your point, but I assumed someone on house arrest wasn't someones child and is probably in a position to avoid contact with people with any symptoms no matter the illness.
This isn't quite correct. Antigen tests will show covid at approximately the same viral load as is needed to be contagious. Essentially, it's a test of whether you can spread covid today.
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here's a good read on the details for anyone wanting a nerdy amount of details for antigen testing https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/antigen-tests...
I live in a big commercial building which is very busy (I'm like the live-in, permanently-available supervisor - house arrest has its uses!). I don't want to give COVID to anyone. I had COVID in jail in March 2020 and it was horrid. I felt like I had it again, so I wanted to get tested.
Exceptions are sometimes made for people on house arrest to allow them to go to work and/or school.
I don't think that's a troll question, but I could imagine a situation where you're a high risk demographic you'd want to know early so you can get early treatment like monoclonal antibodies, paxlovid or ivermectin.
I know this is not the main point of this thread, but please do not use ivermectin for Covid.
https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/why-you-shoul...
https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/why-you-shoul...
toolz(1)
Please don't spout trolling medical advice. Deworming medicine like Ivermectin does not treat COVID-19.
https://academic.oup.com/qjmed/article-abstract/114/10/721/6...
> Based on very low to moderate quality of evidence, ivermectin was not efficacious at managing COVID-19. Its safety profile permits its use in trial settings to further clarify its role in COVID-19 treatment.
https://academic.oup.com/qjmed/article-abstract/114/10/721/6...
> Based on very low to moderate quality of evidence, ivermectin was not efficacious at managing COVID-19. Its safety profile permits its use in trial settings to further clarify its role in COVID-19 treatment.
Have you talked to your local postmaster about this? This sounds like an issue they would be able to help resolve. No matter where I've lived, I've found them extremely helpful whenever I had to deal with them.
If you are on house arrest, are you allowed to get groceries or go to the doctor? Serious question.
It's a case by case thing. If you live with others they may be expected to do the shopping for you.
It's a good question.
So, by default, where I live in Chicago you can't do anything at all. I was told by the Sheriff not to even leave my bedroom for any reason when I first got here. I live in a big commercial building, so I ignored their advice. I have an ankle monitor which uses GPS and cell network triangulation, so they know my rough position at all times. This means they knew I was wandering around, taking my dog for a walk around the building etc. The Sheriff would send people over constantly to harass me. I did a FOIA request to see their logs and it was funny to see that they have police constantly tagging my movements with quotes which basically say "Look, this guy isn't going anywhere, he is just walking around his building, we don't need to bother him" - but obviously there are dozens of different people working at the HQ and some aren't so kind.
I think it took over two months before I persuaded the judge to let me get groceries and go to the laundromat. So I have two hours on Mon/Tues/Thurs to get what I need. But I am supposed to go straight there and straight back.
There is a new law in Illinois which says I get two days a week to do what I want, but apparently because of poor coding in their computer system I can't get it because my jail ID ends in an odd number.
It is also a new law now that they can't charge you with "prison escape" for going outside your house unless you are gone for more than 48 hours. [people ended up with years in prison simply for taking their trash to the Dumpster behind their house]
tl;dr: I can now, after some hassle, get groceries. I cannot go to the doctor. When I needed my booster I timed the appointment so I could run into Walgreens on the way to the grocery store so they didn't notice I'd taken a detour. It might take me several months to get the judge to sign off on a doctor's appointment. If I'm dying I can go to the hospital, but I better have every scrap of paperwork and be willing to prove I was actually dying as I've known a couple of people who have ended up going back to jail after going to the hospital. [one guy took his daughter in an emergency - the judge told him he had no excuse for taking her as he could have just called an ambulance to take her and stayed at home]
So, by default, where I live in Chicago you can't do anything at all. I was told by the Sheriff not to even leave my bedroom for any reason when I first got here. I live in a big commercial building, so I ignored their advice. I have an ankle monitor which uses GPS and cell network triangulation, so they know my rough position at all times. This means they knew I was wandering around, taking my dog for a walk around the building etc. The Sheriff would send people over constantly to harass me. I did a FOIA request to see their logs and it was funny to see that they have police constantly tagging my movements with quotes which basically say "Look, this guy isn't going anywhere, he is just walking around his building, we don't need to bother him" - but obviously there are dozens of different people working at the HQ and some aren't so kind.
