I wouldn't "launch this" because it's not needed in the first place. You should accept email for what it is. The same point the article is defending.
> and was actually trying to make stuff better for users
Now, if we're talking about making communication between users better than yeah you need to go beyond email. E2E, open protocol, something like jmap (imap sucks), focus on privacy and interoperability, yada yada, so many better stuff to "fix" before trying to amplify my inbox and adding more rendering issues between platforms. Do you see a trend? You're now treading a thin line between chat apps, social networks, Android instant apps and glorified iframes. And introducing a whole new set of problems at the same time, not to mention the monumental effort required for something like this to keep backward compatibility (just so you can still call it email and use the superset). And getting the implementation right the very first time.
I too want the worst problems of using email to be solved but since nobody wants to adopt open protocols and work with each other (or eee the whole thing a year later), like history showed us time and time again, it won't happen. So again, let's at least no lose what we have now.
I was typing a long, long reply too but I just realized I wouldn't even use my own suggestions because I don't trust Google anymore, specially to do the right thing in the long run.
Email is already fucked. In my experience Gmail often failed to receive emails from services like Yandex and Zoho. Plenty of people here that setup their own servers, and know what they are doing, getting randomly blacklisted.
Maybe it's fine if email is not central to your life or business but if there's even a, let's say, 10% chance of my emails not getting delivered to Mr Google I have no other option than to bend the knee.
I know nothing about the subject, how does file removal work in decentralized networks? I understand once something is on the internet it's out of your control but what if I accidentally post a naked picture when I'm trying to sell something on decentralized-bay and I try to delete it immediately or a few minutes after? What about illegal content that I don't want to redistribute without my knowledge?
Like I said you can de-anonymize data. I wouldn't know since I'm not a security researcher and haven't tried to analyze Windows traffic with external hardware. It's like asking if nobody would have find out about Spectre in a decade since it's so obvious.
Since everybody else does it now MS, from a competitive standpoint, also has to be a creep with your data. But they own the OS and I don't want that bullshit there.
You can go with the "it was a bug" narrative about all the privacy settings getting reset, saying that the tool showing what they collect is enough, that not being able to pay to stop the data collection is ok (if they "really" have to collect data to be competitive), well for me it's shady business and I don't want my OS doing that. Just tired of this subject to be honest, here's more info if you want to dig deeper https://google.com/#q=Windows+Restricted+Traffic+Limited+Fun...
> In regards to trust, you can actually view the diagnostic data since the insider build half a month ago using windows diagnostic data viewer.
Once again a matter of trust (or not wanting ANY data to be sent, a radio silent OS aside from updates and features that actually require internet access and you opt-in on using them). Would be trivial to lie about the data in the UI. I don't know if it's possible to intercept the data for analysis, so people can verify that it matches the UI.
> Regarding businesses: I do think you can disable all of that using group policy in Windows Enterprise
Nope, even the Security setting still collects data.
With all that's going on with the world (especially the last decade) a lot of people, like me, feels that having telemetry at the OS level is going too far. And think again about data being anonymized when they have so much of it (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10456855). Even if I trust MS (or Google, or Apple, anybody) 100% it's still too much responsibility.
Even worse for people that are forever locked to Windows because of their line of work, clients or something else. They have no option, they can't even pay more to stop the data collection. Not to mention HIPAA and other problems that may affect small business owners.
"When you compare Linux and Windows applications feature for feature, there is very little, if anything, that Microsoft has that Linux hasn't yet perfected."
Even if they define a 5 to 10 years warning before "deprecating" it is better than finding ourselves in the same hole the same amount of years from now.
I register all my accounts using Gmail because I feel DNS/domain security is a joke (this was debated here in the past but I don't have the technical knowledge to explain it any better). I'm saying that because IMO using your own domain is crucial for privacy and control.
I choose Google one day randomly blocking my account over losing it to some random person from the web. At least I can make a blog post and try to make to HNs frontpage to get some customer support.
I wish that was enough. The articles that show up here on HN from time to time make me think they can cross-reference data and fingerprint you through many data sources and more advanced tracking (things that we discover from time to time like canvas, css). People that have you on their contact list, your e-mails that hit their servers even when you don't have a Gmail, DNS, CDN, cloud services, your phone unless you go full tin foil hat, data they acquire from other companies. I try to protect my privacy but I think it's all futile, they have too much power.
And if you want things like "receiving updates" and "no bloatware, stock android" you have to compromise on the hardware side. Gets even worse when you add phone carriers and warranty to the mix (depending where you live).
I just hope Treble will allow us to install a signed stock ROM (custom ROMs don't count in my book) on any device so all that matters is the hardware and customer support.
I know what you mean and my frustation goes beyond that. All my servers and many tools are all Linux based, but my desktop dev environment haven't change in years (even when I hop from LTS to LTS). It's mostly abstracted with my own GUI code so when people start fucking with the underlying and regular components I can just do a quick fix on my side. When I'm customizing my Linux desktop (CLI aside) I feel like I'm wasting my time just to make things work, not have a prehistorical workflow and minimize the GUI toolkit hell. Ironically, on Windows I feel like an actual power user when I'm making scripts and automating workflows. Not sure why, it's just how I feel.
Maybe the annoyances are from the lack of a core desktop experience/"interface" (not talking about GUI) that feels familiar (especially for new users). I bet it also scares developers from other platforms and commercial initiatives. I'm all in for freedom but a "default stack" is desperately needed.
Too bad the new model to not review and approve extensions made me stop installing and experimenting with them (except uBlock and a couple more). Same BS as Chrome but what can you do. My browser is very boring now.
> and was actually trying to make stuff better for users
Now, if we're talking about making communication between users better than yeah you need to go beyond email. E2E, open protocol, something like jmap (imap sucks), focus on privacy and interoperability, yada yada, so many better stuff to "fix" before trying to amplify my inbox and adding more rendering issues between platforms. Do you see a trend? You're now treading a thin line between chat apps, social networks, Android instant apps and glorified iframes. And introducing a whole new set of problems at the same time, not to mention the monumental effort required for something like this to keep backward compatibility (just so you can still call it email and use the superset). And getting the implementation right the very first time.
I too want the worst problems of using email to be solved but since nobody wants to adopt open protocols and work with each other (or eee the whole thing a year later), like history showed us time and time again, it won't happen. So again, let's at least no lose what we have now.
(Sorry I'm a little tired so my writing is bad)