Unreal Engine 4 is now available to everyone for free - <AUTHOR> https://www.unrealengine.com/blog/ue4-is-free <comment><USER2> It appears they've backed off on the royalties, too: originally, it was 5% of gross[1], and now it's 5% of gross _after_ $3000 sales per quarter.[2]

1 [https://www.unrealengine.com/blog/welcome-to-unreal- engine-4](https://www.unrealengine.com/blog/welcome-to-unreal-engine-4)

2 [https://www.unrealengine.com/blog/ue4-is- free](https://www.unrealengine.com/blog/ue4-is-free)

<comment><USER3> I've always wanted to know how the 5% royalty is enforced.

Other, much lesser known, engines have attempted to do something of this sort by acting as an intermediary eg. publisher, planning to pay developers after they were paid by Apple. For obvious reasons that was immediately dismembered by the community.

The only way I can figure is they'll ask for an iTunes connect login so they can check on the numbers for themselves.

Speaking as a developer, it just sounds like something to be avoided from the start.

<comment><USER4> Lawsuits.

I imagine the revenue distribution would follow a power law here. So it would only really make sense for Epic to go after non-compliant "whales", where the unpaid royalties exceed the legal costs.

Also, the more profitable the project, the lower the non-compliance rate, probably. It makes little sense to defy the royalty agreement if you have a successful project.

<comment><USER5> To handle noncompliers, they can get off of the various App stores with a simple DMCA request, no complicated lawsuits required, unless the developers appeal the take down, which probably involves a lot of "under penalty of perjury" lying.

<comment><USER6> Why would breach-of-contract have anything to do with the DMCA?

<comment><USER7> I assume _cma_ is suggesting that the contract would allow Epic to revoke the license of anyone that failed to pay their 5%.

Once Epic exercises that right, any further distribution of the product would be a violation of Epic's copyright and Epic could file a DCMA takedown.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> How does it fare against Unity?

My understanding, from previous versions, is that Unity offered a lot more tooling than Unreal. Also, Unreal's SDK demanded a lot of C++ code, which can be unappealing for small studios compared to Unity's Mono and several possible (managed) language choices.

However, Unreal appears to be much more capable, and better performing.

Also, is Crytek still competitive? It used to be competitive with Epic's offering, but was Windows-only.

EDIT: Unreal does have a comparison page for Unity developers: [https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/GettingStarted/From...](https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/GettingStarted/FromUnity/index.html)

<comment><USER9> It's hard to compare unity and unreal. To answer the question about c++, with UE4, the blueprint system removes almost all of that. Entire games can be written in their visual programming language. I also think there are ways to use c# ([https://mono-ue.github.io/](https://mono-ue.github.io/)), if you prefer that as well. C++ is needed if you want to extend the native classes.

Regarding the editor, unreal is pretty amazing. It really shines in the tools department. Check out the landscape editor, materials editor, and animation tools on youtube. Pretty fantastic stuff.

The game engine itself is better than unity in almost every way with a few big exceptions:

1) multiplayer map size. unity can pretty easily support large online worlds 2) support for mobile/tablets. unity is the dominant platform on those devices. 3) community support. unity has a much larger community, better documentation, and a much more populous online store (though unreal is catching up)

<comment><USER10> [https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?52618-Large-S...](https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?52618-Large- Scale-map-and-Multiplayer)

According to this thread, as of version 4.6, the maximum supported multiplayer map size out of the box is 20km x 20km. Is this the limitation you were referring to? That wouldn't accommodate an MMORPG or Minecraft, but otherwise seems quite big.

<comment><USER11> Never understood the concept of measuring map size in km. It's like measuring distance on a map while ignoring scaling. Something like source's hammer units make a lot more sense to me.

<comment><USER12> In Source the scale is fixed (1 "unit" ~= 1 inch) and I imagine the same's true for UE.

<comment><USER13> 1 unit = 1cm in UE, so 20km has some value as a measurement in game.

Of course, what matters more is what you do in that 20km, but it's also a limit coupled tightly with distant mesh performance and float accuracy issues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Very cool. I can now go from feeling guilty about not finishing a project in Unity Indie to feeling guilty about not finishing a project in Unreal. Seriously though, I'm kind of interested in using this as a playground for the Leap Motion SDK.

</comment><comment><USER15> Smart. Their previous revenue model was contradictory. Now it makes sense, they want to remove _all_ barriers for building your game on UE4, and focus on making money if you are successful.

</comment><comment><USER16> How really easy is it to set up a beginner's project with this engine ? I mean it's a commercial engine, it has all the bells and whistles, but how easy is it to learn it ? Does it require one to use the editor to use the engine, or can I start with a simple bit of code and start going from there ?

What I hate about unity is the whole interface editor thing, it's big and you must use everything to use it. Is this Unreal Engine more earth to earth when it comes to programming ?

If it's a powerful 3D renderer but it's hard to use for simple things and it's not easily extensible, it's not really worthwhile.

I see it's very powerful, but I'm still wondering about the real utility of an "engine" versus a library.

For example, if you have some new idea and you are a programmer, and you want to be able to experiment and not be constrained by the design of the engine, I doubt such engine would really be relevant. Programmers need simple tools and frozen platforms.

I guess this engine is great for small studio who want to make a real 3D game quickly, if their programming style fit well, but if you're an indie or a demoscener and you're just experimenting, this engine is just too powerful.

I mean it's great to have such great and powerful tools (if they can last at least 5 year and not make projects obsolete) for free, but I don't see becoming a standard in the game programming community, and I don't know why...

<comment><USER17> In my opinion, if you're just a hobbyist programmer who want to experiment building games on the side, it makes more sense to build your MVP demo using humble html5 canvas (I personally use pixijs, but things like threejs or whatnot might be more appropriate depending on your idea). This is because building a good indie game is a big commitment requiring lots of time (which is money), and unless you're building this game for your grandchildren, it makes sense to test the market with a MVP and try to raise money for it on a kick-starter site before you commit to building it on a powerful engine like Unreal (or Unity).

In addition, worrying about powerful graphics as an indie game dev is like worrying about distributed database scalability as a minor e-commerce startup. Your priorities are messed up and, just like how you can just get away with mysql on a free heroku instance as long as you have interesting junk to sell on your ecommerce startup, so too can you get away with a shoddy 2d engine with box2d physics as long as your story is engaging (or your mechanics are fun).

<comment><USER18> It really depends on what type of game you're planning to make. Go to any game jam and look at the amazing games prototyped in Unity over a weekend. Compare the html5 games. It's often night and day. The amount of stuff you can get done in an engine you're familiar with so many tools and plugins at your disposal is a huge force multiplier.

Of course do whatever you want. Most of my projects have been HTML5. But at the same time I recognize that free importing of nearly any format of 3d assets into unity and built in animation, collision, physics, ability to edit nearly all parameters at runtime, even code. Is a huge boost once you get used to it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> A demo of the astounding capabilities for those who haven't seen:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6PQ19BEE24](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6PQ19BEE24)

<comment><USER20> This is my favorite Unreal 4 demo - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOvfn1p92_8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOvfn1p92_8) (sadly missing the wonderful quote "I light my level by dropping a sun in.")

I'm completely in awe of the feedback loop here. It even compiles and swaps code while you're in the game!

<comment><USER21> Unfortunately that demo is outdated. They dropped a lot of that GI tech because it was never made performant for medium spec machines.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Update: think you need to register first: [https://accounts.unrealengine.com/register/index](https://accounts.unrealengine.com/register/index)

Is it just me or is the source not public yet? [https://github.com/EpicGames](https://github.com/EpicGames) \- No public repos

[https://www.unrealengine.com/ue4-on- github](https://www.unrealengine.com/ue4-on-github)

<comment><USER23> Why would they not just make the repo public by default? I can't see the major advantage to doing it this way making developers jump through hoops to access your source code. If I don't have a GitHub account this means I have to create 2 accounts just to gain access. Seems unnecessary.

<comment><USER24> GitHub doesn't allow private forks of public repositories. If you read the licensing terms, you aren't allowed to distribute modifications of the UE4 source to anyone who isn't already licensed. In addition, a lot of users of UE4 would not want to make their changes public.

Also, they would be required to allow GitHub users who weren't UE4 subscribers to create forks, which is a violation of their licensing terms.

Public GitHub repos just aren't really suited for projects that aren't open source.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> For someone who's actually using UE4 as an artistic break for web dev, I thoroughly recommend it. It allows you to create great environments with beautiful lighting. 4.7 can export to HTML5 too.

</comment><comment><USER26> Wow, this is great. I really have no excuses now to not be playing with this on my downtime.

<comment><USER27> They're probably hoping that's what everyone will think. They're losing their monthly profit but also dropping the barrier of entry to almost nothing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm very glad of course but...

...technically all they did was lower the price by $19 a month.

...and bought a lot of press for that

...and a lot more shots at the 5% revenue.

It's really great of course. But better yet, it's really very clever.

<comment><USER29> $19/month isn't much to you, but to a 15 year old tinkerer, or the 19 year old college freshman, it's good money.

Throughout its history, the best innovations in gaming have come from such people, the most recent being Palmer Luckey.

<comment><USER30> Unreal Engine was free for students since at least October last year (2014).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I just subscribed two days ago. The $19 subscription fee wasn't a big deal, but even so, I now have a $30 Unreal Engine Marketplace credit.

