4 ms·

I would LOVE to see that

by logicalmoron 16y ago

markbao 16y ago
logicalmoron@news.ycombinator.com
- palish 16y ago
  Question --- I haven't done much webdev stuff so this may sound silly, but --- why can't PMs work that way? Like, why can't I send markbao a private message by sending an email to markbao@news.ycombinator.com? And then the site could forward it on to his email address, or if the site wants to get fancy they'd store it in a database and display them as "comments" in the target user's "editing profile" screen (whenever you edit your own profile). More than that though, I'd like to learn about the nitty-gritty of e-mail. As a game developer I do mostly C++ application code, so everyone else probably has way more knowledge than I... But for example I'd like to be able to embed the ability for my programs to send emails (as a debugging mechanism). Or even receive emails! (Imagine taking down some number of your servers, for patching purposes, by sending a "console command" as an email to servers+someadminpassword@yourservice.com. Or running queries on your servers by sending the query as an email, and then they email back the response. How would I write a C++ function like: bool SendEmail( const tchar* destination_email_address, const tchar* subject, const tchar* body );
  - mweatherill 16y ago
    A primary reason why a site wouldn't support PMs to markbao@news.ycombinator.com is that there is no access control. The address would get spammed too easily from senders with no affiliation with Hacker News. The current mechanism of only supporting messaging within the site limits this.
    - mkramlich 16y ago
      Sometimes it's interesting to think about how much better the world could be if we could design things without worrying about griefers.
  - smanek 16y ago
    When I've needed to send mail from C, I just call a CLI mail user agent like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mailx http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mailx, and configure it to talk to a local MTA (traditionally sendmail), which buffers messages locally before sending them to a real mail server on the internet (I use authsmtp). Python has a nice builtin library for talking to my local SMTP server like, I suspect, many other modern languages. There's no technical reason why email addresses like markbao@news.ycombinator.com can't work. In fact, I'd argue Tumblr/Posterous have some of the same core ideas you're proposing.

I would LOVE to see that

markbao 16y ago

logicalmoron@news.ycombinator.com

palish 16y ago
Question --- I haven't done much webdev stuff so this may sound silly, but --- why can't PMs work that way? Like, why can't I send markbao a private message by sending an email to markbao@news.ycombinator.com? And then the site could forward it on to his email address, or if the site wants to get fancy they'd store it in a database and display them as "comments" in the target user's "editing profile" screen (whenever you edit your own profile). More than that though, I'd like to learn about the nitty-gritty of e-mail. As a game developer I do mostly C++ application code, so everyone else probably has way more knowledge than I... But for example I'd like to be able to embed the ability for my programs to send emails (as a debugging mechanism). Or even receive emails! (Imagine taking down some number of your servers, for patching purposes, by sending a "console command" as an email to servers+someadminpassword@yourservice.com. Or running queries on your servers by sending the query as an email, and then they email back the response. How would I write a C++ function like: bool SendEmail( const tchar* destination_email_address, const tchar* subject, const tchar* body );
- mweatherill 16y ago
  A primary reason why a site wouldn't support PMs to markbao@news.ycombinator.com is that there is no access control. The address would get spammed too easily from senders with no affiliation with Hacker News. The current mechanism of only supporting messaging within the site limits this.
  - mkramlich 16y ago
    Sometimes it's interesting to think about how much better the world could be if we could design things without worrying about griefers.
- smanek 16y ago
  When I've needed to send mail from C, I just call a CLI mail user agent like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mailx http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mailx, and configure it to talk to a local MTA (traditionally sendmail), which buffers messages locally before sending them to a real mail server on the internet (I use authsmtp). Python has a nice builtin library for talking to my local SMTP server like, I suspect, many other modern languages. There's no technical reason why email addresses like markbao@news.ycombinator.com can't work. In fact, I'd argue Tumblr/Posterous have some of the same core ideas you're proposing.