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Comment by vxNsr | Hacker News Reader

I definitively believe that we need to fix the way email is handled, but I don't think this is the solution.

I wanna get away from "free" email, but I think it requires a more full blown solution, something which offers a client with the polish of gmail.com along with it's excellent spam detection/protection, that can be self hosted on any random computer/server (using docker, or similar) that is very nearly plug and play.

Unfortunately, such a project would need to be OSS, with a consulting-type income structure, but the big companies that would be willing to pay for such a thing all use O365, and would never be willing to try something not nearly as proven.

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> I definitively believe that we need to fix the way email is handled, but I don't think this is the solution.

Sorry, I respectfully disagree. We shouldn't fix email, we should throw it away and replace it.

It is almost impossible to have secure email that can't be eavesdropped, even with PGP. Normal people just don't get the need for security and can't bother the hassle of encrypting their email.

Also, from an usability perspective, email was a solution for an age without mobile computing.

What we need is something like Signal: instant messaging with privacy built in by default.

I don't think that idea is realistic. While I agree that it would be great if we could find a fast, secure replacement for email, that's not happening.

Signal isn't federated and doesn't allow me to selfhost.

If you wanna start a messaging platform that can become a defacto standard you need to allow anyone to implement it, you also need to prove a value-add aside from security and privacy (which 99% of consumers don't care about) which builds momentum, it also shouldn't piggyback or rely on email in anyway. Much the same way that email didn't require a snail mail letter to create an account.

email is a solution to a communication problem which happens when two people aren't in the room together. It replaced memos, quick phone calls, long form letters, etc.

Instant messaging UX really only addresses the quick phone call and possibly short memos. The UX strongly discourages anything longer than 3-4 lines.

If I have a Helm device and you have a Helm device, and we both use iPhones, that's a pretty good scenario. All the devices are trusted and run signed audited code, and my email passes from my iPhone to yours purely encrypted at every stage, with no intermediaries having access to the plaintext.

And neither of us have to change apps or behavior.

This is pretty good.

Does that mean that Helm knows when it's communicating with another Helm server and does an end-run-around email infrastructure to keep everything in-house? (like gmail and O365 appear to do)

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