What a great way to handle it.

<comment><USER31> Oh wow, just noticed this in my e-mail:

 _" If you have paid for a subscription on or after January 30th, you will receive a pro-rated refund for your latest month's payment after March 12th."_

So not only do I get most of my money back, but also the $30 credit.

Epic rocks.

\---

EDIT: I see now it also says as much in the announcement, if only lacking the specific details.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> It's available at no charge, but it's not free.

<comment><USER33> You make money with it, you give them a fair share. Entry cost is $0. They'll ignore the first $3000 gross because hassling lots of "little people" for under $150 isn't worth the hassle for anyone.

Pretty amazing, really. I've been in graphics since just drawing a line on the screen of a $6000 (2015 dollars) computer was a big deal for a beginner; now you can get a seriously robust graphics engine for _no cost_ , develop on a week's-pay cheap computer, and publish for $50 per $1000 revenue _after_ you make enough to bother paying for.

No reason to whine, save for the sake of whining. You can still start with gcc if you like.

ETA: per another current thread, you can get a suitable Linux workstation for $89 [http://symplepc.com/blogs/news/16853255-symple-introduces- th...](http://symplepc.com/blogs/news/16853255-symple-introduces- the-89-planet-friendly-ubuntu-linux-web-workstation) Tack on a USB monitor for another $89, and you can write the Next Big FPS for $178 plus 5% of meaningful revenue.

<comment><USER34> > For developing with UE4, we recommend a desktop PC with Windows 7 64-bit or > a Mac with Mac OS X 10.9.2 or later, 8 GB RAM and a quad-core Intel or AMD > processor, and a DX11 compatible video card. UE4 will run on desktops and > laptops below these recommendations, but performance may be limited.

<comment><USER33> "Recommend". If you're trying to develop as close to "free" as possible, "performance may be limited."

(I'm often puzzled that when I suggest a nigh-unto-free solution to a problem, someone usually complains some form of "but that's not optimal!" Of course it's not optimal if you're not willing to put substantial resources into it. Just because the solution isn't perfect doesn't mean there isn't one; do what you can with what you've got, and you'll make progress toward perfection.)

<comment><USER35> I think the point is that it is going to be worse than just laggy UI, it's going to be very painful if you try to use that computer for developing using UE4.

Which isn't to discourage people, there is a lot you can do with that kind of mid tier machine, but you are probably much better off trying to something else than UE4.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I'd be interested to see how the royalties work when UE for is not the primary part of the product.

Say, hypothetically you had an advanced visualisation component that you wanted to build in UE, or a virtual tour part of a much larger app. Or even using it to provide some sort of AR experience, however this was just one feature of a much much larger project, which revenues could be in the millions. Does that mean they get 5% of the whole thing? Or just the part that directly relates to the game engine?

Not knocking it, I think it's a great model, but it does make for an interesting problem. I think Unity is a better choice for this sort of scenario, of course, but still.

<comment><USER37> Back when UE4 was first released I asked that question in relation to training simulations within larger courses and the answer was that, as no software was being sold, then no royalties would apply! (just the $20/mo subscription cost at the time) Definitely contact EPIC and get a ruling on your specific case, but I was blown away! In the end we didn't go ahead with those simulations as the html5 support wasn't quite ready at the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Nice.

Your move Unity. $4500 per seat up front or $225 per seat per month for all- platform access is looking even less appealing for small Indies.

</comment><comment><USER39> I'm hiring a technical Product Manager to work with the Unreal Engine. E-mail me if you're interested in the space, toufique at Google's e-mail service.com

</comment><comment><USER40> I subbed as soon as UE4 came out, and have been loving it so far. I have had extensive arguments with a fellow dev about Unity, but he has access to 5 while I don't want to pay the huge upfront cost just to have access to the same pipeline to help him, and I feel like the cost of Unity is the main barrier to me using it.

Epic is really getting ready to eat Unity's lunch I think. The graphical quality of Unity 5 is comparable, but Epic is making huge updates on short timeframes and they keep doing stuff like this.

For anyone interested, blueprints are great for prototyping, but once you have too much complexity in a BP it can easily cascade inefficiencies to the point it becomes very noticeable, so I would suggest using C++ with VS 2013 community edition, which now works with the plugin the Epic provides.

Also, there are some features that you can only access if you compile the engine yourself, so that is probably also a good idea for anyone serious about their project.

</comment><comment><USER41> I always thought it would eventually be free, but I had never imagined it'd be so quick! This is great news for the adoption rate.

However, while I like Blueprints and hate C++, I still think it needs something in between such as Lua or C# (I'm fluent in both, both come with pro/cons)

Also, with this news I'm a bit concerned about it being free, the growth that may lead in a lot of trolling on forums and misinformation. By that I mean, if you have a financial commitment to something, you're a lot less likely going to bash it publicly since you've put your money down towards it. I hope that they can keep the quality of the community to high standards like they have, with clear questions and answers.

<comment><USER42> > However, while I like Blueprints and hate C++, I still think it needs > something in between such as Lua or C#

I'm actually a little curious about this, What does Lua or C# provide for you that using C++ in the context of UE does not? or is it simply familiarity with Lua and C#?

<comment><USER41> Yes and no memory management. Self management can be scary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Is this because I now get a free proprietary game engine with every single Kickstarter game sponsoring?

About time we stop the 500 monkeys reinventing 500 wheels in parallel (at least it's concurrent monkeys, they smell nicer).

</comment><comment><USER44> Removing most of the business complexity around licensing an engine is a big deal for small developers. This is good news.

</comment><comment><USER45> Has anyone got it to install? I downloaded installer for Mac (57mb), and when I launch/login, it says "No Engine installed", but no links on how to install the engine. My profile has a link to download the engine, but it just downloads the installer again.

<comment><USER46> You install the engine through the launcher. At least this is how it works on windows I assume it works similarly on mac.

<comment><USER47> Thanks for that! I thought I was a smart man, until I tried to figure out where to download a daggum engine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Has anybody done UE4 dev on lower-end computers? I want to make games that can run on laptops with decent integrated graphics (Iris Pro). Does UE4 allow you to turn down all the fancy effects in order to do this at 60fps?

<comment><USER49> Last time I tried it on MacBook Pro with integrated graphics, which was 6 months ago, there was no way to turn down enough settings in the editor to make it run acceptably. On Macs with a graphics cards it ran with lag.

Haven't found a list of games made with UE4 to try out the final output, but the simplest demos here open but run at 0.2 fps on Integrated Graphics [https://forums.oculus.com/viewtopic.php?t=11538](https://forums.oculus.com/viewtopic.php?t=11538)

And for phones you can't do much on older hardware. METAL is iOS8 only. So this demo [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/epic-zen- garden/id915975445?...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/epic-zen- garden/id915975445?ls=1&mt=8) starts with iPhone 5S.

<comment><USER48> OK, I tried the latest version of UT4 in BootCamp on my Macbook w/750M graphics, and it ran pretty well at 60fps with a scattering of High/Med/Low settings at 1680x1050. I'd say that's pretty good for such an early product!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Sigh!..they are refunding..renewed it just last week..

would love if they support WP8.1 as well..

</comment><comment><USER51> This is such good news!!!!! I wanted to do something for VR and since I am just one dev things seemed hard doing things the native way. This just made my day.

</comment><comment><USER52> I used to pay for UE4 and they have now provided me a 30$ coupon to use in the marketplace. 👍 Epic thinks through everything nowadays.

</comment><comment><USER53> Awesome! I have always wanted to work on Unreal Engine 4, but have almost always been a bit skeptical on the pricing.

</comment><comment><USER54> I wish Xamarin had a similar license...

<comment><USER55> I wish Xamarin had _any_ license accessible to hobbyists.

<comment><USER56> In case you are not aware, last fall they doubled the free edition size limit and introduced a $25/month subscription option (eventually the same price at $300/yr).

[https://store.xamarin.com/](https://store.xamarin.com/)

Xamarin is free for students.

[https://xamarin.com/student](https://xamarin.com/student)

<comment><USER54> How they measure the size actually?

Another important thing - Xamarin.Forms should be in the free edition, if it is aimed for starters.... Big studios or established companies can afford to develop native UIs for each platform separately.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> not everyone I can not see the website from IRAN unrealengine blocked our IP !!!!

</comment><comment><USER58> Current subscribers get a $30 refund and store credit. Good times!

</comment><comment><USER59> Awesome, thats the way it should be.

</comment><comment><USER60> has anyone here tried it? What was your experience?

</comment><comment><USER61> So my question is this.

Can you use UE4 to build large online worlds like those in Rust and The Forest? Or is there a limitation like some people have suggested? What is the specific limitation exactly it hasn't been clear.

Can you use UE4 to build cross platform games, on mobile and browser?

Does UE4 have something like Crytek's terrain editor? That's my one favorite thing about Cryengine is their environment editor.

<comment><USER62> Someone else in this submission mentioned this thread: [https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?52618-Large-S...](https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?52618-Large- Scale-map-and-Multiplayer)

>In 4.6 maximum size of map is 20km x 20km.

>Now to put it into perspective. Single continent on Azeroth in WoW (exluding Northend and Pandaria) is something like 7x4km.

