I guess that's why someone decided to build a chat app on the email protocol and infrastructure.
this post was submitted on 18 May 2025
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You can do it from a terminal. Us Linux kids will never let it die.
yeah, aerc and neomutt are two decent options
telnet email_server_ip_addr 25
Helo server.net
ehlo
Mail has the big advantage of being totally cross platform. And it works, basically everywhere.
All the application protocols were supposed to be cross-platform! It’s something the corporatisation of the net undermined to an extent
Sidenote: Remember when having an email address was enough, you didn't have to have a fucking phone number as well? Stop trying to de-anonymize the internet, you're making more problems than you're solving
They're not trying to solve any problem beyond their own, potential resistance to false authority.
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I'm using cpanel email and it's terrible. Can someone recommend something cheap but better than cpanel?
What's wrong with cpanel?
Reality is everyone has an email, and everyone will keep having an email. My 10 year old has an email so they could sign up to epic and steam. You basically need it to use the internet at all. So of course it will survive.
Outside of business though, when was the last time you sent an email to someone you know?
I forwarded tickets to my wife. But for "normal" communication I emailed the city about a citation they gave me for my yard.
My mother uses email for nearly everything. I'm 31 now, but in high school she'd email me from the basement that dinner is ready.
Just last month I received this... we chat on WhatsApp and phone calls regularly as well.
That's cute. She treats it like writing letters or maybe postcards given the length of the message.
My ex emailed me from a new account when he thought I'd blocked him everywhere else. I hadn't, but I did after that!
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IRC and forums as well to a lesser extent.
Much much lesser. IRC has basically died to successors. Everybody still uses email sometimes.
IRC is still a pretty strong backbone for Twitch chat. At least it was a couple of years ago.
Forums are still banging around however. Lots of places still use them, and thank god for that.
Not so much though.
There was a moment when forums were the only kind of community but now forum use is dwarved by discord and reddit.
IRC is mainly a thing for hardcore 2000s re-livers and lobste.rs users nowadays lol
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It's why SMS still exists too. It's from an era where everyone just used open standards instead of trying to create their own thing for money. Big tech conglomerates like we have now didn't exist. The state of the tech industry and it's proprietary standards is absolutely fucked.
SMS was never intended to be available to end users. It was built as a side channel to help field techs with diagnostics. When consumer handsets started to add features, it was co-opted to provide what we know it as today.
That explains why way back when I tried to read the GSM (1.x) specification out of curiosity, it turned out SMS were going via a "control channel".
Always wondered why the data for those was going via a control channel rather than some kind of data channel.
Google is trying to kill SMS. My new android by default has sms disabled, defaulting to RCS with "try sending sms instead if rcs fails to send" option being off by default, which makes no sense from user perspective
RCS is actually a huge improvement over SMS, as it is fully encrypted. One of the few times I've ever approved of something Google did...
If only it was an open standard...
It... is? It's an open standard that anyone can use and implement. The main provider is Google and there has been a huge push from them to get Apple to adopt, which they mostly have. It's not 'owned' by any company. It's predominantly serviced by Google, but is in fact an open standard. Google and others have their own format which is how they and their apps interpret and interact with each other, but it is an open standard. There are some backend and requirements for it which stops most from setting it up and implementing off the shelf and just going with Google, but you absolutely could use and make your own format with the standard.
Yep, main reason it's associated with Google because they bought a company (Jibe Mobile) making one of the main backend service offerings and offered cloud hosting of it, so providers just went with that rather than rolling out their own software.
Also with Apple ignoring it in favour of iMessage, Google was the only one supporting it on handsets. Google client + Google backend = people think it's Google's iMessage competitor.
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This is why I kind of hate microblogging platforms. This could just be part of a conversation, but shown of context every post is turned into a soundbite and takes on levels of faux-profundity that they can’t possibly support. Yeah, email has been around forever; so what?
What faux-profundity is on display here? Sometimes people just talk. Sometimes this includes observations. Kinda like what you did with your comment. I don't understand why you're bringing hate to a tea chat, but I suppose it can be good to get off your chest.
It’s reliable, it’s simple, it’s free, and virtually everyone who uses the internet has one. Email won’t be replaced for a LONG time.
To be fair, if it is "free" you are probably paying your mail provider with your data.
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My most useful emails come from family and groups.io. Rarely some helpdesk response, though if it says reboot something, i stop talking to them.
E-mail barely hanging on between spam, broken HTML and an oligopoly of providers.
Yeah email is one thing I don't bother to run on my own server, because all the oligopoly providers mark unknown servers as spam by default, so you can't send emails to anyone anyway...
Thousands of years after humanity has destroyed itself with nuclear weapons...
As the sun peeks through the gray clouds and lights up a solar panel...
A long-forgotten server hums to life...
And sends an email...
"Attention Required: Your Order is Delayed"
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