Basecamp’s founders are trying to start an email rebellion • Hacker News Board

Re: Basecamp’s founders are trying to start an email rebellion

#101

Post by sktrdie » Mon, Jun 15, 2020, 4:18 PM UTC

The founders like to market this as "not just another email client" but after watching their intro demo it's essentially a bunch of UI changes to email flows.

Sure there's some upfront email blockage/filtering that goes on, but that's essentially other UI tweaks in camouflage.

I'm not saying UI isn't cool! For sure some of the things they talk about sound interesting (like the reply later stacks at the bottom).

For the general tech-savvy people all the UI you generally need lives behind a highly functional "search box": "give me all the email i read yesterday in the evening"; "reply to emails I tagged with 'important' last week"; etc.

Overall I think they're trying to solve problems that are encountered by so called "famous email addresses" (the founders most certainly fall in this category) where your email has been sold to a bunch of lists over and over so you really need a kind of "block this forever" kind of functionality. But how famous are most email addresses?

In general, sure, a cool, sleek new looking UI for email, I like it!

Re: Basecamp’s founders are trying to start an email rebellion

#102

Post by aSplash0fDerp » Mon, Jun 15, 2020, 4:19 PM UTC

Possibly OT, but dropping email and going exclusively with dialtone/messaging for communications would be a breath of fresh air vs cat-n-mousing around the global spam issue (being under 24/7 attack/abuse is absurd).

It may take reengineering some models/processes, but good business only requires good communications (simplicity is the ultimate sophistication).

One-size-fits-all (email in this case) is rarely a solution in the 1st world, but you don't have to tell a nerd that... They disproved [that] theory long ago :)

Re: Basecamp’s founders are trying to start an email rebellion

#103

Post by TazeTSchnitzel » Mon, Jun 15, 2020, 4:24 PM UTC

troughway wrote: post #98

rossdavidh wrote: post #77

"Three months into the pandemic, the argument about the moral and economic superiority of the modern office is over. Remote work works." So, I have worked (mostly) remotely for years, and I don't think I agree with this. It works for some people, in some situations. There are absolutely times when you need to be in the office with other people, and even if my client is in another town I have to drive over there to ta…

There is a massive echo chamber around remote work within tech circles - including HN, mostly driven by an extremely small, but extremely loud minority. This coincides with the kind of bubbles that people live in, which isn't all that surprising.

Management's convenient insistence that remote work hinders collaboration is a bubble, I agree.

Re: Basecamp’s founders are trying to start an email rebellion

#104

Post by mleonard » Mon, Jun 15, 2020, 4:27 PM UTC

jdhornby wrote: post #93

I think the most exciting thing about HEY is the promise of a new way to build web applications. https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1266056835749965829

Does anyone know anything more about this (more than what is in the tweet thread that is, which is not much!)

Re: Basecamp’s founders are trying to start an email rebellion

#105

Post by maltalex » Mon, Jun 15, 2020, 4:27 PM UTC

aSplash0fDerp wrote: post #102

Possibly OT, but dropping email and going exclusively with dialtone/messaging for communications would be a breath of fresh air vs cat-n-mousing around the global spam issue (being under 24/7 attack/abuse is absurd). It may take reengineering some models/processes, but good business only requires good communications (simplicity is the ultimate sophistication). One-size-fits-all (email in this case) is rarely a soluti…

“Messaging” isn’t inherently free of abuse. What make e-mail so abusable is its distribution.

Closed gardens will always be safer from abuse than open protocols. So what you’re really arguing for is that we drop email in favor of something more closed.

Re: Basecamp’s founders are trying to start an email rebellion

#106

Post by omarchowdhury » Mon, Jun 15, 2020, 4:31 PM UTC

niftylettuce wrote: post #96

To launch something with typos everywhere is pretty bad...

Some of them are on purpose, like "Imbox".

Re: Basecamp’s founders are trying to start an email rebellion

#107

Post by jimmydddd » Mon, Jun 15, 2020, 4:32 PM UTC

rossdavidh wrote: post #77

"Three months into the pandemic, the argument about the moral and economic superiority of the modern office is over. Remote work works." So, I have worked (mostly) remotely for years, and I don't think I agree with this. It works for some people, in some situations. There are absolutely times when you need to be in the office with other people, and even if my client is in another town I have to drive over there to ta…

I agree regarding the personal contacts. I've been working remotely for 10 years. But I think it works for me because I have a network of colleagues that I met and became friends with while working in offices over a previous 10 year period.

Re: Basecamp’s founders are trying to start an email rebellion

#108

Post by kyawzazaw » Mon, Jun 15, 2020, 4:35 PM UTC

wazoox wrote: post #83

So it doesn't download tracking pixels. But my email client doesn't, either. Furthermore I read only plain-text email 99.9% of the time. What's the use case exactly?

For people who doesn’t have the time/skills/energy to do what you described but still want to avoid being tracked, somewhat care about privacy and using email with less distractions.

Re: Basecamp’s founders are trying to start an email rebellion

#109

Post by thibran » Mon, Jun 15, 2020, 4:36 PM UTC

This is nice, but doesn't solve the real problem. Its 2020 and its really hard to find something. Ideally there would be one place to organize/manipulate different information/date providers and email would just be one of many.

For example: If I get a file via email, I might also have a local copy that got updated and is newer. Part of the conversation might not have happened on email but on [random messenger app] and on one of the many [things with a CPU] that I own. Even with a Hey like system, the situation stays almost the same → the user has to remember "stuff" and look-up different places to find what he is searching for → this is sooo 1990.

Re: Basecamp’s founders are trying to start an email rebellion

#110

Post by oefrha » Mon, Jun 15, 2020, 4:37 PM UTC

https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1234640048328282113

This is not an email client, but an end-to-end service with clients controlling everything. That’s an immediate no for me. I have multiple email domains hosted by different providers (including myself), they can’t be merged, and I’m not gonna let a single company (Big Tech or not) cannibalize everything anyway. I’m also not gonna use different clients for different domains on each platform (unless work mandates something, in which case I’ll single out work).

Oh, and they don’t support custom domains at the moment.

Some features seem nice though.