<comment><USER61> so from that thread seems like Altis from Arma 3 is roughly 16 X 16. I think that is quite big enough. Maybe if one was building a MMO sort of map, you would patch those 20x20 maps somehow.

I was thinking of creating a giant map like Altis and then putting players on it to roam around and stuff. Cryengine makes this very easy I think but haven't gotten to it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Fantastic. Absolutely fantastic.

The last barrier to entry to someone who's trying to explore game making with Unreal has been removed. Thank you, Epic!

</comment><comment><USER61> wow this will absolutely kill the cryengine unles they also go free.

</comment><comment><USER64> _mark_ _down_ `test`

<comment><USER64> ```other``` ``` test ```

<comment><USER64> ## markdown

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> The Unreal Engine is free neither as beer, or freedom.

Its free as in a mob protection money is given _freely_ , with a lot of strings attached.

Overall a very smart strategy. Free Software Walled Gardens I highly believe will start to become a common thing in the software industry. As you get most the benefits of Free Software, without the normally feared industry risks.

<comment><USER66> It's free enough for most hobbyist game developers, many of whom will never make enough (or anything at all, really) from their games to matter.

You want ideological purity? Go write your own system.

<comment> vezzy-fnord "Ideological purity" is irrelevant. The point here is that people are abusing terminology to create ambiguity. As we are talking about software, the term "free" has specific connotations that differ from everyday language.

UE4 is a source-available, gratis game engine. This is fine. It is not open source, nor is it free or libre.

<comment><USER67> Yes, you're right, the word "free" does have specific connotations. Those include, but are not limited to:

\- not subject to or constrained by engagements or obligations

\- given or available without charge

So, is the product free, as in available without charge, as implied by the clause "available for free"? Yes.

Is it free, as in not subject to or constrained by engagements or obligations, something that is in no way implied by the content of the article? No.

Is your argument based on an excessively restrictive, ideologically motivated definition of the word "free" that does not fully represent how the word is used in practice?

Yes.

<comment><USER68> Except you are constrained by obligations. The obligation to pay a % of revenue. I mean I think the model is great. But calling it free is ridiculous.

<comment><USER69> It's hardly ridiculous when you consider where we just came from, the era of $250,000 - $500,000 source access engines.

You're not constrained by obligations if you choose not to make money with your product. So yes, it can be free of charge and free of obligations. Developers have to earn money somehow, unless you want Unreal to cease to exist. This model not only makes perfect sense, the product can absolutely be free in every sense of the word.

People whining about this are being ridiculous.

<comment><USER70> It's conditionally free. If it were unconditionally free that would permit you to use the term without question or having people call bullshit. When they do call bullshit, which is to be expected, it's absurd to go around accusing them of whining and being ridiculous. Get a grip.

<comment><USER71> Isn't "conditionally free" still free?

<comment><USER70> Yes, but when you don't explicitly state the conditionality, and particularly so in the ad-line, then it's a version of free that one should expect to incite calls of bullshit.

Think of it this way: it's on par with false advertising which companies do get sued for. That's why companies make signs like "up to 30% off" and not just "30% off" (when only some items are 30% off). It is considered, by most, a mis-representation or false hood; a lie if you will.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Gawker's Numbers Tanking - <AUTHOR> http://therawfeed.com/gawkers-redesign-is-killing-the-network

<comment><USER2> I can explain part of it: the hash based URLs are completely broken in Canada (and presumably elsewhere). Any link I follow (e.g. gawker.com/#12345) redirects to ca.gawker.com. The hashes aren't preserved on redirect, and I'm not interested enough in the content to go searching.

<comment><USER3> Same for me in the UK, can't remember the last time I clicked a Gawker link and ended up reading the content.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's interesting - I'm down in Sao Paulo, Brazil right now, and I spent the better part of 15 minutes trying to read a story there. Every time I tried to enter the URL it kicked me into a .br page and I was unable to find the original story.

I eventually just gave up.

</comment><comment><USER5> Is this any surprise considering their new design? The only way I can read any Gawker site is via an RSS feed and even then I can't stand to read past that and actually visit the site.

<comment><USER6> I know a number of people who fell back on using the mobile version but it was so much hassle they just found alternative sources. I used to hit Kotaku and io9 multiple times per day but the new design meant I spent more time trying to find stories than actually reading. Was a pity to lose sources that were usually pretty solid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I stopped visiting Lifehacker not just because of the redesign, but also because the noise began to drown out the signal. They post a ridiculous amount a day, and I just wasn't interested in most of it. I'd rather follow something with fewer posts and much better quality than be overwhelmed by their firehose.

Of course, that's just for browsing by RSS. I suppose the "tons o content" model is geared towards people that visit occasionally over the course of a day. But with the hideous design, why would you want to?

</comment><comment><USER8> Also they F-ed up the RSS feeds. Take a look at this one for the top stories on Deadspin: <http://deadspin.com/tag/top/index.xml>

Barely anything since Feb. Before then there were 4-5 items per day.

<comment><USER9> They've F-ed them up worse than that, a few months ago I got a full feed of Fleshbot in the place of my Gizmodo feed. Fortunately I closed my laptop in time, or it could have been a much more interesting meeting at work (No doubt followed by one with HR)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> With their AJAXy interface, I wonder if perhaps page views are not being counted properly. Put another way, I'd like to see a chart of ad impression numbers.

I'm sure the redesign cost them, but I'm surprised it's such a big hit.

</comment><comment><USER11> I love how designers and product visionaries absolutely refuse to test major redesigns. Hey guys, why not fork 1% of the traffic to your major redesign and see how it performs? Millions of dollars on the line that could have been saved with about $5k worth of developer time.

</comment><comment><USER12> Lifehacker's numbers are conspicuously absent. I've read through other sources that their pageviews took at a bit of a hit but remained relatively steady. I guess that piece of information didn't fit nicely with the story.

<http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/17/gawker-redesign/>

EDIT: link

<comment><USER10> <http://lifehacker.com/stats-month> shows lifehacker pageview declining pretty significantly this year and a _dramatic_ decline in "new visitors." (Somewhat fittingly, the buttons on the stats pages don't work quite right for me)

<comment><USER13> I said at the time that the redesign would hurt Gawker, especially when they responded to the backlash with "well, everybody complains when Facebook changes" - not realizing the power of Facebook's social stickiness. But that's quite shocking even to me. Their own stats show visitors cut to _a third_ of what they were in January.

I guess UI matters, huh?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I discovered last week that the redesign isn't so bad if you go to "Blog view". I don't know when that got introduced between the day I stopped reading gawker sites due to the redesign and last week, but it's reasonably inoffensive.

Still, every gawker site has a less-annoying competitor, and I'm guessing that most of the folks who used to read the gawker version are now reading another version with the same damn stories. Once people have been driven into the arms of a competitor it's tricky to get 'em back.

</comment><comment><USER15> One of the commenters mentioned the geo-redirects. I'm assuming this doesn't affect the individual domain's traffic count (since the source measures entire domain?). Now what if they are charging substantially higher rates to the advertisers though, since they are keeping the time shown of an ad up.

</comment><comment><USER16> I don't really mind the redesign since I usually get linked to individual articles instead of browsing around their sites, but that grey line at the "fold" really bugs me. Anyone else get that?

</comment><comment><USER17> This is just fine with me. I still won't read Gawker sites because of what they did with the iPhone 4.</comment>


When Good Waves Go Rogue - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/15/turbulence/when-good-waves-go-rogue

<comment> Y-bar It should probably be mentioned that you get about halfway through the article before you are being stopped by a pay-wall.

</comment><comment><USER2> This was the teaser of an article, in the middle of it, there is a paywall... Not nice :x</comment>


Hong Kong's protesters created their own "national anthem" - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/2019/9/12/20862441/hong-kong-protesters-national-anthem-china <comment><USER2> Some similar musical collaboration, resistance and anonymity in the Iranian Revolution

For example:

Witness History - Musicians of the Iranian Revolution, 28/01/2019 [http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3cswsjy](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3cswsjy) [https://podtail.se/podcast/witness/musicians-of-the- iranian-...](https://podtail.se/podcast/witness/musicians-of-the-iranian- revolution/)</comment>


Show HN: App rank for searches on the App Store - <AUTHOR> http://www.appstoredata.net/

<comment><AUTHOR> My app currently is not ranked in any categories on the App Store and I noticed myself constantly counting through search results to track my progress up or down in the rankings. So I made this. Right now it grabs your rankings for searches in 8 countries for both iPhone and iPad. I am working on having it poll hourly so that it is easy to track progress over time.

Most of the work is done by workers running on Gearman plus a nominal Django app to launch the jobs and present the results.

Would love to get any feedback! Hope you enjoy.</comment>


Amsterdam tourist unwittingly pays for shipping container in Airbnb booking - <AUTHOR> https://news.sky.com/story/amsterdam-tourist-unwittingly-pays-for-shipping-container-in-airbnb-booking-11721244 <comment><USER2> Every Airbnb page should have a floor plan and it would make things harder for fraudulent hosts [https://www.archibnb.com](https://www.archibnb.com)</comment>


Swarm robots can learn by simply observing - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160830083653.htm <comment><USER2> Obligatory:

"I learned it by watching YOU!"</comment>


Worth it to register a trademark for a software product that is being developed? - <AUTHOR> http://answers.onstartups.com/q/15198/4272

<comment><USER2> It might end up being worth it. In 2006 we registered twingly.com, while a startup in the US registered twing.com. Twing and Twingly are similar enough to sue for cease and desist, especially since our businesses areas overlapped very much. Us being a search engine for blogs and them a search engine for discussion fora.

