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Mailpile: Let’s take email back

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Re: Mailpile: Let’s take email back

#121

Post by oblique63 »

gregd wrote: post #65
andrewcooke wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i don't deny doing stupid things. look, here's an example from my recent posting history - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6121287 and the follow-up http://www.acooke.org/cute/HyperloopW0.html#Mon29Jul20132135... what depresses me is that people don't admit it, learn, and move on. instead we get "well, i am showing how important it is to make this information more explicit because everyone else is as dumb as i a…

When you view the world as being filled with incompetent idiots, you're seeing the world through your own filter...not anybody elses. Realize that everybody on the face of the planet has their own filter. Human relationships are built upon being able to empathize with others and perhaps glimpse life through their filter. Not seeing the fork ribbon in the upper-right isn't about someone being "dumb" anymore than you n…

Very much this. As someone with a strong interest in everything neurology/psychology/intelligence/learning/teaching/etc, this is the most accurate description of what is going on.

"Incompetence" isn't toxic, viewpoint and attitude are. There will always be someone "dumber" than you, and there will always be someone "smarter" than you. Once you realize this and internalize it into your world view, you will come to the same conclusion that book teaches, and that is one of cooperation.

Like my parent here alluded to, you didn't just point out an answer, you projected your thought process onto another person. Why do some people get depressed at what seem like tiny insignificant details, while others live happily in the worst of global conditions? The answer is Perspective. The pain/difficulty anyone feels is very much real to them, it is not an objective measurement -- so when you project the idea that a person just couldn't have tried very hard, you make the assumption that you know what it's like for that person to 'try' anything in that context.

If you look at my own comment history, you'll see that I have dealt with the difficulty of explaining myself to others quite a bit, but also that I try to turn it into a productive thought-provoking discussion with a neutral tone and strong points. For example, what I am saying right now is very similar to a direct attack on your ego (and I wouldn't blame you if you took it as such), but I try to present my words in such a way that will invoke action from your rational 'executive brain' long before it hits your emotional 'reptilian brain', if that makes any sense?

The only real course of action that makes sense is cooperation; any other interpretation would basically implicate that either the world revolves around you, or that everyone is like you, and those ideas should be clearly false to everyone.

Re: Mailpile: Let’s take email back

#123

Post by nonrecursive »

nhangen wrote: post #94
HerraBRE wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have actually been working on Mailpile "altruistically" for a while, but sorely missed the ability to dedicate myself to it full time. Thus the fundraiser.

Totally get it, but why not share some of the risk with your supporters and meet them halfway? Asking for a full (decent) salary for two people for a year places all of the risk on your supporters and makes you look uninspired. Edit: I can't reply to child, so I'll do it here. It has nothing to do with a free ride. I don't want the product because the solution isn't right for me, but I would much prefer to pay a mont…

I don't understand your objections at all. These guys are making a proposal, which individuals are free to accept or reject as they see fit. Those who accept it know what they're getting themselves into and accept the risk. No one is getting scammed. If these guys want a parachute, that's their prerogative. Just because you wouldn't take the same approach doesn't mean the approach is a bad one.

Re: Mailpile: Let’s take email back

#124

Post by cromwellian »

1O0101ll100O wrote: post #60
rufugee wrote: post #29

I just switched back to Zimbra (also open source) after years with Google Apps. It's been a spectacular experience so far, and it's nice to have email fell like email again (not to mention being in full control).. It has everything I need: a rich web client, good smartphone phone support, good spam filtering, and a good community.

Another vote for Zimbra. Seriously, it's not that hard to install and setup. Once you have it all going the capabilities are immense. It also lives on your machine, using your SSL certs, and using as much in-place HDD encryption as you want. This is how you take your privacy back. You care enough about it to do it yourself.

It's also how you give yourself a headache having to sysadmin a machine. I myself used to run Zimbra and switched to Google Apps. Too much irritation with backups, monitoring, security, et al.