I think it took over two months before I persuaded the judge to let me get groceries and go to the laundromat. So I have two hours on Mon/Tues/Thurs to get what I need. But I am supposed to go straight there and straight back.
There is a new law in Illinois which says I get two days a week to do what I want, but apparently because of poor coding in their computer system I can't get it because my jail ID ends in an odd number.
It is also a new law now that they can't charge you with "prison escape" for going outside your house unless you are gone for more than 48 hours. [people ended up with years in prison simply for taking their trash to the Dumpster behind their house]
tl;dr: I can now, after some hassle, get groceries. I cannot go to the doctor. When I needed my booster I timed the appointment so I could run into Walgreens on the way to the grocery store so they didn't notice I'd taken a detour. It might take me several months to get the judge to sign off on a doctor's appointment. If I'm dying I can go to the hospital, but I better have every scrap of paperwork and be willing to prove I was actually dying as I've known a couple of people who have ended up going back to jail after going to the hospital. [one guy took his daughter in an emergency - the judge told him he had no excuse for taking her as he could have just called an ambulance to take her and stayed at home]
I was given stats today: about 40% of those in Chicago on house arrest cannot leave their home for any reason whatsoever. No groceries, no walking the dog, no taking out their rubbish, no fresh air, no doctors appointments. Nothing.
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> so I guess I am just out of luck
I'm sorry this isn't working for you. I've had luck ordering them on amazon though.
I'm sorry this isn't working for you. I've had luck ordering them on amazon though.
this is a known problem that they’ll hopefully have sorted out soon
that people on house arrest cant get tested? or the deliveries? because one problem has been around for over two years...
the test deliveries, there’s a known issue with some apartment numbers and people that live in the same building as businesses
Man, are they going to blow through their free tier lambdas real quick! /s
S3 is nasty expensive for outbound bandwidth. I’m surprised the usps landing page is there. No reason that couldn’t have been on lambda as well.
S3 is nasty expensive for outbound bandwidth. I’m surprised the usps landing page is there. No reason that couldn’t have been on lambda as well.
It's fronted by CloudFront though. I really don't think it's appropriate to render static HTML from an AWS lambda.
As an aside, there was an interesting recent episode of the AWS FM podcast where a guest was rendering dynamic HTML from Lambda functions and seemed incredibly satisfied with the results. (Unfortunately the recent episodes lack transcripts and I cannot easily verify, but I think it was Episode 17 with Brian LeRoux.) This is a use case I haven't seen get a lot of love, but it is at least similar in premise to HTML Over the Wire [1].
[1]: https://hotwired.dev/
[1]: https://hotwired.dev/
Anyone up for guessing how much the AWS bill would be for this specific application? I'm guessing it's less than $100/month.
Chrome Dev tools says 2,615,081 bytes loaded in 67 requests for the first 2 pages (home page + form).
Some of it is on Akamai as the article describes, but if we had everything on CloudFront and wanted to estimate the cost of 1M orders: 2.38 TiB out + (say) 1 KiB/request * 67M or 67 GiB in: that's $275.50 per 1 million orders (approximately $207 out + $67 in + $1 requests cost).
If we add 1M Lambda executions, we still get $0 since that's the entire free tier. 10M Lambda calls at 50 ms each and 128 MB of RAM cost $1.8, so that's pretty much free as well.
Assuming that CloudFront caching is configured correctly, there would be very few requests to the S3 origin so their cost would be negligible.
Someone please correct me if I've got this completely wrong. Source: https://calculator.aws/ (CF: 2.38 TB + 67 GB + 67M req).
Some of it is on Akamai as the article describes, but if we had everything on CloudFront and wanted to estimate the cost of 1M orders: 2.38 TiB out + (say) 1 KiB/request * 67M or 67 GiB in: that's $275.50 per 1 million orders (approximately $207 out + $67 in + $1 requests cost).
If we add 1M Lambda executions, we still get $0 since that's the entire free tier. 10M Lambda calls at 50 ms each and 128 MB of RAM cost $1.8, so that's pretty much free as well.
Assuming that CloudFront caching is configured correctly, there would be very few requests to the S3 origin so their cost would be negligible.
Someone please correct me if I've got this completely wrong. Source: https://calculator.aws/ (CF: 2.38 TB + 67 GB + 67M req).