By the time we found out about each other, we had registered Twingly as a trademark in EU and Twing was pending registration in the US. Thus, we had symmetrical leverage on each other and the negotiations for an agreement of global, peaceful co-existance was hassle-free. It was in both our interests to get it in place. None of us had in their minds to attack the other but didn't know to trust the other in the long run. If you end up building the next Google you don't want someone around with the ability to take an easy shot at your business.

To conclude, I think both of our companies were happy we registered our trademarks early on.

Since then however, Twing was deadpooled after their financers pulled the plug. On another note, Twitter and Twine were also started in 2006, without anyone of us being aware of each other until after some time. It was simply a year for startup names starting with Twi, as it seems.

<comment><USER3> umm <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_Twingo>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I would. My current company has a great product name. We got the .com domain, but the Twitter name is taken by a person with 1 follower, 1 following, and no tweets.

When I showed Twitter our domain and product and asked if we could have the Twitter handle, I got a form letter response telling me they only hand over names if we prove we have trademark.

For me, that alone would be worth it.

</comment><comment><USER5> I was just thinking about this. From the linked discussion it seems to be something a non-lawer can do. Does anyone have a pointer to how to best start this process and the approximate cost in EU or in the US?

<comment><USER6> You can file for an european trademark directly online on the european trademark website.

It costs about 1300€ (as far as I can remember) for 3 categories, 150€ for each category. It will take you some time however to fill out the forms, and select the proper phrases.

You can always remove clauses from your registration, but never add clauses!

If there is a conflict (and there most certainly is one ;-)), be sure to hire an expert.

You have to use it in the european union for it to be valid.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Pombo.io – Uncomplicated Forms - <AUTHOR> https://pombo.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> Pombo.io is a free service where you can easily set up contact forms and get some leads.

Forget about SMTP configuration, Ajax requests and all that stuff that you usually have to do when you have a simple contact form on your website.

All you need to do is change the action-attribute to point to Pombo and create a hidden field with the email (or emails) that you want to receive this form.

Simple as that, no additional JS code.

After submitting the form, the user will get a nice message and will be redirected back to your website and you'll get a new lead.

</comment><comment><USER2> Im in love with this project!</comment>


Interview with Chris Hartjes - <AUTHOR> http://blog.fogcreek.com/dev-life-interview-with-chris-hartjes/

<comment><USER2> Amusing to see someone I know profiled! I worked with Hartjes at a porn company years ago. Glad to see he's moved up in the world.</comment>


Ask HN: Challenges in Finding a Domain Name - <AUTHOR> I'm building a new e-commerce website but finding a domain name which is short and sweet is quite challenging. Most short names I look at are taken. When some are available, there are so many different TLDs that registering the domain name with all of them is becoming prohibitively expensive.
So I thought I would just register a .com and maybe a few more such as .net and .co.uk, but then I worry about two things:
1) If it becomes successful I might not be able to get the domain registered with the remaining TLDs will become even more expensive as the current domain owners who are just holding it will want even more money for it.
2) Phishing attempts using the same domain name with a different TLD extension.
How do others deal with these issues? <comment><USER2> Just buy the domain you like.

#1 is a good problem to have and unfortunately extremely unlikely. But if you do become a brand name, you should have enough money to easily purchase other TLDs.

#2 can be mitigated by filing for a copyright. US servers and Google will shutdown and blacklist phishing sites violating your brand name and copyrights.

Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, this sounds sensible.</comment></comment>


Email is your electronic memory - <AUTHOR> https://blog.fastmail.com/2018/02/14/email-is-your-electronic-memory/ <comment><USER3> I've ranted here before about the complexity of email and the difficulty of even existing as a startup in the email space (see my bio). The single team that has navigated the insanity of the email space well as a small company is Fastmail. They are brilliant, ethical, and pragmatic. I sincerely hope the folks at Google who are behind this AMP-for-email idea will take the time to chat with the Fastmail team about it before pulling the trigger.

Having lived through the last DOJ/Google 10-month battle royale (the sale of ITA Software, now called Google Flights), I think this is an absolutely terrible idea for Google from an antitrust standpoint. The upside for them, while obvious, pales in comparison to the downside they face by leveraging their email and search dominance to create a new walled garden. I'm amazed this got past legal.

<comment><USER4> > brilliant, ethical, and pragmatic

In case it's news to others, as it was to me, Fastmail routinely acquires SSL certificates for its customers' domains without their knowledge or consent.

[https://www.fastmail.com/help/files/secure- website.html](https://www.fastmail.com/help/files/secure-website.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Not routinely, it was done once as part of the plan to support SSL for all websites, and when we hit some limits with letsencrypt, we shelved the plan for a bit. There are currently 4 unsolved issues, which the team are looking in to.

We still need to find a way to provide automatic SSL for customer domains though - because we allow our customers to create arbitrary websites inside either their domains or their personal subdomain on our domains (username.fastmail.com).

The alternative of NOT doing something with SSL certificates is having insecure websites for customers by default, which will be more and more punished (and rightfully so) by browser interfaces. Setting up SSL for the domains which are hosted with us is the right thing to do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> From the TechCrunch article [1]:

> _What is the vast majority of "live" content on the web, stuff that needs to > call home and update itself? Not articles like this one, or videos or songs > — those are just resources you request. Not chats or emails. Cloud-based > productivity tools like shared documents, sure, granted. But the rest — and > we're talking like 99.9 percent here — is ads._

Truer words have never been spoken. Shame on you Google.

[1] [https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/13/amp-for-email-is-a- terribl...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/13/amp-for-email-is-a-terrible- idea/)

<comment><USER6> Brilliant article, to be fair. One small piece of internet history.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Bron, I am so happy to see a blog from you guys about this... I was actually planning to ask.

In the light of Google being a monopoly-scale actor, I understand that you may need to support AMP. But if I might offer a note of implementation suggestion, if you add AMP: Make sure AMP, like remote images, is off by default. Perhaps allow the user to whitelist certain services or addresses to show AMP content without the extra click. That way, if AMP provides me a benefit in the way I use emails from a particular provider, I can turn that on... but my email client is never assuming I want to load their dynamic content.

I can see interesting use cases, as someone who pipes all my notifications at my email. I'd love to Favorite and Retweet right from my Twitter notifications, for example, without leaving FastMail. But I definitely don't ever want dynamic content loading from the latest marketing email from a store I've bought stuff from.

<comment><USER8> AMPHTML Email is designed to sit beside the text/plain and text/html parts as just another alternative, with type text/x-amp-html. So in _theory_ , any senders of AMPHTML Email should also include a regular HTML part that is semantically equivalent, and any client that doesn't support text/x-amp-html should simply get the less fancy version.

In practice, if something gets popular enough then the alternative that is _supposed_ to work properly side-by-side gets neglected. (Some email senders cop out on text/plain these days, leaving it out, or worse, empty, as in Dropbox Paper's document update notifications.)

But I don't _think_ AMPHTML Email is likely to be sufficiently broadly supported that this becomes a problem. (It's only likely to happen at all if all the major providers and major email clients support it.) If at any point we do end up supporting AMPHTML Email, any remote content will be handled like remote images.

<comment><USER9> The more time spent on optimizing for one email client, the less time spent on optimizing for an other.

Hands up if you (like me) have skipped coding the text/plain part of an email template and sent out multipart emails with no or empty text/plain.

Developers are lazy, but business minded people will push amphtml because they think it's an edge. If it becomes a thing, people will create webpages instead of emails and skip proper testing. (Again, myself probably included).

<comment><USER10> We've done the opposite. After ten years in operation we've only just begun to add html parts to our emails. Its just easier to render plain text, and no one has the time to be spending hours templating and testing emails, we've got better things to do.

<comment><USER8> And the really amusing aspect of that is that text-focused emails (be they text/plain or deliberately simple and barely styled text/html) tend to get better engagement than fancy branded emails—the data I've seen from a variety of sources is quite conclusive about that.

I wish more people published data about it.

<comment><USER11> I like everything about plain text emails except for hard wrapping, which looks awful on screens that are too small or too wide.

<comment><USER8> To a large extent, hard wrapping is a combination of choices made by the sender (to hard wrap the text, because it doesn't trust clients to soft-wrap properly) and receiver (to soft-wrap or not).

There was a standard to handle it nicely, format=flowed; sadly, it didn't make it: [https://blog.fastmail.com/2016/12/17/format- flowed/](https://blog.fastmail.com/2016/12/17/format-flowed/)

But even without that, the quoted-printable content-transfer-encoding means that the hard wrapping isn't actually necessary—you can have lines as long as you like. Some email clients _do_ thereby send text/plain with arbitrarily long lines, which will cause overflow in some clients (typically where plain text is shown in a monospace font), and be wrapped in others (most, these days, I think; these are typically where plain text is shown in a proportional font).

Then too, some email clients ignore the 78 character limit (it is, after all, only a SHOULD [1]) and write longer lines in the MIME message. (Not sure what they do after 998, which the spec says they MUST not exceed [1].)

