@ReaderJohn As usual, I disagree entirely with Hansson. It’s not that he isn’t onto something, but I find he has a unique ability to miss the point of what thoughtful people say, and force those things to say what he wants them to say. He’s like Stephen Pinker but with coding skills. 🤓
@tinyroofnail I don't think I'd ever heard of him before. I assumed he was a minor blogger I'd stumbled onto as a one-off.
@ReaderJohn Ah, gotcha. He’s one of the guys behind Heymail and Basecamp. Not sure if I signed up when I got Hey mail or if I was automatically signed up, but I’ve been getting his posts since that time. They’ve gone from tolerable to intolerable since the election, and it’s one of the main drivers to switch to Fastmail or Proton, which I hope to do soon
@tinyroofnail You may have signed up because I have Heymail and don't get his blog. OTOH, I don't recall agreeing to give $55/mo, plus a credit card fee, to an advocacy group I like (I don't like them that much). It's a jungle out there.
@ReaderJohn Ha! It certainly is a jungle. For the record, I do appreciate that “something” being aluded to. The widely subconscience replacement of that God-itch with politics or activism is probably a thing, though, to steal a term from you, most likely overdetermined. I think as @annie is pointing out, the irony of a guy like Hansson pointing this out is too thick (and destructive, I think, in his case) to be funny. I don’t trust any version of Nietzche, let alone (🤓) God, in Hansson’s hands.
@JohnBrady Spare me your godless hippy nonsense; you can’t fool me. Personally, I feel closest to God while I’m throwing Big Gulps out the window of a Hummer while I cruise downtown getting 9 miles to the gallon.
@JohnBrady Yeah, I think you’re right. I do think I’ll miss some features. I appreciated what you mentioned in your email about it being a bit loud and colorful. I still haven’t nearly got used to the design of Hey. And I haven’t really decided if some of the features, like the separate newsfeed, are helpful to me or just an excuse to abuse the sign-up boxes. I think the screener is what I’ll miss the most. Probably the most important thing for me, and this may have something to do with the loud and colorful design, is that I have written very few personal emails since switching to Hey, and I’m certain now that it’s partly because I just don’t like the platform for writing or for personal correspondence.
@tinyroofnail @JohnBrady This is an interesting take. I love the app and I found myself writing more personal emails from it (especially when I briefly used it for blogging).
I ran into major issues with Proton. So much so that it was unusable and I had to request a refund. I'm now on Fastmail, but I really miss some of the features of HEY.
I somehow came across la DHH post (I can't even find the link now) about the longevity of the 37Signals services and it really resonated with me. I started wondering if I made a mistake by canceling. His words did speak to some of the concerns I had...
@tinyroofnail @JohnBrady Ah, I found the link.
This part hit me:
That obsession isn't free, but it's worth it. It means we're still operating the very first version of Basecamp for thousands of paying customers. That's the OG code base from 2003! Which hasn't seen any updates since 2010, beyond security patches, bug fixes, and performance improvements. But we're still operating it, and, along with every other app in our heritage collection, deploying it with Kamal.
@canneddragons That is interesting. Mind detailing your issues with Proton and how you’re liking Fastmail?
@tinyroofnail Sure thing. I expect that my experience was atypical, but it was also extremely limiting.
On my iPad, the inbox wouldn't update. I would get a notification that I had a new message, but it wouldn't show in my inbox. I would try and refresh and would just get a spinning circle. The icon badge would say I had a dozen unread messages, but I didn't have any. The inbox would say mail hadn't been retrieved in > a hour. I couldn't seem to get the inbox to refresh and display new messages.
Another issue was that I would delete multiple drafts, it would give me a message that they were deleted, but they were still there. I couldn't ever get them to delete.
I had almost as many bugs with the MacOS app. These issues came before I imported my mail from Gmail, but they got even worse after that.
@JohnBrady I have problems getting “forgot your password” type messages with Proton. I’ve experienced some of the other issues in this thread also. But I’m too lazy to change services again. 😄
@JohnBrady Is Proton used by too many people who want privacy for nefarious reasons, and is it therefore blocked by some providers/servers? I've run into this problem a few times with my web hosting provider (through which I have my email).
@JohnBrady @tinyroofnail Yeah, despite the somewhat cartoonish appearance, I like the heymail features too much to give it up. I've never paid attention to management and short of seeing allegations that they're literal Nazis or Commies, I don't expect to start.
@canneddragons I used Basecamp for a while in my law practice. It seemed to have unique features, but I can't remember anything beyond that generality. (It's good being retired.)
@JohnBrady I saw that @numericcitizen documented his experience of moving from HEY to Fastmail, including efforts to replicate many of the features.
