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Modern email can be built from borrowed parts

en.andros.dev

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Re: Modern email can be built from borrowed parts

#31

Post by rzerowan »

philipwhiuk wrote: post #27

Old version: * DNS lookup for MX record New version * DNS lookup for A record * HTTP request for .wellknown/htmp/known_hosts Not sure why this is being considered as an improvement? > each mailbox of a domain on a different provider Why is this useful/necessary or even 'good'?

Id think its for enduser flexibility and convenience. Its more involved to alter DNS records vs just adding a text line to a webpage and hitting that default endpoint as standard. Same way LetsEncrypt allows the easiest setup with the .wellknown endpoint , where a user may not have DNS access beyond the initial A record setup.

Re: Modern email can be built from borrowed parts

#32

Post by tcfhgj »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #23
amelius wrote: post #2

> First-contact consent: an unknown sender doesn't get into the mailbox; they land in a "requests" box with their first message visible (like Signal's message requests). You accept, and the thread opens forever. A stranger can knock on your door, which is the essential property of mail, but they can't fill up your living room. I like this. Question: can this e-mail specification/implementation also replace direct-mes…

The unknown request will be buried in spam - a problem we have already, but worse. And I do not want an infinite thread conversation. I want to be able to split off - and perhaps archive and export - different conversations by topic. I recently had to some legal things, which included forwarding copies of a certain conversation to a lawyer. This turns out to be unreasonably difficult because email clients quote previ…

> You do get it on chat services, but there's no option there to create sub-conversations.

It's called threads - even Matrix has these

Re: Modern email can be built from borrowed parts

#33

Post by jjice »

thesuitonym wrote: post #16

> Let's design the successor to email on top of HTTP You can stop there, I've heard enough. Not everything is hypertext.

From the first paragraph:

>The goal is not to replace the current mail system, heaven forbid!, but to learn, have fun and discover current technologies to swap out every element: sending, receiving, gateway, keys, and so on.

It's all for fun.

Re: Modern email can be built from borrowed parts

#34

Post by gostsamo »

andros wrote: post #14
gostsamo wrote: post #11

Unfortunately, stopped reading at one moment, because though the idea might be interesting, the packaging was unbearable. The obnoxious real time visitors counter seriously screws with my screen reader. I don't care how many people are reading this every 3 seconds updated not only with numbers, but with randomly chosen emois in my speech stream. If you have a website, please, don't subject your visitors to something…

I'm sorry to hear about your bad experience. I've hidden the counter for screen readers. Please try again when you're ready.

Thanks for the change.

Re: Modern email can be built from borrowed parts

#35

Post by gostsamo »

jeffbee wrote: post #25
andros wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry to hear about your bad experience. I've hidden the counter for screen readers. Please try again when you're ready.

The combination of "I have an idea for changing one of the fundamental experiences of modern life" and "my website is obnoxious and hostile" didn't really work for me.

Mistakes happen.

Re: Modern email can be built from borrowed parts

#37

Post by forty »

andros wrote: post #14
gostsamo wrote: post #11

Unfortunately, stopped reading at one moment, because though the idea might be interesting, the packaging was unbearable. The obnoxious real time visitors counter seriously screws with my screen reader. I don't care how many people are reading this every 3 seconds updated not only with numbers, but with randomly chosen emois in my speech stream. If you have a website, please, don't subject your visitors to something…

I'm sorry to hear about your bad experience. I've hidden the counter for screen readers. Please try again when you're ready.

Anecdotally, I don't use a screen reader and also couldn't care less on the visitors on the site. I doubt anyone but you is interested in this, and probably this number is slightly lower just because of that popup

Re: Modern email can be built from borrowed parts

#38

Post by Multicomp »

philipwhiuk wrote: post #30
wuschel wrote: post #7

> Optional postage for strangers: the server can answer a first contact with a 402. Configurable per mailbox; the cost of cold spamming stops being zero. Interesting take re putting a cost on spam. Perhaps another take would be functionally implementing introductions. > First-contact consent: an unknown sender doesn't get into the mailbox; they land in a "requests" box with their first message visible (like Signal's…

Yeah the 'Requests' folder just becomes the new Inbox folder. Email clients already highlight/filter people in your contacts

We could add a friend-of-friend for 1 degree of separation (Alice gets an email from Bob, she doesn't know Bob, so it would go into her Requests folder. But Charlie knows Bob and has said 'yes this guy is legit' and Alice has configured her email to trust Charlie's email recommendations up to 2 degrees of separation, so it goes into the inbox with an explanation that it was allowed by Charlie's trust of Bob).

And poof, we've poorly remembered Web of Trust from 20 years ago!

Overall I do love the idea of HTMP and if we could get it to easily fall back to standard old bad email, I think it could start as a niche and then upgrade towards HTMP over time as more clients adopted support for it.

Re: Modern email can be built from borrowed parts

#39

Post by zdw »

I'd take this the opposite direction - HTTP should get more like SMTP.

Take this thought experiment - how does nearly every other standard protocol (DNS, SMTP, etc.) except for HTTP survive at scale without server-side load balancing?

Thankfully we're heading in this direction due to happy eyeballs and related client-side retry mechanisms.

Re: Modern email can be built from borrowed parts

#40

Post by PaulRobinson »

MrGilbert wrote: post #8
amelius wrote: post #2

> First-contact consent: an unknown sender doesn't get into the mailbox; they land in a "requests" box with their first message visible (like Signal's message requests). You accept, and the thread opens forever. A stranger can knock on your door, which is the essential property of mail, but they can't fill up your living room. I like this. Question: can this e-mail specification/implementation also replace direct-mes…

> I like this. Honestly, I'd want this as a default. I wonder if a mailserver can be configure like this. Doesn't sound too hard, does it?

"We" tried this in the late 1990s. I remember writing an exim config to do this a couple of ways back in my ISP times:

1. "The recipient will not get this message until you authenticate yourself as a legitimate sender at this URL [...]" - resulted in people never getting mail from no-reply addresses they cared about (banks, e-com, etc.)

2. "This sender has sent you an email, with this subject and this first paragraph. Click here to whitelist, here to blacklist" - created a lot of churn on first setup that users didn't like as a UX

Baking it into the protocol - even now in SMTP and IMAP land - is doable, but would be resisted by email providers who, for example, make their money selling data to marketing agencies. Like, you know, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo...

I've seen other approaches proposed - even at IETF level - over the years, including digital postage stamps (sender pays to send email, your server gets paid, and may reject non-stamped/paying email), but it's the usual network effect: until it becomes widely supported it won't "stick". The stuff that has been adopted has basically been stuff that Google likes, period.

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