But the inability to specify the desired semantics of proportional-with- wrapping versus monospace is probably the part of text/plain email that makes me saddest.

[1]: [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5322#section-2.1.1](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5322#section-2.1.1)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Email represents three important abstractions of the real life:

First, it's a task queue. And you're the _worker_ that processes the tasks. Anything that helps an email service to be that abstraction is very good for users -- prioritizing, postponing, auto-processing, branching, delegating, etc.

Second, it's a log. As the article rightfully says -- an immutable one. Again, anything that helps email be a good log is very good for the user -- search, filtering, archiving, etc.

Third, it's a file storage. This is the most overlooked part, unfortunately. Search, sharing, organizing into collections -- all that would be of great help to users.

Yet, Google pushes that silly AMP :\

<comment><AUTHOR> Bah - file storage. Yep, it certainly is. And to a large degree, because it's a log. Once you email something as an attachment (even to yourself) it's like a version control commit. That copy is locked in, and won't change. You can find it and refer back to it later. It has a timestamp on it, and it's probably stored in the cloud somewhere with backups and such.

Hence "memory" \- because that's how people use it :)

<comment><USER12> >And to a large degree, because it's a log.

I agree. Although, it's more than just a log. For instance, it would be great to have the ability to see a collection of all files sent by a particular sender, with file versions (with dates and links to according emails) stacked under one file name.

Another suggestion -- view a collection of files in all emails with particular label.

Finally, in some cases it can be helpful to have a local read-only copy of files in a particular collection. It's like one-way read-only Dropbox. This would make automated processing of email attachments so much simpler. (BTW, a product idea, anyone?!).

<comment><AUTHOR> So one of the smartass login messages in our internal slack is "JMAP will fix it".

Interestingly enough, JMAP will make this kind of thing much easier - and we have thought about it in the design! Our Cyrus server already internally keeps a blobId which is a digest of the binary content of each MIME part. Which means you can easily tell that two attachments are identical without reading the contents or guessing based on size and name.

And it's easy to search for messages with file attachments and fetch just the file attachement details via JMAP, making this kind of interface relatively easy to write.

The usual caveats about "we haven't got a particular timeframe in mind" apply - but once JMAP is standard, anyone can write a client to that standard!

<comment><USER13> Hi Bron. JMAP is a great design for what it is (a much better IMAP). Thanks for creating it. I can see JMAP becoming a great standard for email-oriented client/server communications.

That said, I'd still encourage you to think bigger to make a more general system. Of course, the risk of thinking bigger is you may end up with either nothing or a monstrosity no one wants to use. And also you'd likely have to adapt your business model eventually if the bigger picture changes through your actions. So, it's fair to think smaller too.

From a related post I made to the Thunderbird Planning list in April 2017 on what I see as the bigger picture: [https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/tb- planning/2017-April/00...](https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/tb- planning/2017-April/005533.html) "My perspective is from wanting to create tools to support a "social semantic desktop" of which email is a subset of the items. Other types of items include news messages, RSS feed messages, chat messages, notification messages, IoT messages, blog posts, pingbacks, saved web pages, commands constructing complex shared documents, VR world update messages, code snippets, notes, and more. Email is a special case of a much larger world of messages. So, for me, a good assumption is that people will eventually have billions of message items comprising terabytes of data in their local (shared-with-email) store. Eventually each user would be part of a global federation of users that together have billions of times that number of messages as a federated semantic web. I understand that such a vision of messaging on that scale is not yet the goal of most people in this discussion right now. But I'd still urge people to think a little beyond redoing Thunderbird as-it-is and try to imagine a personal messaging system that processes, archives, indexes, and recalls vast numbers of items every day in interaction with a user and automated systems as part of a larger federation of similar systems using shared semantic standards."

I've been beating my head against that wall for years with very limited progress (as have others) -- so I can't say it isn't a high risk endeavor with a low probability of success. But the benefit for humanity could potentially be huge if such an effort succeeded. Maybe it might just take a few tweaks to JMAP to generalize it enough to realize some of that big picture?

<comment><AUTHOR> JMAP is pretty generalizable to other datatypes! It's a large part of why we split it into Core and Mail. We also have Calendar and Contacts modules in a reasonable state already.

We also use JMAP-style APIs for Files, for Notes, and for all the extra Preferences and group management stuff in both FastMail and Topicbox.

<comment><USER13> Neat! Yes, I see the potential there, which is why I an interested in JMAP. Just wondering how it might could get even better at all that.

As related market research, Kolab uses IMAP as a general-purpose data store: [https://github.com/pdfernhout/Twirlip2/blob/master/design/ma...](https://github.com/pdfernhout/Twirlip2/blob/master/design/market- research.md)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The possibility that email content could change after receiving a message is worrying.

Is there going to be a way to reject AMP emails? I won't accept any emails that _require_ loading JavaScript or content from CDNs.

If other email providers reject AMP emails with a bounce message explaining why, it might stop a disaster from taking hold. "Please resend your email in standard HTML or text format without JavaScript or external resources."

<comment><USER8> Anyone sending text/x-amp-html should still be including a text/html part, which won't have JavaScript _et al._ Unless just about everyone starts supporting AMPHTML Email, the text/html parts will still be necessary.

<comment><USER15> Like most emails send nowadays use HTML but still include a text/plain part. Here's a live example from my INBOX: [https://svkt.org/~simias/mail- hp.png](https://svkt.org/~simias/mail-hp.png)

Notice that this is from HP, not some small shop. Nowadays people expect you to be able to parse HTML emails and don't bother to have it work in plain text (I'd actually prefer if they got rid of the text/plain in this situation, this way mutt would know to display the HTML instead).

If AMP becomes popular enough and gets integrated by the big players I have no doubt that we'll see the same thing. Then it means you won't be able to process email in any significant way without a full blown Web engine (probably including JS).

First they ported everything to the web, now they're porting the web to everything else. I don't want the web. The web is bloated crap. Stop it. Please. Stop it.

<comment><USER14> Embrace, Extend, Extinguish, then walled garden and/or broken things.

Emails should not include any JavaScript. It would give anyone a way to send immediately executing code into your inbox. CSS animation in email is already bad enough.

Maybe an AMP filter could check the plain text content against AMP and HTML content and bounce the email with a custom message if there is no plain text or standard-HTML way to read the content.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I went through a phase a couple of years ago when I was with Fastmail and looked around for alternatives [1]. I ended up staying with Fastmail and have adjusted to some of it's UI quirks in the admin interface.

Posts like this remind me why I decided to stick with Fastmail. Do one job well. Fastmail do email _really_ well for me.

(Disclosure: Fastmail user on paid plan, unsolicited review/pat-on-the-back)

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11319298](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11319298)

<comment><USER17> Agreed, with similar disclaimer. I've used so many email providers, and none have had my love and loyalty like Fastmail. The highest praise I can offer these days, they earn: Fastmail treats me like the customer, and not the product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Excellent point. I'm a happy fastmail user, and actually I'd like to see the ability to 'fetch and save images' in addition to the 'show images' button, so that I can archive some of those remote-image-wrap emails.

Remote image links are a bane - look how many forums have been effectively ruined because they relied on 3rd party image hosting, that has now changed it's policy, or gone away, etc.

Another annoyance are the dynamic links to other stories that you see at the bottom of news sites. I often spy a link I'd like to follow just as I leave the page, and then when I reload, the links have all changed! Super annoying.

</comment><comment><USER19> Outside marketing, HTML has no place in email IMHO.

Personally I run my self coded all in one mail server(SMTP & web & IMAP) binary and only use the text parts, or convert them to text.

Any marketing email gets blacklisted(sender or domain) and don't have to worry about them anymore.

Last time I was on Gmail I remember that no matter how many times I would report something as spam(and unsubscribe) it would somehow still land in my inbox next time.

<comment><USER20> Look, I'm for plaintext emails as much as the next guy but there is a value in _something_ that provides formatting. Users, very reasonably, would like to use bold, underline, strike-though, highlighting, section headers, lists, tables, inline images, etc.. HTML was a convenient choice of format at the time and it worked well enough with budding webmail clients.

In a forum of tech enthusiasts we might be able to get away with emails exported from groff but we can't throw out all the useful features users like along with it.

<comment> yoz-y If only they have decided to use something like markdown or rtf at the time. (Some mail clients do support it).

IMO the problem with choosing HTML is that then it becomes tempting to embed a complete HTML rendering engine and try blacklisting elements or restricting it. This opens up a door for vulnerabilities. If e-mail used some format which only does formatting then it would be easier to avoid security problems.

<comment><USER21> A simple Markdown dialect would have been perfect, but Markdown's ability to embed HTML would just lead to abuse.

For emails, headings, quotes, code blocks, hyperlinks, images and bold/italic/strikethrough is surely enough. Perhaps tables.

Unfortunately, that ship has sailed.

<comment> yoz-y Well, the advantage is that since e-mail is a plain text medium, it could be "forced" if clients started supporting it.

And it would require zero hacks like this AMP thing and would also be 100% retro compatible if a markup language with sensible plain text legibility were chosen.

<comment><USER20> Up to your ability to modify the client there's absolutely nothing that prevents you from sending a multipart email with text/markdown as one of the options. _Shoudln 't_ break any existing email clients.

