SIGH. I am far more inclined to listen to John Levine or Suresh Ramasubramanian, both who have been around for decades and have earned their chops with DMARC and Sendmail. Both with a proven track record, rather than someone lacking credentials. Since spam is a subjective term, I’d personally like to know how someone can design a solution that works for billions of people. Heck, you need to improve over existing technology that provides a false negative rate p < 0.01 and false positive p < 0.005.

 

Someone who thinks Gmail is e-mail 1.0 fails to grasp history. Have you ever created a sendmail.cf without using M4?

 

[This message represents views of the author and not any employer (present or former).]

 

 

From: NANOG [mailto:nanog-bounces@nanog.org] On Behalf Of Viruthagiri Thirumavalavan
Sent: Sunday, February 17, 2019 6:04 PM
To: nanog list
Subject: A Zero Spam Mail System [Feedback Request]

 

Hello Everyone,

 

My name is Viruthagiri Thirumavalavan. I'm the guy who proposed SMTP over TLS on Port 26 last month. I'm also the guy who attacked (???) John Levine.

 

Today I have something to show you. 

 

Long story short.... I solved the email spam problem. Well... Actually I solved it long time back. I'm just ready to disclose it today. Again...

 

Yeah.. Yeah.. Yeah... If only I had a dime for every time people insult me for saying "I solved the spam problem"

 

They usually start with the insult like "You think you are the inventor of FUSSP?"

 

These guys always are the know-it-all assholes. They don't listen. They don't want to listen. They are like barking dogs. If one started to bark, everyone else gets the courage to do the same thing.

 

I'm tired of fighting these assholes in every mailing list.  I'm on your side morons. So how about you all knock it off?

 

Six months back, it was John Levine who humiliated me in the DMARC list. Apparently, for him 50 words are enough to attack me. 

 

Töma Gavrichenkov and Suresh Ramasubramanian even started to defend this man saying 50 words are enough to judge a 50,000 words paper.  [We are gonna figure it out today]

 

----------------------------------

 

@Töma Gavrichenkov

 

In theory, I can easily recall a few cases in my life when going
through just 50 words was quite enough for a judgment.

 

How can you be so sure that you didn't fuck up none of the lives of these "few cases"? Or in more technical terms, How can you be absolutely sure that there is no "False Positives"? 

 

----------------------------------

 

@Suresh Ramasubramanian

 

Yes, 50 words are more than enough to decide a bad idea is bad.  You don't have to like that, or like any of us, but facts are facts 

 

Merely appending the text "facts are facts" not gonna convert a bullshit statement into a fact.

 

You know what's the meaning of the word "fact"? It's a statement that can be proved TRUE.

 

Let's do a little experiment. 100 researchers presents their lifetime work to us. Each of their research paper contain 50,000 words. We are gonna judge them.

 

You are gonna judge them based on only the first 50 words. And I'm gonna judge them by tossing a coin. Can you guess who is gonna fuck up less number of researcher lives? 

 

I'm claiming that I solved the email spam problem. If that's true, then you should know, common sense is one of the very basic requirement for that.

 

I designed my email system. Every inch of it. I wrote my research paper. Every word of it. I made my prototype video. Every second of it. So I'm the captain of my ship. Not you. But you all think you know my system better than me? That too, with only 50 words?

 

My research paper has around 50,000 words. And you think 50 words are enough to judge my work? Let me make sure I get this right. You are all saying, you know what's in the rest of the 49,950 words based on only the first 50 words? That's stupid on so many levels.

 

If you are gonna do a half-assed job and relay that misinformation to thousands of people, why volunteer in the first place? And by the way, by saying you are all doing half-assed job, I'm actually insulting the people who are REALLY doing the half-assed job.

 

----------------------------------

 

John Levine vs. me

 

One month back, some of you may have noticed a thread created by John Levine where he goes like "He's Forum Shopping". The whole gist of that message was "We already have DANE and MTA-STS. We don't a third solution". And then I used some harsh words to defend myself. But that was the Season 2 of his "Shitshow". The Season 1 was aired 6 months back. You all missed that show. This is what happened in Season 1.

 

  1. Six months back, I posted on three mailing list saying "I solved the email spam problem" and asked them to provide feedback on my invention. Those three mailing lists were SPF, DKIM and DMARC. That's because my solution relied on them and those three were the only email related mailing lists I knew at that time.
  2. In DMARC community, John Levine started to insult me after reading only the first 50 words. 
  3. Dave Crocker joined the cast and did a flawless job on abusing me. He asked me to kill my project. I told him he is being rude. And this is what he replied for that. He is one of the most radical and ignorant person I have seen in tech. He didn't even stop for a moment and think "Am I attacking an Innocent person?". He even went to other mailing lists to attack me. He abused all his power and kept on attacking me just to have some "dopamine orgasm". Something tells me he slept peacefully on that day.
  4. And then bunch of other guys joined. So the whole thread gone crazy. This is because John Levine successfully distributed wrong version of the story to thousands of people with only 50 words.
  5. Both Dave Crocker and John Levine are the bigshots there. So I knew no matter how much I cry for help, no one is gonna help me.
  6. John seemed like a "decent-asshole" while compared to Dave Crocker. So I sent a private mail to John saying "John, I'm not really sure whether I can afford you since I have not raised any money yet. But let me give it a shot. Could you tell me how much you would charge to go through my presentation, demo video and give me a detailed feedback about my system?"  [The reason I was ready to pay him is because he made it very clear in the DMARC thread by saying "Sorry, but I don't provide consulting for free".  I thought if I make him read my document, he would go back and correct his mistake]
  7. And this is what he replied for that. "Really, even if you had money, it wouldn't be worth your money or my time". [For the record, he come to this conclusion without even knowing what's inside in my document]
  8. I said only "ok, thankyou" and then unsubscribed from the DMARC mailing list. [What more can you argue with a bunch of know-it-all morons who thinks they are all right?]
  9. Six month later (last month), John started his shitshow again attacking my IETF proposal. He tried to make me look like an idiot again. And that's when I started to defend myself by using harsh words.
  10. You all know the rest.

