5 ms·

This. I've long advocated for and would be delighted to have an "Email" that was identical to current email except with cryptography built-in from the ground up

by xoa 4y ago

This. I've long advocated for and would be delighted to have an "Email" that was identical to current email except with cryptography built-in from the ground up, with public certs for any given domain based simply on DNS and coordinated through the server for that domain. Otherwise the same as email. It doesn't need to be "evolved" and "upgraded" beyond that, everyone is fine with and understands email already. At most I'd add "no remote resources", or a standard system around "so and so wants to talk to you" to make it easier to do whitelist/greylist, a standard API for 3rd party vouching services, all things to help transparently cut down on spam ahead of time. But overall less is more here. There is certainly a place for real time messaging/chatting/rich collaboration services as well, but they aren't "electronic mail". The focus should be on making a standard and then model implementations that work very well.

mort96 4y ago
> an "Email" that was identical to current email Please don't. Current email is a mess. One person's email client will set the email background to dark gray and another person's email client will have a dark grey background and the result will be unreadable. One person's email client will put the quoted text at the bottom and another person's client will put the quoted text at the top and the thread will be unreadable. A sender's email client will use quotes in a way which a receiver's client doesn't understand and the receiver's client will show a thread view where each message in the thread also contains a copy of all previous messages in the thread. The sender's email client will use a symbol font which the receiver doesn't have so that symbols look like random letters to the receiver. Email is terrible. It does need to be radically overhauled. The lack of cryptography is far, far from its only problem. Plus there's the spam problem, which means you won't be able to send email reliably unless you're a major company. It's federated, but only multinationals are allowed to play.
- layer8 4y ago
  I think the parent meant identical in concept, not in the technical format. All the valid points you raise could be fixed with a new format and related conventions without changing what email is conceptually (e.g. distributed threaded long-form asynchronous decentralized communication with Subject/To/Cc etc.), as opposed to turning it into a chat system.
  - mort96 4y ago
    > I think the parent meant identical in concept, not in the technical format. That might be true. But I feel like a lot of email proponents have this idea that email is actually pretty good, when in reality, email is an unmitigated disaster and sorely needs drastic changes on the technical front.
    - layer8 4y ago
      Email is not a disaster in user communities with established conventions, such as B2B (and intra-B) communication and open-source/unix-oriented mailing lists. People in those communities see how systems like Slack and Discord and Signal are completely unsuitable to replace the email mode of communication, and therefore there is a pushback against those who push for such a replacement.
      - mort96 4y ago
        Yet for 99% of regular people, email is a complete disaster, and the people who are in extremely insular communities (such as certain FOSS projects) don't realize just how broken email is. There _is_ need for a replacement, since email plain doesn't work.
        layer8 4y ago
        I’m all for improving/replacing email with something that is the same in spirit and doesn’t constitute a regression for the user communities I mentioned (which at least in the B2B case are quite large). Making email Signal-like isn’t that, however.
        mort96 4y ago
        Sure, I agree. A requirement for a replacement would be that it's federated, and that it's asynchronous (i.e not chat). Signal is neither. I just wish that the people who care about federation and asynchronicity weren't also the people who delude themselves into thinking that email is fine the way it is. (Case in point: my comment about the problems with email is downvoted, presumably by the exact kind of people I'm talking about.)
crabmusket 4y ago
It'd be nice if we could either have a better subset of html/CSS support, or find a simpler content type for email content that isn't 80-chars-wide-and-monospaced, but isn't full html.
- layer8 4y ago
  The problem is that big tech would all need to get behind a concerted effort to improve email, but they have no incentive to strengthen a decentralized, nonproprietary communication medium.
NoGravitas 4y ago
It would be nice to have a standard for delivering email-like messages over Matrix, with email-like clients rather than chat-like clients. The protocol itself would support it.
- remram 4y ago
  Isn't the whole concept of Matrix to be a DAG of messages with hashes for tamper-resistance (ie a Merkel tree) to secure the history in the presence of many servers, some of which might exhibit Byzantine failure? What is the point of any of that for 1-to-1 communication?
  - Arathorn 4y ago
    because users generally own more than one device.
    - remram 4y ago
      All of a user's device still go through the one "homeserver" which is the only party doing the federation. If the multi-party stuff is client-to-server, again the Merkle tree is useless.
  - NoGravitas 4y ago
    It's fairly useless for 1-to-1 communication. But for any group communications, it means there's no one server that can go down that will take down the whole room (unless all the participants are on the same server); contrast with XMPP MUCs. On the other hand, XMPP is a lot faster.
  - progval 4y ago
    It's a general Merkle DAG, not a tree. This is because two homeservers can append nodes to the DAG at the same time. The state resolution algorithm ensures all homeservers in a room eventually agree on a consistent state despite receiving nodes in an inconsistent order

