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Comment by mahouse | Hacker News Reader

What do you suggest as a solution?

A new smtp protocol with: - mandatory encryption, mandatory validation of certificates - certainty on the sender (effectively a mandatory hardfail spf) - ideally decoupling the email address from the provider running the mail server (users shouldn't be prisonners of a gmail or a yahoo)

[edit] also a system of extended validation for signatures like for ssl certificates would be useful. I would end up expecting a nice green logo in my mail client for emails from citibank.com, something cit1bank.com could not achieve.

[edit2] also a modern design would require emails to be instantaneous. All these messenger apps would become redundant and we would revert to a common standard.

I've said it before but I'll say it again:

http://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt

Good checklist of things a potential "reformed SMTP" needs to do.

That's quite the low effort response. You could've at least mentioned a point or two that applies to this situation. The list you linked to is not a check list, it only lists ways to shoot ideas down. Although I don't necessarily disagree with the skepticism in this case, consider for a second that a very similar list could have been written up until right before the Wright brothers took off with their plane, supposedly proving manned flight impossible.

Manned flight was a new technology. The proposal to build a new SMTP with [...] requires abandoning SMTP as it is now and convincing everyone to switch.

If the Wright Brothers wanted to eliminate auto accidents by flying, anyone at the time could have told them they were doomed to failure, and history would have proven them right, even though air travel is safer than road travel. That's because getting people to stop using cars isn't simply a matter of inventing an airplane.

a very similar list could have been written up until right before the Wright brothers took off with their plane, supposedly proving manned flight impossible

Someone should write up such a list along with a bot that replies to any post that cites the craphound link linked above. I think it's a valid counterpoint.

Nevertheless, whenever someone offers up a cure-all for SMTP, that craphound list is the first thing that comes to mind.

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