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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

#71

Post by paxys »

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…

Agree about Google Wave, but I want to point out that we already see its evolution in just about every real-time collaborative system today – from Google Docs to Slack to Figma and more. "The next Google Wave" isn't going to show up soon, it is already here and widely in use.

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

#72

Post by nonameiguess »

daveslash wrote: post #7
paxys wrote: post #3

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.

Old-school snail mail and voice telephony are just as open, distributed, and ubiquitous. The delivery channel providers are centralized, but that is just as true of email. Hosting your own server means nothing without an ISP.

That said, I think all three methods of communication feel obsolete and useless to me for the same reason, they're drowned out by marketing chatter. The one nice effect of the recent real estate bubble is I've effectively divorced from even using a phone. I don't even move it from the counter most of the time and don't take it with me when I leave the house. It's like 1995 all over again, but if I have it with me, it's a non-stop cacophony of people claiming to have heard from a friend of a friend that I want to unload a house.

Email is no better. Every single company I have ever conducted even the slighest and smallest transaction with suddenly thinks I want to know everything that ever happens with their products and offers. Regular mail is 99% re-fi offers from obscure mortgage providers I've never heard of.

Massive scale direct marketing is probably the worst thing to ever happen to remote communication between parties actually interested in communicating with each other, as the only practical way to do it now is pseudonymously through closed systems you never use to conduct real business with your real identity, to avoid being hounded by everyone who shares a constant contact account with someone you once gave a dollar to.

Maybe it'll force us to actually interact in person again.

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

#73

Post by leephillips »

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…

Usually when I talk to people about the “confusing threads” in email, it turns out that they are using a broken client like Gmail. Threading in email is great. Your email client is broken and not respecting the protocol:

https://lwn.net/Articles/837960/

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

#74

Post by dijit »

throwawayboise wrote: post #65
paxys wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that the moment you try and add even the most basic value-add features, other email clients can't understand you anymore. And this applies to fundamental things like identity verification, encryption and group chats.

Technically I don't see an issue with doing these things in a portable, standard way. Email signature and encryption (s/mime) has existed for a long time and most mainstream clients know how to handle it. The nut that has still not been cracked very well AFAIK is how to create and share public keys in a seamless way.

For S/MIME you don’t need to share keys. Your private key gets signed by a CA that you both trust.

You can even get free S/‘MIME certificates that validate on all clients.

People don’t do it because encrypted mail can’t be searched or archived, and it becomes cumbersome to have a wider array of clients.

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

#75

Post by leephillips »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #10
thaumaturgy wrote: post #9

Gmail alone currently handles over 50% of US email traffic, with Microsoft and a handful of other service providers taking up a good chunk of the other half. These large providers all use internal blacklists and filtering rules, which cannot be queried, and no support is available if you get blackholed. Worst of all, Gmail especially isn't great about tagging messages as spam; a good chunk of messages sent from outsi…

> Worst of all, Gmail especially isn't great about tagging messages as spam My experience is the exact opposite of yours - I find Gmail's spam detection absolutely amazing. I get essentially zero spam in my inbox, and perhaps 4-6 false positives in the spam folder a month. >As a Gmail user, there is nothing you can do to verify that you're getting all of the legitimate mail traffic that is being sent to you. What oth…

I don’t have this problem with the mail server that I set up for myself. It works as intended. My Gmail account, that I maintain mainly for email lists, gets tons of false spam positives, however. Gmail is garbage.

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

#77

Post by zelly »

rubatuga wrote: post #42
peterpost2 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you want clean IPs for self-hosting a mail server, you can use a service we created called Hoppy Network: https://hoppy.network Our IP addresses are not on any blacklists, and we don't block SMTP or mail ports.

for now rubs hands

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

#79

Post by chii »

babypuncher wrote: post #34
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.

It's fine to want all your communication on an open protocol, but email is just plain clunky and not good at all for the types of online communication people have grown accustomed to. It literally is just an electronic equivalent of sending a letter, and inherits most of the limitations that implies. If any of us are ever going to convince friends and family to leave proprietary platforms like Messenger and Discord,…

> It literally is just an electronic equivalent of sending a letter, and inherits most of the limitations that implies

that's not giving email enough credit. Email has zero limitations unlike real snail mail - the email client is the limitation, and that's "just" software.

The fact that gmail client was so successful is evidence that email could've been _the_ premiere platform for open communication. Instead, we now have many separate walled gardens vying for dominance. Imagine how the world would've been if snail mail back in the 20th century needed different stamps for different recipients!

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

#80

Post by leephillips »

asciimov wrote: post #64

Before you go using Email for everything, check to make sure your audience can actually get your email and that it's not going to spam. --- 10 years ago, I briefly worked for an for a small business that built wordpress plugins. They had an internal message board for communication and, unknown to me, they also used email. It took me six weeks to find out that I had missed hundreds of internal emails, many of which we…

After reading your story the obvious takeaway for me was

0. Don’t use Gmail.

Use a real email client.

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