 

----------------------------------

 

One person told me on that thread to take John Levine's words as criticism. 

 

You see I have no problems with criticism. I usually thank people when they criticize my work. The best criticism usually follows this format.

 

"I went through your paper (#1), your work is full of shit (#2), Here are the reasons (#3)"

 

#1 says, the critic really knows what the author is talking about. 

#2 says, the critic is speaking his mind without any bullshit. 

#3 says, the critic has valid points for his criticism.  

 

However, I can't consider someone as critic who straightly go for #2. Especially when the whole argument was all about killing my work just because he is one of the inventor of MTA-STS.

 

If I start to listen his words, then next time he will create a new thread to attack me for creating <this thread> saying "He's forum shopping. I already told him it's not worth his money and my time". What you want me to do in this case? Take that as criticism and move on? It's my 5 fucking years of research. I can't just let it go just because someone doesn't like my work.

 

----------------------------------

 

@Valdis Kletnieks

 

You missed the part where the RFC says you *MUST* fall back to A if there's
no MX.

 

 "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself; Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man" - George Bernard Shaw

 

----------------------------------

@John Levine

 

I was trying to contribute to IETF the other day. One of the guy from DMARC list uses your words as a reason to attack me and asking me to turn down the proposal. You were watching that.

 

If I really solved the email spam problem, that puts me in the "best problem solvers in the world" category.  So how about you go back to the DMARC list and write a decent apology for posting misinformation to everyone? [Of course only if I solved the spam problem. That was my claim from the beginning right?]

 

----------------------------------

 

@Everyone

 

Here is what you all should know.

 

It's my 5 years of research. So it's worth more than 50 words. I started my work back in 2013 and I used to call my work "XMail" at that time. It's now called "Dombox"

 

My prototype codebase has around 200,000 lines of code. [To be exact: 466,965 ++  254,169 --]

 

Sequoia Capital is one of the well known venture firm in the world. They have invested in over 250 companies since 1972, including Apple, Google, Oracle, PayPal, Stripe, YouTube, Instagram, Yahoo! and WhatsApp. Bill Coughran is a senior investor in Sequoia Capital. According to his linkedin profile, he started as a Programmer in the late 60s and held many engineering related positions over the years. Worked in Bell Laboratories for 20 years. Worked as SVP of Engineering in Google for 8.5 years. To quote his words "I have some level of expertise about the current email systems, which is why I was did some investigating". So this man is one of the toughest person to impress. But he is one of the nicest investor I have met. When I asked him whether he can take a look, he didn't insult me with words like "You think you are the inventor of FUSSP?" He just told me "Sure, I'd be happy to." He went through my entire paper and then sent me this mail. He later turned me down because it's hard for a startup to distribute a new solution. Maybe he is right. Or maybe I'll overcome that too. [Today's discussion is about whether I solved the spam problem. Not about how I'm gonna distribute the solution]

 

Yesterday I published my work on a medium blog post and linked my white paper. An engineer read my white paper and sent me this mail. 

 

These guys see value in my white paper because they completed my ~300 pages white paper. 

 

To the "50 words are enough" band members, let me tell you something. I'm the author of my work. It's my job to decide "what to show you" and "when to show you". I have posted my system summary in a medium blog post. When you reach 75% of the article, you will see a title called "Hot Gates Strategy". Everything you see above is pointless without the remaining 25% of the content. Put it this way, I have designed 75% of that system, only to have remaining 25% of the system. So yeah, even if you had 75% of the content, you still can't judge my work. 

 

Whether you all believe it or not, I'm the goddamn inventor of FUSSP.  I can proudly say that because my system doesn't have the "spam" folder. So how about you all appreciate the guy who spent 5 years in chasing for a solution like a madman and succeeded in solving a challenging problem rather than spending your time in attacking me? [For the record, my single white paper plenty of problems. Email Spam is one of them]

 

Looking forward to hear your feedback. People who complete my white paper, please post whether my claims are true or I'm just wasting everyone's time.

 

[I'm going to bed now. So I may not be online for the next 8 hours. I'll respond to your queries after that]

 

Thanks

 

----------------------------------

 

Materials:

 

 

 

 

Prototype - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VK2eSfCurx4 [This is the video I uploaded before posting to DMARC list. So the interface is little outdated]

 

--

Best Regards,

 

Viruthagiri Thirumavalavan

Dombox, Inc.