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by rakoo 1366 days ago
RSS

IMAP

Bittorrent

I lost my mojo for brand new technologies and frameworks and languages, and I can't ignore the amount of energy and resources that new shiny tech requires, so I stick to low-tech, proven stuff that has been there for eons and will be there for eons, as much as I can.

2 comments

RSS & IMAP I can maybe understand are a bit 'boring' and stale but is bittorrent/p2p ?

I always see some really clever usages still popping up!

The base bittorrent protocol basically hasn't changed in more than a decade. Innovation happened at the periphery, to allow peers to discover themselves (pex, dht), to improve bandwidth management (utp), and now even to scrape in a decentralized way. There is a new version of the core protocol that solves many problems but unfortunately it's safe to say that no one will pick up on it.

p2p is indeed exploding, but it's a field that is plagued with money-grabbing schemes and so many pipe dreams only a professional plumber can conceive them. Bittorrent (and its extensions!) has stood the test of time as a protocol that does what it says on the tin and doesn't need "improvements"

what is the replacement for IMAP if you are not using the browser version?

As far as i can remember, any email client i ever set up with outlook/gmail/gsuite eventually is set up using IMAP

The Exchange ActiveSync thing from Microsoft is probably the most used protocol for synchronizing mails, contacts and calendars. Given its proprietary nature there must be tremendous efforts done just to understand how it works, so it's not for me.

Moreover, more and more uses of email go through the web and IMAP is an afterthought. Tutanota can send end-to-end encrypted emails... if both parties access emails through the web interface. Or it's a link to an encrypted message, but then you have to send the secure link/password some other way. ProtonMail does the same, if you want IMAP access you need to install an additional software on your machine.

IMAP used to be everywhere, but because people like shiny things it is slowly seen as a bad thing we should get rid of