I have a completely unrelated question - why does their base custom domain plan starts at 60GB of storage? This has always escaped me. Not that one can use those surplus too many GBs in any other meaningful way (i.e. object storage, or something usable like Nextcloud, Seafile et cetera). This is odd. Just in case any founder or exec from Fastmail is lurking around here do have a look at it.
Email immutability matters more in a world with AI
101–110 of 115 posts
Re: Email immutability matters more in a world with AI
#102"An email is your copy, and the sender can’t revise it later." Sort of. They can't change plain text, but modern emails often include vast swaths of remote content. When you open the message, it retrieves the relevant assets directly from whoever sent the email. That remote content is not permanently stored . It's cached for a bit and will not be re-used if the email is opened months or years later. If those assets d…
This isn't entirely true. While HTML email sometimes does have html tags in it, and can remotely download embedded images, it doesn't necessarily retrieve the asset from the person who sent it. It could be anywhere, which is another knock against HTML email. Which is why text only email is still king, and used in a lot of places still.
Also HTML email is hilariously broken on many clients. Particularly outlook.
Re: Email immutability matters more in a world with AI
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
I doubt it will be that easy to bypass. A fake would still have to withstand pixel-level analysis on the level of methods that already detect tampering in regular video. For one thing, that will have to be a very high quality monitor indeed to leave no detectable trace of e.g. moire patterns.
A fake doesn’t need to be perfect to be effective, it just needs to fool enough people. Most posts won’t (and couldn’t ever) be scrutinised at that level.
Presumably if the video is AI generated we can also AI detect if it's a legitimate video.
That won't work for the original source probably, but I would think AI sophisticated enough to tell if you're just recording a monitor would exist.
Re: Email immutability matters more in a world with AI
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
What does it mean for the court system though, what happens to video and image evidence?
We have been able to manipulate legal documents for 100s of years. We have been able to manipulate images for over 100 years. We have been able to manipulate images on any computer with a few hours of training for for 30+ years. We have been able to manipulate videos with training for 20+ years. It is an order of magnitude easier now (likely as easy as documents have been to manipulate for 30ish years now). However,…
Not just an order of magnitude easier, many orders of magnitude. We're going from hours of painsraking work done by professionals who you pay to virtually instant and as many as you want.
Re: Email immutability matters more in a world with AI
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
> locked down devices running trusted apps This is a bigger threat than phony AI videos.
To whom? I can imagine starting wars with fake videos. It's hard to imagine someone kvetching about not being able to sideload apps to their phone reaching that point of significance. I don't mean to completely dismiss very real concerns about what people can and can't do with their purchases, but OTOH war involves actual people actually dying, and manipulating media is a fantastic way to get one.
They're both the same problem: control of information. They're both useful for starting wars (or worse).
Re: Email immutability matters more in a world with AI
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
I doubt it will be that easy to bypass. A fake would still have to withstand pixel-level analysis on the level of methods that already detect tampering in regular video. For one thing, that will have to be a very high quality monitor indeed to leave no detectable trace of e.g. moire patterns.
A fake doesn’t need to be perfect to be effective, it just needs to fool enough people. Most posts won’t (and couldn’t ever) be scrutinised at that level.
Even if a lot of people just lap up whatever tiktok feeds them, it still matters that people who care can get actual evidence from the real world that eventually filters out to public consciousness. It will have indirect influence, yes, but it'll still be a lot better than being fully post-truth.
Re: Email immutability matters more in a world with AI
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
This isn't entirely true. While HTML email sometimes does have html tags in it, and can remotely download embedded images, it doesn't necessarily retrieve the asset from the person who sent it. It could be anywhere, which is another knock against HTML email. Which is why text only email is still king, and used in a lot of places still.
Also HTML email is hilariously broken on many clients. Particularly outlook.
Depends on which outlook. There’s the windows 10 version, the windows 11 version, and the office version. They’re all broken in different ways.
Re: Email immutability matters more in a world with AI
#108I have a completely unrelated question - why does their base custom domain plan starts at 60GB of storage? This has always escaped me. Not that one can use those surplus too many GBs in any other meaningful way (i.e. object storage, or something usable like Nextcloud, Seafile et cetera). This is odd. Just in case any founder or exec from Fastmail is lurking around here do have a look at it.
60gb should last you a few years of not deleting anything. That also fits into how long you generally need to keep things for record purposes. It isn’t big enough to keep everything forever (which is good for privacy).
Re: Email immutability matters more in a world with AI
#109Until retired as a professor, I used Thunderbird and the GPG plug-in to sign emails. That makes them immutable no matter who hosts the email server you use. I encrypted the emails holding grades, if the recipient said they were able to decrypt. Setup was non-trivial but very doable. I also used (and still use) a plug-in that clearly shows if any email fails DKIM or SPF (I think DMarc too).
Thank you! Will look into this setup!
Re: Email immutability matters more in a world with AI
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
The entire article is about protecting against AI, and their internal policy on AI use. No new features mentioned.
it doesn't hurt to dispel the illusion that "existing product plus AI equals more money"
True, that is a good point. And rethinking the article, it could be considered relevant even though the article didn't mention new features.
Hopefully "product + AI" doesn't get us as big of a crash as "product + Internet" did in 2000. Pointing it out probably helps.