by xoa 4y ago

mort96 4y ago

> an "Email" that was identical to current email Please don't. Current email is a mess. One person's email client will set the email background to dark gray and another person's email client will have a dark grey background and the result will be unreadable. One person's email client will put the quoted text at the bottom and another person's client will put the quoted text at the top and the thread will be unreadable. A sender's email client will use quotes in a way which a receiver's client doesn't understand and the receiver's client will show a thread view where each message in the thread also contains a copy of all previous messages in the thread. The sender's email client will use a symbol font which the receiver doesn't have so that symbols look like random letters to the receiver. Email is terrible. It does need to be radically overhauled. The lack of cryptography is far, far from its only problem. Plus there's the spam problem, which means you won't be able to send email reliably unless you're a major company. It's federated, but only multinationals are allowed to play.

layer8 4y ago
I think the parent meant identical in concept, not in the technical format. All the valid points you raise could be fixed with a new format and related conventions without changing what email is conceptually (e.g. distributed threaded long-form asynchronous decentralized communication with Subject/To/Cc etc.), as opposed to turning it into a chat system.
- mort96 4y ago
  > I think the parent meant identical in concept, not in the technical format. That might be true. But I feel like a lot of email proponents have this idea that email is actually pretty good, when in reality, email is an unmitigated disaster and sorely needs drastic changes on the technical front.
  - layer8 4y ago
    Email is not a disaster in user communities with established conventions, such as B2B (and intra-B) communication and open-source/unix-oriented mailing lists. People in those communities see how systems like Slack and Discord and Signal are completely unsuitable to replace the email mode of communication, and therefore there is a pushback against those who push for such a replacement.
    - mort96 4y ago
      Yet for 99% of regular people, email is a complete disaster, and the people who are in extremely insular communities (such as certain FOSS projects) don't realize just how broken email is. There _is_ need for a replacement, since email plain doesn't work.
      - layer8 4y ago
        I’m all for improving/replacing email with something that is the same in spirit and doesn’t constitute a regression for the user communities I mentioned (which at least in the B2B case are quite large). Making email Signal-like isn’t that, however.
        mort96 4y ago
        Sure, I agree. A requirement for a replacement would be that it's federated, and that it's asynchronous (i.e not chat). Signal is neither. I just wish that the people who care about federation and asynchronicity weren't also the people who delude themselves into thinking that email is fine the way it is. (Case in point: my comment about the problems with email is downvoted, presumably by the exact kind of people I'm talking about.)

crabmusket 4y ago

It'd be nice if we could either have a better subset of html/CSS support, or find a simpler content type for email content that isn't 80-chars-wide-and-monospaced, but isn't full html.

layer8 4y ago
The problem is that big tech would all need to get behind a concerted effort to improve email, but they have no incentive to strengthen a decentralized, nonproprietary communication medium.

NoGravitas 4y ago

It would be nice to have a standard for delivering email-like messages over Matrix, with email-like clients rather than chat-like clients. The protocol itself would support it.

remram 4y ago
Isn't the whole concept of Matrix to be a DAG of messages with hashes for tamper-resistance (ie a Merkel tree) to secure the history in the presence of many servers, some of which might exhibit Byzantine failure? What is the point of any of that for 1-to-1 communication?
- Arathorn 4y ago
  because users generally own more than one device.
  - remram 4y ago
    All of a user's device still go through the one "homeserver" which is the only party doing the federation. If the multi-party stuff is client-to-server, again the Merkle tree is useless.
- NoGravitas 4y ago
  It's fairly useless for 1-to-1 communication. But for any group communications, it means there's no one server that can go down that will take down the whole room (unless all the participants are on the same server); contrast with XMPP MUCs. On the other hand, XMPP is a lot faster.
- progval 4y ago
  It's a general Merkle DAG, not a tree. This is because two homeservers can append nodes to the DAG at the same time. The state resolution algorithm ensures all homeservers in a room eventually agree on a consistent state despite receiving nodes in an inconsistent order