Post AYd8471HEjyiIXIgfg by markgalassi@floss.social
(DIR) More posts by markgalassi@floss.social
(DIR) Post #AYcrEZoTL7ipH4iOjw by kfogel@kfogel.org
2023-08-11T15:49:37.811739Z
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Have you noticed how often people have started saying “attached” to mean “linked to”?As in: “I’ve attached a document about X” – but there’s no attachment on the email, and instead the words “the document” are just a link to a Google Doc.The distinction between the bits being here (in my hand) and the bits being there (I need a currently-active Net connection and cooperation from a third-party service to get at them) is not only not important to most people, it’s a distinction that doesn’t even exist for them in the normal course of things.Is this important? I tentatively think it is, but I don’t have a good explanation of why, other than inchoate worries about people thinking they have something when actually what they have is a non-binding commitment from some other party to continue allowing access to the thing as long as doing so continues to serve the other party’s purposes. It also feels similar, somehow, to when we (in the U.S., anyway) started allowing branded commercial vending machines into public school cafeterias and hallways.
(DIR) Post #AYd8471HEjyiIXIgfg by markgalassi@floss.social
2023-08-11T18:20:28Z
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@kfogel I also dislike it. When people send me a link that requires a login to someone walled garden I reply asking that they send me the file or put it at a simple link.
(DIR) Post #AYd84BFbVPobQ82BYe by kfogel@kfogel.org
2023-08-11T18:58:13.327131Z
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@markgalassi Sometimes a login isn't required -- there are Google Docs, for example, that Just Work if you have the link (well, Just Work assuming you allow their proprietary Javascript into your browser tab, but I digress). But I agree: it's even worse when an account or some other extraneous thing is required to get at the thing that was supposedly "attached".
(DIR) Post #AYd86YKIgJutZGMVmq by TheyOfHIShirts@glammr.us
2023-08-11T17:00:43Z
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@kfogel I wonder if this is an artifact of terminology continuing to be used because it's the single word someone has learned to describe an entire category of material, such that any file that should be bundled with an email is an "attachment," even if the file itself is linked or embedded instead of a separate file attached to the thing itself. Because most of us do not have to physically attach supplemental materials to our memos or communications any more, or physically cut and paste things.
(DIR) Post #AYd8FQR3OE7RhTkffk by joeyh@hachyderm.io
2023-08-11T16:55:10Z
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@kfogel upload/download reversal gets me this way toobut otoh, a file stored in gmail as an attachment has a similar nonbinding commitment to a google doc so to the average user this is a distinction without a difference
(DIR) Post #AYd8FUefhXOAms9bSC by kfogel@kfogel.org
2023-08-11T19:00:13.931804Z
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@joeyh Yup, you're surely right. But I'm reading email in a local mailreader, running entirely on my computer. The difference between the document being attached and being linked to makes a big difference for me :-/.
(DIR) Post #AYe33we7V3eVVpWu0G by TerryHancock@realsocial.life
2023-08-11T19:11:48Z
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@kfogelStill subject to deletion if you take too long to download it (perhaps because you imagine you already have it).@markgalassi
(DIR) Post #AYe33xPyd7vvuFv7b6 by kfogel@kfogel.org
2023-08-12T05:36:51.186251Z
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@TerryHancock By "it" you mean the so-called attachment, that is, the linked-to online thing? @markgalassi
(DIR) Post #AYe36J437X8zcWmfgm by earthtoneone@mstdn.social
2023-08-11T19:49:42Z
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@kfogel It's sometimes opaque to the sender. I've "attached" a document to an email only to find that Gmail "helpfully" made it a link. (I'm not sure if that's still an issue - haven't noticed in a long time, but it might just be because I trained myself to work around it.)
(DIR) Post #AYe36K0takDQZ2JfPc by kfogel@kfogel.org
2023-08-12T05:37:21.388641Z
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@earthtoneone Wow. That's straight-up doing something different from what the user said to do, IMHO. Not that anyone at Gmail ever asked me :-).
(DIR) Post #AYe3EjYwU61E7VFiJU by soaproot@sfba.social
2023-08-11T21:49:32Z
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@kfogel Offline mode in general seems like a bit of a lost art (which is odd because I tend to travel with multiple devices but not very consistent network access). But that's just one reason to care.
(DIR) Post #AYe3EkHFpLSqKvz6Nk by kfogel@kfogel.org
2023-08-12T05:38:50.268425Z
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@soaproot As is probably apparent by now, it's also the reason I care. I operate in offline mode as much as possible by default; I'm always glad (and somewhat surprised) that it remains mostly doable.
(DIR) Post #AYe3K7QJCLZNZRmXE8 by beamflash@hachyderm.io
2023-08-12T04:38:41Z
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@kfogel I appreciate the difference but the grumpy sysadmin in me says that email shouldn't be a file transfer protocol. I recognise that battle has been lost, but perhaps also the difference that can be highlighted is inside an organisation where everyone can be assumed to be using the same online tools, vs cross-organisation where the document needs to be frozen as it transfers from one to the other.
(DIR) Post #AYe3K89KUxa9p4qUOu by kfogel@kfogel.org
2023-08-12T05:39:51.278466Z
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@beamflash That's an interesting perspective. I never thought of it that way... well, I guess I thought of email as by definition already being a file transfer protocol. The only question is how strict to be about the file contents, and how many files per transfer.
(DIR) Post #AYe505rTUlOsqM4FV2 by TerryHancock@realsocial.life
2023-08-12T05:51:13Z
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@kfogelYes. I have tried to find "attachments" in my old gmail queue only to find they were actually drive links, and now dead.Of course, if I'd been conscious of that, I would probably have downloaded them when I first got them.Makes tracing history harder.@markgalassi