I can't imagine the federal government is on the normal metered plan though.
They're probably on a contract with a yearly minimum (multi-million) with top tier engineering support, virtually eliminating any concern for individual resources.
This is the government we're talking about. A lot of factors are going to push that pricing up (high profile of the project, risk considerations for AWS, sales team seeing blood, etc)
They're probably on a contract with a yearly minimum (multi-million) with top tier engineering support, virtually eliminating any concern for individual resources.
This is the government we're talking about. A lot of factors are going to push that pricing up (high profile of the project, risk considerations for AWS, sales team seeing blood, etc)
That's not how the government engages with AWS and other vendors. Even though the rest of the world sees it as one big entity, they engage as if they're thousands of smaller entities.
They generally get access to AWS through resellers, not direct, and from what I've seen, get a pretty substantial pass through reseller discount.
And finally, having seen USDS work, I'm fully willing to believe this is hosted in a basic AWS account they're paying for with a credit card that's on it's own stand alone setup. Rapid launch, standup, and fielding an independent thing generally doesn't play well with working inside those big contract/managed environments. I'd be surprised if the USPS was doing anything here but providing DNS and the address API on the backend.
I definitely agree that the government as a whole isn't the end client - it's, of course, some sub org.
But with the SLA and support requirements probably involved, I definitely don't see this running on a basic account.
But with the SLA and support requirements probably involved, I definitely don't see this running on a basic account.
Having spent uh, 11? years working with AWS for gov entities, I would actually be impressed if they had bothered to turn on support.
I also assume, given the nature of the activity involved, that AWS had their solutions team there gratis making sure to remember to request limit increases and stuff.
For sure, I was just curious about the envelope math of it all. The tests themselves ($5 / unit) would certainly dwarf the AWS bill.
One thing to mention is that the public sticker price is usually not the end negotiated rate for a large customer like the US government. The final price will be anywhere from 30% to 90% of the public price - a wide range, I know; it depends a lot on the service and their margins. Still, this estimate is probably right within a factor of 2.
$275.50 per 1 million orders
There will be 420 million orders according to sources online, which gets us to $115,710. Very interesting - thank you for the analysis.
There will be 420 million orders according to sources online, which gets us to $115,710. Very interesting - thank you for the analysis.
I filed a FOIA request to GSA to see how much they spent on the website to build it and any third parties used. They referred me to the FDA, guessing they paid for it.
That's awesome - how did you go about FOIA-ing things? I've always wanted to know more about how to do that.
Its fairly easy actually but you have to be specific or they will charge you $$. So long as you arent wanting like the nuke codes or the location of Hoffa, they are helpful. Last one I did took a few months and I got a big packet in the mail. Cost me $10 or $20 I think.
That's incredibly cheap.
Any AWS product at scale gets real expensive real quick.
A general rule of thumb is CloudFront is $2500/mo for every 100 Mbps of traffic you have, not counting origin or per request fees.
I would expect they are pushing multiple Gbps with every household in the US trying to order tests.
A general rule of thumb is CloudFront is $2500/mo for every 100 Mbps of traffic you have, not counting origin or per request fees.
I would expect they are pushing multiple Gbps with every household in the US trying to order tests.
They're probably not pushing even hundreds of Mbps - it's a 2MB site in total, and almost all of it is static, and will be cached by various proxies/etc.
They might PEAK at a Gbps for the first few hours, and then fall off to a long tail of basically nothing.
It's just not big - no serious images, no video, etc.
And it's US only, not global. And most people will only hit the site one time, order and it's done.
And even so, $2500/mo is 'free': just the paperwork to put the money on contract to the provider probably costs more than that by an order of magnitude.
I had missed the CloudFront part, once I saw Akamai my mind must have skipped it.
Can you re-state the cost in terms of F-35 fighter jets?
About 3.1 Tbps per aircraft, if we generously assume the $78M flyaway cost is accurate.
For comparison I'm running a low traffic discussion site (https://sqwok.im) with core api through ApiGateway/Lambda w/lots of backend services and it's currently ~$400/month.
The most expensive piece by FAR is Opensearch (previously AWS Elasticsearch) using 6 instances x 2 environments (12 total).
The cost for Elasticsearch in two environments came to ~$371 out of a total $400 bill in my last statement.