Re: Mailpile: Let’s take email back

#125

Post by [deleted] »

nhangen wrote: post #66

I'm in the crowdfunding business, so I feel strange saying this, but I'm really turned off by this model of 'pay us in advance for developing a product that hasn't been market tested or validated,' especially when asking for a sum as large as is $100,000. What happened to building something and selling it? According to the campaign page, the need is so great because: "We're asking for a lot of money, so of course you…

[deleted]

Re: Mailpile: Let’s take email back

#126

Post by anentropic »

HerraBRE wrote: post #8
ghshephard wrote: post #5

I like the concept - but it's missing a discussion of how they handle what I consider to be (by a pretty large factor) one of the most important feature in email - Anti-Spam. Gmail (which I'm not suggesting is an ideal, just what I happen to use) doesn't even bother to show me my spam folder - and, in the last week, it's redirected 1178 messages there.

Absolutely. I'm the lead developer - I spent almost 6 years working on anti-virus and anti-spam, so rest assured we know this is a big deal. :-) There is alot of quality stuff in the open source world already which we will be able to build on. Update: To clarify why we left it out of the pitch - we just took it for granted that you can't have a functional e-mail client without dealing with spam.

Nothing I tried ever handled spam as well as Gmail, I was drowning in it, it's the number one reason I use Gmail. I see so little spam now I think if everyone used Gmail the spammers would have to give up.

There are plenty of nice-enough webmail UIs around, and people complain about the speed of Gmail but I find it perfectly fine. Spam's the thing.

Re: Mailpile: Let’s take email back

#128

Post by sorbits »

They talk about privacy, but MTAs like Postfix can already encrypt mail via TLS when moving it to another host¹. GPG gives us a better guarantee, but more user overhead, and unreadable by many recipients.

Additionally SPF gives us a way to check if the sender address has been forged. GPG signing is more robust, but again, more user overhead.

Not to mention, I already have S/MIME support in my mail application and can get GPG support via a plug-in, but I use neither, because few recipients can handle it.

So what is new with Mailpile? What is it supposed to change?

In my opinion, if the goal is to make email more secure, we should look into ensuring that all MTAs is setup to support TLS and use it when delivering mail to other hosts (AFAIK Exim4 only announces STARTTLS when connecting to its submission port).

Getting SPF records setup would also be a plus.

This would go a long way in making email more secure, and only requires action from administrators of mail domains.

¹ http://www.postfix.org/postconf.5.html#smtp_tls_security_lev...

Re: Mailpile: Let’s take email back

#129

Post by [deleted] »

foobarbazqux wrote: post #117
FooBarWidget wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could not disagree less. Asking him to "meet supporters half way" makes it sound like you want a free ride. No offense. These are adult guys, who need to support themselves and possibly a family. The software is already open source. And you want them to take even more risk although the Mailpile author has given a lot of his time to the community already? You seriously think everybody would be better off if he risks…

> I could not disagree less. I think you mean, "I could not disagree more." What you wrote means you agree perfectly. It says that if you take the amount of disagreement between you and your parent, there could not be less disagreement, i.e. there is zero disagreement.

[deleted]

Re: Mailpile: Let’s take email back

#130

Post by losvedir »

nhangen wrote: post #66

I'm in the crowdfunding business, so I feel strange saying this, but I'm really turned off by this model of 'pay us in advance for developing a product that hasn't been market tested or validated,' especially when asking for a sum as large as is $100,000. What happened to building something and selling it? According to the campaign page, the need is so great because: "We're asking for a lot of money, so of course you…

> but I'm really turned off by this model of 'pay us in advance for developing a product that hasn't been market tested or validated

Um, you mean software consulting?

This model is beautiful. It's a bunch of email privacy advocates hiring a couple of skilled guys for a year to write the open source software we all wish existed.

Seems fair to me. I'm not so entitled as to demand someone altruistically create this for me.

And I explicitly _don't_ want them to make a business of it, because that changes the incentives completely.

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