Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Stop Microsoft users sending 'reactions' to email by adding a postfix header

neilzone.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 377 posts

Re: Stop Microsoft users sending 'reactions' to email by adding a postfix header

#141

Post by TeMPOraL »

Zambyte wrote: post #107
somat wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are not wrong and I agree with you that this sort of bullshit is laughably unacceptable. Unfortunately nothing opt in ever gets wide adoption. So I expect to keep seeing these sort of infernal acts as people get bright but misguided ideas that require broad adoption to work. for example googles wifi cataloging does not work at all if to get cataloged you have to put "_cataloged" in your ssid.

> Unfortunately nothing opt in ever gets wide adoption. Computers were opt in.

Until they weren't.

Re: Stop Microsoft users sending 'reactions' to email by adding a postfix header

#142

Post by xyst »

Apple added the same thing for iMessage/SMS. It worked as expected if the group message was all Apple users. But if you were the unfortunate person outside the ecosystem, you would get spammed with ‘{person} liked “{message}”’.

In some cases, people would react to the reaction leading to some ridiculous chains of text.

Re: Stop Microsoft users sending 'reactions' to email by adding a postfix header

#143

Post by pinsl »

NoPicklez wrote: post #95
stratocumulus0 wrote: post #31

I remember seeing that some people in the corporate world put a capital J instead of a dot in some sentences. I first brushed this off as some artificial corporate level of politeness that's not too forward (the hook of a J does indeed look like a smiling face). Turns out that 4xA, the value of J in ASCII, is occupied by a smiley face in Wingdings. I still struggle to get it how did the Outlook email client know whic…

So funny, my mother would send me emails from work and I would see J every now and then. First letter of my first name is J so I kept thinking she was just referring to me but she was sending a smiley face

In had exactly the same experience when emailing my father.

Re: Stop Microsoft users sending 'reactions' to email by adding a postfix header

#144

Post by throwaway3306a »

verandaguy wrote: post #122
nlawalker wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not opt-in for the owner of the network, who should really have a say in the matter. Why? It’s literally just a shortcut for asking for the password from someone who already has it and then having it read it out loud or texted. If the owner of the network doesn’t want that happening they need to explain that in either case.

It’s a shortcut that deprives the network owner of agency. As the person running the network, should you not have some degree of control over who gets to join your network, be it fully open, fully closed, or anywhere in between?

Use RADIUS then. If you told someone the password, they can share it

Re: Stop Microsoft users sending 'reactions' to email by adding a postfix header

#145

Post by throwaway3306a »

adzm wrote: post #99
theamk wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you almost got it! This was likely winmail.dat/TNEF[0], Microsoft's proprietary replacement of HTML. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_Neutral_Encapsulatio...

TNEF is a container/encapsulation format rather than a markup language. It can contain HTML as well as RTF and plain text. Granted HTML rendering of email is full of quirks in Outlook

It's using Word to render html. They tried using a browser engine but then it rendered a copy-pasted Word text differently and users hated that.

Re: Stop Microsoft users sending 'reactions' to email by adding a postfix header

#146

Post by conductr »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #36
ryandrake wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This question is how we get opinionated software that slowly-but-surely stops serving the user. "I don't like it" should be a perfectly valid reason for turning off a feature.

Perhaps it would be better to ask, how do you expect people to communicate to you those things that would be expressed as reactions?

When the medium is email, I’m not expecting a reaction as it’s async communication method and if they want to react it’s in a form of another email reply. Occasionally I need a confirmation or something and I ask for it in the email, if they just gave me a thumbs up it becomes uncertain if it’s a confirmation because I’ve learned that some people thumbs up everything just to acknowledge it and I later find out they just want to signal they’re online and on top of things but actually never read my message

Re: Stop Microsoft users sending 'reactions' to email by adding a postfix header

#147

Post by throwaway3306a »

ryandrake wrote: post #57
logicprog wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except, by turning them off, you are therefore forcing people who want to communicate with you to adapt to your communication preferences because you have, by fiat, decided that you simply don't want to perceive the communication method they prefer. Coming to an agreement with others about how you want to communicate with them as fine, but communication is a two-way street, and so it has to be bilaterally negotiated…

Some people pay per text message received. So, they have to ask each and every one of their iMessage-using friends to please not send these ridiculous reactions, because they are ultimately another text message which will cost money. If that counts as "forcing others to adapt their communication" well then I'm sorry, but their preference is my cost, so I don't think it's out of line to politely ask them not to. Ultim…

What, pay for receiving messages? I have never seen that, not during roaming or even on IoT plans or completely free plans.

Re: Stop Microsoft users sending 'reactions' to email by adding a postfix header

#148

Post by helsinkiandrew »

kazinator wrote: post #118
karaterobot wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From that article: > (So if you want to opt out of Google Maps and Wi-Fi Sense at the same time, you must change your SSID of, say, myhouse to myhouse_optout_nomap. Technology is great.) I knew about the Google Maps thing, I didn't know about this. That kind of stuff is so presumptuous and user hostile it's outrageous.

Would it be better to have an op-out database, where you have to log in with a Google account, and prove that you own the device somehow using geolocation? The system has to be resistant against bad actors taking someone else off the map who chooses to opt in. It would be better if the syntax were simpler, like changing myhouse to __myhouse (double underscore == private identifier). By setting SSID a certain way, you…

> Would it be better to have an op-out database

The "_optout_nomap" postfix atleast gives a veneer of privacy that your SSID doesn't need to be sent by every nearby device to a backend service to see if it's in the opt-out database and logged/read by some government backfeed etc.

Re: Stop Microsoft users sending 'reactions' to email by adding a postfix header

#149

Post by anonymousab »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #141
Zambyte wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unfortunately nothing opt in ever gets wide adoption. Computers were opt in.

Until they weren't.

Yeah, widespread adoption will do that to things.

Re: Stop Microsoft users sending 'reactions' to email by adding a postfix header

#150

Post by conductr »

snapcaster wrote: post #45

Can an anti-reaction person explain what they find so distasteful about them? Is it that the other person wasn't willing to make the effort to type is seen as disrespectful? struggling to see what the problem is

It’s usually unnecessary and triggers notifications stealing my attention. If I silence them I might miss some actual change in conversation status. (Eg. Someone asks a question and the answer is in the form of a thumbs down reaction, if notifications are off I am unwittingly waiting for the answer until I check the conversation again)

Usually on multiple devices. That said, they are fine when on certain mediums. Chat and slack type stuff where it’s sync conversations that’s fine (although on larger groups and at work it starts becoming an asynchronous bulletin board more than a chat). Email is asynchronous and I only need the final response if the conversation even requires one. If I’m asking you a question I don’t need an acknowledgment reaction followed by an answer 3 hours later. Just send the answer 3 hours later. If I asked you a question and said I needed an answer quickly, you could say I can’t get it to you for 3 hours or if you never say anything I’m going to assume you won’t be answering me (that’s ok!) but if you acknowledge it I will assume you’re working on the quick response I asked for and if o don’t get it I’ll probably be upset or wondering what the problem is.

Anyways, in general we’ve built up a lot of norms for various mediums. Email norms don’t need to follow chat norms.

Post reply on HN