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Why do self-respecting hackers use Gmail & Co?

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Re: Why do self-respecting hackers use Gmail & Co?

#31

Post by jws »

1) Black listing - if someone in your IP neighborhood sends spam you can be silently blacklisted by Comcast, AOL, some random crazy zealots running a blacklist that other random people choose to use… et.al. and people stop getting your mail. Good luck getting unlisted. Wasted hours. Sometimes it's futile.

2) Spam filtering - If you are the sort of hacker that publishes their email address in order to interact with the community, and you become popular with spammers, then it is difficult to beat Google's spam filtering on the hundreds of spam you will receive each day.

Until a few years ago I used to run my own servers and corporate servers. Nicely trained bogospam filters (this is work and involves the brain killing activity of reading borderline emails to categorize) got most of it with little risk of resource consumption failures. SpamAssassin got some of the remainder, albeit with some risk of exploding, but spam still got through.

Those same addresses now let about 4 spam per year through the Google filters. You can't beat them. Your sample size is too small.

Re: Why do self-respecting hackers use Gmail & Co?

#33

Post by rgrieselhuber »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #24
lukev wrote: post #17

1. Rich webmail is an absolute must for me. I use too many different computers from too many different places for anything else to be remotely practical at this point. 2. No open source webmail servers that I've seen come close to Gmail's functionality, and I don't have time to write one that is. 3. Even if there was/I did, I couldn't get the spam filtering to anything like Google's level even in theory since I don't…

> 2. No open source webmail servers that I've seen come close to Gmail's functionality, and I don't have time to write one that is. Obligatory comment pointing out an opportunity for disruption, etc., why aren't we all millionaires., etc. etc.

The business model isn't there. I have yet to see a large group of consumers willing to pay for secure email and the only other alternative, advertising, leads to the exact same problem that you face with GMail.

Re: Why do self-respecting hackers use Gmail & Co?

#34

Post by cromwellian »

I used to always set up and run my own mail servers. I no longer do so, not because I'm lazy, but because I have better things to do with my time than be a sys-admin, and worry about downtime, logs, security, and backups.

Sure, Google has your mail. So use multiple accounts and keep your really private communications somewhere else, or use S/MIME or PGP Mail.

But who the hell cares about them having data for an account that is mostly subscribed to public mailing lists?

Re: Why do self-respecting hackers use Gmail & Co?

#36

Post by Arelius »

derekprior wrote: post #18

Until recently the GMail web interface was simply unmatched. When GMail first shipped, their conversation view was so far ahead of what anyone was doing on the web or in a fat client. I don't try out as many email platforms as I used to, but from what I have seen, it's still the best implementation of conversation view available. Additionally, you hinted at the other main reason I use GMail in your first bullet point…

You imply that Gmail's web interface has been matched... I have not yet seen that to be the case, any suggestions?

Re: Why do self-respecting hackers use Gmail & Co?

#38

Post by dangrossman »

emu wrote: post #6

This article is link-bait, but I'll bite. Simply put, Gmail provides a compelling user experience: * fast and accurate search. This is key, and I don't know of a single desktop email client that even comes close to providing a decent search feature. Decent here means "answer full-text queries accurately within a second or so". I didn't realize how useful this was until switching to Gmail; now I have it, I can't switc…

I use Rackspace Email, over IMAP on the desktop, IMAP on my phone, and webmail when on someone else's computer. It's never slow in any way. When I sign up for things, I hear the ding of the confirmation e-mail within 2-3 seconds of submitting the form -- fast as push mail.

Re: Why do self-respecting hackers use Gmail & Co?

#39

Post by gala8y »

emu wrote: post #6

This article is link-bait, but I'll bite. Simply put, Gmail provides a compelling user experience: * fast and accurate search. This is key, and I don't know of a single desktop email client that even comes close to providing a decent search feature. Decent here means "answer full-text queries accurately within a second or so". I didn't realize how useful this was until switching to Gmail; now I have it, I can't switc…

> This is key, and I don't know of a single desktop email client that even comes close to providing a decent search feature.

I used to use Opera M2 built-in client and think it's even faster than Gmail web UI and very accurate.

Re: Why do self-respecting hackers use Gmail & Co?

#40

Post by nabilt »

chc wrote: post #30
nabilt wrote: post #16

Funny. I just asked for alternatives to Gmail and other hosted software on the Richard Stallman post http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3551345 Harald's suggestions boil down to - share the administrative and financial effort with friends - use hosting form NGOs or non-profits - use small companies and ISPs The first suggestions might work for me, but what does everyone else use? If you host your own what software?…

A device that sits in your home and hosts your docs, passwords, bookmarks, contact list, and so on? It sounds like you've reinvented the PC.

Well I should have clarified. I want an always on low power appliance with an easy web interface to host important data for people that are not capable or too lazy to set up a server.
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