Obviously very few clients will be able to read it, or even acknowledge that it exists but it's something. Maybe someone on the other end will appreciate it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Paper trails. Absolutely. The concept of keeping a recipient-owned copy of a message is as ancient as the invention of money and writing itself - it's absolutely critical for messages with legal effects, like receipts. Imagine if a fraudster could change the content of their original messages after the scam was done! Yes, Google could implement an audit trail mechanism, but that would be obscure and extremely confusing.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm a fan of FastMail and their philosophy. I believe you have to own your data. It is hard to find companies with core values so deeply entrenched in the product. I think it gets a little hard to stick by it when there are variables like investments, hockey stick growth involved. There is an easy incentive to not make your product open. I recently had to think about that.

That's the reason FastMail is small company. It's our collective responsibility to support the company as best as we could. Of course, not many people would have the mindspace to think about data ownership.

One of the examples I can give is, I can easily pull up a polaroid from the 70s from the attic. I'm not sure we can do that 30 years from now in the digital space, unless we make a conscious effort.

I've built a small email backup app[1] for the Mac a few years ago. I try to make the product as open as possible with open standards. I work with IMAP a lot. I love how they are spearing heading the movement (JMAP) to finally update a 20 year old protocol.

[1] [https://thehorcrux.com/](https://thehorcrux.com/)

<comment><USER24> I checked out your webpage, and I like the product, but it seems Mac only. Any plans for a Win version?

<comment><USER23> I'd love to have a Windows version. As of now, I only have enough bandwidth to support the Mac version.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm so happy to see this blog. I've been a happy, paying customer of fastmail since . . . I honestly don't know how long it's been. I never think twice about it. Fastmail is the ideal of, "It just works" that Apple strives to be. No offense to Apple or their employees, and it's a limited problem area, but these guys are really, really good at it.

Yeah, I have a gmail account. It's mostly a spam folder at this point. Because if you were able to get a good name when it was in beta in 2004 or so, it's a shitshow, even with google's pretty good filtering.

Fastmail is one of the best examples of why you should pay for online services. When you work with this kind of company, it's clear who the customer is: me. They aren't mining me for data; they aren't trying to trick me into anything. They reliably get my x dollars/year, and I pay them gladly.

A thousand thumbs up for the Fastmail team. It's probably not the most glamorous thing in the world. But cheers to a company that is making a profitable living without hype, without bullshit product marketing, and without closing off access. By just being better at something than anyone else is.

I'm hoping to start a company in the next year or so, and I want to do things the way Fastmail does them. You guys really are a beacon in the tech industry.

</comment><comment><USER26> I've been trying to switch to fastmail about once a year for the last few years and checked it again to refresh my memory. My main gripe is still here: if you are on a bad connection (or with no connection at all), Fastmail's mobile app cannot load interface and so can't show your emails. Which makes it reeeeally painful at times when an app is most useful in the first place. :)

Of course, I could connect native mail.app, but that makes your ui on desktop and mobile too different...

</comment><comment><USER27> Hi Bron, not related to TFA but I am a happy fastmail user and just wanted to say thanks. I really appreciate Fastmail's stable standards based services. These are increasingly hard to come by.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! We aim to please :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm moving email providers in the near future and was looking at Google. AMP for Gmail ensured that I won't touch it.

<comment><USER29> You should read the top comment here before you move to fastmail, and fastmail's response.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15855081](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15855081)

I'm a founder of a company, and I use fastmail for my personal email and gmail for my professional email. I like fastmail more, but I need the security of gmail + yubikey because that professional email can manage DNS/domains/bank accounts.

You should also be aware that fastmail doesn't really integrate that well on Android phones. Eg in order to access calendars hosted on fastmail, you will have to use a third party caldav program. I currently used caldav-sync, which fastmail recommends. It's a piece of shit that stops working approximately every other week on a stock HTC 10. The symptom is my calendar stops syncing. I have to notice this, go to the accounts option, and manually trigger a long term sync. This is very very very annoying and I'm going to find a new program as soon as I have the time. Note this isn't fastmail's fault, but it does significantly inhibit use of their service.

The email composition box on mobile firefox on fastmail is a little funky too, but that's on me. I wouldn't be surprised if I'm essentially the only person using mobile firefox/android/fastmail's web client. This was pretty much the outcome of my effort to de-google myself.

That said, I'm really happy with fastmail and I think I'm prepaid for another two years.

<comment><USER5> > _Eg in order to access calendars hosted on fastmail, you will have to use a > third party caldav program_

If using an app bothers you, stop using Android, because CalDAV is _the_ standard for synchronizing calendars. iOS supports CalDAV natively.

That Android doesn't support it natively is yet another example of Google infecting the market with proprietary stuff.

<comment><USER30> You can expect the iOS implementation to be buggy and not fixable without an OS update. Meanwhile, there are multiple open source CalDav implementations for Android that update automatically.

The most probable reason it isn't installed by default is that CalDav is a failed standard, which most people don't use and don't want wasting space on their devices. ActiveSync and Google Calendar won, which is why even iOS paid the Microsoft tax to support ActiveSync long before it supported CalDav.

<comment><USER5> I used CalDAV on both iOS and MacOS for the last 2 years and worked just fine. Never had any problems. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

It's true that back in 2015 FastMail was not doing invitations and RSVPs through CalDAV, but they fixed that since then.

> _most probable reason it isn 't installed by default is that CalDav is a > failed standard_

That is extreme bullshit, the same kind of bullshit that Google used to kill Google Talk and its XMPP interop, while pushing for their shitty and completely proprietary Hangouts.

People used Google Talk back in the day due to its simplicity and interoperability. Who is using Hangouts now? I actually hope it dies, because we can then put such bullshit arguments to rest.

CalDAV can only become a failed standard because unpaid fanboys and shills keep normalizing this behavior.

But until then I'll keep using CalDAV and I'll be happy about not participating in this charade ;-)

<comment><AUTHOR> CalDAV has some issues - we're working on making it easier to work with at [https://devguide.calconnect.org/](https://devguide.calconnect.org/)

(when I say "we" \- I haven't actually attended a CalConnect for a year, due to spending half my life traveling as it is - but FastMail has sent someone to every event for the past few years, and Ken has been going for ages before that)

And JMAP calendar support will be really nice:

[http://jmap.io/spec-calendars.html](http://jmap.io/spec-calendars.html)

With the JSON format on the standards track now:

[https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-calext- jscalendar-00](https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-calext-jscalendar-00)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> When I saw the AMP for email announcement I was not excited, but I did not get the online dread until I read this post.

The immutability of my email has saved me so many times. I also have this feeling (which may be unfounded) that emails are "proof" of something when I get into a dispute. If my email can change or rot underneath me, I will have to change the entire way I operate online.

I like AMP websites (at a basic level they're fast and that's all I care about) but I have no interest in AMP email. I hope I can opt-out of it.

</comment><comment><USER32> From the Google announcement[1]:

> With AMP for Email, you'll be able to quickly take actions like submit an > RSVP to an event, schedule an appointment, or fill out a questionnaire right > from the email message.

Form the company that prides itself on doing advanced natural language processing and machine learning. How about I just _reply_ to the email? You know, via text.

Do some simple sentiment/content analysis and leave the rest to the _senders_ integration between email client, calendar, crm whatever...

We tried "send people code". It was called office macro virus (viri). Running the code as js doesn't really improve things as long as all your important data lives in the same js namespace...

[1] [https://www.blog.google/products/g-suite/bringing-power- amp-...](https://www.blog.google/products/g-suite/bringing-power-amp-gmail/)

</comment><comment><USER33> Gmail has a reasonably nice small inner-core functionality with keyboard accellerators which is javascript-portable to my life. I won't trust a cafe computer to run gmail to login, but I can trust my changing personal device to let me run gmail in some consistent manner through keyboarded commands I like.

And the spambot is good.

But adding rich features? gaaaaah. I want to go back to MH. I want to go back to my shell. I'm so tempted to walk into a dark corner, rather than have the HTML actively engage with me.

because many things, but perhaps I'm kidding myself? I bet I didn't realize how many tracking events exist through my email reading patterns, that google know, and can monetize.

this AMP thing is just a more overt moment. I'm a frog, and I've been boiled slowly.

<comment><USER34> > I'm a frog, and I've been boiled slowly.

That is a myth: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog)

<comment><USER35> These days it's more of a metaphor than a myth.

<comment><USER33> Also _I am not actually a frog_

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> AMP for gmail will be the straw that moves me completely off of google's platform.

<comment><USER37> For me it was when I had location services disabled on my phone and Android _still_ popped up a notification about the commute time between my home and work, as I was walking out the door.

<comment><USER38> At the risk of venturing off the topic of the main thread... Could that behaviour possibly be explained by timing rather than location? My Android gives me commute data around 7:30AM, regardless of where I am or whether I'm moving. Perhaps they simply guessed you'd be at home.

<comment><USER39> Not just timing... but you're connected to "CompanyWiFi" and it's the end of the business day when you usually disconnect your charging cable/leave. There are many signals they could use to show that

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I mentioned this the other day when a "Google Talk" discussion [1] was featured on HN. The reason I love Google Talk is the fact that conversations are saved in my inbox, and I can export the history to a local drive and encrypt the files. Pictures can go 404, but text, never. Email should be simple, but I know in 20 years, our Internet technology will end up like futuristic anime world technology. A simple, non-interactive, non-multimedia e-mail will last like a paper.

