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Just Use Email – How to Use Email for Everything

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Re: Just Use Email – How to Use Email for Everything

#171

Post by bradjohnson »

peterpost2 wrote: post #11
daveslash wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll give you an up-vote because I think a variety of different viewpoints is important, but I'm very much in the e-mail camp. My biggest reason is simply: it's the only ubiquitous, decentralized, open protocol that I can think of. I can run my own server if I want, an I can interact with anybody with an e-mail address . Sure, there was XMPP for IM, but that doesn't have wide adoption; same with other protocols.

You really can't run your on email server nowadays though, you need to have been running one for several decades otherwise the email common email providers(gmail, outlook) will automatically just assume its spam. Also due to the way extensions added to the email protocol configuring and learning how to properly configure it so it gets accepted will be a dayjob.

I want to throw my hat in here because there are plenty of the "works for me" crowd.

I've run a personal mail server for the last 5 or so years and I have SPF, DKIM, DMARC setup correctly, get 10/10 for mail-tester.com and get graded "not spam" for all the other spam tester sites. Spam Assassin loves me and I have a .com mail server.

I can land more or less into personal emails (occasionally I get filtered into spam), but when it comes to corporate emails I pretty much get /dev/nulled each time and can't even land into a spam folder. I can't give out my personal email as a point of contact and have to use my gmail or protonmail instead.

I've all but given up on owning my own email because the protocol has effectively made it impossible to reliably land mail in a mailbox if you don't have a certain amount of outbound mail traffic.

Re: Just Use Email – How to Use Email for Everything

#172

Post by nikisweeting »

bgroat wrote: post #152

I frequently tell coworkers and clients that *nothing* is more urgent than an email, but less urgent than a phone call.

Not sure I follow? I feel like most IM apps get more urgent/timely responses from most people than email, but are still less urgent than phone calls.

Re: Just Use Email – How to Use Email for Everything

#173

Post by tomjen3 »

darau1 wrote: post #116
cwmartin wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re probably thinking about Hey https://www.hey.com . The issue I see with it is that it goes beyond a refreshed interface and breaks IMAP compatibility.

Yes, that's what I was thinking of. What does it do wrong? I was actually thinking of signing up, but it is too expensive.

I considered it two, here are the things I think it gets wrong:

  * Can't use your own domain
  * Have to use their client
  * Can't add your old email
The last one is a deal breaker. I have 10+ years of email that I still want to be able to search.

Re: Just Use Email – How to Use Email for Everything

#174

Post by pfranz »

paxys wrote: post #114
darau1 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give some examples? I've never seen any mentioned.

End-to-end encryption, large attachments, managing group messages (aka "reply all" problem), changing message subject, quoted messages when replying, HTML/CSS formatting, sorting/labeling/folders, tracking protections, sending messages over websocket, heck even basic message threading. None of this works consistently across different clients.

Isn't the "reply all" problem a user issue? If people used BCC instead of a bunch of To's, we'd never hear about it. Heck, I would think email clients would prompt if you tried to sent more than a dozen people without BCC.

I agree with everything else and think "managing group messages" has other issues. For example, it's nice that I can duck out of an iMessage group, but can't duck out of a text message group or email chain.

Re: Just Use Email – How to Use Email for Everything

#175

Post by pfranz »

darau1 wrote: post #115
pfranz wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sending private information is the first thing I think of--from a bunch of aspects. Secure in transit has had a bunch of different, awkward implementations. My biggest concern is sending tax documents and it sitting in someone's archive folder (or sent folder) for years until their account is compromised. So I often have organizations that send email pointing to their proprietary webmail. The alternative is sneakerne…

Unless you physically hand your taxes in, isn't any solution technically vulnerable to being compromised? Also, wouldn't encryption fix this problem? I don't understand how it might be implemented in the real world, but if you encrypt with your private key, then their public key the message should be safe in transit, and at rest (unless they leave it decrypted on disk)

> Unless you physically hand your taxes in, isn't any solution technically vulnerable to being compromised?

If that's all there is to it, then why do people use other solutions?

> Also, wouldn't encryption fix this problem?

Kind of. The problem is the protocol and lack of consensus prevents this from being feasibly implemented. Personally, I think encryption in transit is a low probability threat for me. I would also like certain data to "expire" or go into "cold storage" after a period of time. Sending it in a side-channel, like Dropbox or Google Drive means I can delete it or revoke access after a period of time but this breaks email.

