JA WestenbergEmail is the cockroach of the internet - it outlives every wave trying to kill it. Forget Slack, forget Discord, forget chat apps. Email is universal, decentralized, and asynchronous. It's not sexy, but it's the ultimate survivor.
Jeff Miller (orange hatband)@Daojoan Email: it's older than the Domain Name System.
mbpazRemember "bang paths"? ( host1 ! host2 ! username )
Raise your hands, all of you who had an email address *without* an "@" sign.
I did. But I was young them, and now I'm 50.
Ashwin Dixit🙋
I had a BITNET email address, with a % instead of an @
@purrperl @jmeowmeow @Daojoan I never got to connect to BITNET, but addresses with "%" were not rare during the transition from bang paths to domain addressing.
According to the Linux Network Administrators Guide (vintage 1991 or so): "... user %domainB@domainA is first sent to domainA, which expands the rightmost (in this case, the only) percent sign to an @ sign. The address is now user@domainB, and the mailer happily forwards your message to domainB, which delivers it to user"
Daniel Barlow (bike)@mbpaz @purrperl @jmeowmeow @Daojoan I had an address with a % in it in 1992 because it was (I think) on a computer which could only send email to the internet via Janet
At some point not long afterwards the admins did something magic with MX records and rewrites and in was able to replace the % with a .
At some point not long afterwards the admins did something magic with MX records and rewrites and in was able to replace the % with a .