Email is not broken: It’s a framework, not an application • Hacker News Board

Re: Email is not broken: It’s a framework, not an application

#21

Post by kelnos » Sun, Apr 15, 2012, 9:47 AM UTC

alexchamberlain wrote: post #18

myspy wrote: post #9

Without all the sexual allusions this could be a decent statement -.- (sorry, I have nothing against that when joking with friends or reading some not so serious post, but it does not fit to a commentary about email)

I thought I was the only one who got frustrated with sexual innuendo peppered blog posts or those with swear words ever other sentence.

Diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks. It amused me and made the post more entertaining for me to read, thus holding my attention better.

Yes, I probably do have the sense of humor of a 12-year-old, but that's immaterial.

Re: Email is not broken: It’s a framework, not an application

#22

Post by kingsidharth » Sun, Apr 15, 2012, 9:49 AM UTC

SagelyGuru wrote: post #14

kingsidharth wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The style of this post is a bit 'wild' but ... So? Is that bad? Everyone has their own way of expressing. Some herein declare that electronic mail is not flawed. Some say that email is not broken. Some just say that email doesn't need dick-sucking.

Yes, everyone has their own style and some are better than others. It does not bother me but I think a metaphor like this is misplaced and distracting.

> some are better than others

No they are not. Some are more * preferred * by you than others. Personally I find such metaphor to be engaging & expressive. I love @holman 's writing for same reason. But that doesn't mean one is better over the other.

Writing style is form of art & expression. The quality of an art piece is determined by how well it is expressed and formal technicalities. So as long as his expression is in place, and grammar is sound - it's good art.

Re: Email is not broken: It’s a framework, not an application

#23

Post by SagelyGuru » Sun, Apr 15, 2012, 9:51 AM UTC

Animus7 wrote: post #17

SagelyGuru wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Email can be secured and authenticated with GPG and perhaps more people should consider doing this. The problem with SPAM is that what some may consider to be a 'fascinating circular' will be perceived by others as SPAM. SPAM is often in the eye of the beholder.

> Email can be secured and authenticated with GPG and perhaps more people should consider doing this. Doesn't work unless you teach people about security, which is difficult. We have padlocks next to URLs but it's amazing how many people are still willing to send CC info over HTTP. > SPAM is often in the eye of the beholder. There's a lot of grey area, but when a particular string has a 99% unread/deleted rate, you c…

Yes, spam filters work OK, so what is the problem? Do we really need some governmental/corporate agency deleting our emails, with all its attendant dangers of abuse? Because that is what you will get. I would rather have spam.

GPG has email clients and key management clients (e.g. seahorse) which make it increasingly user friendly.

Re: Email is not broken: It’s a framework, not an application

#24

Post by kelnos » Sun, Apr 15, 2012, 9:57 AM UTC

Animus7 wrote: post #17

SagelyGuru wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Email can be secured and authenticated with GPG and perhaps more people should consider doing this. The problem with SPAM is that what some may consider to be a 'fascinating circular' will be perceived by others as SPAM. SPAM is often in the eye of the beholder.

> Email can be secured and authenticated with GPG and perhaps more people should consider doing this. Doesn't work unless you teach people about security, which is difficult. We have padlocks next to URLs but it's amazing how many people are still willing to send CC info over HTTP. > SPAM is often in the eye of the beholder. There's a lot of grey area, but when a particular string has a 99% unread/deleted rate, you c…

>> Email can be secured and authenticated with GPG and perhaps more people should consider doing this.

> Doesn't work unless you teach people about security, which is difficult.

Simple, transparent security is hard. But this is again a UI problem, not a failing of email.

Think about this for a second: let's say Google decided that it was going to transparently PGP-sign all GMail users' emails. Now GMail knows that any message with a from address that ends in @gmail.com but without a valid PGP signature is fraudulent.

Now let's say Yahoo wants to adopt this too. So we add some syntax to SPF that advertises, "any mail coming from this domain must be PGP signed." And another field that points to a public key server. So then all other SMTP servers (or even end-user mail clients, if they want), can auto-reject mail based on this criterion.

Sure, this leaves out some details, like people sending mail from an @gmail.com address using their own SMTP server via a thick mail client that doesn't support PGP (or requires complicated setup to do it properly, like most do). But it's a (hopefully) interesting idea that might work with some modifications.