Re: Just Use Email – How to Use Email for Everything

#176

Post by nikisweeting »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #157

Ok, emotional me really hated this site, so rational me will try to calm down a bit and explain why. I started with the "Dislikes about email are Questionable" post, which was perhaps my mistake, but every point in that post had a dripping "I'm sorry peasant, you're doing it wrong" vibe to it. I can fully understand why someone may choose to use email over other forms of communication, but to be incredibly dismissive…

I started with that post as well, and had a similar reaction.

Also I find it misses most of the real points against email and focuses on the relatively minor ones.

- email enforces much higher latency communication, which maybe good sometimes, but most of the time is not helpful

- much more difficult to actually keep track of a threaded conversation with multiple concurrent subtrees, it's a stack when instead you want a tree like Zulip / Slack threads. quote replying a subthread in an email tree without disrupting convos in the rest is a painful experience even in the nicest clients.

- file attachment and embed preview experience is worse than most modern IM apps

- no emoji reactions, these are huge for efficient async communication without spamming everyone with notifications

Re: Just Use Email – How to Use Email for Everything

#177

Post by tomjen3 »

jeppesen-io wrote: post #66
dvt wrote: post #5

I don't think this kind of Luddism is useful. It's purported by the same kinds of people that, upon seeing a new SaaS, quickly retort: "couldn't you just do that with Google Docs/Word/pen and paper?" Not to mention that email absolutely sucks . The confusing threads, the forwarding, the constant CC'ing, someone making it or not making it into a list, the spam. It's absolute garbage. In fact, people have been seeking…

Can't agree more Email works O.K for one-way communication (e.g. mailing lists or bill notification). Maybe sometimes infrequent one on one communcation When its comes to having a converstation, particularly with multiple people, I can't think of anything worse. I always dread tracking down information when I have to dig into achived mailing lists

Thats funny, because I hate facebook message threads because it is effectively impossible to have a conversation there because everything overlaps and I can't take the time to write something clear and in multiple paragraphs.

Honestly at this point I wonder if the right solution is a private usenet server: just like email it is not instant but async, unlike email it is spilt into topics better and you can have new people catch up on threads easily.

Re: Just Use Email – How to Use Email for Everything

#178

Post by bccdee »

lhorie wrote: post #149
bccdee wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It didn't read my mind, it's just that my instant messaging is 0% automated messages and 100% people I know. My email is 98% automated messages from services I signed up for using my email, and 2% my mom. The configuration is never over with email, because every time I sign up for something, I've got more filters to set up. With instant messaging? There was never a problem to begin with

So you're saying you voluntarily gave out your primary email address and then don't like that they are emailing you? Why give it out in the first place then? It's free to setup a dummy email address for these purposes. Unless you're complaining about getting reminder emails from upcoming doctor appointments, bills and the like. But my impression was that getting those are a feature...

I could set up multiple accounts. But then I have to check multiple accounts. Either way, I have to go out of my way to make email as pleasant to use as instant messaging already is.

Re: Just Use Email – How to Use Email for Everything

#179

Post by tomjen3 »

sethammons wrote: post #54
ihattendorf wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> perhaps 4-6 false positives in the spam folder a month That's 4-6 valid messages a month the average user will never see.

Your mileage will vary I guess. It has been _years_ since I got a legit message caught in gmail spam; every few months I glance at it and go "yup, that's all spam." Proofpoint however, they capture a legit email every other month or so.

I just checked and I missed an important message by somebody I had been on a thread with because gmail thinks it is spam.

Because of that I just added a recurring remainder to go through gmails spam folder every sunday, but that of course defeats the purpose.

Gmail also thinks that every 2fa message from Microsoft is spam for some reason, despite how often I tell it is is not.

Re: Just Use Email – How to Use Email for Everything

#180

Post by sien »

dvt wrote: post #5

I don't think this kind of Luddism is useful. It's purported by the same kinds of people that, upon seeing a new SaaS, quickly retort: "couldn't you just do that with Google Docs/Word/pen and paper?" Not to mention that email absolutely sucks . The confusing threads, the forwarding, the constant CC'ing, someone making it or not making it into a list, the spam. It's absolute garbage. In fact, people have been seeking…

Was this ironic with Google Wave?

Can you imagine a company that went all in for Google Wave and then had to deal with Google pulling the entire product?

Email has been there for over 50 years and it's likely to be around for a long time.

The Lindy effect isn't a bad way to look at it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect

In my current job we've had 3 ticketing systems in the last 5 years.

We now use Slack and Jira but we still archive certain important emails for some things because, well, the archive of email and the fact that someone sent an email is something we can trust a lot better than the rest.

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