The compute cost for Lambda is very low but if you scale out to potentially millions of users it's going to be much more than $100.
Not sure if they're using Opensearch but if they are it's likely a huge part of the bill.
I'm sure there's a better alternative but it's not my particular area of expertise and I haven't been able to focus on that yet.
The most expensive piece by FAR is Opensearch (previously AWS Elasticsearch) using 6 instances x 2 environments (12 total).
The cost for Elasticsearch in two environments came to ~$371 out of a total $400 bill in my last statement.
The compute cost for Lambda is very low but if you scale out to potentially millions of users it's going to be much more than $100.
Not sure if they're using Opensearch but if they are it's likely a huge part of the bill.
I'm sure there's a better alternative but it's not my particular area of expertise and I haven't been able to focus on that yet.
After having a look at your page, I am confused.
What kind of traffic numbers are you seeing? Because I can't figure out how one would ever end up with spending more than a few dollars to host a site that rarely gets a post.
What kind of traffic numbers are you seeing? Because I can't figure out how one would ever end up with spending more than a few dollars to host a site that rarely gets a post.
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Are you using Opensearch for logging or site search? $371 seems like a lot for a low traffic site. You can probably reduce the cost to a fraction by doing some research on alternatives
It's largely due to the homepage loading a ranked list of items from ES on every request, but I'm probably not optimizing things properly either.
I saw your comment about anvere and looks like you have a background in search/ES? I'd be interested to chat but didn't see a way to contact you!
I saw your comment about anvere and looks like you have a background in search/ES? I'd be interested to chat but didn't see a way to contact you!
Hey, send me an email to linh at anvere.net. Or twitter dm @linh_at_anvere
edit: anvere is a Search as a Service that I am currently building
Yeah if your low traffic site doesn't need any crazy compute you can probably run it for $5/mo on any commodity VPS provider like Linode or DigitialOcean
I wasn’t suggesting that. Static files are cheaper on Akami. They are already hosting half their static content there.
“Static” is the key word here, these are likely to change as bugs are filed and new features are added, no?
That's not usually what "static" vs "dynamic" means in this context.
Static just means it's already a file, and that gets delivered directly to the user's browser with no server-side substitutions or especially database lookups.
There's some ambiguity there, but that's the basic idea. The alternative is pages that are created on-the-fly when requested, often by looking up a bunch of crap in a database, or the server running a bunch of code to compile together separate files.
"static" sites absolutely change, it's just you usually have to deploy something when you change them, it's not just "a different person viewed this".
Static just means it's already a file, and that gets delivered directly to the user's browser with no server-side substitutions or especially database lookups.
There's some ambiguity there, but that's the basic idea. The alternative is pages that are created on-the-fly when requested, often by looking up a bunch of crap in a database, or the server running a bunch of code to compile together separate files.
"static" sites absolutely change, it's just you usually have to deploy something when you change them, it's not just "a different person viewed this".
Yo do you know how much aircraft carriers and cruise missiles cost? You think they care about AWS egress?
> I suspect what’s happening from here is that API Gateway is in front of a Lambda function (indeed, this is a common design pattern that AWS documents) that does minimal-to-no processing of the JSON blob and puts it in a database, likely DynamoDB given the overall managed services flavor of this implementation. At that point, backend processes can take over...
A bit of an aside, but since this is an article about architecture, wouldn't the more common pattern here be APIGateway->Lambda->MessageQueue->BackendServices rather than APIGateway->Lambda->Database->BackendServices? Or does DynamoDB have something like a queue that backend processes can subscribe to? (Non-AWS user here).
A bit of an aside, but since this is an article about architecture, wouldn't the more common pattern here be APIGateway->Lambda->MessageQueue->BackendServices rather than APIGateway->Lambda->Database->BackendServices? Or does DynamoDB have something like a queue that backend processes can subscribe to? (Non-AWS user here).
DynamoDB has DynamoDB Streams[0] and Kinesis Streams[1] which it can hook in to.
0: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/amazondynamodb/latest/developerg... 1: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/amazondynamodb/latest/developerg...
0: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/amazondynamodb/latest/developerg... 1: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/amazondynamodb/latest/developerg...
Really either would work, depending on your specific use case. DynamoBD can emit an event stream based on writes/updates, which would be published to an SQS queue.