This has nothing to do with email per se, nothing about its successes or failings. It's just building an easier-to-use distributed authentication system that mail recipients can use.

Re: Email is not broken: It’s a framework, not an application

#25

Post by drucken » Sun, Apr 15, 2012, 10:00 AM UTC

kingsidharth wrote: post #22

SagelyGuru wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, everyone has their own style and some are better than others. It does not bother me but I think a metaphor like this is misplaced and distracting.

> some are better than others No they are not. Some are more * preferred * by you than others. Personally I find such metaphor to be engaging & expressive. I love @holman 's writing for same reason. But that doesn't mean one is better over the other. Writing style is form of art & expression. The quality of an art piece is determined by how well it is expressed and formal technicalities. So as long as his expression…

You're writing an awful lot of words and almost seem offended by the mildest possible expression of someone's opinion about the stark contrast of a technical topic and more than colloquial writing. A whole thread over "wild"...?

Re: Email is not broken: It’s a framework, not an application

#26

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Apr 15, 2012, 10:01 AM UTC

SagelyGuru wrote: post #14

kingsidharth wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The style of this post is a bit 'wild' but ... So? Is that bad? Everyone has their own way of expressing. Some herein declare that electronic mail is not flawed. Some say that email is not broken. Some just say that email doesn't need dick-sucking.

Yes, everyone has their own style and some are better than others. It does not bother me but I think a metaphor like this is misplaced and distracting.

[deleted]

Re: Email is not broken: It’s a framework, not an application

#27

Post by SagelyGuru » Sun, Apr 15, 2012, 10:04 AM UTC

kingsidharth wrote: post #22

SagelyGuru wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, everyone has their own style and some are better than others. It does not bother me but I think a metaphor like this is misplaced and distracting.

> some are better than others No they are not. Some are more * preferred * by you than others. Personally I find such metaphor to be engaging & expressive. I love @holman 's writing for same reason. But that doesn't mean one is better over the other. Writing style is form of art & expression. The quality of an art piece is determined by how well it is expressed and formal technicalities. So as long as his expression…

I don't agree that this is just a matter of relativistic personal preference. There is also the objective context. So many people think that this kind of style works much better in the context of a standup comedy than in a technical discussion.

Re: Email is not broken: It’s a framework, not an application

#28

Post by defdac » Sun, Apr 15, 2012, 10:06 AM UTC

tferris wrote: post #12

Couldn't upvote this more. I am fed up with posts telling me email is broken and a new disruptive tech will be the cure. Email is an open protocol, decentralized, providing optional security. Shortcomings—or rather call them additional requirements—can be solved with tools keeping email focussed on async text-based communication. Want to send large files? Dropbox. Want more automation? Improve the client side and/or…

Thanks for this. I had a hard time articulating why email is not broken, and you pretty much sums it all up.

Re: Email is not broken: It’s a framework, not an application

#29

Post by SagelyGuru » Sun, Apr 15, 2012, 10:13 AM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #24

Animus7 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Email can be secured and authenticated with GPG and perhaps more people should consider doing this. Doesn't work unless you teach people about security, which is difficult. We have padlocks next to URLs but it's amazing how many people are still willing to send CC info over HTTP. > SPAM is often in the eye of the beholder. There's a lot of grey area, but when a particular string has a 99% unread/deleted rate, you c…

>> Email can be secured and authenticated with GPG and perhaps more people should consider doing this. > Doesn't work unless you teach people about security, which is difficult. Simple, transparent security is hard. But this is again a UI problem, not a failing of email. Think about this for a second: let's say Google decided that it was going to transparently PGP-sign all GMail users' emails. Now GMail knows that an…

Gmail etc. could have provided encryption and authentication if they wanted to. Unfortunately they don't want to because their business model(s) rely on reading our emails.

Re: Email is not broken: It’s a framework, not an application

#30

Post by 7952 » Sun, Apr 15, 2012, 10:16 AM UTC

evaneykelen wrote: post #20

>We fix it by building smart clients. If you allow me to pick an interesting remark from this post: I think the idea of embedding instructions in the payload of an email is an interesting one. For instance an email could contain text and a link to a Pivotal Tracker story while at the same time it could contain a JSON payload which tells my augmented email client to render the story and allow me to interact with it. T…

I agree that payloads are an interesting idea; but would be a security nightmare. As soon as you load a URL based on an email, you are leaking information to the sender. You could restrict the types of content, but all you end up with is RSS.