191–200 of 311 posts
It's interesting that this mentions the Signal fiasco and specifically the scamcoin that is MobileCoin. Is that the fate of all messaging apps? Once they get some traction, they sell out their users? I can see things like Matrix as a good alternative, but then what happens when that gains traction? MatrixCoin anyone? When does it end?
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I run a mailinabox server for almost half a year and gmail is a pita. I send an email to a gmail user and it always goes into spam. I have to phone them to unspam it but next day same thing. Yahoo mail or others dont seem have this issue because I have 10/10 on the dkim something scorecard. Google somehow wants to force me to not use my email server. Fuck them
Do you have a residential IP? It you don't have dmarc enabled that is for sure worth doing too.
I don't care that gmail has the majority of the market. I care that Google can not simply break compatibility with SMTP/IMAP and force everyone into their version of it. And no, "it's hard to self-host" is not enough of an argument. There are plenty of smaller professional hosting companies and as long as there is an option this is enough to stop Google from monopolizing the market.
Likewise, I don't care that Matrix still doesn't have a perfectly polished client. As long as it lets me talk and have video calls with my family and friends without being forced into WhatsApp or iMessage or whatever closed solution is popular, I'm willing to deal with its inconveniences and shortcomings. Bugs can be fixed, privacy violations can't.
Crypto as well. For all the talk about "investment opportunities" in crypto and the "get rich quick" schemes, there are still a good number of people working on it that understand that the important thing is to have an alternative to the existing financial system.
The worst part of the article though is not that it presents a problem that does not exist, it's the proposed solution: political intervention and regulation always works out in favor of the status quo. If you really want to kill whatever grassroots movement or attempt at breaking away from the big players, just throw the political/bureaucratic apparatus on top of it.
[0]: https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...
The author's definition of what makes a "decentralized application" is too strong and I don't agree that email isn't an example of a decentralized application. She argues that it's not because it's really hard to run your own mail server. To me, "decentralized" doesn't mean every user has to run their own node. It means it's an open network, anyone can join, and there's no centralized control / censorship. You can bu…
Using the terminology most commonly found in the crypto space, email is not decentralized but rather federated. This is because participation in the email ecosystem requires permission from other participants in the email ecosystem. If only 5% of the ecosystem is willing to forward your emails, most of your emails aren't going to make it to their destination. Conversely, in the blockchain space anyone can participate…
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> Spam filtering is a a very difficult thing to do well and Google's implementation was very good, very advanced, and trained on huge amounts of data. Something a normal person could never do on their own server I'm sure most normal people could install SpamAssassin and configure it to use community blacklists on their Dovecot/Postfix server. It's not that hard.
It's been 5+ years since I've last used SpamAssassin, but at that time it didn't hold a candle to Gmail's spam filtering. Also you're incredibly alienated if you think a "normal person" could manage their own mailserver. 95%+ of western people couldn't use a CLI.
Great article! I have been meaning to write an article like this and the author raises a lot of points that I would make. But my assessment of why we don't have more centralization is pretty simple: "Consumers don't care" The concept in the real world is simple: "If I want something I go to store x and buy it". Translating that concept in the digital world is super easy with centralization: - Want to watch a video: g…
Like having the video and music and ebook (and VR headset!) you've paid for (and therefore think it belongs to you) arbitrarily removed or rendered inoperable with no recourse. If that happened with a DVD it'd be considered theft. Most normal people just don't think that can happen, or assume that if it did the legal system would be on their side, but it has and it does.
Ultimately, while I'd like to see more use of decentralized systems and API standard systems and federated systems, it's more likely that the biggest problems with centralized systems will be addressed ultimately through regulation, once the legal system catches up.
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Indeed.
After posting I realized you had effectively said the same thing. To your point about government acting as a referee to ensure the free market is operating effectively, I don't see that happening unless the electorate demands an end to all activities that could lead to regulatory capture. I'm not sure if this is ever possible..
This is something that requires eternal vigilance from voters.
Yeah. Right. Maybe.
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Agreed and I will add that a huge reason Google is used by so many was very effective spam filtering. A huge reason why hosting your own email is hard? Getting filtered by Google because of the massive amount of spam they are blocking. Spam filtering is a a very difficult thing to do well and Google's implementation was very good, very advanced, and trained on huge amounts of data. Something a normal person could nev…
Spam seems pretty "solved" (if one can call it that) problem nowadays though. Most people who run their own servers simply put SpamAssassin and a couple of other tweaks; not much fuss is needed anymore.
A slightly more problematic is targeted phishing attacks, where the attackers try to put at least some work-relevant information “. Some of those attempts are not so trivial. I do receive them few times per year, while with GMail I do not remember getting one in at least a year. But on other hand I am not so sure that Google will defend against those if we have used GMail at work.