What's interesting about this is the conscious decision to throw money at the government IT problem. Meaning, services like AWS Lambda get very, very expensive at scale. Nationwide government-scale is probably pretty high scale, and I shudder to think what the AWS bill would be.
Yet, most government IT projects run very high costs to begin with anyway. Indeed, for all we know, they probably saved money, even with the high costs of running this at scale on Lambda. And it'll be worth it if the service is actually functional.
Just interesting to think about the cost of introducing stability as a standard before eventually the pendulum will swing back and get people to think about cost optimization.
Yet, most government IT projects run very high costs to begin with anyway. Indeed, for all we know, they probably saved money, even with the high costs of running this at scale on Lambda. And it'll be worth it if the service is actually functional.
Just interesting to think about the cost of introducing stability as a standard before eventually the pendulum will swing back and get people to think about cost optimization.
If you go with the authors original description that the lambda function for handling orders is small and fast. Probably a bunch of server side validation before stuffing in DynamoDB or maybe into a queue (Message Queues / Kafka). We can assume that the program is small and fast.
If you saw 300,000,000 requests in the month on a 256MB lambda function and 500ms of runtime. It would only cost $678 for the order capture. Maybe my math is wrong here, but not huge in my book.
If you saw 300,000,000 requests in the month on a 256MB lambda function and 500ms of runtime. It would only cost $678 for the order capture. Maybe my math is wrong here, but not huge in my book.
Given what they’d probably spend to a contractor like General Dynamics to completely flub this, I’m glad for them to foot a massive AWS bill instead.
It’s interesting that this is a government service in the US. That would probably not be politically possible in Sweden - there are already online stores where you can buy tests, the government would be competing with them.
We also don’t have a national postal service, it’s a deregulated market. There’s an operator owned by the state, but only 50%, the rest is owned by Denmark, so it’s unlikely it could participate in something like this without it being an open contract for all delivery companies.
We also don’t have a national postal service, it’s a deregulated market. There’s an operator owned by the state, but only 50%, the rest is owned by Denmark, so it’s unlikely it could participate in something like this without it being an open contract for all delivery companies.
"There is still no turnkey solution for UX"
What would that even look like? Do they expect a unified UX language from the Gov t?
What would that even look like? Do they expect a unified UX language from the Gov t?
Perhaps like USWDS? https://designsystem.digital.gov/
It definitely looks like USWDS, which happens to have accessibility well baked in.
It has been years since i have had to manage web design stuff...but as i recall, section 508 specifically calls for federal-centric web properties to - by law - include accessibility features to accomodate the American Disabilities Act (the ADA). So, yeah, it better damn well have accessibility baked in, else it would be illegal. :-)
To be fair, the little documentation and blog posts here and there that i have read on the US Digital Service is that those folks reaslly are attentive to design considerations for always including accessbility...which is awesome!!
To be fair, the little documentation and blog posts here and there that i have read on the US Digital Service is that those folks reaslly are attentive to design considerations for always including accessbility...which is awesome!!
This site uses the USWDS
I wonder if what they meant was "it's impossible to have a turnkey solution for UX"?
There are all sorts of turnkey solutions for frontend and backend infrastructure, but none guarantee good user experiences - only a team that knows their users' needs and is empowered to meet them can do that.
There are all sorts of turnkey solutions for frontend and backend infrastructure, but none guarantee good user experiences - only a team that knows their users' needs and is empowered to meet them can do that.
Yes, this is exactly what I meant to write, but stated less clearly than you did. Thanks.
I'm curious how the mechanics of this work. Can someone just put in orders for every single address in the US, even those that they don't live at? Also, I assume a bunch of people will get these and resell them, which I assume is very illegal, is there something to stop that?
Just like with a lot of government programs, the cost to manage preventing fraud is usually more expensive than to just let the fraud take place.
Not to mention it prevents people trying to legitimately access these services from doing so by putting extra barriers in place, defeating the purpose of the assistance program in the first place.
It's a tricky balance to strike!
It's a tricky balance to strike!
In my limited understanding so far:
You cannot order to any address, only to residential addresses that USPS ships to (as indicated by their Residential Delivery Indicator). Specifically, you cannot order to commercial addresses and PO boxes.
Resale is not prevented but (intentionally or not) limited by the distribution of only 4 tests per home, regardless of how many people live there. This means that poor folks where typically many people share a household get fewer tests per person to begin with, while more affluent folks (who are less likely to resell the tests) get more per person.