[1]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16349897](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16349897)

<comment><USER41> E-mail and IRC. Relevant XKCD: [https://xkcd.com/1782/](https://xkcd.com/1782/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Finally interested in getting off gmail. Could someone summarize the pros/cons of fastmail vs. protonmail or any other major email provider?

<comment><USER43> I can't compare services too well but I'll toss Migadu into the hat.

[https://www.migadu.com/en/index.html](https://www.migadu.com/en/index.html)

It's basically just an IMAP server. They have webmail but otherwise it's on you to provide a client.

So far it's been great, I switched from gmail and I am not looking back. They give really nice clear instructions on setting up your DNS properly and the pricing isn't too bad.

My main motivation was to get onto a service that lets me have my own domain. Once you're off gmail you are then free to choose and switch between whatever you like.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I'm disappointed at this. If everybody ignored this AMP business, it wouldn't get mainstream attention.

I don't like the idea that some day use need to have a full blown web browser to check your mail.

</comment><comment><USER45> This is pretty fun in an F500 org where email retention is 2 months or less.

Many of you have the luxury of several years of searchable email. Not all of us do. And MS exchange search functionality isn't anywhere near what Gmail's is.

</comment><comment><USER46> I do want to use Fastmail, but their ToS are no better than Gmail i.e, that they can terminate your account any time for any reason whatsoever. Source : [https://www.fastmail.com/about/tos.html](https://www.fastmail.com/about/tos.html) This is the biggest reason I am hesitant to try fastmail.

<comment><USER47> But they probably _wouldn 't_.

That's the whole advantage of building up a business reputation over years (part of which is blog posts like these; another part of which is just _not doing_ shit like that.)

As a potential customer, I knew that Fastmail didn't have a reputation for abusing customers or capricious/erroneous/fucked-up account termination. That's why I chose their service, and today I'm a mostly-satisfied customer.

I didn't and wouldn't choose Google for this kind of service because I don't have that level of trust in them (because, as we all know here, they not only _can_ but also _do_ engage in fucked-up account terminations all the time).

Even if the Fastmail terms of service said "we will not ever terminate your account unless you are convicted of felony child abuse" they could always terminate your account by going out of business.

So I get your concern, but that's really _always_ a concern. You have to judge that risk, and the primary way to do that is by checking out a company's reputation.

<comment><USER46> I understand your point, but prior to the recent update their termination criteria were really broad, basically on whatsoever reason your account could be terminated. Now they have modified their ToS and the termination criteria now seem reasonable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> It's bad because people can manipulate email. It is not absolute. An overzealous email admin/exchange admin can work horrors.

But maybe that's just me. I've been an Exchange admin.

<comment><AUTHOR> For sure - anybody who can modify your mailstore can change emails - that's not really under debate. The same way anybody who has access to your hard drive can change your files.

The issue at hand here is whether the original sender can modify the message after you've received it.

<comment><USER49> I guess they can by brokering a deal with the bad actor in charge of your mail server. Unlikely but email is still bound to social manipulation.

<comment><AUTHOR> We're in the "you're screwed regardless" territory here - like having an ISP who intercepts TLS connections and substitutes content as you download it. There's no real way to work around that, though you might be able to detect it if there are unforgeable signatures on some of the content (e.g. DKIM signatures from third parties on incoming emails) - though the intermediate can strip those too, so all you see is "unsigned" rather than "modified".

<comment><USER50> > if there are unforgeable signatures on some of the content (e.g. DKIM > signatures from third parties on incoming emails)

FWIW, in many cases content can be changed even if signed with DKIM without breaking the signature.

[http://noxxi.de/research/breaking-dkim-on-purpose-and-by- cha...](http://noxxi.de/research/breaking-dkim-on-purpose-and-by-chance.html)

I think email clients should be rethinking how they communicate to users whether or not an email is signed, e.g. if the headers haven't been oversigned and/or the full body hasn't been signed then it may be better to just show the message as having been not signed at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> This is the first convincing argument I've read against AMP email.

On the other hand, if someone sends you a link to a web page, sure the _link_ didn't change, but that's not very useful, since anything can happen to the web page that the link points to.

So it might just be about not confusing the user about what's immutable? Which is itself pretty important.

<comment><USER52> It's the first convincing argument i've read against AMP email, assuming it's a valid argument. It doesn't look like amp4email is any less immutable than standard email is - it fetches some resources from external servers, but mandates that those resources must be static and cacheable. Gmail's current behaviour is to download and store all images in emails when they are first opened, which makes the images in emails as immutable as fastmail wants them to be, and i don't see why they would treat any other resources delivered in amp emails differently to images. To me, this seems perfectly reasonable - <USER2> responsibility to store email contents in the state they were first recieved should be on the recipient's client, not the sender's server.

i love this blog post, because it's great to write down in clear terms why email being a read-only log is so important. but it looks like in the case of amp it might be a bit of a straw man.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is absolutely a good point. I should have shown my working a bit more.

static is boring, because every email can still have a custom endpoint.

proxyable is more interesting.

You say "cacheable" \- I don't see that in the AMP project notes:

[https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/13457](https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/13457)

@ras9929 yes amp-list allows you to generate dynamic content populated from a json endpoint. The demo shown today did exactly what you are suggesting. See [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8Eo4gAoDBA&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8Eo4gAoDBA&feature=youtu.be)

The only reason to host images remotely rather than including them as cid: links inside a multipart/related is size and encoding overhead. Likewise, a new dynamic multimedia format could be entirely self-contained within the email if you wanted to design it that way.

Instead what we have is something which is very tightly coupled to short-lived online services. It's a really poor archival format, but it has just enough sweet bits that people will want to use it for things that it shouldn't be used for. It's really short-term design.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I read this

      Of course, we're a hosted "cloud" service. If we turned bad, we could start silently changing your email. The best defence against any cloud service doing that is keeping your own copies, or at least digests of them.

Does this remind anyone else of that old _Gmail Paper_ April Fool's prank? Last bastion of immutability. [http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,288...](http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1888721_1888719_1888655,00.html)

Wait why do they have a legit link to it still? [https://www.gmail.com/mail/help/paper/](https://www.gmail.com/mail/help/paper/)

<comment><USER54> > _" It's paper, plain and easy. I sometimes find myself wondering: what will > Google think of next? Cardboard?"_

Keeps you wondering where they get their product names...

[https://web.archive.org/web/20141217113440/https://www.gmail...](https://web.archive.org/web/20141217113440/https://www.gmail.com/mail/help/paper/more.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> I've begun to see immutability as a common theme in some of the most esteemed tech in production. Email, git, cryptocurrency, and stream processing (although I admit I don't know a lot about that one) just to name a few big ones.

</comment><comment><USER56> For me, email is just a repository of order and shipping confirmations. I can't even remember the last time I sent an email, or I even read one written by a human.

</comment><comment><USER22> Here's a free B2C startup idea for you aspiring founders: a personal email (local?) archiver and search engine. Pull all my logs from my 15 different addresses I've had over the years, and give me super-fast realtime search on all of it. I wouldn't hesitate to pay 10 bucks a month for that. This idea has a super-useful B2B angle as well (think of the explosion of MailChimp clones).

<comment><USER57> If you don't want to put your data in another silo, this is what mu [1] and notmuch [2] provide. I have been using mu/mu4e for a while and it is absolutely great for quickly finding e-mail, creating virtual search-based mailboxes, etc. Combined with isync and Fastmail's standard-conforming IMAP support, you have a really nice e-mail setup.

Of course, it's not for the general public, but this is _Hacker_ news ;)

[1] [https://www.djcbsoftware.nl/code/mu/](https://www.djcbsoftware.nl/code/mu/)

[2] [https://notmuchmail.org](https://notmuchmail.org)

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> I love FastMail and this is just one of the several reasons I recently updated to a 2 year plan.

I hope you can implement some feature to download the amp-content or similar so it works like normal email. I do not like amp at all but I understand if you have the need to do something to support it, but as other have written please leave it off by default!

</comment><comment><USER59> Email is quickly becoming the equivalent of linked in notifications. When you have 100 unread emails you might be flooded with something important. When you have 20-100 thousand unread emails: Email is broken

It's the electronic memory of nobody cares. I will potentially spend 5-30 minutes a day on email... Most days it is zero

<comment><USER60> You don't need to read everything for it to be useful. I get email reminders of things I need to do - I don't need to read past the subject line (same with shipping notifications), and purchase receipts are useful to keep in case there is a problem (you have a searchable record of when/where you bought it) but don't need to be actively read.

There's a high percentage of emails I get that I don't get any extra value from actually reading them, but I would lose value by not getting them at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Great post!

> The email in your mailbox is your copy of what was said, and nobody else can > change it or make it go away. The fact that the content of an email can't be > edited is one of the best things about POP3 and IMAP email standards.

I rely on this feature of email _all the time_ as I'm sure most people do. We cannot let this change.

</comment><comment><USER62> This makes a convincing argument for the general adoption of ipfs as a the backbone of the internet.

As I understand it, nothing can be truly deleted, you only need to know what the hash of the object was and chances are it will still be accessible in cache for quite some time.

