221–230 of 310 posts
Well, you can certainly blog using just email: https://PublicEmails.com . Disclaimer: it's one of my side projects.
If that's how these services get abused, I'm glad now I didn't waste any time on my version :(
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Email has very real limitations, imposed both by the protocol itself and by lack of consensus among all the major and minor clients.
Can you give some examples? I've never seen any mentioned.
no shared concept of a group/channel/...
no shared history support
no shared concept of a thread
no consistency about how previous replies are referred to (e.g. different quoting styles)
no real identity support
...
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XMPP is having a resurgence with OMEMO being added to clients and some new clients (Dino) being made. However, I'm not sure if it will ever be the popular thing even among the free software options. We have Matrix now, and although most clients are lacking and it can be laggy, in 5 years it will probably be pretty good. I'm especially excited about their P2P work which sounds like it'll allow account migrations, offl…
> However, I'm not sure if it will ever be the popular thing even among the free software options. I'm one of the many people actively working on XMPP projects. Is there something in particular that makes you think this? People often talk about XMPP in the past tense on HN. It's understandable, XMPP had a peak of popularity with the adoption of Google Talk, but Google being Google and shutting that down did not end X…
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Your points are even more valid when you start to move to different counties. You quickly realise that people in other countries often don’t use the apps you are using, in fact you most likely won’t have heard of the apps they are using. But “everyone is using X” they will tell you, but you’ll have no way to know for sure. Are you really going to install every piece of software people say to install? At least with em…
When you move to a new country that has a dominant messaging app, you can't avoid installing it without making your life a lot more difficult. And moving already makes your life difficult enough.
I want to point out something from one of the articles which is so far from the truth that it somewhat undercuts the authors credibility: > For instance, if WhatsApp goes down, not only can you not send/receive messages, you won’t be able to see your old ones, and no one else on your network will be able to either. You could argue that a single email provider has the same effect, but you’d be wrong. If Gmail goes dow…
> Obviously you will be able to see all your WhatsApp messages when WhatsApp goes down. The same is true for Facebook Messenger and many other applications, because everything is saved locally. It's even possible to send WhatsApp messages while being offline which will then be delivered later on. I wonder how long this has been the case. My experience in the past is that these applications are not usable without a st…
In the case of whatsapp, this has been true since its inception. Not sure about Messenger.
I'm on the exact opposite end of the spectrum. I haven't used email outside of work for many years now, and don't miss it one bit. And even at work most communication now happens on Slack. The digital world has evolved since 1997, and email simply hasn't kept up. I skimmed a couple articles on the blog and my biggest problem with it is that the author is making a social rather than technological argument (which are a…
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.
I'm on the exact opposite end of the spectrum. I haven't used email outside of work for many years now, and don't miss it one bit. And even at work most communication now happens on Slack. The digital world has evolved since 1997, and email simply hasn't kept up. I skimmed a couple articles on the blog and my biggest problem with it is that the author is making a social rather than technological argument (which are a…
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…
I mean, the threads are only confusing if people keep insisting on using shit email clients.
> the forwarding, the constant CC'ing,
Think of it as defining a chatroom. Most of the time it can be handled just fine automatically by your email client, but you can also have more finegrained control if you wish.
> someone making it or not making it into a list,
?
> the spam.
This I will agree with.
> Will the author's next big revelation be "How to use a hammer for everything?"
Yeah, I don't agree with the author that email should be used for everything. But for non-instant, asynchronousm, flexible, decentralized, cross-platform communication it's pretty damn near perfect.
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
Can you give an example of a communication medium — where having a conversation involves multiple different people over the course of weeks or months, with message frequencies varying from several-per-minute to a-few-per-month, and message sizes varying from single sentences to essays — works better than e-mail (and e-mail lists)?
I agree that unwinding a sprawling email thread after the fact can be a lot of work, but I also haven't seen any other medium make that job any easier. It seems to me to be an inherently hard problem.