You cannot order to any address, only to residential addresses that USPS ships to (as indicated by their Residential Delivery Indicator). Specifically, you cannot order to commercial addresses and PO boxes.
Resale is not prevented but (intentionally or not) limited by the distribution of only 4 tests per home, regardless of how many people live there. This means that poor folks where typically many people share a household get fewer tests per person to begin with, while more affluent folks (who are less likely to resell the tests) get more per person.
"Effective, mission-critical software at scale need not be complicated." Amen.
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There is approximately 0% chance that this is using Akamai NetStorage. No one uses this. The Akamai portion is probably just hosted on S3.
With Cloudflare being so cheap and easy to use, I am also always astonished when I hear of people still using Akamai.
They and their salespeople manage to get their meaty claws in the door at most large organizations.
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It's really fast too! They're preloading fonts! I'm so proud.
I'm surprised the US government design system even recommends custom fonts. Surely the native stack would be sufficient?
Well, it depends. Perhaps they want a multilingual font that looks good? Perhaps they have dyslexia requirements around the characters? Those are both things I would consider if making a design system for the government.
That being said, while this site is already extremely fast, they could cut their first paint times by a further 90% by just reducing their font file sizes.
Since this is a static page, and we want things really fast for all Americans (99 percentile?), maybe subset characters to what's shown above the fold, base64 encode that subsetted font into the document and load the remaining characters async as a fast follow. Bang, great CLS and ~0s FCP.
That being said, while this site is already extremely fast, they could cut their first paint times by a further 90% by just reducing their font file sizes.
Since this is a static page, and we want things really fast for all Americans (99 percentile?), maybe subset characters to what's shown above the fold, base64 encode that subsetted font into the document and load the remaining characters async as a fast follow. Bang, great CLS and ~0s FCP.
When they fail to deliver a majority of tests kits by early February, at least they can say the website was working (for the most part).
I've worked with DDS, USDS's Defense child org, and the author's description sounds exactly like what we did.
Clicking "Order Free At-Home Tests" gives an HTTP error... bit rough @ US gov devs
EDIT: US Postal Service's fault not gov
EDIT: US Postal Service's fault not gov
Try getting off VPN if you're on one.
The USPS is governed by, well, the government. The Republicans are actively looking to kneecap it, and as usual, the Democrats are doing basically nothing to stop them.
So, calibrate your expectations accordingly.
So, calibrate your expectations accordingly.
In my experience government services in areas completely controlled by Democrats don't seem better-run than ones in mixed-party or Republican-controlled areas. The "Starve the Beast" hypothesis doesn't seem to have much predictive value at the state and municipal levels, though I admit I haven't disproven it at the federal level.
So - It's a landing page with a CTA that goes to the USPS website.
It was simple and boring. But boring is good because it worked
can someone explain why it is so convoluted? are all sites so convoluted? is it security by obfucstion going on?
Only one test per address. Multi-family homes are sol. Top on their FAQ is "sorry to people living in apartments. Put in a request."
I was able to make an order to my apartment. And it’s four tests per address, not one.
I don’t see where it says anything about apartment-dwellers being out of luck in the FAQ.
I don’t see where it says anything about apartment-dwellers being out of luck in the FAQ.
One request per address*.
It's four, and you can still get at-home tests reimbursed by your insurance plan: https://www.cms.gov/how-to-get-your-at-home-OTC-COVID-19-tes...
Four tests are in one request. It's one request per address.
And every address with a unit number counts. What's your point? I live in a 3 flat in Chicago and each floor has it's own unit designation including mine. BSMT. haha
I live in a mfh that has individual units and got kicked back. Your anecdote doesn't negate my point: mfh have more hiccups.
It is based on the postal service database, so if your address was properly split with the postmaster or if you have a history of receiving mail using multiple apartment numbers at the same address... you are probably fine.
Seems like a reasonable compromise to prevent scalpers from using Apt 1, Apt 2, Apt 3, etc. at their house.
Seems like a reasonable compromise to prevent scalpers from using Apt 1, Apt 2, Apt 3, etc. at their house.
seems like it would be possible to allow placing the order, and have a human review before the items ship.
and what are scalpers going to do, compete with a free service?
and what are scalpers going to do, compete with a free service?
> and have a human review before the items ship.