<comment><USER63> So, literally illegal in Europe, where you have the legal right to be forgotten from the internet? There is a lot to be said for being able to delete data from an internet-connected computer and trust that it is, in fact, deleted. Email definitely falls in that category, but while deletion for email has a fairly obvious value, remote mutability of emails is extremely questionable at best.

<comment><USER62> IANAL but I don't believe ipfs in of itself runs afoul of "right to be forgotten". Skimming Wikipedia, "the right to be forgotten" only requires search engines to not index things which are "deleted", or more realistically, things which have been unlisted.

Because even in the infrastructure we have today, objects aren't truly "deleted" for quite some time, at least not where CDNs and Google and Facebook and others are involved.

<comment><USER62> Perhaps a better place to start the discussion about the legality of ipfs would be to ask if bittorrent is illegal in Europe.

After all, if even one seeder is online somewhere in the world, a torrent is accessible and cannot be deleted. Does bittorrent have the potential infringe on someone's right to be forgotten?

ipfs operates in a similar way (peers and seeds).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> As always Bron & teams - so happy with your take on this and proud to be a Fastmail user and advocate.

-Sam.

</comment><comment><USER65> This is why I hate docsend pitches. I can't go back a year or two later and look at things - someone will ask me if I know a founder and I search my inbox and find them, but the pitch is gone and I can't rememeber what they did or what we talked about.

</comment><comment><USER66> Perhaps not to the point, but I find more interesting pieces that I want to remember occur in Hangouts, Slack or some other more expeditious medium other than email.

I suspect that for some, email is losing priority.

</comment><comment><USER67> Google just wants to take control of publishers. And then dictate to them what they can do or not, when a publisher page is displayed in an email. No, to AMP for email

</comment><comment><USER68> > We strongly believe that our customers stay with us because we're the best, > not because it's hard to leave

That's why I stay with them.

</comment><comment><USER69> I love seeing posts like these where a company demonstrates what their core values really are, not just shallow slogans. I'm a happy Fastmail customer and just renewed for 5 more years.

Off-topic -: Do you plan to ever open source your Android app?

</comment><comment><USER70> an email service would be the only instance where I would consider disabling my ad blocker if ads are not targeted... could FastMail consider?

</comment><comment><USER71> A bit unrelated, but since, Bron, you are obviously reading this: I love your blog, the only thing that drives me crazy: I can't see the scroll bar in your blog posts on my mobile. I guess it's because it's rendered in white. Scroll bars, however, are great to have an indication how much of a page I've read already, like a download bar. Not having it drives me nuts :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, our blog is currently a pain to work with in a few ways. It's generated straight out of our source repository from Markdown files, and you have to do the full pull request, merge, deploy to get posts out.

We're looking at moving the blog to another platform, and usability review will be part of that!

<comment><USER25> I recently wrote a blog engine that's pretty lightweight. Sort of tries to hit a middle-ground between a static blog and a wordpress type of thing. It also . . . doesn't work perfectly. I fucked something up with drafts, and I need to get back to it. But if you are interested, it's not too bad. Insanely fast.

[http://actuallysprained.net/](http://actuallysprained.net/)

Source code is here: [https://bitbucket.org/tronflux/pyrant](https://bitbucket.org/tronflux/pyrant)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll pass the link on to the team looking at it. I think they already have something in mind though. Ta.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> _> (even more specifically, an email with remote images can totally change after being content scanned)._

Can anyone speak to the prevalence of this abuse strategy? Are our anti-spam engines able to handle this?

</comment><comment><USER73> Then why isn't Fastmail adding some kind of end-to-end encryption at least for its own users? Shouldn't our memories be private (unless we choose otherwise)?

<comment><USER74> [https://blog.fastmail.com/2016/12/10/why-we-dont-offer- pgp/](https://blog.fastmail.com/2016/12/10/why-we-dont-offer-pgp/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! The benefits of having blogged all this already :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> Gmail inexplicably deleted all my email prior to sept of 2009.... and later I needed the emails I had in the account.

So yes - ___email_ __is and should be your digital mem, but the system sucks and the companies suck that promise you free "digital memories" \-- so I am still on the fence in general regarding all tech firms that provide a free service - but what should one plan to pay for this:

\---

I was born in 2028. I was immediately augmented from what I was organically contrived to be/become; a Human.

Human.

What did that mean exactly? What is the definition of a Human? What the FUCK is this bag of potential intelligence? This bag of potential revenue? This bag of potential fealty? This.. bag... of... ...potential???

Out of the gate the system labeled, confined, contrived, pre-determined and then finally ___programmed_ __me as to what, no, WHO, I was....

I had to then begin to ___PAY_ __to be " __ _HUMAN_ __" \-- I had to pay for maintenance of my body, pay to feed it, pay to educate it, pay to protect it, pay to get it loved, pay for everything that I either required or desired... -- this is what the 'definition' of being human has become.

If you are born and cant be intelligent enough, beautiful enough, lucky enough, rich enough or evil enough... You are not allowed to be human. Survival of the fittest at its best. And the only ones who would agree with that, are those that can state that they are better than masses who cant compete....

This is the new 'Human'

\--

Who is greater than what.

When youre a "what" \- a plumber, a coder, a low life, a socialite... yeah... there are lots of layers in WHAT....

But there is really only one "who". WHO is that WHAT? is the basics....

Who is that master plumber?

Who is that elite socialite?

Who is ___that_ __low-life?

\---

Then the system judges " __ _how much_ __"

"How much has that low life cost ___society_ __"

"how much does that plumber give to society?"

"How much is that socialite worth?"

"How much does that engineer contribute to my life's well being?"

"How much do these jerks make?"

\---

So, as we discover who and what we are, we need to look at ___how_ __we became that [thing].

How? Parents predilections, socioeconomic status, location born, innate abilities, genetic modifications, external modifications....

Human is a basic condition that is manipulable and shall be exploited through whatever given tools are available to those who are in a position to exploit.

Now, where is my blood-boy.

/fiction-rant

</comment><comment><USER76> Email is not immutable though? It's pretty easy to just copy an email out of your favorite IMAP client, modify it, and drag it back. Do they not know this?

<comment><USER7> I think the point is that it's immutable to the user. Nobody can go in my mailbox and change the content of emails that are there. You can't unsend an email (except for weird hacks like delaying sending the email in the first place). The use of the term immutable here is not intended to suggest your inbox cannot be modified in any way by yourself.

A good example of how Gmail has futzed with immutability with "dynamic" content before is how they embed Google+. It lets you +1 and comment straight from inside Gmail, which is pretty awesome! But... in the case of a notification for a deleted post or comment, the dynamic overlay Gmail uses will try and obscure the content. You end up having to go to a mobile or IMAP client to see what was actually contained in the email notification of the deleted G+ item.

<comment><USER76> > The use of the term immutable here is not intended to suggest your inbox > cannot be modified in any way by yourself.

Okay, but then, is this any different from cloud storage? Would you also say Google Drive is immutable for the same reason? Or for that matter, wouldn't the same go for files on your computer?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes - assuming you trust Google not to fiddle it. I would expect that a document I stored in Google Drive wouldn't update itself a week later.

<comment><USER76> OK, so by "immutable" you really _do_ mean "static" then? Static stuff can change, but stays unchanged until you actually change it. Dynamic stuff can change even without input from you. Mutable stuff is possible to change. Immutable stuff is impossible to change. etc.

The bigger issue though is I'm trying to square what you're saying here with your blog post:

> I admit it annoyed me when I first ran into it – why can't you just fix up a > message in place

If this was a poor wording, maybe go back and rephrase? Because I it seems pretty _undeniable_ that after reading this sentence the reader gets the impression that you claim it's not possible to go back and fix up a email in your own inbox. Which wouldn't really matter, except that people who aren't aware otherwise will actually believe you and spread misinformation on this. Last thing I want is someone reading your blog post and falling for a scam because they read from a presumably reputable source (you) that emails can't be edited post-facto.

<comment><USER77> Once you send an email to someone, you can't change it. It's that simple.

It has absolutely nothing to do with what you can do to your own inbox. The entire point is that you should be able to rely on the fact that what you see in the emails you receive from a sender cannot be modified by that sender.

If someone sends you threats over email, you just archive them as evidence. Now with amp, they can send you threats that only show a threat the first time and then load inane text the rest of the time.

I'm sure someone thought this was a good idea but I can't imagine they used emails very much themselves because this is idiotic. Email isn't a web browser.

<comment><USER78> There are tons of games you can play with email. If it isn't signed with PGP or S/MIME or DKIM someone on either side can make it look like something completely different than the original.

A bad actor can claim their edited copy of your email is death threats.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Like Firebase but for frontend - <AUTHOR> https://www.producthunt.com/posts/dohnny <comment><USER2> Amazing product!

</comment><comment><USER3> wow</comment>


The Supposedly Physics-Defying NASA Thruster Doesn't Work, New Research Confirms - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/the-supposedly-physics-defying-nasa-thruster-doesnt-wor-1826296320 <comment><USER2> It might be a good idea to investigate from the point of view of engineers, what this real scientist [1] wrote some 15 years ago:

[0] [https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/6706/AIM-2002...](https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/6706/AIM-2002..).

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Wisdom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Wisdom)

</comment><comment><USER3> Actual scientific article at [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325177082_The_Space...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325177082_The_SpaceDrive_Project_- _First_Results_on_EMDrive_and_Mach-Effect_Thrusters)</comment>