It's reviewed right before delivery... by the mail carrier.
"Hey, that's just one house, there's not 20 appartments here! I'll leave the other 19 test boxes in the truck and they'll get reassigned to legitimate addresses".
It's reviewed right before delivery... by the mail carrier.
"Hey, that's just one house, there's not 20 appartments here! I'll leave the other 19 test boxes in the truck and they'll get reassigned to legitimate addresses".
seems like it would be possible to allow placing the order, and have a human review before the items ship.
Yes. A human to review 500,000,000 addresses. In a timely manner. We'll just tap that massive skyscraper complex full of surplus government humans sitting at computers not doing anything at all.
and what are scalpers going to do, compete with a free service?
Yes. They already do it with the free in-person COVID testing, by setting up fake COVID testing services and charging immigrants and people with poor reading skills who don't know any better.
Yes. A human to review 500,000,000 addresses. In a timely manner. We'll just tap that massive skyscraper complex full of surplus government humans sitting at computers not doing anything at all.
and what are scalpers going to do, compete with a free service?
Yes. They already do it with the free in-person COVID testing, by setting up fake COVID testing services and charging immigrants and people with poor reading skills who don't know any better.
> A human to review 500,000,000 addresses.
No, many thousands of humans to review a couple hundred at most a piece.
"Huh, I'm supposed to deliver ten of the COVID test packs to this house. Nope."
No, many thousands of humans to review a couple hundred at most a piece.
"Huh, I'm supposed to deliver ten of the COVID test packs to this house. Nope."
i figured it was obvious to only flag human-review for multiple orders to the same address or an unknown apartment suffix. if the current solution is to have those users file a human-processed request anyway, this streamlines that flow and makes it painless to the user.
You'd think that, but that isn't the case. Look at the top option.
https://emailus.usps.com/s/the-postal-store-inquiry
https://www.cnet.com/health/usps-offers-solution-for-people-...
https://emailus.usps.com/s/the-postal-store-inquiry
https://www.cnet.com/health/usps-offers-solution-for-people-...
If your address isn't in the postal database you should fill out that form and contact them. Your second step should be to call your local postmaster and figure out what is going on. It is possible your landlord didn't know any better and just told you to use an apartment number.
Having an entry on a support contact dropdown simply means they want to route those requests differently than general support questions. It does not indicate that the problem is widespread.
Having an entry on a support contact dropdown simply means they want to route those requests differently than general support questions. It does not indicate that the problem is widespread.
My address is in their database. USPS has no issue doing their job every day. I filled out the form.
Worked fine at my apartment building. 123 Main Street Apartment X is correctly recognized as a different address from 123 Main Street Apartment Y.
Is it better to get tests to a bunch of people ASAP or wait until all the bugs have been worked out?
I am not expecting perfection, but I am expecting the people who need the resources the most actually get access to it. Sfh in sprawlland benefit from some at-home tests that would cost them a negligible amount?
But again, your entire premise is wrong. It's not 1 request per physical building. People in apartments are able to get free tests from this just fine. You've made up a totally wrong hypothetical scenario and gotten all upset about what happens to people in your imaginary world.
How is my premise wrong? This isn't reddit, I'm going to need a bit more. People in mfh have more hiccups than those in sfh. How does this not advantage the advantaged?
I live in a MFH and we have 3 actual addresses for the units as far as USPS is concerned. Also for some stupid reason the units are #1, #A and #B but I don't think that's USPS's fault.
As a YIMBY, I'm very cognizant of the benefits of multifamily housing. But apparently their system has some problems with it. Would it be better to wait until the system is perfect for all addresses or go with what is functioning now and get tests to people?
this is a larger issue than perhaps a lot of people think it is. huge numbers of low-income people (think the people serving you food) in high-CoL cities are living in roommate situations, where several independent adults share a single address, often subletting. i'm already aware of several people in this situation who have been denied an order by this website.
Our multi-family home is still "Unit 1," "Unit 2" and it understood that just fine.
If you have no division at all in your address then you're going to have trouble.
If you have no division at all in your address then you're going to have trouble.
it looks like submitting the form gets stuck now
Careful. Missouri Governor, Mike Parson, would consider this hacking.
Guys let's print out Missouri's website and snail mail it to them. They'll get so scared of hackers trying to shut their internet down, maybe even secede.
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